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Chapters (22)
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Page
  3. Dedication
  4. Chapter 1
  5. Chapter 2
  6. Chapter 3
  7. Chapter 4
  8. Chapter 5
  9. Chapter 6
  10. Chapter 7
  11. Chapter 8
  12. Chapter 9
  13. Chapter 10
  14. Chapter 11
  15. Chapter 12
  16. Chapter 13
  17. Chapter 14
  18. Chapter 15
  19. Chapter 16
  20. Chapter 17
  21. Chapter 18
  22. Chapter 19

I covered the mouthpiece. ‘It’s a brave man who refuses to cooperate with a caller claiming to be in the Gestapo.’

The clerk came back to the telephone and told me that Bock was on a work detail beyond the edge of Greater Berlin, on the Berlin-to-Hanover stretch. ‘Specifically, the section between Brandenburg and Lehnin. I suggest that you contact the site-office a couple of kilometres this side of Brandenburg. It’s about seventy kilometres. You drive to Potsdam, then take Zeppelin Strasse. After about forty kilometres you pick up the A-Bahn at Lehnin.’

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘And is he likely to be working today?’

‘I’m afraid I don’t know,’ said the clerk. ‘Many of them do work Saturdays. But even if he’s not working, you’ll probably find him in the workers’ barracks. They live on site, you see.’

‘You’ve been most helpful,’ I said, and added with the pomposity that is typical of all Gestapo officers, ‘I shall report your efficiency to your superior.’

Chapter 13

13

‘It’s just typical of the bloody Nazis,’ said Inge, ‘to build the People’s roads before the People’s car.’

We were driving towards Potsdam on the Avus Speedway, and Inge was referring to the much delayed Strength Through Joy car, the KdF-Wagen. It was a subject she evidently felt strongly about.

‘If you ask me, it’s putting the cart before the horse. I mean, who needs these gigantic highways? It’s not as if there’s anything wrong with the roads we have now. It’s not as if there are that many cars in Germany.’ She turned sideways in her seat the better to see me as she continued speaking. ‘I have this friend, an engineer, who tells me that they’re building an autobahn right across the Polish Corridor, and that one is projected across Czechoslovakia. Now why else would that be but to move an army about?’

I cleared my throat before answering; it gave me a couple more seconds to think about it. ‘I can’t see the autobahns are of much military value, and there are none west of the Rhine, towards France. Anyway, on a long straight stretch of road, a convoy of trucks makes an easy target for an air attack.’

This last remark drew a short, mocking laugh from my companion. ‘That’s precisely why they’re building up the Luftwaffe - to protect the convoys.’

I shrugged. ‘Maybe. But if you’re looking for the real reason why Hitler has built these roads, then it’s much more simple. It’s an easy way of cutting the unemployment figures. A man receiving state relief risks losing it if he refuses the offer of a job on the autobahns. So he takes it. Who knows, that may be what happened to Bock.’

‘You should take a look at Wedding and Neukölln sometime,’ she said, referring to Berlin’s remaining strongholds of KPD sympathy.