Traitor's Gate (11 page)

‘I see what it is. You want to be free to marry someone else at the drop of a hat, just as we did.’

‘Oh, Conrad, you know our marriage is over. Do the gentle­manly thing. All you need to do is go off to Brighton with a tart, we hire a private detective who bursts in on you and Bob’s your uncle.’

Conrad raised his eyebrows. ‘You want me to be the guilty party?’

‘That’s the gentlemanly thing to do, Conrad. And you’ve never been anything less than a gentleman. That’s what Bryan did with Diana.’ Bryan was Bryan Guinness: gentleman, devoted husband and cuckold.

Conrad shook his head. ‘No, Veronica. I am not going to Brighton with a tart.’

‘Oh.’ She looked downcast. ‘Well, be a dear and think about it, will you?’

The dinner ended on a cool note. When they left, Göring was still enjoying himself with his Luftwaffe cronies.

Conrad searched for a cab, but there was none, so they set off down the street to the next corner. It was quiet: the only people on the street were a group of four members of the SA with swastika armbands around their brown coats shaking tins, seeking donations for a Nazi charity, and laughing loudly. The SA, or Sturmabteilung, were the stormtroopers of the Nazi move­ment. They had been the strong arm of the Party during its rise to power, the muscle on the streets; their brown-shirted members had pride of place at the front of Nazi parades. That was until the Night of the Long Knives in June 1934, when Himmler’s black-shirted SS had launched a coup against the SA, murdering most of their leaders. Now it was the tall blond SS supermen who strutted alongside the Führer, leaving the beefy thugs and bruisers of the SA to beg for alms and break Jewish shopkeepers’ windows.

As Conrad and Veronica approached them, the laughter stopped. Veronica’s grip on Conrad’s arm tightened. One of the stormtroopers thrust out a tin and shook it. There was a strong smell of beer about the group, and also an air of suppressed excitement. Conrad was tempted to ignore them, but whether because of the presence of Veronica, the quietness of the street or the air of menace about the group, he dropped a few coins in the tin.

‘
Heil Hitler!
’ slurred one of the men.

‘
Heil Hitler!
’
said Veronica.

‘I do wish you wouldn’t say that,’ Conrad protested in English as they hurried on.

‘Oh, come on. It’s just like
bonjour
in French, isn’t it?’

‘No, it isn’t.’

About fifty yards further down the street, they came across a couple more stormtroopers, waving a tin under the nose of a professorial-looking gentleman in his sixties with a grey beard and a monocle.

‘I’m sorry, I have no money,’ the man who looked like a profes­sor said in a shaky voice as Conrad and Veronica walked past. ‘I left my wallet at home. I was just going for a walk.’

‘Are you a Jew? He’s a Jew, Fritz!’

There was something in the way that the man stiffened that led the two SA men to think that their suspicion was confirmed. Conrad paused. ‘What’s going on?’ whispered Veronica, who didn’t understand German.

‘It doesn’t look good,’ said Conrad. He approached the storm­troopers, taking out his wallet. He extracted a note.

‘Would you allow me, sir, to make a contribution on your behalf?’ Conrad said to the professor, stuffing the note in the tin.

‘Thank you, sir, but we need a contribution from this Jew.’ The bigger of the two was speaking; he had a beer belly, close-cropped grey hair and meaty fists.

‘But I’ve given you something for him,’ said Conrad.

The stormtrooper grabbed the professor by the collar and shoved him up against the wall. ‘You Jews are so tight,’ he growled. ‘Just a few marks for the honest German poor, that’s all we’re asking for.’

‘But I have no money. I tell you, I have no money!’ The pro­fes­­sor’s voice rose in panic and his eyes were wide with fear, a fear which seemed to feed the aggression in the stormtrooper.

‘All Jews have money,’ the thug growled.

‘Put him down!’ Veronica’s voice rang out clear and English. ‘Let him go, you brute.’

The stormtrooper hesitated, not sure how to treat a tall beau­ti­­ful Aryan woman giving orders in a language he didn’t understand.

‘Don’t worry, madam,’ said the professor in heavily accented English. ‘This is not your problem.’

The SA bully swung his fist into the professor’s stomach and he doubled up, his monocle swinging from its cord.

In a flash Veronica slapped the stormtrooper hard across the face. ‘Stop that at once!’

The other stormtrooper, smaller but meaner-looking, spoke in German. ‘Leave us alone,
gnädige Frau,
or we will arrest you.’

Conrad touched Veronica’s arm. ‘Let’s go,’ he said.

Veronica glared at the second stormtrooper. ‘Go away, you horrid little man,’ she said. And then she slapped him too.

A red weal appeared on the pale skin of the smaller man. His eyes, which had been blurred with drink, focused in anger. He swung his right fist at Veronica.

Conrad caught it. ‘Steady now,’ he said.

The man swung his left, hitting Conrad rather feebly in the side. The bigger man dropped the professor and grasped Conrad’s shoulder.

‘Run, Veronica!’ Conrad shouted. She grabbed the hand of the old professor, kicked off her high-heeled shoes and set off barefoot down the street. Conrad thrust his knee between the legs of the smaller man and wriggled free of his larger comrade. The big stormtrooper swung clumsily at Conrad’s head. Conrad ducked and jabbed upwards at the stormtrooper’s nose, which erupted in blood.

The group of four Brownshirts further down the road had heard the commotion and were running to help. Conrad turned and sprinted.

He had seen Veronica dash into a narrow side street, and he followed. He spotted her and the professor disappear down some steps leading to a basement. ‘Stay there!’ he shouted as he ran past.

It was a short street and Conrad had a good lead, so he slowed enough for his pursuers to see him rounding a corner at the far end. They followed, rushing past the basement where Veronica and the professor were hiding.

Conrad ran on, ducking from left to right down side streets and alleys. He was a fast runner and his follow­ers soon gave up. When he was sure they were no longer on his tail, Conrad waited five minutes and then cautiously jogged back to Veronica’s hiding place.

He looked over the railings down into the well. Half of the small space was illuminated by a street lamp. In the shadows of the remaining half a cigarette glowed.

Conrad descended the steps. Veronica was alone. ‘Where’s the Jewish professor?’

‘Oh, he’s gone. You know he really was most ungrateful. He said we were stupid to cause so much trouble and all that would happen was that we would get him thrown into a concentration camp.’

‘He’s probably right,’ said Conrad.

‘Probably. But it was rather fun, wasn’t it?’ Even in the dark Conrad could see Veronica’s cheeks were flushed and her eyes gleaming.

He couldn’t help returning her smile.

‘You were so brave, taking on those two brutes,’ she said.

‘Well, thank you.’ Conrad gave a little bow.

‘You should have stayed to beat up the rest.’

‘There were a few too many of them.’

‘Not for you, darling.’ Veronica dropped her cigarette. She was leaning against the wooden door of a basement. There was a strong smell of damp coal dust. Footsteps scurried by on the pavement above. ‘Conrad?’

‘Yes?’

‘Kiss me.’

So Conrad kissed her.

They pulled apart. ‘That was nice,’ said Veronica. ‘Now, let’s get my shoes and you can take me back to my hotel.’

Confused and angry with himself, Conrad led Veronica up the steps to the side street. As they turned the corner on to the street where they had met the stormtroopers, they saw a bundle crumpled on the pavement.

Conrad ran. It was the professor, blood seeping from his temple and the corner of his mouth, his face lying in splinters of glass from his smashed monocle. Conrad took off his jacket to make a pillow and shoved it under the professor’s head.

‘Oh, God!’ said Veronica.

The man’s eyelids fluttered and he tried to say something. Conrad bent close to his mouth to hear. The words were in English.

‘Tell your wife... tell your wife her own business to watch.’

Conrad turned to Veronica. ‘Get an ambulance!’ he shouted.

‘How do I do that?’

‘There’s a telephone box at the end of the street over there. Here’s the money.’ Conrad fished some coins out of his pocket and flung them at her. ‘
Krankenwagen.
Ask for a
Krankenwagen
!’

But the man had died before Veronica had even reached the telephone box.

Theo hurried along the corridors of the offices on the Tirpit­zufer, nodding and saluting as he passed uniformed col­leagues on the way. He hadn’t quite told the truth when he had claimed to Conrad that he worked in the War Ministry. The War Min­istry was indeed next door, on the Bendlerstrasse, but this particular set of corridors and cubbyholes was the domain of an organization known as the Abwehr. The Abwehr was the German secret service, and it was quite successfully secret: few Germans and even fewer foreigners knew of its existence. And it was the head of the Abwehr, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, who wanted to see him.

Canaris’s offices were on the top floor of the building with a view over the Landwehr Canal, in this part of Berlin an elegant stretch of water lined with chestnut trees and ornate residences. The admiral was waiting for him, together with Colonel Hans Oster, the head of Section Z of the Abwehr and Theo’s direct boss. Section Z was responsible for administration and organ­iza­tion. Although this might sound the most bureaucratic of the various departments, it was actually one of the most influ­ential. Oster was the man Canaris turned to when he needed something done, and, increasingly, Oster would turn to Theo.

Canaris smiled and bade Theo sit down. There was a pleas­ing informality about the Abwehr, Theo thought. Although staffed solely by military officers, they treated each other courteously and with respect, a culture that had been reinforced when Canaris arrived as the new chief in 1935. The admiral was a small, mild-looking man with white hair and a sallow skin. In the war he had had a lively naval intelligence career in South America and then in Africa, where, in addition to picking up useful skills and languages, he had contracted malaria. Theo thought of his chief not as a high-ranking German officer but rather as a cosmopolitan in a uniform. Canaris was fond of quoting the motto of the founder of the Abwehr, Colonel Nicolai: ‘Secret work must always be the preserve of the gentleman. When this ceases to be the case, all is doomed to failure.’

Colonel Oster was not quite as subtle as his boss, but was just as intelligent. He was a dashing, good-looking officer who wore the Iron Cross First and Second Class and the Knight’s Cross with Swords, decorations he had won on the Western Front. After the war he had served under General von Hertenberg, which was how he had first come across Theo. On a visit to his former commanding officer’s Pomeranian estate, Oster had been introduced to Theo and immediately recognized his talents. Over a period of nearly a year, Oster had persuaded him to join the Abwehr.

Oster seemed to know everyone and everything, and he had a knack of inspiring loyalty and trust in his fellow officers, both senior and junior. Theo liked and respected him, and the sentiment seemed to be reciprocated. There had been a scandal several years before when Oster had been stripped of his rank after having an affair with the wife of a senior officer, but Canaris had reinstated him and the two men worked well together.

‘Ah, good morning, Hertenberg,’ Canaris began. ‘We have confirmation about Mühlendorf.’ As Canaris spoke, a dachs­hund trotted over from a basket in the corner and hopped on to his lap. The admiral stroked the dog absently.

Theo raised his eyebrows. ‘From the Gestapo?’

‘No. From Moscow. He was seen speaking to a senior officer in the NKVD a week before he left for Berlin.’

‘Just as we thought. And that explains one thing that never quite made sense to me.’

‘What is that?’ asked Canaris.

‘Why he didn’t talk. I know the Gestapo didn’t get very far in their interrogation, but Mühlendorf knew what he was in for. If he really was just a diplomat purveying gossip he would have given the Gestapo everything they wanted and more right away. He was holding out on them; he had something to hide.’

‘Do you think he had heard anything specific?’

‘About a plot against Hitler?’

Canaris nodded.

‘No,’ said Theo. ‘And especially not if he was a Soviet spy. He was on a fishing expedition. He told de Lancey to tell me that he had friends who could help. Perhaps he was referring to the Soviets.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Canaris. ‘Is there any chance that de Lancey is a Soviet spy also?’

‘I would be very surprised,’ said Theo.

‘Tell us about de Lancey,’ said Oster, speaking for the first time. ‘We are really quite interested in that man.’

So Theo told them.

The Tiergartenstrasse, as its name suggested, ran along the south­ern perimeter of the park. Conrad knew he was get­ting close to number seventeen when he saw a queue snaking along the pavement beside the brand-new pink-stucco Italian Embassy. He followed the line towards a fine eighteenth-century sandstone building and was stopped by a large Yorkshireman in a commissionaire’s uniform, displaying a row of medals from the Great War.

‘I’d like to see Captain Foley, please,’ Conrad said in his best English accent. ‘My name’s de Lancey.’

Conrad waited as the commissionaire disappeared. One of his colleagues was dispensing tea from a trolley to the line of sup­plicants. They were pinched, desperate-looking people, some well dressed, some in little more than rags. Many of them appeared Jewish to Conrad, although he might have been mistaken. He wasn’t convinced that you could always identify a Jew simply by looking at him, and he didn’t like the Nazi assumption that you could.

Conrad was tired. He had spent half the night at police head­quarters in the Alexanderplatz. Veronica had suggested that they leave the dead professor where he was, but Conrad had insisted on waiting for the police. He was not going to walk away and pretend that nothing had happened, however much trouble that might cause. The grizzled sergeant who had taken down the details of the incident grasped the situation immediately, and explained that since Conrad and Veronica had not actually seen the SA men beat up the professor, it would be impossible to bring charges against them successfully.