Traitor's Gate (38 page)

And then he thought of her as he had known her. The hours piled upon hours that they had spent together, talking. How being with someone had never felt so right to him before. He remembered the way she stood; her hair, her smile, her green eyes, her smell; her irony – how she teased him gently, invigorating him. He remembered how her skin felt cool under his hot touch. He remembered her vitality, her spirit and also the vulnerability that she so jealously guarded and that he alone was allowed to see. At that moment he could remember everything about her with total clarity. He wanted to hold the moment forever; he had a terrible fear that from now on his memory of her would fade and fray until only scraps remained.

Of course it was his fault that she had died. The second that they had realized exactly how obsessed Klaus Schalke was with her he should have backed off. Somehow he could have arranged for her to leave Germany; and even if he hadn’t succeeded she would still be alive. He was too selfish; he had simply wanted to spend as much time with her as possible and now he was paying the price.

What was he thinking? She was the one who had paid the price.

He wanted to get right away from Berlin. From England too. Start a new life. Find a hole a long way away that he could crawl into. America, perhaps? No, that wasn’t far enough. India? New Zealand – now that was a long long way away.

Then, almost as if he could hear her, he thought about what Anneliese would have made of the situation. Do something practical, she would have said, something that would make a difference. While there was a chance that he could help Theo and his friends get rid of Hitler, he couldn’t run away. He had to help in any way he could: if necessary he would kill the dictator himself. His pulse quickened at the thought.

Ultimately one man was responsible for Anneliese’s death, and for the deaths of thousands of other Germans. Adolf Hitler. For most of his life, Conrad had shied away from killing, but now he remembered Anneliese’s words when they were discussing whether he should help von Kleist. It was his duty: to himself, to Anneliese, to humanity.

Someone had to kill Hitler, and kill him soon before the whole of Europe was engulfed in his evil. Conrad was deter­mined that that person should be he.

And, while he was at it, he would get even with Klaus Schalke as well.

Otto Barsch admired the climbing rose he had just cut back. The rose had had a wonderful summer, and had now conquered the whole length of the arbour at the back of the garden. The garden was not Otto’s; it belonged to a civil servant in the Transport Ministry. When Otto had started working in the garden four years before, the two boys of the house had still spent most of their summer holidays there with their friends. Now they were older they went further afield for their fun.

Otto hadn’t always been a gardener. He came from Breslau in Silesia. He had fought in the war, displaying the commonplace bravery of the ordinary soldier who managed somehow to keep his sanity in the hell of flying metal, mud and death. Afterwards he had taken a job in a factory manufacturing lifting equipment for the coal mines, but in 1930 he, along with all his colleagues, had been thrown out on to the street. He had migrated to Berlin, and had spent a couple of years near starvation before securing odd jobs as a gardener in this quarter of Dahlem. He had discovered a natural talent, and the householders seemed to like his air of steady reliability and his genial but respectful conversation, so he now worked for most of the people on that particular road. He didn’t earn much money, scarcely enough to keep his wife and his daughter in their tiny tenement room.

The tough couple of years of the early thirties had been brightened by membership of the Nazi Party and the SA. Although not a violent man by nature, he couldn’t help but be invigorated by the street battles with the communists, and when Hitler came to power in January 1933, his happiness knew no bounds. With his brown uniform, which he religiously wore on Sundays and at every other opportunity, came a certain power and status that gave Otto a much-needed boost. But after the initial euphoria, things had not gone quite so well for him. The SA had been humiliated during the Night of the Long Knives in 1934, and the rearmament boom of the 1930s had somehow left him behind, barely scratching a living among the tulips, roses and hydrangeas of the suburban gardens.

He took his duty as a Nazi and a German seriously, and he was proud to be the
Blockwart
for the street. This was a semi-official position, the holder of which had a duty to pass on any suspicious or anti-social behaviour in his block to higher authorities. This caused him some anguish, as he liked the people he worked for. When a young clerk had been whisked away after Otto had overheard him listening to the BBC, Otto had felt rotten. In particular he liked the Wedemeyers, and Frau von Wedemeyer, who, although not a German, was looking the picture of a good Aryan mother-to-be, with her blonde plaited hair, her rosy cheeks and her full belly.

So he hadn’t said anything when he had spotted the foot­prints by the fence at the back of the garden, or the light on in the attic. But when he peered through the beech hedge to the next-door garden and saw a young athletic man brazenly walk out of the house and leap over the back fence in broad daylight, he decided he ought to report it. It was his duty.

Theo felt terrible as he left the Dahlem house. Conrad had had a very rough time since he had come to Germany. Theo liked Anneliese, admired her even, in a way he could never admire Sophie. For a short spell, far too brief, Conrad had been a lucky man. This madness could not be allowed to continue. Perhaps Chamberlain’s negotiations with Hitler would fail, or he would miraculously change his mind, and the coup could go ahead. Theo desperately hoped so.

He took the U-Bahn across the city to a small café around the corner from St Hedwig’s Hospital, where he had arranged to meet Sophie. He was forty minutes late, but she was still waiting for him, as he knew she would be, in her crisp nurse’s uniform with a cup of coffee and a newspaper in front of her.

‘I’m sorry, Sophie,’ he said. ‘Things are frantic at the War Office. I hope you’re not late for work.’

Sophie smiled, pleased to see him. ‘I’ve got ten minutes, and it sounded important.’ She tapped the newspaper she was reading, the
Berliner Tageblatt.
‘I’m sure things are busy, with everything that’s going on in the Sudetenland.’

Theo took the paper. Women and children mown down by Czech armoured cars, screamed the headline.

He tossed it back on the table. ‘I don’t know how they can write this rubbish.’

‘Don’t you believe it’s true?’

‘Of course it’s not.’

Sophie frowned. ‘What about that one, then?’ The headline on the abandoned paper at the table next to them was clearly visible.
Bloody regime – new Czech murders of Germans
. ‘And I have heard Henlein on the wireless. He says he has
seen
the Czech army committing atrocities. And he’s there.’

‘Of course he does,’ said Theo impatiently. ‘And anyway, he’s not there any more, he’s run away back to Germany. The truth is the Sudeten uprising has fizzled out in the rain. And from what we are hearing, the Czechs have actually shown restraint.’

‘So the newspapers are lying?’ Sophie’s big blue eyes showed confusion, but also a hint of anger.

‘Basically, yes.’

‘Theo, sometimes I think you are too clever,’ she said. ‘You don’t see the things that are right in front of your nose. The Sudetenland is German; it’s full of Germans, who just want to be a part of their own country. We have to help them. My father thinks we should invade Czechoslovakia, and I think he’s right. It’s only justice.’

‘So your father is an expert on international relations, is he?’ said Theo. ‘Why does he care? There aren’t many fish in Czechoslovakia, you know.’

Sophie reddened. ‘He may be a fishmonger, but he is an intelligent man who is interested in these things. Yes, he’s just an ordinary German, he’s not a general like your father, but he has common sense. And he fought for his country in the war. In a trench, not in a
Schloss
thirty kilometres behind the lines.’

Theo bit back his anger. ‘I’ve told you before, Sophie, you can’t believe what you read in the papers. Especially these days.’

‘I’m going to be late,’ said Sophie. ‘You said you had some­thing to tell me. Is that it?’

‘Anneliese is dead,’ Theo said baldly. As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he regretted their bluntness.

Sophie froze. She blinked, and a tear leaked out of first one eye and then the other. ‘Oh, no.’ It wasn’t a cry. It was little more than a whisper.

Theo reached over the table and held her hand in his.

‘She wasn’t even Jewish,’ Sophie said, the tears flowing freely. ‘She was a Christian, really. They made a mistake. A dreadful mistake.’

Theo withdrew his hand. ‘So it would have been OK if she was one hundred per cent Jewish?’

Anger flashed in Sophie’s moist eyes. ‘She was my friend, Theo. Leave me alone!’

Theo let her blunder out of the café, thinking he should have handled her better. But sometimes he just didn’t have the patience to put up with the ignorance he saw all around him. He fought the temptation to order a quick brandy, paid the bill and left.

Twenty metres down the street from the café a man stepped out of the doorway and set off after Theo. He had picked Theo up that morning, catching him as he brought his horse into the Tattersalls’ stables by the zoo in the Tiergarten. The Abwehr officer really had been foolish to think the same dodge would work twice.

Lord Oakford emerged from the Travellers’ Club in Pall Mall and decided to walk all the way home across Green Park, Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens. He had a lot to think about. He had just had luncheon with Sir Robert Vansittart, who had filled him in on the comings and goings between London and Germany, and just as important, between Whitehall and No. 10. Both Van and Lord Oakford had been at Eton with Lord Halifax. Van had shone in comparison to Wood, as Halifax was known then, being a member of ‘Pop’, the exclusive club for the most popular boys, and an Oppidan Scholar. Although Halifax had caught up later on – he had after all won a fellowship to All Souls College in Oxford – Van had never quite got out of the habit of looking down his nose at the six-foot-eight-inch peer, something that had not helped their relationship when Halifax was Foreign Secretary and Van was his adviser. But Van knew Halifax well, and what he had had to say about him had made Lord Oakford think.

London was alive with preparations for war. Hyde Park resembled a building site, with soldiers energetically digging trenches everywhere. Barrage balloons were floating up and down the Thames from the most unlikely places, and the snouts of anti-aircraft guns pointed skywards. Extra editions of the newspapers were whipped from vendors within minutes of their being delivered. These announced government plans to issue gas masks to every adult, child and baby in the land.

Lord Oakford wished that he could speak to his son about what he had just heard over luncheon. He had no idea where Conrad was: only that he was in hiding somewhere in or around Berlin. Lord Oakford had a feeling that something could still be done to save the situation but it would have to be done rapidly, and Conrad was the man to do it. Through Warren Sumner he had a means of communicating with him, but he really needed to discuss things face-to-face. For a mad moment he thought of flying over to Berlin himself. But that would attract too much attention. Also, he would have to ask the government’s permission, which would be exceedingly awkward, and almost certainly wouldn’t be granted.

But someone had to make contact with Conrad. Someone whom both he and Conrad trusted, who was intelligent enough to pass on complicated messages, and above all who wouldn’t raise the suspicions of the German authorities. The answer came to him as he passed the round pond in Kensington Gardens. As soon as he reached the house in Kensington Square he telephoned Chilton Coombe and spoke to Millie, telling her to come to London by the first available train and to bring her passport.

The follow-up meeting between Chamberlain and Hitler took place at Bad Godesberg, on the Rhine, on 22 September. It all started well enough. Chamberlain was met at Cologne Aerodrome by a guard of honour and a fine band playing ‘God Save the King’. He was driven from there to the Petersberg Hotel, one of the most luxurious in Germany. Each room had its own bathroom filled with the products of Cologne: scent, soap, bath salts and shaving equipment. A balcony ran the length of the hotel, and Chamberlain and Henderson spent the following morn­ing admiring the view of the Rhine, glimmering in the warm Indian summer sunshine, and discussing the forthcoming talks.

Hitler had taken up residence in the Hotel Dreesen on the other side of the river, and at five o’clock in the afternoon Chamberlain, Henderson and Ivone Kirkpatrick crossed the Rhine by ferry under the eyes of thousands of onlookers lining the banks. It felt rather like Henley or the University Boat Race. Hitler met Chamberlain at the entrance of the hotel, and proceedings began without delay.

Chamberlain started by laying out all that he had achieved since their meeting at Berchtesgaden. He had managed to obtain the agreement of the British Cabinet, the French government and most crucially the Czech government on the peaceful transfer of the Sudetenland to Germany. Now all that remained was to discuss how to achieve this transfer, and once that had been settled to put in place guarantees for peace in Europe.

Then things went wrong.

Hitler announced that everything Chamberlain had done so far, all his efforts at finding a compromise over Czecho­slovakia, were now of no use. Chamberlain was shocked. Having worked so hard to accede to Hitler’s demands he was being told that he hadn’t gone far enough. Hitler went on to explain that his friendship with Hungary and Poland demanded that their claims on Czechoslovakia must be met also.

This was plainly ridiculous, but Chamberlain wasn’t about to give up. He had come to Bad Godesberg to secure peace for Europe, and he wasn’t going to let Hitler’s intransigence sway him from that goal. A long, tough twenty-four hours of negotiations lay ahead for the two leaders.