‘I am told that tomorrow, or at the latest the day after, American and Soviet tanks will meet on the Elbe at Torgau. My dear boys, in that dark moment the Germany I dreamed of, the Fatherland I fought with all my heart and strength to build into a living reality, will be dead. It will have been killed. It will have been murdered by barbarians at the incitement of the International Jew.’
He paused and took a long deep breath.
‘All that we love most dearly will be turned to smoke, and the smoke will disperse on the wind. Yet I tell you, my young friends, in this moment as I look at you, my heart swells with hope…’
Hitler let his gaze travel along the line, pausing a moment on each young face.
‘I look at you and I see the essence of my Jugend, my ideal of the Aryan spirit. I see it in every one of you, the bright promise of a race and nation, the natural enemy of those who lay waste to our beloved land.’
General Albers moved a fraction closer, just to be sure: he took a swift hard look at the Führer’s face and yes, he could see, there were tears welling in his eyes.
‘In your maturity you will bear many duties,’ Hitler said, his voice rising above the rumble and crash of gunfire. ‘The most important of them, the most sacred, will be to uphold and keep alive the spirit of the Reich, and to eliminate its darkest enemy, with no thought of mercy. This is a precious charge. You boys, as its bearers, are no less precious.’
He paused and looked along the line again.
‘You are the young, pounding heart of Germany,’ he said. ‘You are the embodiment of Siegfried, the strength and hope of your race. You are the future.’
Several boys were smothering tears. Another shell went off, bringing down rubble at the end of the street.
General Albers sidled up to Hitler and spoke in a sharp whisper. ‘We should get back to the bunker, Führer, as much for the sake of the boys as for ourselves. The chances of us all leaving here undamaged must be slim by now.’
Hitler nodded slowly and turned away. Albers and Goebbels fell in behind him. The guard led the way back across the Chancellery garden, the sodden earth sucking under their boots. At the top of the bunker steps Hitler stopped and looked back at the street. The SS officer was shepherding the boys back into the gutted office building. Hitler shook his head.
‘What a thing it would be,’ he said.
Albers and Goebbels looked at each other, mystified.
‘To be young again,’ Hitler said. ‘That young, with everything still to happen.’
Later, as General Albers sat in his quarters, recording the day’s events in his diary, he looked up at the agonized Christ on a large wood-and-ivory crucifix by his bed.
‘Not long now,’ he said quietly. ‘A week at most, with luck.’
The realism of the crucifix sometimes struck him as grotesque, but he kept it by him. It was the only memento of his wife, the one item to survive the inferno of their cottage after a British bomb reduced everything else, Greta included, to ash and vapour.
‘Perhaps, Lord,’ he said, ‘you will arrange it so I can surrender to someone with a sense of irony, and no great desire to punish.’
He looked at the diary again and thought for a moment before finishing the page. The small, special brotherhood is established, he wrote. If the meticulous plans of Secretary Bormann and Minister Goebbels unfold in the way they are intended, the remaining Jews in Germany will one day feel the Führer’s throttling grip from beyond the grave.
He put down the pen and rubbed his hands together. The room was cold and damp. He pushed back the chair, got down on his knees and peered under the bed. There was probably enough schnapps under there to ease the chill. He pulled out the bottle and held it up. Three good drinks, maybe four.
‘Enough for now.’
He stood up, took the tumbler from the night-stand and poured a measure. With the glass held out before him he felt an impulse to toast the future of the thirty bedraggled orphans. They had looked so downcast. Just pathetic, frightened, parentless children.
That was now. But years from now…
‘God,’ he groaned, ‘all the black tomorrows.’
He looked at his row of treasured books on the shelf above the bed; at the framed snapshot of himself and his brother as children; at the ivory face of Christ hanging there, twisted with pain and despair.
‘Why should I wish more calamity on the world?’
Outside in the passage there was the sound of shouting. The wise men in the map room were being outraged again, berating absent commanders for the failure of crazy stratagems to rescue the Nazi dream. Albers sighed and raised his glass to the crucifix.
‘Shalom,’ he whispered.
A policeman on New Bond Street pointed towards the corner of Clifford Street. ‘Along there,’ he told the attractive American woman, ‘and it’s the first turning on your right.’
She thanked him.
‘First visit?’ he said.
‘Oh no, not at all. I’ve been coming here since I was in college. But I still manage to lose myself in May fair.’
She thanked him again and moved on, turning along Clifford Street and into Cork Street. At the first gallery she stopped, caught by the sight of a solitary canvas on an easel in the middle of the window.
‘Impressive, isn’t it?’ a man said.
She nodded, coolly enough to stay aloof, not so much as to appear rude. She had reached a stage in her life where the ability to draw men’s attention, without trying, was no longer a particular pleasure.
‘Probably a fake, mind you,’ he grunted, moving off.
She could see it was no fake. It was an untitled George Stubbs, another of his horse paintings, this one a grey stallion hedged around with menacing shadows, rearing back from an unseen threat beyond the edge of the picture. The fear in the animal’s eyes was painfully authentic, a primal terror more vivid than a photograph could convey. She turned away and walked on, blinking against the cold wind, wondering how a person could live with such an unsettling picture.
Outside the Lancer Gallery she stopped and glanced at her watch. She had dawdled over lunch and hadn’t intended to get here so late. If she went in now, she would have to make it a swift visit. Too swift, probably, to enjoy it. If she waited until tomorrow she would have more time to browse. On the other hand, her London schedule was tight; a visit tomorrow could only be a maybe.
She stood facing the window, not sure what to do. As she raised her arm to look at her watch again, a man on the other side of the street drew a pistol from his pocket and fired a bullet into her spine. The impact threw her against the window. The second shot hit the back of her skull and came out
