Simon Tolkien Inspector Trave Trilogy: Orders From Berlin, The Inheritance, The King of Diamonds. Simon Tolkien
Heydrich’s respect for his new agent.
Seaforth’s hatred for his country was the reverse of everything that Heydrich stood for. Heydrich prided himself on his patriotism, but here he was, placing his trust in a man who wanted to commit high treason. Why? Partly, of course, because Seaforth’s story made sense. Heydrich had verified the details, and Seaforth certainly had no reason to love England after all that had happened to him. But Heydrich also instinctively recognized that the wellspring of anger that drove each of them forward was essentially the same, even if it led them in opposite directions. Heydrich had been enraged by the November criminals who had signed away the fatherland in 1918, just as Seaforth abhorred the British generals and politicians who had sent their people to die in droves year after year in the mud of Flanders and northern France. Only their conclusions separated them: Heydrich wanted to change his country, whereas Seaforth wanted to destroy his.
But it was more than rage that they had in common – they shared a capacity to channel and direct their anger. Both were prepared to be extraordinarily patient in the pursuit of their goals; they did not take unnecessary risks but instead built slowly and carefully towards a position of power. For Heydrich, the policy had already paid dividends – he had complete power over the lives of everyone in the Reich through his control of the SD and the Gestapo. Seaforth’s rise had been slower, but the war had helped his cause with the concentration of MI6’s focus away from Soviet Russia and onto Germany, where his fictitious network of agents was located. With Seaforth’s help, Heydrich had been able to liquidate all the other high-level British agents operating inside Germany. He’d done it gradually, picking them off here and there so as not to give the game away either to Seaforth’s superiors in MI6 or to his own rivals in the Abwehr, the official Reich intelligence service run by Heydrich’s rival, the wily Admiral Canaris. But now, finally, Seaforth was the only MI6 spymaster receiving high-level intelligence from inside the Reich, and he was climbing the ladder of seniority inside the British Secret Service at a rate that would have been inconceivable two years earlier. One day soon he might become deputy chief, and MI6 would become an unwitting branch of the Gestapo.
Yet now, out of the blue, after all the years of painstaking groundwork, Heydrich’s prize agent was proposing to risk everything on one throw of the dice. The assassination plan was a good one, and Seaforth had the capacity to carry it out – Heydrich had no doubt on either of these scores. The scheme could certainly succeed, but it was opportunistic in nature and depended on a fair slice of luck. Heydrich wondered why Seaforth wanted to expose himself in this way, but then he turned the interrogation light onto himself and was even more surprised at his willingness to agree to the idea. There was the political answer, of course. Churchill’s removal could make all the difference, and Heydrich would gain immeasurably if he received the credit for knocking England out of the war. But it was more than that. The recklessness of the plan and the boldness of the stroke appealed to Heydrich at a gut level. It felt like flying into combat again, wheeling his Messerschmitt fighter through the sky towards the enemy aircraft. Leaning back in his chair with a faraway look in his eye, he felt a deep sense of kinship with this Englishman whom he hadn’t seen in over a year and might well never see again. Charles Seaforth was a man after his own heart.
At three o’clock Heydrich put on his cap, straightened his uniform, and walked out into Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse. He preferred to walk; it was a beautiful day, and the Reich Chancellery was only two streets away. His two SS bodyguards fell into step behind him, but he paid them no attention. Heydrich had a deep-seated faith in his own inviolability that was to continue right up until the moment of his assassination in an unescorted, open-topped Mercedes staff car in Prague two years later.
He turned left into Wilhelmstrasse and walked past the long steely-grey marble façade of the massive Air Ministry building, thinking of Goering and the continuing inability of the Luftwaffe to win the air war over London. Heydrich had an acute sense of the shifting movements of power in Hitler’s court, and he had no doubt that Goering’s star was on the wane. If Seaforth’s plan succeeded, Heydrich had no doubt that he would eclipse not just Goering but all the other party bosses. The thought made him giddy and he had to steady himself for a moment before he passed through the outer gates of the Chancellery and entered the Ehrenhof, the court of honour, leaving his bodyguards behind. The Führer had a way of seeing into people’s minds, and Heydrich knew that he needed to have all his wits about him during the coming encounter.
The great marble walls, lined with square and rectangular windows, reared up on all sides, defining in strict shape the rectangle of blue sky above. Not a curve or a flourish had been allowed to interrupt the stark symmetry of the architecture. The courtyard was not empty – helmeted, black-uniformed SS guards stood at exactly spaced intervals around the sides. But they were immobile, trained to rigid stillness, and the silence, broken only by the sound of Heydrich’s boots crossing the marble floor, added to the impression of overwhelming power that the construction was intended to convey. Heydrich felt it as a unique silence – not an absence of noise, but a presence in its own right, bearing down on him from all sides.
He climbed the steps leading to the entrance and went inside, passing through a dark, windowless hall inlaid with red mosaics and on into the long gallery, the famous centrepiece of the building, lit by a parade of high windows looking out over the Voss-Strasse. There was no furniture anywhere, not even a trace of carpet to relieve the severity of the design. Slippery marble floors were just the right surface for slippery visiting diplomats, according to Hitler.
The huge bronze doors at the end of the gallery beckoned and threatened, but Hitler’s office was halfway down on the right, with the intertwined AH initials of his name monogrammed above the doorway, where two steel-helmeted SS soldiers from his personal protection unit stood guard with their guns at the ready.
Heydrich was known and expected. The doors opened and he stepped inside. The office was vast, far larger and grander than any office he’d ever seen. Heavy tapestries and huge baroque paintings adorned the blood-red marble walls, and Hitler’s desk was placed intentionally at the far end, so that visitors would have a final journey to make across the thick carpet towards the dictator’s presence. It was a room designed to intimidate, but that was not Hitler’s intention today. He wasn’t sitting at his desk; instead he was standing in front of a large marble-topped table positioned under one of the tall windows looking out over the Chancellery gardens, examining an architectural model of a building that Heydrich did not recognize. He was bareheaded, wearing a black tie and a brown military jacket with a swastika armband.
‘Do you know what this is, Reinhard?’ asked Hitler, looking up at his visitor and acknowledging his raised-arm salute with a nod of his head. Heydrich was encouraged by the Führer’s use of his first name. Hitler was notoriously unpredictable, and Heydrich needed him to be in a receptive mood.
‘No. Please tell me,’ said Heydrich, pretending to be interested. He knew nothing about architecture but was aware that it was a subject dear to the Führer’s heart.
‘It is a design for my mausoleum. It will be built in Munich across from party headquarters. You can see it is modelled on the Pantheon in Rome. See, here is the rotunda and in the roof directly above the sarcophagus, you have the oculus,’ said Hitler, pointing.
‘What’s that?’ asked Heydrich. It was a word he’d never heard before.
‘The round opening, the eye. And just like in Rome, there is no glass. The sunlight and the rain, even the snow in winter, fall onto the tomb, connecting it to the elements. It is perfect.’
Hitler clasped his hands together, a characteristic gesture when he was pleased. But Heydrich was horrified. There was so much to do, yet here was the Führer planning his own funeral.
‘Don’t worry, Reinhard,’ said Hitler, laughing as he sensed Heydrich’s discomfort. ‘I am not dying just yet. But nor do I feel that I will live to be an old man, which is why I am in a hurry. Perhaps when we have accomplished all that we need to do in the world, then there will be time for me to return to architecture. I would like to build, but first we have to destroy,’ he said wistfully. There was a faraway look in his eye.
‘Thank you for seeing me at such short notice,’ said Heydrich after a moment, when Hitler