Len Deighton 3-Book War Collection Volume 1: Bomber, XPD, Goodbye Mickey Mouse. Len Deighton

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СКАЧАТЬ for cigarette butts. Lately they’d brought from door to door madonnas carved from old crates. Catholic residents exchanged potatoes, cigarettes and bread for them.

      The hospital had expanded enormously since the air raids upon the Ruhr had increased. There was an annex and a training centre for Red Cross ‘Samariter’ (as they called the young trainees who did the three-week emergency nursing course). Adjacent to these buildings there was a big hutted camp where amputee casualties from the Eastern Front came for convalescence and learned how to use their new false limbs. These establishments dominated the town. Some afternoons Dorfstrasse was so crowded with medical staff and convalescent soldiers that local people felt out of place there.

      Where Winkel’s was once a sea of blossom there was now a Technische Nothilfe camp, full of specialist troops ready to send heavy rescue and repair convoys to bombed towns in the Ruhr. Lately the TENOs had been building a railway siding there for their heavy equipment. It was heavy work and each night they drank a lot of Frenzel’s thin wartime beer.

      The housing estate on the north side of town, intended as rehousing for the slums around the gasworks, was now occupied by doctors and TENO engineer officers, which did nothing to endear the visitors to the locals. Not that everyone complained about the influx of personnel. Herr Frenzel, who owned the best restaurant in Altgarten, never complained. The downstairs bar was always full of TENO engineers and was sometimes a little rowdy, but the restaurant upstairs was chic. It commanded a view across Liebefrauplatz of the church itself and the seventeenth-century houses beyond it. This was the very heart of Altgarten and these buildings, from this viewpoint, were its proudest asset.

      The Liebefrau was one of the hall-style churches that you get only in the north. The tracery windows were extra large to let in the sparse northern light, and the roof was extra steep to shed the winter snow. Its slim buttresses ran down like anchor chains stretched tight by a stiff tide and behind it the white houses were like chalk cliffs against which it was moored.

      By lunchtime the cold front and its dense dark low cloud had passed eastwards over Altgarten without causing rain. Now the whiter clouds moved gently, shrinking in the subsiding air to reveal blue sky beyond and permit golden pools of sunlight to hurry through Liebefrauplatz, finger the ancient church walls and transform the gloomy interior with its glowing stained-glass pictures. In front of the church a crowd was gathered at a highly publicized fund-raising drive. Anyone contributing two marks to Winter Help was invited to hammer a nail into a wooden map of Britain. Since the Burgomaster had driven home the first nail that morning many of the town’s most influential people had joined in the witchcraft. The map was studded with a pox of nail-heads that concentrated around London, for only the tallest could reach Scotland. A Hitler Jugend fanfare band was playing, helping with the Winter Help collection. The boys played loudly and expertly and the music was audible inside Frenzel’s in spite of the rattle of dishes and the chatter.

      ‘Frenzel’s Stube’ was spelled out in carved wooden letters across the doorway. The upper storeys were ochre-coloured plaster and carved black beams built upon a brick first floor. The ancient house was bent and bowed like an illustration from a book of fairy stories and the interior was dark even on a sunny day like this. There were other, more luxurious restaurants in the old town, but none had Frenzel’s chef or was able to get meat as good as Frenzel’s served. Whether he obtained the meat on the black market was a matter of constant speculation. Meanwhile Frenzel’s Stube was patronized by Altgarten’s most important citizens and none of them asked questions. There was good wine in Frenzel’s cellar and champagne and old brandy too. For those with money to pay there were Bayonne ham and paté Strasbourg studded with truffles. For without Britain and the USA, and with the mark pegged artificially high, Germany had become the best customer for Europe’s home-grown luxuries.

      Müller, who owned the parachute factory, came to Frenzel’s almost every night. Nazi Party officials held banquets here. The commanding officer of the TENO engineers was a regular and so was the electricity station chief. So also was Frau Kersten who ran the vegetable farm. Tonight, however, was to be special. The Burgomaster was sitting near the window with Herr Frenzel himself, planning every detail for the Burgomaster’s fifty-third birthday dinner.

      Walter Ryessman, the Burgomaster, was six feet two inches tall, a white-haired ex-cavalry officer with a duelling scar on his forehead. He had joined the Nazi Party in 1928 when dignified upper-class members were in short supply. The Burgomaster was still an ardent Nazi but also a German of the old school. He was a calm dignified man to whom honour meant telling the truth, fighting to the death and ruthlessly rejecting all non-Aryan influence. Over half of Altgarten’s population had grown up in Catholic homes but the Burgomaster’s political creed did not extend to anti-Catholic persecution. The crucifixes in the Volkschule had, of course, been removed and destroyed and there was no longer any religious instruction but no policemen had ever been posted at the church to record the names of worshippers. As Herr Ryessman had boasted at a Party gathering in Dortmund, ‘No non-Jewish citizen who is prepared to march forward with National Socialism to victory and honour need fear injustice from me.’

      But the Burgomaster’s greatest and most popular triumph was a bureaucratic one. Just five months previously he had, by string-pulling, form-filling and judicious bargaining, saved the bells of the Liebefrau church from being melted down for armaments. The response from all sides had surprised him. In one month he had managed to find favour with Catholics, traditionalists, historians and colleagues. Oddly enough, Herr Berger – senior full-time SS officer in Altgarten – had been one of the first people to congratulate him.

      ‘Not a large affair,’ the Burgomaster explained. ‘Eighteen persons, most of them of my family.’

      ‘I understand,’ said Frenzel. ‘I will personally supervise the Herr Bürgermeister’s food and wine and service.’

      ‘A Burgundy. The same one as last year.’

      ‘I have it written down,’ said Herr Frenzel.

      ‘Who’s that with Herr Bach?’

      The Burgomaster had respect for August Bach. Not only had Bach had a distinguished career in the First World War but he was a man of good family and a serving officer of the Luftwaffe, a true German, honourable and silent. Furthermore, his cousin, Gerd Böll – although a frivolous and unconventional fellow – was one of the town’s most prosperous tradesmen. Mind you, if Bach had paid a little more attention to practical politics he could have done far better for himself than Oberleutnant’s rank. A man with the ‘Blue Max’ – the highest decoration of the first war – at his throat should be a general. What couldn’t the Burgomaster have done if he’d had that medal.

      ‘His housekeeper,’ said Frenzel without looking up, for he had already surveyed his restaurant and amended his knowledge of his fellow citizens.

      ‘He’s lunching with her?’ asked the Burgomaster.

      ‘Yes,’ said Frenzel.

      ‘How long since his wife was killed?’

      ‘Thirteen months,’ said Frenzel, who had already calculated it.

      ‘She’s a very beautiful girl,’ said the Burgomaster.

      ‘A beautiful girl,’ agreed Frenzel. ‘Her father is from Breslau: a high-ranking official of the Propaganda Ministry.’

      ‘Indeed,’ said the Burgomaster. He fingered the Party badge in his lapel.

      August Bach was seeing an Anna-Luisa that he had only suspected might exist. She laughed readily and was delighted with everything he said and did.

      ‘I’m glad to see that Herr Frenzel’s СКАЧАТЬ