The door of Gabriel’s room in the officers’ mess swung open. He turned, wondering if a girlfriend belonging to one of his comrades had got lost again. The Old Hares were mostly married but kept their wives and families in home towns in other parts of Germany. Girlfriends were a feature of the quarters on Obersalzberg and new ones had a tendency to get lost in the featureless corridors, going to or from the bathroom. But instead of a young girl wrapped in a towel or lover’s shirt, Gabriel discovered a giant. The appearance of this monolith triggered in him an ingrained military response. The gargantuan frame and bearing of the visitor snapped Gabriel to attention.
‘At ease,’ came the response, in a voice as deep as the speaker was big.
Colonel Nicolaus von Below spoke again. ‘He wants you.’
The colonel was one of Hitler’s three adjutants. When he said he, Gabriel knew that meant Hitler.
The force of nature turned and left Gabriel’s room, sucking him after, as a leaf caught in the after-draft of a tornado. They crashed down the corridor together and there, ahead, was one of the waifs – blonde, adolescent, hiding her nakedness under a borrowed SS tunic. The girl viewed their implacable advance, which froze the dismay on her face into a mask. She stuck herself to a wall, closed her eyes and tried to disappear as they thundered past, boots crashing on the planking. They continued this progress across Obersalzberg, startling soldiers as they had startled the girl. The men, in a maelstrom of military panic, threw salutes and called out the mantra that Gabriel and the colonel echoed.
‘Heil Hitler!’
At the gate of the Berghof, he turned to Gabriel. ‘If Operation Watch on the Rhine fails, then defeat becomes almost a certainty. You know what your role will be in that eventuality?’
Gabriel agreed he did. For a moment the giant wavered; his eyes left Gabriel and went up to the mountains around them.
‘If the worst comes to the worst…’ he trailed away. ‘That little girl we passed reminded me of Heidi,’ he said. ‘I loved that girl in the book. If she had been real, not an illustration, she might have been that young tart in your mess. Did you see her blonde hair, the beguiling timidity? I suppose that’s what war does; turns a man into a hero and Heidi into a whore. Don’t let him down.’
The giant turned sharply and left, back down the road. Gabriel wondered if he’d talked of Heidi because she was Swiss, reminding him of shared stories and thus a combined destiny. The colonel possibly thought that because, like Heidi and her grandfather, Gabriel had spent his childhood up a mountain, he would identify with her. But of course, Gabriel thought sniffily, the two families had been entirely different: Heidi’s had herded goats, his had kept sheep. Only a valley boy would make that confusion.
Gabriel entered the Berghof alone, handed over his sidearm and was shown into the presence.
‘When I look at you, I see myself.’ The Führer seemed as calm and reflective as the season. The huge window was behind Hitler, turning him into a silhouette without colour. Gabriel felt he was being addressed by a cinder-man; a flint come to life. A malevolent spirit from the mountains. ‘This war is your adventure, as the last was mine.’
He indicated the clouds outside, dark and conspiring to unleash thunder.
‘We two are children of the storm. Back then, battle made my blood hot.’ The silhouette smiled, sudden teeth appearing on the shadow. ‘When they told us of the great betrayal, the stab in the back, I was in hospital, recovering from a gas attack that had blinded me. My sight returned, but when they came and informed us that Germany had surrendered, even though the army had not been defeated, the shock took my sight away again. In my blindness and bitterness, I knew I could never trust what I couldn’t control. I wouldn’t be the puppet of others again.’
Hitler stepped to one side of the window and was instantly illuminated with form and colour, like a slide projected on a wall. ‘We were stabbed in the back by Jews. The Hebrews occupy countries as surely as we occupy Norway. But whereas our occupations are honest, open affairs that will ultimately benefit the folk of those lands, a Jewish occupation is as silent and sinister as a cancer. When my sight returned, I knew I must lead a crusade to purge Europe of this Jewish plague.’
Gabriel wondered if he was about to endure an hour-long Führer rant.
‘What did Churchill say of the British and Americans? Two nations but one people. But the United States is Yid ridden; it should be Germany and Britain who are two nations but one people! The English have been stolen from us. Your Lorelei has the blood of both England and Germany.’
This sudden reference to Lorelei unnerved Gabriel.
‘She might be the perfect woman, a fusion of iron and blood – but what if she’s too good to be true?’ The Führer took himself off to inspect some of the art on his walls. He stopped by the picture of the swan ravishing a woman. Gabriel still found it shocking and knew his father would have put it on an autumn bonfire.
‘We think we have to perform miracles to win the ladies, like Zeus here turning himself into a swan to have carnal relations with Leda. The ladies seem to be angels – but then so do the best devils. So do the best deceivers. I asked your woman about a town in Wales and she said she knew this place well, but her stumbling replies, when I asked her for details, convinced me she was lying. Never mind, I thought, small matter; people always lie to me to give me the answers they think I want. Only I tell the truth.’
Gabriel acknowledged this with a small tilt of his head. Inside, his stomach was a knot of panic for Lorelei.
‘I meet her again in that charming kindergarten and she regales me with a detailed description of the small town she had known nothing about. Where has this knowledge come from? She can’t have paid a visit.’ He smiled. ‘There’s a war on.’ The smile went. ‘Possibly she researched in the library, so, just to be sure, I have checks carried out. She isn’t a member and hasn’t visited it, and it’s the same for the lending library down in Berchtesgaden. In fact, she hasn’t left Obersalzberg since our party on Kehlstein. So, I ask myself, who has briefed her? I know it seems trivial but the passage of information is a map of the world. I understood her motive for trying to cover her previous embarrassing lie, but who told her about Bridgend, the Upper Town and the Lower Town, the churches and market places? She has been briefed.’
Hitler moved closer to Gabriel. ‘I want you to find out. It seems a small matter but you know the children’s rhyme, for want of a nail… I need to know you’re loyal. You might have to pay the blood price and deal with this Anglo-German woman if she is false. Find out – use pillow talk if necessary.’
The Führer left Gabriel and went to his desk and sat. He looked back. ‘You’re a good boy, Zobel. But like so many of the brave, as I once was before the stab in the back, naive. I wonder, even if Lorelei Fischer proves whiter than white, if she’s the right woman for you? You need someone less complex I think, and, call me traditional, but should you be consorting with a married woman?’
Gabriel wondered what hurt more; Hitler knowing something of Lorelei that he didn’t, or that Lorelei kept secrets from him. She was married. She hadn’t told him. It was a secret. Secrets corrode love.