Traitor's Gate

by Michael Ridpath

  The queue was moving slowly, despite the urging of the waiting women. No one wanted to be late for roll call. At last Anneliese’s turn came, and she just made it out to the yard before the guard, whom the prisoners nicknamed the Scorpion, read out the roll. Anneliese was finding it difficult to stand, and could barely shout her response to her name loudly enough.

  As the prisoners were dismissed to go to their breakfast of stale bread and turnip jam, she and two other women were asked to stay behind. The Scorpion – none of the inmates knew her real name – was a thin woman of about thirty with a long ugly nose. She always seemed to pick the same three women for punishment: Anneliese, a petite blonde communist named Andrea, and Sylvia, a statuesque Jehovah’s Witness whose head had been shaved because she had been discovered with lice. The other two had told Anneliese that before her arrival in the camp the Scorpion used to pick on another Jewish girl, pretty and defiant. The girl had stood it well at first, but then had committed suicide. Anneliese was her replacement.

  Anneliese was impressed with the strength of both women. The Jehovah’s Witnesses had openly defied Hitler from the outset: in their eyes the Nazi salutes and greetings were words of Satan, and they said so. Three years before, the movement had been outlawed and most of the members carted off to concentration camps, where they continued to defy Nazi authority, quoting passages from the Bible at their captors at every opportunity. The faith of Andrea, the communist, was just as strong, but in her case it was the unswerving belief that the Nazi regime would crumble at any moment and the proletariat would take over Germany and set the concentration-camp inmates free. Anneliese’s belief in God was much more hesitant, and her faith in communism had been shaken when she had noted the similarities between the state-controlled society in Nazi Germany and the state-controlled society of the communist ideal. But she was just as determined to survive her time in Sachsenhausen, for the sake of Conrad, for the sake of her parents, and to show the Nazi bastards, including Klaus – especially Klaus – that they couldn’t break her.

  Except now her head felt light and the queasiness was increasing. She needed food badly. She felt hot – perhaps she had a temperature.

  ‘You three were late for roll call as usual,’ the Scorpion said in her broad Berliner accent. She was holding a cane, and two male SS guards and an Alsatian looked on. ‘The camp rules are simple yet you insist on wilfully disobeying them. Your behaviour is intolerable. You will stand facing the wall until work.’

  The three of them had been made to do this two days before, missing breakfast. Not a good way to start a twelve-hour day working in the camp laundry, but bearable if you were fit and healthy. That morning, Anneliese was neither.

  The wall in question was built of white-painted brick and served as a perimeter between the men’s and women’s sections of the camp. The women lined up facing it. The guard prodded each of them in the back. ‘Straight! Stand up straight!’

  Then she gave a brisk command to the Alsatian, which immediately placed itself in front of the three prisoners and began barking and growling. Anneliese had never been afraid of dogs before she had arrived at Sachsenhausen. Now she was petrified of them.

  It was still only five-thirty, and not yet light. Although it was early September, the temperature was low at this time of the morning. The prisoners’ feet were bare and very cold. It began to rain, at first a few cold drops, then a steady drizzle. After a few minutes the cold water seeped through to Anneliese’s skin. By now her temperature was raging, so for the first few seconds the rainwater was wonderfully cooling. Then she began to shiver.

  ‘Straight! I said straight!’ came the cry from the Scorpion, who had taken shelter in a doorway a few metres away.

  ‘I’m not sure I can stand this,’ Anneliese said out of the corner of her mouth.

  ‘“Blessed are you when men hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil,”’ Sylvia said. ‘Luke six, verse twenty-two.’

  ‘Are you ill?’ Andrea asked, somewhat more helpfully.

  ‘I think I might be.’

  ‘Don’t admit it to her,’ said Sylvia.

  ‘She’ll take it as a sign of weakness; she won’t let you go,’ said Andrea.

  ‘Shush! She’s coming!’ Sylvia had heard her footsteps. Anneliese couldn’t hear anything but a buzzing in her ears.

  ‘You must stand up straight!’ a voice shouted behind her. Anneliese realized she was swaying. ‘Listen to me!’

  She barely heard the swish but she felt a sharp pain at the back of her thighs. Then another blow across her back made her pitch forward. Her head banged hard against the wall, and everything went black.

  28

  Theo’s silver Horch sped through the woods on its way back to Berlin. Next to him sat General von Witzleben, commander of Army District III. Theo liked him: he had served with Theo’s father, and he was an altogether simpler, less complicated soldier than either Beck or Halder. He, too, had insisted on seeing Schacht, and Theo and he had just spent the Sunday afternoon with the President of the Reichsbank at his country house. The politician and the soldier had got on very well, each respecting the other’s discipline. Schacht repeated to von Witzleben what he had told General Halder, that he would be willing to lead a civilian government after a coup.

  ‘We’ll need a detailed list of targets, Hertenberg,’ the general said. ‘SS barracks, telephone exchanges, police stations. They will all have to be taken on the first day. In the first few hours, even.’

  ‘Yes, Herr General,’ replied Theo. ‘I have made a provisional list. It has proven quite difficult to pin down where exactly all the SS barracks are. But I have a contact in the police who I hope will be able to help me.’

  ‘We must be sure of the police,’ said von Witzleben. ‘If they oppose us, the coup will be impossible to pull off.’

  ‘I know, Herr General.’ Theo and Oster had good contacts in the police, but the chief of the Berlin police force, Count Helldorf, was one of the original members of the Nazi Party, and an unknown quantity. Theo would have to get to know him soon.

  The general stared at the trees flashing past. ‘I don’t profess to know about politics, indeed I believe generals should stay well clear of politicians. But Hitler wants a war, he is doing everything he can to provoke it and it will be the end of Germany. He has to go. Tell Oster he can count on me.’

  Theo smiled. ‘I am very glad to hear that, Herr General.’

  Theo slept poorly that night, plans rolling around his brain in disjointed confusion. But eventually he must have drifted off, because he was wakened by the jarring sound of the telephone bell. He rolled out of bed, padded barefoot into the hallway of his apartment and picked up the receiver. ‘Hertenberg.’

  He heard three guttural coughs, and then the line went dead.

  Theo blinked and put down the receiver. He dressed hurriedly, let himself out of the apartment and started up his car. He drove south-west towards the wealthy suburbs of Berlin, passing through Lichterfelde to Zehlendorf. At the corner of two small residential roads he saw a man waiting for him. He slowed, and the man jumped in.

  ‘Left here,’ he said. Theo obeyed, turning into a narrow residential street. His passenger was always careful, very careful, and Theo followed his instructions to the letter.

  They wound a complicated route through the silent back streets of Zehlendorf before pulling up by a small lake at the southern extremity of the Grunewald.

  Theo switched off the car engine and they sat in silence for a full minute, listening, before his companion pulled out a pistol and crept around the car, poking into bushes. Then he motioned for Theo to follow him through the trees down to the shore of the lake. The moon was three-quarters full and shone off the still water. They were alone and out of range of any microphones.

  ‘Well?’ said Theo.

  ‘I have the list,’ said the man, passing Theo an envelope. He was a grizzled old policeman with thin lips, shrewd eyes under bushy eyebrows
and a large broad nose. His name was Artur Nebe, and he had built up a reputation as Berlin’s foremost detective. Now he was head of the Kripo, the civilian sister-organization of the Gestapo. He and Theo met occasionally, always in the utmost secrecy; of all the conspirators Nebe was the most obsessively careful. ‘All the SS barracks in the country. It was a nightmare to put together. It’s only because every newly opened brothel must be reported to the local police that I could get the information at all.’ Nebe grinned. ‘You can’t have an SS barracks without a brothel.’

  Theo took the envelope. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I will need to approach Helldorf very soon.’

  ‘Good luck,’ said Nebe. ‘Just don’t mention I’m involved.’

  ‘Don’t you trust him?’

  The grizzled policeman smiled. ‘I trust no one, Hertenberg. That’s why I am still alive.’

  Theo grasped the nettle and went round to police headquarters in the Alexanderplatz the following morning. He was nervous. Count Helldorf might be an aristocrat, but he was the kind of aristocrat of whom Theo was most suspicious. In addition to being a member of the Nazi Party since 1925, von Helldorf was leader of the SA in Berlin. The man was a Nazi through and through, with a reputation for toughness and a fearsome temper.

  Theo well understood that the more people who became aware of the plot, the greater the risk that it would be exposed. He was confident of the loyalty of the tight network of Prussian families of which he was a part, and of Artur Nebe and the small number of generals in whom they had confided. But von Helldorf? Von Helldorf might be a conspirator too far.

  Without the support, or at least the neutrality, of the Chief of Police in Berlin, the coup would fail. Theo had been assured by an old friend of his family’s, the Deputy Chief of Police Count Schulenburg, that von Helldorf would respond positively to an approach. Theo just had to trust him.

  Von Helldorf was about forty, clean-shaven with tight lips, hard eyes and a duelling scar above his left eye. He listened impassively as Theo spoke.

  ‘A friend suggested I contact you about ideas that some of the officers in the army have been discussing,’ Theo began.

  ‘Go on,’ said von Helldorf.

  Theo realized there was no point in beating about the bush. ‘There is a plan afoot to remove Hitler,’ he said. ‘As soon as he orders the invasion of Czechoslovakia, which we think he will very shortly, the army will take over Berlin and he will be arrested.’ Theo watched von Helldorf for a reaction, but he didn’t get one. ‘In those circumstances the attitude of the Berlin police will be vital. If you oppose the army, there will be a bloodbath.’

  Count Helldorf sat back in his chair, examining Theo. For a moment Theo thought he had made a dreadful mistake.

  But then von Helldorf’s thin lips formed a smile. ‘It’s about time someone did something. Tell me, Lieutenant von Hertenberg, how can we help?’

  ‘Heil Hitler,’ Klaus drawled casually as he entered Heydrich’s office.

  ‘Heil Hitler,’ Heydrich replied. He signed a letter in front of him and placed it firmly in his out tray, smiling to himself as he did so. Heydrich’s signature was an important weapon of power in the Third Reich, an instrument of life and death, and its owner enjoyed wielding that power.

  He looked up at Klaus. ‘A couple of things, Schalke. We have just received an interesting rumour: a high-up German politician has recently visited London. We don’t know when exactly he went, but we think it might have been last month. He had unofficial talks with the British.’

  ‘Any idea who it might be?’

  ‘No. Have you?’

  Klaus thought a moment. ‘No, I haven’t. But we can look through our files, see who has travelled out of the country recently.’

  ‘Do that. I will check with our Abwehr friends.’

  ‘Is there a chance it might have something to do with Conrad de Lancey?’ asked Klaus hopefully.

  ‘There’s no evidence for that,’ said Heydrich. ‘But I do want to discuss de Lancey with you.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  ‘It seems that he has been seen in Halle asking questions about my family.’

  ‘Oh, really?’

  ‘He spoke to a man named Eckert at the town hall. Eckert said de Lancey seemed to have a detailed knowledge about my ancestry, knowledge that I thought was safely buried.’ Heydrich stared at Klaus, the man who had buried it.

  ‘Do we know who he is working for?’ said Klaus.

  ‘Despite what the Abwehr say, he must be working for the British. I wouldn’t put it past the Abwehr to check on my background – we check up on theirs, after all – but I don’t see why they would use a British citizen for that kind of work.’

  ‘It would not be a good thing if the British secret service got hold of any...’ Klaus hesitated, ‘...erroneous information about you, Herr Gruppenführer.’

  ‘No, it wouldn’t. Which is why I want you to take some men and search de Lancey’s flat. Take Kriminalrat Huber with you. And Huber leads the search.’

  ‘Is that necessary?’ Klaus asked.

  Heydrich smiled. ‘I know about your personal feelings towards Herr de Lancey, and I don’t want them to get in the way of the investigation. But if Huber finds anything, he gives it to you and only you.’

  ‘Yes, Herr Gruppenführer!’ There was no one in the Gestapo who knew as much about Heydrich’s ancestry as Klaus, including Heydrich himself, and Heydrich was eager to keep it that way.

  Three-quarters of an hour later Huber and three Gestapo agents were methodically combing Conrad’s flat, carefully replacing everything they moved. Klaus watched. The superintendent had done a good job of showing surprise at their arrival, but Klaus lagged behind the others as they climbed the stairs, just to make sure that the man was suitably frightened. He was.

  It didn’t take them long. One of the floorboards under a rug in the bedroom creaked. When Klaus had investigated it, it had been easy to remove, revealing a hiding place that had obviously been used before. Klaus doubted Conrad knew anything about it; the superintendent had told him that the previous occupant was a Jewish architect who was much more likely to have had need of it. The Gestapo found it in five minutes.

  Klaus watched closely as Huber was handed a single sheet of paper. He gave it the merest glance and then passed it on to Klaus. There, in handwriting that Klaus had ensured closely resembled Conrad’s, was a family tree of one Reinhard Heydrich, extensively annotated. Klaus nodded at Huber, who ordered his men to make sure that the flat was left exactly as they had found it. Five minutes more and they were gone.

  Heydrich paled as he read the scrap of paper. ‘Damn it!’ he said. ‘These are lies, all lies! Schalke, you know these are lies. I am no more Jewish than the Führer.’

  ‘Of course, Herr Gruppenführer,’ Klaus said, thinking that that was one claim it would be very foolish to try to verify for all sorts of reasons. ‘But they are lies we don’t want the British to see.’

  Heydrich glanced at Klaus. ‘So what do you suggest we do?’

  ‘Kill him,’ Klaus said.

  ‘You’re just jealous of him because of your Jewish tart, aren’t you?’

  ‘The Jewish tart is in a concentration camp,’ Klaus said calmly.

  ‘I’m very pleased to hear it.’

  ‘But yes, I would be happy to see Conrad de Lancey die. In fact, I will see to it personally, if you wish.’

  ‘The Abwehr would never stand for it.’

  ‘Let’s do it and tell them afterwards. Say we have evidence that de Lancey was spying on senior members of the Gestapo for the British.’

  Heydrich frowned, thinking. ‘Yes, that might work. The Abwehr would never want to admit to being involved in anything like that.’

  ‘De Lancey has hoodwinked them,’ said Klaus. ‘They’ll be as upset about him as we are. But I’m sure they would be fascinated by what he has discovered, if we ever let them get their hands on him. Which I suggest we don’t.’

  ‘All right, Schalke. Arr
est him, find out who he’s working for and then kill him. But do it fast, and do it somewhere where the Abwehr won’t be able to find him. Nowhere official.’

  ‘Yes, Herr Gruppenführer!’

  29

  The taxi dropped Conrad outside his flat. He scanned the square and saw Warren Sumner waiting for him on a low wall under the old chestnut tree. The American waved and ambled over, carrying a bag.

  ‘Sorry I’m a bit late,’ Conrad said, shaking his hand. ‘I hope you haven’t been waiting long?

  ‘Ten minutes, that’s all. It’s good to see you.’

  ‘And you too.’ And it was. Warren’s friendly smile and his American accent were a breath of fresh air to Conrad, bringing signs of an outside world removed from the increasingly tense atmosphere of Berlin on the brink of war.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t mind me staying the next couple of nights?’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Conrad. ‘I could do with the company.’ He led Warren into his building and they climbed the stairs. ‘What is it exactly you are doing back here? I thought they needed you in Prague?’

  ‘Vernon Sherritt, our Berlin correspondent, has to go back to the States to sort out some family business. His father is very ill – he won’t last more than a few days. The paper doesn’t want to leave the Berlin office unstaffed, so they sent me back, at least until Vernon returns. I start next week.’

  ‘Interesting time to be here,’ said Conrad, unlocking the door to his flat.

  ‘It sure is. Vernon is going to try to return by the end of the month. That’s when the balloon goes up, apparently.’

  ‘So you’ll be back in Prague when the German tanks roll in?’

  ‘I’m not convinced they will,’ Warren said, dumping his bag in Conrad’s spare room.

  ‘Really? You don’t think Hitler will invade?’

  ‘You bet he will. But your military attaché in Prague thinks the Czechs can hold out for six months, maybe more. You should have seen the Czech army when they mobilized in May. They’re very professional and their weapons are all modern. I’ve been out and seen the border fortifications; they are as good as anything on the Maginot Line.’