Berlin Red (24 page)

That afternoon, in the eastern district of the Berlin, not far from the Karlshorst Raceway, Inspector Hunyadi wandered slowly down the street, wearing paint-spattered blue overalls, frayed at the heels, and with a hat pulled over his eyes. He carried a metal toolkit in one hand. To people passing by, he looked like some weary electrician or  plumber, walking to a job because he no longer possessed a car, or else the fuel to run it. There were many such men in Berlin, too old to be conscripted by the regular army and too young to be entirely overlooked, whose trades were valuable enough to keep them out of uniform. Most of them would have been retired by now, but there was no one else to do the work. And soon, even their trades would be abolished. In the hundreds, they were being summoned by the authorities, given armbands printed with the word ‘Volksturm’ and, after half an hour’s training in the use of a handheld anti-tank weapon known as a ‘Panzerfaust’, they were cobbled together into suicidally primitive squads whose purpose was the defence of Berlin. In the meantime, there was nothing to do but to wander the streets, drunk if at all possible, visiting old friends and taking their last tours of the city.

But if those people passing by had looked more closely, they might have noticed the way he kept raising his hand to the right side of his head, and the thin strand of wire running out of his sleeve to the small earpiece he attempted to conceal in his palm.

And they might also have noticed a delivery van, bearing the logo of a non-existent floor-tile company named Ender & Söhne, following slowly in Hunyadi’s path along the street. Although the van was painted to look as though its sides were made of stamped metal, the panels were, in fact, constructed out of wood. This was in order not to cause any malfunction of the radio-detection equipment contained inside it, along with two technicians, who hunched over a direction-finding apparatus known as a Nahfeldpeiler.

Ever since the radio men on top of the Zoo tower anti-aircraft station had located an Allied transmission signal in the eastern portion of the city, Hunyadi had been making his way along every street in the district, slowly closing in upon the operator.

Hunyadi had established that these transmissions were being made at regular times, either around midday or in the early evenings. He had a hunch that the operator, whoever he or she was, had been leaving their job during their lunch break in order to send messages, or else was waiting until rush hour, when the noise of buses and trams out in the street would be at their loudest, obscuring any sounds made by the transmitter.

Now it was lunch time, and the detection equipment had picked up a signal, somewhere in the area of Lehndorffstrasse. Hunyadi edged his way down dirty alleyways between the houses, searching for the fuse boxes which, for fire-safety reasons, were located outside and usually close to the ground. Among the rubbish bins, the shards of broken beer bottles and hissing, homeless cats, Hunyadi crouched down, opened the rusty metal fuse boxes and unscrewed the stubby porcelain fuses one by one.

Back in the delivery van, the technicians listened, headphones pressed against their ears, for the moment when power to the agent’s radio transmitter was suddenly cut off by the removal of the fuse. When and if that happened, they would send a signal through to Hunyadi, who carried a portable radio strapped against his chest.

Hunyadi’s bones were aching. The radio set was small but heavy and carrying the added weight upon his chest had begun to hurt his back. Besides that, many of the fuses were corroded and twisting them out of their sockets had blistered his fingertips so badly that he now wore leather gloves to protect them.

Now and then he would stop, hands pressed against the small of his back and quietly groaning with pain, and he would glance up at the windows, wondering if this plan of his would ever yield results.

After checking every house on Lehndorff, Hunyadi turned the corner and began to make his way down Heiligenbergerstrasse. It was a narrow, gloomy street filled with blocks of flats, some of which showed damage from bombs that had fallen on the nearby Karlshorst Station.

At the first house, he managed to locate the fuse box behind a crate of old milk bottles. The bottles had long since been emptied of milk but were now partially filled with dirty-looking rain water, capped with a greenish scum of algae. Holding his breath, Hunyadi lifted the crate, careful not to rattle the bottles, and placed it down beside him.

He kept drifting off in his thoughts. Sometimes he thought of his wife. He hoped they were treating her well. In other moments, he thought of his days at Flossenburg. It was strange, the way he recalled it. There was no terror in his memory, although he had often been terrified. Instead, there was a curious finality about his imprisonment, as if everything that happened before his release belonged to one life, and everything since was part of another. And, in this second life of his, each tiny detail, even those things which were unpleasant, appeared miraculous to him. How can a person know the value of his life, he thought, until he stands upon the brink of its extinction?

Hunyadi’s daydreams exploded as a high-pitched whine drilled into his skull from the radio speaker plugged into his ear.

He froze, his fingers locked upon the circular glass fuse which he had been unscrewing at that moment. The technicians in the truck were signalling to let him know that the transmission they had been monitoring had just been interrupted. Hurriedly, he screwed the fuse back in. The signal from the radio truck abruptly ceased.

Hunyadi stared at the number written in black paint above the fuse. It was flat number three. The house only had three storeys, with one main fuse per storey. Now he knew where the agent was hiding.

Peering upwards, his gaze following the metal ladder of the fire escape, he saw the flutter of a curtain in one of the windows at the top of the building.

His heart began thundering.

He heard the slam of doors as one of the two technicians left the van and ran into the alleyway. From the man’s silhouette, Hunyadi could see that he had already drawn his gun.

‘Watch the fire escape,’ whispered Hunyadi.

The man nodded.

Hunyadi pushed past him, coming around the building to the front entrance, where he found the door to the foyer unlocked.

He made his way in and began to climb the stairs. The steps were bare and rickety and there was no way to move quietly. Speed was more important now.

At the front of each landing, a window looked out on to the street and wintery grey light shone in over the worn floorboards.

By the time he reached the third floor, Hunyadi was breathing heavily.

There was only one door. Hunyadi didn’t bother to knock. Instead, he raised one booted foot and kicked the door completely off its hinges.

Although this was the first enemy agent that Hunyadi had run to ground – such tasks were normally reserved for the Secret State Police, the Gestapo – there was a cruel sameness to the manner in which this arrest took place.

Hunyadi had lost count of the number of times he had burst in upon criminals, having tracked them to their lairs in every squalid corner of the city.

Realising at once that there was no escape, these criminals reacted in a variety of ways. Some fought back, with knives or guns or whatever object they could lay their hands on. Hunyadi had once been attacked with a rolling pin and, on another occasion, had a bird cage thrown at his head, with a squawking parrot still inside. He had shot men dead, and women too, but only when it would have cost him his own life not to do so. More often, they gave up without a fight.

What Hunyadi saw when he charged into the single-room flat was a short, slightly built man with a dark moustache and a thick head of hair. He wore a grubby white undershirt and a pair of pinstripe woollen trousers, with braces pulled up over his narrow shoulders.

The man was hunched over a small fireplace, attempting to set fire to a sheaf of documents. He appeared to have been taken completely by surprise, at least until the power had gone out. There was even a cup of hot tea steaming on the mantelpiece. He was using wooden matches to set the fire, but without much success. Several of the matches had already been burned, their blackened remnants lying on the hearth beside his bare feet. There had been no time for him to pack his radio and it lay on a desk by the window, its power cord snaking up to a light socket which dangled from the middle of the ceiling. The suitcase in which he stored the radio was still lying open on his bed. Beside it, Hunyadi saw a small-calibre pistol.

The man glanced up at Hunyadi. Then he looked towards his pistol, as if to gauge whether he might reach it before the stranger killed him with the gun in his own hand. Realising it was hopeless, he fumbled with another match, still hoping to set fire to the documents.

Hunyadi strode across to the room, tilting the gun in his hand and cuffed the man across the temple with the butt.

The man collapsed, an unlit match still pinched between his fingers.

Hunyadi looked down upon the agent. In his experience, it did no good, at times like this, to scream and make a show of force. ‘Get up,’ he said quietly. ‘You need to come with me.’

The man stared at the inspector, his dark eyes gleaming with fear. The gun had cut a gash across his forehead, and blood was running down across his face.

Still holding his pistol, but no longer aiming it at the man, Hunyadi held out his free hand, in order to help the agent to his feet.

Hunyadi knew that this was a dangerous moment. If he was not careful, he could easily be pulled off balance, but it was important to offer this gesture – to force the criminal to understand that the chase was over, that he was caught, and that to offer resistance could only end in death.

The agent took hold of Hunyadi’s outstretched hand.

Hunyadi helped the man to his feet. Then he handed the agent a set of handcuffs which were attached, not by a chain but by a single, heavy swivel bolt. ‘Put them on,’ he said.

With blood trails lightning-branched across the side of his face, the agent did as he was told. From the way he handled the cuffs, it seemed to Hunyadi that this might not be the first time he had been arrested.

When the agent’s hands were firmly locked in front of him, Hunyadi placed his hand upon the man’s shoulder and marched him out through the door.

The agent did not resist. There was, Hunyadi observed, a quiet dignity in this man’s acceptance of defeat. I ought to have let him drink his tea, thought the policeman. Or fetch his coat. And maybe a pair of shoes. So docile was the prisoner as he descended the stairs, that Hunyadi felt it safe to release his grip upon the prisoner.

‘You should have used a car battery,’ remarked Hunyadi.

The agent turned and looked at him, a baffled expression upon his face.

‘To power the radio,’ continued Hunyadi. ‘That way, I wouldn’t have caught you when I pulled the fuses.’

A look of tired resignation filtered into the man’s eyes. He turned away and continued down the stairs.

By now, they had reached the second floor. Rain streaked the windows on the landing.

At that moment, the agent appeared to stumble.

Hunyadi, who was right behind him on the stairs, reached out to steady him.

The prisoner tipped forward, as if he were about to fall.

‘Careful!’ called Hunyadi, suddenly realising that if the man did not regain his balance, he would crash into the window panes.

In that same moment, Hunyadi understood what was happening.

But it was too late.

The agent dived head first through the window.

The crash was almost deafening.

Hunyadi saw the man, his eyes closed, the terrible whiteness of torn flesh mixing with the jagged hail of glass shards. He saw the agent’s bare feet, the soles dirty from walking on the old floorboards. And then there was nothing but the gaping hole where the window had been.

He heard the sound of the body hitting the street.

Hunyadi rushed to the window opening.

The man lay twisted on the ground.

He had gone head first into the pavement. His skull was shattered, and the torn scalp with its long, dark hair lay draped over the dead man’s face.

The technician who had been guarding the fire escape came running from the alleyway. He skidded around the corner, and barely missed colliding with the body. For a moment, he just stared at the corpse. Then he slowly raised his head and looked up at the window.

Through the daggers of the broken window panes, Hunyadi felt the cold rain touch his cheeks. ‘Now there will be hell to pay,’ he thought.

Later that day, Hunyadi sat at his desk, staring at a pile of unopened mail, all of which had arrived at his flat while he’d been away at Flossenburg. Bills. Subscriptions. Reminders about doctor and dentist appointments. He had brought them with him to the office on the first day, intending to sort through it all. But there had been no time. Even now, he made no move to open the dozens of envelopes.

All Hunyadi could think about now was who he could turn to for help.

Immediately following the death of the radio operator, who had quickly been identified as a low-level employee at the now-defunct Hungarian Embassy, a search of the room had revealed a handful of coded messages. These messages had been transcribed on ricepaper, which could have been eaten by the radio man if he had been able to get to them in time.

As he held the messages in his hand, a taste of marzipan had flooded into Hunyadi’s brain. He had been reminded of the almond pastries he had enjoyed as a boy, which had been baked on sheets of ricepaper. He remembered peeling off the delicate strips of paper and eating them first.

He could make no sense at all of the code, and he knew better even than to try. Officially, the only people in Berlin who might assist him in such matters were the SS Intelligence Service, but Hunyadi had serious misgivings about bringing them into the picture.

The reason for Hunyadi’s reluctance to hand over the codes to the SS was that he now felt convinced that someone in their ranks was behind it. These coded messages, if they could only be deciphered, might provide all the evidence he needed, but only if the SS was prepared to confirm their own involvement in the breach. And that, Hunyadi wagered to himself, was very unlikely to happen.

As the minutes passed, Hunyadi reluctantly arrived at the conclusion that he would have to call upon Fegelein. However much Hunyadi disliked the man, Fegelein was the only person within reach who might have access to someone with code-breaking skills. Although Fegelein was a high-ranking member of the SS, Hunyadi’s recent conversation with Rattenhuber, Head of Security in the bunker, and everything else he had heard about the man, pointed to the fact that Fegelein had fallen out with his masters. Fegelein’s assistance in finding the source of the leak might just be enough to tip the balance back into his favour. From that point of view, Fegelein needed Hunyadi even more than Hunyadi needed him.

Hunyadi reached into the pocket of his waistcoat and removed the calling card on which Fegelein had written his phone number.

With his hand hovering over the telephone, Hunyadi paused, knowing that this call, whatever its results, would set into motion events he would no longer be able to control.

He picked up the receiver.

The station operator clicked on to the line.

‘Call this number,’ said Hunyadi.