‘No,’ answered Hunyadi. ‘I would be dead.’
Hitler glanced at him and shrugged. ‘Death awaits us all, Hunyadi.’
Hunyadi cleared his throat. ‘If I may ask, why call on me for this? I do not see why you would place your faith in me, especially since you yourself ordered my execution for what you have termed crimes against the state.’
‘Ah!’ sighed Hitler, resting his hand briefly on Hunyadi’s shoulder. ‘Yours was a crime inspired by love, misguided of course, but understandable in the circumstances. It is because of this love that I know I can trust you to carry out your task.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Hunyadi.
‘At my request, your wife Franziska has been taken into custody by some friends who have remained loyal to me among the Spanish authorities.’
Hunyadi felt the bile rise in his throat. ‘On what charges?’ he spluttered.
‘I am sure they have come up with something,’ remarked Hitler.
‘Why don’t you just take me back to Flossenburg and hang me?’ demanded Hunyadi. ‘Why must you put me through this?’
‘Because, my old friend, I no longer know whom to trust,’ Hitler stamped his heel into the sandy soil, as if to trample out a fire which had broken out beneath his feet, ‘down there in the bowels of the Reich. If I give this mission to a member of my own security, who is to say I am not entrusting an investigation to the very people who should be investigated? No, I needed someone from outside. Someone I know will not smile in my face and then stab me in the back, as others have tried to do. Don’t you see, Hunyadi? It is your hatred which convinces me that you are the right man for the job, and your love for that woman which has guaranteed your loyalty.’ Now he fixed Hunyadi with a stare. ‘Do you honestly mean to turn me down?’
‘Under the circumstances,’ answered the detective, ‘I don’t see how I can.’
Hitler nodded with satisfaction. ‘Then it is settled.’ He reached into his tunic and removed a thick envelope. ‘Here is everything I know about the case.’ He handed the envelope to Hunyadi.
‘If what you say is true,’ said the detective, ‘I may need to question some very high-ranking people.’
‘Yes.’
‘I doubt they will appreciate the intrusion.’
‘Indeed they won’t, but you have my word they will endure it. In the envelope I have just given you,’ said Hitler, ‘you’ll find a number that will connect you directly to the main switchboard in the bunker. If anybody tries to obstruct you in your duties, no matter who they are, just have them call and I will personally explain the situation.’
They had reached a place where they could go no further. The path was blocked by a huge piece of smashed masonry and the ground beyond had been cratered by explosions.
From the moment he had set eyes on Hitler that day, Hunyadi’s first thought had been to kill the man, with a rock, with his bare hands, with his teeth, and then to simply vanish among the ruins. But what Hitler had said about Franziska paralysed him. He had no doubt that, even with the Allies and the Red Army closing in upon Berlin and the German army little more than a heap of wreckage propped up by pensioners and teenage boys, there were some still prepared to carry out their Fuhrer’s wishes. When these men learned of what he’d done, Franziska would be dead within the hour.
He wished he could go back in time, to that moment when he had emerged from his bunker and found the young corporal ensnared by the rusting barbed wire. He wished he could have turned his back and walked back down again into the musty earth, leaving the man to be torn to shreds by their own artillery.
The fact that this had even occurred to him, a man who usually confined himself within a world of fact, not dreams, showed him just how powerless he was.
And Hitler knew it, too. Why else would he have dared to meet Hunyadi alone and without his usual escort of armed guards?
Now, in one last attempt to reason with the man, Hunyadi reached out and took hold of Hitler’s arm.
Hitler was startled. Few people ever touched him. Even his mistress seemed to hesitate before allowing her pale flesh to brush against his own, still paler skin.
The dog began to growl, lips curling up around its teeth.
Realising his mistake, Hunyadi let his hand slip away. ‘Listen to me,’ he said. ‘We have been bound together all these years by the debt you think you owe me. Allow me to absolve you of that now. Just let us go, me and my wife, and if you cannot do that, then at least let her go free. Don’t hold this over me. It may well be that we no longer share that friendship, but at least there was a time when we did not think of each other as enemies. I beg you to remember that.’
Hitler stared at him. A look of intense curiosity spread across his face.
For one brief moment, Hunyadi convinced himself that his wish might be granted, after all.
‘The debt I owe you is mine to repay,’ said Hitler. ‘I will decide when the slate has been wiped clean, and I will decide how it’s done.’ He glanced up at the sky. ‘It will be night soon,’ he said. ‘Time for me to head back underground. I will leave you here, Hunyadi. You can find your own way home.’ With those words, Hitler turned and made his way back towards the Chancellery entrance. The dog followed close upon his heels.
As the sun set over the ruins of the city, the brassy evening light suffused with yellow dust, Hunyadi set off towards his flat on the Kronenstrasse. No one seemed to notice him as he shuffled along in his dirty prison clothes. He looked like just another refugee, of which there were thousands roaming the streets in search of shelter and food.
In spite of the fact that Hunyadi had not been home in weeks, he found the door to his apartment still locked and everything inside untouched since the moment of his arrest. The air was musty and still. In spite of the cold, he opened the windows, then sat down at his desk, turned on the light and read through the report Hitler had given him.
When he had finished, he sat back in the chair, laced his fingers together and set his hands on top of his head. For a long time, he just stared at the open window, watching how the night breeze brushed against the curtains. There must be some way out of this, he thought. Lost in the caverns of his mind, he searched for a solution, but there was none. Hunyadi was utterly trapped. There was nothing to do but proceed with the task he had been given.
He returned the envelope of documents to his chest pocket, rose to his feet, breathed in deeply and strode out of the room.
After a short walk across town, he arrived at the Pankow district police station where, up to the moment of his arrest, he had spent his entire career.
The sergeant on duty was surprised to see him. ‘Inspector Hunyadi!’ he exclaimed, ‘I thought . . .’ he hesitated, ‘well, I thought they . . .’
‘They did,’ replied Hunyadi.
The sergeant nodded vigorously. ‘And what can I do for you, Inspector?’
‘I will be requiring my old office.’
‘But I don’t think it’s available,’ spluttered the man. ‘It belongs to Inspector Hossbach now.’
‘Hossbach!’ muttered Hunyadi. An image appeared in his mind of the small, rosy-cheeked man, his face split almost in two by a patently insincere smile. ‘And how long did he wait,’ Hunyadi asked the sergeant, ‘to move into my room after I left?’
The sergeant’s tactful silence was an answer in itself.
Hunyadi climbed up the first flight of stairs and made his way along a stretch of industrial carpeting worn almost bare by the path of his own feet over the years until he reached his office door.
He did not bother to knock.
Hossbach was sitting with his feet up on the desk, reading a monthly magazine called Youth, which passed itself off as a pictorial journal celebrating what it touted as ‘the human body and spirit’ but was, in fact, little more than pornography.
As soon as the door opened, Hossbach tossed the magazine over his shoulder and swept his feet off the desk. He snatched up the receiver of his phone, as if to give the impression that he had been engaged in some important conversation. ‘God damn it to hell!’ he shouted. ‘Didn’t anyone teach you how to knock?’ Then he paused, astonished, the heavy black receiver frozen in his hand. ‘You!’ he gasped.