SS-GB by Len Deighton Read Free Book Online Page B

sheet. Kellerman looked at it briefly and said, ‘This chap from Berlin, Standartenführer Huth…you remember?’
    ‘I remember everything you said, sir.’
    ‘Splendid. Well, the Standartenführer has been given a priority seat on the afternoon Berlin-Croydon flight. He’ll be arriving about five I should think. I wonder if you would go there and meet him?’
    ‘Yes, sir, but I wonder…’ Douglas couldn’t think of a good way to suggest that an SS-Standartenführer from Himmler’s Central Security Office would consider a welcome from one English Detective Superintendent less than his rank and position merited.
    ‘The Standartenführer has requested that you meet him,’ said Kellerman.
    ‘Me personally?’ said Douglas.
    ‘His task is of an investigative nature,’ said Kellerman. ‘I thought it appropriate that I assign to him my best detective.’ He smiled. In fact Huth had asked for Archer by name. Kellerman had energetically opposed theorder that put Douglas Archer under the command of the new man, but the intervention of Himmler himself had ended the matter.
    ‘Thank you, sir,’ said Douglas.
    Kellerman reached into the pocket of his tweed waistcoat and looked at his gold pocket watch. ‘I’ll start right away,’ said Douglas, recognizing his cue.
    ‘Would you?’ said Kellerman. ‘Well, see my personal assistant so that you know all the arrangements we’ve made to receive the Standartenführer.’
    Lufthansa had three Berlin–London flights daily, and these were additional to the less comfortable and less prestigious military flights. Standartenführer Dr Oskar Huth had been given one of the fifteen seats on the flight which left Berlin at lunch time.
    Douglas waited in the unheated terminal building and watched a Luftwaffe band preparing for the arrival of the daily flight from New York. The Germans had the only land-planes capable of such a long-range, non-stop service and the Propaganda Ministry was making full use of it.
    The rain had continued well into the afternoon but now on the horizon there was a break in the low clouds. The Berlin plane circled, while the pilot decided whether to land. After the third circuit the big three-engined Junkers roared low over the airport building, and then came round for a perfect landing on the wet tarmac. Its hand-polished metal flashed as it taxied back to the terminal building.
    Douglas half expected that any man who had his doctorate included with his rank on teleprinter messages might have retained a trace of the bedside manner. But Huth was a doctor of law, and a hard-nosed SS officer if Douglas had ever seen one. And by that time Douglas had seen many.
    Unlike Kellerman, the new man was wearing his uniform, and gave no sign of preferring plain clothes. It was not the black SS uniform. That nowadays was worn only by the Allgemeine SS – mostly middle-aged country yokels who donned uniform just for village booze-ups at weekends. Dr Huth’s uniform was silver-grey, with high boots and riding breeches. On his cuff there was the RFSS cuffband worn only by Himmler’s personal staff.
    Douglas looked him up and down. There was something of the dressmaker’s dummy about this tall, thin man, in spite of the state of his uniform which was carefully pressed and cleaned but unmistakably old. He was about thirty-five years old, a powerful, muscular figure with an energy in his stride and demeanour that belied the hooded eyes that made him seem half-asleep. Under his arm he carried a short silver-topped stick, and in his hand a large briefcase. He didn’t go to the door marked for customs and immigration, he rapped the countertop with his stick, until a uniformed Lufthansa official opened the gate for him to go into the reception hall.
    ‘Archer?’
    ‘Yes, sir.’ The, officer shook his hand perfunctorily, as if his briefing had said that all Englishmen expect it.
    ‘What are we waiting for?’ said Huth.
    ‘Your staff…your baggage…’
    ‘Shotguns,