The air smelled of leaf dust. In the dry autumn breeze, the leaves had crumbled but still needed rain to pulp. Gabriel crossed Obersalzberg and wondered what it had been like before it had been turned into a sort of benevolent concentration camp for important Nazis. Once it had been an air resort for consumptives who came to dry out their lungs. It had always been a retreat, a magic kingdom; now it was a Camelot far from the terror bombing. The magic mountains wove an enchantment and Gabriel could imagine the war reaching the foothills below and then grinding to a halt. The peace seemed too strong to be pierced. He almost expected to meet a knight in armour, galloping his charger down the track. A warrior with shield and lance and plumed helm, just like the heroes in the stories his father had read him; knights fighting dragons, knights rescuing damsels, knights winning the hand of a princess. Even as a child, he knew his father enjoyed these stories more than he had, and as an adult, Gabriel had awoken from their spell suddenly, the glory vanished, the armour crushed, the warrior inside toasted to a crisp in the brewed-up wreck of a Panzer tank.
Behind him, the Berghof watched his every move; its giant window a Cyclops eye, watching over the whole of Obersalzberg. The year was turning. Gabriel had hoped that Hitler would have been dead by now, the war over and he would be back in his hut in the clouds in time for Christmas. Up in his mountain, where night came as soft as the snow and the air wasn’t burdened by legend. A normal mountain that the gods had never noticed.
He was going to see Lorelei and tell her he was in again. He would be the bodyguard, protect Hitler from his generals and unmask and kill the other assassin. Above, birds flew but didn’t sing. Did they already smell winter? Gabriel wanted the snow, snow to cover the burnt skin of Europe like a bandage. He would go home and sit at his window, watching the wind organise the drifts, then change its mind and reorganise them in a different direction, as busy as a Swiss housewife with a broom. His nostrils would detect the faint, almost forgotten, aroma of resin that still, after a century, seeped from the logs of the hut. Would Lorelei be there with him? He thought not. He couldn’t see her living there and he couldn’t imagine himself living anywhere else. He was ready for the season to change and he wanted to go home. But not alone.
A figure stepped onto the path and blocked him. It was the witch and he was Hansel. Matron Irmgard Gunther, Iron Arse, waited for him to reach her. She was holding something up for Gabriel to see.
‘Yours, I think,’ she said, like a lawyer producing a crucial item of evidence that would hang the accused. When he saw what she flourished, Gabriel realised he was indeed in the shadow of the noose.
All the soldiers of the Papal Guard were presented with one after their standing-down parade, when they were dined out of the corps; a ceremonial wristwatch. As an object it was surprisingly austere compared with their garish uniform. A black leather strap, a steel case over Swiss clockwork and the papal arms embossed across the face. On the back was engraved the name of the recipient and their years of service. Gabriel’s father had been buried with just such a watch as this on his wrist, and now Gabriel’s watch threatened to bury him.
‘It’s mine,’ he said. ‘Looks like it,’ and he reached for the watch.
‘Oh no,’ she said, snatching it away, ‘this is evidence. Do you know where I found it?’
Gabriel yawned, sniffed the air and turned his head to take in the view before condescending to stare back into her eyes and speak. ‘In the toilets at the Mooslaner Kopf Tearooms. That’s where I left it, after I took it off to wash my hands. Now would you mind returning my property to me?’
He reached, but again she twisted and held the watch close to her. ‘No,’ she said.
Gabriel looked at her; a lump of resentment and menace.
‘Why did you smash up my chalet?’
‘Don’t be stupid, woman. I’ve never been to your home.’
‘No?’
Gabriel saw she was attempting to laugh but the action was so foreign to her that her mouth resembled a wound and the sound that came out was guttural. ‘Then how is it I found it under an upturned chair in my lounge?’
She waved the watch at him like a captured standard. This time Gabriel was fast enough to snatch it from her.
‘How dare you!’ she screamed, and somewhere above them, in the crisp air and the mountains, her words caught an echo and ganged up against Gabriel. She was shaking with rage. ‘You broke his leg!’
Gabriel was confused. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Kaiser, my little dachshund. He was trembling in a corner, whining with pain. The veterinary says his leg had been kicked – kicked hard. Some brute had kicked him – you!’
‘Not me.’ Strangely, Gabriel discovered he felt all the indignation of an innocent man. That Iron Arse clearly didn’t believe a word he said just added to his sense of outrage. Like all men, he felt that he should be believed, even when he was lying. ‘This watch went missing at the same time as that French waiter did. If your home was ransacked, it was probably him looking for more valuables to steal.’
‘So why didn’t he take something precious? Why did he just wreck things and leave my mother’s silver?’
Gabriel moved to pass her, then spun back as an argument occurred to him. ‘Revenge. He’s French, a defeated nation. I expect he’d had enough of the master race and decided to go home. Kicking a German dog is something a Frenchman would do.’
‘Ridiculous. Anyway, why me? Why not one of the big cheeses, why not their home?’
‘Because you made it personal. Everyone knows you’re rude to the waiters at the Mooslaner.’
Gabriel didn’t know if this were true but it was a fair guess, given her rhinoceros nature. And certainly her eyes registered a flicker of confusion. Using this moment of doubt, Gabriel side-stepped Iron Arse. He walked on, his heart pounding and not from the altitude. To survive in Hitler’s backyard he had to be invisible. Incurring the suspicion of someone like Matron Gunther was the opposite of discretion. She wouldn’t let things alone. She’d dig and complain and start a very public vendetta. While he could blame Volfgangu he’d be believed, but if the Frenchman’s body was found, then things could become very difficult. He glanced back – she was still there, like a roadblock.
Gabriel looked in at the kindergarten window, at the art gallery pinned to its walls. The children had contributed wild abstracts of primary colours and melting form that made the wall they covered look like a burning city. In the areas seized by adults, the countryside and peace reigned; posters of forests and meadows with a complement of fauna, apparently coexisting without the need to devour each other. In the top left-hand corner of each poster, like the eye of God, was a neat black swastika.
Through the walls, Gabriel could hear the shriek of the children, and when he stepped through the door the smell of the infants swooped to meet him; the scent of innocence infused with an essence of puke. All was chaos; it was an army up-camping to move out. Chairs were being scraped back, some children were dutifully falling in, while others sought to desert. Clara Sporrier, the head, sought to bring order to the march. She held a tearful toddler to her chest and moved skilfully amongst the others, organising them into a defence that finally stuck.
Out of chaos, she brought order, and Gabriel knew that Clara Sporrier was the sort of young woman his father would have wanted him to wed. She had the beautiful face of a Madonna, a practical bust, a trim waist that seemed to have been bolted to another’s body. A large bottom lurked to her south, atop tree-trunk legs. It was a good child-bearing chassis and her thighs were what his father, in the nearest he ever came to obscenity, would have called generous.
Clara did occasionally glance in Gabriel’s direction. Looks that suggested a life of wedded bliss awaited if he were interested. She was a woman who could definitely cope with a hut in the mountains and children underfoot. Lorelei was also in the melee, calming the horseplay, gathering the lost souls, organising the little people into an arrangement that was pleasing to adults. There was a brief question mark in her eyes when she spotted Gabriel. The look spread to her mouth, which gave a cautious smile – then she was off after an escaped child, flying down the tailwind of his scream.
Adolf Hitler watched the chaotic arrangements with the slow, fixed smile of a benevolent marionette. Beside him, Eva Braun expressed more impatience, as she tried to focus her camera on the fluid scene. The children suddenly seemed sucked dry of energy and stood still in a lethargic lump. Clara placed a chair in their midst, a chair for the Führer. Gabriel turned to him and was disconcerted to find he was the object of Hitler’s scrutiny. A slow smile turned the edges of the Führer’s mouth up and he shrugged in resignation. A look to Gabriel, a look between men, men in a sea of women and children. The mad, raging Hitler of their last meeting was gone. The chameleon had changed its colour again. Gabriel realised he was too trivial to be resented for long; the Führer had bigger fish to fry.
Hitler seemed to take a step towards the chair, then turned on his heel and whispered in Eva’s ear. ‘My dear, you need to clean up the image.’
Eva glanced at her lens, as if some dirt might have lodged there. The Führer tutted and explained slowly. ‘There are too many swarthy children in the composition. The German housewife associates swarthiness with dirt. Clean up the image, only the blonde ones.’
Eva was confused. ‘But none of them are Jews. All the children are German.’
‘But some of them don’t look German enough.’
He walked to the group, smiling and nodding at them, and moved among them as they stared up at him, curious and hopeful that all this might lead to a story. As he passed through them, he tousled heads, and the hair that he ruffled was all dark. As he indicated them, Eva scuttled forward and removed them from the group and handed them over to Lorelei. The ranks were closed and became densely blonde.
Hitler took his place on the chair in the middle of the chosen children and beamed about him. And no one pointed out to the Führer that he, like the rejected children, had dark hair. As Eva began to focus anew and then take shots, Gabriel saw Hitler’s eye for the dramatic. He saw the drama of the contrast; the Führer was one of them – but different. The star in the midst of the chorus.
Gabriel followed the banished children to the other classroom, where Lorelei was in charge of them. It was another cosy room; autumn leaves pasted to walls, nuts on a nature table around an old bird’s nest, a line of small beds for naps. Lorelei sat them on the floor and began to read them the ‘Three Little Pigs’. As Gabriel listened with the toddlers, it occurred to him that the third little pig, the one who built his house of bricks, was a very north European pig, and the wolf some Slav or foreigner; indeed, Lorelei had given the wolf a Russian accent. It was a moral tale, where feckless piggies ended up in the wolf’s belly, but the pig who made the best defence of his home would not only fend off the invader, he would defeat him and eat him.
With excellent timing, Hitler entered the classroom with the blonde children and his blonde mistress as the wolf fell down the chimney into the pan of boiling water. Everyone laughed with approval. Again he caught Gabriel’s eye above the children and women and he pulled an expression of amused shock, as the toddlers laughed out loud with relish at the wolf’s end. His eyes said little children were savages, and adults were more civilised beings. Gabriel wondered if fairy stories were the first round of basic training for the young future soldiers, as binding as all the military trappings were; the regimental badges, the corps flashes and the flapping colours paraded with crashing music. Perhaps it didn’t begin with the anxious recruit coming through the barrack gates for the first time; perhaps this unit loyalty was begun in kindergarten, with shared stories, myths and legends. Lorelei read out the storyteller’s promise: they all lived happily ever after. Hitler nodded.
The children were bundled into coats to play outside, where Eva wanted to take some informal shots of them. Lorelei had abandoned book for Führer and, as Gabriel moved closer, he could hear her. ‘It’s almost two towns, Bridgend.’
He realised she was jabbering on about Bridgend, this time a lot more knowledgeably than in the Eagle’s Nest. Hitler seemed to be listening carefully to her babble, while ignoring the waving of the children being marched out into the autumnal sunshine, led by Eva. For some unfathomable reason, Hitler’s rapt scrutiny of Lorelei filled Gabriel with unease.
Then Lorelei’s monologue was broken as Clara approached Hitler, her face screwed with anxiousness, an advance warning that what she was about to say might be contentious. ‘Sir, the children, sir – I’m not political, I can’t pretend to understand these things – but the colour of a child’s hair – isn’t it irrelevant? Aren’t all God’s children the same, even the swarthy ones?’
Gabriel noticed her enormous bottom was trembling as she asked, but there was no mockery in his observation. It was one of those rare moments on the battlefield when a previously unregarded soldier does something monumentally brave. He wanted to cheer her, the brave nursery teacher who loved children and whose conscience demanded of her that she speak. Gabriel wondered what stories she’d been raised on. He realised that Lorelei had moved by his side in trepidation of what was to come. Hitler was the weather over a peak; dark, moody, threatening a storm – then the sun came out and he smiled and pinched Clara’s cheek.
‘You’re a good woman. A good German woman. You know you have the same given name as my mother? So you see, I would expect nothing less from German womanhood but kindness and compassion, that’s how it should be. I expect this from women, this universal love for all children, even those from the mongrel races. What an awful world it would be without it. But, my dear, for men it is not the same. It cannot be.’
He looked around as if to find support for his words, but it was merely, Gabriel knew, a desire to address the crowd, to buttonhole posterity even in a kindergarten.
‘I love children,’ he said. ‘Men love children as much as women – but men have to be selective; history demands it, survival demands it. A man must feed his own children first. This selective love is a burden a man must carry and if a man is not prepared to shoulder it, he must renounce his manhood and become a priest. Listen, young lady, as you know in your position of teacher, the boys are as kind as the girls; all are born kind.’
The Führer seemed to pull himself in from the waist and clutched his hands in prayer, his eyes closed. And although he spoke softly, there was thunder in his words. ‘But it would be irresponsible for a society to leave young boys in this natural state, when one day, as protectors, they must be strong and make cruel decisions.’
He looked around the classroom as he gathered his thoughts and he saw a bucket and mop in the corner. ‘That bucket,’ he said, and his audience regarded it with a respect engendered by the person who had drawn their attention to it.
‘That bucket is the answer. I believe every child in the kindergarten should be given a kitten, a beautiful little bundle. The girls will be allowed to play with their kittens here in this classroom, while the boys will take theirs to the hall. There, in the centre of that room, they will find this bucket.’
Again the bucket was regarded.
‘It will be full to the brim with water and the boys will be encouraged, one by one, to drown their kitten. In this simple way, we will teach the boys to harden their hearts. We will teach them the true path to manhood. It will be a rite of passage, their first test. The whole kindergarten will learn their true role in life: the girl to be kind; the boy, when required, to be cruel.’
He finished and went silently out into the playground to join the children and Eva. Clara turned and looked at them hopelessly, before she too followed the Führer out into the weak sunshine.
Gabriel turned to Lorelei by his side. ‘You were right,’ he said.
‘What about?’
He looked around at the soft room they were in, its yellow walls glowing like honey. ‘I still want to kill him. I want to kill that monster – but you’re right, and London’s right – it would just make things worse. A new world can’t rise from the ashes unless there are ashes. Germany has to burn. Everything has to go; all the old stories, all the shit. There needs to be a clean sweep. Half measures will avail the world nothing but a breathing space, before a new Hitler, or a committee of Hitlers, starts the whole fucking business again. How does it go? – purged by fire. So I’ll protect him from his generals, I’ll make sure he’s alive to take this whole great nation down into the pit with him. I’ll be his bodyguard.’
Lorelei listened and nodded and took his arm. ‘We need you. London has been in contact; we’re definitely looking for an Old Hare.’