Traitor's Gate (12 page)

It turned out that the professor wasn’t actually a professor, but a Jewish schoolteacher from Charlottenburg who had been giving a private lesson close by. The police sergeant refused to give Conrad the teacher’s address so he could speak to the man’s family. Although frustrated by the sergeant’s unwilling­ness to help, Conrad recognized that he was simply trying to keep two foreigners out of trouble. After initially weeping softly to herself on the pavement, Veronica had pulled herself together and sat through the rest of the night in silence, her face cast in a mask of cold haughtiness. She rebuffed Conrad’s gestures of com­fort. Conrad knew his wife was in distress, but he also knew she wouldn’t admit it, even to him. It was three o’clock before Conrad deposited her at the door of the Adlon and said goodbye. He had no desire to see any more of her while she was in Berlin.

The Yorkshire commissionaire reappeared, and at his ‘Follow me, sir’ Conrad crossed a courtyard and climbed some steps into an entrance hall. Inside, it was mayhem; here the queue bunched and heaved and became an insistent mob. Conrad was ushered up the stairs into an inner office on the first floor. Foley was sitting at his desk, in front of which stood a tall, well-dressed businessman.

Foley leaped to his feet and held out his hand. ‘Ah, good morning, de Lancey. This is Herr Trencholtz.’

The businessman turned to Conrad. ‘Delighted to meet you,’ he said in perfect unaccented English, holding out his hand. Conrad shook it.

A spaniel appeared from under the desk and sniffed Conrad’s trousers.

‘One moment, de Lancey,’ Foley said, returning to his desk. ‘Have a seat. We won’t be long here.’

Conrad sat down and fondled the spaniel’s ears. Foley examined the German businessman’s passport and a visa ap­plica­­tion next to it. He studied the paper and then the man in front of him. He picked up a red pencil and drew a line through the application. ‘I’m sorry, I’m unable to grant you a visa,’ he said to the man, in German.

The businessman replied in rapid angry English that he had received an invitation from Imperial Chemical Industries and that the British Home Office had granted a permit on his behalf.

‘Yes, I have read the permit,’ said Foley, once again in Ger­man. ‘It entitles me to grant you a visa, but it doesn’t oblige me to.’

‘But why haven’t you?’ protested Herr Trencholtz. ‘There must be a reason.’

Foley smiled politely. ‘I’m terribly sorry, but I’m afraid we don’t discuss the reasons for our decisions. Matter of policy, you know. Now, good day.’ He ushered the man, still protesting, out of his office. The businessman was nearly a foot taller than him. He returned to his desk and stuck a pipe in his mouth. ‘What did you think of him, then?’

‘He seemed perfectly respectable to me,’ said Conrad.

‘Too respectable. A spy if ever I saw one,’ said Foley. ‘We don’t need his type in Britain.’ He smiled at the spaniel, which was leaning against Conrad’s trousers, rhythmically thumping his tail. ‘I see Jonny likes you, that’s a good sign. Did you know that Jonny is a good Aryan dog?’

He put his hand in a small bowl on his desk and the dog pricked up his ears. ‘Come on, Jonny, show the gentleman you are an Aryan. Say “
Heil Hitler
”.’

The dog leaped on to its hind legs, lifted up its right paw and gave two sharp barks. ‘Good boy,’ said Foley and tossed him a lump of sugar. ‘Now, what can I do for you?’

Conrad explained Anneliese’s father’s predicament. Foley listened carefully, pulling on his pipe.

‘Dr Werner Rosen, did you say? I remember the case; it was highly publicized at the time. Shocking. And I think your friend is right to be concerned. He’s just the sort of man the Gestapo would throw into protective custody.’

‘Can you help him?’

‘Did your friend explain how the system works? Does he have enough money for the Capitalist Certificate?’

Anneliese had explained this to Conrad. In order to be eligible for a visa to Palestine an applicant had to show proof that he had at least a thousand pounds available to him when he arrived there. Even for wealthy Jews this was a problem, since it took months or even years to get the foreign exchange cleared through the Reichsbank. For the likes of Dr Rosen it was an impossibility. The family’s savings were non-existent.

 ‘I’m afraid not. What about Britain? Can you get him a visa for England?’

Foley shook his head. ‘The British Medical Association have been complaining about the number of Jewish doctors entering the country. They say that British medicine has nothing to gain from new blood and much to lose from foreign dilution.’ Foley’s voice was laced with contempt. ‘They sound almost as bad as the Nazi who complained about the blood transfusion in the first place, don’t they?’

‘He wouldn’t have to practise as a doctor—’

Foley raised his hand to halt Conrad. ‘Believe me, if there was a way I could let even half of those people out there into Britain, I would. But I can’t. I ask for more visas but the Foreign Office doesn’t give me them. And with all the Arab unrest in Palestine in the last couple of years, they are not happy taking in more Jews there, either. I’m in a very difficult position here; we all are. We have to decide who stays and who goes, and we have to be fair to everyone, however impossible that is in reality. Dr Rosen’s case is compelling, but so are all those other cases. I can’t let one applicant through because he has a British friend who will speak up for him. It’s not just.’

‘Would it be any different if I had gone along with your request to spy for you?’ asked Conrad.

‘Do you have something you want to tell me?’ Foley sat back in his chair, puffing at his pipe in a slow rhythm, and waited.

Conrad took a deep breath. ‘As you know, I was arrested two weeks ago. By the Gestapo.’

‘Go ahead, old man.’

Foley listened closely as Conrad described the evening in the Kakadu, Joachim’s gossiping, and then his arrest, inter­rogation and death.

‘I’m sorry about your cousin,’ said Foley, when Conrad had finished. ‘I hear so many of these stories and each is terrible in its own way; all the victims have friends, families.’

Conrad gave a brief nod of acknowledgement.

‘Do you think the plot is just a rumour?’ Foley asked.

‘I have no way of knowing.’

‘What about von Hertenberg? What’s his view?’

‘He thinks it’s just gossip.’ Conrad decided not to mention Theo’s theory that Joachim was a spy. It would only encourage Foley’s suspicions of his friend.

‘And you don’t believe him?’ Foley was studying Conrad’s face intently through those owl-like glasses.

‘Can you do something about Dr Rosen?’ Conrad asked.

Foley frowned. ‘I’m hoping to get another small batch of visas through from London next week.’

‘He’s due to be released next week.’

‘I can’t promise anything, de Lancey,’ said Foley with a sigh. ‘I really can’t.’ He studied Conrad. ‘What you’ve told me is very useful. But I would like to find out some more about your friend von Hertenberg.’

‘Why?’ asked Conrad. ‘He says he’s a lawyer in the War Min­istry. What possible interest could that be to you?’

‘I think he’s more than just a lawyer.’

‘Well, what is he then?’

Foley shook his head. ‘I can’t tell you more than that.’

‘I’m afraid I’m not inclined to spy on my friend,’ said Conrad. ‘Especially if you won’t tell me why I should.’

‘Oh, I can tell you why you should,’ said Foley. ‘The polit­icians back home may talk until they are blue in the face, but you and I both know that the Nazi regime is evil and the one way that Hitler will be stopped is by war. It might be this year, it might be in five years’ time, but at some point our country will be fighting this one.’

Conrad was listening.

‘God knows, I love Germany,’ Foley went on. ‘I’ve lived here for nearly twenty years, and I hate war. But it’s going to happen. And when it does happen, unless Britain is a damned sight bet­ter prepared than she is at the moment, we will lose. That doesn’t just mean that the Germans will win, it means that the Nazis will rule Europe. Whatever our misgivings, it’s up to all of us to do everything we can to stop that happening.’

Conrad shook his head. ‘Theo is my friend,’ he said, and got up to leave. ‘Please do all you can for Dr Rosen.’

Foley stood up and saw Conrad to the door of his office. ‘Think about it,’ he said, as he shook Conrad’s hand.

As Conrad left the Passport Control Office, he did think about it. He brushed past the queue outside and jumped on to a cream-coloured bus heading east towards Unter den Linden and the Stabi. He climbed up to the upper deck and stared out at the green treetops of the Tiergarten.

There was no doubt in Conrad’s mind that if he helped Captain Foley the chances of Anneliese’s father getting a visa for Britain would be much higher. He was sure Foley really did have strict limits on the number of visas he could issue, but as long as some were available, Dr Rosen would get one. If Conrad did nothing the poor man would rot in a concentration camp. There might be thousands of others like him in Germany, but Conrad couldn’t do anything to help them. He might be able to help Dr Rosen, to do something useful for once.

Anneliese would be very grateful. True, he had found her company fun, stimulating – more than that, exciting. But he was married and still faithful to his wife. He wished he hadn’t kissed Veronica. How could he allow himself to be manipulated by her still? Perhaps he was wrong to be wary of seeing other girls; perhaps the sooner he did so the sooner he would escape Veronica’s influence over him.

But how could he spy on Theo, his friend? Or was Theo his enemy? Conrad’s conversation with Theo after the dinner party had crystallized a series of little inconsistencies into solid sus­picion. Yes, Theo counted Conrad as a friend. That was why he had put pressure on his friends –
friends
,
for God’s sake – in the Gestapo to release Conrad. Why he wanted Conrad to forget about Joachim and avoid more trouble with the Gestapo. Oh, yes, it looked as if Theo was being loyal to his old friend. But it also looked as if he had sold out Joachim.

Theo obviously wasn’t an innocent lawyer in the War Min­istry. He knew more than he was letting on: it was distinctly possible that he had passed on Joachim’s tittle-tattle in the Kakadu to his friends in the Gestapo. And now Joachim was dead.

 Perhaps this was a chance for Conrad to do something about Joachim’s death. Find out exactly what Theo was up to, and, yes, if necessary use him. Because if Theo had caused Joachim to be arrested he deserved more than to be spied upon.

The bus crept towards the Potsdamer Platz, a maelstrom of metal spinning around a flimsy traffic tower on four spindly legs. It was the bustling centre of modern Berlin, criss-crossed with tarmac, rails and overhead wires, the magnificent façade of Wertheim’s department store rising massively off to the left and the Columbia-Haus, a curved modern office block, loomed on the right.

Conrad looked out at the gleaming new Germany and felt the anger rise in him: the anger born out of his frustration at what had happened in Spain, his inactivity in England afterwards, at the battering to death of Joachim and the Jewish schoolteacher, at the way the dictators, the torturers, the murderers, the burn­ers of books, the destroyers of liberty were taking over Europe and no one was stopping them. No one!

He remembered what Theo had said about how the Germans were sleepwalking to oblivion. Theo was dead right. He glanced at the couple in the seat next to him: he was middle-aged, portly with a fine walrus moustache and a watch chain straining across his bulging waistcoat; she was small, wide, with flabby cheeks and kindly eyes. Respectable, law-abiding sleepwalkers.

That was the old Theo speaking. The Theo Conrad knew and understood. He hated the idea that that Theo had gone. Conrad had lost so much over the previous year: his wife, his socialist ideals, his cousin; he was in danger of losing his belief in humanity. And yet Conrad
did
believe in humanity: it was an essential optimism about the goodness of the ordinary human being that kept him going. If Theo of all people had become a Nazi then that belief, that optimism would be severely damaged, perhaps irreparably. And without it, there was darkness. Conrad was not easily frightened, but that dark­ness scared him.

He had to know who Theo really was.

The bus swished along Leipziger Strasse past Göring’s new Air Ministry, a stark, swastika-embossed limestone pile guarded by tall iron bars and an eagle perched on top of a squat pedestal. Two Luftwaffe soldiers goose-stepped in an absurd pas de deux outside.

Was there any truth in what Foley was saying about the inevit­ability of war? Conrad feared there was: he felt his old confidence that peace could be preserved slipping away. But he had to cling on to it. If the politicians, if the people, could just keep their heads and not do anything stupid, war could be averted. Well, that might be a possibility in Britain, perhaps, or France, but what of Germany? Would Hitler keep his head? Would all those Nazis strutting around in their uniforms? Would the massed crowds at the Party rallies?

Conrad was not going to abandon the possibility of peace just because of glib platitudes from a minor Foreign Office function­ary about duty and his father’s bravery. The Great War had shown up the idiocy of blind patriotism. Foley was trying to manipulate him into participating in just the sort of diplomatic games that had ignited that conflict. Trying to get him to compromise on his pacifism in order to fight the Nazis. Conrad had done that once before, in Spain, and it hadn’t worked. Should he really do it again?

Despite the evidence, Conrad couldn’t quite bring himself to believe that Theo had shopped Joachim to the Gestapo. Perhaps there had been microphones in the Kakadu, or a lip-reader with really good eyesight who could understand English, however unlikely both of those possibilities seemed. He didn’t know for certain, either, that Dr Rosen would be released if he cooperated with Foley. But Conrad did know that once he undertook to be a spy for the British government against his best friend he would have taken an irrevocable step, become a different person, a person he didn’t want to be.