Midnight in Berlin (21 page)

“I don't know. He's fine.”

“I want a letter in his handwriting, understand? He's got to mention the weather. Got that? The weather. Before I do anything.”

Bonner was being dictated to by a Jewish whore in a bordello run by the Gestapo, of which he was a senior officer. He smiled at the absurdity.

“Your brother is a convicted terrorist,” he said. “You're lucky he is being kept alive and going through re-education. So, you do as you are bloody well told or you'll join him.”

She sat back, nostrils flaring, dark eyes glowing.

He didn't want to make her angry; what was the point? He softened.

“Join me in a drink,” he said. “Let's have some smoked salmon and sausage – yes?”

She nodded, said nothing, accepted the drink and sat beside him, staring ahead.

“I wish no harm to come to you,” he said. “We get caught up in things, don't we? All of us. We lose control. You have your brother; I have my family. We do things to protect them – is that so wrong?”

“No,” she whispered. “That's not wrong.”

“I need results. I need that Englishman. He is no different from any one of them. He'll have a dark little secret – they all do. Something he'll want you to do.”

Bonner waved an arm at the diners and in doing so almost fell off the bar stool.

“They want you, all of them, because, you know what?, you have something beyond beauty and they want it.”

He put a hand to her cheek, lifting the hair away and pushing it around the back of her neck. She didn't flinch. One more man touching her hardly mattered.

“Maybe it's the way you look.”

“Maybe it's because I'm a Jewish whore,” she said, shaking her head away.

“Exactly! So bloody well do the job.” He was angry again now. The drink was talking. “Kitty! Get her some of the pills.”

Kitty reached behind the bar and produced a small bottle.

“Put one in his drink. Get him into a room.”

“Where's my letter?” she hissed at him.

“Do what you are told or you will never hear from him again – or your mother – understood?”

She rose from her chair, shaking, it seemed to him. For a second he thought she was going to slap him.

“I'm sick and tired of it all,” she said. “You, your little games and all those maggots out there.” She waved an arm at the room and left.

As spring gave way to summer, journalists from newspapers and radio stations around the world descended on Berlin to cover what was called “the Czech crisis”. In daily broadcasts and in print, the propaganda machine in Berlin insisted that the three million members of the German-speaking population of the Sudetenland were being persecuted by the majority Czech population in the region. Cavalcades of correspondents could find no evidence of this. If anything, it was the Czech speakers who were suffering at the hands of pro-Nazi thugs in the disputed territory.

In meetings with the French, American and British ambassadors, Hitler launched ferocious assaults on what he called the Jewish-owned press of those countries and their vile attempts to smear the German people and its government. In London, the government refused to join France in pledging to come to the aid of Czechoslovakia, should that nation be attacked. As a result, the French government collapsed, the eighth administration to do so in three years.

In Washington, President Roosevelt suggested a conference of all European leaders, to include the Russian
government, in order to negotiate an end to the crisis. Deeply engaged in the New Deal programmes that were slowly turning the US economy around, the White House was not disappointed when the initiative was dismissed out of hand by the German foreign minister.

Halliday had vanished from Berlin for almost a month and no one in the embassy knew where he had gone or when he would return. When asked at the weekly meeting, the ambassador muttered something about official duties in other countries and left it at that. The senior staff in the embassy concluded that he knew no more of the whereabouts of the intelligence officer than anyone else.

Macrae had little time to worry about his missing colleague. A heat wave in June continued into the following month. There was no air conditioning in the embassy as he worked through daily requests from the War Office in London for information on the Czech frontier fortifications, manpower of the country's front-line units and the likely order of battle against an invading German army.

After a flying visit to London, Sir Nevile Henderson grandly announced that he had urged the cabinet not to give Hitler a final warning. This would only provoke him and make an invasion more likely. He was happy to report, he told his staff, that the prime minister had followed his advice. Chamberlain had decided that a face-to-face meeting with Hitler was the only way to resolve the crisis. There was no question of Hitler being invited to England. The meeting would take place in Germany, probably Munich, sometime in September.

Long hours in the embassy and exhausting trips through the Czech border regions meant that Macrae had seen little of Primrose that summer. He spent the best part of July in the Sudetenland. He now knew exactly what was meant by the old saying, a “wild-goose chase”. All that month, journalists had thundered around the hills in expensive cars, searching for signs of military activity, of which there was no evidence beyond that supplied by helpful local innkeepers and hoteliers.

They were only too happy to assure the press that there had recently been tank movements in the area and sightings of new artillery emplacements in the hills. But such activity always seemed to take place just before the press arrived. The hills kept their secrets beneath the thick foliage of their forests. By the end of July, the press, military attachés and curious tourists had all given up the chase and returned to Berlin.

On his first evening back at the embassy, Macrae was told that the ambassador was spending a few days at Göring's estate in Saxony, David Buckland was in hospital with appendicitis, and Halliday was still missing. After relaying this news, Daisy Wellesley remarked that he looked tired and should rest. She had left a bottle of champagne on his desk – won in the raffle, she said – and suggested Macrae take it home to celebrate his return.

“I've phoned your wife – she knows you're back,” she said.

Macrae left the embassy early with the bottle of champagne. He was going to have a quiet dinner that evening with Primrose. He needed some time with his wife and she with him. He would surprise her with a champagne cocktail. Whether they dined in or out depended on what was in the fridge.

She was somewhere upstairs when he arrived. He opened the champagne in the kitchen and mixed the cocktails: a sugar lump, splash of cognac and a shake of bitters in each glass, topped with champagne. He placed the glasses and the bottle on a tray and walked carefully up the stairs to the bedroom. Primrose was sitting on a cushioned stool in front of the dressing-table mirror in a white bathrobe. She was brushing her hair and turned as he came into the room.

“What a nice surprise,” she said, getting up and taking the tray. “What are we celebrating?”

Macrae untied his laces and kicked off the shoes, so that they clattered into the wardrobe door. He loosened his tie and sat down on the bed with a thump, lying back at full stretch against the pillows.

“My return. Us. Anything,” he said.

Primrose hadn't seen her husband for months, or so it seemed. The man lying on her bed – or rather their bed, she reminded herself – looked like a stranger. The lines on his face had deepened, the skin looked grey with fatigue, and there were dark pouches under his eyes.

“You look exhausted,” she said. “Poor thing. Have a drink.”

Macrae sat up against the bedhead and accepted a cocktail. She kissed him gently on the forehead and sat down on the dressing-table stool again. She began to rub cream into her forearms.

“Are you all right?” she said.

“A bit tired.”

“You're working too hard, travelling too much.”

“I know.” He watched as she sprayed eau de cologne under each arm.

“I suppose it is all very exciting, isn't it? History on the march, and all that.”

“The trouble is, it's marching the wrong way,” he said.

“I don't know what the fuss is about. Why shouldn't Hitler have the Sudetenland? They are only bloody Germans there, aren't they?”

“It's not his to take. Europe is not a sweet shop where you just grab what you want.”

“Don't patronise me, Noel.” She got up and walked to the wardrobe.

“I'm not patronising you. But do you really think he is going to stop at the Sudetenland?”

“Oh, dear God! Have I heard this a thousand times? Next it will be all of Czechoslovakia, then Poland and then Russia, then the whole bloody world. Let Hitler run the world, I say. He might make a better job of it than the lot we have now.”

She pulled open the doors of the wardrobe and looked over a rack of dresses.

“Where are you going?”

“I had no idea you would be home tonight. I have a drinks do and then the opera.”

“I thought Daisy told you I was back.”

“She just said you were back in the office. I thought it would be another late night with all those cables.”

“Well, I'll come with you.”

“I think you'd better stay here. You wouldn't enjoy it. Have a bath and finish the champagne. You need a rest.”

He watched her take off the bathrobe and reach into the wardrobe, pulling out first one dress, then another. Her skin was pale, almost milk-white. She had put on weight, he noticed. There was an attractive plumpness to her figure, the breasts heavier but still firm. Primrose used to complain about what she called her derriere, and say it was too big, but it looked fine to Macrae. He noticed that she had trimmed
her pubic hair so that the dark matted tangle had become a glossy lawn. There you have it, he thought: my wife fresh from her bath, powdered, perfumed and creamed, choosing a nice dress before going to meet her lover.

“Where is the drinks party?” he asked.

She had pulled on a dark red dress and walked to the bed so that he could zip up the back.

“At the opera house. Boring really. An American touring company is putting on a short opera. I don't know what. There's drinks beforehand.”

It was too obvious a reply to be a lie, he thought. The deceit lay in whom she would meet there. He sat up and sipped the cocktail. It had a kick and he felt better.

“Are you having an affair?” he said.

“Are you going to be very boring?” She was twisting to pull up the zip of a light blue satin dress. She had decided against the red one.

“No, I'm just asking if you're having an affair.”

“I might well ask you the same question. You're never home before midnight when you are in town, and that's not often. Are
you
having an affair? It wouldn't bother me if you were, frankly. Probably do you some good, cheer you up a bit.”

“Well, are you?”

“I'm not going to discuss it. This is childish. We're adults. Anyway, we agreed that as far as that department is concerned, you go your way and I go mine.”

“We didn't agree any such thing.”

“We did. We talked about it – remember?”

“We did
not
agree that you should take a lover.”

“For God's sake, Noel! Stop behaving like an idiot. Don't you have enough on your plate trying to stop the next war without worrying whether I'm having an affair?”

He flung the champagne flute across the room, where it shattered against the wall, leaving shards of glass on the floor and dregs of the cocktail trickling slowly down the wallpaper.

“Why shouldn't I? I'm your husband, aren't I?”

“Yes. And I'm your wife. And a bloody good wife too.”

She sat down in front of the dressing table and began applying lipstick. She was talking quite normally, as if they were having a discussion about the menu for a dinner party.

Macrae got off the bed, picked up the bottle and raised it to his lips. The champagne fizzed over his face.

“Go and find a pretty girl. You're still quite attractive.”

“You haven't answered my question.”

“What about Daisy? She likes you. I've seen her looking at you at those embassy parties. She'd like a fling, I'm sure.”

“Don't be absurd.”

“I'm not being absurd! I'm being serious. Go and enjoy yourself. Joy. J-O-Y. It's not a word you understand, is it?”

She put on her shoes, picked up a handbag, looked briefly at the shattered glass, shook her head and left, closing the door quietly behind her.

Macrae lay back, gazing at the ceiling. Tiredness stole over him and he fell asleep.

The phone woke him. He looked at his watch. It was eight o'clock. He rarely got calls at home. Diplomats were told to use the phone as little as possible, on the assumption that all lines were bugged. It was Daisy from the embassy.

“I thought you should know he's back.”

“Who?” said Macrae groggily.

“Our mutual friend. He's in a bar in Mauerstrasse.”

Macrae found Halliday looking more dishevelled than ever, sitting alone at a table studying a wine list with a glass of beer
in his hand. The veins on his nose had spread to his upper cheeks and gave his face a florid glow. His hair hung well below the collar of a linen jacket, the same one that Macrae had seen him wearing at his first morning meeting. Sweat stains coloured the armpits. He wondered if Halliday actually slept in his clothes. It certainly looked like it.

They settled for a light Austrian wine with a plate of cold meats. Halliday had not been seen at the embassy for six weeks, but Macrae knew better than to ask where he had been. He got straight to the point.

“Thank you for letting me know about the boy.”