Dominion (16 page)

He came and sat behind his desk again. ‘We have found it impossible to get any real intelligence about the American weapons programme because their security there, as you might imagine, is
watertight.’ He smiled again and his eyes widened a little. ‘But now a chink may have opened. Just maybe.’

Gunther felt the excitement again, a slight inner trembling. ‘Is this to do with my mission?’

Gessler leaned back in his chair. He suddenly looked tired. ‘Things are not good. I wish the Führer would broadcast again, speak to us as he once did. Another winter has started in
Russia, the supply trains we need to keep our armies up to strength are being attacked again. The Russians know how to live off the land, what grasses to eat, what to wear to keep out the cold and
how to survive in temperatures of minus 40. We’re sure they are about to launch another winter offensive, supplied from those factories they’ve built in deep forests far behind the
Urals. Our rockets are little more than useless, we don’t know where to aim them. And these Resistance movements in Spain and Italy, Britain and France . . .’ He shook his head, then
looked hard at Gunther. ‘To win the Russian war we need to know what the American scientists know.’

Gunther shifted uneasily in his seat. If even an SS Intelligence colonel could talk with this sort of pessimism, what were Speer and the army people saying? Gessler saw his look and sat up
straight, frowning, formal again. ‘Have you ever heard of the Tyler Kent affair?’ he asked sharply.

‘Kent was a sympathizer of ours in the American embassy just before victory in 1940.’

‘Yes. He passed on useful information about Churchill’s contacts with Roosevelt before he was arrested. He knew some of the British Fascists, like Maule Ramsay, the present Scottish
Secretary. The British secret services found out about him. Ambassador Kennedy – he’s been there a long time, he’s got lax, he’s sympathetic to us. We have agents in the
embassy, new Tyler Kents, and a few weeks ago one of them told us something very interesting.’ Gessler sat forward, lacing his fingers together. ‘An American scientist – there are
reasons why I can’t tell you what area he was working in, except that it was at the edge of their weapons research – came over to England for his mother’s funeral. His name is
Edgar Muncaster. He’s British by birth, though he’s been an American citizen for nearly twenty years. A man we have in the US embassy found out the security people at Grosvenor Square
were worried about him going around London on his own.’

‘Does he have Resistance sympathies?’

Gessler shook his head. ‘Far from it. Committed to an isolationist and powerful America. That’s not the problem. But after a recent divorce, he has become an unpredictable drunk. He
stayed in London for a while, as he wanted to sell his mother’s house. He seemed more or less in control of himself. Then one day he went AWOL. He was watched, but he didn’t register at
the embassy in the evening as he was supposed to do. Then there was a phone call from him; he was in a hospital in Birmingham, with a broken arm.’

‘How?’

‘He went to visit his brother. A geologist who works at Birmingham University. There was an argument, which ended in the brother pushing our American friend out of a window.’

‘Was he badly hurt?’

‘Just the broken arm. But the Americans hauled him out of the hospital, smashed arm and all, arrested him and put him on a plane back to the States. Destination, according to what our man
at the embassy saw, Folsom Prison in California; isolation, maximum security.’

Gunther said, ‘So he did something.’

Gessler nodded vigorously. ‘Or said something. We don’t know what. Our spy doesn’t have that level of clearance.’

‘Were the British involved?’

‘No. This is something the Americans don’t want them to know about. They were told the Americans were just taking an injured citizen home.’

Gunther considered. ‘Who does our man at the US embassy answer to?’

Gessler smiled. ‘Not to Rommel’s people. He works for us, for the SS. And we’ve kept hold of this information. We’ve made enquiries with some of our friends in the
British Special Branch, though – we have some good people there. We asked them to look into the brother’s background. I think you know the present commissioner.’

‘Yes,’ Gunther agreed. ‘From when I was here before. A strong believer in Britain and Germany working together. A good anti-Semite, too.’

Gessler nodded. ‘We can work with some of them on this, if we’re careful. Not the British secret services, what’s left of them since we found out about all their Communist
moles when we took over the Kremlin. It’s just a few death-or-glory patriots left there now.’

‘Yes,’ Gunther agreed again. While posted in England he had watched the Special Branch grow from a specialist section of the Metropolitan Police dealing with spies and subversives to
a whole Auxiliary Police force supplemented with informers and agents in anti-government organizations.

‘What did Special Branch find?’ he asked.

‘That the brother, Frank Muncaster, was arrested for attempted murder. He smashed up his own flat and when he was arrested he was raving about the end of the world. Screaming at his
brother that he shouldn’t have told him what he did.’

Gunther laughed, but uneasily. ‘The end of the world?’

‘Yes. Helpfully, the charge was reduced to causing serious bodily harm. His behaviour was so bizarre that he wasn’t put in prison, but committed to a local mental hospital. Where he
sits now. This we know from local police files in Birmingham. We’ve told the Special Branch people we think brother Frank may have undesirable political connections in Europe. When they told
us he didn’t, we said thank you very much and went away.’

Gunther considered. ‘The Americans will be interested in this man, if the brother has told them what happened.’

‘Yes. Certainly they were very keen to get Edgar Muncaster back to the States. They could try to kill the brother. But they can’t go through official channels, they don’t want
the British finding out their weapons secrets. If that’s what Edgar told Frank about.’

Gunther thought for a moment. ‘So, forgive me, sir, but we don’t know whether this – lunatic – actually has any secrets.’

‘No, we don’t. But it is very much worthwhile finding out.’

‘Has he said any more while he’s been in hospital?’

‘We simply don’t know. They may have just drugged him up to keep him quiet. They usually do, with the violent ones. Unfortunately getting to him in the mental hospital will need a
certain amount of delicacy and local knowledge.’ He shrugged. ‘You know the British, all sorts of bureaucratic complications, different parts of the system sealed off from each other.
The Medical Superintendent, a Dr Wilson, is related to a civil servant in the British Health Department.’

‘They’re putting through a sterilization bill, aren’t they?’

Gessler waved his hand in a gesture of contempt. ‘Pussyfooting, trivial. They should just gas the lot, as we did. But they won’t.’

‘Yes,’ Gunther reflected. ‘It’s even taken them over ten years to establish a sort of authoritarian government.’

‘Well, they’re on the right path now.’ He smiled. ‘The British will have another matter to preoccupy them very shortly.’

‘Will they?’

Gessler smiled again, the smirk of a man with secret knowledge. It made him look suddenly childish. ‘They will.’ Suddenly he was all business again. ‘I want you to go to
Birmingham. Get into the flat where Muncaster lived, see if there is anything of interest there. Visit Muncaster. Later we may ask you to lift Muncaster, bring him back here. But first I want you
to try and find out what state he’s in, whether he’s talked. You’ll have Special Branch help.’

Gunther nodded. The excitement in him was steady now, focused.

‘Of course,’ Gessler said, ‘this may well be a mare’s nest. But the instruction to undertake the investigation comes from very high up, from Deputy Reichsführer
Heydrich himself.’ Gunther saw a little gleam of ambition in Gessler’s eyes

‘I’ll do all I can, sir.’

‘You’ll have an office here, and you’ll be assisted by a British Special Branch police inspector called Syme. He’s a good friend; he’s spent time in Germany.
He’s young but he’s clever and ambitious. Recommended by your successor here, in fact. Use him to get through the hoops.’ Gessler jabbed a finger at Gunther, reminding him again
of his old headmaster. ‘But so far as Syme is concerned, and anyone else who asks, we still want Muncaster because of suspected political links. I wish we could have gone straight to the top
and asked Beaverbrook for him, but in the circumstances we must fly beneath the radar, as the Luftwaffe people say. For now at least.’

‘Do
you
think there’s anything in this, sir?’

‘I know a little more than you.’ Gessler couldn’t stop that annoying smirk appearing again. ‘About what Edgar Muncaster might have been working on. Enough to realize this
could be important. I can’t tell you, Hoth, because to be blunt what you don’t know you can’t tell anyone else. The point is, Himmler and Heydrich want this done.’

Gunther was already thinking about how to navigate his way through the British authorities, the bureaucracy, without them learning what he was doing. He thought, if Heydrich’s hunch was
right – and it was only a hunch – he might do something important with his life after all.

A
T THE HOSPITAL ON
W
EDNESDAY
, two days before, the rain had been succeeded by days of fog and mist. Frank sat in his usual place
in the quiet room. The previous day he had told Ben, the Scottish attendant, a little about his university friend David, and Ben suggested Frank telephone him, see if he might be able to help get
him transferred to a private clinic. ‘After all, if he’s a civil servant, they ken how to get things done. You can use the telephone in the nurses’ office when I’m on
duty.’

But Frank wasn’t sure. The fewer people he spoke to the better, because of his secret, because of what Edgar had told him. And he was suspicious of Ben; why had the attendant singled Frank
out to help, particularly when he had spoken bitterly about Dr Wilson giving Frank more attention because he was middle-class? Ben seemed direct and friendly enough but still there was something in
him that did not quite ring true. He noticed that sometimes his Glasgow accent was stronger, as though for effect.

Earlier that morning Ben had come up to him and asked if he had thought any more about phoning his friend. Frank asked suddenly, ‘Why are you doing this? Why are you helping me?’

Ben raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. ‘You’re a suspicious wee fella. It’s just I don’t think you belong here, you should try’n get out. But it’s up
to you, pal; if you’re happy to trust Dr Wilson, that’s fine.’ He’d walked away then, Frank staring after him anxiously. He knew it was true, he was suspicious of everybody,
had been since childhood. He hadn’t heard any more from Dr Wilson about electric shock therapy, but feared he might and that it might make him blurt out what he knew. He thought again about
David Fitzgerald. He had been one of the few people Frank had ever really trusted and liked. He hadn’t seen him, though, for some years. After they graduated from Oxford they had kept in
touch by letter, and Frank had been invited to David’s wedding in 1943 but he had never been to a wedding and felt he would be unable to cope with all the people. After that the gaps between
David’s letters had grown longer and for the last couple of years they had only exchanged Christmas cards.

Frank preferred to stay in the quiet room but the attendants often chivvied him out, saying he must come to the day room, mix with the other patients. He didn’t want to; the others
reminded him of the awful position he was in. Some passed their time staring at the wall, others would suddenly erupt with fury over nothing. Some of their faces had been twisted and warped into
strange expressions by years of madness. But Frank knew he had his own peculiarity, his habitual grin; and he had attacked his own brother. Was he mad too? It was all right when the drugged effect
was strong in him, but as it weakened and wore off at the end of the period between his three daily doses, his heart often pounded with fear now and he wanted to scream. And though he had never
dreamed about school since leaving Strangmans, he did dream about it now. This place reminded him of it in so many ways. He had even had a couple of frightening dreams about Mrs Baker.

Mrs Baker had been a spiritualist. Frank’s mother claimed she was able to contact his father, who had been killed at Passchendaele in 1917; Frank had been born,
prematurely, two weeks later. His mother had never recovered from his father’s death. George Muncaster had been a doctor, he hadn’t needed to volunteer, and Frank’s mother had
begged him not to go but he believed joining the Army Medical Corps was his duty. Then, as his wife had feared, he had been killed, leaving her alone in the big house with just two boys and Lizzie,
the daily woman.

Frank knew his mother didn’t love him, though she did love Edgar. But Edgar, who was nearly four years older than Frank, had been born when she was young and happy, before the world went
mad in 1914. She was always saying Edgar was a good boy, clever and obedient, while Frank with his childhood illnesses and, even then, oddities, was a trial.

But it was Frank who most resembled his father. The photograph of him, draped in black, on the mantelpiece had shown the same long nose, full, feminine mouth and large, puzzled dark eyes. Like
Frank, he looked as though he might have been afraid of the world. Edgar, though, was big, stocky and confident. Before he went on his war orphan’s scholarship to their father’s old
school in Scotland, he would often call Frank names like ‘runt’ and ‘weed’ and a word he had found in a Grimm’s fairytale: ‘You’re weazened,
Frankie,’ he would say, ‘a weazened creature.’

Thousands of women turned to spiritualism in the 1920s, women who had lost sons and husbands and brothers in the trenches. Mrs Baker first came to the house in Esher late in 1926, when Frank was
nine. Edgar had already gone to Scotland, and Frank was at a small local day-school, a quiet, fearful child with few friends.