Traitor's Gate

by Michael Ridpath

  Klaus forced himself to smile. He was lucky that Heydrich was feeling so understanding, and he had to respond positively to it. ‘That’s a very good idea, Herr Gruppenführer. You’re right. It’s probably just what I need. Thank you.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said Heydrich and turned to the papers on his desk.

  ‘Heil Hitler!’ said Klaus, and left the office.

  He knew he had been lucky to get away with a rebuke. Heydrich and Canaris were totally different men, but they had a strangely close relationship. As a nineteen-year-old naval cadet Heydrich had served on a training ship commanded by Canaris, and they had seen a lot of each other since then. They lived almost next door to each other in Schlachtensee and Heydrich would often visit the Canaris household to play the violin accompanied by Frau Canaris on the piano, while the admiral cooked a Spanish dish. Klaus knew also, because Heydrich had told him, that Canaris was trusted and respected by the Führer, who admired and was a little intimidated by his cosmopolitan sophistication. If de Lancey had Canaris’s protection he was untouchable.

  That was depressing. Maybe he should shoot de Lancey himself. But although he would certainly not be formally prosecuted by the authorities, Heydrich would know that he was responsible and his career in the Gestapo would be over. He would probably be dead himself within a week.

  And now that de Lancey had been released, Anneliese would know that Klaus was behind his arrest. His plan had been to blame other Gestapo officers and to tell her that he had set out to free de Lancey but had been too late. She would never believe that now; in fact she would hate him. He realized that she would never be his again.

  The thought bore on him like an enormous dark weight. With his mother gone and Anneliese lost to him, what was the point of living? Maybe he should shoot de Lancey and then himself. Why had Anneliese rejected him? He loved her more than this Englishman did; he probably loved her as much as Paul had. Paul had been a great man; Klaus had always known that. But de Lancey? All right, he was good-looking and Klaus wasn’t; as far as Anneliese was concerned, that was probably enough.

  Bitch!

  Bitch? How could he think of his angel as a bitch?

  Because he was angry with her, bitterly angry. If he couldn’t have her, then no one else would, not de Lancey, nor any other smooth-talking gigolo she might come across.

  The passengers waited patiently in the cabin of the three-engined Lufthansa Ju-52 on the apron outside the great semi-circular terminal building at Tempelhof Aerodrome, among them Conrad. All of them had gone through the painstaking formalities at customs and passport control where papers were checked and questions asked, especially of the Germans on board. Each German traveller had to be sponsored by a ministry, have their allowances for foreign money stamped by the Reichsbank, and show an invitation from a foreign friend who would bear their expenses while abroad, all of which was noted in the Gestapo files. There were no simple tourists any more.

  Theo had seen no reason why von Kleist’s visit to London could not go ahead. Apparently, Canaris had been impressed by Conrad’s ingenuity and had been quite happy to go along with the deception. He much preferred that to Conrad bravely refusing to talk until he eventually gave everything away under torture. To reassure the Gestapo of his cover, Conrad had stayed in Berlin a few days, even meeting Foley. Conrad assumed that Foley knew about von Kleist’s visit, but neither of them mentioned it. Foley did, however, confirm that Anneliese’s exit visa was in place once her other documents were ready. Conrad avoided seeing her; there was no point in provoking Klaus, and with luck they would soon be together in London.

  The steward had announced that there was a brief delay while they waited for another passenger. Out of the window Conrad noticed an open-topped Mercedes containing a German general and a civilian speeding along the tarmac towards the aeroplane. It screeched to a halt, the general climbed out and briskly shook the hand of the civilian, who rushed up the steps. The soldier was General Paul von Kleist and the civilian his cousin Ewald. The last passenger safely on board, having circumvented all of the departure formalities, the door shut and the aeroplane taxied to the runway. A minute later it was airborne and on its way to London.

  General Beck sat and stared at his desk, unfamiliarly clear apart from a fountain pen and a single sheet of paper bearing the title of the Chief of the General Staff.

  It had been a humiliating couple of weeks. In the end von Brauchitsch had bowed to the weight of Beck’s memoranda and called a meeting of the generals at army headquarters in the Bendlerstrasse. He had read out Beck’s latest paper pointing out the absurdity of Hitler’s proposed invasion of Czechoslovakia and asked for comments from the assembled officers. General Adam, the oldest and most respected general present, had spoken about the West Wall defences of which he was in charge, and emphasized that they could never withstand a determined French attack. The other generals, with the exception of two, had agreed that the Führer’s strategy was dangerously flawed. The two dissenters were von Reichenau and Busch. Beck had torn a strip off Busch for suggesting that a German general’s duty was to blindly obey his führer.

  But then von Brauchitsch had let the meeting lapse without reading out the speech Beck had prepared for him inciting the generals to threaten mass resignation. Afterwards, Beck was furious; von Brauchitsch avoided him.

  Ten days later Hitler had gathered the same generals together at Jüterbog to watch the Wehrmacht’s artillery demolish some concrete bunkers that were supposed to represent Czech fortifications. The whole thing was a sham and Beck told him so. The gunners had had weeks to prepare and so had their ranges exact, and the concrete was nowhere near as thick as that in the Czech fortifications.

  Hitler ignored him. Not only ignored him; he humiliated him. Either Busch or von Reichenau must have told Hitler about the generals’ meeting, because after dinner he spoke about the weakness of his general staff. He implied that they were cowards, that Beck was a coward. And at some point during the day he told von Brauchitsch to forbid Beck from writing any more memoranda.

  Von Brauchitsch, his superior, had lost confidence in him. Hitler had lost confidence in him. He was being asked to plan a war based on a ludicrous strategy that would lead to certain defeat. His situation was intolerable. There was only one honourable course open to him.

  He thought of all his conversations with Oster over the summer. Perhaps a coup was the only option left, but he knew he couldn’t lead it from his present position of weakness.

  He glanced up at the portrait of his predecessor, Field Marshal Helmuth Count von Moltke, exuding austere intelligence and self-confidence. The humble Ludwig Beck had never done his office justice after all.

  He pulled the single sheet of paper towards him and began to write.

  Dear Colonel General,

  It is with the greatest regret…

  25

  The taxi dropped Conrad off at the gates of Chartwell, Winston Churchill’s country house in Kent. He walked up the short drive and rang the bell on the front door.

  ‘Mr de Lancey!’

  He turned to see a short round figure approaching him in a blue boiler suit wielding a trowel in one hand and a cigar in the other.

  Churchill jammed the cigar between his lips, held out his hand and shook Conrad’s. When he was younger Conrad had attended a couple of dinner parties at which Churchill had held forth, and he wasn’t sure whether Churchill would remember him, but the great man’s smile was friendly, almost familiar.

  ‘Been in a motor smash?’ he said, looking at Conrad’s battered face.

  ‘Slight disagreement with the local police in Germany,’ Conrad said. ‘Don’t worry, it’s all sorted out now.’

  Churchill grinned. ‘Come along with me,’ he said through teeth clenched around his cigar. ‘I’m building a wall by the kitchen garden. I should be writing, but I thought I would just finish this row. I’m up to my neck in Ancient Britons, Angles, Saxons and Jutes. I thought I had shot of them when I left school, but
they have come back to haunt me.’

  ‘I thought you were working on Marlborough,’ Conrad said. ‘I’ve read the first three volumes, and I’m rather looking forward to reading the final one. When will it be published?’ Although the first Duke of Marlborough was not exactly Conrad’s period, he enjoyed Churchill’s writing.

  ‘Harrumph,’ said Churchill, but he was grinning as he puffed on the cigar. ‘Marlborough is nearly finished. This is The History of the English-Speaking Peoples, a foolish project I promised to my publishers years ago. Bill Deakin is providing me with some valued assistance. He tells me you know each other?’

  ‘Yes, I know Deakin,’ said Conrad. Bill Deakin was a young don at Wadham, someone Conrad both liked and admired. Churchill’s habit of taking on and firing historical assistants was legendary amongst the academic community and Deakin had been brave to accept the post. ‘Until a couple of years ago I was working on my own thesis at Oxford. German history.’

  ‘A dark subject,’ said Churchill. ‘And getting darker by the day. Tell me, how is your father? I don’t see as much of him as I would wish.’

  ‘Very well, I think. He spends a lot of time in Somerset these days.’

  ‘An admirable man,’ Churchill said. ‘Of course I disagree with him on appeasement, but he was the only one of that Cabinet to do the right thing over the Hoare–Laval pact. They should all have resigned.’

  They reached the wall, a half-completed line of red bricks surrounding the kitchen garden. It was a warm day and Churchill was sweating. He plunged his trowel into a bucket and smoothed the mortar along the wall, before carefully aligning a brick against a piece of string. The brick didn’t look very straight to Conrad, but he decided not to point this out to Churchill.

  ‘I saw Herr von Kleist on Friday with Randolph,’ Churchill said. Randolph was Churchill’s son. ‘I took him for a drive around the estate.’

  ‘What did you think of him?’

  ‘I like the man. He said he’s a patriot and I believe him. He says that the ordinary Germans do not want a world war. Do you think that is true, Mr de Lancey?’

  ‘I believe so, sir. Oh, they love their uniforms and their military parades, but Germany lost twice as many men as we did in the Great War.’

  ‘And do you think that Herr von Kleist has the support amongst the general staff that he claims?’

  ‘Once again, I believe so. I have met his family in Prussia and they are implacably opposed to Hitler. I think it is difficult for some of them; they have such an entrenched sense of duty that to oppose the head of state is something they will only do as a last resort. But they believe they are reaching that point.’

  Churchill grunted. ‘Herr von Kleist says that General Beck requires a letter from the British government committing to support Czechoslovakia in the event of an invasion, so that he may show it to his supporters. A secret letter to someone who has declared opposition to a sovereign government is, of course, impossible for a serving minister to write. But I have discussed the matter with Lord Halifax, and I have drafted something which I hope will suffice. Would you be good enough to see that it gets to Herr von Kleist on your return to Berlin?’

  ‘Certainly,’ said Conrad. ‘Can you persuade our government to take von Kleist seriously?’

  Churchill wiped his brow and sat on his steps. ‘I can try,’ he said. He frowned, his fleshy cheeks drooping. ‘Here I am, an old man without power and without party, what advice can I give?’

  ‘You must tell them what you think,’ Conrad said. ‘They might disagree with you, but they have to listen to you.’

  ‘I take it you don’t accept your father’s views on appeasement, then?’ he said.

  ‘Not any more.’

  ‘Very good,’ said Churchill. ‘Tell me, Mr de Lancey, do you think Herr Beans will fight the Germans if they do invade?’

  Conrad frowned for a moment before he realized Churchill was referring to Edvard Beneš, the President of Czechoslovakia. They spent a fascinating hour discussing Central European politics before Conrad returned to his waiting taxi, Churchill’s letter for von Kleist and General Beck safe in the inside pocket of his jacket.

  Conrad sat in the first-floor drawing room of his family’s home in Kensington Square, sipping a cup of tea. He was staying there while he was in London, rather than at his club, and his father had just come up to town to sound out those of his old Cabinet colleagues who were still languishing in the capital in August. It was a hot day, and the windows were open, letting in the occasional sound of a car driving around the square and the more persistent hum of traffic from the High Street a hundred yards distant.

  ‘Your face is a bit of a mess,’ said Lord Oakford.

  Conrad touched his cheek. ‘Actually, it’s healing quite well.’

  ‘Who did it? Winston?’

  Conrad laughed. ‘No. Although he did greet me brandishing a trowel. It was the Gestapo.’

  ‘Did they hurt you? I mean, beyond what I can see?’

  ‘Not much, fortunately. I managed to put them off the scent just as they were getting into their stride.’

  ‘Be careful, my boy.’

  ‘I will, Father.’

  There was an awkward moment as Lord Oakford peered closely at his son. Then he seemed to relax, sitting back in his chair and sipping his tea. ‘So, how is Winston?’

  ‘Building a wall,’ replied Conrad. ‘He said some nice things about you. About your resignation.’

  Lord Oakford chuckled wryly. ‘It is a sad thing when the most notable event of one’s time in government is one’s departure from it.’

  ‘I think he, like you, is frustrated at being out of things.’

  ‘Who said I was frustrated at being out of things?’ said Lord Oakford.

  Conrad smiled. ‘Just a guess, Father.’

  ‘Well, I’m not completely out of touch,’ Lord Oakford said. ‘I had luncheon with Edward today at White’s. He knows all about your man von Kleist’s visit; Van, George Lloyd and Winston have given him a full report.’ Edward was Lord Halifax, and Van was Sir Robert Vansittart, the foreign-policy expert.

  ‘I wonder if they all said the same thing?’

  ‘Probably not. Van is a bit suspicious. He seemed to think von Kleist wanted to grab half of Poland.’

  ‘Oh dear. And Halifax?’

  ‘He doesn’t quite know what to think. He has authorized Winston to send a letter—’

  ‘Which I have here,’ said Conrad, patting his jacket, which was lying on the arm of the sofa.’

  ‘Be careful with that,’ said Oakford.

  ‘Don’t worry, I will.’

  ‘But you know Edward. He worries about it not being quite “proper”. And I have to say, I know what he means. It’s dashed tricky dealing with renegade aristocrats.’

  ‘It’s the only way,’ said Conrad.

  Lord Oakford frowned. ‘I hope you are right.’

  Conrad sipped his tea. ‘And what about the Prime Minister?’

  ‘He’s fishing at the moment. In Scotland.’

  Conrad snorted. ‘While Europe is about to burst into flames?’

  Lord Oakford shook his head. ‘I know, I know, but he was asked to Balmoral by the King, and he could hardly decline. I was at Cliveden over the weekend. There was a lot of talk about what we should do with Germany, as usual. Geoffrey is adamant that appeasing Hitler is the only way.’ Geoffrey was Geoffrey Dawson, editor of The Times and an old friend of Lord Oakford. ‘Nearly all the others around the table agreed with him.’

  ‘Except you?’

  Lord Oakford smiled. ‘I said that Hitler was an evil man and he had to be stopped. But that war was a last resort. When they asked me how I thought I could stop him without a war and without doing a deal with him, I said we had to stand firm by Czechoslovakia and force him to back down. They weren’t impressed. And, more importantly, they are pretty confident Neville is committed to bringing Herr Hitler to the conference table and making whatever concessions he asks f
or.’

  ‘But if General Beck and the others get rid of him, there won’t be anyone to give concessions to.’

  ‘You know that, and I know that. They don’t.’

  There was a pause. ‘Thank you for listening to me, Father.’

  ‘You were pretty bloody rude. I don’t think anyone has ever called me a coward before.’

  ‘I know, I’m sorry. It was the only way I could get through to you. I needed to make the point.’

  Lord Oakford smiled. ‘And actually you did it in exactly the right way. I knew what you meant; I knew I was taking the easy way out by clinging to appeasement at all costs, that’s what made me so angry.’ He smiled. ‘Your mother put me straight, as always. If you ever get married again, marry someone with more sense than you. It can be very useful sometimes.’

  Conrad found himself thinking immediately of Anneliese. Then he stopped. He was still married to someone else, someone with considerably less sense than himself. He glanced at his father. There was a twinkle in his eye, as if he could read Conrad’s mind. Conrad felt himself reddening and changed the subject to cover his confusion. ‘So what do you think Chamberlain will do? Now he knows about the coup he must stand by Czechoslovakia, surely?’

  ‘I really don’t know,’ said Lord Oakford. ‘Neville is quite committed to appeasement.’

  ‘I can’t believe he would pass up such an opportunity!’ Conrad frowned. He had assumed that the British government would go along with von Kleist’s suggestion, once they had satisfied themselves that he was credible. ‘If Chamberlain does let Hitler walk into Czechoslovakia unopposed, will the Cabinet follow him?’

  ‘Some probably won’t – Duff Cooper, for example. Some will, come what may – Kingsley Wood, Sam Hoare. But I think the others will follow Edward. Although he’s toeing the appeasement line at the moment, he’s not an out-and-out appeaser at all costs. If he comes to believe that Hitler can’t be trusted or that there is another way of stopping him, he might withdraw his support for the Prime Minister. And say what you like about Edward, he does have a reputation for integrity. He could swing the majority of the Cabinet against Neville if he was absolutely convinced Neville was wrong.’