Stranger at the Gates (17 page)

‘You're so beautiful,' Heinz Minden mumbled, ‘so wonderful … Why did you cry out? I didn't mean to hurt you …'

‘That thing round your neck,' Louise whispered. ‘It cut into me. Please take it off.' In the darkness he fumbled with the chain and it slid away; she took it out of his hand, feeling the little key between her fingers. She let it drop on the floor beside the bed. Then she closed her eyes as his arms clamped round her. An hour later she stood in the doorway of Savage's room. She held the chain with the locket and the key.

‘He's asleep,' she said. Take what you want. He's in my room.'

‘Don't cry,' Savage said. He took the key from her. ‘How long can you give me? How long can you keep him there?'

‘As long as I like,' she said. She put a hand to her face for a moment and then brushed back her hair. Savage saw her hand trembling. ‘He said he loved me,' she said suddenly. ‘I feel as if I'll never be clean again. For God's sake go—I'll have to get back in case he wakes.'

‘Wait here,' Savage said. ‘I'll bring the key back when I've opened the case. Then go back to him.'

Five minutes later he had come back. She took the key from him.

‘It's one-thirty now,' Savage said. ‘Give me till four.'

‘Good luck,' Louise said. ‘I'll pray for you.' She turned to go back to her own room.

Minden stirred in the bed, reaching towards her.

‘Where were you—darling …'

‘I'm here,' she whispered. ‘I'm with you. You were sleeping. It's early still; we have all night to be together.'

General Friedrich Brühl had finished dinner. He was not a glutton, but he appreciated the quality of food. He had developed a taste for wine and rare liqueurs, which was far removed from the days when he had lived on sauerkraut and beer as a young man. It amused him to imagine the pride of his parents, good solid artisans from Munich, if they could see their son's elevation in the world. He sat at the head of the long sixteenth-century refectory table, and glanced at his officers; there were six of them, intimates chosen as his personal staff. The light from candles in solid gold Renaissance candelabra flattered their faces and reflected on the General's thick-lensed glasses. Three of them were scientists, like himself, the others were his aide, a liaison officer with the military commander of Paris, and his nephew, whom he had saved from service on the Russian front. He raised his glass and tasted a mellow Château Yquem. The cellars had been stocked with magnificent wines; Brühl had ordered their careful removal to the stable block, where it was cool and the precious vintages wouldn't be disturbed again. He caught his nephew's eye and smiled. His sister and he were very close; she wrote regularly and he replied with affectionate enquiries about the family, details of the weather and the continued progress of her son, who was proving just the sort of young man Brühl approved of most. Reliable, obedient, sober-minded. In his uncle's service he would have a fine career. Brühl had begun his working life at fourteen as assistant in a chemist's shop, sweeping out, running errands, cleaning the counters and bottles for a few marks a week. In the evenings he studied; he had never been aggressive or athletic, his eyesight was poor and his inclination was solitary. He was a bookish boy, a disappointment to his father, who was a boisterous, lusty man, and one of the earliest recruits to the National Socialist Party. He grew up in the violence and mob politics of Munich in the 20's, saw his father come home with the brown uniform of the Nazi Sturmabteilung stained with the blood of Communists and Jews who had been beaten up. He listened to the exposition of the new philospohy and recognised the superiority of the tough fanatical men who were its prototypes of the new Germans. He couldn't be one of them; nature and undernourishment had prevented that, but he hero-worshipped and admired. It was a party member, a wealthy furniture manufacturer, who heard of his interest in chemistry and science, and paid for his education. Brühl found his
métier
in the University. He excelled at his studies, and he gave his services to the Party who had befriended him, by pointing out Communist elements among the students. He was made treasurer of the Nazi student organisation and he was admired for his administrative gifts. His nickname was the Owl; he emerged with an honours degree in physics and chemistry and went on to achieve a doctorate. When Hitler became Reichschancellor, he was given the post of professor, after its former occupant, an elderly Jew, was bullied into resignation. Friedrich Brühl, the butcher's son, became one of the new élite; a fanatical party organiser, an intellectual whose achievements embellished the Nazi image among a people who worshipped academic titles. He also met, and formed a friendship with another mild myopic, Heinrich Himmler. The result of that friendship was to bring him into brief contact with the Führer himself, an occasion which to Brühl could only be compared with the Beatific Vision to a Christian Saint. He was overwhelmed, enslaved; rational political belief became obsessional faith. There was nothing Brühl couldn't equate with service to his leader and his country. At the outbreak of war he was immediately placed in charge of all chemical research and given full facilities at the I. G. Farben chemical plant at Dresden.

One of his minor contributions was the development of ZKI, which came into use in the gas chambers of Auschwitz; it was quicker and left the corpses less noisome to handle than Monoxide. Exposure to Brühl's gas killed within four minutes.

But the perfection of the ultimate in chemical warfare lay before him; after two years of intensive study and research and highly secret experiments, also undertaken within the concentration camps, Brühl was able to offer to his old friend Himmler a means of repulsing the Allied invasion, of rolling back the advancing Russians, of reducing any country to submission. Victory, Brühl announced to Hitler's personal representative, could be within German grasp inside a year. Hysteria, convulsions, panic and death. Armies, entire populations would be destroyed. Everything he needed was put at his disposal. Brühl himself rejected the facilities at I. G. Farben; he didn't need large laboratories for his work, but he did need absolute secrecy and immunity from Allied bombing. It was decided to establish his research centre in France, in a quiet rural district near enough to Paris to be easily accessible to the defensive bomber squadrons, and in an area where there was no resistance and negligible risk of local curiosity. Brühl had chosen the Château Diane as his headquarters, picked a small, highly qualified staff, and assumed the rank of General in the Wehrmacht. His staff were also given military rank, and the Château was officially designated an Army Headquarters for the areas around Dreux, Houdan and St. Blaize en Yvelines. The security was so efficient that the district headquarters at Chartres had no idea of Brühl's real function or of the existence of his research laboratory in the Château cellars. He had enjoyed every moment of the time spent at the Château Diane; he indulged in romantic day-dreams of a vanished age, and lusted over the memorials of a woman who had died four hundred years before. He felt like a king, sleeping in the bed where a Valois had coupled with his mistress, sitting at the same table, taking a mid-morning walk through the gardens where they had wandered together. In the laboratory the perfection of his work was near. He gave the signal and the company of men rose to leave the dining room.

On this night he did not invite them to take coffee with him. He didn't believe in spoiling his subordinates. In the splendid marble hall he said good night, and went to the red salon to have his special brandy and coffee alone. The mess waiters were S.S. men, in army uniform. Even the chef, specially imported from Germany, was a member of the fanatical Nazi Police. Logs were alight in the fireplace; his coffee and a superb Champagne Cognac waited for him. Brühl relaxed into an armchair, sipped his cognac, and gazed at the portrait of Diane de Poitiers.

Red hair in delicate ringlets, a pale Aryan face and a body like white silk, erotically exposed against a dark background. Brühl closed his eyes for a moment and thought about her. He had never wanted a living woman and his sexual impulses were feeble even in youth. Now he copulated in imagination.

By the time he had finished his brandy, he was thinking about his research. Only one factor remained unresolved. The gas was affected by rainfall. On contact with soil, or any greenery, it became noxious and pervasive. Water, or waterlogged conditions, prevented it from rising. As it had a limited effectiveness on exposure to the atmosphere, this was a serious problem. Bad weather could nullify a gas offensive for some hours; after which the poisonous content would be dissipated. Brühl was a perfectionist. He had to present a weapon without weakness. Its strategic importance depended upon its swift annihilation of the enemy. It could not be subject to the vagaries of weather. The strategy had already been worked out; it was the Führers intention to offer token resistance to the Allied invasion force, allowing a major advance along the entire front. It was calculated that a quarter of a million men would be in France within a week. When the target was large enough, Luftwaffe squadrons would saturate the area with gas bombs, working from the immediate coastal front inland to a depth of two hundred miles. The result should end the invasion attempt and a massive gas raid on selected cities should cause England to surrender. But the vital elements were surprise and timing. If the enemy were not completely destroyed at a safe distance from the German border, the gas could not be used. Brühl frowned; he had a particularly able assistant in Heinz Minden, who had put forward several solutions to the problem of the gas reacting to water, but unfortunately none of them were viable. Without boasting, Brühl recognised that no member of his team possessed the scientific genius which distinguished his own work. He alone would be able to find the answer. He yawned a little, and squinted up at the massive ormolu and ebony clock which stood on a bracket beside the fireplace. It showed eleven-thirty. He rang a bell and the waiter appeared. The tray was removed and the General went up the marble staircase to the state bedroom on the first floor. There his batman undressed him, placed a glass of hot milk and an apple beside the bed, saluted and went out. By ten minutes past midnight Brühl was asleep.

Savage shut himself up in Minden's room. The briefcase was open and he had taken out the papers, carefully keeping them in sequence and was examining them. All Minden's identification papers were there; the special pass into the Château Diane was a small yellow card, with his photograph on the inside. It was quite different to any form of identification used in any of the German armed forces. His controller at OSS had suspected that a special pass would be issued to the members of Brühl's staff, but there was no way of obtaining a specimen. Savage had to get the genuine article and substitute his own photograph. He carried that photograph, full face and showing the upper portion of a Wehrmacht major's uniform, concealed in the lining of his inner breast pocket. It lay on the table beside him. The size was correct, it would fit over the Major's picture. It was firmly pasted in and there wasn't time to remove it without the risk of damage. But it was the papers themselves that occupied Savage. He had glanced at them quickly; most consisted of scientific data which he didn't understand, but there was a copy of a recent memo, obviously circulated among the staff and signed by Brühl. ‘Gentlemen, I have received instructions from the highest authority to produce a specimen of the formula XV for testing before the end of May. I cannot comply with this command until we have overcome the problem of the formula's reaction to rainfall. I urge everyone to apply themselves with increased diligence to this most urgent matter. I have assured the highest authority that we will succeed in our efforts. There will be a meeting in the conference room at four o'clock this afternoon. “Brühl”.' Savage looked at the date. It was two days old. The formula's reaction to rainfall. It could mean anything in scientific terms. Practically, it meant that whatever the reaction was, it prevented the gas being tested for final approval. So unless they had found their answer in the last two days, he was in time. There was a green leather notebook; inside it was a meaningless jumble of chemical symbols, with Minden's observations jotted down. But the last two pages were straight notes. Again, much of the language was too technical for Savage to understand in detail, but the sense was clear enough.

Water had a nullifying effect on the nerve gas. The final comment, scribbled and underlined, said simply,
‘We must find a solution'
. He shut the book and began replacing everything in its original place in the briefcase. With a pinpoint of adhesive at each corner, he affixed his photograph on top of Minden's. Then he went to the wardrobe and began to dress in the Major's uniform. It was tight and the sleeves were an inch too short, but the greatcoat covered this, and the peaked cap fitted. He paused for a moment, catching sight of his reflection in the mirror. Then he went out and down the stairs. The major's car was in the garage, adjacent to the stables at the one side, and out of earshot of the Château. The batman Fritz slept in the chauffeur's flat above.

Savage slipped behind the wheel and started the engine. He just hoped the servant didn't wake and look out of the window. Minutes later he was through the rear gate of the Château and on the road to Anet and the Château Diane.

5

The two sentries at the main gate of the Château had come on duty at midnight. There was a four-hour rota system throughout the day and night. It was two-thirty and both men were sleepy and unalert. Two cars had turned into the Château since they took up their posts; both contained officers returning from trips to Dreux, where there was a discreet little brothel run by a respectable widow. The lights from another car dazzled them for a moment as it swung into the gateway and stopped. The left-hand sentry approached and as he did so, the window on the driver's side slid down and a hand came out, holding the distinctive yellow card which the sentry recognised immediately. As a matter of form he shone his torch, saw the photograph, glanced in the interior of the car and saw a German officer in the semi-darkness.