Traitor's Gate

by Michael Ridpath

  ‘I wish we could do this all morning,’ said Oster.

  ‘Do you ever see General von Fritsch out here these days?’ asked Theo.

  ‘Not since he resigned. He’s too humiliated to be seen in public, even on a horse in the Tiergarten.’

  They passed a small pond and a rather grand statue of a minor composer of operas; the path was just wide enough to ride abreast. It was amazing how quiet it was here in the very heart of the city.

  ‘An extraordinary thing happened to me the other day,’ Theo said. ‘I was approached by the British to spy for them.’

  Oster turned to him, his eyebrows raised. ‘Your friend de Lancey?’

  Theo nodded.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘It took me by surprise; I wasn’t expecting it at all. I felt insulted and I told him so. We left on bad terms.’

  ‘You told me you didn’t think he was a spy?’

  ‘And I didn’t. But we know that he went to the British Passport Control Office a few days ago. Foley has obviously got to him. I’m surprised, I thought Conrad’s pacifism was stronger than that.’

  Oster stared hard at his subordinate. ‘So, Hertenberg. What shall we do with him, I wonder?’

  Conrad glanced at the station clock. Six minutes past five and the evening rush hour was just getting into full swing. The vast Anhalter Station, one of the two largest in the city, was a baroque cathedral dedicated to the worship of steam. He had arrived a little early: if there was anyone watching, he wanted to appear to be hanging around waiting to meet someone on an arriving train. The clock was a small one for such a large station, and it was mounted above the main entrance. At this time of day people were bustling past him, the direction of the flow being mostly into the station and trains to Bavaria, Anhalt, Saxony and Czechoslovakia.

  It had taken him an hour and a half to get from his hotel to the station, less than a mile away. After Theo’s revelation that he had been followed to the Passport Control Office and then again to the Bendlerstrasse, Conrad wanted to make absolutely sure there was no one on his tail. He hadn’t seen anyone, but he had tried a variety of dodges to make sure: lingering over a cup of coffee in a café and studying all the other customers, jumping on and off U-Bahn trains, walking slowly in one direction across the Pariser Platz and then turning on his heels to retrace his steps. He was as sure as he possibly could be that he was clear.

  When Anneliese had asked Conrad that morning over a hurried cup of coffee at Café Josty whether he was still serious about helping her father, he had instantly answered yes, even though he knew there would be danger. Her instructions had been clear. Her uncle, who was employed by a company called Focke-Wulf, was working on the design of a new fighter aeroplane. He was in Berlin for a meeting at the Air Ministry and would be on his way home, catching a train from the Anhalter Station. Conrad was to wait for him at a quarter past five under the clock.

  Conrad kept his eye on Platform Seven. He had checked a timetable, and there was a train that arrived there at five-sixteen. His plan was to wait until all the passengers were off the train, and then to leave the station disappointed.

  The clock again. Eight minutes past. He was confident that Anneliese’s uncle would accost him at exactly quarter past; a rendezvous this important would bring out the punctuality in any German. He checked for potential watchers: in the Anhalter Station at that hour of the day there were dozens of possibilities.

  This was real, honest-to-goodness spying Conrad was involved in now. He realized that he was gambling everything, perhaps even his life, on Anneliese and her uncle being careful. They were only amateurs, like him. There were all kinds of mistakes they could make. He had to trust that their innocence had kept them out of the Gestapo’s eyes. Except Anneliese wasn’t really innocent: she was an ex-communist who had done time in a concentration camp. Perhaps they had a permanent watch on her.

  Eleven minutes past. A man Conrad had suspected of being a Gestapo watcher folded up his evening newspaper and headed off to a train on Platform Four. Conrad was jumpy. It had been foolish to arrive early after all; the waiting was killing him. It was the longest ten minutes of his life.

  Thrust deep into his overcoat pockets, his hands were clammy. He pulled them out and opened his tightly bunched fists to let the air cool his palms. He shouldn’t have agreed to do this. He didn’t know Dr Rosen; he wasn’t sure he even knew Anneliese. For a moment he thought of just walking away. But he had given his word, and having done that he couldn’t let Anneliese down. Anneliese’s uncle had already taken a great risk to meet him; Conrad had to be there.

  Fourteen minutes past. A fat man in a bow tie holding a rolled-up newspaper sauntered up to him. Conrad tensed, but the man sauntered past. A train whistle blew and steam billowed along one of the platforms.

  ‘Excuse me, sir, would you like to read my newspaper? I have finished it.’

  Conrad turned to see a thin man with glasses and a greying moustache holding out a copy of the Frankfurter Zeitung. He was licking his lips, and sweat glistened on his forehead. The paper was shaking.

  Conrad took it. ‘Thank you, that’s very kind,’ he said.

  ‘Not at all,’ said the man, touched his hat and walked briskly off towards Platform Eight, where the train was just about to leave.

  His heart beating rapidly, Conrad moved towards Platform Seven where another train had just arrived and was disgorging its passengers. He tried desperately hard to concentrate on the passengers and not look around for watchers, or better yet, just turn on his heel and leave. The wave of hurrying men and women jostled past him, and then they were gone.

  With a sigh of relief, he glanced at the now empty platform, checked his watch, shook his head in feigned disappointment that the person he had been supposed to meet had not been on the train, and turned for the station exit.

  Turned, and walked straight into a big man in a raincoat. A smaller colleague stood next to him.

  ‘Can I see that newspaper, please?’ the man said, holding out his hand.

  ‘No,’ replied Conrad, indignantly.

  ‘Gestapo,’ the man said simply, opening his wallet to show his identification.

  Conrad hesitated and then handed over the newspaper. ‘Can’t you people buy your own?’ he said, allowing a heavy English accent to tinge his German. He didn’t want his perfect German to arouse suspicions this time.

  ‘Are you a foreigner?’ the man snapped.

  ‘I’m English.’

  ‘May I see your papers?’

  With steady hands, Conrad pulled his passport from his breast pocket and passed it to the officer, who examined it closely.

  ‘Where did you get this newspaper?’ the Gestapo officer barked.

  ‘Someone just gave it to me. I assume he had finished with it. Jolly decent of him, really.’

  ‘Do you know the man?’

  ‘No. Never seen him before in my life. I did get a look at him, though. I could probably identify him if you wanted me to.’

  ‘Don’t worry, we know who he is.’ The officer turned to his colleague, who was shaking the newspaper. ‘Anything?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  The Gestapo officer grabbed the newspaper and leafed through it furiously, swearing under his breath. His face was reddening.

  ‘If you’re looking for the test scores, I don’t think that paper carries it,’ said Conrad. ‘Last I heard Australia were two hundred and twenty for four.’

  The officer glared at Conrad as if he were mad. ‘Search him!’Protesting mildly, Conrad took off his coat and turned out his pockets. Nothing.

  The officer pursed his lips in frustration. ‘Take down his name and address,’ he ordered his colleague. ‘We’ll be in touch if we need you.’

  ‘May I have my paper back?’ Conrad asked.

  The Gestapo officer ignored him, and strode towards the station exit clutching the copy of the Berliner Tageblatt to his chest.

  13

  Klaus was tired. The previ
ous evening he had accompanied Heydrich to Salon Kitty, a high-class brothel in a smart area of Berlin, staffed by beautiful and sophisticated women. The establishment’s nine bedrooms were wired with microphones, and the idea was to entice foreign diplomats to come in and relax and then to listen to their pillow talk. The project had notched up some minor successes and Heydrich was very proud of the place, so proud that he frequently inspected it. Often he took Klaus with him, and Klaus was always careful to telephone ahead to make sure that the microphones were switched off for their visit. On such nights Klaus never made it home to bed until after two.

  Klaus found it strange how little interest he had in the women at the salon. Sometimes, if he was drunk enough, he would give one of them a good seeing to, but mostly they just made him think of his angel. He wondered when he would forget her. It was nearly twelve months since they had split up and, if anything, his feelings for her were stronger than they had ever been. Never; the answer was never.

  At least he had received a letter from his mother saying she was feeling much better. Worry over her health had been bearing down heavily on him for the last few weeks, and the relief was exhilarating. Perhaps on Sunday he would slip home and see his parents. He knew his father wasn’t looking after his mother properly and it made him feel very guilty that he couldn’t be home more. His father was such a pig, willing to be waited on hand and foot by his wife for all those years, and then when she became ill grumbling because she could no longer look after him rather than repaying her for everything she had done for him.

  Klaus removed his spectacles, rubbed his eyes and picked up one of the files from the pile on his desk, flicking it open. More denunciations, this time by a butler who objected to his employer, a director of the Reichsbank, entertaining Jews to dinner. The day-to-day work of the Gestapo was relentless: the collation and analysis of the thousands of pieces of information that came in from informants and busybodies throughout the land, as well as from the Gestapo’s own men. The information accumulated faster than the Gestapo could process it.

  Klaus had discovered that two things were required to make sense of it all. One was a well-designed and efficiently maintained card-index system; the other was a team of clerks diligent enough to be accurate, but imaginative enough to make connections. One of the best of these was Gertrude Lüttgen, a mousy twenty-year-old pastor’s daughter with an extraordinary memory and voracious curiosity. When she knocked on his door with the announcement: ‘It’s probably nothing, Herr Kriminalrat, but I was just wondering...’ he always listened, however busy he was.

  ‘Come in, my dear,’ he said at her timid knock, with a friendly grin. ‘What have you got for me?’

  ‘It’s a report from an incident yesterday,’ Fräulein Lüttgen said, clutching a file tightly to her chest. ‘Our officers were following an engineer from the Focke-Wulf aircraft factory whom they had been told had been acting suspiciously recently. On his way back from the Air Ministry he bumped into a man at the Anhalter Station and handed him a newspaper. Our officers searched the man, but couldn’t find anything on him, so they let him go.’

  ‘So?’ Klaus wasn’t impatient. Knowing Fräulein Lüttgen, he knew there would be more.

  ‘So I thought I recognized the man’s name. I checked and I was right. It was someone you interrogated a couple of weeks ago.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘An Englishman named Conrad de Lancey.’

  Conrad met Anneliese at the S-Bahn station at Potsdamer Platz. God, she was beautiful. It was strange, the more he saw her the more beautiful he thought she was. It wasn’t her bone structure or her figure, it was something in the way she moved, in her smile, in the way her eyes flashed.

  ‘What is it, Conrad?’ she said. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Oh, yes, yes, I’m fine,’ he said, trying not to sound embarrassed. ‘Let’s go.’

  It was a hot day and the famous Berliner Luft, the crisp energizing air which made the city bearable in summer, had vanished. Despite the oppressive heat, they walked briskly towards the British Passport Control Office, Anneliese threading her arm through his.

  ‘Oh, Conrad. I’m so glad you weren’t caught,’ she said. ‘My uncle told me the train was stopped by the Gestapo at the first station outside Berlin, and he was hauled off. He thought he was done for. They told him they had arrested you, but fortunately he kept his nerve and said that he had just given you an old newspaper he had finished reading. They let him go in the end, but he was quite shaken and he says he’ll never do anything like that again.’

  ‘I don’t blame him,’ said Conrad.

  ‘But why didn’t they arrest you?’ Anneliese asked. ‘Did you escape somehow?’

  Conrad smiled. ‘I thought it wise to discuss your plan with Foley. Just as a precaution, he said he would provide some help. As soon as your uncle passed his paper to me, I walked into a crowd. One of Foley’s men jostled me and switched newspapers. So whatever your uncle gave me went straight to him. A moment later I was stopped by the Gestapo. You should have seen their faces when they couldn’t find anything!’

  ‘But if they had found something you’d be in a cell now!’

  ‘I know, but they didn’t, did they?’ Conrad said, squeezing her arm. ‘The one problem was that we didn’t know what newspaper your uncle would hand me. Fortunately the Gestapo never noticed that his Frankfurter Zeitung miraculously became a Berliner Tageblatt.’ It was strange but despite the risk, or possibly because of it, Conrad had enjoyed the whole experience. He would certainly think twice about doing it all again, but it had been a sweet feeling to fool the Gestapo. ‘And if we can get your father out of the country tonight it will all have been worthwhile.’

  ‘Thank you so much, Conrad,’ Anneliese said. ‘Do you think Captain Foley will have the visa?’

  ‘I hope so. I’m sure he will have done all he can to get it.’

  ‘I’m trying not to get my hopes up in case I’m disappointed, but it’s difficult not to.’ And indeed there was eagerness in Anneliese’s voice and in her step as they walked along Tiergartenstrasse. ‘I will miss my father if he goes to Britain, but at least I’ll know he’ll be safe.’

  The people queuing patiently along the street outside the Passport Control Office were wilting in the heat, brows glistening with sweat. The Yorkshire commissionaire recognized Conrad and led him through to Foley’s office. The captain was pleased to see them, as was his dog, but Conrad sensed immediately there was something wrong. Perhaps because Foley was English and she was German, Anneliese didn’t seem to pick up the same feeling.

  ‘Congratulations to both of you,’ Foley said in English with a smile. ‘That information your uncle gave us was gold dust, pure gold dust.’

  ‘I’m glad,’ said Conrad. But as he said it he realized he wasn’t. He hadn’t really considered what usefulness the information would have for his country. It was Anneliese’s father he was concerned about. Whatever he was doing, he wasn’t doing it for Britain, he was doing it for victims of Nazism, individuals who were important to him: Anneliese, Dr Rosen, Theo, Joachim, and, he realized, ultimately himself. He was still wary of the kind of blind patriotism that required unquestioning loyalty to one’s country’s government: there was too much of that all around him in Berlin.

  ‘Fräulein Rosen, I would be extremely interested in obtaining any further information your uncle may be able to provide.’

  ‘I am sorry, Captain Foley,’ Anneliese replied in halting English. ‘He was quite afraid this time. I do not think he will help you again.’

  ‘I quite understand,’ said Foley, switching to German for Anneliese’s benefit. ‘But please just ask him to bear it in mind in future. If the situation in this country continues to deteriorate, he might change his position.’

  ‘I will tell him,’ said Anneliese. ‘Now, have you issued the visa for my father, Captain Foley?’

  ‘Yes, I have it here,’ said Foley with a quick smile, touching a form in front of him.

&nb
sp; ‘That’s wonderful!’ said Anneliese, glancing at Conrad. Seeing his expression, she looked at Foley. ‘What? What is it? What’s wrong?’ A note of panic rose in her voice.

  Foley sighed. ‘It’s the exit permit,’ he said. ‘The Gestapo won’t grant one.’

  ‘But I’ve done all the paperwork! The passport, the tax-clearance certificate. It took me weeks to get it all together.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with the paperwork,’ said Foley. ‘Usually when there is a hiccup like this we can sort it out, inducements can be brought to bear. In this case I asked a good friend of mine to do all he could, and normally that’s enough. But not this time. My friend says that someone doesn’t want your father to leave the country.’

  ‘No.’ She whispered the word and her lower lip trembled. A single tear ran down her cheek. She sniffed. ‘I’m sorry. I just thought... I hoped... I knew I shouldn’t have counted on it but...’

  Foley opened a drawer in his desk and produced a clean handkerchief, which he offered to her. Conrad realized he must be used to desperate weeping women in his office; he probably had a stack of them stowed away there. She dabbed her eyes. Conrad moved over to her and put his arm around her shoulders. She leaned into his body.

  ‘Is there nothing you can do?’ he asked.

  Foley shook his head. ‘I’m sorry. I’ve tried everything. The entry visa to Britain is good for six months, but without an exit permit it’s useless.’

  ‘I can’t let him rot in a camp,’ Anneliese protested.

  Foley sighed. ‘I appreciate the risk you both took to bring me this information, and I will continue to do what I can for your father. I have pulled people out of concentration camps before, provided we can get the exit permit.’

  ‘Perhaps he won’t be rearrested?’ Anneliese looked at Foley hopefully.