The Nostradamus Traitor: 1 (The Herbie Kruger Novels) Read online

  “A good Anglo-Saxon voice, I think. That would be best.”

  So the call was made, the appointment fixed. No names. Just that a civil servant would like to give her tea the following afternoon to discuss the matter of her request made at the Tower. Five o’clock. She would arrange the tea at her hotel.

  Herbie hoped that by then the files would have arrived and that his security contacts at the American and West German embassies would have given him negatives or positives. He went back to St. John’s Wood alone that night, ate a hearty dinner, drank almost a whole bottle of gin, watched a mediocre TV play, and then listened to the Mahler Ninth with all its forebodings of death.

  He did not cry—as he often did with certain visitors present. Instead he allowed the music to let his mind range over the network he was setting up, wondering from time to time if Frau Fenderman would turn out to be a likely recruit.

  On the table, laid out in a neat row, were the six matt prints he had selected from the Pix man’s sneak previews. He thought how good-looking Frau Fenderman must have been twenty or thirty years ago. At least her husband, Claus, probably went to his death with fond memories of her.

  4

  LONDON 1978

  GROSVENOR SQUARE TURNED IN a blank but, with all its usual Teutonic thoroughness, Herbie’s contact at the West German Embassy produced a small folder of documents with bare, though essential, details regarding Frau Hildegarde Fenderman. It was known that she was born in Dresden on 25 January 1922 which, Herbie thought, made her younger than she appeared in her photograph. Fifty-six looking sixty-three or -four.

  Widow. He knew that. If her story tallied she had been widowed at the age of nineteen.

  No details of her life before the end of the war. In 1948 she was working in East Berlin. Secretarial work, it said, for the Department of Labour. In 1958 she was in charge of an office connected with the Ministry of Culture. Until the clamps came down, in 1961, she made infrequent visits to her sister, Fraulein Gretchen Weiss, who worked for the American Secretariat and was four years Hildegarde’s junior.

  Once the East put the screws on, Gretchen had tried to make yearly visits to her sister in the East. Three out of four came off.

  Then, in ’73, Fraulein Weiss was taken ill. Diagnosis: cancer of the right lung. The Americans operated, and there was partial recovery, but inevitably she eventually started going downhill. There was record that, on 15 June 1975, Gretchen Weiss asked for assistance in getting her sister permanently into the West. Reading between the lines, Herbie Kruger could see that some kind of low-grade diplomatic efforts were made on her behalf. In the following year the DDR relented and allowed Frau Fenderman a permanent exit visa.

  By the autumn of ’76 she was nursing her sister through the final stages of illness, and had been granted a Bundesrepublik passport. Fraulein Gretchen Weiss died on 3 September 1977, leaving her small apartment and the equivalent of some £15,000 in Deutschmarks to her sister—a tidy sum for a national who had worked for the American Secretariat.

  The appended intelligence report was a simple Nothing known or suspect. That covered a multitude of sins, omissions, and possibilities, particularly in the light of the American negative response.

  Herbie Kruger thought it smelled. Not strongly, but a hint of something carried on the breeze from Berlin. True, there had been a slackening of the rigidity between East and West in 1976. But Herbie had a lot of suspicion going when it came to relatives being given permanent exit visas. Family pressures often brought with them temptations—particularly when applied to the split and divided country that was once the Third Reich.

  Strange, he thought, that the Americans did not offer a report on the sister of one who had worked for them. Particularly one who had so obviously worked hard and effectively. He made a mental note: what did Hildegarde Fenderman’s sister actually do for the U.S. Secretariat?

  He had just turned from the problem of Frau Fenderman to his daily paper work when the files from the Yard Archives arrived.

  The year 1941 was not particularly good. Twenty-five arrests had been made, but nineteen were simply on questions of nationality. Ten of those were held under the Detention of Aliens Act. The other nine were either errors or pliable material. According to the records they had been returned undamaged.

  Six were unfortunate. Tried. Found guilty of espionage. Executed. None according to the records, on 16 May; or at the Tower of London. None bore the name Claus Fenderman, but Herbie was not overly worried about that. In the secret world, names—true names—were often lost forever.

  He sent the six dossiers down for copying, with a request that they lift the photographs and let him have a batch of ten-by-eights.

  The name Fenderman did not appear in any of the files, from 1934 right through to 1945.

  It was after two o’clock in the afternoon when he got back to the day’s normal paperwork, and the first thing confronting him was a memo that the Director would be away on the Washington trip for the best part of a month. All queries and new files were to go through the Deputy Director.

  Herbie Kruger was not keen on Sir Willis Maitland-Wood, the DD. Better the devil you know, he thought.

  At four, Tubby called down with the suggestion that one of the juniors get in some practice on the ground and keep an eye on him from afar during the teatime meeting in Bayswater. They sent up Worboys, and Herbie gave him a rundown without telling him anything.

  Worboys left at four-twenty, which gave Big Herbie enough time to sign out of the building and get to a pay phone, where he called one of his already selected new team. If Herbie had to have someone playing ass watcher, he preferred one who knew the ropes.

  It started to rain just as he hailed a cab and asked for the next street to that in which Frau Fenderman’s hotel was located.

  5

  LONDON 1978

  BAYSWATER LIES TO THE north of Kensington Gardens. To those who have a sensibility about these matters, Bayswater is on the wrong side of Kensington Gardens. There are one or two moderate three-star hotels in the area. There are also some pretty dreadful pensions intermingled with many that try to be refined. Some are good, but to the point of anonymity. Such is the Devonshire Hotel with its twenty bedrooms, small dining room, and residents’ lounge. The staff are few, mainly European, but try to please.

  Hildegarde Fenderman had done her best to persuade the staff to serve what she felt was a typical English afternoon tea in the residents’ lounge.

  When Herbie Kruger arrived, he found himself expected, and Frau Fenderman already seated next to a table that carried cups, heavy tea, and hot water, pots, a plate of triangular sandwiches and another with little cakes, each in a crinkled paper container.

  Herbie, who carried an official-looking briefcase full of buff forms and yellow paper, did his best to look awkward and out of place: not hard for one who has spent most of his life doing that kind of job.

  Though Frau Fenderman was alone in the lounge Herbie stared around foolishly, as though this lady could not be the one he expected to see. He started speaking in German, taking in her face and, particularly, the eyes, searching for signs of momentary panic. He detected something. Surprise possible. Close up, Hildegarde Fenderman indeed did look a good five or six years older than her true age.

  “It was thought that someone who spoke your native tongue…” He flapped his arms and almost knocked over the tea tray with his briefcase. “In a delicate situation like this…a painful situation for you…”

  She shook her head slowly and motioned him to put his briefcase down and take a seat. The circumstances were not painful to her anymore, she said, speaking softly as though the room was full of other residents. He started to take off his coat and she stood up, putting out her hands to assist, but he waved her away in the same clumsy motion he was using to free the raincoat from his body. He reminded her of a large snake making heavy weather of shedding its skin. Finally she took the garment from him and put it over the back of a spare chair.
r />   “It is raining, Herr…?”—as she felt the dampness on the collar.

  “Nothing. A fine drizzle. Kruger. Mr. Kruger. Eberhardt Kruger.”

  He patted his pockets, going through each in turn until, with a grin of triumph, he produced a card which was proof that he was indeed Eberhardt Kruger Esq., Assistant to the Chief Archivist, Public Records Office. With a self-effacing motion of the hands, he said that he was really only one of many assistants.

  “You are German?” She had him organised now, sitting down, though still fiddling with the briefcase, first holding it on his knees, then trying to make up his mind whether it would be better at his feet or by the side of the chair.

  “I am nationalised British. Second generation. Born in Hanover, but our father brought us here in the thirties—soon after I was born. Funny, though, we spoke nothing but German at home. I still have the accent when I speak English, but it does not seem to trouble the Civil Service.” He gave his slow foolish smile and she lowered her eyes, asking if he would take tea.

  No sugar, and the milk in last. Just like my father, she told him. My father liked his milk in last—that was when he drank tea. In Dresden? Herbie queried. Yes, she nodded, cocking her head in what was obviously a characteristic mannerism, then pouring the tea, which gave Herbie a chance to fiddle with the briefcase and watch her at the same time. She seemed poised, calm. No shake of the hand. Good bone structure, as Kemp had said, but the face starting to go flabby. Too many pastries, he diagnosed. Her hair was striking: soft and full with a twinkle of the original gold flecking the grey.

  He managed to plunge his hand into the briefcase just as she passed him the cup of tea.

  “I have to establish certain things,” he began once they were properly settled, knowing that he must present a ridiculous picture, seated on the edge of the chair with a minute cress and cream-cheese sandwich in his great paw.

  “Naturally.”

  The papers were out now; he went into the business of her identity; age, status. Then—

  “Two days ago you made a statement to one of the Yeoman Warders of the Tower of London. You claimed that your husband, er…” He referred to his notes before naming Claus Fenderman and repeating her claim that he had been executed at the Tower on 16 May 1941.

  “That is so. Out of respect I wished to see where my husband died. It is not morbid, you understand.”

  Herbie waved his big hand as if to say that he would swat anyone who even suggested such a thing. Then he tried his first deflection shots and asked where she had been on that day—on 16 May 1941.

  She answered immediately. She had been in the Reich Ministry of Propaganda. She worked there. Herbie said that she must have been very young. Hildegarde Fenderman looked at him steadily, right in the eyes—or directly between them, Herbie thought—and said she was nineteen at the time. She worked at the ministry from 1939 until just before the end.

  “And you were married to Claus Fenderman?”

  “On April the thirtieth 1941.”

  My God, less than a month. Aloud he said they should have been on their honeymoon. She said they were, but Claus was recalled.

  “What exactly was he? You say he was a spy. Arrested and executed by 16 May 1941—two weeks after you married. I’m afraid I do not understand this, Frau Fenderman.”

  She told him, simply, with no drama. Not even a hint of sadness. “My husband was with the SS. With the Ausland SD. You know…?”

  Herbie, nodded and said he knew the Ausland SD was the Foreign Intelligence Service. “Rank?” he snapped, sounding like a Hollywood SS man.

  Hauptsturmführer, she snapped back, as if they were playing a game. A captain in the SS Foreign Intelligence Service. Married and dead, in two different countries, in just over two weeks. He asked her how long she had known her captain. Not long. A matter of weeks. A whirlwind romance. They were given permission to marry. He had three weeks’ leave—he was stationed in Berlin. About the eleventh or twelfth of May he was ordered to return to Berlin (they were honeymooning in the Black Forest). She saw him last on the thirteenth. He was on a special mission.

  “Three days later he was supposed to be executed in the Tower of London. How can that be?” Herbie smiled and spread his hands. “Who told you all this?”

  “That he was dead? Fraulein Hildebrandt, the Reichsminister’s secretary. I would run messages for her sometimes. She sent for me—it would be a week or so later—and told me. She was very good, like a mother. Very good.”

  “What did she actually tell you?”

  “Just that he had been killed.”

  “No details?”

  “No. Later I had the details. Excuse.” She picked up her handbag and drew from it two letters.

  They were worn, stuck together with cello-tape, faded, but had the look of the real thing. One was an official notification letter—It is my painful duty to tell you that your husband… died on active service for the Fatherland and the Führer…. It was signed by Himmler as Reichsführer of the SS.

  The other was from Fenderman’s boss: SS Brigadeführer Walter Schellenberg himself. Big Herbie scanned it quickly. For the Chief of Foreign Intelligence, Schellenberg had been uncharacteristically indiscreet.

  You must be aware that your husband was on a mission of great importance to the Reich and, particularly, to the Führer. The mission was on enemy territory and your husband was arrested and died bravely as a soldier on 16 May 1941.

  Herbie pointed out that there was no mention of execution in the Tower of London.

  “I went to see Schellenberg.”

  “Yes?”

  “I only saw his adjutant.” She gave a little smile. “He said he really should say nothing, but Claus was on a secret mission in England. He was arrested and shot almost immediately. In the Tower. He said that. He said that all officers arrested for spying in England were taken to the Tower and shot. No trial. Nothing.”

  Gently, Herbie leaned forward and told her that it was not true. Things were not done like that in England. Not even during the war. She said she knew now that it was not likely. But…

  The “but” had a tail to it, trailing something else, as though she had been hiding vital facts. For a moment he wondered if she had falsified the dates, but they were plain enough on the letters from Himmler and Schellenberg. She looked away, as though caught in some act of deceit, then sighed.

  “There is something else. He wrote to me. It was—what do you call it?—a strict breach of security?”

  Herbie nodded, asking if she had that letter.

  Silently she reached for her handbag again, retrieved the official letters from Herbie, and handed him another, complete in its faded envelope. It was addressed Frau Fenderman. He did not recognise the name of the street. Berlin. There was no stamp or frank, only a By Hand. Confidential scrawl.

  Inside were two sheets of plain paper. No letterhead. The date was 13 May 1941, and a quick glance told him that the first page, at least, was full of written endearments. He held the pages uneasily, sliding his eyes over the love talk and turning quickly to the second page, and the part that mattered—

  You are not to worry if you do not hear from me for some time. I should not say this, but I go on a mission of great secrecy to England. Burn this. It would not be good if anyone discovered it. Think of me, my dearest…and so into the intimacies again.

  Big Herbie shook his head. No wonder Claus Fenderman got himself lifted if he wrote letters like this to his wife. But, then it was all so full of holes. The cold, educated, SS Intelligence whizz kid Schellenberg writing a letter of condolence like the one he had just read. The dates. The absurdity.

  After the scribbled signature at the bottom of the page, there were four extra lines and a notation. No explanation, simply

  The kingdom stripped of its forces by fraud.

  The fleet blockaded, passages for the spy:

  Two false friends will come to rally To awaken hatred a long time dormant.

  Nostradamus, V
II, 33

  God in heaven. A quotation from the prophecies of Michel de Nostradame: doctor, seer, astrologer to the court of Catherine de’ Medici. A small signal triggered itself in Herbie Kruger’s mind, but he couldn’t finger it. Instead, he asked Frau Fenderman why she had not burned the letter as her husband instructed. She was vague. You know how it is when you are in love?

  “This quotation…?” he began.

  “Nostradamus”—a small nod, as though acknowledging the obvious.

  “A code? Something which interested you both?”

  She said, no. Claus had spoken about astrology a couple of times and she had seen him with copies of Zenit—the officially sponsored astrological magazine. But she had no interest.

  “Why? I mean why this quotation here in the letter you should have destroyed?”

  She had no idea. It had puzzled her for years, and could only presume that this was some clue to what he was to do in England.

  It all seemed highly improbable to Herbie—particularly the insecurity of the whole business, not to mention the timing.

  He let silence fall between them, sipping his tea and helping himself to one of the sticky cakes. It was sickly and not really to his taste. The silence stretched out to breaking point as he looked at her with a vacant expression, as if he had nothing to say, no facility for small talk or anything outside his daily round. Eventually, he spoke:

  “We will do all that is possible, Frau Fenderman. Anything we can do. You are here for some days?”

  He left the photographs until last, as he was gathering his things together. “Ah, yes. One more thing” Delving into the briefcase to extract the six pictures of the men who had actually been executed for espionage in Britain during 1941.

  He handed them to her, one at a time, asking her to study each one with care.

  She took them in turn, spending a long while, like somebody uncertain, whose word might identify a murderer.

  “You see anyone you recognise?”

  Slowly she shook her head. “No. I am supposed to know one of these people?”