The Company of Strangers. Robert Thomas Wilson

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       Chapter 3

       8th February 1942, Wolfsschanze HQ, Rastenburg, East Prussia.

      Voss was driven back to Restricted Area I in silence, the dead hand of a full inquiry already on his shoulder. He pieced together the ugly fragments of information in his brain and felt his mind recoil in disgust. He began to see, for the first time, how a man could shoot himself. Until then it had been a mystery to him, on hearing of someone’s suicide, how a man could bring himself to such a disastrous conclusion. He smoked hard until he was quite faint and prickling. He staggered up the path to the main building and realized on entering that the horrific news had preceded him by some minutes.

      The dining room was full, but rather than being morbid with the news of the death of the most important and capable engineer in the German Reich, it was rife with the rumour of a successor. The monochrome mass of braid and band, oak leaf cluster and iron cross seethed like the bullring of the Bourse. Only one man was silent, head up, hair swept back, dark eyes shining under the thick straight eyebrows – Albert Speer. Voss blinked, sure as a camera shutter, and captured the image – a man on the brink of his destiny.

      Voss took a coffee, fed himself into the knots of conversation and soon realized that anybody with anything to do with construction and transportation was in the room.

      ‘Speer will take the Atlantic Wall, the U-boat pens and the Occupied West. It’s already been talked about.’

      ‘What about the Ukraine? The Ukraine is more important now.’

      ‘You didn’t forget that we declared war on the United States before Christmas.’

      ‘No, I didn’t, and nor did Todt.’

      Silence. Heads swung to Speer’s table. People were putting things to him and he was managing vague replies to their questions, but he wasn’t listening. He was coming to terms with a price. Appalled at the animal troughing around him, unwilling to accept anything that they attempted to confer on him, he was trying to justify to himself not only his presence there (for the first time and on such a tragic occasion), but something else whose nature he couldn’t quite grasp. He seemed to be coping with a strong, unpleasant smell which had reached his nostrils only.

      ‘He won’t give it all to him…the Führer wouldn’t do that. No experience.’

      ‘He’ll split Armaments and Munitions away from Construction.’

      ‘You wait…the Reichsmarschall will be here any moment. Then we’ll see…’

      ‘Where is Goering?’

      ‘At Romiten. Hunting.’

      ‘That’s only a hundred kilometres away…has anybody called him?’

      ‘Goering will take Armaments and Munitions into his Commission for the Four Year Plan. He’s in charge of the war economy. It fits.’

      ‘The only thing that fits, if you ask me, is that one’s face over there.’

      ‘What’s Speer doing here, anyway?’

      ‘He was stuck in Dnepropetrovsk. He flew in with Captain Nein last night.’

      ‘He fetched him?’ asked a voice, aghast.

      ‘No, no Captain Nein flew in there with SS General Sepp Dietrich and offered Speer a lift.’

      ‘Did Speer and the general…talk?’

      There was silence at that probability and Voss moved across to some air force officers who were picking over the details of the crash.

      ‘He must have pulled the self-destruct handle.’

      ‘Who? The pilot?’

      ‘No, Todt…by accident.’

      ‘Did it have a self-destruct mechanism on board?’

      ‘No, it was a new plane. It hadn’t been fitted.’

      ‘What was he doing in a two-engined plane in the first place? The Führer has expressly forbidden…’

      ‘That’s what Todt was told yesterday. He was furious. The Führer waived it.’

      ‘That’s why they took the plane up for a practice spin.’

      ‘And you’re sure there was no self-destruct mechanism?’

      ‘Positive.’

      ‘There were three explosions…that’s what the flight sergeant said.’

      ‘Three?’

      ‘There must have been a self-destruct…’

      ‘There was none!’

      Voss went to the decoding room to pick up any positional changes in the field. He took the decodes to the situation room. The corridor was silent. Hitler rarely moved before eleven o’clock, but on a day such as this? Surely. The apartment door stayed closed, the SS guards silent.

      Weber was already working on supply positions in the Ukraine. He didn’t look up. Voss leafed the decodes.

      ‘SS Colonel Weiss was looking for you,’ said Weber.

      ‘Did he say what he wanted?’ asked Voss, bowels loosening.

      ‘Something about those boxes of files…’

      ‘Have you heard, Weber?’

      ‘About the plane crash, you mean?’

      ‘The Reichsminister Todt is dead.’

      ‘Were those files on board?’

      ‘Yes,’ said Voss, stunned by Weber’s insouciance.

      ‘Shit. Zeitzler’s going to be mad.’

      ‘Weber,’ said Voss, amazed, ‘Todt is dead.’

      ‘Todt ist tot. Todt ist tot. What can I say, other than it will brighten the Führer’s day not to have that doom merchant on his shoulder.’

      ‘For God’s sake, Weber.’

      ‘Look, Voss, Todt never agreed with the Russian campaign and when the Führer declared war on America, well…poof!’

      ‘Poof!?’

      ‘Todt СКАЧАТЬ