‘So what brings an aspiring novelist from Boston to London? I’d have thought there was as much, if not more, inspiration in the States. Isn’t Greenwich Village the place to be?’
‘Jeez, Jamie, you must be older than you look. You’ll be telling me next you were at Woodstock.’
He ran a hand though his hair and slouched in his plastic chair in a vain attempt to appear what people called cool and she laughed, a deep-seated, unashamed proper laugh. ‘Hey, you almost made it to the eighties there. A new haircut and full wardrobe change and I might let you take me out.’
Ouch.
She noticed his look. ‘Hey, I’m only kidding, right?’ She threw a handful of fries into her mouth and managed to make it look elegant. Swallowing, she took a drink from what looked like a gallon cup of diet Coke and produced a gentle belch. ‘To get back to your original question, I’m not here for inspiration, I’m here for the atmosphere. My book is a time-shift thriller.’ His mystification must have shown. ‘Happens now and way back in history? Simultaneously. Barbara Erskine?’ He nodded, the name was familiar. ‘Same theory, different execution. Mine will be tougher, grittier. Elizabethan London. You’ll be able to smell the sweat and the cat pee.’
‘Sounds great.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘You’re kidding, right?’
‘Not at all,’ he said, and meant it. ‘I’m fairly sure that anything you write will be worth reading.’
‘Anyway, I’ve just finished the first draft and now I’m looking for another feature assignment to help keep my foul-breathed landlord out of my face for a while.’
Jamie hesitated for a full five seconds. The decision he was about to make was like stepping off a cliff just to experience what it was like to fly, and he suspected he was going to regret it when he hit the bottom, which was bound to happen sooner or later. He took a deep breath.
‘Er, there’s this rather wonderful stolen painting and . . .’
He told her about the Raphael. But not about the journal or Matthew. Not yet. When he’d finished, her eyes shone and the words bubbled from her like water from a mountain stream. ‘Now that’s a story. You think you might be able to track it down? Maybe I can help you. I’m good with research and I’ll pay my way. Anyway, you need somebody to watch your back.’
Which was true. He’d also convinced himself he was attracted to her in a way that went beyond the purely physical. That would take time to confirm and he had a feeling he’d need to approach things slowly. On the other hand, working together, even if it was on a wild-goose chase, would at least give him a chance to find out. He grinned. ‘OK, you’re hired as my acting, unpaid researcher, but if there’s a story in it, I get copy approval.’
Now it was her turn to grimace, but she nodded.
‘What do you know about Heinrich Himmler?’
XIX
4 May 1945, somewhere south of Nürnberg. Walter Brohm was probably the most self-centred human being I ever met. Anyone else would have been cowed by the situation in which he found himself – a prisoner travelling under guard and with an uncertain future – but all Brohm could see was opportunity. We travelled together in the second jeep and he talked and talked, about his work, about his genius and about the conflicting ideologies that had brought about the war. For Brohm, our war was the inevitable continuation of that ‘War to end all Wars’ both our fathers had endured; a necessary reconfiguration of national boundaries, power and influence to redress what had been taken – he said stolen – from Germany two and a half decades earlier. ‘You may take a nation’s resources, but its pride is inviolable, Leutnant Matt. You would have done the same.’ Calling me Leutnant, though he knew I was a captain, was his idea of poking fun. That was Brohm’s way. ‘But we could never have produced Hitler,’ I countered. ‘Pfaw! You created Hitler with your merciless peace, you and the French and the Americans. Hitler was just a politician taking advantage of his people’s prejudices and fears. Every country has its own Hitlers. Wait until your middle classes are without jobs and forced to watch their children go hungry,’ he said. ‘Then you will see your Hitlers.’ He told me that Hitler’s only mistake had been to declare war on America. Not Russia? ‘Of course not. Communism was the ideological counterweight to Nazi-ism, for one to prevail the other must fall. It was a question of natural selection. With France neutered and powerless, Hitler had to attack Stalin before Stalin attacked Hitler.’
He trusted me because he had cast me in the role of his saviour. ‘The Nazis,’ he said, ‘had just been a means to an end – Ein mittel zu einem ende, Leutnant Matt.’ All that mattered was his work. He could have gone to the Russians, but for all their power and resources they were a stupid people who wouldn’t have treated him correctly. He would work with the west and the world would be a better place for it. We talked about art. ‘I have a great painting,’ he said, ‘very famous.’ From his loving description I worked out that it must be Italian, perhaps by one of the big three. ‘Where?’ I asked, joking. ‘In a safe place.’ He winked and his hand strayed to his breast pocket.