Traitor's Gate (22 page)

‘That’s ridiculous.’

‘It didn’t seem like it then. It seemed perfectly logical.’

‘That was last week. What about now?’

Anneliese stroked his cheek. ‘Now I just want to think about this moment, this minute with you. Not about next month or next year.’

‘But you must think about the future, before it’s too late. For my sake, you must get out of this insane country.’

‘For your sake?’ said Anneliese with a smile.

‘Yes,’ said Conrad.

They kissed.

‘Yes,’ he repeated.

She shook her head. ‘I can’t.’

‘What do you mean, you can’t?’

‘When I asked Captain Foley for a visa for my mother, I asked for one for myself too. I wasn’t going to, but my mother insisted.’

‘Good for her.’

‘Captain Foley said there was no chance.’

‘Why?’

‘I’m a communist. Or I was a communist.’

‘That shouldn’t matter.’

‘Oh, but it does. Captain Foley is explicitly forbidden from issuing visas to communists.’

‘That’s outrageous!’

‘Possibly. To be fair, no other country is too enthusiastic about us either.’

‘Isn’t there anywhere else you could go?’

‘It’s getting harder all the time. Captain Foley suggested Shanghai; it’s about the one place you can still get a visa for as a German Jew. Oh, Conrad, would you like me to go to Shanghai? I’d much rather be here with you.’

‘I’ll talk to him,’ Conrad said.

‘You can try if you wish,’ Anneliese said. ‘But I think I’m stuck here.’

Conrad tried to do as Anneliese said she was doing, think of just the minutes, the hours they were spending together. But he couldn’t help thinking about the future, the near future. And it scared him.

In the chestnut tree in the square outside Conrad’s flat a night­ing­ale was trilling a complicated aria of its own com­position. In the middle of the square, next to the tree, was the red-brick Church of the Twelve Apostles. Although it was a cloudless night and a full moon, and although there were street lamps around the square, there were numerous niches and crannies in pitch-black shadow. In one of these stood Klaus.

He had been standing there for three hours, ever since he had followed Conrad and Anneliese back from the neighbourhood restaurant in which they had eaten their supper. It had been a long evening. He had waited outside St Hedwig’s Hospital in the Scheunenviertel for Anneliese, and had followed her to her building. Even though she looked tired, she had walked fast. He had watched for a quarter of an hour, and then she had appeared, changed out of her nurse’s uniform, and scurried off towards the U-Bahn, a small smile on her face. What little pleasure did she have to smile about?

Klaus had lagged well behind her. Although he worked for the Gestapo, he had no experience of following people. His size and his clumsiness made him an appalling choice of watcher; he had other skills of more use to his employer. But Anneliese was tired and preoccupied and Klaus was certain she hadn’t seen him.

As she had turned into the little square, Klaus knew for sure where she was going. He had had Conrad followed earlier that summer and he knew his address. He bit his lip in frustration and pounded the wall of the church with his fist. A tear ran down his cheek. That night, of all nights, he needed to see Anneliese.

Eighteen hours earlier his mother had died. It had been quick. The doctors had thought she had beaten the mysterious ailment that had plagued her over the previous year, but all the time the cancer, for that was what it turned out to be, must have been eating away inside her, undetected. She had only begun to feel ill again a week before. The deterioration had been fast. Klaus had managed to get the day off, and by great good fortune had been at her bedside in her little house in Halle when she had died. His father was downstairs, reading the newspaper. He had smiled when Klaus had told him the news, actually smiled. Klaus had long suspected that his father had hated his mother throughout their long marriage, but it was only then that he had realized it was true. Klaus wanted to hit him, but even at that moment he was scared of the small old man. Those vicious beatings he had received throughout his youth had left him cowed and in awe of his father. So he stormed out of the house, his heart full of grief and anger. Why couldn’t the old bastard have contracted cancer instead of her? He had a disgusting rasping cough, which always ended with him spitting up great gobs of mucus. He’d been doing that for years. He should be dead, not Klaus’s mama.

He knew it was foolish to think about Anneliese while he was in that frame of mind. When she had dropped him the reason was clear enough; once her father was out of the country he was no longer any use to her. He had never accused her of that obvious truth for fear of alienating her. He wanted her to love him, not hate him.

The problem was that those few days when she had been his again had transformed his longing for a lost love into an obsessive desire. If his life was to have any meaning at all, he had to be with Anneliese.

He had tried explaining this to her, but she had been stub­bornly firm. Indeed that was one of the things that Klaus loved about her: her wilful independence. He remembered, he would always remember, seeing her shouting slogans on those communist marches, her blouse tight over her breasts as she raised her fist, her hair tangled in the wind and the excitement, her face alight, not with hatred or rage, but with a passionate idealism. He had done nothing on those marches but stare at her. However impossible it seemed at the time, with her and Paul so obviously in love, and he a great shambling oaf whom she pitied, he knew that one day, one day she would be his. All he had to do was wait.

And she was his, for a while. It had started on the day she received Paul’s ashes through the post in a cigar box. That was before Klaus had joined the Gestapo, when he was still a humble lawyer in the Berlin Prosecutor’s Office.

Anneliese had telephoned him late in the evening to tell him; Klaus had after all been a friend of Paul’s at university. It was an extraordinary telephone call: there was no grief, no hysteria; her voice was devoid of emotion, dead. When Klaus offered to come and see her the following morning, she said she wouldn’t be there and hung up.

Klaus had thought it over for a minute and then dashed round to her building in the Scheunenviertel. The landlady tried to refuse him entry, saying there was no sound from her room and she must be sleeping, but Klaus barged upstairs, and after banging on her door, broke it down. As he expected, she was lying fully clothed on her bed with an empty medicine bottle on her bedside table.

He had picked her up, slung her over his shoulder and run the five hundred metres to St Hedwig’s Hospital. He was in time: they pumped her stomach, and she lived.

He had stayed with her all night, and the following day packed her into his small Opel to take her to the little village that he used to visit on summer holidays with his mama. It was in the mount­ains of Silesia, near the Czech border. The woman who ran the guest house remembered him: Klaus was memorable even at fourteen – he had been a great clumsy giant at that age. Klaus and his angel spent a glorious week together while she recovered. He had to lie to his office, claiming that his mother was ill. She was too ashamed of what she had tried to do to get in contact with her own parents, at least at first. It was idyllic: the mountain, the lake, the trees, the cows heading out to the steeply sloped pastures after their morning milking, the slow peace of the village. Eventually the week had to end, Klaus had to return to work, and Anneliese insisted on going back to her family, but over the following weeks and months Klaus looked after her. Nothing was too much trouble for him. He seemed to give her the sense of security, of comfort, of reliability that she needed. She improved in front of his eyes.

The day he had asked her to marry him had been the most frightening of his life, and then the most joyful when she had said yes. A few months later she broke it off. Although heartbroken, truthfully he wasn’t surprised; he had always known that she had only agreed to marry him in a moment of weakness.

This summer she had come to him once more. And she would again, in time. He thought of her as his angel, but actu­ally he was her guardian angel, faithfully coming to her aid. It was hardly an equal basis for a relationship, but this was not a relation­ship of equals. He wasn’t worthy of her; he knew that. But if he was patient, patient and watchful, she would need him again and he would be there. It was their destiny.

So he had tried to force himself to stay away and wait. But it was difficult and that night, the day after his mother had died, it was very difficult. Especially now that he had seen her with the Englishman. How he detested that man! He so badly wanted to storm in there, arrest de Lancey and take her in his arms. But he knew that if he did that he would switch from guardian angel to bitter enemy, and it would be harder than ever to win her back.

No, there was nothing to do but stand outside the church, listen to the nightingale and watch the darkened windows of de Lancey’s flat.

Hatred welled up inside him, mixing deliciously with love and grief.

Conrad strolled up Bendlerstrasse, past the purposeful bulk of the War Ministry, and stepped out of the bright sunlight into the cool of the lobby of the Casino Club. Despite its name, the Casino Club was not a glitzy gambling den but rather an ancient establishment in which the Prussian aristocracy could gather while they were in Berlin. Theo’s father and grandfather had been members.

Conrad had slept very little the night before, and he was light-headed, but in a thoroughly good mood. How Anneliese was going to cope with a long day at the hospital he had no idea.

He was shown through to the bar where Theo was waiting for him, looking tense. Conrad was pleased to see him: he realized that in his mind Theo had been reinstated to the category of ‘friend’.

They shook hands. A waiter instantly appeared, and Theo ordered them both whisky and sodas.

‘Nice place,’ said Conrad, looking around the room. Half the men in the bar were in uniform; half were in suits. Most had the stiff, upright bearing of the Junker as opposed to the roly-poly solidity of the Berliner burgher. The walls were adorned with large oil paintings and smaller prints depicting past Prussian kings and German emperors, with some celebrated field marsh­als thrown in. Heavy silver knick-knacks were scat­tered over tables and bookcases. On the surface, the place was similar to a London club, but it had an atmosphere of crisp formality rather than of comfort and relaxation.

‘Not quite as nice as our old quarters,’ said Theo. ‘We had a lovely building in the Pariser Platz until last year when the Nazis kicked us out. It’s been taken over by the Minister for Armaments and Munitions. But at least this is just over the road from the War Ministry, so it’s very handy.’

Taking his whisky, Theo looked Conrad up and down and smiled. ‘You look well. I mean, you look exhausted. But happy.’ He frowned. ‘If I didn’t know you better I would guess that you were getting your wicked way with some poor girl.’

Conrad grinned broadly.

‘Is it anyone I know?’

Conrad nodded.

‘Not Anneliese?’

‘That’s right. I’ve been seeing a lot of her this past week. An awful lot.’

Theo frowned. ‘What about her Gestapo boyfriend?’ Con­rad had told Theo about Anneliese and Klaus Schalke in Pomerania.

Conrad saw Theo’s expression and felt a surge of irritation. ‘It’s over, I’m sure of it.’

‘You have to be very careful of a man like that,’ Theo said.

‘Obviously,’ Conrad said. ‘But it’s not as if I have anything to hide these days.’

‘Well...’

‘Oh, I see,’ said Conrad. ‘That’s what this is about. The mes­sage you want me to deliver.’

A small figure moved briskly into the bar. ‘Hello, Uncle Ewald,’ Theo said. ‘You remember Conrad de Lancey?’

‘Of course,’ said the Junker. He was smartly dressed for the city in winged collar, club tie, tiepin and waistcoat. He clicked his heels, bowed and held out his hand. Conrad shook it, with a little bow of his own.

‘I must be going, Conrad,’ Theo said. ‘I have something to attend to over the road. But Uncle Ewald is anxious to treat you to lunch.’

Conrad accepted his fate, and, abandoned by Theo, he fol­lowed Ewald von Kleist through to the club dining room. The waiter showed them to a­ small table in an alcove at the back of the room.

Lunch was stilted at first as von Kleist made curt small talk, but in the interests of making things bearable Conrad asked him about politics, and the landowner became quite animated as he discussed Germany’s history and its future. He was a right-wing monarchist who wanted the Kaiser back, just as Conrad had expected, but one who was driven by a fierce sense of justice. What he saw going on in Germany was wrong and he was going to say so, whatever the cost. He was enough of a realist to know that the cost would be high.

After lunch they retired to the library, and von Kleist ordered coffee and cigars. There was no one else in the room, save a portly old gentleman snoozing into his newspaper. Von Kleist identified him as a landowner from Silesia who invented business in Berlin every couple of months so that he could escape his wife and go to sleep in an armchair in the club for a week.

Von Kleist got down to business. ‘You know that Hitler is determined to invade Czechoslovakia?’ he began.

‘Everyone expects it,’ Conrad answered.

‘He has made the general staff draw up detailed plans for an invasion before the first of October.’

‘I’m not surprised.’

‘The generals’ evaluation of the situation is that if Britain and France stand by Czechoslovakia there will be a long, bloody war that Germany will lose.’

‘You would lose? Interesting. But would Britain and France stand by Czechoslovakia?’ Conrad asked.

‘That’s precisely the question!’ von Kleist said. ‘At the moment France has guaranteed Czechoslovakia’s borders, and Britain has undertaken to join France in any war with Germany. In practice the French will follow the British lead. The British made encouraging noises of support to the Czechs when the Czechs mobilized in May. But the French and the British are sending out mixed messages. Your ambassador seems very pro-German. Your foreign secretary, Lord Halifax, seems much more eager to negotiate than to fight.’