‘You’re not kidding, are you?’ Tayte said as soon as he and Strobel were alone. ‘How can you be so sure I’ll do it? I don’t think for a minute that Fleischer or your daughter are going to let me walk out of here afterwards.’
Strobel sighed. ‘When you leave, Max and Ingrid will both receive a tidy sum of money. Max will disappear, and Ingrid and her husband will retire early to whichever tropical paradise they choose. Tonight this building will be burned to the ground. The authorities will find my bones and blame the anti-Nazi groups that have so long campaigned to shut this place down. You will be a free man again, and as long as you keep your silence about what happens here, you will not be implicated. But try to leave this room without killing me first and it will be you who dies. That I promise you.’
‘We’re in the basement of your museum, aren’t we?’ Tayte said. ‘Your education centre?’
Strobel nodded. ‘It has been little more than a cover for my operations with the Fourth Reich. I think it fitting that my body should be cremated here beneath the image of my Führer.’
‘You really are crazy,’ Tayte said, still unconvinced that he would be allowed to walk away from this. Strobel surely understood that he would go straight to the authorities and tell them everything, regardless of the consequences he might have to face as a result. No, Tayte wasn’t buying any of it. He knew he was a dead man whether he ended Strobel’s life or not.
He gave a firm shake of his head. ‘I won’t do it.’
‘Yes, you will, Mr Tayte. My story, remember. I haven’t finished it yet. Now, where was I? Ah, yes. It was the 26th of April, 1945, and I had just killed your grandfather.’
Tayte had heard enough of Strobel’s story. All he wanted to do was to get out of there, find Jean, and board the plane back to London. But how was he going to do that? He had a gun in his lap with a single bullet in the chamber, no knife with which to free himself from the wheelchair he was bound to, and even if he could reach the door, Keller and Fleischer were beyond it, armed and most certainly dangerous. One bullet would not be enough. On top of that, no one had any idea where he was. He realised then that he had no way of knowing how long he’d been unconscious, either. He had no idea whether it was day or night, or even if it was the same day. The flight back to London might already have left for all he knew. He concluded that for now, as before, he had no choice but to play along with Strobel’s bizarre game and listen as the old man continued his story.
‘Within seconds of shooting Johann,’ Strobel said, ‘the guards patrolling the street were at my door, and naturally, after hearing the shots, they were full of concern for me. I dismissed them easily enough. I was, after all, their Lagerführer.’
‘They didn’t question the state of your face?’
‘They never saw my face. It was dark and I barely opened the door, They were soon gone and I was glad to be alone again. I had to think, and think I did. By morning I had it all worked out, but I had to make sure Johann’s body was never found.’
‘Don’t tell me,’ Tayte said. ‘You buried him in one of your lime pits.’
Langner gave Tayte a sharp smile. ‘You’re on the right track, but I had to be very sure. So while it was still dark, I went out and removed the striped uniform from a dead Jew. I put it on Johann, and in the morning I had his body collected and taken to the incinerators. No one cared who he was, and I was accustomed to my orders being obeyed without question. Johann appeared as just one more Jew for the pile.’
‘You’re despicable.’
‘Yes,’ Strobel said, eyeing the gun. ‘Perhaps I’m the kind of man you’d like to rid the world of, eh?’
Tayte didn’t answer. He closed his eyes instead, unable to look at Strobel a moment longer.
‘With Johann gone and the Allies close to Dachau,’ Strobel continued, ‘all that remained for me to do was to dress myself in my friend’s uniform and take off with his papers. Johann was very strong, and he beat me so hard. I should have gone to a hospital to have my jaw and my eye treated, and my eye might have been saved if I had, but that would have been too risky. Instead, I bandaged myself up as a wounded soldier and I endured the pain as I went into hiding. My wounds left me disfigured, as you see, but that, too served its purpose. By the time I was picked up, some months later, I looked enough like Johann and was virtually unrecognisable as the man I truly was. Not that anyone came forward to verify that I was Johann. Most, if not all, of Johann’s close companions in the Leibstandarte had been killed at one time or another, particularly during their retreat from Falaise on the Western Front, and later, when Vienna fell to the Soviets.’
Strobel paused and Tayte opened his eyes again to see the old man smiling to himself, as though gratified at how well everything had worked out for him.
‘You know the really clever thing about it?’ Strobel added.