Traitor's Gate

by Michael Ridpath

  Conrad had slept very little the night before, and he was light-headed, but in a thoroughly good mood. How Anneliese was going to cope with a long day at the hospital he had no idea.

  He was shown through to the bar where Theo was waiting for him, looking tense. Conrad was pleased to see him: he realized that in his mind Theo had been reinstated to the category of ‘friend’.

  They shook hands. A waiter instantly appeared, and Theo ordered them both whisky and sodas.

  ‘Nice place,’ said Conrad, looking around the room. Half the men in the bar were in uniform; half were in suits. Most had the stiff, upright bearing of the Junker as opposed to the roly-poly solidity of the Berliner burgher. The walls were adorned with large oil paintings and smaller prints depicting past Prussian kings and German emperors, with some celebrated field marshals thrown in. Heavy silver knick-knacks were scattered over tables and bookcases. On the surface, the place was similar to a London club, but it had an atmosphere of crisp formality rather than of comfort and relaxation.

  ‘Not quite as nice as our old quarters,’ said Theo. ‘We had a lovely building in the Pariser Platz until last year when the Nazis kicked us out. It’s been taken over by the Minister for Armaments and Munitions. But at least this is just over the road from the War Ministry, so it’s very handy.’

  Taking his whisky, Theo looked Conrad up and down and smiled. ‘You look well. I mean, you look exhausted. But happy.’ He frowned. ‘If I didn’t know you better I would guess that you were getting your wicked way with some poor girl.’

  Conrad grinned broadly.

  ‘Is it anyone I know?’

  Conrad nodded.

  ‘Not Anneliese?’

  ‘That’s right. I’ve been seeing a lot of her this past week. An awful lot.’

  Theo frowned. ‘What about her Gestapo boyfriend?’ Conrad had told Theo about Anneliese and Klaus Schalke in Pomerania.

  Conrad saw Theo’s expression and felt a surge of irritation. ‘It’s over, I’m sure of it.’

  ‘You have to be very careful of a man like that,’ Theo said.

  ‘Obviously,’ Conrad said. ‘But it’s not as if I have anything to hide these days.’

  ‘Well...’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ said Conrad. ‘That’s what this is about. The message you want me to deliver.’

  A small figure moved briskly into the bar. ‘Hello, Uncle Ewald,’ Theo said. ‘You remember Conrad de Lancey?’

  ‘Of course,’ said the Junker. He was smartly dressed for the city in winged collar, club tie, tiepin and waistcoat. He clicked his heels, bowed and held out his hand. Conrad shook it, with a little bow of his own.

  ‘I must be going, Conrad,’ Theo said. ‘I have something to attend to over the road. But Uncle Ewald is anxious to treat you to lunch.’

  Conrad accepted his fate, and, abandoned by Theo, he followed Ewald von Kleist through to the club dining room. The waiter showed them to a small table in an alcove at the back of the room.

  Lunch was stilted at first as von Kleist made curt small talk, but in the interests of making things bearable Conrad asked him about politics, and the landowner became quite animated as he discussed Germany’s history and its future. He was a right-wing monarchist who wanted the Kaiser back, just as Conrad had expected, but one who was driven by a fierce sense of justice. What he saw going on in Germany was wrong and he was going to say so, whatever the cost. He was enough of a realist to know that the cost would be high.

  After lunch they retired to the library, and von Kleist ordered coffee and cigars. There was no one else in the room, save a portly old gentleman snoozing into his newspaper. Von Kleist identified him as a landowner from Silesia who invented business in Berlin every couple of months so that he could escape his wife and go to sleep in an armchair in the club for a week.

  Von Kleist got down to business. ‘You know that Hitler is determined to invade Czechoslovakia?’ he began.

  ‘Everyone expects it,’ Conrad answered.

  ‘He has made the general staff draw up detailed plans for an invasion before the first of October.’

  ‘I’m not surprised.’

  ‘The generals’ evaluation of the situation is that if Britain and France stand by Czechoslovakia there will be a long, bloody war that Germany will lose.’

  ‘You would lose? Interesting. But would Britain and France stand by Czechoslovakia?’ Conrad asked.

  ‘That’s precisely the question!’ von Kleist said. ‘At the moment France has guaranteed Czechoslovakia’s borders, and Britain has undertaken to join France in any war with Germany. In practice the French will follow the British lead. The British made encouraging noises of support to the Czechs when the Czechs mobilized in May. But the French and the British are sending out mixed messages. Your ambassador seems very pro-German. Your foreign secretary, Lord Halifax, seems much more eager to negotiate than to fight.’

  The coffee came, with a humidor, and von Kleist paused to light a cigar. ‘I can understand that. We tried that tactic too, here in Germany. When my friend Franz von Papen was chancellor in 1932 he thought if he dealt with Hitler as a responsible politician Hitler would behave responsibly. Six months later, Hitler was chancellor. Hitler is used to dealing with weak adversaries: he doesn’t believe that the British will stand by Czechoslovakia. He believes he can invade that country with impunity, just as he invaded the Rhineland and Austria. He needs to know he is wrong.’

  ‘I’m not so sure he is, unfortunately,’ said Conrad.

  ‘We must encourage the British to stand by Czechoslovakia.’

  ‘And how will you do that?’

  Von Kleist cleared his throat. ‘In answering your question I might be signing my own death warrant. But I trust you. My nephew trusts you.’

  The hard eyes stared at Conrad. He resisted the temptation to look away. ‘Go ahead,’ he said.

  ‘By telling the British government that if they do, and if Hitler insists on invading anyway, we will remove him.’

  ‘Remove him! You mean you’d launch a coup?’

  ‘We would arrest him and replace him with an interim administration that would negotiate a fair peace with Britain, France and Czechoslovakia.’

  ‘But what will the German people say? You know how popular Hitler is.’

  ‘The people fear war. We couldn’t do this now. We can only act if we can plausibly say that we are keeping Germany out of a war like the last one: long and bloody that we will ultimately lose. Which is why Britain must stand by Czechoslovakia, and why we must wait to move until Hitler has ordered the invasion.’

  Von Kleist puffed on his cigar. The fox on his cufflinks peeked out of his sleeve. ‘Of course there is a chance that if Britain does stand unequivocally next to Czechoslovakia, Hitler will back down and there will be no war.’

  ‘But you don’t think that’s likely?’ said Conrad.

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘By “we”, whom do you mean?’

  ‘There are quite a number of us. Senior officers in the army, the Abwehr, the Foreign Office, the police.’

  ‘And these men will go along with your plans?’

  ‘They are not my plans, they are theirs.’ Von Kleist smiled. ‘And Theo’s. He is a bright and energetic young man.’

  Conrad’s pulse quickened at what he heard. It sounded too good to be true. If the Germans really could remove their dictator then there would be no need for a war, and the senseless violence in Germany would stop. It sounded as if opposition plans against Hitler were much further advanced than Theo had suggested. Joachim was right all along. But of course Joachim was dead. ‘They are all taking an enormous risk,’ Conrad said.

  ‘Is it such a risk, when the alternative is a war that will be bloodier than the last one? As so often is the case, the greatest risk lies in doing nothing.’

  ‘Have you planned a date?’

  ‘Hitler intends to order the invasion sometime in September. We will need to move just before that.’

  ‘
Two months away. And whom do you want to tell my government all this? Me? I’m not sure I have the credibility.’

  ‘No, that role falls to me,’ von Kleist said. ‘I intend to travel to London sometime in the next two or three weeks. I would like to speak to some important members of your government. We need someone we can trust to arrange the trip. That’s you.’

  Conrad raised his eyebrows.

  ‘You must be careful to whom you speak. It’s probably best to contact the government ministers either directly or through your father. Whatever you do don’t go through your secret service.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Admiral Canaris tells me that it has been penetrated. Awkward reports would come through to him, my name and yours would be placed on files, the information would be difficult for the Abwehr to ignore. He also says the British secret service are not to be trusted: they betray their agents if it is useful to them. But you should have direct access to the people I want to contact.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Conrad, imagining trying to discuss all this with his father.

  ‘Will you do it?’

  Conrad’s initial thought was to say ‘no’. He had already decided he wanted to keep out of any international intrigue Theo might try to enmesh him in. But the enormity of what von Kleist had told him made him hold his tongue.

  Von Kleist, who had been hunched forward conspiratorially throughout this conversation, leaned back into his armchair and sipped his brandy. He was willing to give Conrad time to think.

  The idea that this man and the officers who stood behind him should actually want Britain to come to the aid of their enemy seemed illogical, even absurd. But the more Conrad thought about it, the more sense it made. Of course it was a high-risk strategy, it made defeat for Germany much more likely if there was a war, but that just showed how determined von Kleist and his friends must be to avoid one. There was no doubt they were serious about toppling Hitler.

  Conrad still didn’t feel any sense of patriotic duty to spy for his country. Nor did he want to be manipulated by Theo or Foley or the Abwehr. But whatever else you could say about the Junker sitting opposite him, he wasn’t manipulative. He was an honest, straightforward, brave man of integrity who was prepared to risk his life to save Europe from mass bloodshed. This was presumably why he had been chosen as an envoy; the man had credibility.

  Conrad wanted to end Hitler’s evil regime, the regime that had twisted truth, spread hatred, tortured and murdered. The regime that had destroyed Joachim Mühlendorf and would one day destroy Anneliese.

  Suddenly everything slotted into place. Conrad hated war. He hated Hitler. Here was a chance to do something that might make a real difference. David Griffiths and Harry Reilly had been willing to die to stop fascism overwhelming Europe. In the struggle between sanity and insanity he couldn’t be a bystander. While there was a chance, even a small one, that von Kleist’s mission could avert a war, he had to take it. Otherwise, he couldn’t live with himself.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ he said.

  Anneliese came to his flat that night. She was exhausted after a full day at the hospital on top of several nights of inadequate sleep, but despite that they stayed up late into the night, in bed, talking.

  ‘How was your lunch with Theo?’ she asked. Conrad had told her they were meeting that day.

  ‘I only saw him briefly,’ Conrad said. ‘He palmed me off on to his uncle Ewald.’

  ‘The man you met in Pomerania? That was a bit cheeky of him.’ During their week-long conversation, Conrad had told Anneliese all about his weekend with Theo’s family. ‘Ah, I understand,’ she said. ‘He wanted to give you “the message”.’

  Conrad nodded.

  ‘Was it something to do with Joachim’s plot?’

  ‘I’d better not say. But if their plan works, there won’t be a war.’

  ‘That would be good,’ said Anneliese. ‘You are right to help them. I know it goes against your resolution to keep yourself out of political intrigue, but you can’t step away from an opportunity to do something like that. It becomes a duty.’

  ‘I thought that,’ said Conrad. ‘But a duty to whom? To my country? To your country?’

  ‘No,’ said Anneliese. ‘To right. To justice. To everyone, English, German, Czech, French.’ Then she smiled. ‘To us.’

  ‘That’s exactly it,’ said Conrad. ‘It feels as if I am doing this for you, for us.’

  ‘Just be careful,’ Anneliese said.

  ‘Oh, I think my part in this is fairly safe,’ Conrad said. ‘But they want me to go back to England to speak to my father. I’ll probably leave in the next couple of days.’

  ‘Will you be coming back?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Conrad, leaning over to kiss her. ‘The tricky bit will be persuading my father to help.’

  ‘Surely he wants peace? He doesn’t like Hitler, does he?’

  ‘Oh, no. But he and I disagree all the time, often violently. It’s become almost a habit. It wasn’t always like that, but it has been for the last several years. Since I married Veronica, anyway.’

  Until he had gone up to the university, Conrad had idolized his father, stung by criticism during his father’s bad moods to strive to earn praise once the storm had passed. But at eighteen, faced by his father’s increasing unreasonableness, Conrad started to stand up to him until it became a point of pride to oppose him.

  That’s when things started to go wrong for the de Lancey family. First came the death of Edward, Conrad’s elder brother, in a climbing accident on the slopes of Mont Blanc. Then the banking crisis of 1931: Gurney Kroheim, the family merchant bank, was heavily involved in Germany, and would have gone under during the run on the banks there had it not been for a rescue engineered by the Bank of England. The humiliation of this contributed to Conrad’s grandfather’s death six months later, and his father’s unpredictable temper worsened, becoming an almost intolerable burden on the family.

  It was Conrad’s conversion to socialism, instigated by Joachim and encouraged by Oxford, that had driven a wedge between him and Lord Oakford, who had been a Conservative MP from 1924 until he succeeded to the title in 1931. The gap had simply been widened by Conrad’s marriage to Veronica.

  ‘At least your father saw through her,’ Anneliese said. ‘He must be perceptive.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ said Conrad. ‘I wonder if you will ever meet him?’

  He had said this without thinking, as both of them had said so much without thinking over the previous days, but it was a question whose answer had all sorts of implications.

  ‘I’d like to,’ said Anneliese, carefully.

  Conrad raised himself on to his elbow. ‘If I was able to persuade Foley to come up with a visa for Britain for you, would you go through all the paperwork and leave here?’

  ‘Would you be here or there?

  ‘If you were in England, then I would be in England too.’

  Anneliese paused and then smiled. ‘Yes. Yes, I would. That would be nice.’ Then she frowned. ‘But don’t get my hopes up. It won’t happen. Captain Foley was very firm.’

  ‘Captain Foley is always firm,’ Conrad said.

  21

  Opposite the Passport Control Office at 17 Tiergartenstrasse was a large marble statue of Richard Wagner, sitting imperiously above three desperate Valkyries. Beyond that, a narrow path stretched into the trees. There Conrad met Foley and his dog. The three of them started off; the little man set a brisk pace, but for all his energy he looked tired. The spaniel was eagerly sniffing, checking which dog had come by that morning and leaving his own calling card on every other tree.

  ‘Thank you for meeting me out here,’ Foley said. ‘It really is the best place to talk in Berlin. These days the park is full of diplomats and embassy officials like myself.’ He touched his hat as they passed a dapper man in morning coat and winged collar in earnest discussion with a disreputable-looking German.

  ‘The Third Secretary at the Italian Embassy,’ he sai
d. ‘See what I mean?’

  ‘You must be busy these days,’ said Conrad.

  ‘Very busy,’ said Foley with a sigh. ‘The queues get ever longer and the visas ever more restricted. They will let almost no one into Palestine now. I don’t know if you heard about the conference at Évian a couple of weeks ago? It was supposed to lead to an international agreement that every country would take in their fair share of Jewish refugees. Instead they are all trying to outdo each other in barriers to immigration. No one wants to be a soft touch. It’s like a trade war, only much, much crueller.’

  ‘What will happen to those Jews who can’t get out of Germany, do you think?’

  Foley sighed. ‘It will get worse.’

  ‘How much worse can it get?’

  ‘Never underestimate the determination of the Nazis, or their ability to go further than anyone thought possible,’ Foley said. ‘They’ll round them all up and lock them up in the concentration camps. And then one day a Nazi bureaucrat will calculate that it’s too expensive to feed them all.’

  ‘What – they’ll starve?’

  ‘Perhaps. Or perhaps they’ll shoot them.’ Foley shook his head. ‘I hope to God I am wrong.’

  They were walking towards the noise of construction in the middle of the park, where the Siegessäule was halfway resurrected in its new location, the Grosse Stern circle. With a couple of excited barks, the spaniel shot off after a squirrel.

  ‘Come here, Jonny!’ called Foley, and after a couple of wags of his tail at the bottom of a birch tree the dog returned to his master.

  Conrad thought of the queue outside the Passport Control Office and then he thought of Anneliese. ‘Thank you for getting Frau Rosen out.’

  Foley smiled. ‘That one wasn’t difficult. She is “Aryan” after all, and her husband was already in Britain.’

  ‘But you couldn’t do anything for Anneliese herself?’