The next morning confirmed that he had not been followed. Not a soul was to be seen on the country road. He turned onto the major road to London. There was little traffic this early. He watched his rear-mirror. Isolated cars overtook him. None appeared to be following him.
Nevertheless, he would make the fake reservation to Buenos Aires. That cost nothing. He drove into the outskirts of London, and with great difficulty found the Hertz depot. He returned the car and set off for the underground station. People were hurrying to work through the drizzle.
First he telephoned British Airways and established there was space on their flight to Johannesburg that evening. He did not make a reservation. Then he telephoned El Al airline. He made a reservation for James McQuade on their flight three days hence to Tel Aviv, and another reservation two days later from Tel Aviv to Buenos Aires.
It was probably a waste of time, but he might as well carry it one step further. He had thought this one up last night on his second bottle of wine, before talking the barmaid into bed. He telephoned the Israeli Embassy.
‘My name is James McQuade. I’m flying to Tel Aviv in three days time, to do some research into the Holocaust. I’m particularly interested in Heinrich Muller, once head of the Gestapo. Now, is there a library in Israel which specializes in this information?’
‘There certainly is, sir.’
Five minutes later he hung up, almost convinced that he really should go to Israel. Well, if Wiesenthal’s boys enquired, they’d certainly get that message.
He consulted a map of the London underground system, then bought a ticket to Sloane Square and waited for the next Circle Line train.
The rush hour was over. Only two people got into the half-full carriage with him. He settled down to see if anybody stayed on the carriage with him, all the way round the circle, back to Sloane Square.
By the time the train was half way round all the original passengers had left, so that when the train got back to Sloane Square he was absolutely satisfied he was not being followed.
It was only eleven o’clock. He asked at the ticket office how to get to the Imperial War Museum, and was sold a ticket to Elephant and Castle. He emerged from the bleak underground into the bleak rain.
He walked up the steps into the Imperial War Museum, and asked the receptionist, ‘May I use the library, please?’
‘What subject are you researching, sir?’
‘The Gestapo. In particular, Heinrich Muller.’
An old uniformed attendant creaked him upwards in an old elevator, then escorted him down corridors, up stairs and into the library in the big sepulchral Victorian dome. There were a dozen people researching at curved tables.
The librarian already had half a dozen books waiting for him. McQuade sat down and started reading the fly-leaves. Within ten minutes he knew he would not be catching tonight’s flight.
None of the books was specifically about Heinrich Muller, but about the Gestapo and the Nazi Party. He turned to the index at the back of each and looked for Muller’s name. There were many page references.
The first volume was called The Encyclopaedia of the Third Reich by L. L. Snyder. He found the appropriate page.
MULLER, HEINRICH. Chief of the Gestapo and leading administrator in mass killing operations. Gruppenführer (Lieut. Gen.) Heinrich Muller was … one of the fifteen top-ranking Nazi bureaucrats present at the Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942, when the Final Solution to the Jewish question was arranged … In 1942 Himmler decided to make his concentration camps Judenrein (Jew free), and delegated much of the responsibility for the task to Muller. In January 1943 Muller rounded up 45,000 Jews from the Netherlands, 3,000 from Berlin, 30,000 from Bialystok ghetto, and 10,000 from Theresienstadt, to be deported to Auschwitz for extermination. In June 1943 he was sent by Himmler to Rome to ascertain why and how Italian Jews were escaping arrest. In the summer of 1944, when the German frontiers were being breached in both east and west, Muller, at Himmler’s orders, took terrible vengeance. He sent huge transports of Jews to Auschwitz and the gas chambers …
In the final days of the Third Reich Muller was present in the Führerbunker (Hitler’s Bunker) . … By now Muller was almost independent of Himmler, and made no secret of his ambition to succeed his superior officer. For some years after the war it was assumed that Muller had been killed when the Russians encircled Berlin. Later he was reported to be in Brazil and Argentina, where he was said to be an ‘enforcer’ among escaped SS criminals … He was placed on a list of most-wanted Nazis.
McQuade felt a flash of self-satisfaction. This confirmed that Muller had not defected to the Russians. But only James McQuade knew that he had gone to South West Africa, at least in the first instance.
He turned to the next book, Who’s Who in Nazi Germany, by Robert Wistrich. He read:
MULLER, HEINRICH. Head of the Gestapo … Adolf Eichmann’s immediate superior, responsible for implementing the ‘Final Solution’ … During World War I he served as a flight leader on the eastern front and was awarded the Iron Cross (First Class). After the war, the ambitious Muller made his career in the Bavarian police, specializing in the surveillance of Communist Party functionaries and making a special study of Soviet Russian police methods … The stubborn, self-opinionated Muller was highly regarded by both Himmler and Heydrich, who admired his professional competence, blind obedience and willingness to execute ‘delicate missions’ … spying on colleagues and despatching political adversaries without scruples … The model of the cold, dispassionate Police Chief and the bureaucratic fanatic, Muller was rapidly promoted …
As head of Amt IV (Gestapo) … Muller was more directly involved in the ‘Final Solution of the Jewish Question’ than even his superiors, Heydrich, Himmler and Kaltenbrunner … Until the end of the war, Heinrich Muller continued his remorseless prodding of subordinates to greater efforts in sending Jews to Auschwitz. In his hands, mass murder became an automatic administrative procedure. Muller exhibited a similar streak in his treatment of Russian prisoners of war and gave the order to shoot British officers who had escaped from detention, near Breslau, at the end of March 1944. Muller’s whereabouts at the end of the war are still shrouded in mystery. He was last seen in the Führerbunker on 28 April, 1945, after which he disappeared. There were persistent rumours that he had defected to the East … either to Moscow, Albania or to East Germany. Other uncorroborated reports also placed him in Latin America.
There were several books on the Gestapo. McQuade looked for Muller’s name in the indexes. He was looking for personal information about the man, his personality, habits, his family history, significant incidents in his life – anything that would give him clues about the man he might be looking for, what he might be doing now. It was not his intention to make a study of the whole history of the Gestapo and the Holocaust, but, by the time the library closed, that was what he was doing, and he knew it would be at least a week before he flew back to South Africa. At five o’clock he left the library with his bag and a big sheaf of notes and pages he had had photostatted.
He took the underground to Tottenham Court Road. He bought a cheap pocket-size tape-recorder. He went into Foyle’s bookshop, asked what was available on German submarines and bought The Type VII C U-boat, by David Westwood. Then he took the underground to Earls Court and started looking for a cheap hotel. It took him an hour to find that there were no cheap hotels in London any more, but in a newsagent’s window, amongst the cards of Monique and Miss Cane, he saw a bed-sitter advertised. He found a public telephone and rented it for one week, unseen. He bought a four-pack of beer and two bottles of wine and moved in. He settled down at the table, spread out his notes and photostats. He had to summarize his notes, to try to get a clear profile of Muller.
He picked up the pages he had photostatted from Gestapo, Instrument of Tyranny, by Edward Crankshaw, and re-read them.
Muller did his job, while Berlin rocked, shuddered, and disintegrated … and Hitler prepared himself for the end. Then … the chief of the Gestapo vanished – whether to die in the streets of Berlin, to escape under an assumed identity to Austria or Spain or the Argentine, or to join the Russians he admired so much, we do not know … For some time he had been using captured Russian agents to communicate false intelligence to the Soviet armies, using their own codes and their own wireless sets; and it would have been entirely possible for him to enter into detailed communication with the enemy by this means without anyone being the wiser. Be that as it may, like a perfect civil servant, he went, leaving not a trace, his files totally destroyed.
He turned to an earlier passage.
Muller … will repeatedly appear by name in these pages. But we shall never meet him. He was the archetype of non-political functionary, in love with personal power and dedicated to … the State. He worked anonymously … We find his signature on orders authorizing the most atrocious deeds. We glimpse him once or twice in action, and are surprised to discover that this man without a shadow, this office bureaucrat, could walk about and use a gun. But we know nothing about him, neither where he came from nor where he went. Even his subordinate, Eichmann, the murderer of the Jews, who never on any account put his signature to a document, left behind friends and acquaintances who have given us vivid glimpses of the man. Muller left nobody. We see him lunching at the Adlon Hotel with Heydrich, Nebe, Schellenberg, later with Kaltenbrunner. They are all dead.
McQuade sighed and opened another can of beer. He sifted through his notes, then began to dictate into his recorder:
‘Heinrich Muller. Bavarian. Square head. Short, stocky, heavy. Considered good-looking, with hard face, often expressionless. Large forehead, piercing flickering brown eyes. Heavy eyelids. Very thin lips. Short neat hair. Large strong hands, fingers.
‘Joined Munich police as ordinary detective. Worked his way up to top by hard work. A good bureaucrat. Very stubborn. Self-opinionated. Expert policeman. Great energy. No scruples. Great believer in force and fear. Highly efficient, cold police boss. Very ambitious. Very jealous of his power. Distrusted others. Blindly obedient to Himmler (Chief of entire SS, which included Gestapo) and Heydrich (head of S.D.) and Hitler. Frequently visited Hitler’s bunker to see Martin Bormann, Hitler’s right-hand man. Officially Muller was fifth in the chain of command (Hitler – Bormann – Himmler – Heydrich – Muller): but eventually he became the second most powerful man in Germany after Himmler because Nazi Germany was a police state with Muller as its chief.’
McQuade paused. He sorted through his mosaic of notes, trying to marshal his facts.
‘The SS (Schutzstaffel or Protective Force) duplicated every branch of the civil service and dominated every aspect of life, even the army. Gestapo was the spearhead of the SS. “Gestapo” is acronym for Geheime Staatspolizei (Secret Police). It was the Nazis’ instrument of terror. Hitler decreed that the Gestapo was above the law. No appeal. Only the Gestapo had the power to send people to the concentration camps and death camps: therefore Heinrich Muller was ultimately responsible for the entire Holocaust. Torture always preceded interrogation. Afterwards the victim went to death camps or concentration camps. Frequent executions by shooting or hanging. Standard torture was crushing testicles: a special machine was invented. Other standard Gestapo procedures included electrocution through genitals and anus, wrist-cnishing, wrist-hanging, flogging, burning, icy baths. Terror was Gestapo’s standard procedure. Muller developed a spy system which made every individual feel it was impossible to trust anybody else – ordinary citizens were made honorary Gestapo members, informing on everything everybody else did. Thus giving impression that Gestapo omniscient. Giant filing system for all Europe, tabulating secrets of millions of people. This terror was typified by so-called Nacht und Nebel Decree of 1942 (Night and Fog Decree) in terms of which suspects were immediately executed or vanished into the “night and fog” of Germany, never to return. Vast terror and destruction. In all, Heinrich Muller and his Gestapo were responsible for the execution of eleven million people.’
It was almost midnight. He threw himself on the bed.
Good God … Eleven million people …
About twice the population of New Zealand. Two thirds the population of Australia. And all their horrible deaths to be laid at the door of one man called ‘Gestapo Muller’. And only James McQuade knew what had become of the bastard! And oh God, God, once he had cracked that submarine, he was going to find him if he was still alive. And see him stand on a scaffold.