Midnight in Berlin (5 page)

He wondered how the Big Four from Africa – elephant, rhino, lion and giraffe – were faring in the weather. The penguins, seals and polar bears would be thriving. But the species from warmer climes would have heated indoor areas. He would visit the elephants first, he decided, less in the hope of finding Koenig than because it would be warm.

“Das Reptilienhaus ist sehr gut,”
piped a small voice beside him.

Macrae looked round to see a boy aged about ten, his face barely visibly beneath hat and scarf. The boy backed away, gave a little wave, then ran off.

Macrae turned to the map. The reptiles were kept on the far side of the zoo between a children's play area and the bear enclosure. He pushed through the crowd and began to walk.

It was dark and warm in the reptile house. A large sign in English and German asked visitors to be silent and not to disturb the creatures by tapping on the glass. At first he could not see properly, then he became aware of a row of dimly lit plate-glass windows stretching either side of a long gallery.
He walked to the first and peered around the heads of a family, mother, father and three children.

They were all looking into an Amazonian jungle setting, hoping to see a yellow anaconda. The jungle had been cleverly brought to life with a pond fed by a small stream and a painted backdrop of a tree canopy, through which flitted parrots and parakeets. In the centre was a log, around which was draped the anaconda. The reptile was motionless, its yellow and black markings creating such effective camouflage that it was hard to tell what was log and what was snake. The eldest boy tapped on the glass and was immediately restrained by his mother, who hissed something in his ear.

Macrae walked on, hoping to find a window that might afford him a better view. He was feeling warmer. He had almost forgotten what he had come for. A large crowd had gathered around one of the bigger enclosures. Macrae peered over their heads. Two snakes were moving slowly over a tangle of branches and logs. They were identified on a sign as Burmese pythons, the world's longest snake, which could grow up to six metres in length and normally ate small mammals such as rabbits but would on occasion take a deer or an unwary human being.

There was a murmur from the observers and they began pressing forward, jostling for a better look. A thin pole had appeared at the top of the cage, from which dangled a rat on a short length of twine. The rat was alive and it struggled as it was slowly lowered into the cage. It was fastened to the pole with a loop. Both snakes began to raise themselves, their hoods opening. With a shake of the pole, the rat was released and dropped onto the vegetation below. The crowd gave a loud “Ahhh!”

The rat vanished from view towards the back of the enclosure. As if by agreement, one snake remained still while the other moved fast, its silvery skin slithering swiftly through
the undergrowth. The snake reappeared within seconds. The rat was struggling in its jaws. Mothers began to move their children away but they tugged back, determined to witness the final scene in the drama.

“Feeding time at the zoo is very popular,” said a voice.

Macrae turned to see Koenig behind him, smiling. They shook hands. It was the first time he had seen the German out of military uniform. He was dressed smartly in country clothes: a brown herringbone overcoat on top of a tweed jacket, thick corduroy trousers and boots.

“I didn't know you were allowed to feed live animals to these snakes.”

“Not quite the same as the London zoo, I am sure,” said Koenig. “But this is Berlin. Shall we have coffee, and maybe something with it?”

He reached into his pocket and drew out the top half of a silver hip flask.

“Where are your children?”

“They have gone off to see the lions. It's their feeding time, too. Very efficient. If you have them at the same time, you halve the crowds.”

They sat in a corner of the cafeteria with two cups of coffee liberally laced with cognac.

“You wanted to see me?” said Koenig.

“It's been a couple of years and I thought it might be good to renew our friendship.”

Koenig laughed. “Of course. I knew you were here, but it is difficult to get in touch. These are, how shall I say this …?”

“Interesting times?”

“Let's just say times when it pays to be cautious. Anyway, good to see you. How is Primrose?”

They talked for a while of Primrose, his children and his new job. Koenig had risen to be a full colonel on the general staff. He was proud of the promotion and it reminded Macrae of the time they had first met in Vienna four years earlier.

It was Macrae's first week in post in the Austrian capital as military attaché. His predecessor had left him a list of English-speaking German officers of sufficient rank and prospects to merit a good dinner at Maxim's. The restaurant was one of the oldest in Vienna, frequented by those rich enough to afford the extravagant cost of a meal or lucky enough to work for an organisation that conferred a liberal expense account upon its executives.

His predecessor's list included senior officers of known conservative views in infantry or armoured regiments who were excelling at the staff college in Berlin. Such officers regularly visited the Austrian capital for staff talks. And in Vienna it was easier to approach them than in Berlin. In turn, they were more free with their views. Lieutenant Florian Koenig's name had been top of the list. He had accepted the invitation by return post.

It had been a memorable evening for all the wrong reasons. They had drunk cocktails at the bar and sat down at a table on which stood a bottle of Krug champagne in an ice bucket. It was a gesture of friendship, Koenig said, a gift from one fellow officer to another.

Two tables away a scion of Austrian nobility, with monocle and scar and wearing evening dress, sat with a woman in a black low-cut dress who looked remarkably like Marlene Dietrich. Macrae found himself casting long sideways glances at her, trying to work out if she really was the famous film star.

“You find her attractive?” said Koenig.

“No, not my type.”

“Yes you do, you were staring at her.”

“Half the room's staring at her. She looks like Marlene Dietrich, that's why.”

“You English are all the same, you never tell the truth. Admit it, you'd take her to bed if you could.”

Macrae noticed that the champagne bottle was already half empty. Lieutenant Koenig was drunk.

“But I can't. I'm married. Let's order.”

“See what I mean? Hypocrisy. You know the trouble with the English? Corrupted by class and empire. You lord it over all those dusky peasants around the world and think you're better than everybody else.”

“Unlike the Germans, of course? Anyway, I'm not English; I'm Scottish. Shall we order?”

It was not a good start to the evening.

Koenig had close-cut iron-grey hair, making him look older than his thirty-nine years. He had been too young to serve in the Great War. As the only surviving son of an old Prussian family with a long tradition of military service, he had joined the shattered remnants of the German army in 1920 out of family duty and as a tribute to his two brothers who had been killed in the trenches. He regarded the army less as a career than as an obligation.

A family estate in Mecklenburg in the north of the country provided the comforts of home life with his wife and three children while he moved from his infantry brigade based in Bavaria to the staff college in Berlin to pursue promotion. Family connections and a series of impressive exam results enabled him to attend an exchange training course at the military college of Sandhurst in England, where he learnt excellent English.

They were on the second bottle of champagne and the main course had not arrived. The German lieutenant had become morose and Macrae wondered whether he could find an excuse to leave early.

“You know both my brothers died in the trenches?” Koenig said this casually, as if remarking on the passing of a long-forgotten relative.

“Yes, I did know that. I'm sorry.”

“Second battle of the Somme. I blame the English entirely for the war.”

“Really? I thought you Germans started it.”

“We did. But you should have stopped us.”

“Easier said than done.”

“Not if you consider the power of your navy, the fact that the royal families of both countries were all kissing cousins and that the French were fast asleep as usual. If you had woken them up and made a joint diplomatic démarche there would have been no war.”

“That would have been asking a lot.”

“What, waking the French up?”

They both laughed. They got drunk over dinner and afterwards Macrae allowed himself to be taken to a nightclub, where the entertainment was provided by young women who paraded around in diaphanous knickers with silver hearts on the front and the words
Küss Mich
stitched to the back.

“You can touch them, you know,” said Koenig. “It's part of the show.” He slapped a passing waitress on the backside and ordered more drinks.

“I think it's time for me to go home,” said Macrae, yawning.

Koenig was too drunk to reply. He was slumped over the table, seemingly asleep, a handsome young man who would probably do well in the army but was of no use now or later to Macrae. He left.

The next day a handwritten letter of apology was delivered to the embassy.

And that it was how it had started. Macrae tried to remember exactly when it was: eight, nine years ago? It didn't matter. A few months later they dined again, this time in Budapest. Koenig had changed. He was quiet, reserved and very careful with his drink. He was endlessly curious about the military preparations in Britain, or rather the lack of them.

“It is strange to me – indeed to my colleagues – that at a time like this you appear to be disarming. Is that true, or is Perfidious Albion playing one of its tricks?”

He had laughed. It was 1935 and the government of Stanley Baldwin in London had announced a cut in the defence budget and once again refused to countenance conscription. Meanwhile, Hitler had defied the advice of his own generals and sent three divisions into the demilitarised Rhineland, breaking the terms of the Versailles treaty.

“You know you could have stopped us? All the French had to do was move a brigade near the border while the British sent a naval task force into the North Sea with the threat of a blockade. Hitler would have backed down.”

“You think we made a mistake?”

Koenig laughed. They were in a café by the river. Koenig said he preferred meeting in Budapest rather than Vienna. There were too many spies in Austria and they were all Nazis, he said.

“Ah, you English and your sense of humour. Mistake? The mistake is that you think you know Hitler. You don't. We do. That is our problem.”

“We're not alone, you know. The French have the biggest army in Europe.”

“The French!” Koenig had almost fallen off his chair laughing.

Primrose wanted to meet the man she called “your debauched German lieutenant”. Having heard about their first evening, she was curious to meet someone who could behave so badly and apologise so sweetly. Primrose thought she understood something of Koenig's behaviour. He had lost two brothers in the war, just as she had lost her Richard. Grief did strange things to a person, she said.

When Koenig was next in Vienna it was arranged they would lunch at a new fish restaurant called Esterhazy several miles out of town on the Danube. The lunch began promptly at one o'clock, but it was not until early evening, as the waiters were laying tables for dinner, that they finally left.

Macrae had sat back and watched and listened as his wife and the German officer explored the deaths of their siblings, talking as if they were part of the same family. He had never heard Primrose talk in that way. The millions of dead in the Great War had created a bond between those who had lost loved ones in the slaughter that transcended all barriers. Denied the intimacy of shared grief, Macrae felt like a stranger at the table. At one stage, Koenig had comforted Primrose as she was recalling the last time she had seen her brother.

“I never said goodbye properly – that's the awful part. I never told him good luck or that I loved him or anything,” she said.

She had begun to cry, which is when Koenig had put his arms around her. They were drinking a light Austrian wine
and Macrae noticed that by four clock they had each had a bottle.

As the lunch stretched into early evening, Macrae felt more and more like an intruder on private grief. Primrose and Koenig shared memory after memory of their lost siblings. Macrae knew that if he were to get up and silently walk away, they would hardly notice. Their conversation flowed like a river emerging from dark subterranean caves where guilt and grief were etched in crude images on rock walls. Alcohol, memories of the dead and the thin thread of desire were creating a catharsis for these two people, his wife and the German lieutenant.

Macrae got to his feet. “I think it's time to go home, darling,” he said.

They were both drunk when they got back. Primrose poured more drinks, threw her arms around him and danced a slow waltz in the drawing room. He tried gently to break away but she would not let him go. She pressed herself against him. For the first time in months she wanted him to make love to her and flung herself naked on the bed, arms and legs spread wide, urging him to take her with a string of profanities that shocked and excited him. He came quickly, then fell asleep, waking later to hear her deep gasping breaths from the far side of the bed, and then silence.