A Small Death in Lisbon

‘Following orders.’

‘You’ll find yourself with more of a free hand than most.’

‘Now that I’m a fully paid up member of the SS . . .’

‘It’s only a mark a month off your salary and it all goes into the Spargemeinschaft-SS so you can draw interest-free loans and . . .’

‘A mark a month isn’t my problem. What am I being paid to do? Am I allowed to know yet?’

‘I wasn’t trying to bore you Hauptsturmführer Felsen, I was merely trying to give you a practical instance of what I’ve been talking about . . . what I mentioned in the car last night.’

‘The SS as an economic power in the new Germanic Reich, spreading from the North Cape of Scandinavia to the Pyrenees and the tip of the Brest Peninsula to Lublin.’

‘Don’t leave out Great Britain, the Iberian Peninsula, the Ukraine, the Black Sea states and on and on and on,’ said Lehrer. ‘The big picture, remember.’

‘I’ll settle for a thumbnail sketch for the moment. It’s the peasant brain, sir.’

‘You probably know the SS runs various businesses.’

‘I’ve only supplied couplings to the railways which are heavily used by the SS, but I don’t know much about their other business interests.’

‘We have brickworks, quarries, potteries, cement factories, building material plants, soft drinks factories, meat processing plants, bakeries and, of course, military armaments and munitions factories. There are a lot of other enterprises, but that gives you the idea.’

‘I don’t see where my expertise fits in, sir.’

‘Let’s talk about munitions. What’s the difference between this war and the last one?’

‘It’s an aerial war, an aerial bombardment war.’

‘All Berliners think about is air raids,’ Lehrer sighed. ‘I’m talking about the war. The offensive.’

‘There are no static fronts. It’s a mobile war. Blitzkrieg.’

‘Exactly. It’s a mobile war. It requires machinery, machine tools, artillery. It’s also a tank war. Tanks have armour. To stop a tank you have to penetrate the hardened steel of its armour and that requires what is known as solid-core ammunition.’

‘The shell heads are hardened with an alloy – tungsten, I believe . . . so are the machine tools, the gun barrels and tank armour.’

‘Otherwise known as wolfram or wolframite,’ said Lehrer. ‘Do you know where that comes from?’

‘China . . . most of it, and Russia. Sweden has some, not much, even though they invented the word tungsten, and . . .’ Felsen slowed as the cogs clicked, ‘. . . the Iberian Peninsula.’

‘You know your stuff.’

‘I learnt a lot from Wencdt.’

‘Wencdt?’

‘My General Manager, he’s a metallurgist,’ said Felsen. ‘You mentioned the Ukraine and the Black Sea states earlier.’

‘Ah . . .’ said Lehrer leaning back, steepling his fingers, savouring his own lips, ‘the bigger picture.’

‘I was under the impression that we had signed a non-aggression pact with Stalin in 1939. I’m not expecting you to confirm that that pact will be broken, but it hasn’t escaped the Berliners’ attention that factories are churning out massive amounts of material and it’s all heading in one direction.’

‘Let’s hope Stalin’s not as perspicacious as the Berliners.’

‘All he’d have to do is hang around the Bierstuben and Kneipen of Kreuzberg and Neukölln and offer to buy a few beers and he’d get all the military intelligence he needs.’

‘A worrying thought,’ said Lehrer, totally unconcerned. ‘Keep talking, Herr Hauptsturmführer, you’re doing very well.’

‘The wolfram we’re getting from China . . . does it come via Russia?’

‘Correct.’

‘And when we break the non-aggression pact we’ll be cutting ourselves off from the biggest wolfram suppliers in the world.’

‘Now you understand why I wanted you in uniform before I told you about the job.’

‘Susana Lopes,’ said Felsen, nodding at Lehrer. ‘You want me to use my lover’s Portuguese to buy wolfram.’

‘Portugal has the largest reserves in Europe and you didn’t get the job just because you speak Portuguese.’

‘What was wrong with Koch?’

Lehrer fanned the name away like a nasty fart.

‘Not subtle enough,’ he said. ‘This job requires finesse, an understanding of people, a sort of games-playing skill, you know, a genius for bluff, a talent for dissimulation, that kind of thing. Skills of yours we have already seen in action. And anyway, he wasn’t what Susana would call simpatico was he?’

‘Am I buying this wolfram for the SS?’

‘No, no, you’re buying it for Germany, but the Supply Department is headed by Dr Walter Scheiber who, apart from being a great chemist, is an old Party member and a true SS man. In this way, the Reichsführer Himmler wants to make sure that the SS gets the credit for the campaign and in return we’ll take more of the munitions production. That is nothing to do with you. Your task is to get your hands on every kilo of uncontracted wolfram there is.’

‘Uncontracted wolfram? What’s already under contract?’

‘The biggest mine is British. Beralt – production 2000 tons per annum. The French own the Borralha mine – production 600 tons. The United Kingdom Commercial Corporation signed a contract with Borralha last year but we are being successful, through the Vichy government, in preventing it from working. We control a small mine called Silvicola, maximum production a few hundred tons. The rest is on the open market.’

‘And how much do we need?’

‘Three thousand tons for this year.’

A clock ticked behind Felsen’s head. Snow shifted on the roof overhead and dropped in a flurry past the window.

‘May I smoke now, sir?’ asked Felsen, Lehrer nodded. ‘Didn’t you just say that the biggest mine produced two thousand tons a year?’

‘I did. And that’s not the least of your problems. The UKCC will institute pre-emptive buying offensives. You will have to manage vast quantities of “free” labour as well as your own men and any associated Portuguese agents. You will have to secure stockpiles, arrange shipments. You will have to be . . . how shall I put it . . . unconventional in your methods.’

‘Smuggling?’

Lehrer stretched his fattening neck out of his collar.