Gabriel and Max saluted and marched from the drawing room. Through the giant window the mountains watched them go; from behind his desk the Führer didn’t. Heinz Linge, Hitler’s valet, let them out of the room. There was no sign of his aides. In the waiting room they recovered their sidearms but, before they could leave, Martin Bormann waved them to one side and ordered them to wait. He then disappeared down the corridor through the doors at the end. Gabriel was desperate to follow him, to get out of the Berghof and to get to Lorelei’s apartment. He knew she wouldn’t be there yet and he could set in motion the warning system they’d devised. If he was late she’d be back and Max would arrest her. But Bormann wanted them to wait and without explanation.
Opposite, in the corridor room, were the Führer’s secretaries; Traudi Junge, Christa Schroeder and Gerda Christian. They were turned in on themselves, having a private conflab and taking neat piles of documents from a stack on a table by them.
Max said, ‘Those little girls know where all the bodies are buried.’
Gabriel didn’t care, he wanted to stamp his heel in frustration. He needed to go. The three secretaries turned, took in the two silent men opposite them across the corridor and smiled.
‘Good morning, gentlemen,’ said Traudi, still looking like an ivory angel in her black widow’s weeds.
‘Ladies,’ said Max.
The double doors at the far end of the narrow room flew open and Martin Bormann returned at the head of a military convention. Gabriel and Max stiffened into attention and brought their arms up into the Party salute. A glitter of Reich Marshals marched past with Hitler’s own aides and adjutants in attendance. Apart from the crash of their heels it was a silent group, precise and Prussian. The valet must have been listening from the other side of the doors to the Great Hall, for upon hearing the heel tattoo, the doors flew open and the marshals swept past and into the Führer’s presence. The aides hovered briefly, picking up and taking documents from the secretaries, then they too went through the doors, which were then closed, this time with Heinz Linge on the outside of the room.
‘All safely delivered,’ he said and the people in the corridor visibly relaxed, except Gabriel, who set off immediately. Max was just behind him, talking. ‘Did you see that SS Obersturmbannführer in the second rank, behind Model and Rundstedt? I recognise him but I can’t recall his name.’
Gabriel could. ‘Joachim Peiper. He has the 6th Panzer Army.’
‘I thought they were on the Eastern Front fighting Ivan? If the staff want a briefing from him why not the Wolf’s Lair? Why bring him all the way west to Obersalzberg?’
‘Perhaps he’s being re-tasked. Eva told Lorelei that Hitler was planning something big on the Western Front.’
‘Bloody women, always chattering.’
They left the Berghof and went towards the ruined theatre.
‘You up for this?’ said Max.
Gabriel nodded. ‘Better me than some fat gangster from the Old Hares, leering and touching her up as he searched her.’
They approached the theatre that Gabriel thought once again looked like it had been stepped on by a passing mountain troll.
‘Will she be in, d’you know?’ Max asked.
‘Should be,’ Gabriel lied. ‘She had a night shift yesterday, so she climbed into bed this morning as I climbed out. That’s where we’ll find her.’
But he knew this wasn’t true. Before he’d left, Klara the kindergarten head had arrived and begged Lorelei to cover for a sick nurse. Wearily, Lorelei agreed to help out. She was due back at midday and Gabriel needed to warn her off.
They moved through her apartment, Max letting Gabriel take the lead. Gabriel headed for the bedroom as if he expected to find her there, even calling her name. ‘Lorelei?’ He went past the empty unmade bed and through the stuffy air and pulled back the curtains and opened a window. He had set the signal.
‘Where is she?’ Max asked, carefully skirting some of her discarded scanties on the floor.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘She should be here catching up on her sleep.’
It was after midday and he knew she’d be on her way back from the kindergarten. If she followed tradecraft she’d check her bedroom window from a safe place. The open curtains would tell her she was blown, that she had to run for her life. There was a plan in place, Gabriel knew, but what that contingency plan was, he did not. She had kept it from him on the assumption that if they were after her they might already have him, and be torturing him for her whereabouts.
Max spoke. ‘We’ll wait. Let the mouse come to the cheese.’
He glanced again at the knickers on the floor. ‘But not in here.’
In the sitting room, Gabriel sat but Max paced. ‘This is not looking good for you, sunshine.’ Gabriel didn’t reply, so Max carried on. ‘Well?’
Gabriel grunted. ‘My woman turns out to be a British spy. Can’t help that.’
‘She could also be the sniper.’
It was a clumsy attempt to trap him. ‘She was in that room, in bed with me when the shots were fired. I didn’t lie.’
Max said nothing but sunk down into a chair. ‘The fact remains, the person furnishing your alibi turns out to be a traitor. Who’s going to accept her word? You’re up shit creek. And when push comes to shove, what can I say Mr Zobel? You’re not even German.’
‘I’ve taken the blood oath.’
‘So had the generals who tried to murder the Führer in July. For want of a better word, you’re a mercenary.’
Gabriel tried to present the fear that gripped him as outrage. ‘I have never been a mercenary. The Holy Father in Rome did not consider me a mercenary. My father fought for the Fatherland, the land of his language. German-speaking Swiss want an Anschluss. My greatest hope is that my children will be born in Germania.’
Max brought his hands together in a soft mockery of clapping. ‘Bravo,’ he said, ‘bravo, but Gabriel, just spiel. You bring me your tart cuffed and crying and I’ll start to believe you, but I don’t have time for speeches. The enemy is at the fucking gate. Adolf might be an arsehole but he’s our arsehole. We don’t have time to fanny around looking for an alternate leader like some effeminate democracy. We’re in this together; the Party, the people, the military. We break apart and Ivan will be through our front door, shooting Granddad and raping our little sister.’
Gabriel leaned into Max’s face. ‘I understand that. I fought Ivan for two years.’
Max carried on as if he hadn’t heard Gabriel. ‘There’s only one man who can deliver the miracle we need to survive, and as far as I’m concerned, anyone trying to kill him is organising my sister’s rape. I’m not Party, I’m not Jew-wise, Germania sounds like a medicine to me, but what I am is family. And you Mr Zobel are not a member of my family.’
Someone knocked on the door. They looked at each other and then moved quickly to it. Max threw it open. They were faced with a bunch of ferns and twigs, and the odd late-flowering rose. The young soldier-messenger looked at his superior officer as a rabbit might have viewed a wolf it had blundered into.
‘What the fuck is this?’ Max screamed.
The flowers were plucked a second time that day, but on this occasion from the hand of the boy. Max shook them and then the bouquet hit the ground and was kicked.
‘What are you doing lurking around a woman who’s clearly marked officers only?’
The blushing boy tried to back off, changed his mind and came to attention, changed it again and continued the retreat.
‘You repeat this dereliction of duty and you’ll find yourself in a punishment battalion on the Eastern Front!’
The young soldier actually ran down the road, skipping out of the path of the milkman’s horse, slowly coming the other way.
‘You know about him?’ Max demanded of Gabriel.
Gabriel shrugged. ‘He has a crush on her. He’s harmless, just a boy.’
‘Is that all it is? Could be a cover. How often does he pitch up here?’
The same thought had occurred to Gabriel. The young soldier might be the postman in the Foxley team.
‘I’ve only seen him once.’
‘Well you won’t be seeing him again.’
But then Max’s attention was caught by the passing milk cart.
‘He’s late. He’s been and gone by now most days.’
Max waved at the milkman to stop. Reins were pulled, and the horse humphed. ‘You still up on the mountain? Something happen?’
The milkman clambered down from the cart, an action that displayed his inflexible wooden leg. His real one, he told people, he’d left in Poland. ‘I’ve been up once already. Leave that!’
His horse had begun to inspect the wrecked bouquet on the road.
He lugged a feed-bag from between the wooden crates filled with empty bottles, and hung it around his horse’s head. The dull-eyed piebald began to chomp, more out of duty than appetite, Gabriel felt.
‘Got back to the yard and didn’t even have time to unload the empties. Had to come straight back up, didn’t I?’
‘Did you?’ said Max. ‘Why?’
‘Orders from his bit of fluff, Eva. She’s doing a picnic for the Führer and some bigwig from Japan. Dish of the day is going to be Jaegerschnitzel. The ladies of Obersalzberg are going to collect the wild mushrooms. Me, I have to provide the cream. Buckets of it according to blondie. I told her my supplies are limited so she said she could give me requisition forms to commandeer cream from the other milkmen of Berchtesgaden. So back up I had to come to get them.’
The horse stopped munching and stamped its hoof impatiently.
‘I know, Lily,’ he said to the nag, ‘it’s a liberty, up this mountain twice in one day.’
For the first time the disgruntled milkman looked at Gabriel. ‘She wants to be safe in her stall back at the yard.’