‘In a policeman’s office, Superintendent Archer? That would hardly be appropriate would it?’ He went out without waiting for an answer.
Douglas phoned the SS guard commander, and passed on Huth’s message with the friendly rider that Standartenführer Huth was in a great hurry.
The guard commander’s response was one of consternation. Kellerman’s briefing about the arrival of the new man was obviously taken seriously by the security force.
Douglas stepped across to the window and looked down at the Embankment. The curfew ensured that few civilians were on the street – Members of Parliament, and shift workers in essential industries and services, were among the exceptions – and the street and bridge were empty except for parked lines of official vehicles and an armed patrol who visited the floodlit perimeters of all the government buildings.
A motorcycle and sidecar combination stopped at the checkpoint where Victoria Embankment met Westminster Bridge. There was a brief inspection of papers before it roared away into the dark night of the far side of the river. From across the road there came the loud chime of Big Ben. Douglas Archer yawned and wondered how people like Huth seemed to manage without sleep.
He opened Huth’s briefcase to get the Francesca reproduction for framing, but before he had time to unroll it he saw, inside the pocket of the case, a brown manila envelope sealed with red wax and bearing the unmistakable heraldic imprint of RSHA – the Central Security Department of the Reich, and holy of holies of Heinrich Himmler and all he commanded. The envelope had already been opened along the side and a folded paper was visible.
Douglas could not repress his curiosity. He pulled out a large sheet of paper and unfolded it to find a complex diagram, as big as the blotter on the desk. It was drawn in black indelible ink upon handmade paper that was as heavy as parchment. Even Douglas Archer’s fluent German did not equip him to comprehend fully the handwriting of the German script, but he recognized some of the symbols.
There was a reversed equilateral triangle, inscribed within a double circle. The triangle contained two words, written to form a cross – Elohim and Tzabaoth. Douglas Archer’s successful investigation of a series of Black Magic murders in 1939 enabled him to recognize this as a ‘pentacle’ representing ‘the god of armies, the equilibrium of natural forces, and the harmony of numbers’.
A second pentacle was a human head with three faces, crowned with a tiara and issuing from a vessel filled with water. There were other water signs too. Handwritten alongside it was ‘Joliot-Curie laboratory – Collège de France, Paris’. And close against another water sign was written ‘Norsk Hydro Company, Rjukan, Central Norway’.
Heaped earth, spades and a diamond pierced by a magic sword ‘Deo Duce, comite ferro’ was an emblem of the Great Arcanum representing, according to the chart, ‘the omnipotence of the adept’ and here the runic double lightning of the SS was lettered, and followed by ‘RSHA Berlin’.
The third symbol was the spiral marked ‘Transformatio’ which became a spinning toy top with ‘Clarendon Laboratory, Oxford, England’ written there, and the words ‘Formatio’ and ‘Reformatio’ arranged over ‘Transformatio’ to make a triangle. Below it ‘German army reactor in England’ was written against a spinning device. In another hand, ‘Peter Thomas’ appeared here in pencil, as if added hurriedly at the last moment.
Douglas straightened as he heard the sound of German boots on the mosaic stone of the corridor. He folded the diagram too quickly to be sure that it showed no sign of being tampered with. Then he tucked the envelope away into the red-lined pocket of the case and closed it.
There was a knock at the door. ‘Come in,’ said Douglas as he unrolled the Francesca reproduction.
‘One sentry and six men for duty,’ reported the SS officer.
‘Standartenführer Huth wants this furniture removed,’ explained Douglas. ‘Replace it with metal furniture from offices on this corridor.’
The SS officer showed no surprise at the order. Douglas had the feeling that this farmer’s son from Hesse – as Douglas accurately guessed him to be – would have obeyed an order to jump out of the window. The officer took off his jacket to work with his six brawny lads while their armed comrade stood on duty in the corridor.
The job was almost finished by the time Harry Woods arrived at 2 A.M. He’d been at the reception at the Savoy. Douglas noticed, with some apprehension, that Harry was slightly drunk.
‘Talk about a new broom sweeping clean,’ said Harry as he watched furniture being moved. ‘I haven’t seen this kind of activity since that night when the invasion started.’
‘Do you know where we can get this picture framed?’ Douglas asked him.
Harry Woods held the edge of the picture and looked at it. It was ‘The Flagellation’. Douglas knew the painting – a fine colonnaded piazza, flooded with overhead sunlight from a blue sky. In the background Christ is scourged. Three magnificently attired men – the Count of Urbino and his two advisers – turn their backs upon the scene and converse calmly together. In real life, the advisers depicted in the painting were suspected of complicity in the murder of the Count. For centuries art experts have argued about the hidden meaning of the picture. Douglas found it appropriate as a decoration for the office of this hard-eyed emissary from the Byzantine court of the Reichsführer-SS.
‘Funny bugger, isn’t he?’ said Harry, looking at the painting.
‘We’d better learn to live with him,’ said Douglas.
‘He’s down in number three conference room,’ said Harry, ‘talking to that squeaky-voiced little police Major that he took along to the mortuary. Who is he?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ said Douglas.
‘They’re talking together as if the world was about to come to an end.’ Harry brought out his cigarettes and offered them to Douglas, who shook his head. It was no longer done to accept a friend’s tobacco ration. ‘What’s it all about, chief?’ said Harry. ‘You understand all this double-talk. What’s it all about?’
‘I thought you might be able to tell me, Harry. I saw Sylvia today. She told me that you have a finger in everything that’s going on in town.’
If Harry guessed what Sylvia actually said, he gave no sign of it, but he didn’t seem surprised that Sylvia had turned up at Scotland Yard. Douglas wondered if she’d seen Harry too.
‘I’ll tell you one thing,’ said Harry. ‘That little Major is nothing to do with pathology or medicine or anything like that. I’d like to know why he was at the mortuary. Do you think this bloke Huth let him come along just for a laugh?’
‘You’ll soon find out that our new Standartenführer is not that keen on laughs,’ said Douglas.
‘There are some bloody peculiar people about, you know that. I mean, letting that little wireless mechanic come along there was wrong. And I’d tell Huth that straight, and to his face. I’d tell him it was all bloody wrong. You think I wouldn’t but I’d tell him.’ Harry swayed slightly and steadied himself by gripping the desk.
‘Wireless mechanic?’
‘Hah!’ said Harry with the arch smugness of the slightly drunk. ‘I saw his file. He’s got a police uniform but that’s just for show. I phoned Lufthansa, and got his number from the flight manifest, then I went upstairs and looked up his record.’
‘You got his file?’
‘Just his card. Say you work for the Gestapo and you can get any bloody thing. Do you know that, Douglas?’
‘You don’t work for the Gestapo,’ Douglas pointed out.
Harry waved his hand in front of his face as if trying to remove a speck from a dirty windscreen. ‘Wireless mechanic, it said, a doctor of wireless theory. They’re all bloody doctors these Huns, have you noticed that, Douglas?…Studied at Tübingen.