wasnât there and he was thinking aloud. âSwine. She tried to get him off, but noâthe Chief wouldnât listen. Didnât listen to her.â¦â
âWho tried to get him off?â Max leaned close to him, he put a hand on his arm and gave it a little shake. âWho was it? Tell me.â¦â
âE.B.,â Helm sniggered. âBut the Chief wouldnât listen.â
E.B. The girl who had escaped with him from the Bunker had used those initials but they hadnât registered. Heâd forgotten them until he started reading the Allied reports and Trevor-Roperâs definitive account of the last days in Berlin. Eva Braun . Eva Braun had tried to save the man from execution. Adolf Hitler hadnât yielded. He brought himself very near to Otto Helm.
âWho was he?â
âEh? Who? I donât knowâI donât remember things. Whereâs TrudiâI want the bottle.â
âYou can pee in a minute,â Max Steiner said. âWhen you think back. The Bunker, the last dayâwho did E.B. try and save, Otto? Come on, you tell me and Iâll get Trudi for you.â
The eyes were looking into his, and there was a clear intelligence in them. âFegelein. He was trying to escapeâbetray us. I never told them about that. They put me away for all those years.⦠I never said anything about that.â
âNo,â Max said. He felt as if heâd been winded. Fegelein. Herman Fegelein. The man who had whispered to him to find Janus had been Eva Braunâs brother-in-law.
He got up, and went to the door. âIâll get Trudi for you,â he said.
He found her in the sitting room, watching television. She looked up and smiled. âYou havenât been long,â she said. âWas Dad able to help?â
âNo,â Max shook his head. âI didnât worry him too much. Heâs pretty confused.â
She stood up and there was something awkward about her. âHe was in prison more than nineteen years,â she said. âI was eight when he went inside. My mother kept things going till she died. I donât know what he was supposed to have done, Herr Steiner, and I donât care. Heâs my father and Iâm not ashamed of what he was. There are people around here whoâd spit on us if they knew heâd been in the SS.â
âHe wants the bottle,â Max said.
âOh, God,â she said. âWhy didnât you say so?â She hurried out. He looked round the pleasant little room. More potted plants, photographs of herself and her husband on a skiing holiday, outside the Mayorâs office after their wedding; modern furniture and bright colours. All his preconceived ideas about Otto Helmâs family were ludicrously wrong. The house didnât belong to them; they were tenants, not owners, a young couple, not long married, looking after the wifeâs invalid father. He remembered so vividly that it sickened him the last time he had seen Otto Helm, standing over the bound and bleeding victim in the Chancellory yard. He had been right not to mention that incident to his American interrogators. He might have been hanged instead of going to prison. To his daughter, and probably to her decent young husband too, he was a sick and helpless old man who had been punished for serving his country.
There was nothing he could say to Trudi Mintzel that made any sense now. He let himself out of the flat and began to walk slowly down the road. He was booked on the ten-thirty flight to Hamburg the next day.
Minna Walther had promised to meet him at the airport; it was understood that there would be an exchange of information. He went on walking; there was a tightness in his stomach that followed the nightmare, only he wasnât dreaming now. He took a bus to the sector where his hotel was. A pretty girl sat next to him and smiled; the atmosphere was genial, different from his remembrance of the
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