Free SS-GB by Len Deighton

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 officeof 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.