The Vengeance of Rome
- Автор: Муркок Майкл
- Серия: Between The Wars #4
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «The Vengeance of Rome». Краткое содержание книги:
‘It’s typical of the swine to falter at the last hurdle!’ Röhm was ferocious. ‘Him and his fucking guilt. He didn’t kill the bitch after all!’ This was a little insensitive. While I did not know Hitler, the man’s affection seemed to have been genuine enough. It was not in Röhm’s nature, unfortunately, to go over old ground.
‘What Göring told me,’ says Mrs Cornelius, who enjoyed a brief liaison with the Reichsmarschall a short while after his wife died, ‘was that Geli’s lover did it. The SS boy she was going to go to Vienna with. Zeiss? They were terrified of Hitler. When she told the boy Hitler wouldn’t let her go, he shot her in a lovers’ quarrel. Himmler had Zeiss shot later, but a lot of people still think it was Hitler himself.’
‘It was neither,’ I insist. ‘The killer was Röhm. He told me so.’
‘Well,’ she says, ‘there you go.’
She always says such things when she believes I am lying or exaggerating.
‘Study the facts,’ I say. ’It is all there. You only have to read between the lines - anyone can. The case is so obvious once you know.’
‘I don’t need to do any studying, Ivan,’ she says. ‘I got it from the horse’s mouth, didn’t I?’
‘Stupid horse. Big mouth.’ But Göring had his good points. I have no wish to confirm the stereotype.
‘Oh!’ She shakes with affectionate laughter. ’And you was so bloody clever yourself!’
‘I think you could at least acknowledge my experience,’ I say.
‘I believe what you boys got up to,’ she says. ‘It’s just what yer make of it, you know. I ‘ave to larf.’
‘What I did was not important? Strasser or Göring would have been the new Führer and everything would have gone along exactly the same?’
‘Well,’ she says, ‘there you go.’
But I know every detail. Every detail. If it had not been for me, the party would have self-destructed. The communists would have won. I made a sacrifice I will never admit to. Hitler’s guilt kept him in that condition, and his guilt had to be grounded.
In early October with only a few days left before the arranged meeting with Hindenburg, Strasser telephoned Röhm at the villa. Father Stempfle, who had been Geli’s confessor, was with him now, trying to convince him that Geli had always had suicidal tendencies while at the same time assuring Hitler his niece had deserved her full Catholic burial. This might be confusing the Chief all the more. Strasser said that both he and Stempfle had tried talking Hitler round, but he would begin to weep silently and refuse to respond. He was turning into a melancholy vegetable.
Röhm repeated what he had said before. They should try the known solution. It had always produced a catharsis in the past and clearly functioned as an act of absolution.
‘I told Strasser that it had to be one of us,’ said Röhm that night as we prepared for bed. ‘Someone who is already in on it. That’s Rudolf Hess, you, me, Gregor Strasser, little Bernhard Stempfle.’
‘To do what?’ I asked.
‘To do what you do best,’ he said. ‘I could make only one choice in the end. You. Will you do this for us, Mashi? For me? For Germany? Believe me, you’re the last damned card we can play.’ He explained what they wanted me to do.
‘That’s not a natural role for me,’ I said. ‘There would be difficulties, also, in the anatomical respects.’
Röhm explained how my costume would overcome those problems.
I was sure that it was possible for someone else to perform the ritual he described, however. While I understood the urgency of the situation, I simply did not have the heart for the role. Indeed, the thought terrified me. I could not play it with any kind of conviction. I did not tell them that the role was in some respects familiar from my Egyptian days when I had been a witness and a participant.
Pausing, with profound pain in his eyes, Röhm mentioned the file he had taken from Frau Oberhauser, the former Baroness von Ruckstühl. Clearly he had deliberated for a long time. He knew he was threatening something rare that we had built between us. ‘Then we would have to investigate these claims and discover how you, a suspected Jew, managed to inveigle your way into the holiest shrines of National Socialism.’
I grew a little sad at that moment and was deeply shocked. ‘A suspected what? My dear Ernst, whatever else you accuse me of, do not call me that. It is a disgusting slander. You yourself have said how you know for certain I am not a Jew.’
Röhm was silent. He turned away in shame.
I understood him well and was even sympathetic. The struggle he must be having with himself! His whole body was shaking. This was tearing him apart. For the love of his Fatherland and all he held dear, Stabschef Ernst Röhm was prepared to blackmail his ‘sweetest love’ and destroy almost everything honest and pure between us.
‘Only you could pull it off, Mashi. You have the skills, the physique, the actor’s gift . . .’
‘You want me to pose as some dirty little whore —’
‘A game, Mashi. Just a game. We’ve played it before.’
‘I have not played that role for you, Ernst. Never.’ My heart was sinking. I knew what this meant. Our idyll was drawing to a close. Yet still I resisted the inevitable. ‘Why not get some girl from the street? She needn’t know —’
‘We can’t risk it. Just as we can’t risk any more killing. Half the cops in Germany are waiting for a chance like this. That’s why you, at least, are guaranteed your life, Mashi.’ He turned, red-faced, with tears in his eyes. And then I realised the full horror of what had been contemplated.
‘You’ll lose nothing, Mashi. And the Fatherland will gain everything!’
I still wasn’t sure I could do what he wanted. ‘He would realise the deception, Ernst. You know he would.’
‘You haven’t seen the shape he’s in. Believe me, the pills have taken every ounce of judgement.’
‘Then how will this work?’
‘The way it has always worked. What do you think that little slut used to do for him? She kept him moving forward. I don’t know what you call it — but it got rid of any guilt he might be feeling about what he was doing.’
‘Guilt?’
‘There were things he promised his mother. Other loyalties. He had to give them up. He had to give a lot up, Mashi, to get where he is.’
I could not resist those pleading eyes. My friend was desperate. As a Christian I could only forgive him. I would have to help him. I, of all people, had come to understand how Christian duty must sometimes come before personal feelings. I bowed to his necessity, but an enormous sadness filled me. I knew a great love affair was finished. Love was what we both sacrificed.
That night Hess arrived from Munich driving the massive Mercedes received from an industrialist well-wisher. His old friend Father Stempfle was with him. Röhm had already suggested how I dress and had packed a bag for me. I was wrapped in one of his greatcoats. Perhaps instinctively recognising me from that encounter in the hotel, Stempfle looked at me with the same peculiar, gloating disgust he offered to most of the world. He moved so that he sat across from me with Röhm and began to eat a liver sausage, smacking his lips and glaring at me with happy sadism. The leather of the seat was cold. I felt utterly helpless.