The coffee dribbled into the jug; a small, black stream that filled Max’s office. As he watched the slow drip, he tried to remember when good coffee, like Max’s smuggled brew, had disappeared from general life. It had been a gradual attrition. There had been no shortage of coffee, as he could recall, during his ceremonial service at the Vatican, but later, during the war in Spain, supply of all things had been chaotic. Franco’s logistics had been slipshod and his colonial troops and foreign mercenaries, like the Condor Legion, learned to take what they wanted from the peasants. This had meant an abundance of cheap, gut-rot wine but not much coffee.
Max handed him a steaming mug as reverently as a priest might handle the wine that was the blood of Christ, and delivered his blessing. ‘Drink it while it’s hot.’
Gabriel did – black, scalding, oily. Some soldiers in Russia maintained that a good shit somewhere warm and safe was better than sex. For Gabriel it would have been coffee that triumphed over copulation – that was until he met Lorelei. She had welcomed him back into the Foxley team with a passion that still shivered him and gently shook the coffee in his hands as he had flashbacks of her on the bed of her apartment in the ruined theatre. He was back in her lap. Gabriel was the ermine again.
And after the passion, there had been the news. ‘London has told us. The MI6 team is being led by an agent with the codename the Three Graces,’ Lorelei had told him.
‘So, are there three of them?’
She shook her head. ‘Probably not. It’s deception, a codename that’s confusing. The Three Graces could be one old, embittered SS officer, or seven virgins in dirndls. Don’t put any weight on the word three.’
‘Or grace,’ he said, reaching for her again.
‘My, you are hungry,’ she said, complying.
Suddenly Max was speaking across the blue film of his memory and Gabriel had reluctantly let his erotic images of Lorelei float away.
‘So why two teams?’ Max swirled his own coffee around in its mug and stared down at the mini-maelstrom he’d created, as if expecting an answer in it.
‘A circle of steel,’ suggested Gabriel. ‘A war on two fronts; one espionage team run by the Russkies and the other by the Tommies?’
Max became agitated as a barrage of homilies shelled his head. ‘Too many cooks, too many irons in the fuck-up – bollocks Gabriel – how does it go: left hand not knowing the right hand’s having a wank? Two teams working simultaneously and not cooperating? Sounds like the bloody Italians and the Africa Corps in the desert.’
‘Maybe that’s it; allies don’t always work well together, maybe they don’t share intelligence. We’re allies of the Japanese but they didn’t tell us they were about to attack Pearl Harbor and bring the Yanks into the war.’
Max nodded morosely. ‘True.’
Max sat behind his desk, eking out his coffee in small sips. Gabriel sat in a leather club armchair that at some point, in a colourful past, had been wounded in one flank and still bled horsehair.
‘Besides,’ he said.
‘What?’ prompted Max.
‘I don’t think we’re dealing with two teams any longer. I think the first, let’s call it the British team, on account of the Lee–Enfield rifle, is now defunct. Their sniper was probably the French waiter-cum-Legionnaire, Volfgangu, and he’s done a runner.’
Max nodded his agreement. ‘Given his military background, I reckon he was the marksman who took the second shot. The French Resistance and British wouldn’t send someone to shoot Adolf Hitler who wasn’t an A1 sniper.’
‘The first, rotten shot queered Volfgangu’s pitch; Adolf was ducking and weaving but he did his best, tried his luck, missed and headed out for La Belle France.’
Max reluctantly put his empty mug on his desk. ‘The remaining team – you think it’s a Red cell?’
‘The Soviets put ideology above professionalism. I can see them sending a trusted communist in spite of the fact he’s also a mediocre marksman.’
‘What about the second team being run by our generals?’
Gabriel nodded. ‘But again, they’d send someone like me or you.’
‘An elite soldier who could shoot off a midget’s prick at a thousand metres. Someone with the cold hand of a sniper.’
‘That’s right, Max. And anyway, the generals shot their bolt at the Wolf’s Lair.’
‘It won’t stop them trying again.’
‘No,’ said Gabriel, ‘but it takes time to organise a plot.’
‘And their leaders are dead and the survivors won’t be reckless. It must have been a kick in the balls for them when we all believed the little corporal was dead and no one took to the streets cheering.’
‘An attempt two months after the failed bomb plot is far too fast for the Prussians.’ Gabriel leaned forward and his mug joined Max’s on the desk.
Max thought and shook his head. ‘I don’t know why but it doesn’t feel right, this Red cell thing. If this was Berlin, maybe; plenty of communists there, but Bavaria? Any man on Obersalzberg has had his record trawled through time and time again. There’s only one Party up here and it’s not the Workers’. And don’t forget, someone put a grenade in the Führer’s elevator and that someone can only have been one of the Old Hares. And their profile fits the crime; they’re survivors every one of them. Faced with defeat, which of them is most likely to sacrifice Adolf to save themselves?’
Max pulled himself up, approached his electric coffee machine. For a wild moment, Gabriel thought they were in for a second mug, but Max fought temptation and paced the office, speaking his thoughts. ‘Perhaps he has family, female relatives – we all know what Ivan does to women. The Old Hare has done his best, but Germany is still going to hell courtesy of a T34 tank. He’s pragmatic; time to bail. He needs to trade, so what’s he got in his pocket? Little Wolf. And for slaying the beast, he gets immunity for himself and his ladies and a passport out of the ashes – but it won’t be the Reds, will it?’
‘Why not?’ Gabriel asked.
‘They don’t want what our generals want. They want the little corporal fucking things up till they roll over his bones in Berlin. No, if it’s not the Prussians it still has to be the British or Yanks. The Yanks are still Boy Scouts, so my bet is the British. The grenade proves they haven’t abandoned the mission. I bet my best boots there’s a British team on Obersalzberg running an assassin in the Old Hares.’
Gabriel found his hand working the hole in the side of the armchair. ‘So,’ he said, ‘we’re back to finding which of them doesn’t have an alibi.’
‘Them and you,’ said Max, turning to face Gabriel. ‘You still haven’t explained your movements on the day in question.’
‘But I was in the elevator with Hitler, I defused the grenade. Why would I try to kill him one day and save him another?’
Max laughed. ‘To save your own skin. And besides, this might be another two-team cock-up. Forget the grenade, what were you doing on the morning someone tried to put a round between the beloved Führer’s eyes?’
Gabriel abandoned the hole in the armchair and folded his hands in his lap. He spoke primly. ‘To tell you where I was would impinge on the modesty and reputation of another person.’
Max snorted with impatience. ‘If you were with Lorelei Fischer that morning just say for God’s sake. You’re not at the Vatican now. They’re running scared; the good and great of the Nazi party are shitting themselves and that makes them dangerous. The rule of law means sod all to them. I tell the Führer you’re a possible suspect, he’s just as likely to shoot you without further proof, just to be sure. So spit it out – where were you precisely on the morning of the attempted assassination?’
Gabriel took a breath and tried to look as if he was being made to talk under duress, but the lie he was about to give to Max had been concocted weeks before he’d squeezed the trigger. ‘I’d spent the previous night with Lorelei. I was up and dressed when I heard the shots but still in her apartment.’
‘What did you do?’
‘Attached my sidearm, left the apartment, saw Herzberger and Schadle ahead of me, racing up the hill.’
‘What did you think had happened?’
Gabriel shrugged. ‘We all know Wolf’s routine. There had been one attempt on his life.’
‘And no one saw you till you all arrived at the picnic. Will Lorelei confirm you were with her all morning till the alarm?’
‘If she must.’
‘Oh yes, she must.’
Gabriel pulled himself up out of the armchair. ‘Then she will be my cast-iron alibi.’
As if they were on opposite ends of a seesaw, Max sat. ‘Be careful of that: cast iron has a habit of shattering.’
Max looked at Gabriel, drummed his fingers on his desk and began to lecture him. ‘One of the things you discover as a copper is how little couples really know about each other. Maybe they’ve got better things to do than talk. But we love it in the force; having two suspects romantically entwined. One of them will always finally rat out the other. There’s no honour among lovers.’
‘I know Lorelei.’
‘Do you? Do you really? So, what’s she doing here, up this bloody mountain? What’s she up to on jolly old Obersalzberg?’
Gabriel felt a small seed of panic start to germinate in his stomach. ‘You know what she does, Max.’
‘But what she does up here makes no sense. Think about it – she’s a qualified nurse; they’re like gold dust on the Eastern Front and in the bombed cities of the Ruhr. What’s she doing here?’
Gabriel spoke slowly to Max as if explaining to a slow-witted child. ‘She works in Platterhof Hospital, taking care of battlefield casualties. That’s where she serves.’
‘But only on a part-time basis. What’s that about? She helps out at the kindergarten but I figure she does that because she gets bored. She’s here for a reason and it’s not kiddies and casualties.’
The seed of panic inside Gabriel grew and its roots twisted around his gut. ‘What is she here for, Max?’
‘You really don’t know?’
Gabriel didn’t bother to answer, couldn’t answer.
‘You’re not aware that Lorelei Fischer is on the personal staff of Adolf Hitler? She’s his creature as much as his dog, Blondi. You didn’t know that?’
Gabriel didn’t need to act his reply. ‘No.’
Max suddenly shut up when Gabriel needed him to talk.
‘What are her duties? Tell me, Max.’
What were her duties? Was she another mistress, he wondered? Was Eva just for his arm? Did Lorelei simply warm his bed?
‘Not what you think,’ said Max, reading Gabriel’s thoughts. ‘I made enquiries, bent some arms. Seems the Führer sent for her on account of her command of Japanese. For reasons known only to him, he has need of a patriotic German who is fluent in Jap. There aren’t many, she’s one – this gives Lorelei Fischer the Führer’s seal of approval, and it’s this blessing that makes her word your steel alibi.’
Gabriel found his breath returning to his lower lungs. ‘You’re saying I’m off the hook?’
‘Looks like it. Anyway, you don’t fit the bill. If the French waiter took the second shot, as seems likely, then that would make you the cross-eyed sniper who missed, and I don’t think you do – miss. I think you’ve got cold hands.’
Max reached and brushed a speck of imaginary dust from the gold Close Quarter Hand to Hand badge on Gabriel’s uniform.
As the panic died and withered within him, Gabriel found himself wondering what Lorelei’s duties were exactly, what she did for Hitler and why she’d never confided in him? He also wondered if London knew of this other occupation of the Foxley team leader?
‘Nothing for it,’ said Max. ‘We’ll have to reel the Old Hares in and see if any of their stories crack under pressure. The ones he didn’t send to Berlin with his double, anyway.’
Out of the remaining detachment, there were three Old Hares that Gabriel wanted to investigate, but he didn’t want to do it in the presence of Max. ‘Don’t take this the wrong way but I need to see my Old Hares without you. I want to see each of them alone, Max. They’re my officers and they might open up if it feels more of a discussion and less of an interrogation.’
Max looked at him. ‘A cosy fireside chat?’
‘If I keep it casual, comrade to comrade, they might let something slip. Then I can bring you in to take their story apart.’
‘You don’t think I can be matey?’
‘I think it’s the military, Max. You’re in a different arm; technically you’re a gunner, and, more than that, you’re in a different service, the Luftwaffe. They won’t confess to suspecting a comrade in front of an officer from a rival service.’
Max nodded. ‘I take your point. You do the chat and send for me when you need the cavalry.’
Gabriel needed to see them without Max because of the information that had come from London. He knew an Old Hare had contacted a pastor in Munich after the July plot and only three of the Old Hares had taken a weekend leave pass in that city at the end of the summer. He would look closely at those three: August Korber, Bodo Gelzenleuchter and Emil Maurice.