Shadows of War (3 page)

‘And who else was part of the conspiracy?’

Theo had known most of the conspirators, but had not passed their names on to Conrad. Some, though, had been obvious.

‘Well, there’s Admiral Canaris, the Chief of the Abwehr. Theo Kordt in the German Foreign Office. Count Helldorf, the Chief of the Berlin Police. General von Witzleben. General Halder, the current Chief of the General Staff. Hjalmar Schacht, the former President of the Reichsbank. Many others I don’t know.’ As he reeled off the names, Conrad was reminded how extraordinary it was that so many senior members of the German government had been willing to overthrow their leader. And had come so close.

‘Have you come across a Captain Schämmel of the OKW Transport Division?’

Conrad frowned. ‘No, I don’t think so. There were a lot of people involved. Hertenberg may know him.’

Van was listening intently as he jotted the names Conrad mentioned on a pad of paper on his desk.

‘Over the last few months we have been bombarded by peace initiatives from every quarter. Most are a waste of time.’ Van grimaced. ‘An enormous waste of time. But our people in Holland have come across one which seems promising. They have been approached by a certain Captain Schämmel to discuss possible peace terms following a successful attempt by unspecified generals to remove Hitler.’

Conrad grinned. ‘I’m very glad to hear that.’ They had come so close twelve months before; only the offer by Neville Chamberlain of peace talks at Munich had derailed their plans at the last minute, to Conrad’s intense frustration. He had assumed that now war had been declared, all thoughts of removing Hitler would have been shelved. But apparently not.

‘Schämmel seems genuine and the Cabinet have been discussing how to respond. But we need to be sure. Which is why I thought of you.’

‘Me?’

‘Yes. You are the only Briton who has had direct contact with a number of the conspirators. I want you to go to Holland at once and meet this Schämmel, with our people. I would also like you to make contact with your friend Hertenberg. We believe that he has been operating in Holland recently; as a neutral country directly between Germany and Britain, it has seen a good deal of intelligence activity. Ask him whether the generals really are planning to remove Hitler and whether this man Schämmel represents them.’

‘Hertenberg might be unwilling to tell me,’ Conrad said. ‘He always made clear to me he was a patriot first and foremost, and his country is now at war with ours.’

‘If indeed there is coup planned, and the potential new government wishes to open discussions with us, he’ll tell you.’

Conrad considered Van’s point. It made sense.

‘Can you get in touch with him yourself?’ Van said. ‘Our people could no doubt help you, but it would probably be better all round if you could contact him independently.’

Conrad could hardly telephone him or send him a wire. But Denmark might work after all. ‘I can’t guarantee it, but I can have a go,’ he said. ‘When do I go to Holland?’

‘You are booked on a flight to Amsterdam early tomorrow morning.’

Conrad felt a rush of excitement. After the tedium of all that training, finally a chance to do something that might make a difference. ‘I’m due back at Tidworth this evening. Have you cleared it with my CO?’

‘That will be done,’ said Van.

Conrad smiled. ‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘If the German generals are finally going to dump Hitler, I’m grateful for the chance to be a part of it.’

‘Good. Mrs Dougherty outside will furnish you with the details.’ Van stood up to usher Conrad out of his office. ‘You will no doubt have contact with our people in Holland, but I would like you to report directly to me when you get back to London.’ He smiled. ‘I prefer to have direct access to sources of information. It gives me a much clearer picture.

‘Certainly, Sir Robert,’ Conrad said as he shook the mandarin’s proffered hand. ‘One question?’

‘Yes?’

‘Have you discussed this with my father?’

Van smiled. ‘In very general terms. He helped me track you down.’ The smile disappeared. ‘You raise a good point. I think it would be inadvisable to discuss the details of this with him. He may well press you on the issue, but you should be firm.’

‘I will be,’ said Conrad.

Conrad was damned sure his father would press him on the issue, and he wasn’t looking forward to that at all.

Conrad didn’t have much time. He arranged with Mrs Dougherty for his aeroplane ticket to be forwarded to his club, and went there himself to compose the telegram.

When he had last seen Theo, in Berlin over a year before, Theo had suggested a means of communication in emergencies. It involved an address in Copenhagen, and the use of certain codewords. These involved people and places from the Second Schleswig War of the 1860s, which was the subject of Conrad’s unfinished thesis at Oxford. The idea was that these could credibly be buried in a letter to a Dane on the subject of his academic work.

It was the address Conrad had used for his letter in plain English in September. He didn’t know why he hadn’t received a reply. Perhaps Theo disapproved of the sentimentality, or the lack of professionalism, or, more worryingly, he had simply never received the message.

Anyway, there was no time for a letter now. Scarcely time for a telegram. It took Conrad several attempts before he was happy.

‘
PLEASE
INFORM
PROFESSOR
MADVIG
THAT
I
WISH
TO
MEET
HIM
IN
LEIDEN
10
NOV
STOP
NEED
TO
DISCUSS
DYBBOL
STOP
LEAVE
MESSAGE
AT
HOTEL
LEVEDAG
STOP
DE
LANCEY
’.

Johan Madvig had been a Danish liberal politician in the 1860s: the use of his name in the message meant ‘meet me’. Dybbøl was the major battle of the war, and that meant ‘emergency’. Three was subtracted from any dates and times, so ‘10 Nov’ meant 7 November. And there was no way that Conrad could think of to hide the name of a rendezvous near The Hague. Leiden was a nearby university town, and the Hotel Levedag was one mentioned in the guidebook to Holland in the club library. He translated the draft telegram into Danish, addressed it to Anders Elkjaer at a house in a suburb of Copenhagen, and took it along to the Post Office to be sent right away.

It was the best he could do.

Fortunately, Conrad’s passport was at his parents’ house in Kensington Square, rather than the family home in Somerset. He would also need some civilian clothes: he could hardly travel in his uniform. Unfortunately it was likely that his father would be up in town. The most natural thing would be for Conrad to stay there that night and dine with his father, but Conrad thought Van had been absolutely correct in anticipating that Lord Oakford would want to interrogate him about his mission. Much better to sneak in, grab his things, sneak out, and stay at a hotel somewhere.

The plan worked. His father was out at the House of Lords, and Conrad left a message with his valet, Williamson, apologizing that he had missed him.

Telegram sent, travel documents in order, dressed in mufti and suitcase in hand, Conrad checked into a hotel in Bloomsbury.

Paris

Major Edward ‘Fruity’ Metcalfe skipped up the steps of the imposing house on the boulevard Suchet out by the bois de Boulogne, and rang the doorbell. The gendarme on duty outside nodded to him in recognition. Lights peeped out beneath the curtains which barely covered the tall windows of the four-storey property. There would be no German bombers that night, and the inhabitants of Paris knew it.

The door was promptly opened by a footman, and inside a butler as tall as Fruity stepped forward.

‘Good evening, Hale,’ said Fruity, handing the man his coat and hat.

‘Good evening, Major Metcalfe.’

‘You know we are dining with your former employer this evening?’

‘Please be sure to send my regards to Mr Bedaux, sir.’

‘If you like, Hale. But I don’t want to taunt him, what?’

Hale was the best butler in France. Everyone knew it, including both his former employer – Charles Bedaux, and his present employer – the Duke of Windsor.

‘Tell His Royal Highness I’m here, would you? I’ll wait.’

‘Very good, sir.’ Hale disappeared up the stairs, and Fruity settled in his favourite Louis the somethingth chair, crossed his long legs and lit up a cigarette. He stared at the absurdly ornate clock opposite him, its dial surrounded by an exploding sun of gold leaf, and listened to its familiar restful tick. One way or the other he had spent a lot of time over the last month waiting for the duke in this hallway. The duke would either be late or very late. Fruity didn’t mind: it was all part of the job.

Fruity was HRH the Duke of Windsor’s aide-de-camp, or equerry or something. He wasn’t quite sure what his official title was, which was fine, but he was becoming increasingly unsure whether he would even be paid for it, which wasn’t. The duke had found himself in a pickle when war had broken out, and Fruity had been willing to step into the breach. The British government had tied itself in knots trying to work out how the king-in-exile should be treated in the new war. The duke and his wife had returned to England from their house in Antibes to be met with official indifference. Fruity had done his duty, inviting the duke to stay at his own modest house in Sussex, and then joining him when the powers that be had finally found a job for him in France. That’s what friends were for. And whatever else he was, Fruity was the duke’s friend. Sometimes he wondered whether he was his only friend.

He heard the scrabble of paws on the stairway and stood up. Pookie, Detto and Prisie tumbled down. Fruity bent down to scratch the ears of the largest of the cairn terriers, Detto, his favourite. Detto wagged his tail, as did the other two. The younger one, the puppy, started yapping. They were all pleased to see Fruity; animals usually were.

‘Oh, Prisie, do be quiet!’

Fruity straightened up. ‘Hello, Wallis.’ He tried his best friendly smile, but it wasn’t returned. The duchess was smartly dressed for a night in alone, in an elegant black dress with a giant diamond brooch in the shape of a star sparkling from her forbiddingly flat chest. On anyone else, Fruity would have assumed it was fake, but Wallis never wore costume jewellery. She was, after all, the woman for whom a king had given up his throne.

‘Be sure to bring him back right away, Fruity.’

‘Of course, Wallis.’

‘No going on anywhere else?’

‘Straight home for us,’ Fruity said. Wallis’s strictures were completely unnecessary, more was the pity. In the old days in London, when the duke was the Prince of Wales, he and Fruity would have gone on to the Embassy Club after dinner, and stayed up all night drinking and dancing. And of course there were plenty of tempting places to visit in Paris. But the duke was even more scared of Wallis than Fruity was; there was absolutely no chance of him going on anywhere afterwards.

‘Fruity!’ The duke himself bounded down the stairs, dressed in black tie and dinner jacket, his mane of thick blond hair carefully parted and combed. He smiled broadly at Fruity, showing off those perfect gleaming teeth, his blue eyes twinkling. ‘Are you ready?’

Fruity grinned back. ‘I certainly am.’

The duke turned to his wife.

‘Give my love to Charles, Dave,’ Wallis said. Fruity winced. The duke’s family and his closest friends called him by the seventh of his many Christian names, ‘David’, instead of the first, ‘Edward’. But Dave?

‘And to Fern,’ the duchess went on. ‘I haven’t seen her for years. See if you can arrange for all of us to meet up soon, will you, sweetheart?’

‘I will, darling. Let’s go, Fruity!’

The duke’s Buick was waiting outside, piloted by his chauffeur Webster, with a former Scotland Yard detective in the front seat next to him. Fruity and the duke climbed in the back.

‘I was just writing up my notes for the Wombat,’ said the duke. ‘The Wombat’ was Major General Howard-Vyse, the senior British liaison officer at French headquarters.

‘I’d say it was rather a successful trip,’ Fruity said. They had just spent five days together touring a portion of the French lines.

‘I suppose so,’ said the duke. ‘But they are a frightful shower, the French, aren’t they? I’ve done my best to point it out tactfully, but it’s damned difficult.’

It was their third trip. The duke had been given a job at the British Mission to the French headquarters at Vincennes, reporting to the Wombat. In that role he was to inspect the French lines in a series of tours, but he had also been given the task of reporting back to the Chief of the Imperial General Staff in London with an assessment of the strengths and especially weaknesses of the French defences.

They had started near the Channel, where the powerful French 7
th
Army was poised to speed north following a German invasion of Belgium, and then worked their way east. Their most recent trip had been to the French 2
nd
Army stationed along the Meuse in the Ardennes, at the hinge where the Maginot Line along the Franco-German border met neutral Luxembourg and Belgium.

The duke was right: the 2
nd
Army was a frightful shower led by a complacent idiot, a general named Huntziger. But Fruity enjoyed driving around the lines with the Little Man, hundreds of miles from Wallis. The further he strayed from her petticoats, the more the duke loosened up, the more fun he was.

The Buick cruised down the wide avenue du Président-Wilson towards the centre of Paris. Headlights of oncoming motor cars were barely covered; strips of light spilled out between inadequate blinds in the cafés. Where London was battened down under a grim black cloak, Paris at night was lifting its hem to show some garter.

The Little Man might have to rush back to Mrs Nibs after dinner, but that didn’t mean Fruity had to.