Traitor's Gate

by Michael Ridpath

  Burning with anger, Conrad turned and blundered down the stairs and past Frau Goldstein, who had been listening in the hallway, into the street. He stood on the pavement, taking in great gulps of the cool night air. It was obvious what Schalke was doing there. It was also obvious why Anneliese had invited him: to get an exit permit for her father.

  For a moment he thought he didn’t know who Anneliese was, but then he realized that he did, that he had known all along. She was a single-minded, selfish woman who would do anything, anything, to set her father free. That was why she was with Schalke now. That was probably why she had been so friendly to him over the last couple of weeks. God, he had assumed that she had betrayed him by taking Schalke into her room, and probably into her bed. But she hadn’t done that at all. To her, he and Schalke were equivalent: men who were weak enough to be manipulated to bring her what she wanted.

  He thought of the message he had come to give her, about the exit permit for her father. Well, she knew all about that already, no doubt. But he didn’t want to jeopardize the delicate bureaucratic dance that was needed to spirit her father out of the country. He pulled out an old envelope and scribbled a hasty note on the back that Anneliese should call Captain Foley.

  He rang the doorbell, and Frau Goldstein answered immediately. She looked visibly distressed. ‘Oh, Herr de Lancey, that girl is so stupid. Do you know who the man is?’

  ‘I know, Frau Goldstein. And so does Fräulein Rosen. Now please give her this note.’ He just wanted to get the message through to Anneliese; once he had done that he had no need to communicate with her ever again.

  ‘I am so sorry, I wouldn’t allow him in my house, Herr de Lancey, but you must understand that it is a mistake to make an enemy of men such as him. And when you telephoned I thought if I said she was working at the hospital you wouldn’t come—’

  ‘I understand, Frau Goldstein. The note.’ He thrust the envelope into her hand and turned into the dark street.

  The Friedrichstrasse Station was smaller than the Anhalter, and it was difficult for Conrad to find a spot from where he could watch Platform One unobserved. In the end he settled on a corner of the station café, through the window of which he could get a pretty good view. The train for Hanover and the Hook of Holland left the platform at 4.10 p.m., but Conrad gave himself plenty of time to settle in before any other observers arrived.

  He had spoken briefly to Foley on the telephone the day before to confirm which train Dr Rosen was going to catch. Conrad was pleased about the doctor. The man had been treated barbarically and deserved a chance of a new life. He hoped that England would be kind to him. But his daughter. His daughter.

  For the last few days Conrad had played in his head over and over again the time he had spent with Anneliese. He saw everything in a new perspective, with her as the cunning manipulator and himself as the dupe. Had she thought the hours spent with him tedious, but necessary if her father was to be freed? He had done so much for her. Risked his life to pass on secrets to Foley. Destroyed his relationship with Theo.

  She had written him a note, which was now crumpled in his jacket pocket. He had read it so many times he had memorized its contents.

  Dear Conrad,

  I am terribly terribly sorry. You should never have had to see Klaus like that. I am sure you know why he was in my room: he has promised to arrange the exit permit for Papa. You might not know that Klaus and I have been acquainted a long time.

  You have been unfailingly kind and considerate; such a help to me both spiritually and in arranging for my father’s visa. You do not deserve what I have done to you.

  I won’t ask you to forgive me; I can’t forgive myself. I am so pleased that my father will soon be free, but that freedom has come at a great cost. I hate myself, for what I have become, for what I have done to you, for what I have done with Klaus. When I was a student Paul and I started a long war against the Nazis. Now they have won. He is dead, and I – well, I may as well be. But at least my father is free.

  Don’t let them destroy you too, my dear Conrad.

  Fondly,

  Anneliese

  It was hard to dismiss a letter like that. Conrad was tempted to feel sorry for her, but it was a temptation he resisted. Anneliese was trouble. Just as Veronica had been trouble. Both of them had exerted their magic on him; he had fallen for both: both had used him. True, Anneliese’s goal had been nobler than Veronica’s – Veronica basically wanted a good time and had become bored by Conrad. He had no idea what Anneliese really thought about him. Her letter said no more than that she felt guilty, which wasn’t at all surprising.

  He glanced at a menu. He wasn’t hungry, but his mouth was dry so he ordered a beer. In the midst of the swirling mass of humanity, he spotted a Gestapo watcher, also positioned with a view of Platform One. He wasn’t making much attempt to be unobtrusive, and he hadn’t seen Conrad.

  The line in the letter about being acquainted with Klaus for a long time puzzled Conrad. They seemed unlikely friends: Anneliese was a half-Jewish nurse; Klaus was in the Gestapo. He wondered what past they had shared together. Then his blood went cold. He remembered how he had accused Theo of informing on Joachim. What if it had been not Theo, but Anneliese?

  Theo had ruled her out because he said she didn’t speak much English and wouldn’t have understood Joachim, yet Conrad had seen her speaking the language with Captain Foley. Come to think of it, the first words she had spoken to him had been after overhearing the blonde woman at Theo’s dinner party talk about Linaro in English.

  And she knew Klaus.

  Joachim had died at the hands of Klaus Schalke. No wonder Anneliese was disgusted with herself.

  Just then a small group hurried towards the train at Platform One. There was Foley, Dr Rosen – walking awkwardly, his head shaven under his hat – Frau Rosen and lastly Anneliese. Even in the week since Conrad had last seen him at the gates of Dessau Prison, Dr Rosen seemed to have shrunk. Foley helped him stow his suitcases on the train. He only had two: restrictions on Jews applied not just to how much money they could take out of the country, just ten marks, but also to their property.

  The doctor shook hands with Foley, and hugged his wife and then his daughter. They were some distance away and the glass windowpane of the station café was between them, but as Anneliese held her father, Conrad thought that she caught sight of him watching them. Her eyes widened for a moment and then shut. A minute later, to the shrill cry of the guard’s whistle and the clamour of steam, the train pulled out of the station. At least one man has escaped the Nazis, Conrad thought, and one man is better than none.

  An oppressive gloom gathered about Conrad as he threaded his way through the commuters hurrying into the station. It wasn’t just Anneliese who had manipulated him. Foley had told him something else when he had telephoned to confirm the time of Dr Rosen’s train.

  Theo von Hertenberg worked for the German secret service. Which meant Conrad was as naive a mug as ever walked the streets of Berlin.

  Part 2

  July 1938

  16

  It was a beautiful July in Berlin. Relaxed crowds thronged the pavements in the sunshine, the girls in their summer dresses, couples dancing on café terraces, ice-cream vendors with their rainbow wheels and multi-coloured umbrellas doing a brisk trade. Neat baskets of geraniums and petunias shouted their presence from windows and balconies. There was a sense of optimism and purpose in the air.

  But not for Conrad. He sought refuge in the Stabi and his novel, but didn’t find it. It was hard to write about imaginary lives in Berlin in 1914 when Berlin in 1938 had changed his own life so deeply.

  He was coming to terms with the realization that he had spent the first twenty-seven years of his life completely misunderstanding the world around him. It was if he had lived his life in a large, dimly lit room and suddenly switched on a bright table lamp. Under the stark light, deep shadows stretched everywhere he looked. He had assumed that most people were good, decent indiv
iduals, who said what they thought and felt, and whom you could trust. Of course everyone had some flaws in his or her character, but these were usually obvious and could easily be ignored. As a reasonably intelligent observer, he could spot the good and the bad.

  Anneliese and Theo had taught him that this wasn’t the case. He had never completely understood either of them, but he had assumed in his naivety that those parts of their characters that had remained a mystery to him represented confusion: in Anneliese a secret pain; in Theo a conflict between his own sense of justice and the insanity of the country in which he lived. But that wasn’t the case at all. Both Anneliese and Theo shared the same secret: they were manipulating him. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t been warned. Veronica had taken advantage of his gullibility as well, but at least she had been less coldly manipulative; she just had a natural flair for getting what she wanted.

  It wasn’t just individuals whose shadows were now plain to see. It was whole countries; the world, even. He was beginning to realize that the Nazi insanity surrounding him might not be an aberration, but the way the world was. No one knew exactly what was going on in Soviet Russia, but it was probably just as bad there, if not worse. There was the ugly aggressive posturing of Mussolini’s Italy, and if the Fascists won in Spain the vengeance they would inflict on those who had opposed them would be terrible. It probably wouldn’t be much better if the Republicans were the victors. He had assumed, with so many, that there was still a chance that the Great War had indeed been ‘the war to end all wars’. This, of course, was rot. That conflict had ushered in a period where glorification of power was everything and where another world war was a certainty. Well-meaning men like Lord Halifax or Neville Chamberlain had no chance of preserving peace. Hitler would manipulate them, just as he had manipulated everyone else.

  He considered returning to England, but the idea dispirited him even more. He couldn’t face Veronica, and Oxford and his still unfinished thesis on Bismarck’s Danish wars didn’t appeal. Besides, he hated the idea that he was running away. No matter how awful Nazism was, or how much of a mess it made of his own life or the lives of others, he was determined not to flee from it.

  After a week or so lurking in the Stabi, writing and rewriting listless paragraphs and trying to ignore the self-satisfied Volk strutting around outside, he came home one evening to find an envelope waiting for him, the address in Theo’s handwriting. It was an invitation to join Theo at his parents’ house in Pomerania. There was to be a wedding, and Theo wanted to introduce him to the rest of his family. Conrad scanned it quickly, ready to crumple it up and throw it into the wastepaper basket, but the last sentence held him up: If that oath we made to each other still means anything to you, as I believe it must, please come. There is madness in this world; together we must try to overcome it. It is our duty.

  In Conrad’s frame of mind, no oath given while drunk many years before meant anything, and he failed to see how two young men could possibly have any effect on the insanity that was gripping whole nations. As for duty, that was the watchword of the manipulator. And yet...

  That oath had meant something to Conrad once. Deep down, he knew it still did.

  He pulled out some writing paper and replied to Theo. He would go.

  Theo’s family lived in a small village in Pomerania, about two hundred kilometres north-east of Berlin. It lay in the ancestral heartland of the Junkers, the Prussian landowners descended from the old Teutonic Knights who had formed the backbone of the German officer class since before the time of Frederick the Great. Conrad took a train to the Hanseatic town of Stettin on the Baltic coast, and then changed twice on to ever-smaller trains until he arrived at a village station. Theo was there to meet him in his silver Horch, and they were soon bumping along stone roads through open countryside with fields alternating between sparse golden rye nodding in the light breeze and close-cropped pasture.

  Theo chatted away to Conrad as though there had been no rift between them, and in the sunshine, on the open road, Conrad found himself responding. They passed slowly through a village of brick barns and wooden houses, the smell of freshly baked bread wafting out of open doorways. A group of five or six girls dressed in milkmaids’ skirts who were playing in the road with hoops scattered out of the path of the car. Chickens busied themselves in small gardens adjacent to the road, and on the roofs of several of the larger buildings were great bundles of sticks where storks were nesting. It was all very quaint and rustic, but to Conrad’s eyes a bit primitive.

  Theo seemed to read his mind. ‘The soil here is very thin and sandy and the yields are not very good. Farmers do nothing more than eke out an existence. It’s been a long time since owning an estate here was very profitable. Actually, I doubt if it ever was. That’s why so many of the Junkers became professional soldiers or civil servants. They needed the money.’

  They drove past a small stone church and turned up an avenue lined with lime trees, at the end of which was a low manor house of white stucco with a steep red-tiled roof. Theo stopped the car, bounded up the steps and opened the oak door. Inside was a cool dark hallway with grey flagstones, heavy velvet curtains and dim oil paintings of von Hertenbergs in various uniforms. A fireplace dominated one wall, and above it hung the head of a European bison. Dotted also around the walls was a veritable arsenal of arms and armour.

  Within seconds figures emerged from doorways and down the stairs to greet the returning son. There was Theo’s father, a large man with a walrus moustache and blue eyes that twinkled behind his monocle; his mother, tall, slim and refined; and a sister, just as tall, blonde and gorgeous. Theo’s younger brother, a lieutenant in the army, was on manoeuvres in Thuringia near the Czech border and hadn’t been able to get away for the weekend. They were all overjoyed to see Theo. There was much talk of the wedding; it was a female cousin from a nearby village who was getting married. She was a Bismarck, a Prussian name with which Conrad was very familiar.

  They had coffee and cake on the terrace at the back of the house, and then Theo suggested that he and Conrad go for a walk in the pine forest that stretched along the low ridge beyond the garden.

  Theo set off at a brisk pace. It was a hot afternoon, and the shade of the pine trees provided a welcome relief. They walked in silence for ten minutes. Now Conrad was very aware of the barriers between them: he recalled that painful conversation along the Landwehr Canal, that mutual betrayal.

  They came to a break in the woods and a small, brilliantly blue lake. A heron was standing motionless on a fallen log, staring at the water. Bees danced among the little blue flowers around the shore. The two men paused, breathing heavily after their rapid walk. Tiny sounds surrounded the lake: the lap of water, the murmur of the bees, a rustle of air through the reeds and then a splash of a fish lunging for a fly.

  ‘Why did you ask me here, Theo?’

  ‘To meet my family.’

  ‘Yes, but why?’

  Theo picked up a small stone and threw it far into the lake. The sharp plop shattered the near silence. ‘I want to talk to you, and here seems the right place to do it.’

  ‘About our agreement never to fight each other?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so.’

  ‘You’re a soldier, Theo. You wear a uniform.’

  Theo laughed. ‘A lawyer warrior.’

  ‘I know you are a member of the secret service. I’m surprised you have to wear a uniform. I would have thought it would be a raincoat and hat tipped down over your eyes, a bit like your Gestapo friends.’

  Theo frowned. ‘Who told you that? Foley?’

  Conrad nodded.

  ‘That was one of the things I wanted to talk to you about.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ said Conrad, his words heavy with scepticism. He laughed bitterly. ‘So here we are, two spies on opposite sides stirring up a war. Although I think I’ve retired before I’ve even really got going.’

  ‘Let’s walk a bit further,’ Theo said. ‘There’s something I want to show you.’ And
he led Conrad deeper into the trees. The forest seemed even darker here, and a carpet of fallen pine needles covered the path. The air was cool and laden with the scent of pine and earth and darkness. Out of the corner of his eye Conrad thought he saw something flitting between the tree trunks. He turned his head and it was gone. A deer perhaps? In an English wood, the further you walk the nearer you are to the other side. This ancient German forest felt very different; open fields could be many days’ walk away for all Conrad knew, and with each step he was leaving civilization further behind him. All those old German myths about the woods that his governess had taught him when he was a boy, from Hansel and Gretel onwards, crowded around him.

  ‘Actually, I think we are on the same side,’ Theo said. ‘Or we should be.’

  ‘You’re not going to try to get me to spy for your country, are you, Theo? I know I tried to get you to spy for mine, but it was pretty clear that was a mistake, and one I regret.’

  ‘No, not for my country. For something more than that. For what you and I believe in.’

  ‘I’m not sure what I believe in any more,’ Conrad said. ‘In fact, I’d almost say I believe in nothing.’ He chuckled. ‘Except if I did say that, you’d start quoting Hegel and Nietzsche at me.’

  ‘I’ve stopped doing that,’ Theo said. ‘These days things are much simpler. It’s really just a question of right and wrong. For me, my conscience and my faith tell me that everything I see around me is wrong.’

  ‘I didn’t notice much of your conscience or your faith when I was in Berlin in thirty-three. You didn’t seem all that unhappy when Hitler came to power. I remember you saying that someone needed to sort the country out.’

  ‘That’s true. And like a lot of my countrymen, I was wrong. But unlike many of my countrymen, I realize that now. Being a lawyer, even a very junior one, I couldn’t avoid seeing the travesties of justice all around me. There was the Night of the Long Knives in thirty-four when the state murdered hundreds of men in cold blood. They weren’t innocent men, most of them, they were SA thugs, but General von Schleicher was a former chancellor, and General von Bredow was a friend of my father’s, and head of the Abwehr. My uncle was on the list, but fortunately he was warned the day before and went into hiding.’