Traitor's Gate (10 page)

It was early evening at the Adlon Hotel, the cocktail hour. A quartet played a gentle waltz, although no one was dancing yet. All around voices murmured in conversation, interrupted by the rattle of ice cubes in a cocktail shaker. The Adlon, standing on Unter den Linden only a few yards from the Brandenburg Gate, was the grandest hotel in Berlin. Everyone who was any­one coming through the city stayed there. Conrad had already spotted Lord Lothian, a former Cabinet colleague of his father’s, scurrying out of the lift. In the last ten years the mix of visitors had changed: fewer film stars and opera singers, more diplomats and journalists.

Conrad had come straight from the Stabi, where he had spent the day reading about the assassination that had started the Great War. He had decided to insert a prologue into the novel: a description of Gavrilo Princip shooting the Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The story fascinated him; Conrad had not realized how huge a part luck had played in the outcome.

The Archduke, heir to the throne of Austria–Hungary, was visiting Sarajevo with his wife Sophie. Seven members of Young Bosnia, armed with weapons provided by the Black Hand, a Serbian secret society, planned to assassinate him. As the Arch­­duke’s motorcade made its way through the city, the first assas­sin couldn’t get a clear shot. The second managed to get close enough to lob a bomb at the Archduke’s car, but missed, seriously injuring the occupants of the car behind. Although shaken, the Archduke went ahead with a reception at the town hall, and then decided to visit the injured in hospital.

By this time the conspirators had given up, and one of their number, Gavrilo Princip, went into a shop to buy some lunch. As he came out he was astonished to see the Archduke’s car reversing up the street, having taken a wrong turn. Princip promptly dropped his lunch and shot the Archduke, killing him and starting a world war. He then swallowed a cyanide pill, which he vomited straight back up, and was restrained before he had a chance to shoot himself.

A nice first chapter.

The Adlon was a favourite haunt of foreign correspond­ents, and Conrad had arranged to meet a contemporary of his at Oxford, an American journalist living in Berlin named Warren Sumner. Although Conrad hadn’t known him very well at the university, he had always rather liked him, and he thought he might be a good source of information for articles for
Mercury.

He tried to listen as Warren conducted a passionate argu­ment with a journalist from the English
Daily Mail
about the strength of the Czech defensive fortifications. The subject would be a good one for
Mercury
, but Conrad’s thoughts drifted to Joachim and Theo.

He was still trying to come to terms with the idea that Joachim had been a Soviet spy. The more he thought about this piece of news, the less surprising it was. He realized he wasn’t shocked; on the contrary, he was proud of his cousin. Conrad had no sympathy with Stalinist Russia, especially since he had seen the Soviet attempts to suborn the Republican Army in Spain, but he admired the way that Joachim had stood by his principles and done what he could to oppose the Nazis. He supposed that Joachim, used to leading one kind of secret life, was good at leading another.

What he found very difficult to accept was the possibility, fast becoming a probability, that Theo was responsible for Joachim’s arrest. That was something Conrad really didn’t want to believe.

‘Darling! Imagine bumping into you!’

He turned to see a very familiar face beaming at him.

‘Veronica! What the hell are you doing here?’ Conrad asked before he could stop himself.

‘It’s an hotel, Conrad. I’m staying here.’

‘With Linaro?’

‘No, he’s back in Hampshire with Katherine and the kids, poor darling.’ Lady Katherine Linaro was a pretty if rather dull woman and Conrad felt sorry for her: with Veronica as a rival she didn’t stand a chance. ‘Aren’t you pleased to see me?’

‘Not especially.’

He heard a cough next to him. Warren was staring at Veronica, with his whitest, most gleaming smile. Conrad couldn’t blame him. His wife was beautiful, tall, with red hair and high cheek­bones and a poise that was both aloof and alluring at the same time.

Reluctantly, Conrad introduced them. On hearing the words ‘my wife’ Warren’s eyebrows shot up.

‘Would you excuse us, Warren?’ Conrad asked and moved Veronica away from the group towards a fountain supported by a circle of wrought-iron elephants. The trickle of water was magnified in the splendid lobby, the circular ceiling of which stretched high upwards past five sets of landings to a glass cupola.

‘Why are you in Berlin?’ Conrad asked.

‘I’m keeping Diana company. You remember Diana Guinness?’

Conrad certainly did. Born into the aristocratic but eccentric Mitford family, she had married a charming man who was an heir to the Guinness brewing fortune, but had dumped him in favour of Sir Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists.

‘Oh, a meeting of the “Wayward Mistresses’ Club”, is it?’

‘Don’t be so vile, Conrad, it doesn’t suit you. Anyway Diana and Tom are married now.’

‘Tom?’

‘Oswald Mosley. Diana calls him Tom. So do I. And it’s an enormous secret. They got married eighteen months ago here in Germany with Adolf Hitler as a witness. Imagine that!’

‘Quite the society wedding.’

Veronica’s eyes gleamed. ‘In fact, Diana has gone round to the Chancellery now to watch a film with Hitler.
The Lives of a Bengal Lancer.
It’s his favourite. “Uncle Wolf”, she calls him.’

‘And you didn’t join them?’

‘Oh, he’s such a common little man. Not really my sort of person.’

‘I see.’

‘And I wasn’t invited. But never mind. You can take me out to dinner. Diana took me to this wonderful little place the other night with the Goebbelses; we could go there.’

‘No, Veronica.’

‘Oh, come on, darling, please! I do have something I want to talk to you about. And you have to admit, it’s easier to talk here in Berlin in neutral territory without other people around.’

She gave him a smile full of enthusiasm. Her eyes shone with mischief. When they had first met the mischief had been beguil­ingly innocent, now it was knowing.

Conrad sighed. Although he remained bitter at the way she had treated him, he still had an urge to talk to his wife. ‘All right. Let’s go. I’ll just make my excuses to Warren.’

 He had met the Honourable Veronica Blakeborough in the summer of 1934 at a ball he had been reluctantly dragged to by an old school friend. It was her coming-out season; she was barely eighteen, red-haired with a beautiful cream complexion and a lithe slim figure. She was infused with an innocent wickedness that Conrad found intoxicating. She must have liked him, for she fiddled her dance card to ensure that she spent most of that evening dancing with him.

Conrad wangled an invitation to the next debs’ ball, at a grand house in Berkeley Square, and he danced with Veronica again. This time she had a ‘scheme’; it was the first of many that Conrad was to experience. Her idea was to sneak out to a nightclub one of the other debs had told her about, the 400, and be back before her aunt noticed she was gone. So they escaped; they danced, they smoked, they drank champagne, they laughed and then they returned to Berkeley Square, her chaperone none the wiser.

Conrad was besotted. And she was fascinated by him. She found his socialism intriguing, his disagreements with his father inspiring. Conrad suspected they were too young to get married – he was still only twenty-three, and she was far too young – but he also knew that he would never meet another woman like her. So despite, or probably because of, their parents’ opposition, Conrad and Veronica were married in her village church in Yorkshire in May 1935.

After their marriage, Veronica had become an immedi­ate hit with London society, and she and Conrad were invited here, there and everywhere. Veronica was surprised by Conrad’s modest cottage in Oxford, but accepted his explanation that since the family bank had nearly gone bust in 1931 his income was significantly less than it might otherwise have been. Veronica didn’t care; there were plenty of people to stay with. Conrad enjoyed the social whirl; he found the contrast with the hours spent studying in Oxford libraries invigorating. He knew that it was really Veronica everyone wanted to see, but they were all perfectly pleasant to him. Some of them he would even count as his friends. His one regret was that he never seemed to get enough time alone with his beautiful young wife.

A thought that had obviously been shared by Alec Linaro.

The ‘wonderful little place’ that Veronica knew turned out to be Horcher’s, one of the most sumptuous restaurants in Berlin, and a favourite of prominent Nazis. Indeed, in the midst of the white tablecloths, shining silver and gleaming crystal sat Field Marshal Göring himself, splendid waiters in red waist­coats and black knee-breeches buzzing around him. The Fat Boy was tucking into a small fowl of some kind, a napkin jammed under his chin to prevent his tightly stretched white uniform getting spattered with sauce.

They were seated at the other end of the room, and ordered jugged hare and claret. Conrad did his best to resist Veronica’s charm, but under the influence of the food, the wine and Veronica’s laughter, he slowly unbent to the point where he was almost enjoying himself. After a couple of abortive attempts by Conrad to mention Linaro, which Veronica completely ignored, the racing driver was forgotten.

They lit cigarettes over coffee. Göring’s table at the other end of the restaurant erupted into laughter.

‘You know he wears make-up?’ Conrad said.

‘No!’ said Veronica her eyes widening. ‘But he’s a general!’ She peered across towards the far table. ‘His face does look a little flushed.’

‘That’s not flushed, it’s rouge. A touch of lipstick. Eye-liner. Warren told me this evening.’

‘Poor Conrad,’ Veronica said. ‘It must be hell for you in Berlin.’

‘You mean with all these Nazis everywhere?’

‘Are you still a Red?’

Conrad frowned. ‘I’m not sure. My faith in the cause was jolted pretty badly in Spain. But I still feel that there is too much of a gap between rich and poor. That there must be ways of organizing society which don’t involve leaving millions of workers and their families unemployed and starving. I still feel there is too much injustice in the world. And, I suppose, I still feel guilty that I am one of the privileged elite living very comfortably on a private income.’

‘Oh, you are too harsh on yourself. You always were. You did volunteer to go and get yourself killed for people you didn’t even know. That was pretty brave.’

‘Stupid perhaps,’ said Conrad.

He remembered the day in October 1936 when David Grif­fiths had excitedly announced that he was going to join the Inter­national Brigade fighting the Fascists in Spain. Veronica had thought it a terrific scheme and that they should both go: it would be fabulous fun. Conrad could fight and she could do something heroic with the Red Cross.

At first Conrad had rejected the idea: it offended the pacif­ism he had absorbed from his father. But David was passionate and persuasive. Conrad shared David’s fear that fascism would engulf Europe, and admired his friend’s courage in wanting to do some­thing to stop it. How could Conrad sit back in his cosy cottage in Oxford while his friends were fighting and dying a thousand miles away for a cause in which he himself believed utterly? And if fascism did sweep through Europe while he had done nothing, would the knowledge that he had stuck to his pacifist principles in safety while others had died for theirs be enough to salve his conscience? He had to go, even if it meant killing other people. Even if it meant dying. So David and he left for the training camp for international volunteers in Albacete, with Veronica promising to follow as soon as she could organize herself a position in the Red Cross.

Two weeks into his training, Conrad received a letter with the wonderful news that Veronica was pregnant. This meant, of course, that she would have to stay in England. She wrote to him every day, then twice a week, then not at all. The mail in Spain was intermittent at best, and Conrad assumed her letters had been lost, even though the other Englishmen in the International Brigade were occasionally getting theirs through. When he was on his way back to England he cabled her to let her know which boat train he was taking from France, but she wasn’t at the station to meet him. It was only when he got home to Oxford that he finally found a letter from her saying she had run off with Linaro.

She had lost the baby: he had received a short letter about that. But he couldn’t help wondering – if things had been differ­ent, he would be a father now, of a son or a daughter? And would she have stayed with Linaro – or rather, would Linaro have stayed with her? A heavily pregnant woman is not the ideal mistress to take to Le Mans or Monte Carlo.

If there really had been a miscarriage, of course. Perhaps she had visited a back-street doctor. Perhaps she hadn’t really been pregnant. Or perhaps the baby wasn’t even his.

‘You know I really was rather beastly to you,’ Veronica said.

‘You were.’

‘I’m sorry.’

Conrad had the impression that they were coming to the business part of the evening. But if Veronica wanted his forgive­ness, she wasn’t going to get it.

‘I’m quite surprised you don’t want a divorce,’ she went on.

So was Conrad, but it was something he had tried not to think about. Despite everything he wanted Veronica back, the old Veronica, the mischievous young girl who loved him and who would never deceive him. If he thought about it sensibly he knew that that was impossible, that the innocent Veronica was long gone, if in fact she had ever existed. But he wasn’t yet ready to think about it sensibly, to face up to the inevitable.

And he certainly wasn’t going to admit as much to Veronica. ‘Is Linaro getting one?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Do you want to marry him?’

Veronica smiled. ‘Not yet.’

‘Then why do you want a divorce?’

‘You never know what may happen.’