‘It should be more widely known’, said Professor Zulz, ‘that the Reichsfuhrer is highly distinguished in the field of ethnology. I’m referring to his work at the Ahnenerbe.’
‘Certainly,’ said Doll. ‘He’s assembled whole teams of anthropologists and archaeologists.’
‘Runologists, heraldists, and what have you.’
‘Expeditions to Mesopotamia, the Andes, Tibet.’
‘Expertise,’ said Zulz. ‘Brainpower. Which is why we’re the masters of Europe. Applied logic — that’s all it is. There’s no great mystery to it. Do you know, I wonder if there’s ever been a leadership, a chain of command, as intellectually evolved as our own.’
‘IQ,’ said Doll. ‘Mental capacity. There’s no great mystery to it.’
‘Yesterday morning I was clearing my desk,’ Zulz went on, ‘and I came across two memoranda clipped together. Hear this. Of the twenty-five leaders of the Einsatzgruppen in Poland and the USSR, who did some warm work I can tell you — fifteen doctorates. Now look at the Conference of State Secretaries in January. Of the fifteen attendees? Eight doctorates.’
‘What was this conference?’ asked Suitbert Seedig.
‘In Berlin,’ said Captain Uhl. ‘At Wannsee. To finalise—’
‘To finalise the proposed evacuations’, said Doll, raising his chin and tubing his lips, ‘to the liberated territories in the east.’
‘Mm. “Over the Bug”,’ said Drogo Uhl with a snort.
‘Eight doctorates,’ said Professor Zulz. ‘All right, Heydrich, rest in peace, convened and chaired. But him apart these were secondary or even tertiary functionaries. And yet. Eight doctorates. Strength in depth. That’s how you get the optimal decisions.’
‘Who was there?’ said Doll with a glance at his fingernails. ‘Heydrich. But who else? Lange. Gestapo Muller. Eichmann — the distinguished stationmaster. With his clipboard and his whistle.’
‘That’s exactly my point, Paul. Intellectual strength in depth. First-rate decisions all the way down.’
‘My dear Baldemar, nothing was “decided” at Wannsee. They merely rubber-stamped a decision taken months earlier. And taken at the most exalted level.’
It was time to introduce and emphasise my theme. Under the political system that here obtained, everyone had soon got used to the idea that where secrecy began, power began. Now, power corrupts: this was not a metaphor. But power attracts, luckily (for me), was not a metaphor either; and I had derived much sexual advantage from my proximity to power. In wartime, women especially felt the gravitational pull of it; they would be needing all their friends and admirers, all their protectors. I said, slightly teasingly,
‘Major. May I tell you one or two things that are not widely known?’
Doll gave a little upward bob on his buttocks and said, ‘Oh yes please.’
‘Thank you. The conference was a kind of experiment or pilot run. And the chairman foresaw very serious difficulties. But it was a great and unexpected success. When it was over, Heydrich, Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrich, had a cigar and a glass of brandy. In the middle of the day. Heydrich, who only ever drank alone. A brandy in front of the fire. With the little ticket-puncher Eichmann curled up at his feet.’
‘… Were you there?’
I shrugged limply. I also leaned forward and, in an experimental spirit, placed my hand between Alisz Seisser’s knees; and her knees clenched and her hand found mine, and I made a further discovery. In addition to her other troubles, Alisz was mortally terrified. Her whole body quaked with it. Doll said,
‘Were you there? Or was it too low-level for you?’ He chewed and swallowed. ‘Doubtlessly you get all this from your Uncle Martin.’ The two black eyes toured the table. ‘Bormann,’ he said in a deeper voice. ‘The Reichsleiter… I knew your Uncle Martin, Thomsen. We were muckers in the time of struggle.’
This was a surprise to me, but I said, ‘Yes, sir. He often mentions you and the friendship you both enjoyed.’
‘Give him my best. And uh, do please go on.’
‘Where were we? Heydrich wanted to test the waters. To see—’
‘If you mean the Lake it’s bloody freezing.’
‘Suitbert, please,’ said Doll. ‘Herr Thomsen.’
‘To test the waters for administrative resistance. Resistance to what might seem to be a rather ambitious endeavour. To apply our conclusive racial strategy through the whole of Europe.’
‘And?’
‘As I said, unexpectedly smooth. There was no resistance. None.’
Zulz said, ‘What’s unexpected about that?’
‘Well, think of the scope, Professor. Spain, England, Portugal, Ireland. And the numbers involved. Ten million. Perhaps twelve.’
Now the lolling shape on my left, Norberte Uhl, dropped her fork on her plate and said with a splutter, ‘They’re only Jews.’
You could hear the gustation and ingestion of the civilians (Burckl methodically slurping gravy from his spoon, Seedig rinsing his mouth with Nuits-St-Georges). Everyone else had stopped chewing; and I felt I was not alone in becoming intensely conscious of Drogo Uhl, whose head now slowly described a figure eight as his mouth widened. He turned with bared upper teeth to Zulz and said,
‘No, let’s not fly off the handle, eh? Let’s be indulgent. The woman understands nothing. Only Jews?’
‘“Only” Jews,’ Doll sadly concurred (he was folding his napkin with a sagacious air). ‘A somewhat puzzling remark, don’t you think, Professor, given that their encirclement of the Reich is now complete?’
‘Very puzzling indeed.’
‘We didn’t undertake this lightly, madam. We know what we’re about, I believe.’
Zulz said, ‘Yes. You see, they’re especially dangerous, Mrs Uhl, because they’ve long understood a core biological principle. Racial purity equals racial might.’
‘You won’t catch them interbreeding,’ said Doll. ‘Oh no. They understood this long before we did.’
‘That’s what makes them so dire a foe,’ said Uhl. ‘And the cruelty. My God. Pardon me, ladies, you shouldn’t have to hear it, but…’
‘They flay our wounded.’
‘They strafe our field hospitals.’
‘They torpedo our lifeboats.’
‘They…’
I looked at Hannah. Her lips were compressed, and she was frowning down at her hands — her long-fingered hands, which slowly combined and twined and intertwined, as if being sluiced under a tap.
‘It’s an age-old planetary racket,’ said Doll. ‘And we’ve got the proof. We’ve got the minutes!’
‘The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion,’ said Uhl grimly.
I said, ‘Ah now, Commandant. One gathers that some people have their doubts about the Protocols.’
‘Oh do they,’ said Doll. ‘Well I hereby refer them to Mein Kampf, which makes the point quite brilliantly. I can’t remember it word for word, but this is the gist. Uh… The Times of London says again and again that the document is a fabrication. That alone is proof of its authenticity… Devastating, nicht? Absolutely unanswerable.’
‘Yes — put that in your pipe and smoke it!’ said Zulz.