“I said no such thing!”
“But ’tis true,” Nuala continued.
“When my mother asks me where he is, I say that he’s probably in some monastery somewhere, praying.”
We all laughed.
“Well, it’s a joke, but Des likes to pray. There’s a lot of piety in the book, like he says he’s praying for me because he thinks Chicago is more dangerous than Asmara.”
“Were you after telling him about this nice boy you’ve been dating in Chicago?”
“I did. I thought I should. He says he knows him, met him at a couple of parties and he’s totally cool.”
“He didn’t bat an eye?”
“Not that I noticed.”
It was not all quite that easy, I thought. But Des had fair warning.
“Did Des seek you out?” Nuala asked cautiously.
“He sure did. Girls were all over him and he slipped away like he was a ghost. I thought they were disgusting. Scrawny, crazy little guy with a fake smile. Then one day in the Student Union he was behind me in the cafeteria line and he said something stupid like he thought I ought to talk more in Father O’Donovan’s class because I had plenty to say and he was tired of carrying the conversational load. And I said that I thought he could carry a conversation in an empty room. Then that afternoon I got into an argument with Father about whether it was all right to imagine God as a woman. Back then the Jebs were a little uneasy about that. I won the argument.”
“Of course!” me wife said brightly.
“Dessy congratulated me after class and I brushed him off. Then I began to notice that he’d turn up next to me in the Union pretty often and say something stupid and I’d laugh at him.”
“Then didn’t he take you out to supper one night at the best restaurant in Milwaukee, if they have one?”
“Me wife is fey,” I explained.
“You don’t have to be fey to know something like that,” Nuala said with a sniff.
“He didn’t put any moves on me,” Siobhan explained,
“never did. Yet he really did like me and I liked him.”
I had finished my crab cakes and Nuala, skillful from much practice, deftly slipped her second cake over to my platter.
“And his parents liked you?”
“They would have liked any woman who didn’t have tattoos and pierced lips.”
“Where does this sister of his fit into the picture?”
“She’s the quiet, thoughtful type, the very opposite of Dizzy Dessy. She adores him but doesn’t fight her parents about it, just sort of stands on the sidelines and silently cheers him on. She’s as smart as he is. I talk to her on the phone once in a while and tell her that he’ll be back as crazy as ever.”
“She’s a senior?” I asked.
“She is and she’s not doing the Peace Corps. She’s doing Teach America instead. Wants to go to New Orleans.”
“Won’t her parents love that!”
“They’re not bad people, Nuala, just very conservative. They must have been desperate to ask for your help.”
“Aren’t they now, poor dear folks.”
We drove her back to her home in south Oak Park and then returned to Sheffield Avenue. Despite frequent calls to our house, Nuala was impatient to return and see if anyone had misbehaved.
I drove the car and Nuala and Siobhan sat behind me, talking about Ireland. Me wife deigned to join me in the front seat on the way home.
“A very nice young woman,” I said as we steered onto the Congress Expressway (as we Democrats call it).
“They were in love, Dermot. They just wouldn’t admit it to one another.”
“’Tis true.”
“Do you think she should have pushed a little harder?”
“Like I pushed you?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Go long with you, Dermot Michael Coyne, you were thinking that. And I didn’t have to be fey either to know what you were thinking … Anyway it wouldn’t have done any good and himself an illusive leprechaun fella.”
“But not mean, like the real ones.”
“No not mean at all … I want to cry for the two of them.”
“It won’t help them.”
“It will help me.”
“She’ll be a wonderful wife and mother and a great psychologist,” I said.
“And what will he be?”
“He may regret all his life what he lost.”
“You don’t say he will regret it.”
“I don’t know, Dermot Michael, I just don’t know.”
The childer’s behavior had been exemplary, Ethne reported.
Ethne was technically our nanny, though in fact she was a substitute for the little sister whom Nuala never had. She was in the final phases of her doctoral work in educational psychology at DePaul University and was “practically engaged,” to Brendan our sometime dog runner and now an affluent artist
“Brendan was here tonight.”
“Why am I not surprised at all, at all?” Nuala asked.
“He says he wants to marry me.”
“’Tis about time, isn’t it now?”
“’Tis.”
They both sighed loudly.
“And what did you say to him, Ethne?” I asked.
“I wanted to tell him that I needed a couple of months to think it over.”
“It would have been good enough for him …”
“It would have.”
“But that’s not what you said?”
“I just said yes.”
“And he seemed surprised altogether?”
“He did. I told him that he would have to ask you, Dermot, and my parents dead and buried!”
“Me! I’m too young!”
They both laughed at me.
12
“You understand, Timothy,” the Minister for External Affairs whispered in his usual soft voice, “that Ireland is neutral in this foolish war.”
“I do, sir.”
“But we certainly don’t want that madman to win, do we?”
“No, sir.”
“And this a Catholic country!”
“Yes, sir.”
“So we must be absolutely and totally neutral, right?”
“Absolutely, sir.”
“But neutral on England’s side, eh?”
“Naturally.”
“Your da isn’t going to take command of his regiment again, is he?”
“Only if England gives us back the six counties.”
“That’ll be the day … So we won’t let the Brits use our treaty ports, which will drive Winston crazy.”
“Perfectly fair.”
“We will tell our people that the state does not approve of them volunteering to serve on either side in the war. We will not, however, be able to prevent our citizens from crossing the Irish Sea to seek employment of whatever kind, will we?”
“That would violate their rights, sir.”
“And we’ll intern all military personnel, sailors, airmen, spies whom we apprehend within our borders.”
“We’ll have no choice, sir.”
“It may just happen that the English we intern may slip away on us into Northern Ireland. That isn’t our fault, is it now?”
“Neutrality, Irish style.”
He looked at me intently and sighed.
“You’ll send your signals to us in our usual code?”
“I will, sir.”
“It’s not our fault that the Brits might intercept them.”
“They’ll need someone who has the tongue.”
“You’ll be sending them in the official language of our nation?”
“Naturally, sir.”
“Aye, then the Brits will need someone to translate, won’t they?”
“Yes, sir.”
He sighed again.
“I would imagine that they’ll be able to find the odd Irish speaker somewhere on the island.”
“It would not be impossible.”
“Well, the long fella will be pleased to read them in our traditional language, won’t he?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’ll be running some risk.”
“The most they’d do is deport me. Neutral embassies are important in the game the way it is played now. Both sides need them to do their behind-the-scenes negotiations.”
“I think you have the right of it, Timothy, but be careful, just the same.”
“I will, sir.”
I would then be a cautious but attentive spy for the British Empire in Berlin. This assignment did not surprise me. Quite the contrary, I took it for granted. I was surprised that the minister had made it so explicit and even more that he did not make me promise to treat his observations as a deep secret. He might indeed have believed that such a warning was quite unnecessary.
I spent the weekend with my parents, who doubtless figured out the double role I was to play. They promised prayers and bid me Godspeed.
The war had turned into a rout for the Führer’s enemies—Poland, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, and now France. just as Claus had predicted, Guderian had crashed through the impenetrable Ardennes and driven to Boulogne, thus cutting the Allied armies in two and surrounding the British Expeditionary Force around the port of Dunkirk. The Allies expected that the Germans would follow the same route to Paris as they had in 1914—through Belgium and the Netherlands. They were utterly unprepared for the Blitz through the Ardennes. Paris fell in twelve days and France was effectively knocked out of the war. The Brits managed to evacuate most of their army by using an armada of small boats along with their regular navy units. France formally surrendered on June 22 at Compiègne, where the 1918 armistice was signed, indeed in the very same railroad car. The Germans occupied the northern half of the country. Marshal Pétain, the hero of Verdun, took over the government in the south, which became a German puppet regime. Everyone in France assumed that England would be next, that Hitler would launch a Blitzkrieg across the Channel against a battered English army, which would soon collapse. Many in England wanted to negotiate a peace, including a majority of the inner cabinet in Winston’s government. He gave his famous speech about fighting on the beaches and promised that England would never surrender. He is supposed to have added after the microphone was turned off, “And we’ll have to fight them with sticks because we don’t have any guns.”
But they did have the Royal Navy up in Scapa Flow in Scotland, secure from the Luftwaffe which couldn’t fly that far, and from subs which rarely were able to break through the nets that protected the big ships. If Hitler were about to launch his barges into the Channel, the Navy would appear and blow them out of the water. Many ships might fall prey to German planes and submarines, but the Wehrmacht would suffer horrendous losses.
I bet the Old Fella that the invasion would never happen. Later, much later, I would collect the thousand pounds we had wagered.
Thus I arrived in Berlin the day of the Compiègne surrender. I was exhausted after a long and circuitous flight from Dublin to Lisbon to Madrid to Berne and then a train ride through celebrating cities till I reached Berlin, where the streets were filled with delirious Germans. Versailles had been avenged. The war was over, this time a quick and easy war. Peace had returned. The Führer had triumphed. The choice now was either England or Russia.
I unloaded my baggage at the musty three-story building on the Friedrichstrasse, which had served as both the embassy and the Residence. I phoned the couple who were my staff, a butler/driver and a cook/housekeeper. They sounded like they had just come in from the celebration.
Much of the German government arrayed itself along the streets running parallel to the east end of the big park called the Tiergarten in the center of Berlin and around the bend in the Speyer River north of the park. The embassies clustered in this area, the most impressive on the wide parkway called the Unter Den Linden or at the edge of the park on what was once the Ebertstrasse but now was the Hermann Goering Strasse. The Den Linden ended at the famous Brandenburger Tor. The Tiergarten was the old royal hunting ground and the Den Linden, originally the path the kings’ road to the hunting ground.
The next street in from the Tiergarten was Wilhelmstrasse on which stood most of the government buildings, including the Old Chancellery and the New Chancellery with a bunker for the Führer in the basement. The narrow and gloomy Friedrichstrasse was a block east of the Wilhelmstrasse. The headquarters of the SS and the Gestapo was on the Albertstrasse, one of the cross streets between the Friedrichstrasse and the Wilhelmstrasse. I was therefore close to the headquarters of all the leading Nazis—the Führer in the Chancellery, Goering in the Air Ministry and Himmler in the Albertstrasse—too close for comfort I often thought as my time in Berlin went on.
Fortunately for me, this section of Berlin—the mitte or middle—was the cultural center, from the Den Linden down to the Potsdamer Platz. Both the U-Bahn and S-Bahn came into the station north of my house on Friedrichstrasse and there was another station on the Potsdamer Platz. The latter was one of the main shopping districts and the other, the Kufürstendamm, was on the west side of the Tiergarten, a couple of stops away on the U-Bahn.
A few streets farther east of Friedrichstrasse one encountered massive German culture—museums, galleries, churches, libraries, concert halls, and the campus of Humboldt University. Truth to be told, there wasn’t much work to do, as Irish ambassador to Berlin. The embassy was open three hours of the day, two in the morning, one in the late afternoon. Our offices were on the ground floor, several bedrooms on the first floor, and our communications room on the second floor with the coders, decoders, and other secret means of communications, should the people of Ireland need to hear from me. I would listen to the radio, read the papers, attend the diplomatic functions and, disguised by my youth and my smile, talk to people in the beer gardens, wine gardens, and coffeehouses of my intensely active neighborhood.
And I would spend my free time finishing my book on the relationship between Germany and England. The trouble, I would argue, began when Germany decided it had to have a navy to be equal to the Royal Navy. Blasphemy!
I would also on occasion walk by the Air Ministry in case I might encounter Annalise.
I would not know what to say to her if I did.
Yet she was always just a stone’s throw away.
After I had done the preliminary work of unpacking I walked over to the Foreign Ministry and presented my papers to a clerk who didn’t seem to know exactly where Ireland was. However, he stamped them and told me that I would be informed when I would be summoned to present my credentials to the glorious Führer.
“Heil Hitler!” he shouted, throwing his arm into the air.
I nodded politely, a response I would offer on every occasion during my term in Germany.
“You do not salute our glorious Führer?” he said, glaring at me.
“My leader,” I said very gently, “is in Dublin, not here.”
“Heil Hitler!” had a certain alliterative appeal. “Up the Long Fella!” would cause one to be laughed out of every pub in Dublin. “Up Dev!” on the other hand would lead to a fight with the followers of the Big Fella—Michael Collins, poor dear man as the Galway woman would say.
It took me several days to unpack and organize. Herr and Frau Winter were efficient and respectful. My predecessor had assured me that they were good Catholics who did not like the Nazis. I had resolved to assume they were spies and told them that I would double their salary.
My family had a bank in Berne from which I could routinely withdraw Reichmarks without any trouble—or anyone noticing. Thus I had available much larger resources than my predecessor, happy in the thought that it was English money I was spending and that there was a lot more of that where it had come from.
We hoisted the tricolour on the flagpole in front of the building, put up the sign which identified us as the embassy of Eire (Ireland) and hooked up the aerials on the roof, which enabled me to pick up the news
from Radio Ireland and the BBC and send my dispatches to Dublin. I also hooked up the encoder which would transmit my dispatches to the Ministry. Magda Winter pressed my morning suit and my evening clothes so that I was ready for formal appearances. Franz Winter serviced the Benz touring car, filled it with petrol at the station where diplomats were able to obtain it, cleaned the cover which was supposed to protect us from rain, and affixed the flags on the front of the car—the tricolour and the foreign office flag which, alas, had a Swastika in the center. Later we were ordered to paint the Swastika on the right-hand side and the tricolour on the left. There was now a highly visible Irish presence in Berlin.
I was ready to go.
I sent my first dispatch to Dublin, reporting the general jubilation in Berlin and the assumption that the war would soon be over. I observed that judging by the propaganda on the radio, the German people were demanding an invasion of England. I asked Dublin to confirm reception, which they did promptly.
Franz called the tennis club where the embassy had a membership and informed them that I would present myself the next morning for a match and a swim.
Ja, ja, all was in order.
My opponent was Herr Hauptman Claus Graf von Stauffenberg.
The attendant introduced us formally.
Claus winked and bowed.
“Ja, Herr Ambassador.”
“Ja, Herr Hauptman.”
I beat him easily. “Tomorrow afternoon,” he whispered, “a café just down the street from the Adlon Hotel, on the right-hand side of the street as you face the Brandenburger Tor.”
“Ja, ja, Herr Hauptman!”
“There are too many ears in this place.”
“Ja, ja.”
The Adlon, on the Pariser Platz, was the social center for the diplomatic corps, as fine a hostelry as one could find anywhere in Europe. I avoided it because I didn’t want to seem to be wasting the money of the people of Ireland, though in fact it was my father’s money, taken from his trust fund for me.
The 1932 Benz, however, in which Franz would drive me everywhere, even a block away, when I was on official business, belonged to the people of Ireland.
The morning after my arrival I called at the Foreign Ministry to try once again to pay my compliments to Reichsminister Joachim von Ribbentrop, the architect of the Hitler-Stalin nonaggression pact which sealed the fate of Poland and divided that poor country once again.
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