Traitor's Gate (3 page)

‘I thought you’d like this place,’ said Joachim. ‘I met your friend here a couple of nights ago. Theo von Hertenberg.’

‘I didn’t know you were in touch with Theo!’

‘I’m not really. That was the trouble. I’ve only met him through you, that time I visited you in Oxford, and then when you came to Berlin a couple of years later.’

Conrad smiled. ‘I remember the Oxford visit and I’m sure Theo does. I will never forget you declaiming Goethe from my window in Front Quad. It was all I could do to stop you falling out.’

Joachim smiled. ‘I was a little tight, wasn’t I?’

‘You were. You also weren’t wearing very much.’

‘It was a warm evening. I hope you didn’t get into
too
much trouble on my account.’

Conrad had, but it was a long time ago. ‘So why did you want to see Theo?’

‘I had something I wanted to discuss with him, something I’d heard in Moscow. Unfortunately, he brought a couple of girls along. Perfectly nice girls, but they rather got in the way of a frank discussion. Anyway, I seem to have offended him.’

‘How?’

‘I suppose I was a bit indiscreet. Hertenberg became quite huffy and more or less threw me out.’

‘I’m sorry about that,’ said Conrad.

Joachim shrugged. ‘I
was
a little drunk. But I was speaking in English, and the girls didn’t understand. I’m sure there was no one listening.’

‘For all his enlightened ideas Theo is a Prussian at heart,’ Conrad said. ‘He disapproves of people behaving badly. He can’t help it.’

Joachim leaned back in his chair. He carefully transferred the cigarettes from the packet the waitress had given him to a silver case engraved with the Mühlendorf family crest. The procedure complete, he offered one to Conrad before lighting one of his own.

‘Do you trust him?’ Joachim asked, looking closely at Conrad.

‘Theo? Yes. Absolutely.’ There was not a trace of doubt in Conrad’s voice.

‘Have you seen him recently?’

‘Not for five years now. Not since I was over here in 1933. But we were very close at Oxford.’ Theo was a Rhodes scholar, the first to arrive at Oxford from Germany since the war. Conrad and he had quickly become friends. It wasn’t just that they shared a mixed heritage – Conrad’s mother was German and Theo’s grandmother American – nor that they both embraced the intellectual fashions of the time: the Labour Club, pacifism, home rule for India. They seemed to share the same view of the world, or at least they had seemed to then. Conrad was looking forward to seeing him in Berlin. Theo had always been a source of good-natured sanity; it would be interesting to see what he made of the insanity all around him. Besides, a night on the town with Theo was always fun.

‘You know he has joined the army now?’ Joachim said.

Conrad nodded. ‘I know: he wrote to me a couple of years ago and mentioned he had joined the reserves. It seems quite unlike him.’

‘It might have been a ploy to avoid signing up for the Nazi Party,’ Joachim said. ‘I tried that dodge myself, but the reserves wouldn’t have me.’ He tapped his chest. ‘It’s my heart. I get these palpitations.’

‘So what did you do?’

Joachim shrugged. ‘I became a Party member. I had to if I wanted to become a diplomat.’

Conrad couldn’t help showing his surprise. Joachim had been a convert to Marxism in the 1920s, several years before it was fashionable in England.

‘Don’t look so shocked,’ said Joachim. ‘It doesn’t mean anything.’

‘Of course it means something,’ said Conrad. ‘How can you be a member of such a vile organization, even if it is just for the convenience of your career? That’s a terrible reason.’

‘You’re quite right, Conrad,’ Joachim said. ‘I am a morally corrupted individual who deserves every ounce of your disap­proval. But the question is not am I a Nazi, but is Theo one?’

‘I doubt it very much,’ said Conrad. ‘I haven’t seen him for years, but he was my closest friend at the university. His views on right and wrong are deeply entrenched. I would be very surprised if he had become a Nazi, a genuine one.’ Although when Conrad had spent a month in Berlin in the spring of 1933 just after the Nazis had come to power, Theo had seemed complacent about Hitler. To Conrad’s disgust he had said that someone had to bring order back to the country; it was just a pity the new Chancellor was so common and vulgar. As far as Conrad was concerned, the least of Hitler’s sins was that he was ‘common’. But Conrad couldn’t conceive of Theo as a follower of the man.

‘That’s good to hear,’ said Joachim. ‘I had made up my mind in Moscow that Theo was the right person to speak to once I got here. After the other night, I thought perhaps I was wrong. But if I trust anyone, I trust you, and if you think he’s all right...’

A group of three girls squeezed past their table. One of them, a tall brunette with a suggestive swing of her hips, paused to ask Conrad for a light. As he obliged, she murmured her thanks, dark eyes under long lashes briefly meeting his, and joined her friends at a table not too far away.

‘I’m impressed. It’s good to see married life hasn’t dulled your talents,’ Joachim said.

Conrad ignored him. ‘Anyway, what did you want to talk to Theo about?’

‘Have you heard of General von Fritsch?

‘Yes. He was commander-in-chief of the army, wasn’t he? Resigned a couple of months ago. Ill health or something?’

Joachim snorted. ‘They accused him of being born on the seventeenth of May.’

Conrad frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘Seventeen five. Article 175 of the Penal Code.’

‘Is that the one dealing with homosexuality?’

‘The very same,’ said Joachim. ‘I know it well. But the Gesta­po were framing him. They had an elaborate story about him picking up a male prostitute at the Potsdamer Station. There was a secret trial in March and von Fritsch was acquitted, but he resigned anyway. I understand that the army is still very upset about it.’

‘I never heard about that.’

‘Of course not,’ said Joachim. ‘But it caused quite a stir in the army, or so I am told.’

‘And that’s what you were talking to Theo about?’

‘That. And something else I heard in Moscow, something even more interesting.’

Conrad raised his eyebrows.

‘Oh, look, he’s leaving,’ said Joachim. The deaf man with the rabbit teeth was indeed on his way out of the club. ‘I’m glad he’s gone. Look, Conrad, are you planning to see Hertenberg over the next few days?’

Conrad nodded. ‘I was intending to get in touch with him tomorrow, in fact.’

‘Could you do that? And when you do, could you tell him I’m sorry about the other night and I really must speak to him before I go back to Moscow next week. Tell him I have some friends who can help him.’

‘Help him do what?’

‘He’ll know what I mean. Please. It’s terribly important.’

Conrad examined his cousin closely. He thought Joachim and Theo made unlikely conspirators, a view that seemed to be shared by Theo. But it clearly mattered to his cousin, and Theo could make up his own mind whether he wanted to speak to Joachim. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I will.’

‘Thanks, old man.’ He refilled Conrad’s glass.

‘Now. Tell me about Veronica. You said in your letters it was all a little unexpected.’

‘That’s an understatement.’

‘You do have a tendency to understate these kind of things,’ Joachim said.

Conrad smiled. ‘I do, don’t I?’

‘It’s all very well keeping a stiff upper lip, but if it was me who was walked out on, I would be furious.’

Conrad glanced at his cousin. He hadn’t spoken to anyone properly about Veronica. He told himself and others when they asked that he didn’t want to burden them. But Joachim had shared so many of his own confidences with Conrad when they were younger.

‘Actually, it wasn’t much fun,’ he began.

Joachim was a good listener. Conrad must have been talking for ten minutes when he became aware of two shapes hovering over the table. Two men looked down at them, both wearing leather trench coats and gloves.

‘Herr Mühlendorf?’

Joachim’s eyes widened in fear when he recognized who they were. ‘Y-yes?’

‘My name is Kriminal Assistant Dressel of the Geheime Staatspolizei,’ said one of the men. He had a hard, pinched face, close-cropped red hair and freckles. ‘We would like you to accompany us.’

‘Where to?’

‘You will find out,’ said Dressel. ‘And you,’ he said to Conrad.

‘But I am a British citizen,’ said Conrad.

‘May I see your papers, please?’ The Gestapo officer held out a gloved hand, his face impassive.

Conrad was aware of people at the neighbouring tables staring at them. The band was playing on resolutely, but aside from the music, the chatter in the club had died down to a murmur.

Conrad reached into the inside pocket of his dinner jacket and handed the man his passport. There was some­thing im­mensely reassuring about the stiff blue document with its gold coat of arms and its demand on the inside page that His Britannic Majesty requested and required that foreigners keep their hands off his subjects.

Reassuring for Conrad, but not for Joachim. His cousin was sitting frozen at the table. There was still fear in his eyes, but also determination. Conrad saw his glance flick towards a door at the back of the club, only a few feet away. Despite their fearsome reputation, Conrad was pretty sure that the Gestapo would not risk harming him, a foreigner. But Joachim with his gossip about wayward generals? His best, his only chance of escape was in the next few seconds.

And it was up to Conrad to give him that chance.

The gloved fingers flicked through the pages clumsily. ‘You speak German very well.’

‘Thank you,’ said Conrad, although it was more of an accusa­tion than a compliment. Also he had only said a couple of words.

Dressel thought for a moment. ‘You come with us.’

This was his chance. Conrad pulled himself to his feet, knock­­­ing over the chair behind him. ‘I beg your pardon,’ he said, drawing himself to his full height so that he looked down on the Gestapo officer. ‘I will do no such thing.’

The man stared at Conrad. ‘You look like a spy. You sound like a spy. You are coming with us.’

‘This is outrageous!’ said Conrad. ‘I don’t know what you think Herr Mühlendorf has done, but I can assure you he is a man of the utmost integrity. And as for myself, I am a British citizen! I demand...’ He paused, shaking, switching up a gear from outraged Englishman to furious German. ‘I demand that you contact my embassy at once! At once, do you hear!’ He snatched his passport back from Dressel’s fingers.

Dressel’s colleague reached out and placed a glove on Conrad’s sleeve. Conrad angrily shook it off. ‘Take your filthy hands off me!’ he shouted, and pushed the Gestapo officer hard in the chest so that he took a step backwards. Dressel grabbed Conrad’s other arm and Conrad shoved him too. Conrad saw out of the corner of his eye a pistol bearing down on his skull. He managed to duck so that it only caught him a glancing blow, but it was enough to send him to his knees.

He heard a bang, and he and the two Gestapo officers turned to see the back door to the club swing open. Joachim had gone.

‘After him!’ snapped Dressel, and the two men rushed for the door, leaving Conrad on his knees in a pool of spilled champagne.

Smiling, Conrad pulled himself to his feet. He touched his temple, which was wet with blood, but the dizziness in his brain was already clearing. He stumbled for the front entrance, the other patrons staring after him open-mouthed, the waiters making no attempt to stop him. He spilled out into the warm night air and climbed the steps to the street. A green van was parked directly outside the club and he could hear the sound of running feet to his left. Without looking that way he turned right and walked hurriedly down the street.

He had gone about ten yards when he heard the sound he was dreading: ‘Halt!’

He kept moving, but then there was a sharp crack and the whine of a bullet as it ricocheted off a lamp-post in front of him. The sound brought back the dusty battlefields of Spain. He stopped, turned and raised his hands.

Dressel ran up to him, panting and waving a pistol. ‘Now you are coming with me!’

He was handcuffed, shoved down the street and bundled into the back of the green van. Fifteen minutes later he was dragged out on to the pavement beside a grandiose grey Wilhelmine building. There was no sign advertising what lay within, but Conrad could see a number eight beside the imposing entrance.

It was 8 Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, the headquarters of the Gestapo.

The entrance hall was a large room with a vaulted ceiling and high domed windows, watched over by two SS guards and a pair of crimson swastika banners. As Conrad climbed the stairs he was told to keep to the wall with his escort on the outside, presumably so that he wouldn’t throw himself over the banisters. On the third floor he was taken along a corridor and shown into a tiny waiting room. He sat on a bench, and a tall guard took a seat beside him. He waited.

Exhilaration that Joachim had escaped faded. Now Conrad was inside their notorious headquarters, his initial certainty that the Gestapo would have to release him untouched seemed optimistic. He had no idea what the Gestapo would do to him; he tried to dismiss images of torture chambers and concentration camps from his mind.

He pulled himself together. It was Joachim they wanted, not him. He was innocent, he was no spy; they would release him – as long as he could maintain an aura of confidence. He would deny everything, and they would have to let him go. After all, His Britannic Majesty requested and required it.

At least Joachim was free.

After about three-quarters of an hour a large, ungainly man appeared, wearing steel-rimmed spectacles and a scruffy, ill-fitting suit. ‘Herr de Lancey?’ he said to Conrad, holding out his hand.

‘Yes.’ Conrad rose to his feet and shook it.

‘My name is Kriminalrat
Schalke.’ He smiled. It was a strange, lop-sided grin, which exuded what seemed to be genu­ine friendli­ness. ‘Come through.’

Conrad followed Schalke into an office, or rather interview room. Schalke sat on one side of the desk and Conrad sat on a chair a few feet back on the other. A female stenographer came in and settled herself at a machine on a table just behind Conrad.