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

well-regarded Abwehr career officer who was running a successful spy ring in England and was therefore protected from the purges towards the end of the war. The rumour was that he was now helping the British.

Now Klaus Böhme observed a man who looked very much like Franz Rauter chatting amicably with a man and a woman in civilian clothes, neither of whom appeared to be Russians. After a friendly farewell, he was put into handcuffs and led towards his block.

As he queued for supper later that afternoon, Böhme spotted the same man ahead of him on the landing. He heard a guard address him as Möller, but when the man turned his head, Böhme had absolutely no doubt. If Rauter was here – under an assumed name – it was because he was a traitor. Böhme knew what his duty was, and it wasn’t as if he had anything to lose. They might even put him out of his misery sooner.

He collected his supper and walked towards the man, whose back was towards him. ‘Hey, Franz – Franz Rauter!’

Instinctively Rauter turned. In the brief moment before Böhme plunged the knife deep into his heart, he recognised the young man who’d called his name but couldn’t for the life of him place him.

His memory was so bad these days.

Alphonse Schweitzer was unaware of all this. He was still in Block D. The governor had come to his cell that afternoon and informed him Marshal Zhukov had reviewed his case and denied his petition.

‘What does that mean?’

‘What do you mean, what does that mean? It’s obvious, isn’t it? You’re going to be executed after all – at dawn tomorrow. You’ll be transferred to the death block now.’

Schweitzer was dragged crying from his cell at dawn the next morning. The guards were disgusted at having to handle the terrified prisoner, who’d soiled himself and kept vomiting. He was thrown in the back of a truck and driven the short distance to the barracks, then dragged to the firing range.

A white-faced Catholic priest was allowed to spend a few seconds with him, but Schweitzer couldn’t hear what he was saying and nor did he care.

As he was strapped to a post, he felt his legs give way. At that moment a tall man in a commissar’s uniform strolled over to him. The man – who looked suspiciously like a Jew – smiled as he instructed the guards to gag the prisoner but not to bother blindfolding him. ‘Let him enjoy everything!’

Once he was trussed up like a pig, the commissar leaned over and spoke clearly in his ear. ‘I really must thank you, Schweitzer: you’ve no idea how helpful you’ve been!’

When Hanne and Prince met with Commissar Gurevich in his office in Behrenstrasse later that morning, the mood could not have been more sombre. Prince had listened to the Russian’s account of Schweitzer’s execution without showing any reaction, and simply shrugged when informed that the prisoner had been told how helpful he’d been just before he was shot.

‘Are you not pleased, my friend?’

Prince said he supposed he was, but he was more devastated at Franz Rauter’s death. ‘I don’t know how that could have been allowed to happen.’

‘It wasn’t allowed to happen; from what Comrade Orlov tells me, it was sheer bad luck – he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. The man who killed him – Prisoner Böhme – knew him from the RSHA and guessed he was a traitor, don’t ask me how. When he realised he was using an assumed name, he concluded his guess was correct. If it’s any consolation, Prisoner Böhme was shot later that day.’

‘It’s no consolation actually. I think we should have pulled Franz out of Hohenschönhausen once he’d told us the Ferret’s identity. It was risky to—’

‘Hindsight, my friend, hindsight. It could also have been risky to pull him out immediately. We weren’t to know Böhme would spot him; it was a chance in a million, sheer bad luck. And at least he’s dead, which means no one will make the link with the Ferret. Do you want some news to cheer you up?’

‘Go on.’

‘I did a check yesterday, and we do have a Wolfgang Steiner on our watch list. He was a Nazi Party official at the Parteikanzlei, just a few minutes’ walk from here. We don’t know a lot about him, but he was known to be an associate of Martin Bormann, Hitler’s personal secretary, who is someone we certainly want to arrest – he’s one of the most senior Nazis whose whereabouts we know nothing about. As far as we know, Wolfgang Steiner left Berlin in late March and has disappeared.’

‘He got out early,’ said Hanne, ‘before your main assault on the city.’

Gurevich nodded. ‘Obviously smart – and the fact that he got away then means he’s probably more important than we realised. I’ll make a note on his file. But what I don’t quite get is the son – Friedrich. He was a young Gestapo officer who murdered people. I’m afraid that was not unusual. So why are you going to these lengths to find him – surely there are more important war criminals?’

‘Because, Iosif, two of the people he murdered were our agents, people who’d been sent over from England, and there’s a view in London that we have a responsibility to bring the person who killed them to justice.’

‘But it sounds as if there may be a reason why he’s so hard to find – why someone was murdered in Munich when they tried to track him down. I can get Friedrich Steiner’s name added to our watch lists – I’m sure you’ll be doing the same with yours.’

‘It’s already been done.’

‘Good. There is something, though.’ Iosif Gurevich hesitated, as if unsure whether to carry on. He drummed his fingers on his desk and then held up a hand – wait – and walked over to the door. He opened it and appeared to look