Last Man to Die. Michael Dobbs

      So he had come to Berlin. He had never before been to the German capital yet, as he began to suspect that the mincing clerics he had so long despised might after all be right, that he should prepare to account for those things he had done, so a sense of guilt had risen inside him. Guilt was a new feeling; he didn’t know how to handle it. It implied fallibility and a concern for the judgement of others, characteristics for which he was not noted. He had always worked behind the scenes, wielding his influence away from the public eye and never having to answer to any other than a handful of the good and great, and the justification of acting in the national interest had served to excuse a multitude of sins. Yet as death loomed, the excuse seemed no longer enough, not for what had been planned for Berlin. He had always avoided the place, not wishing to allow any measure of doubt to enter the comforting certainties of his life, but those certainties were being corrupted along with his flesh and it had become all but inevitable that he should fly here, a last attempt to atone on earth for the things he had no desire to answer for in another place.

      Sir William Cazolet Bart., KCMG, CB, CVO etc., former adviser to Prime Ministers and éminence grise of the British Establishment, whose informed if unattributable counsel had frequently been sought by monarchs, judges and editors, sat on the upper deck of a bright green tour bus as it barged its way around the sights of Berlin. Most of the other passengers were still in shirtsleeves, enjoying the last of the September warmth, but Cazolet was wrapped up tight in hat and scarf. His circulation had gone and his long, thin fingers showed like white bird’s claws as they gripped the seat in front for support against the swaying of the bus. He shouldn’t travel until next spring, one doctor had advised. There’s no point in waiting, another had countered looking deep into his glassy eyes, you won’t be here by then.

      Berlin was not as he had imagined. Somehow his mind’s eye had always seen the city in black and white, slightly flickering, like an old British Pathé newsreel, but the western half was tinselly, garish and loud, while the east still bore the scars of the attempt to build nirvana out of concrete. ‘Directly ahead you shall see the Brandenburg Gate,’ intoned the courier, ‘built in 1791 to act as a toll gate at the western end of Unter den Linden. It was here on 13 August 1961 that the first stones of the Berlin Wall are being laid. The statue of the goddess of Victory on top was firstly naked, but was quickly covered up, and then taken for a few years to Paris by Napoleon …’

      The bus lurched to the right and the Gate was no longer in sight. An overweight American in the next seat who had been sleeping off lunch gave a belch as he came to life and muttered something in the ear of his equally substantial wife. She ignored him, burrowing into her guide book, double checking everything they were told by the courier with an air of unremitting scepticism as if anxious to ensure they were getting their money’s worth. She saw Cazolet staring. ‘Yeah?’ she said aggressively as if welcoming the opportunity to engage in combat with someone new, before being distracted once again by the voice over the loudspeaker.

      ‘The low grassy mound you are seeing in front of you is all that is left of Hitler’s infamous Bunker, which was blown up by the Russians after the war. It was from this point that Hitler and his generals directed the campaign in its last few months, and it was here that he and his mistress Eva Braun committed suicide in the closing days of the war, she by poison, he by shooting himself …’

      Up to this point the fat American had been far more engrossed in her guide book than the real-life sights of Berlin, but now she stared out of the window, leaning across the girth of her husband to get as close as possible. ‘’S no bigger than a Little League pitcher’s mound, Leo,’ she snorted in contempt, digging her husband in the ribs before snapping her guide book shut and burying her nose in a slimming magazine. Leo, grateful for the respite, went back to sleep.

      Neither of them noticed Cazolet’s reaction. He was sitting to attention in his seat as though reprimanded, his head swivelling on its scrawny neck to ensure that his eyes stayed fixed upon the grassy knoll for as long as possible. When at last it vanished from sight the old man slumped back in his seat, a puppet with all its wires cut. His face, already pale, had become chalky white beneath the parchment skin, the only sign of colour being the blue veins throbbing at the temples. His breathing was anguished, the air forced through thin, downcast lips. There was sweat on his brow and the dim eyes stared straight ahead, taking in nothing, lost in a distant world of their own. He took no further interest in the tour and showed no sign of leaving the bus when it reached its final stop. The courier had to shake him by the shoulder to rouse him. ‘Must have had a turn,’ the courier muttered to the driver, relieved that the old man was able, albeit with difficulty, to disembark and so release him and the tour company from any further responsibility.

      It was not until the following day that Cazolet seemed to have recovered the grim determination which had brought him to the city. There was more to be seen, but he forsook the formal guided tours and instead commandeered a taxi. ‘Take me to old Berlin,’ he instructed. ‘I want to see the city as it was, before the war.’

      ‘What’s left to see? Try a picture library,’ the driver muttered.

      But Cazolet had insisted, so the driver, encouraged by a substantial tip paid up front, had driven east and north, across the line where the old Wall had only recently divided the city before being chipped to fragments by a thousand hammers, into the working-class district of Niederschoenhausen. As the sights of the tourist brochures slipped away behind them the shrunken figure in the back seat seemed gradually to come to life. This was more as he had imagined it, sad, grey, like British Pathé. ‘Slow down,’ he ordered, peering intently out of the window as they came off the highway and began to bounce along streets of bare cobblestone.

      For some while they crawled between the rows of austere, gloomy tenements that huddled along either side of the road. There was little life to be seen. The only greenery grew out of the cracks in the cornicing that hung, often precariously, along the frontages, and the few people he saw on the streets had expressions which perfectly matched their dismal surroundings. Many of the buildings were in need of substantial repair, with dripping algae-covered water outlets and cracked window panes, or bits of board and cellophane where windows ought to have been. The ancient ravages of war could still be seen in the pockmarks which were spattered across the façades. There were gaps between houses where buildings had once stood but where now there was nothing but a wilderness of weeds doubling as a burial ground for old cars. Everything seemed worn out, of a past age, just waiting to die. At last, Cazolet told himself grimly, he had found a place where he belonged.

      He stopped outside the shop for no better reason than that it appeared to be the only place open. It loosely described itself as an antique shop but the goods were more second-hand than aged. As he opened the door, a bell jangled overhead producing not a bright song of welcome but a choking sound, a stiff rattle of discontent as if complaining at being disturbed. Cazolet guessed it had been that way for a long, long time. The shop was cramped and narrow, like a railway carriage, with a thin corridor down the middle between bric-à-brac and dusty oddments which were piled with little apparent logic or order along the shelves and on top of the collection of dark tables and bureaux that had been pushed against the walls. The best of what there was seemed to be in the front window, a large blue-and-white Nanking temple vase which was a modern reproduction, he guessed, and a nineteenth-century mahogany upright clock with an intricate brass face but no back panel. It had been disembowelled and the movement lay on the floor beside it. Both vase and clock bore a substantial layer of dust, as did the owner, who appeared from behind a curtain at the back of the shop wiping his hands on a tea towel. He had a stomach which his grimy undervest and leather belt had difficulty in containing, and from his scowl and the grease that had dribbled on to his chin it appeared as though he had been disturbed in the middle of eating. He was somewhere in his mid-sixties, Cazolet estimated. As always when he met a German of his own age, Cazolet wondered what the other had done during the war and what secrets and torments hid behind the watery, suspicious eyes. He would have been about fifteen by the end of the fighting. In Berlin that was old enough to have been conscripted, to have been sent out with nothing more than a couple of grenades and a busted rifle to face the Soviet tanks and the peasant-conscripts who swarmed behind, to have fought for Berlin street by street and sewer by bloody sewer, to have killed and been killed. Many much younger