The Valhalla Exchange

It was Rafael who broke the spell, arriving with my brandy on a tray. 'Can I get you another one, senor?' he asked.

Canning smiled, all charm again. 'Later, my friend. Later.'

'Senores.'

Rafael departed. Canning leaned back, watching me, then swallowed a little Scotch. He didn't waste time trying to tell me how mistaken I was, but said simply, 'We've met before, presumably?'

'About fifteen minutes ago up the street at the mortuary,' I said. 'I was standing in the shadows, I should explain, so I had you at something of a disadvantage. Oh, I've seen you before at press conferences over the years, that sort of thing, but then one couldn't really specialize in writing about politics and military affairs without knowing Hamilton Canning.'

'O'Hagan,' he said. 'The one who writes for The Times?'

'I'm afraid so, General.'

'You've a good mind, son, but remind me to put you straight on China. You've been way out of line in that area lately.'

'You're the expert.' I took out a cigarette. 'What about Bauer, General?'

'What about him?' He leaned back, legs sprawled, all negligent ease.

I laughed. 'All right, let's try it another way. You ask me why a reasonably well-known correspondent for the London Times takes the trouble to haul himself all the way from Lima to a pesthole like this, just to look at the body of a man called Ricardo Bauer who dropped dead in the street here on Monday.'

'All right, son,' he said lazily. 'You tell me. I'm all ears.'

'Ricardo Bauer,' I said, 'as more than one expert will tell you, is one of the aliases used by Martin Bormann in Brazil, the Argentine, Chile and Paraguay on many occasions during the past thirty years.'

'Martin Bormann?' he said.

'Oh, come off it, General. Reichsleiter Martin Bormann, Head of the Nazi Party Chancellory and Secretary to the Fuhrer. The one member of Hitler's top table unaccounted for since the war.'

'Bormann's dead,' he said softly. 'He was killed attempting to break out of Berlin. Blown up crossing the Weidendammer Bridge on the night of May 1st, 1945.'

'Early hours of May 2nd, General,' I said. 'Let's get it right. Bormann left the bunker at 1.30 a.m. It was Erich Kempka, Hitler's chauffeur, who saw him come under artillery fire on that bridge. Unfortunately for that story, the Hitler Youth Leader, Artur Axmann, crossed the Spree River on a railway bridge, as part of a group led by Bormann, and that was considerably later.'

He nodded. 'But Axmann asserted also that he'd seen Bormann and Hitler's doctor, Stumpfegger, lying dead near Lehrter Station.'

'And no one else to confirm the story,' I said. 'Very convenient,'

He put down his glass, took out a pipe and started to fill it from a leather pouch. 'So, you believe he's alive. Wouldn't you say that's kind of crazy?'

'It would certainly put me in pretty mixed company,' I said. 'Starting with Stalin and lesser mortals like Jacob Glas, Bormann's chauffeur, who saw him in Munich after the war. Then there was Eichmann — when the Israelis picked him up in 1960 he told them Bormann was alive. Now why would he do that if it wasn't true?'

'A neat point. Go on.'

'Simon Wiesenthal, the Nazi hunter, always insisted he was alive, maintained he had regular reports on him. Ladislas Farago said he actually interviewed him. Since 1964 the West German authorities have had 100,000 marks on his head and he was found guilty of war crimes at Nuremberg and sentenced to death in his absence.' I leaned forward. 'What more do you want, General? Would you like to hear the one about the Spaniard who maintains he travelled to Argentine from Spain with Bormann in a U-boat in 1945?'

He smiled, leaning over to put another log on the fire. 'Yes, I interviewed him soon after he came out with that story. But if Bormann's been alive all these years, what's he been doing?'

'The Kameradenwerk,' I said. 'Action for comrades. The organization they set up to take care of the movement after the war, with hundreds of millions of gold salted away to pay for it.'

'Possible.' He nodded, staring into the fire. 'Possible.'

'One thing is sure,' I said. 'That isn't him lying up there at the mortuary. At least, you don't think so.'

He glanced up at me. 'Why do you say that?'

'I saw your face.'

He nodded. 'No, it wasn't Bormann.'

'How did you know about him? Bauer, I mean. Events in La Huerta hardly make frontpage news in the New York Times.'

'I employ an agent in Brazil who has a list of certain names. Any mention of any of them anywhere in South America and he informs me. I flew straight down.'

'Now that I find truly remarkable.'

'What do you want to know, son? What he looked like? Will that do? Five foot six inches, bull neck, prominent cheekbones, broad, rather brutal face. You could lose him in any crowd because he looked so damned ordinary. Just another working stiff off the waterfront or whatever. He was virtually unknown to the German public and press. Honours, medals meant nothing to him. Power was all.' It was as if he was talking to himself as he sat there, staring into the fire. 'He was the most powerful man in Germany and nobody appreciated it until after the war.'

'A butcher,' I said, 'who condoned the final solution and the deaths of millions of Jews.'

'Who also sent war orphans to his wife in Bavaria to look after,' Canning said. 'You know what Goring said at Nuremberg when they asked him if he knew where Bormann was? He said, "I hope he's frying in hell, but I don't know."'

He heaved himself out of the chair, went behind the bar and reached for a bottle of Scotch. 'Can I get you another?'

'Why not?' I got up and sat on one of the bar stools. 'Brandy.'

As he poured some into my glass he said,

'I was once a prisoner-of-war, did you know that?'

'That's a reasonably well-known fact, General,' I said. 'You were captured in Korea. The Chinese had you for two years in Manchuria. Isn't that why Nixon hauled you out of retirement the other year to go to Peking with him?'

'No, I mean way, way back. I was a prisoner once before. Towards the end of the Second World War, the Germans had me. At Schloss Arlberg in Bavaria. A special set-up for prominent prisoners.'

And I genuinely hadn't known, although it was so far back it was hardly surprising, and then his real, enduring fame had been gained in Korea, after all.

I said. 'I didn't know that, General.'

He dropped ice into his glass and a very large measure of whisky. 'Yes, I was there right to the bitter end. In the area erroneously known as the Alpine Fortress. One of Dr Goebbels's smarter pieces of propaganda. He actually had the Allies believing there was such a place. It meant the troops were very cautious about probing into that area at first, which made it a safe resting place for big Nazis on the run from Berlin in those last few days.'

'Hitler could have gone, but didn't.'

'That's right.'

'And Bormann?'

'What do you mean?'

'The one thing that's never made any sense to me,' I said. 'He was a brilliant man. Too clever by half to leave his chances of survival to a mad scramble at the final end of things. If he'd really wanted to escape he'd have gone to Berchtesgaden when he had the chance instead of staying in the bunker till the end. He'd have had a plan.'

'Oh, but he did, son.' Canning nodded slowly. 'You can bet your sweet life on that.'

'And how would you know, General?' I asked softly.

And at that he exploded, came apart at the seams.

'Because I saw him, damn you,' he cried harshly. 'Because I stood as close to him as I am to you, traded shots with him, had my hands on his throat, do you understand?' He paused, hands held out, looking at them in a kind of wonder. 'And lost him,' he whispered.