Traitor's Gate

by Michael Ridpath

  Conrad tensed, ready to move.

  As Sophie raised herself on her toes to kiss Theo, she moved her right hand to her bag. Theo stared angrily off in the other direction. Dressel watched Theo.

  As Sophie pressed herself up to him, Theo pushed her away in disgust. She seemed to slip and fall into Dressel, who took two steps back, his gun waving off target. She twisted and with lightning speed plunged the hypodermic into Dressel’s wrist. He yelped in pain and the pistol fell to the ground. Conrad leaped. In one motion he grabbed the gun, turned it on Dressel, pointed it at his head and pulled the trigger.

  Dressel died instantly, but at such close range that his skull was a mess. Sophie screamed and recoiled. Conrad turned his gun on Klaus, but Klaus was already moving behind Sophie. As Conrad looked for a clear shot, Klaus grabbed her and pulled out his own gun, holding it to her temple.

  ‘Stay there!’ shouted Klaus as he backed away.

  Conrad hesitated. He glanced at Theo, who was rooted to the spot.

  Sophie stared at Conrad, her eyes wide with fear. Her cheek was spattered with Dressel’s blood. ‘Theo,’ she whimpered. She closed her eyes.

  Klaus could not be allowed to escape; it was as simple as that. And Theo shouldn’t have to take the decision. Conrad hoped that if he hit Klaus in the forehead, he would die instantly, before he had a chance to press the trigger of his own weapon.

  Conrad aimed carefully. Fired.

  His hope was misplaced. The two shots rang out almost simultaneously, and Klaus and Sophie crumpled to the ground. Klaus must have been watching Conrad’s trigger finger rather than waiting for the sound of the shot before firing his own gun.

  ‘Come on, Theo,’ said Conrad dully to his blood-spattered friend, who cradled Sophie in his arms.

  Theo looked up at him. There were tears in his eyes. ‘She was so brave. She died so bravely.’

  ‘Let’s go,’ Conrad said. He picked up the blue copybook, lying on the grass a few feet away from Klaus’s body, and took Theo gently by the arm. ‘Someone might have heard the shots. We have to go. We still have things to do.’

  37

  Chamberlain woke early on the morning of 28 September knowing he had until two o’clock that afternoon to stop a war. He was exhausted. The day before had been long and frustrating, the worst of the crisis. He had sent last-minute appeals to Hitler requesting that he reconsider his position, and to Roosevelt asking him to intervene. With Horace Wilson, just back from his latest failed mission to Berlin, he had drafted a telegram to the Czech government insisting that they accede to Germany’s demands, but this had been scotched by Halifax, who remained firm that they could not press the Czechs to do something that the British government believed to be wrong. Chamberlain knew he would have a Cabinet revolt on his hands if he persisted, and so he gave up. At eight o’clock, exhausted, he had given a radio broadcast to the nation, preparing them for war. He knew it had not been an inspirational address; he had not felt inspired. Then, to cap it all, he had been awoken that morning by a letter from Hitler rejecting the pleas Wilson had made in Berlin to change his mind.

  He would have one more try. He drafted a message to Hitler proposing a five-power conference of Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Czechoslovakia to discuss the question. Then, following the suggestion of the British Ambassador in Rome, he wrote a similar message to Mussolini. The messages had been dispatched to His Majesty’s respective Ambassadors in Berlin and Rome by ten o’clock.

  Gertrude Lüttgen came in to work very early that morning. She knew that Klaus was interested in Wilfrid Israel, and she had just remembered that he had been seen with Adam von Trott, someone else the Gestapo had suspicions about. She knocked on Klaus’s door and carried in the Trott file.

  Klaus’s office was empty, which didn’t surprise her this early in the morning. On the desk, next to an envelope with Klaus’s name on it in Kriminal Assistant Fischer’s handwriting, was a single sheet of paper. Curiosity was what had made Gertrude one of the Gestapo’s best clerks. She couldn’t resist picking up the sheet and reading it.

  It was not yet dawn when Conrad and Theo met the other members of the raiding party at army headquarters in the Bendlerstrasse. They had each managed a couple of hours’ sleep, Conrad in one of the flats commandeered by the raiding party, Theo in his own apartment. Captain Heinz handed out guns, ammunition and grenades and again ran through the plan to take the Chancellery. Security there was poor, especially in the current crisis when all kinds of people were coming and going, and there were only thirteen SS guards on duty. Oster had arranged for a friend in the Foreign Ministry to unlock the big double doors behind the guards, and it was through here that the assault would be made.

  Most of the members of the raiding party knew Theo and knew each other. They were Prussian army officers, student leaders, writers and young aristocrats. Captain Heinz, the former soldier from the Great War who had fought in the dirty street battles of the 1920s, was older and more battle-hardened than his men. But there was no lack of courage in the tense young faces as they waited for the order to move. Despite his flawless accent, they knew that Conrad was not a German soldier, but they were comforted by the fact that Theo and Heinz seemed to have confidence in him. For Conrad’s part, he was proud to be among them, and determined not to fail in his chosen task. To shoot and kill Hitler.

  The raiding party dispersed back to the three flats near the Chancellery to wait.

  ‘Theo?’

  ‘What is it?’ Conrad and Theo were hurrying along the streets towards their rendezvous. The raiding party were moving in twos and threes so as not to attract attention.

  ‘I wonder what will happen when they find the bodies?’

  ‘They’ll start an investigation. Once they realize who Klaus is, the police will call in the Gestapo.’

  ‘Will they discover what Klaus was working on?’

  ‘It will take them some time. We know that Klaus didn’t have any concrete evidence, which is why he wanted my notes. And we’ve got those back now.’

  ‘So you don’t think they will piece it together?’

  ‘Not before two o’clock this afternoon,’ said Theo. ‘And after that it will be too late.’

  Gertrude, usually so diligent, found it impossible to concentrate on her work that morning. She was an intelligent woman; she understood what she had read. There were highly detailed plans to launch a coup against the Führer as soon as he mobilized for war against Czechoslovakia. And that mobilization was expected this very day!

  What surprised Gertrude, shocked her even, was that she found she hoped the coup would succeed. She was a good Nazi: she had joined the League of German Girls, the female equivalent of the Hitler Youth, at sixteen, soon after Hitler had come to power. She enjoyed her job, she was good at it, and she liked working for Klaus. But things happened in Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse that horrified her, things that she would never dream of telling her father, the pastor at St Mark’s Church. Six months before, she had begun to lose files or misplace information in cases where the story of one of the Gestapo’s victims seemed particularly poignant. Never with Jews, she had no sympathy at all with Jews. But there were some people, decent, hard-working Germans, who had been caught up in the Third Reich’s machinery through no fault of their own. These people she helped.

  She knew deep in her heart that the Third Reich had gone wrong somewhere; not only that, she could see it was set on a path of ever-increasing violence and depravity. Nothing could stop it, except perhaps a world war.

  Or a coup.

  ‘Have you heard the news, Gertrude?’

  Gertrude was jolted out of her reverie to see Claudia, a colleague in her department, her face flushed with a mixture of excitement and horror.

  Gertrude’s heart skipped a beat. Was this it? The coup?

  ‘Kriminalrat Schalke has been found shot in the Tiergarten! With Dressel. And a woman. All dead!’

  The news hit Gertrude hard. She liked working for Klaus; he appreci
ated her skills and he was less cruel than many of his colleagues. But she knew immediately what she had to do. She grabbed the Trott file from her desk and strode into Klaus’s office. She placed some of the papers in the file on his desk and scooped up the single page of Klaus’s notes, stuffing it back into that same folder. She was just in time; on the way back to her own office she passed Kriminalrat Huber and two of his men marching determinedly along the corridor.

  In the Bendlerstrasse, General von Witzleben and Colonel Oster gathered in the office of General Halder. Oster handed the Chief of the General Staff a letter.

  ‘What’s this?’ asked Halder.

  ‘Two days ago, Horace Wilson, who is a special adviser to Chamberlain, delivered an offer of further discussions to Hitler,’ said Oster. ‘This is a copy of Hitler’s reply.’

  Halder read the note, his face reddening as he did so. ‘This proves it,’ he said. ‘Despite everything he has told me over the last few days, it is clear Hitler is determined to invade Czechoslovakia whatever the British do.’

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ said General von Witzleben.

  Halder glanced at his co-conspirators. ‘The time has come to bring in General von Brauchitsch,’ he said.

  ‘But what if he doesn’t respond?’ said von Witzleben.

  ‘Then we move without him. Wait here.’

  With that, Halder strode out of his office, clutching the copy of Hitler’s reply to Chamberlain.

  He was back five minutes later, a smile on his face.

  ‘Will he do it?’ von Witzleben asked.

  ‘Yes. But he wants to go to the Chancellery just to make sure that Hitler really is bent on war. He will call us from there with the order to move.’

  ‘But should we wait, Herr General?’ asked von Witzleben.

  ‘We wait,’ said Halder. ‘I believe von Brauchitsch is convinced. And the coup will have much more legitimacy if the commander-in-chief of the army gives the order.’

  Von Witzleben hurried off to Army District III headquarters in the Hohenzollerndamm, where he waited by the telephone ready to give von Brockdorff’s 23rd Infantry Division its orders to march from Potsdam, only a few kilometres outside Berlin. Before he left, he assured Oster that if von Brauchitsch dithered, he would give the order to launch the coup himself.

  Oster sat at his desk in Abwehr headquarters, ready to telephone Heinz. Canaris, Schacht, Count Helldorf, Beck and dozens of other conspirators knew what they had to do. Everything was in place. Everyone was waiting.

  It was after eleven o’clock by the time Fischer got back to Gestapo headquarters. His interviews with the staff of N. Israel had been disappointing. Even the Party members had shown an unusual determination not to incriminate their boss.

  He headed straight for Klaus’s office, ostensibly to check that Klaus had received his report, but also to ask some indirect questions about the sheet of notes he had seen. Was there really going to be a coup attempt that day, he wondered? Perhaps Klaus would be out of the office doing something about it.

  Long before he got there, he heard the news. He hurried on, and found a Gestapo agent going through Klaus’s desk.

  ‘Have you found his notes on the coup?’ Fischer said.

  ‘What notes?’ said the agent.

  ‘A single sheet of paper. I found it on the floor in his office and left it on his desk. At the top of the sheet was the word “Coup” and today’s date. There were notes about a plan for a putsch: an attack on the Chancellery and a military takeover of Berlin.

  ‘I haven’t seen anything like that.’

  ‘Are you sure? Let me look.’ Fischer shoved the agent out of the way and quickly glanced through the papers on Klaus’s desk. He found some documents related to a man named Adam von Trott, and his own report on Wilfrid Israel still sealed in its envelope, but nothing about a coup.

  ‘Who’s in charge of the investigation?’ Fischer snapped.

  ‘Kriminalrat Huber.’

  ‘Do you know where he is?’

  ‘I think he’s reporting to Gruppenführer Heydrich.’

  The small apartment was filled with the smell of sweat and cigarette smoke; there was so much cigarette smoke that it was difficult to see. Twenty men were crammed in there. Some of them spoke softly to each other, some played skat or backgammon, some just stared into space. All of them smoked.

  Conrad sat next to Theo on the floor in the kitchen and thought about what he was about to do. Assassinating a world leader was a major step, the enormity of which was only now sinking in. He thought of other assassins, the killer of Abraham Lincoln – who was that? – John Wilkes Booth. And then of course there was Gavrilo Princip, the man who had shot the Archduke Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo and started the most terrible war the world had known. To date. Princip had believed totally in the cause of Serb nationalism, but Conrad didn’t share his ideological certainty. Since the age of eighteen Conrad had espoused the cause of pacifism, but in the last couple of years his faith in that cause had been shaken as all his assumptions had been proved too simplistic. Now, though, there was something simple he could do to prevent millions of men killing each other.

  He knew that by taking it upon himself to shoot Hitler he was greatly reducing his chances of survival. Every one of the Führer’s bodyguard that remained standing would instantly point his weapon at him.

  If he succeeded, his action would certainly make its mark in the history books. But his name wouldn’t be associated with it: a mysterious Lieutenant Eiche would take the credit. Conrad didn’t mind; he wasn’t looking for a place in history. There was only one person whom he wanted to know what he had done: his father. He hoped Warren had found a way of safely delivering his letter.

  For a pacifist, Conrad had killed a lot of people. There was one of the Republican soldiers whom he and David Griffiths had caught raping the nuns in Spain. There were others in Spain too; he hadn’t counted how many he had shot in his eight months there. A dozen perhaps? Twenty? Then there were Klaus, Dressel and Sophie. He had really killed Sophie.

  ‘I’m sorry about Sophie, Theo.’

  Theo didn’t answer at first. He just stared at the small potted fern on the windowsill of the kitchen. ‘I was a fool. An arrogant fool.’

  Conrad didn’t say anything. He agreed with Theo and Theo knew it.

  ‘She was absolutely right that I took her for granted, Conrad. I thought I knew her so well, I thought she was so shallow, but I didn’t understand her at all. I never would have suspected she was a Nazisse. I never suspected she was anything much.’

  Still Conrad didn’t answer.

  ‘You know, when I said I loved her, at the end, I only said that to make her feel better.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘But in the end she died for me. For us. For what we are doing.’

  They sat in silence for a minute.

  ‘Got another cigarette?’ Conrad asked. Theo handed him one and he lit it. ‘Did you hear what Klaus said about Anneliese?’

  ‘About how he had whisked her away to another camp?’

  ‘Yes. Do you believe it?’

  ‘Honestly?’

  ‘Yes, honestly.’

  ‘No,’ said Theo. ‘Klaus would have said anything to get Sophie to give him the names on that list. What about you?’

  Conrad pulled angrily at his cigarette. ‘No.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Theo. ‘Sophie. Anneliese. Both...’

  ‘Killed by the Nazis.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Theo.

  ‘That might happen to us,’ said Conrad. ‘In an hour or two.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Theo. ‘But at least we will die fighting the swine.’

  Heydrich listened to Huber’s report of the investigation into Klaus’s murder. Death rarely upset Heydrich, but this one did. He realized he had liked his shambling assistant. He would miss his cunning insights, and his company at the Salon Kitty.

  Huber had already made progress. Footprints of two men had been found at the scene
of the crime: soldiers, or at least men wearing army-issued boots. The girl had been identified as Sophie Pohlmann, who was the girlfriend of Lieutenant Theo von Hertenberg, who worked at the War Ministry. As far as Huber was aware, Klaus was working on an investigation of Wilfrid Israel, the owner of the department store. And Huber had found an interesting scrap of paper crunched into a ball a few metres from the bodies.

  He handed it to Heydrich.

  It was a list. Of animals. Beside each animal was the name of a leading Nazi figure.

  ‘What do you think this is?’ asked Heydrich.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Huber. ‘The writing isn’t Schalke’s. Perhaps it’s an assassination list? That’s just a guess.’

  ‘And an interesting one,’ said Heydrich.

  ‘Do you have anything you can add, Herr Gruppenführer?’ Huber asked. ‘I know that Schalke often did special work for you directly.’

  ‘Possibly,’ said Heydrich. ‘Theo von Hertenberg is an officer in the Abwehr. I’m sure Schalke will have had a file on him. And Schalke had heard a rumour about a coup, although he had no hard evidence. You know how many rumours there are, Huber?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘And you are correct, Schalke was doing some special work for me. Work that I would like to remain confidential.’

  ‘Was that related to the search of the Englishman de Lancey’s apartment?’ Huber remembered the other scrap of paper he had found there, which he had passed on to Klaus unread. Now he wished he had looked at it more closely. Although there were some things it was better not to know.

  ‘Yes, it was.’

  ‘Do you think the killing might be related?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Heydrich. ‘Perhaps. Hertenberg and de Lancey are old friends. Let me call Admiral Canaris. I want to see if he knows anything about this. Wait outside.’

  ‘Yes, Herr Gruppenführer!’

  Heydrich mulled over the possibilities in his mind. He knew Schalke had been obsessed with that Jewish girl, and as a result was obsessed with de Lancey. On the other hand, he had also been looking for hard evidence of a coup and the names on the list did look like targets. Canaris would know. He picked up the telephone.