A War of Flowers (2014) (39 page)

On that day the girl’s tray held small round wooden pins of the Reichsmütterdienst, formed in the shape of an alpine flower. Clara picked one up, gave a mark for it, and watched the
child move on to the next door to rouse Herr Engel.

Nerves had dulled her appetite, so after drinking a quick cup of tea – black because she had forgotten to buy milk – Clara headed out. In the streets, sandbags had been piled up, and
a couple of children were playing with one that had split, scooping handfuls of it into their own little fortresses. The railings alongside had been removed, for melting down into aeroplanes.

The city was at its most beautiful that day – the trees were flushed with gold and the first autumnal edge had entered the air – but beneath Berlin’s distinctive smell of buses
and trams, asphalt and pine, there was another scent now – the smell of fear. It was pressed into the walls and trapped in the streets, lurking behind the impassive faces. It was there,
although everything was doing its best to look normal. Even though the Ku’damm still hummed with the bustle of people out on a Sunday stroll, girls window-shopping the smart stores, ancient
men with cracked leathery faces and fur rugs over their knees, sipping steaming coffee with pursed lips, sparrows bobbing on and off the tables, bicycle bells ringing and Zoo station rearing like a
great botanical greenhouse behind them. It was there in Clara herself, who forced herself to walk at the same, unhurried pace as the Sunday strollers, hoping that yesterday’s shadow had not
resumed his task.

As she walked, Clara thought about the message she had sent to London Films and calculated what she had achieved in the past couple of weeks. She had done what they asked her to do. She had got
close to Eva Braun, and even rescued her from suicide. She had learned that Hitler was intemperate, liable to wage war at any moment, but other than that, she had no valuable detail. Now she was
about to be drawn into a plot against Hitler staged by Germans themselves. What would the men back in London make of that?

Clausewitzstrasse was a tree-lined street leading off the smartest end of the Ku’damm in Charlottenburg. The expensive, nineteenth-century buildings with their white
stucco faces and mahogany-panelled halls housed doctors and lawyers, many of them Jewish, judging by the Meyers and Grossmanns on the brass nameplates by the bell which Clara rang. At the top of
the block a curtain twitched at a window.

Max Brandt opened the door, but he was no longer the passionate, seductive figure who had wooed her with oysters and champagne in his Munich hotel room. His eyes were bloodshot as if he
hadn’t slept and a bluish tinge of stubble darkened his cheeks. He wore a crumpled, open-necked shirt and braces and smelt of alcohol and cigarette smoke. For a moment he hesitated and she
thought he would embrace her, but instead he waved her inside to the drawing room where a man in immaculate field-grey uniform was standing in the centre of the room.

‘Ulrich Welzer. Clara Vine.’

Welzer stiffened with Prussian instinct and clicked his heels. He must have been around forty, with features finely chiselled by generations of Prussian breeding and a wave of immaculate blond
hair.

‘Ulrich wanted to meet you briefly.’

Welzer grasped Clara’s hand and fixed her with a penetrating stare. She could sense him taking her in, his eyes sweeping over her cotton blouse and tweed skirt, noting the cut of her hair
and the colour of her eyes. He even glanced down at her shoes – black leather T-bar – and then up again to the silver locket at her throat. She had the impression that he was committing
every part of her to memory and she returned his gaze unwaveringly.

‘All too briefly, I’m afraid, Fräulein Vine,’ he spoke with precise, upper-class diction. ‘I’m due to drive out to the country for lunch with my mother today,
and she will not look kindly on me if I’m late. But believe me when I say, I am very pleased to make your acquaintance.’

‘And I yours.’

‘Ulrich works at the Abwehr, with Colonel Oster,’ said Brandt.

Clara frowned, uncomprehendingly.

‘I’m sorry, Clara. We’ve been up half the night talking. I forgot that you know nothing of this. I’ll explain.’

‘And perhaps we can make a better acquaintance when this enterprise is over,’ said Welzer gallantly. ‘I have seen many of your films, Fräulein Vine. In happier times. I
would far prefer to discuss movies than army manoeuvres.’

With a nod at Brandt, he crossed to the door and was gone.

‘Did I interrupt something?’

‘He just wanted to get a good look at you. So he’ll recognize you when he sees you again.’

He turned on the wireless – an act which had become automatic for any Berliner planning a private conversation. It was one of the ‘People’s’ sets, the
Volksempfänger, which were universally dubbed Goebbels’ Snout. A blast of dance music drifted out.

‘In England they have a record label called His Master’s Voice. I suppose the Goebbels’ Snout must be Our Master’s Voice.’

The orchestra was playing a sweet, lyrical ballad called
Adolf Hitler’s Lieblingsblume
which was wildly popular just then. Adolf Hitler’s favourite flower. It had the
tendency, once heard, to embed itself in the listener’s mind for hours.

Brandt listened for a moment.

‘Do you like this one?’

‘No. It’s dreadful.’

‘You’re wrong, my dear. It’s brilliant. Goebbels thought of it. Adolf Hitler’s favourite flower. Hitler doesn’t give a damn about flowers of course, I know for a
fact, but Goebbels thinks of everything. Whatever else you say about him, Goebbels is a tailor. He tailors people to be the way he wants them. Sit down or take a look around while I fix you some
coffee.’

Clara walked slowly round the apartment. It was luxuriously equipped, the antique furniture burnished and gleaming, the walls covered in paintings she could tell were valuable; an engraving of a
hare, a still life of flowers, and one of a dead partridge. Another wall was devoted to bookcases and the floor was covered in deep Persian rugs. A bronze copy of the Brandenburg Gate’s
quadriga stood on the mantelpiece and there was a low Chinese lacquered table piled with more books. In the corner, a cabinet of burled walnut was clustered with bottles – brandy, cognac,
vodka – and a cocktail shaker, and above it hung watercolours of a German lake. Behind the radio on a chest of drawers was a photograph of two small boys in sailor suits, accompanied by a
young woman in white lace, whose dark curls and shy smile marked her out as Brandt’s mother. Beside it was a glass bottle containing a ship in full rig spreading its sails. Clara bent down to
inspect the meticulous modelling of the decks and the steelwork. Tiny passengers could be seen on deck and through the windows of the cabins. Like all German products, it was engineered to a high
standard, a perfectly reproduced nineteenth-century sailing ship, correct in every detail.

Brandt returned with two cups of steaming coffee. It was the real thing, Clara could tell from its aroma. He flung himself down onto the sofa and spread his arms across the back.

‘That’s my mother you were looking at. I miss her every day. Do you miss yours?’

‘It’s been more than ten years, but yes, I do.’

‘Were you alike?’

‘Physically very much, and I think in some aspects of character too. But my mother kept her cards close to her chest and that meant I never felt I knew her properly. The reason I came to
Berlin originally was because I wanted to feel closer to her and understand the country she’d grown up in but . . .’ Clara scratched a pensive fingernail along the sofa’s arm,
‘though I miss my mother, it sounds wrong, but I feel angry at her too.’

‘For dying?’

‘I’ve never told anyone this, but her death left me feeling abandoned. That’s monstrous of course to my dear mother, but her dying when I was sixteen left me with a sense that
you can’t ever rely on anyone. Or that anyone you do love will desert you. And in some ways, that’s become true in my life.’

Brandt was gazing at her fixedly.

‘It will only be true if you allow it to be. You can protect yourself from love, Clara, or you can take a chance and risk being hurt.’ He touched her hand fleetingly. ‘And
everything I know about you tells me you’re brave enough to take risks.’

She blinked and turned away, fixing her attention on the ship in the bottle.

‘It’s a beautiful thing, isn’t it? My father was in the Navy and he made that ship for me. I loved it as a child – it symbolized the idea that one day I might
escape.’

‘You mean travel?’

‘Travel, certainly. But escape too. It’s why I joined the Foreign Service – the idea of other countries was always appealing to me, no matter how much I loved my own. I never
wanted to be tied down by national boundaries. But now, I suppose, is no time to be talking about travel . . .’ He leant forward grave-faced, suddenly businesslike. ‘Things are moving
fast. There’s no time to lose.’

Clara replaced her coffee untouched, and sat attentively.

‘Remember when we last talked I told you that it was crucial for us that Chamberlain takes a strong stand against Hitler’s threats to the Sudetenland? So that Germans understand
their Führer is a warmonger? Well Chamberlain’s back in London and it seems Hitler has no intention of backing down from his plans. Welzer has just informed me that Hitler has secretly
moved his troops into attack formation along the Czech border. The resistance has decided it’s now or never.’

A chill ran down her spine.

‘What does that mean?’

‘It means I need to give you a little more information about our plans. This has been a long time in the preparation. A few weeks ago Ludwig Beck, the Chief of Staff, resigned as a
Wehrmacht officer in protest at Hitler’s plans to take Czechoslovakia by force. Since then, an entire provisional government has been drawn up. Under the plan, Beck will be regent in the
post-Hitler regime. The plotters will arrest and try Hitler. They’ve compiled a file of Hitler’s crimes and will prosecute him in a people’s court. They’ve lined up a
neurologist to testify that he’s insane and they’ve found that he and his parents are descended from a line of highly psychotic people. The plot goes right up to Canaris, the head of
the Abwehr.’

‘Canaris? You mean German Military Intelligence is behind a plot to oust Hitler?’ She stared at him, trying to grasp the magnitude of the endeavour.

‘Canaris has all the files on the Nazi leaders, he knows everything, but it’s too risky for him to play a leading part, so he’s promoted a young colonel to be his deputy,
Colonel Hans Oster. Oster is a Christian. He hates the SS. He’s obsessed with getting rid of Hitler, so he will mastermind the coup.’

‘How will it happen?’

‘They’ve been planning this for a long time. They have a string of safe houses around the Reich Chancellery, stashed with arms and ammunition. The aim is to occupy the government
quarter, take over the government communication centres and neutralize the Gestapo and the SS. The Gestapo has camouflaged its buildings well – they’re mainly quite innocuous outposts
but Arthur Nebe, the Gestapo’s head of criminal investigation, has provided a map of all the Gestapo bases in Berlin. Count von Helldorf, the head of the Berlin police, is also
involved.’

Canaris? Arthur Nebe? And the head of the Berlin police? Clara was stunned at the level of the people involved.

‘The idea is, if we raid the Gestapo, SD and SS offices, we should turn up enough evidence to try all the key players and provide legitimacy for the coup to the rest of the world. At the
same time we’ll have a ready-made list of names and addresses of Gestapo informers to be rounded up and arrested.’

He stubbed out his cigarette, and immediately lit another.

‘They’ve decided that tomorrow’s the time to strike.’

‘Tomorrow!’

‘It has to be. The country must be on the brink of war before a coup like this could succeed. That’s the only circumstance in which army officers could be persuaded to rise up
against Hitler. Only a lunatic would underestimate the force he exerts on the minds of the people. The only way they will accept their Führer’s arrest is as an alternative to dragging us
into a senseless war. And it looks very much as though that is what Hitler has in mind.’

‘So what will happen?’

‘Captain Friedrich Heinz, a colleague of Oster’s, has a commando unit of twenty men who will assemble at dawn at army headquarters in Bendlerstrasse. They will be issued with
grenades and guns with instructions to take the Chancellery by force. The commander of the Berlin military district, General von Witzleben, will be escorted to the Chancellery by a unit of thirty
active army officers to perform the arrest of Hitler.’

Clara thought of the impenetrable wall of black-suited SS who formed around the Führer at all times.

‘But surely Hitler’s protected by his own bodyguard. They’ll die before they give him up.’

‘The Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler consists of thirty-nine men and three officers. They are all specially selected and personally approved by the Führer himself. Only twelve are on duty
at any moment. There is one security guard at the main entrance of Wilhelmstrasse 78, and one at Hitler’s residence at number 77. There are other armed guards around the Chancellery and
special security officers who work at reception. They look like ordinary reception officers but they are trained to recognize people of interest. Potential assassins. However, that number of guards
is not an overwhelming security force. A commando raid of twenty would certainly be able to overcome them.’

‘And what then?’

‘The 23rd infantry division is based in Potsdam. They will be ordered to march on Berlin and occupy all key ministries, radio stations, police, Gestapo and SS installations. They’ll
seize Himmler, Goering and Goebbels. We will need to occupy all the transport and communication centres in Berlin. For the purposes of this operation Oster’s codename is Uncle Whitsun. Hitler
is Emil, the Reich Chancellory is Mount Olympus.’