They were two men he had trailed on and off for Klaus. Conrad de Lancey and Theo von Hertenberg. And de Lancey was wearing the uniform of an officer in the Wehrmacht! He watched as the two men exchanged words and set off across the road to the Reich Chancellery. Fischer followed them.
Conrad and Theo walked straight past the Chancellery entrance on Wilhelmstrasse and turned into a small courtyard where there were two double doors. These were unguarded, presumably because the guards assumed they were locked. Without pausing, Theo turned the heavy iron handle of one of the doors and pushed. The door moved; Oster’s Foreign Ministry friend had done as he had promised.
The lobby of the building was full of people jostling, protesting, hurrying to and fro. The black-uniformed SS guards with their white gloves were busy by the main entrance stopping visitors, too busy to notice Conrad and Theo. A small bespectacled man did see them and turned the other way. Oster’s friend, perhaps.
Theo led Conrad to the foot of the grand staircase. Neither of them had been inside before, although both of them had studied the plans Heinz had shown them. There were more SS guards on the staircase, but they were being jostled by anxious-looking officers, diplomats and civil servants rushing up and down the stairs.
Conrad glanced up and saw a figure he recognized bearing down on him: Sir Nevile Henderson, His Majesty’s Ambassador to Germany, looking preoccupied. Conrad lowered his head as he climbed the stairs, hoping that his uniform would confuse the Ambassador. And so it did, until the last instant when out of the corner of his eye, Conrad saw Henderson hesitate on the bottom step.
‘De Lancey?’ the Ambassador enquired in a doubtful voice.
Conrad kept going, trusting in Henderson’s desire not to make an embarrassing scene and his fear of being proven mistaken if he did. It worked.
They hurried along a corridor at the top of the stairs until they reached an opened door, guarded by a tall SS man. Theo barked that he had to see the Führer urgently with a message from Admiral Canaris. The guard waved him into a red-plush antechamber. An impatient crowd was gathered at one end of the room, outside the door to Hitler’s office. An SS adjutant acted as gatekeeper.
‘Heil Hitler!’ said Theo, raising his arm. ‘We have an important message for the Führer from Admiral Canaris.’
‘Everyone here wishes to speak to the Führer,’ said the SS officer.
‘But I must speak to him at once,’ said Theo. ‘Tell him the Abwehr has uncovered a British secret-service plot to destabilize the High Command. They are planning to put it into action at any minute.’
The SS officer glanced doubtfully at Theo. ‘Then why doesn’t Admiral Canaris come himself?’
‘He’s trying to deal with the plot now!’ said Theo. ‘We don’t have much time.’
In a day of surprise and counter-surprise, this proposition did not seem as incredible as it might otherwise have done. ‘Very well,’ said the SS officer. ‘The Führer is speaking to Field Marshal Göring now. I will interrupt him.’
Fischer ran across the road and up the steps to the entrance, where he was promptly stopped by the two SS guards. He gabbled his explanation, but they wouldn’t listen. A delegation of Italian diplomats pulled up in a long Mercedes and hurried up the steps. The guards, who recognized them, let them through.
Fischer gave up and dodged into the courtyard to the door he had seen de Lancey and Hertenberg use. It pushed open easily. There was a reception desk in the lobby, and he rushed over to it.
‘There are intruders in the building!’ he said to the harassed SS guard at the desk.
‘Who are you?’
‘They are planning to shoot the Führer.’
The guard raised an eyebrow. ‘I said, who are you?’
‘Kriminal Assistant Fischer, Gestapo.’ Fischer pulled out his Party badge.
At that moment the Italian delegation arrived and launched into a tirade in English, Italian and German at the guard. The guard ignored Fischer’s badge and dealt with the visitors.
‘The Führer’s life is in danger!’ Fischer shouted in frustration.
The Italians ignored him. The guard snapped at him to wait. It took a minute to sign all the Italians in, and then they were on their way.
‘There are two men in the building dressed as Wehrmacht officers,’ Fischer said. ‘I have information at Gestapo headquarters that suggests there is a plan to overthrow the Führer today. I believe that these men intend to kill him in the next few minutes.’ Now the guard was listening. ‘I must speak to your superior officer at once!’ Fischer urged. ‘If the Führer dies, it will be your responsibility!’
The guard picked up the telephone and dialled a number. Fischer noticed a Wehrmacht colonel slip through the double doors from which he had just come a moment earlier. ‘The adjutant is just coming,’ the guard said, passing the receiver to the excitable Gestapo officer. Fischer decided to ignore the colonel. The important thing was to get through to the guards around Hitler before it was too late.
Two diplomats, a civil servant and a general scowled at Theo and Conrad as they waited. Through the window, Conrad could see the garden behind the Chancellery and the men calmly working on the new building next door, oblivious to the drama unfolding so close to them.
Conrad scanned the two SS guards. Tall, fit, young, inexperienced, they were distracted by all the excitement and the hubbub around them. They would respond to a rapid movement, but if he surreptitiously slipped his Luger from out of his holster, they probably wouldn’t notice. There was plenty to keep them occupied.
There was a bustle outside the room and the sound of English being spoken in a heavy Italian accent echoed down the corridor. ‘The Duce wishes me to speak to the Führer now. Now, I say.’
A stumpy man with a short bristle of iron-grey hair and thick-lensed glasses burst into the Red Room and pushed himself in front of Conrad and Theo just as the door to the Chancellor’s office opened.
There, six feet in front of Conrad, listening to the Italian Ambassador haranguing him in English, was Adolf Hitler.
Conrad had never seen the dictator so close. The little moustache and the lock of fine dark hair hanging down over the forehead were instantly recognizable. Lord Halifax had described him as commonplace and vulgar, but to Conrad he was the most powerful and dangerous man in Europe. An air of suppressed tension seemed to surround him, and caused those waiting for him to stiffen in anticipation. Close to, Conrad noticed that Hitler’s skin was soft and pale, and flecked with drops of sweat, as were the bristles of his moustache. His right shoulder twitched in an angry tic. Blue eyes bulging from dark sockets stared at the Italian Ambassador in front of him as his interpreter translated.
Conrad slowly moved his hand to the Luger at his side. In a moment, the dictator would be dead. In another moment, in all probability, so would Conrad. He didn’t care; it would be worth it. No one noticed Conrad; everyone’s eyes were on the Führer.
Or not quite everyone’s.
‘Don’t do it, Herr de Lancey. I order you not to shoot.’
The voice, little more than a whisper came from a foot behind Conrad.
Conrad turned to see Colonel Oster standing behind him, unarmed. ‘You can’t order me, remember, Oster. That’s why I’m here.’
‘I can order Hertenberg to shoot you.’
‘He won’t. At least not until it is too late.’ Conrad slipped his pistol from its holster and rested it in front of his belt, under his cap which he clutched with his other hand. Still no one had noticed.
‘Everything has changed,’ said Oster. ‘This morning, you were assisting a legitimate revolution, an attempt to bring democracy back to Germany. Now you are a lone assassin. Before, you were going to stop a war. Now, if you shoot Hitler, you will start one.’
‘He’s evil, Oster. You know that. How many Germans have to die before you realize how evil he is?’
‘You will make him a martyr. The German people will demand revenge on the British, the Czechs, the French
, all of Europe.’
Conrad hesitated.
‘Hertenberg. Shoot de Lancey.’
Conrad waited. At the first movement Theo made towards his pistol, Conrad would shoot Hitler.
As Theo looked from his friend to his mentor, Conrad could see the excitement, the desire to seize the moment, overcome by Theo’s innate respect for authority – and for reason.
‘We don’t want to start a war, Conrad,’ said Theo. ‘Remember Algy.’
Conrad thought of Algernon Pendleton who had lost his life at Ypres in 1916. And he thought of Gavrilo Princip whose assassin’s bullet two years before had led to Algy’s death, and millions of others like him.
‘This is too big a decision for you and me to take,’ said Theo. ‘Let’s go.’
Conrad felt the weight of history bearing down on his shoulders. He had spent years of his life studying German history. He, of all people, should know that the consequences of what he was about to do would be impossible to predict and could be truly disastrous. He had thought long and hard before he had convinced himself that the coup was the best way to bring peace.
Oster was right; an assassination was different. At that moment Conrad realized that he was being driven by hatred and a desire for revenge, rather than a sober calculation of the balance between right and wrong, peace and war.
He returned his Luger to its holster and turned to Theo.
‘Don’t worry. You don’t have to shoot me.’
The SS adjutant took his time to get to the telephone, there were so many people clamouring for his attention. When he eventually picked up the receiver, he was bombarded by frantic warnings from an overwrought Gestapo agent. He was getting weary of these histrionics.
He glanced up to see the two Wehrmacht officers leaving the antechamber, accompanied by a colonel.
‘Don’t waste my time, Fischer,’ he snapped. ‘I can see the men now. They are leaving the building.’
40
The next day, Chamberlain flew to Munich, armed with his neatly furled umbrella. The leaders of Britain, France, Italy and Germany discussed the future of Czechoslovakia in the Brown House, the Nazi Party headquarters. The Five-Power Conference had become a Four-Power Conference: the Czech delegation was left skulking in the corridors outside. Inside, the four governments decided that the Czechs should allow German troops to march into the Sudetenland by 10 October. The text of this agreement was handed to the Czech Foreign Minister at 1.30 a.m.; he was told that a response from his government was not required. Without the Sudetenland and its line of fortifications the rest of Czechoslovakia was defenceless. As the Czech Prime Minister put it: ‘We were given the choice of being murdered or committing suicide.’
The following morning, Chamberlain wrote out a brief note on a piece of paper and persuaded Hitler to sign it. This Hitler did quickly, and without much thought. The note stated:
We, the German Führer and Chancellor and the British Prime Minister, have had a further meeting today and are agreed in recognizing that the question of Anglo-German relations is of the first importance for the two countries and for Europe.
We regard the agreement signed last night and the Anglo-German Naval Agreement as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again.
We are resolved that the method of consultation shall be the method adopted to deal with any other questions that may concern our two countries, and we are determined to continue our efforts to remove possible sources of difference and thus to contribute to assure the peace of Europe.
It was this declaration that Chamberlain had been working so tirelessly to secure. This was the goal of Plan Z; it was for this that he had let Hitler remain in power. This was the piece of paper he waved to the cheering crowd at Heston Airport later that day on his return to London. This it was that guaranteed ‘peace in our time’.
Three days later, Hjalmar Schacht, Colonel Oster, Theo and Generals von Witzleben and Beck all met at von Witzleben’s house. There they tossed all their plans for the coup into the fire, including Theo’s notebook. Perhaps one day in the future Hitler would overreach himself and give them another opportunity to act, but for now they had to watch an ecstatic populace cheer their führer as he absorbed the Sudetenland into the Reich without a drop of blood being shed.
The debate on the Munich Agreement in the House of Commons lasted three days. Duff Cooper duly resigned, but the prevailing tone was in favour of the Prime Minister who had preserved peace. At the end of the debate, Winston Churchill gave his own summary of what had happened:
‘One pound was demanded at the pistol’s point. When it was given, two pounds were demanded at the pistol’s point. Finally, the dictator consented to take one pound, seventeen shillings and sixpence and the rest in promises of goodwill for the future.’
The traffic in the Potsdamer Platz was as busy as ever and, with the threat of war suddenly removed, crowds thronged towards Wertheim’s department store on the far side of the square from the Café Josty. Theo and Conrad toyed with small cups of coffee each. Throughout 1938 the quality of coffee available in Berlin’s cafés had deteriorated steadily, but however bad it was Berliners were still in the habit of drinking it.
‘Are you sure this is safe?’ Conrad asked.
‘Quite sure,’ said Theo. ‘The last thing the Gestapo wants to do is find you. For some reason, Heydrich is convinced that you have been spending your free time in Halle checking up on his ancestry. It didn’t take much for us to hint that Klaus Schalke’s death was connected to that somehow. It was amazing how quickly the Gestapo dropped their investigation.’
‘I’m sorry I couldn’t come to Sophie’s funeral.’
‘It was sad. The saddest thing was that her father insisted on all the Nazi paraphernalia. But I don’t believe she died a Nazi.’
‘She didn’t,’ said Conrad.
‘Hey, fellas!’ They looked around to see Warren striding towards them, white teeth flashing. ‘Conrad! I didn’t expect to find you here. But I’m glad to see you are still in one piece.’
‘My name is Lars. Dr Lars Bendixen.’ The Abwehr had given him new papers to replace those of Lieutenant Eiche.
‘Whatever you say, doctor. But I’m not going to put up with that cod-Danish accent all afternoon.’
‘All right,’ said Conrad, ‘let’s speak German, then,’ although he persisted with the Danish accent in that language.
‘That’s better,’ said Warren. ‘So, doc, I’ve got this pain in my back. Have you got anything for it?’
‘Doctor of history, you imbecile. At the University of Copenhagen.’
‘Shame. I thought you might have learned something useful for a change.’
‘Are you returning to Prague soon?’
‘Next week. Vernon arrived back in Berlin yesterday. It will be interesting. From what I understand the Czechs are hopping mad.’
‘That doesn’t surprise me.’
‘I shipped all your things back to your family in England, by the way. Just in time, too. The Gestapo showed up at your apartment to confiscate them the day afterwards.’
‘Thank you, Warren.’
‘What shall I do with the place?’
‘Just leave it. I’ll write to the owner in Paris to explain what has happened. If I send him a big enough cheque, I’m sure he will understand.’
Warren ordered a cup of coffee. ‘Oh, and I got a friend who was flying to Paris to post that letter to your father from there.’
Conrad smiled. ‘I knew I could rely on you. I thought you would be in front of the Chancellery to watch the parade. I was lucky there were so few other people there so I could find you.’
‘I didn’t spot you,’ said Warren.
Conrad glanced at Theo, who was frowning. He hadn’t told him of his quick escapade the afternoon before the coup to get a message to his father. Come to think of it, the poor man must be mystified. ‘Could you do me one more favour, Warren? Could you just let him know that I am a
live?’
‘OK,’ said Warren. ‘Say, with all this toing and froing to Munich and places, did I miss a story?’
Conrad and Theo exchanged glances and grinned. ‘I would say that you did,’ Conrad said.
‘Am I going to hear about it now?’
‘One day,’ said Theo. ‘One day, I hope.’
Warren frowned. Then he looked over towards the door of the café. ‘Isn’t that Captain Foley?’
Sure enough the unassuming Englishman was making his way towards their table. Behind him was a woman, walking awkwardly in clothes that were too big for her thin body.
Anneliese.
Her face was pinched and pale, the skin drawn tight over her cheekbones. But there was nothing unfamiliar about her smile when she saw Conrad.
She sat in the empty chair next to him.
‘Captain Foley says I am not to kiss you,’ she said to Conrad. ‘But consider yourself kissed.’
‘And you. It’s so good to see you! I thought I would never see you again.’
‘I look dreadful, though, don’t I?’
‘No,’ said Conrad. ‘You look wonderful.’
‘We only have a few minutes,’ said Foley. ‘Anneliese has to leave the country tonight, so we must catch a train.’
‘Do you want anything to eat?’ asked Theo.
‘Captain Foley gave me lunch on the way from Lichtenburg. But I’ll have a Menzeltorte.’
The Menzeltorte was a Café Josty speciality. It was a square pastry with a hard layer of iced chocolate, underneath which was soft cream in lighter chocolate, then a crisp base.
‘I know I’ll only be able to manage a couple of mouthfuls, but I’ve been dreaming of it for the last six weeks.’
‘Are you... all right?’ Conrad asked.
‘You mean, what was it like?’
‘I suppose I do.’
‘It was worse than last time. I had been in the camp a couple of weeks when I knocked myself out, falling against a wall. I spent a day in the infirmary, and after that I was in solitary confinement, first at Sachsenhausen, and then in Lichtenburg Castle. I had no idea why, until Captain Foley explained it to me.’
Traitor's Gate Page 37