Midnight in Berlin

by James MacManus

  “Where’s Gertrude?” asked Primrose.

  “She’s gone to bed. She’s not well and dancing always tires her. She sends her apologies for neglecting her social duties.”

  “Oh, I am sorry,” said Primrose. “She dances beautifully. You both do.”

  “Thank you. Perhaps you would have the next dance?”

  Primrose was about to reply that it was late and they had to leave in the morning when Colonel Schiller and his wife joined them. Primrose noticed that Macrae had left the room.

  “All too much for me,” said the colonel. “I never could dance.”

  “Well, I enjoyed myself,” said his wife, “but I think, how do you say it in English? I mismangled your husband a little.”

  “Yes, he did look a bit mismangled,” said Primrose. “What have you done with him?”

  “Come on, we’re having one more dance,” said Koenig, and he put another record on.

  The colonel and his wife edged to the door, making goodnight noises. Koenig paid no attention and took Primrose onto the floor. They began to dance to a slow melody called “The Way You Look Tonight”.

  “Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers,” he whispered. “They’re good, aren’t they?”

  Macrae had searched the ground floor for what seemed like a long time looking for a lavatory. He finally found an oak-panelled room by the back door filled with boots, shoes, brushes, hunting clothes and an assortment of umbrellas and riding crops. He leant forward, his head resting on an arm against the wall, and tried to calculate the alcoholic content of the stream that flowed into the bowl.

  He had as usual broken his rule to match every glass of wine or whisky with one of water. He looked into the mirror. The face that stared back seemed grey and crumpled. He had learnt something that could be of real importance that night. The journey had been worthwhile. Why would Koenig have gone to the trouble of inviting him for the weekend if they had not meant what they said?

  He returned to the ballroom. Colonel Schiller and his wife had gone. Many of the candles had guttered, leaving the room in semi-darkness. He picked up his old glass. Primrose and Koenig were dancing slowly, closely entwined, to the music of a song with which he was faintly familiar.

  He tried to make sense of the information. Senior officers in the Wehrmacht would lead a coup against Hitler if they were asked to use force against their Czech neighbour. Their men would follow orders. That piece of information was certainly true; you could bet on that. The German soldier was by instinct and training loyal to his unit and commanders. There was no question that if senior officers gave orders, they would follow.

  They would need a general to lead them, of course. Who would that be? Not Keitel, for sure. Maybe Halder or Beck. But this would only happen if Britain precipitated the crisis by making a stand against Hitler. If the Führer backed down, his war strategy would be shown for what it was – bluff. Then the army would move. But what was Macrae going to do with the information?

  Koenig left the dance floor to put on a new record. A light rain was tapping on the dome roof. He looked up briefly. He did not seem to notice Macrae in the darkened room. One thing was for certain: Macrae could not tell the ambassador. The colonel was right. Henderson would take the information to Göring, and Göring would pass it straight to Hitler and the Gestapo. Stalin had just purged his entire officer class, ordering the execution of tens of thousands of entirely innocent men, on the grounds that they posed a possible threat. Hitler would not dare contemplate such barbarity, but there would be a purge all the same; arrests, show trials, executions.

  Koenig and Primrose began to dance again, this time at a slower tempo, to a long-drawn-out solo by a saxophone player whose notes floated from the gramophone and coiled around the dancers in a melodic embrace. Primrose lacked the skill and grace of Gertrude, but she danced with desire. It was evident in every step she took; in the way she held him, her fingers locked through his; in the way she rested her head on his shoulder, with her cheek against his; in the way she pressed herself against him. Koenig’s dance with his wife had been an act of remembrance, a recital of past pleasures recalled in dance, a long-married couple finding release rather than lust on the ballroom floor. With Primrose it was different, as was obvious to anyone watching from the shadows that night.

  Halliday was lounging against the wall by his office door when Macrae returned the next morning.

  “Decent weekend, was it?” he said.

  Macrae unlocked his office. There was ten minutes before the morning meeting and he needed a coffee. The secretary he shared with the others had not turned up on time. He put the kettle on to boil and reached for the jar of instant coffee below the telex machine. Halliday followed him into the room. He would want coffee too. He was known as the embassy scrounger.

  “Get any shooting in?” asked Halliday.

  “It’s not the season.” Macrae was tired, the tone abrupt. There were times when a little of Halliday went a very long way.

  “Oh, I know, but still plenty of pigeon, rabbit, hares, that sort of thing?”

  Macrae thrust a cup of coffee at him.

  “I thought you were supposed to spy on the other side.”

  “Take it easy,” said Halliday. “I just thought it might be useful to see if you are hearing what I’m hearing.”

  “Which is?” snapped Macrae.

  “Dear me, but you’re in a bad mood. We can discuss this later.”

  “No, go on.”

  “Czechoslovakia, Sudetenland, and the army is …”

  “Not happy?”

  “Exactly, but how many units at what level, do we suppose?”

  “We suppose nothing. Let’s have a drink later.”

  At lunchtime Macrae walked back from the embassy towards home. He had eaten a sandwich in the canteen and needed time to think. It was the first warm day of spring and he wanted to see if the park had finally thrown off winter. He passed by the Brandenburg Gate, dodged the traffic and crossed the road to Charlottenburger Chaussee. It was lunchtime and people were hurrying to meet friends, maybe lovers, or just heading home. The trees of the Tiergarten were breaking into leaf and a large flock of starlings darkened the sky as they swooped overhead as if to celebrate the fact.

  Ahead in the crowds a taxi stopped on the avenue. Under new traffic rules it was illegal to park anywhere near national monuments. A woman got out and the cab drove off rapidly. The woman began walking away from him, about a hundred yards ahead. She was hatless and her long dark hair fell in ringlets over a light fawn overcoat. She seemed to be looking for somewhere to sit down. She looked too glamorous for a secretary or an office worker but might be the wife of a wealthy businessman, thought Macrae. Even from behind, there was something familiar about her. He quickened his stride until he was a few paces behind. Now he was sure. The woman sat down on a bench.

  “The lady from the Adlon bar,” he said, catching up with her.

  She turned, looked startled and then smiled.

  “Hello. The businessman – import and export, wasn’t it?”

  Macrae had forgotten his clumsy subterfuge. “Er, yes … so where are you going?”

  “I am going to sit here in the sun, enjoy the warmth and eat an apple.”

  “May I join you?”

  He sat down. She dug into her bag and produced a green and red apple. Immediately, several starlings appeared and began strutting back and forth in front of the seat.

  “I think you told me a little fib when we met in the Adlon the other day,” she said, and bit into her apple.

  “What makes you think that?”

  He waited while she finished the first bite.

  “Because you’re a British diplomat, aren’t you?” she said, taking another bite.

  “Why on earth would you say that?”

  She munched the apple, swallowed, laughed. “The trilby, that suit, those shoes. You all look the same, and there aren’t many other British people in Berlin these days.”

  “And
you?”

  “I’ve told you, I am a manager of a restaurant.”

  “Perhaps we have both been fibbing.”

  She suddenly looked serious and threw the apple core on the ground. By now the starlings had been joined by several others, who fought over the core. A larger bird than the others bore it away, with the rest of the flock in noisy pursuit. She leant forward, her elbows on her knees, and began talking, head down, in a low voice, very quickly.

  “I would like a small favour. My brother is in a concentration camp. It’s Buchenwald; you may have heard of it. He’s my twin. I need to know if he is alive. That’s all. Just if he is still alive.”

  Macrae looked around, trying to see if they were being watched. Impossible to tell, given the lunchtime crowds. He shifted away.

  “There are many such people, I am afraid. I have no means of finding out. Have you tried the Red Cross?”

  “They are useless; no access. Please help me. It’s not much to ask. You’re a diplomat; you could find out.”

  “They are arresting people all the time, holding them for interrogation and then releasing them. Unless he’s done something, he’ll be all right.”

  “Not my brother. He’s my twin. We’re Jewish.” She scrabbled in her handbag, then thrust a piece of paper at him. There were tears in her eyes. “Please,” she said.

  Macrae shifted back. This was an old trick. An agent provocateur, a document passed over in a public place and a hidden camera somewhere. He didn’t know why he had followed her and joined her on the bench. It had definitely been a mistake. She had planned this meeting. He had been followed. He was being set up.

  “Put the paper away,” he said, getting to his feet.

  “Joseph. Joseph Sternschein. Buchenwald,” she said.

  He turned and walked away. He did not look back, but he knew she was watching him. It had been a mistake to talk to her. Ruth, she had said her name was. Whoever she was, she wasn’t a restaurant manager.

  8

  Bonner looked with dismay at his desk. Two fresh stacks of different-coloured folders had been placed there while he had been at what Heydrich chose to call his “planning-and-action” meeting. Heydrich loved planning, especially large-scale arrest operations. He would interest himself in every detail, questioning his subordinates about the number of trucks or cars to be used, the condition of their spare wheels, fuel consumption, back-up vehicles and so forth.

  Sometimes there would be Nacht und Nebel operations when prominent people, occasionally police officers deemed disloyal or Jewish community leaders judged guilty of nothing at all except their racial identity, would be spirited away after a late-night knock on the door, never to be seen again.

  Heydrich spent hours going over these cases before signing them off. More often, the operations were conducted in daylight, because Heydrich never ceased telling them that the violent arrest of one or two people and the physical abuse of their family, especially children, when witnessed by neighbours helped break the communal resolve to resist. To make people truly believe in us, you must first break them, he would say.

  Bonner noticed that he always looked happier after such decisions had been taken. Then he would leave in an excellent mood for fencing lessons or to take his violin to play with his own quartet. In fact, he was always in a good mood on those afternoons when he left early to play the violin. He would bring the instrument to the office, place it on a table behind his desk and open the case. If he noticed you looking at it, he would allow you to inspect it, proudly announcing that it had been made by the Italian master craftsman Giovanni Battista Guadagnini in the eighteenth century. He would hold and stroke the instrument as if he had a baby in his arms. Then he would tell you he was playing this or that concerto, usually Mozart or Beethoven, with musicians who met at his home.

  Heydrich clearly meant what he said when he demanded that his senior staff work without pause until the mission was complete. “Sleep in the office, don’t leave the building, I want those files back here in twenty-four hours,” he had said at the close of the meeting. He did not shout. He spoke quietly, unlike Himmler, who occasionally conducted the senior staff meetings and ranted and raved at them, so that his spittle flew across the table, landing in shiny droplets on the polished mahogany.

  There had been twelve people in the room and there was not a man among them who did not know that Heydrich would have them arrested if they questioned the logic or purpose of what they were told to do.

  The mission lay in those files on his desk. There were more, no doubt, waiting for his attention in the secretary’s office. Bonner picked one up. The name on the cover was “Case Green”, code name for the invasion of the Sudetenland province of Czechoslovakia in the summer. The files contained names of people who were to be arrested and organisations that were to be eliminated once the German army had crossed the border. It would do so in overwhelming force, although combat was not expected.

  The military planning for Case Green was based on the fact that there would be a spontaneous uprising in the majority German-speaking province to welcome the invading troops. And guess what, Bonner thought, who is going to organise that spontaneous uprising? We are, of course. Gestapo gold had already been paid and weapons secretly distributed to paramilitary groups in the Sudetenland.

  Further information was required about those enemies of the German Reich in the Sudetenland that had already been identified. Their homes and work addresses had to be cross-checked and added to the file, along with addresses of relatives and close friends. The lists contained the obvious targets: communists, social democrats, Jews, political priests, saboteurs, known homosexuals and general antisocial scum.

  There were many more suspects deemed possible enemies of the Reich. You didn’t have to do much to fall into the grey area of suspicion. Those who had written to newspapers condemning paramilitary violence in Czechoslovakia or who had demanded international intervention to prevent precisely what was about to happen – they were on the list. People overheard by neighbours complaining about how national radio had been subverted to broadcast Nazi propaganda – they were very high on the list.

  The SS, effectively the military arm of the Gestapo, and very much under Heydrich’s control, would move in after the military and arrest them all. There would be initial interrogations. A few, very few, who were obviously innocent of harmful intent towards the Reich would be sent home. The rest would be put on trains to concentration camps in Germany, mostly to Dachau. Rough estimates placed the number of those in the first wave of arrests at ten thousand. Dachau would be the clearing centre, Heydrich had told the morning conference. It had recently been enlarged for that very purpose. At the end of the meeting, he had looked around and asked quietly if there were any questions. There never were. Reinhard Heydrich always made his plans perfectly clear.

  Bonner drank his coffee and took a savage bite from a sandwich. This is what his life had come to: lists and files of people and places, endless reams of paper produced with lethal intent. At least he would not be involved in the laborious cross-checking of information. That was clerical work. Down below, the machinery of the Gestapo had been working on those files all morning. Teams of mostly women had been checking telephone directories, police files, local government records and witness statements for days, collating information that would pluck a person from his house, office or the street and within twenty-four hours place him, bloody and bleeding, in a sealed railway truck on the way to Dachau. Heydrich always said that women did the cross-checking much better than men. They were more patient, more thorough. That was why the Gestapo had the highest proportion of female staff in the whole government.

  Bonner’s job was more delicate and, as Heydrich had put it, suitable only for someone of his talent and experience. Heydrich knew the power of flattery and praise. He never overlooked the opportunity to thank one of his senior staff for an operation well done or for an idea that he liked. He was good on birthdays too. His secretary made sure he kn
ew when to offer a little cake and a greeting card to a senior colleague.

  Bonner’s job was to select those deemed sufficiently subversive to be spared the journey to Dachau. They would be brutally beaten for information, maybe for a day or two, and then executed, usually in the basement of the building where they had been detained. These people were a real danger, mostly communists receiving pay from Moscow and bent on subversion and even assassination. Communists were the real enemy; they always had been. Ask anyone in the army and they would just shrug when you talked of the Jews. As Bonner well knew, many Jews had risen to rank in the last war and fought well. The army did not have a problem with them. Communists were different. They deserved everything that was coming to them.

  At exactly the same time every morning, Sir Nevile Henderson walked from his residence to the embassy next door through a connecting corridor. This morning, however, he cancelled his early appointments and decided to spend the first hour of his day on a walk. It was when he did his best thinking, free from the distraction of his office and far from the household chatter around him in the residence. He was a bachelor, but there always seemed to be a relative or friend staying.

  It was May and there was no better time for a long and thoughtful stroll in the Tiergarten. The park was in its spring beauty, with buds breaking into pink and white flowers on every branch and the freshly mown grass in the picnic areas looking like an emerald-green carpet.

  He had a lot to think about. As a good Christian, he knew that doubt was an essential element of his faith. You had to doubt the existence of God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, because only by overcoming that doubt and accepting the truth of divinity could you find real belief in the god you served. And Sir Nevile Henderson believed he served his god, just as he served his country, with faith and humility.