Traitor's Gate (9 page)

‘Idiot!’

‘The strange thing is, I think he genuinely meant it. It is fright­ening how these Nazis can lose touch with reality, with common sense.’

‘I can’t believe it,’ said Conrad, shaking his head.

‘You will get used to it.’

The maid cleared their plates and produced some cheese, both German and French, once again demonstrating the hunter-gathering skills of Theo’s cook. But no Stilton. Anneliese took some Mainzer sour-milk cheese and Conrad some Brie.

‘When is your father due to be released?’ asked Conrad.

‘In a couple of weeks.’

‘That must be a relief.’ Conrad looked to Anneliese, expecting to see a smile, but she was concentrating on the cheese in front of her, chasing it around her plate as she tried to spread it on a slice of bread. Conrad realized he had said something wrong. ‘Is there a hitch of some kind?’

Anneliese bit her lip. Her self-assurance seemed to crumble away in front of Conrad’s eyes. ‘You could say that.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You see, the release is the most dangerous time of all. The Gestapo often wait outside the gates to arrest the prisoner as he walks free. They take him into what they call “protective custody” and throw him into a concentration camp. It’s much worse than prison.’

‘But why would they do that to your father?’

‘To protect the Aryan population from his blood,’ Anneliese muttered bitterly. ‘Herr and Frau Schmidt could be innocently driving along the road, have an accident, go to hospital and wake up Jewish. They must be protected from this risk.’

‘Do you know for sure the Gestapo will do this?’

‘I’ve heard they are intending to. It was a high-profile case, as I’m sure you can imagine. Himmler himself took an interest.’

‘I’m so sorry. Is there nothing you can do? Can that really be legal?’

‘It is legal. My one hope is if I can get him a visa to leave the country. Sometimes the Gestapo let prisoners do that. If he’s abroad he can hardly be a risk to German blood, can he? I’ve been trying for the last month. The problem is it’s so difficult to get a visa.’

‘Have you tried Britain?’ asked Conrad.

‘Yes. In fact that was our first choice; my father has a cousin there. But there are queues and quotas. The same goes for Palestine – the British administer the visas for there too. The United States, France... they are all cracking down. But I haven’t given up yet. I will not let him end up in one of those camps. I will not!’

Conrad thought about Foley, of the conversation he had had with him in the Tiergarten. Faced with the immediate distress of Anneliese, his earlier distrust of the man seemed irrelevant, capricious even.

He broke the silence. ‘I know the Passport Control Officer at the British Embassy,’ he said. ‘Or at least I met him this morning. Would you like me to have a word with him?’

Anneliese smiled, hope flickering in her eyes. ‘Would you?’

‘I can try. It might not work.’

‘Please do,’ she said. ‘Please, please do.’

Conrad had no opportunity to speak to Theo alone until the other guests had all left. Anneliese had given him her telephone number so that he could get in touch with her if he had any luck with Captain Foley.

Theo glanced around the apartment. André, his cook, was chivvying the maid to clear up the mess. ‘It’s a nice night. Let’s go for a walk.’

‘All right,’ Conrad said, and followed his host out into the street. The air was pleasantly cool. They walked up to the Tier­garten and then headed west, the trees and bushes looming darkly beside them.

‘Sorry about that,’ said Theo. ‘You never know who is listen­ing these days.’

Conrad raised his eyebrows. ‘The cook? Or are you worried about microphones? Why would they want to bug you?’

Theo shrugged. ‘Who knows? But it always pays to be careful.’

‘That was an excellent dinner,’ Conrad said. ‘Thank you for inviting me at such short notice.’

‘I was lucky to find André,’ Theo said. ‘You obviously got on well with Anneliese.’

‘I like her.’

‘So do I. She’s an intelligent woman. And she has had a diffi­cult time.’

‘She told me about her father. It’s an appalling story.’

‘There’s that. And other things.’

‘It all sounds quite mad.’

‘It is,’ said Theo. ‘As you spend more time in Germany you will see lots of things like this. And it’s important to remember that they
are
quite mad – not just mad, wrong. If you are not careful you grow accustomed to the madness, it loses its ability to shock, it becomes acceptable. And you become one of the madmen.’

‘I don’t understand how the people put up with it,’ Conrad said. ‘Ordinary people, not the fanatics. Germany used to be full of ordinary people.’

‘We are all sleepwalking,’ Theo said. ‘Sleepwalking to oblivion.’

This sounded like the Theo Conrad knew, not the Theo wearing an army uniform. That still made Conrad uneasy, as had Captain Foley’s curiosity about his friend. Conrad realized he had no clue about what Theo did apart from working in the War Ministry. Theo had implied that he acted as a lawyer there, but Conrad wasn’t exactly sure what a lawyer did in the army. Perhaps Theo was actually involved in something else entirely: drawing up invasion plans for Czechoslovakia, or organizing Germany’s rearmament programme. Both of these seemed most unlike him.

Conrad remembered a summer night at Oxford. It was in their second year: he and Theo had been working their way through a bottle of port in Conrad’s rooms. They had just drunk a toast to Algy, as was their custom. Algy was Algernon Pendleton, whose name was engraved on a mahogany plaque fixed above the door of Conrad’s rooms, together with the year he had arrived at the college, and the year he had been killed at Ypres. Many, if not most, of the rooms in Conrad’s college commemorated their former occupants in this way.

‘You know,’ Theo had said, ‘we shouldn’t let them do that to us.’

‘What, fight each other?’

‘Yes. They shouldn’t be allowed to order you to kill me, or me to kill you.’

‘They shouldn’t,’ said Conrad. ‘But one day they probably will.’

‘Let’s promise to refuse if they try. Not just promise. Swear it.’

‘Right oh,’ said Conrad, slouching in his armchair. ‘I swear it.’

‘No, we need more than that,’ said Theo. He went over to Conrad’s bookcase and found a Bible. ‘Put your hand on this and swear it.’

Conrad hesitated and then rested his palm on the book. ‘I do solemnly swear that I will not let anyone tell me to go and kill my good friend, Theo von Hertenberg.’ He glanced up at Theo. ‘All right?’

‘Very good. Give me the book.’ Theo returned to his chair and holding the book in the air, repeated the oath in German. He placed the Bible on the floor by his chair.

The two friends sat in silence for a long time. They were half drunk and the oath had been made in an atmosphere of mock sincerity. Yet they meant it. And seven years later, Conrad meant it still. It wasn’t just a personal thing between Theo and him: their friendship represented the antipathy their generation felt towards massacring each other. It was a kind of moral progress to match the technological progress they saw all around them, a conviction articulated in the famous vote at the Oxford Union two years later supporting the motion that ‘This House will under no circumstances fight for its King and Country’.

But over those seven years Conrad had changed: he had married and fought in Spain. And what had Theo been up to? Their correspondence had been desultory since Conrad had last visited Theo in Berlin in 1933, and petered out completely when he had gone to Spain. At the time, Conrad had put that down to his own preoccupations. But now he wondered whether Theo didn’t want to be seen to be writing to a member of the Inter­national Brigade. Understandable, perhaps, but disappointing.

They turned south, crossing the dark silent ribbon of the Landwehr Canal and entering streets of shops and people. They passed through a crowd spilling out of a brightly lit cinema on to the pavement, searching for taxis. An enormous picture of Frederick the Great was emblazoned over the pseudo-Grecian façade, which glowed an eerie luminescent blue in the lights.

‘Anneliese told me who Johnnie von Herwarth is,’ Conrad said. ‘You didn’t say he was an old friend.’

‘I didn’t, did I?’ said Theo dryly. ‘Did Anneliese say anything about that evening with Joachim?’

‘Not really. Apart from that he was drunk.’

‘Good,’ grunted Theo.

They turned back along quieter residential streets towards Theo’s apartment. Unease gathered around them, like mist in the night. Conrad was obviously grateful to Theo for rescuing him. But Theo hadn’t been able to save Joachim, and he didn’t show much sign of caring about that much either. Joachim was just another innocent German chewed up by the Nazi machine. Of course Theo’s response wasn’t unusual, it was the classic reaction of his countrymen to brutal murder by the state. Look the other way. Talk about something else. Well, Conrad wouldn’t look the other way. There were things about Joachim’s death that didn’t make sense, and Conrad was going to make sense of them, whether Theo liked it or not.

‘Was there any truth in what Joachim said?’ Conrad asked. ‘About a plot to remove Hitler?’

‘I’ve told you,’ said Theo. ‘It was just a wild rumour.’

‘Like you told me you didn’t know Johnnie von Herwarth?’

‘I said no such thing. I just didn’t answer your question.’

‘Semantics,’ Conrad said. ‘Lawyer’s semantics.’

‘Well, at least it’s not a soldier’s semantics,’ said Theo, with half a smile.

‘Theo, he was my cousin. I have a right to know what was going on.’

Theo walked in silence for a minute. Conrad could tell he was thinking, and let him. Eventually he spoke. ‘The lawyer in me says you have no prima facie right to know, Conrad. The citizen of the Reich in me tells me the less you know, the better. But you are my friend.’

There was something ominous in the way Theo spoke. ‘And?’

Theo took a deep breath. ‘It is quite likely that Joachim Mühlen­­­dorf was a Soviet spy.’

‘That’s absurd!’ said Conrad. ‘Joachim is the last person in the world I would imagine as a secret agent.’

‘Never a bad qualification,’ said Theo.

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘Don’t you? You knew him much better than me. Is it possible that he was ever a communist?’

‘Not in any formal sense,’ said Conrad.

‘But he had communist beliefs?’

‘Yes,’ Conrad admitted.

‘And is it possible that he still had those beliefs when he died?’

Conrad took a moment to consider the question. ‘Yes, I sup­pose so. Although he was a member of the Nazi Party.’

‘I don’t know whether he was recruited in Moscow, or some time before. But if Mühlendorf was a spy, it would help to be a Party member to do his job.’

Conrad frowned, thinking. It
was
possible. Despite his extra­va­gant behaviour, Conrad knew that Joachim’s socialist beliefs ran deep. And Joachim would love the idea of people like Theo assuming he was a superficial lightweight when actually he was leading a secret life spying against the Nazi regime. But Conrad wasn’t going to admit as much to Theo. ‘So are you trying to tell me it was perfectly justifiable that the Gestapo killed him?’

Theo paused before answering, as they overtook a couple sauntering along the pavement. The street was quiet and their voices carried in the still night. Theo lowered his. ‘No. But I am saying he was an enemy of my country. A Bolshevik.’

‘And is Bolshevism so much worse than Nazism?’

‘Conrad,’ Theo said wearily. ‘He was spying for a foreign power. He was betraying his own country,
my
country. And yes, Bolshevism is evil. I spent three weeks in Russia after I went down from Oxford, just to look around, see what the workers’ promised land was really like. And it’s hell, Conrad, really. It dehumanizes people. You must have seen that in Spain?’

‘Perhaps,’ said Conrad. ‘But Nazism dehumanizes people too. Is that why you supported Hitler when I saw you here in 1933?’

‘I never supported Hitler,’ Theo said. ‘It’s true that in 1933 I thought that Hitler was the lesser of two evils and someone had to put some order into the mess that Germany had become. I thought Hitler wouldn’t last more than a couple of years. But I was wrong. Like everyone else, I was too complacent.’

Conrad couldn’t help himself asking the question that had been foremost in his mind over the previous few days. ‘Theo. Are you a Nazi?’

‘Of course I’m not a Nazi!’ Theo snapped. ‘Don’t be so damned suspicious.’

They had reached the Landwehr Canal again; a half-moon was reflected in a strip of silver shimmering on the otherwise black water. They were at the point where Theo turned one way and Conrad the other to get back to his hotel.

 Theo halted. ‘Look, I asked you to forget about Joachim. I meant that. And it’s very important you do as I ask, otherwise the Gestapo will think you are a Soviet spy also. And that would not be good for your health.’

‘I was thinking about my interrogation,’ Conrad said.

‘Conrad—’

‘No, listen,’ said Conrad with impatience. ‘The Gestapo officer asked me about Johnnie von Herwarth, and he asked me about the plot against Hitler, the one that you say doesn’t exist.’

‘So?’

‘So, Joachim hadn’t mentioned either of those two things to me that evening. Which means that someone at the Kakadu that night with you and Joachim must have told them.’

‘Perhaps their lip-reader was watching us?’

‘Joachim spoke to you in English, didn’t he? It must be very difficult to be a bilingual lip-reader. Think how hard it must be for a deaf person to learn a foreign language. Face it, Theo. It’s much more likely that someone at your table informed the Gestapo.’

‘That doesn’t make sense,’ Theo said. ‘It can’t have been Sophie; she speaks no English, and besides she disappeared to the Ladies once Joachim started talking to me. Anneliese was there, but she doesn’t speak English very well, either. And, as you heard tonight, she is the last person who would be helpful to the Gestapo.’

‘Precisely,’ said Conrad. ‘Which leaves just you and Joachim. And it wasn’t Joachim.’