“Yes, yes,” Karl said, “I know that, but I can assure you it is very difficult for a young man like myself to join the Prince of Wales’s set. They are all very smart, very fast and very sure of their own importance.”
“Surely,” the Baron asked, Queen Victoria, who is still mourning her German husband, is prepared to receive you?”
“Of course!” Karl replied. “Her Majesty was extremely gracious and talked to me for a long time about her family, with whom I have a slight acquaintance. But it is not her family in whom we are interested.”
“Of course not,” the Baron agreed.” It is the Marquis who you must arrange to meet and persuade him that the one subject in which you are really interested is the development of weapons like the gun.”
“I assure you, Baron, I am doing my best,” Karl asserted, “and in this respect I do bring some news for you.”
“What news?”
“I am reliably informed that the Marquis of Midhurst is planning a visit to Berlin.”
“I do not believe it!” the Baron exclaimed.
“It is true,” Karl said, “and I thought it might be possible for you to give me a letter to him inviting him to stay with you. You can remind him that you enjoyed a brief acquaintance with his mother, and I do not think the Marquis would enjoy staying at the British Embassy, nor will he be invited to the Palace.”
“That is definitely unlikely,” the Baron said, “for the simple reason that he is a close friend of the Prince of Wales. As we all know, the tension between the Emperor and the Prince grows more pronounced year by year.”
“That is so,” Karl accepted, and there is no doubt that the Prince resents the fact that his nephew is now an ‘All-Highest’, the third Emperor of the third Empire in Europe.”
His voice rose as he spoke which made his words seem almost triumphant.
“We are all aware of that,” the Baron added quickly, “which is the reason why we must learn more about this gun. It is imperative that we produce one which is more powerful and effective than anything produced by the British.”
“What I am suggesting,” Karl said lowering his voice, “is that you, Baron, invite the Marquis to stay here with you as your guest. I have the idea, although I may be wrong, that he is coming to Berlin ostensibly for a holiday, but in reality because he is looking for Watson.”
“Do you think Watson is that important?” the Baron asked sharply.
“I am sure he is,” Karl replied, “and I should have thought by this time that, if he will not collaborate as you have asked him to do, you should go a little further.”
There was a silence before the Baron said, “I have always been against torture of prisoners. It often results in suicide, which means they are of no further use.”
“I realise that, but somehow you have to make him talk!”
“We are trying, I assure you we are trying,” the Baron stated positively.
He paused for a moment.
“I did not think he is important enough to bring the Marquis of Midhurst to Berlin.”
“Well, he is coming,” Karl said, “and I do beg you to give me a letter of invitation for him. There is a fair chance he will accept and who knows what you might find out from him – perhaps after dinner when the wine has been particularly delicious.”
There was a further silence and then the Baron said in a different tone,
“I have a better idea. I have been told that the Marquis is notable as a ladies’ man. But he is determined not to get married. In fact, living in London, you must have heard people say that nothing will persuade him to find a wife as someone in his position should do.”
“Yes, I have heard this story,” Karl agreed.
“Then I suggest that, if I can persuade him to stay here, I should make his visit particularly enjoyable by including Zivana.”
Karl made a sound of triumph.
“Baron, you are a genius!” he exclaimed.” I would never have thought of such an idea. Of course, Zivana could extract a secret, however well hidden, from the Sphinx itself.”
“That is what I have always heard,” the Baron said complacently, “and she has been brilliantly successful on every occasion when we have sought her help.”
“And she must be no less brilliant on this occasion,” Karl stressed. “I am sure that when we tell His Majesty of your scheme, he will be delighted. He is very disappointed at present because I have no news for him.”
He sighed as if he was envisioning a particularly unpleasant interview.
The Baron rose from his comfortable chair.
“I will write a letter of invitation at once,” he said.” Then I think you should be on your way to the railway station.”
Karl looked at the clock.
“You are right,” he responded.” I am very glad we have had this conversation and I definitely feel more confident now than I did earlier.”
The Baron sat down at his writing desk while he wrote quickly on his heavily engraved writing paper.
He folded the letter into an envelope and sealed it, imprinting his seal with his signet ring.
He handed the letter to Karl.
“I think the Right Honourable Marquis will find it difficult to refuse my invitation without seeming rude. In fact I am confident that he will accept. When does he plan to arrive?”
“I learned before I left England that it was to be at the beginning of next week, about the twenty-second or the twenty-third.”
“Then I will be ready to receive him,” the Baron said, “and I will of course be in touch with Zivana immediately.”
“I will return to England feeling that the sun is shining and you have set me on the first step of the stairway to Heaven,” Karl enthused. “The Ambassador, who has been almost in tears under pressure from the Emperor, will now feel renewed hope.”
He walked to the door as he spoke and the Baron followed him.
“Now what you must do, Karl,” he said as they moved into the passage,“is to be very careful –”
The door closed behind them.
Simona shuddered, feeling as if she had been holding her breath all the time they had been talking.
She slowly opened the door of the Sedan chair.
She realised that she must flee the Sanctuary immediately.
The Baron would undoubtedly return when he had said farewell to Karl at the front door.
She closed the Sedan chair behind her and ran across the room. She opened the door very carefully just in case the two men were still in sight.
The corridor was empty.
It would take them a little time to walk to the large hall where the footmen would be on duty and say goodbye.
She left the Sanctuary, quietly shutting the door behind her. Then she walked quickly into one of the other rooms which opened into the corridor.
It was one of the rooms where she had already been inspecting the pictures. But she knew that if anyone saw her here, it would be taken it granted that she was just looking around.
She crossed the room to the window looking out into the garden with unseeing eyes.
Was it really possible that what she had heard was true? She could hardly believe it herself.
The Baron, Karoline’s father, who had seemed such a pleasant kindly man, was holding an Englishman prisoner!
He was trying to force from him the secret of an English gun that was being produced with the approval of the Prince of Wales.
Karl was obviously a Secret Service agent and, unless she was mistaken, he was posted at the German Embassy in London.
What was most important was that the Marquis of Midhurst was coming here to Berlin.
They were determined to extract from an Englishman called Watson, the secret of this gun and were intending to use a woman to do so.
‘I must do something about this!’ Simona told herself.
She wished she could ask her father’s advice. There was however no time.
The Marquis of Midhurst was to arrive in
a few days.
He would fall into the trap they were setting for him by coming to stay here in the Baron’s house and it would be too late for her father to give her any advice.
‘The only thing I can do,’ Simona told herself, ‘is to warn the Marquis when he arrives.’
As she mused about it, she realised that if she did so, it was unlikely he would believe her.
‘He will think I have been reading too many novelettes,’ she thought, ‘or possess an extremely foolish imagination.’
It was a problem that seemed almost impossible to solve.
At the same time how could she allow an Englishman to walk unwarily into a trap set for him by Germans?
If they were so anxious to extract from him the secret of his gun, it was obviously too vital for England to be shared with any other nation.
She had heard her father and others talk about the animosity between the Prince of Wales and the new Kaiser of Germany.
Queen Victoria, who was the most powerful Monarch in the world, had married her daughter Vicky to the Crown Prince of Germany. The Prince of Wales had regularly visited Vicky and was very fond, so everyone said, of his brother-in-law, Fritz.
Thinking it over now, Simona remembered her mother talking about them. She had said that the Princess did not find life in Germany very congenial.
She had found that the people were disagreeably provincial in their habits, that they lacked taste and ate dinner at five o’clock.
“Yet,” her father had added, “I am always told that Her Royal Highness is extremely loyal to her adopted country and will allow nothing to be said against the Germans.”
Most English people looked forward to seeing the Princess on the throne of Germany.
But in 1887 the Crown Prince complained of soreness in his throat and his wife, Vicky became full of anxiety and foreboding.
It was then that opinion in England began to talk about the Crown Prince’s eldest son, William, who was behaving in a very hostile manner to his mother, who nevertheless adored him. Of course this news spread around the Court at Windsor.
From the Court it spread to the most important hostesses in London and from them to the public.
Simona could remember a remark her father had made at a dinner party to one of his fellow Peers,”
Bismarck has been building up the strength of Germany,” he had said, “and has been quick to spot his opportunity!”
“In what way?” his friend had enquired.
“He is weaning young William away from his parents,” Lord Belgrave replied, “and I am told he has taught the boy to regard his father as an ineffectual visionary.”
“I also have heard that story,” the Peer remarked.
“And what is more,” Lord Belgrave had continued,“he looks on his mother as a misguided Englishwoman who does not appreciate the great and glorious role that Germany is destined to play in the future.”
Simona had only been interested in this scenario when she became a friend of Karoline.
She was quite upset when the Crown Prince, having ascended to the throne of Germany, died within a hundred days.
Naturally in England a Royal death, especially when Queen Victoria was involved, caused a great deal of comment.
It was soon known that young William was behaving with intolerable callousness and lack of feeling towards his mother.
The Embassy in Berlin in fact had sent a full account of his behaviour to the Queen, who had always been fond of Prince William.
When he had been a youngster, he had paid her many visits to Osborne and Balmoral. He was brash and impetuous, but she had treated him with surprising leniency.
He was her first grandson and she never forgot that the Prince Consort had doted on him as an infant.
In the years that followed, Lord Belgrave and everyone in Court circles believed that Prince William was genuinely fond of his grandmother.
But his Uncle Bertie, aroused a strange resentment in him. It seemed unfair to William that the Prince of Wales should inherit an Empire, whose power was acknowledged from one end of the world to the other, while he was made to struggle to make people respect Germany’s growing strength and importance.
Lady Belgrave had always been sorry for Prince William. Simona had often heard her say,
“His somewhat theatrical elegance is entirely due to the fact that his left arm was deformed when his mother experienced a very difficult time bringing him into the world, and it never grew beyond a twisted stump.”
“You may believe that,” Lord Belgrave had replied, “but I personally think he would have been just the same if he had been born with two arms as straight as ramrods!”
It was not easy to make excuses for Prince William.
Only a few months after he had been crowned as the new Kaiser, he put all the conventional restraints of mourning aside. He invited himself to the Courts of Russia and Austria.
Everyone in England knew that Queen Victoria had remonstrated with him over this unseemly haste.
He merely replied that there were dangers confronting Monarchy all over the globe.
“We Emperors must stick together,” he had proclaimed proudly.
As Lord Belgrave explained when he reported to the Palace what he had heard,
“The new Kaiser is prepared to accept his grandmother, Queen Victoria, the Empress of India, in the Imperial circle of Europe, but he is determined to keep out Uncle Bertie, a mere Prince of Wales.”
Simona was thinking about these stories now and of many other incidents that had been discussed and chewed over, not only in London but in all the aristocratic houses of England.
Everyone knew that there was a battle raging between the Kaiser and the Prince of Wales over the Cowes Regatta.
The Prince, who was Commodore of the Royal Yacht Squadron, had duly elected his nephew as a member, but it was a gesture he was to regret, when the relationship between them had sunk from being bad to truly appalling.
The situation had not particularly interested Simona at the time.
She could however remember that the yacht Hohenzollern, in which the Kaiser usually arrived at Cowes, was the largest and most powerful vessel of its kind afloat. In fact it looked more like a warship than a pleasure boat.
It was certainly a contrast to the Victoria and Albert which was a pleasure yacht and English from bow to stern.
The Hohenzollern was just one example of Germany’s determination to outshine everyone else at the Regatta. The Kaiser had also brought a racing yacht with him.
It had been especially designed to beat the Prince of Wales’s Britannia which it most certainly did. Everyone in England knew that the Prince was hurt and disappointed and felt sympathetic.
Lord Belgrave and a great many other statesmen were aware that the German Empire was thrusting vigorously and politically to dominate the Continent.
There was something else even more perturbing.
Germany hated and was envious of the British Empire. Therefore she was not only determined to dominate the Continent, but was already screaming for her ‘place in the sun’ outside Europe.
All these recollections surged into Simona’s mind as she stood staring into the garden.
She knew that at this very moment she had stumbled accidentally onto something significant that would undoubtedly contribute to the animosity between her country and Germany.
The question was, what should she do about the conversation she had overheard? Of course it was something that should not have happened.
She should never have entered the Baron’s Sanctuary in the first place unless she had been invited to do so.
She should not have hidden herself in the Sedan chair.
But she had done so.
She had thereby overheard that her host and the man, who she realised was in the Kaiser’s confidence, were planning to spy on an Englishman.
They were determined to obtain from him details of a gun which eventually could be used in the defence of En
gland.
‘I shall have to tell him what is happening,’ Simona said to herself. ‘I cannot allow him be spied upon and seduced by a woman who is working for the Germans into giving away our secrets, which might prove of great value to Germany if they intend to attack other countries.’
She could not help thinking that if what she had heard was true about the hostility between the Kaiser and the Prince of Wales, the country the Germans might want to attack first could be her own.
‘I have to do something,’ she told herself.
At the same time she shrank from doing anything which would seem underhand, and could be seen as discourteous to her hosts who were entertaining her.
Most of all she hated the idea of having to admit that she had been eavesdropping or even spying on the Baron!
She had been strictly brought up as to how gentlefolk should behave.
Her Governesses, one after another, had told her, “A lady does not do this.”
“A lady does not do that.”
“A lady never tells a lie, but faces up to the truth no matter how difficult it may be.”
She could hear their voices repeating these words to her over and over again.
‘I am sure that whatever I say, no one will believe me,’ Simona whispered to herself.
But she knew that she was only making excuses because she did not want to confess that she had been eavesdropping.
“What can I do? What can I do?” she asked aloud looking at the sunshine.
Suddenly she realised for the first time, that as an Englishwoman her duty and above all her love must be for England.
It was the land of her birth.
The land she loved and its people loved her.
In the face of whatever Germany might plot against England, every English citizen must protect their own country. Just as a soldier must risk his life, so she must be prepared to risk her reputation, if it was to protect her own country.
It took her some time to work out a plan in her own mind and she knew that there was no point in continually asking herself questions or prevaricating.
Love Wins In Berlin Page 2