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.
As the bus lurched to a stop on the corner of Friedrichstrasse and Unter den Linden, and Conrad stepped on to the pavement, he came to a decision. It would be wrong to try to trick Theo into giving him secrets, that would be betraying their friendship. But if he asked him straight out, then it would be up to Theo whether to help him or not. He had no idea what Theo’s reaction would be. Theo might have joined the German army, but he had always had a strong sense of justice and an equally strong dose of common sense. He must realize that Hitler was wrong – worse than wrong, evil. There was a chance, a good chance that he would be sympathetic to Conrad’s suggestion.
And, either way, Conrad would find out who Theo really was.
The woman getting off the bus after Conrad had no idea of the turmoil simmering in the Englishman’s brain. She was just doing her job. She was in her early thirties, smallish, wearing a brown hat and shapeless raincoat and carrying a shopping bag, one of thousands of such women in Berlin. Her job was made easier by Conrad’s preoccupation. And it was a job well done: Conrad’s visit to the British Passport Control Office would be sure to interest her superiors.
10
Conrad had been waiting on the Bendlerstrasse outside the War Ministry for an hour and a half. He lit another cigarette and checked his watch – it was half past six. Conrad was pretty sure he hadn’t missed him, but he didn’t know how late Theo might work. And of course he didn’t really know whether Theo worked in the War Ministry at all; that was what he was here to confirm. If he didn’t see Theo that evening, he would try Gestapo headquarters on the Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse the following day.
He turned away from the entrance to the ministry and looked down the street to see the tall figure of Theo striding towards him from the direction of the Tirpitzufer, the road that ran along the Landwehr Canal. Theo was almost upon him before he recognized his friend. ‘Conrad! What are you doing here?’
‘I wanted to talk to you and so I thought I would wait for you to leave your office.’
Theo glanced up at the imposing grey block of the ministry building. ‘Well, this is a damn silly place to wait. We’ll be seen.’
‘Does that matter?’ said Conrad. ‘We are friends after all. What’s strange in us meeting?’
‘Do you realize we are being
watched?’
Conrad looked up and down the street. There were three people waiting at a bus stop about a hundred yards away. A woman, a round old man and a tall man with an umbrella and hat. At that distance it was difficult to see any of the three closely.
‘The tall man by the bus stop?’
‘No, the woman,’ Theo said.
‘Is she watching me or you?’
‘Well, she’s watching both of us now, isn’t she?’
‘Let’s walk to your flat then,’ said Conrad. ‘I have something I want to say to you.’
Theo paused to light a cigarette. ‘If you want to say something important, it’s better we don’t go to my flat.’
‘Oh, the microphones.’
‘It’s always safest to assume they are there. Let’s go down to the canal.’
‘What about our tail?’
‘She won’t get close enough to hear.’
They crossed the Tirpitzufer and walked along the path next to the Landwehr Canal, under the chestnuts. Above them was the new Shell building, an elegant nine-storey edifice whose smooth white curves looked effete compared to the strong square slabs of Nazi construction sprouting up all over Berlin.
Conrad hesitated as he prepared to tackle Theo on Foley’s request, but it was Theo who brought the subject up before Conrad had a chance. ‘So you’ve been to the British Passport Control Office?’
‘Yes. I wanted to speak to the people there about a visa for Anneliese’s father. You know he’s in prison?’
‘By “the people” you mean Captain Foley?’
‘Yes, I do,’ admitted Conrad. ‘But how did you know I’ve been there?’
‘And do you know that Captain Foley is head of the British Secret Service in Berlin?’
‘I guessed as much,’ said Conrad. ‘Is it you who has been having me followed? Don’t you trust me?’
For the first time since they had met that evening, Theo smiled. ‘Yes, actually, I do trust you. About the big things, anyway.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, I trust your instincts, your beliefs. You’re a good man, Conrad, an honest man, someone who believes in right and wrong and who will stand up against injustice when you see it.’ Theo’s voice was warm, but it was warmth tinged with a touch of sadness. ‘That’s why I think you should go back to England.’
‘But why?’ said Conrad. ‘You said yourself the people of this country are sleepwalking. So are the people of my country. Do you want me to join them?’
‘They weren’t all sleepwalking,’ said Theo. ‘When the Nazis came to power and Hitler usurped the constitution, there were many people who looked the other way, myself included, I’m ashamed to say. But there were some, hundreds – no, thousands – who stood up and shouted that what was happening was wrong. Students, workers, trade unionists, writers, civil servants, lawyers, artists, schoolteachers, academics, pastors. People like you.’
‘Well, it seems there aren’t enough of us,’ said Conrad.
‘The cemeteries are full of you,’ said Theo. ‘And the concentration camps. You asked whether I trusted you; well, I don’t trust you to keep yourself out of a graveyard.’
‘They won’t touch me,’ said Conrad. ‘I’m a foreigner, and a well-connected foreigner at that.’
‘Oh, believe me, Conrad, if they really want to, they’ll touch you. They won’t be stupid enough to arrest you and put you on trial. A bullet in the back of the head is all it needs. Perhaps your body will never be found. Go home, Conrad. Please.’
They came to a little bridge over the canal and crossed it, heading back towards Bendlerstrasse. A barge nosed quietly through the dark water. Conrad spotted the woman following them, now facing them on the other side of the canal. She turned and dropped her shopping bag, spilling a couple of items on to the pavement, and stooped immediately to pick them up.
Given what Theo had told him, Conrad wondered whether he should continue with his plan. But now he needed to know more than ever whose side Theo was on.
‘You said you are not a Nazi,’ he began. ‘And that you think the Nazis are mad.’
‘What if I did?’ said Theo.
‘I don’t know what exactly you do at the War Ministry, but if you come across any pieces of information that are interesting, you might pass them on to me? Something about Joachim’s plot to overthrow Hitler, perhaps?’
Instantly Theo stopped, as if he had been struck. He glanced quickly at Conrad with an expression of shock and surprise; then he took a deep breath and walked on, staring straight ahead, his jaw set, the duelling scar stretched taut.
‘Theo?’ Conrad said, searching for a response and getting none. ‘You could choose what to give me. Just things that might damage Hitler.’ They walked on in a silence that was rapidly becoming unpleasant. ‘Theo?’
‘You’re asking me to spy on my country,’ Theo muttered.
‘I’m asking you to help stop Hitler starting a war.’
‘No,’ Theo said. ‘If a war starts between our two countries, which is highly likely, you’re asking me to help Germany lose it.’
‘If a war starts it will be Hitler who starts it,’ Conrad said.
‘I can’t believe this!’ Theo said. ‘What right have you got to ask me to betray my country?’
‘I’m not asking you to betray your country,’ Conrad said. ‘Just to stop the Nazis.’
Theo’s eyes were alive with anger. ‘Look, Conrad. I thought you were on the side of peace and against war. I thought you were for the international brotherhood of man. I thought you swore that you wouldn’t let anyone order you to kill other people.’
‘Yes,’ said Conrad, swallowing. ‘I believe in all that.’
‘You can either be in favour of peace, or you can be on the side of your country against mine,’ Theo said. ‘What you cannot do is try to persuade me that spying for your country against my own is somehow backing the cause of international peace and harmony.’
‘I decided to ask you straight out,’ protested Conrad. ‘I’m not trying to trick you or anything.’
‘Captain Foley asked you to do this, didn’t he?’
‘Yes,’ admitted Conrad.
‘Why me? Why is he interested in me?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Conrad. ‘But I suspect you do.’
Theo snorted and shook his head. ‘I was wrong when I said I trusted you. You, of all people, to become a spy.’
‘All right,’ said Conrad. ‘If you don’t want to tell me anything I understand.’
‘You’re damn right I don’t want to tell you anything!’ Theo stopped and faced Conrad. ‘Look, I suggest you go back to your flat, pack your suitcase and get a train back to England. And until you do so, I suggest we don’t meet again.’
He hailed a passing taxi, which pulled over. He climbed in and wound down the window. ‘Go home, Conrad. If you want to stay alive, go home.’
Conrad trudged back to his hotel. The sky was grey and it began to rain. Conrad ignored it, moving slowly, not bothering to check whether the woman or some as yet unidentified colleague of hers was following him.
If Conrad had ever had any doubts that Theo was not simply drafting legal documents in a little office in the War Ministry, he had lost them now. Theo had put a tail on Conrad. He knew all about Captain Foley and the British Passport Control Office. And his contacts were good enough to tell him that Joachim was a Soviet spy.
Theo’s accusations had struck home. Conrad didn’t like his friend, or former friend, claiming that he had sold out his principles. That was the whole point of tackling Theo directly; if Theo really was as anti-Nazi as he claimed then he should have been all too eager to help Conrad.
But he hadn’t been. And the obvious conclusion was staring Conrad in the face. Theo had become a dyed-in-the-wool Nazi who would ruthlessly betray first Joachim and then him.
The idea hit Conrad hard. It undermined not just his trust in Theo and his friendship, but his very understanding of the wo
rld. But, despite all the evidence, Conrad couldn’t quite accept it yet. He had hoped the confrontation with Theo would bring certainty. Instead it had piled on further doubts.
At Oxford, Theo had enjoyed a reputation as a bit of an enigma. But Conrad had understood him – or thought he had. There were three opposing forces in Theo’s character. There was the arrogant, upright Prussian, with his belief in order and duty. Then there was the romantic intellectual who liked to discuss poetry and ideology late into the night. And finally there was the charming, good-looking man-about-town who could drink his male friends under the table, and charm his female friends under the bedcovers. These aspects of his character seemed to be in constant conflict; at any time one or other was dominant, but the others were always there under the surface.
So who was Theo now? The Prussian patriot? The ideological Nazi? Although Conrad had seen him with flirting with the blonde girl, Anneliese’s friend, at the dinner party, he seemed much more serious than Conrad had ever known him. None of this quite made sense.
Theo had been serious when he had warned Conrad about the dangers of staying in Germany, deadly serious. Conrad accepted that Theo had a point: he must be more careful how he behaved in Berlin, and he could not assume that just because he was a former British government minister’s son he was safe. But Conrad wasn’t going to run away. Joachim had followed his principles and died for them. Conrad had been prepared to die for his in Spain, and had seen too many of his brave colleagues give up their lives for an ideal. What was happening to people like Joachim, like the schoolteacher in the street, like Anneliese’s father, like countless other Germans, was wrong and Conrad couldn’t – wouldn’t – run away from it.
11
General Ludwig Beck, Chief of the General Staff, surveyed the remains of the dinner that he and twenty of his fellow staff officers had just consumed. Candlelight glimmered off silver candlesticks and cutlery, sparkled through crystal glasses and decanters, and gleamed in shimmering pools on the deeply polished wood of the dining table in the private room of the Esplanade Hotel in Berlin. The grey of the officers’ uniforms and the black of the iron crosses adorning their necks flickered in shadows. Although they were relaxing after a good meal and plenty of drink, their sabre-scarred faces betrayed the intelligence, discipline and imagination that had made the German general staff the envy of the world for at least a century.
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