End of Spies by Alex Gerlis (best free ereader txt) 📗

he must have looked as shocked as he felt. This was clearly no longer the social occasion he’d thought it was. There was an undoubted air of menace in the room, as if one of the windows had been opened and the wind was blowing in from the Wannsee.

‘What kind of arrangements do you mean, sir?’

‘That is what I very much hope you are going to tell me.’

The room was so quiet he could hear the crump crump of artillery in the distance. Just a few weeks ago he’d been impressed at people who could tell the difference between incoming and outgoing artillery fire – it all sounded the same to him. Now even he could tell this was incoming. Most of it was these days.

‘I really… I really don’t know what you…’

‘Let me help you, perhaps, eh? What I mean is that I understand you have made arrangements to escape from Berlin. That is correct, is it not?’

Steiner hesitated, unsure how to reply. ‘No, sir – I intend to remain at my post until the last possible moment, at which point of course it would be improper for me to remain in Berlin and surrender or be captured or…’

Bormann held his forefinger to his lips. ‘Let’s not beat about the bush: I know you’re making plans to leave Berlin well before the battle for the city is over. Don’t forget, I have eyes and ears everywhere; how else do you think I’ve got to the position I’m in now in this nest of vipers? I know everything. I know you’re smart and I know you’ve been photographing documents at the Parteikanzlei and taking the film home, and I’ve picked up reports of you being seen in the Rott Valley. So don’t treat me like a fool, Wolfgang.’

Steiner found himself unable to respond. It was as if he was hypnotised, but was brought round by a heavy slap to his thigh.

‘But it is no more than one would expect of you, you crafty Austrian bastard, eh?’ Bormann was smiling. ‘Not only do I want you to continue with your arrangements, I want to be part of them!’

‘I’m not sure I understand…’ Steiner was convinced he’d stepped into a trap.

‘For so many years, anyone who was anyone wanted to be in Berlin. In a matter of weeks, anyone who’s anyone will want to be anywhere but here.’

‘But, sir, I—’

‘Stop, Wolfgang, please. Anyone not making arrangements to leave the city is a fool, as long as they’re being discreet about it, of course. Who wants to hang around for the Russians, or to be arrested by the Allies? There are escape lines being set up, some of them quite sophisticated, I’m told. My problem is who to book my passage with: I don’t trust anyone.’

Bormann leaned back in the leather armchair and smiled at Steiner.

‘Apart from you, of course, Wolfgang: I’m counting on you.’

Chapter 4

Germany, July 1945

When Wolfgang Steiner realised he had no choice but to take his son to a psychiatrist, he was careful to choose one of the few in Vienna who didn’t appear to be Jewish. The last thing a prominent Nazi needed in 1935 was to have a Jew analysing his son’s problems.

Steiner had been most reluctant to admit that twenty-one-year-old Friedrich had a problem. For years he’d attributed his behaviour to adolescence, and then to the excesses of youth: girls seemed attracted to him, and he liked a drink, and Wolfgang Steiner couldn’t see what the problem was with that. If Friedrich did sometimes go a bit too far, Wolfgang blamed himself: his own low moods and frequent absences had probably been the cause of his wife’s alcoholism, which in turn had led to her death when Friedrich – their only child – was just fourteen.

But recently matters had become increasingly hard to ignore. The boy had sexually assaulted two maids at the Steiner family home in Alsergrund, the city’s smart 9th District. In the case of the second girl – a sweet young thing from Carinthia – Wolfgang had had to arrange an abortion and then pay a considerable sum to her family to keep matters quiet. Then there’d been an incident in a bar in the 4th District that resulted in Friedrich beating up a man; again Wolfgang had had to pay a large sum in compensation to avoid a criminal case. Inevitably the police had become involved, and the sympathetic senior officer who agreed to drop the case warned him that unless he did something about it, his son was bound to end up in prison.

Christian Gruber might have had a decidedly Austrian name, but as far as Wolfgang Steiner was concerned, the psychiatrist looked suspiciously Jewish, with his dark complexion, black hair with eyes to match, and a nose that while not classically Jewish could certainly not be described as typically Aryan either. He was also extremely perceptive, perhaps almost too much so. After two sessions with young Friedrich, he asked to see the boy’s father alone. It was with some reluctance that Wolfgang went to Dr Gruber’s consulting rooms on Burg Ring, with the Parliament building framed through its neat window.

‘You have heard of manic depression, Herr Steiner?’

He replied that he had, but wasn’t too sure of what it meant. Dr Gruber explained that manic depressives typically suffered from extremes of mood: excitable mania on the one hand – which could present as a form of psychosis – and periods of depression, sometimes very severe, on the other.

‘So are you saying Friedrich is a manic depressive?’

‘Actually, no – in fact I’m struggling to make an accurate diagnosis, to be frank with you, Herr Steiner. He certainly suffers from very elevated moods, which would explain the psychotic behaviour you describe – the attacks on women, for example, his temper. He told me about his mother.’

Wolfgang nodded but shifted uncomfortably. The more he saw of the man, the more he believed Dr Gruber could well have Jewish blood, and the last thing he