The Berlin Affair

by David Boyle

  “You must show me what you write about trousers,” he said. “You see, Xanthe, we enjoy blonde hair. It is one of our little weaknesses but it is also a great strength.” She could feel some fumbling under the table in the direction of her knees. This is the moment, she thought to herself – what should she do?

  Then, as if she had conjured him up herself, there was Ralph. Stumpf was on his feet greeting him, with some magnanimity, she thought, given what he had just interrupted.

  “No, do stay seated,” Ralph was saying. “My apologies for interrupting, only I am the bearer of a request from the British contingent at the Adlon – Joyce and Norman Baillie-Stewart, Frances Eckersley and the rest – and we knew you might be here, and I promised I would pass it on if I saw you. Would you both like to come?”

  She felt overwhelming relief. She was so grateful to Ralph that she had not registered surprise that there was a British contingent at the Adlon. She had realised, of course, that there was a group of misfits who had found their way to Berlin at the outbreak of war. She knew that Bill was an acquaintance of the broadcaster William Joyce, the distinctive voice of Lord Haw-Haw. The surprise was that they had organised themselves together at all to meet at the Adlon, if indeed they actually had.

  There was also the surprise that Ralph had guessed where Stumpf would take her. For a moment, she loved him for his intelligence and courage.

  Either way, by the time Ralph had finished speaking, she was on her feet, had thanked Stumpf for a wonderful evening and picked up her handbag and was about to walk out onto Wilhelmplatz.

  *

  Joyce had organised the get-together as a sort of launch for his book Twilight Over England, which had just been published. His wife Margaret was there too – Shirer used to call her “Lady Haw-Haw” – and both were in great spirits. Joyce looked a little frightening, like a menacing version of Stan Laurel, but he gave Xanthe a big smile, and the scar on his face twitched into a different shade of red as he signed her a copy.

  “Go on, give it a read. You might learn something,” he said. Shirer and the others were there on the fringes. Sigrid regarded them with a frosty stare from the other side of the bar.

  She opened the book and read the first paragraph:

  “Our only purpose is to show how England’s historical development contributed to the fateful and fatal action which her government took on September 3rd, 1939. There is a certain dramatic irony in Mr Chamberlain’s choice of the date. For September 3rd was the date of Oliver Cromwell’s birth and also of his death…”

  “Purple prose,” said Bill in Xanthe’s ear.

  “On the contrary – I don’t really understand what he’s on about. What’s Cromwell got to do with it?”

  Xanthe enjoyed the occasion, so confusing in its loyalties and diverse in its company. For a brief moment, in their extraordinary mixture of different nationalities and political affiliations, the war seemed forgotten – except of course that none of them would have been there without it.

  Ralph drank whisky a little apart from the rest. She was thinking how extraordinary he was – perhaps the only person in the whole city who remained unafraid of anything: not the Gestapo, not the RAF, not the Nazis, and not his own side, pursuing his own war in his own chosen way.

  What she should have been wondering perhaps was how he had become so intimate already with these people, mixed up in the whole tragedy as flyblown traitors.

  9

  Berlin, July 1940

  She handed the draft of her article about the “pants” controversy to the censor with some satisfaction. Xanthe felt pleased with herself. She had told the truth, but had not compromised her ability to get it passed by spelling out her conclusions – but she confided quietly to herself that any regime that seemed to disparage the clothes that women wore was probably not competent to fight a world war. She knew from her time in London that there were women in trousers even then driving buses, operating radar, making shells, and this must give them some advantages. She did not spell this out, though of course she wished she could have done.

  “Now Fraulein Schneider, this is an interesting piece but it is somehow a little – er, pointless, is it not? It is not very important.”

  She had not expected this kind of angle from the censor. “Well, I leave the military stories to the experts,” she said defensively.

  “Very well, I will pass it with just one deletion. I should like to remove the word ‘unfeminine’. I would not want you to give the impression that German women were unfeminine, even in wartime.”

  “Ok,” said Xanthe, with relief. “How would you describe it then – why the fear of pants, I mean trousers?”

  “Perhaps we could use the words ‘dressed as they should be’ or ‘appropriately’ for their vital role.”

  “How about ‘dressed correctly’?”

  “Very well. We agree. Thank you, Fraulein. A fruitful negotiation.”

  *

  Should she be having “fruitful negotiations” with Nazi officials, she wondered as she asked Ralph about the pants controversy again that evening as they walked again in the park? Berlin matrons were enjoying the evening sun. There was even a military band playing in the distance. She recognised the notes of Gott Strafe England. They talked about the strange contradictions in Nazi society – worrying about the word “unfeminine” while a naval officer happily reveals the truth about damage to his ship in action (not to mention what he confided about Enigma, but she kept that element to herself).

  “It’s true that the naval officers you meet are enjoyably open and free of pomposity, rather like our own navy back home,” said Ralph. “They are also supremely confident in their own way of doing things, the U-boats, the uncrackable code system.”

  This time, she could barely resist.

  “If Enigma is really uncrackable, then what are you doing here? I don’t completely understand, you know Ralph. Sorry to be so direct.”

  He stopped walking and looked her full in the face. His smile had vanished.

  “Xanthe, it is time for the truth. The most important truth.”

  She feared she was in for an accusation. But it wasn’t one.

  “I think I’m beginning to fall in love with you.”

  “You too?” she wailed. “What is it about this country? They can’t all adore blonde hair!”

  He looked cross.

  “Well, that’s a bit flippant, after what I’ve just told you.”

  She found she was breathing faster than she felt she should. There was something about Ralph’s sheer defiance which really attracted her. It was as if everything she had ever wanted had been given to her. A great feeling of excitement and happiness was wafting through her, like the waves of a storm.

  “Oh Ralph, I don’t know. I mean, how can we? We’re in such a peculiar and dangerous place…”

  “That’s enough of an answer for me,” he said. “Now I’m sure you feel the same. Come here.” He pulled her into a shadowy corner in the trees, bent over her and kissed her.

  When they drew breath, she nestled into his chest. Xanthe said: “Let’s just leave this city. Together. They give you so much freedom, Ralph; you could just escape and go home.”

  “Yes, and be hanged as a traitor.”

  “But you’re not, are you? You have plans. We both know that. How can we love each other here?”

  “Well, I don’t see – listen, Xanthe, tell me now. Who sent you here? Did you really come for the Chicago Tribune?”

  She could feel the immense relief, almost physical, that she was about to come clean. The words even came into her mouth to say. But at that moment, she saw Sigrid on the other side of the path. She leapt apart from Ralph just before she was seen.

  “Come on, Xanthe,” she said. “You’ll miss the press conference. Remember? Or didn’t you hear – at the Propaganda Ministry?”

  By the time she had recovered and excused herself, promising to meet Ralph later that evening, the moment had passed.


  *

  The press conference was too hot, as they invariably were. Almost everyone Xanthe knew in Berlin seemed to be squeezed into the heated room to hear Hitler’s ideologue Alfred Rosenberg make an extremely verbose statement about how Sweden would now have to apply to join the Nazi Scandinavian protectorate.

  As soon as he said it, some civil servants rushed out to report – presumably to the Foreign Office – and came back in time to pass notes to the shadowy man who was chairing. As soon as Rosenberg had sat down, the chairman was on his feet explaining that these were simply “Herr Rosenberg’s personal views”.

  “Why did they do that?” she asked Bill. “Was it because they don’t really want an absolute domination of Europe, or is it because they don’t want us to know yet?”

  “Good question. I think everything really points towards the latter, doesn’t it?”

  She was pleased that he had replied kindly. She had realised her press colleagues disapproved of her growing closeness with Ralph when she found herself excluded from key conversations. Of course they were reporters, and quite able to stab each other in the back in pursuit of the right story, but as foreign correspondents – and particularly with such fearsome hosts – they knew they also stood or fell together. If one of them sloped off for an event, the chances are that the others would follow, knowing they risked losing their job if another paper got a key story they had missed. So they organised their lives in such a way as to minimise the chances of that happening.

  Reporters like Shirer went their own way, but he was anyway a broadcaster with different technological needs. Otherwise, they stuck to each other like limpets – particularly when one of the censors proved particularly intractable, or when one of them was threatened with deportation because of the tone of their reporting.

  When that happened, there would be little clusters of American journalists in the bar at the Hotel Adlon, hammering out joint approaches or simply listening to each other’s sob stories. Xanthe first realised she had become an object of suspicion when she ambled over to join one of these clusters and the hubbub of voices hushed; people looked at her, irritated. She waited for a moment and then slipped away. It was mortifying, but what could she do? She was in reality not quite one of them, and they seemed to sense this.

  “Why are people avoiding me?” she asked Cynthia, an American Associated Press stringer she had become friendly with.

  “Oh come on, honey. It can’t be a surprise. Because you’re such pals with that Brit – they don’t know whose side you’re on.”

  “That’s ridiculous. I’m supposed to be friendly with people on the other side. We all are – you are, Bill is, every journalist is. That’s how we get our stories.”

  Cynthia put down her drink and turned to face her. “Xanth, I like you. Really do. So don’t make me spell it out. Of course we’re friendly to people, even in the regime. But generally speaking we don’t fall in love with them. We don’t sleep with traitors.”

  Cynthia saw the look of shock in Xanthe’s face. She wondered how best to deny it.

  “I’m not sleeping with him. I am not.”

  But the truth was that it was becoming untenable resisting his advances. She may not have been sleeping with Ralph, but she could certainly imagine herself doing so. He seemed to her to rise above the whole business of war. She still could not grasp quite what it was he was attempting to do. She had made no real decision about his sanity. She understood the challenge of the naval codes and how vital it was to find a clue, any clue – let alone a key that would unlock Enigma, if only to keep the trade routes open so that Britain could feed her people. But she could not quite see how he was planning to provide it – and despite all that, she admired his sheer aplomb, his savoir faire in the face of what was a clear case of tyranny. How often in life do you meet someone so courageous, or so insane, that they can rise above complexity and tyranny with good humour? She may not have been sleeping with him, but she certainly loved him.

  *

  The conversation upset her, partly because it struck an obvious nerve. What was she doing? Who was she actually betraying? It had all seemed so simple to start with when Commander Fleming had briefed her. She stayed awake in her little room, listening to the sounds of a typical Berlin boarding house, the running water, the banging doors, as she wept. The air-raid warnings went again, and she pulled the covers over her head and listened for the telltale cracks of bombs which never came.

  She felt she could hardly confide in Ralph. In fact, there was nobody she could confide in; who would forgive an agent who falls in love with her subject? A horrible suspicion began to grow in her that this was precisely what Fleming and Turing had intended all along, though she could think of no proper reason. Why would they want her to fall in love with Ralph? What advantage would it give them? And if they had not considered the possibility, why had they not? Did they not understand the way that men and women were, especially when they were a long way from home?

  She began to resent their involvement in her life. She decided again that she would throw herself on Ralph’s mercy and tell him everything and ask him to forgive her. She still had not understood his plan or its purpose, and she no longer really cared enough. She was giving up, handing in her spy’s licence, if there was such a thing. Not publicly, of course, but in her own understanding of her main purpose. She was due to meet Uncle Sam this time next to the reptile house, and she would fail to show up. She knew now what was most important.

  She was seeing Ralph as usual that evening. They saw each other most days when he had time – and, this time, she told herself, she would come clean. Once she had used the phrase to herself, she knew it was an appropriate one – her very small secret smelled; it made her feel dirty. She no longer really minded whose side Ralph was on.

  “I’ve got something to tell you,” she said sheepishly as they passed the Hotel Adlon.

  “Well, hold on,” he said, steering her across Pariserplatz, taking her arm as they dodged the military vehicles which seemed to be crowding through the Brandenburg Gate.

  “I tell you what,” he said. “I will walk you round to my hotel, we’ll have a night cap in my room, and you can tell me there.”

  She knew what this implied and a warm feeling of nervous anticipation flooded through her down to her toes. But in the event, the anticipation was too strong for any conversation.

  “Weren’t you going to tell me something?”

  “Oh, don’t worry – it wasn’t important…” She was hardly thinking any longer.

  She leaned back towards him as they went in through his door and she felt his arms come around her body.

  “It’s hard not to, isn’t it,” she said.

  “It certainly is.”

  She was not a virgin. But sex in Cincinnati had not really been more than a few smutty fumbles after a dance. Or once in Cambridge after a foreshortened May Ball in a borrowed dress that previous summer. This was somehow grown up and luxurious in Ralph’s huge bed. She had wanted to feel the weight of him on top of her, wanted the smell of him on her and around her. It was a moment of fulfilment for which she had no regrets at all. Wartime makes for unlikely conjunctions: here was she, a girl from Cincinnati, Ohio, in the arms of a former parliamentary undersecretary for the Crown, up to heaven knows what combination of selfishness and heroism. He was flawed, she knew. He was arrogant and pompous sometimes, and maybe not even entirely sane. She couldn’t see into his mind or his thoughts, but somehow his sheer bravado, his very madness, made him exciting. The rank male odour that emanated from him, under his carefully pressed aristocratic collars, made him feel different. But then again, she had never really been in love before.

  There was only one peculiarity about the night, the strange habit that made him cover his face at the moment of climax. She took it for shyness at the time, or vulnerability. It was only as she stared up at him, his face flushed, his fringe flopping down over his eyes, that she realised she had still not made her confession.


  10

  Berlin, July 1940

  “What are you so busy doing?” Xanthe asked Ralph the next morning. The sunlight was pouring through the net curtains.

  “Well, you know; I’ve got things to do.”

  “What things?”

  “Oh, come on, Xanthe. You know what I’m doing. I don’t need to spell it out. Time’s getting on. Everything’s kicking off in the next few days.”

  She got up in bed and wrapped herself in a sheet as a robe. She had stayed with him that night right through until breakfast. His bedroom smelled of sweat, whisky and eau-de-cologne.

  The moment had passed for her confession, at least like that, but now that they were actually talking about it, she realised she wanted to know a great deal more. Why the preparations? Why the meetings with Stumpf? Why, in fact, was he being looked after in some comfort by his Nazi hosts? She still did not quite understand.

  “I know I’ve asked you this before, but I don’t understand why you need all these meetings. What are you preparing for?”

  “You’ll know in two days,” he said enigmatically. “We are invited to a party, in fact, if you would come. In the Rundfunk building.”

  “Of course…”

  “Weren’t you going to tell me something important last night?”

  She had barely articulated these questions to herself before. Perhaps she had been too preoccupied with her changing feelings for the man that she had not asked herself these things with quite the objectivity that was required. Where did he actually go in the daytime?