by Wilbur Smith
‘Thank you, Herr Meerbach,’ Isidore said with the due formality of a man addressing his boss. He gave a nod of the head to Alatha. ‘Countess . . .’
‘Good morning, Isidore,’ she replied with a fond smile, since she had known him since he was a boy.
Like his father before him, Isidore had been the von Meerbach family lawyer. Before taking on that role he had fought with distinction in the First World War and been awarded the Blue Max, Germany’s highest award for gallantry. Alatha had been disgusted by the way her oldest son had treated such a loyal servant to their family and country.
For Saffron, ‘Max’ was also the code name by which she had known Isidore when they first met in pre-war Switzerland, barely twenty-four hours after her encounter with Gerhard. It was Isidore’s account of how Gerhard had helped the Solomons family escape Germany, in defiance of his brother’s will, that had made Saffron certain that she had found the right man.
‘So,’ Isidore said, ‘I have been asked to consider the current state of the Meerbach Motor Works, assess its future prospects and give my advice as to the best course for the future. But, however distressing this may be, I must begin with the man who is not here – Count Konrad von Meerbach. No one knows where he is now, or even whether he is still alive. The same is true of his second wife, Francesca, who is also known by the nickname Chessi.’
‘Yes, when we were best friends at school . . . Chessi and Saffy,’ Saffron said sadly, more to herself than the rest of the table.
Isidore glanced at her and then continued, ‘Both have disappeared. The count remains a wanted man, a pariah, regarded as a war criminal by the Allied powers and the state of Israel.’ Isidore paused for a moment and looked around the table. ‘I apologise if my description seems too harsh.’
‘On the contrary, it is no more than the truth,’ Gerhard said. ‘Please, carry on.’
‘Very well. I have been able to establish that the company’s reserves of foreign currency were removed from its bank accounts in the two weeks before the end of the war in Europe. At around the same time, a number of the most important works in the art collection here at Schloss Meerbach were cut from their frames and removed, and have not been seen since. It is possible that other members of the Motor Works board took the company’s money. Allied troops may have stolen the artworks. But the most likely explanation is that the count and countess fled the country, taking the money and canvases with them.’
‘So he’s a thief as well as everything else,’ Trudi hissed.
‘Well, the paintings were the count’s personal property, so he could not be accused of stealing them. But smuggling them out of Germany and into another country would be a serious crime. As for the company funds, the count was of course the largest single shareholder in Meerbach Motor Works, but that did not entitle him to embezzle company money. That was a criminal act, and the loss of crucial financial reserves has had a damaging impact on the company’s ability to recover in the past few years.
‘Equally significant has been the stain the count’s wartime activities has left on the name and reputation of the Meerbach Motor Works . . .’
Isidore paused. Saffron was looking at him with a hand raised slightly off the table, wanting to ask a question.
‘But, Max, surely that applies to almost every major German company,’ she said. ‘Forgive me, I don’t wish to be insensitive, but they were all caught up in the Nazi war effort, or the Final Solution, in one way or another.’
‘Yes, but our company bears the name of an SS general. And as the representative of an American corporation told me . . .’ The meeting had been conducted in German, but now Isidore switched into English. ‘“I’m real sorry, Izzy, but that sure is bad for the brand.”’
‘The American was right,’ Gerhard said. ‘That’s why I dropped the “von” from my name. I didn’t want to be connected to Konrad.’
‘I always thought the “von” was a ridiculous, arriviste affectation,’ remarked Alatha, whose own family could trace their aristocratic lineage and title back to the twelfth century. ‘The Meerbachs added it to sound smarter than they really were.’
Saffron could not help but smile, knowing how much Alatha must have relished the opportunity to skewer the pomposity of men who had caused her so much grief. But returning her attention to the matter at hand, she asked Isidore, ‘Are you suggesting that the company should change its name?’
‘My suggestions go further than that,’ he replied. ‘I am suggesting it should no longer belong to the Meerbach family at all.’
Isidore Solomons took a careful look at the faces of the other six people in the room. So far as he could tell, only Trudi von Meerbach seemed upset by what he had suggested. But she always looked infuriated, so he decided to ignore her and carry on.
‘The situation in Germany is more favourable now than at any time in the past forty years. The economy is booming, creating demand for our products, and we are also developing export markets. There is little doubt that the Meerbach Motor Works can prosper in the future as it has in the past. But from the day it was founded, this company has been led by a member of the family. So now I must ask – does anyone here want to take on that responsibility?’
Isidore was met by silence. ‘Gerhard,’ he asked, ‘may I speak to you and your family as a friend?’
‘Of course.’
‘Very well, then. I believe that the actions of the past two counts have left you all with a cursed inheritance. You will not be free to pursue happy, fulfilling lives as long as you are weighed down by this damn company – and this damn castle, for that matter.’
Gerhard thumped the table with the flat of his palm, to signal his hearty agreement.
‘I’ve always hated it.’
‘I couldn’t agree more,’ said Alatha. ‘So soul destroying!’ She glanced at her son. ‘Do you remember, darling, when your father threw us out and we went to live in my pretty villa in Grünwald? Such an improvement!’
‘Then you will not, perhaps, object to my advice,’ Isidore resumed. ‘I have been approached by a number of parties interested in purchasing various family properties, including the Motor Works, the land surrounding the factory, the castle and the estate. I am confident that we can achieve good prices. You might wish to receive some of the payment for the Motor Works in the form of shares in the purchasing company. In this way you could benefit from future growth. I would also counsel you to keep a small portion of the land in the castle estate – a few hundred metres of lake shore and a little woodland, perhaps – for your private use.’
‘How much do you think the sales would bring in?’ Gerhard asked.
‘I cannot give you an exact figure, but if we can get buyers bidding against one another, I would hope to achieve a total in excess of ten million marks.’
‘Otto used to boast that he was worth more than a hundred million,’ Alatha said, dryly. ‘And that was forty years ago.’
‘Ha!’ Gerhard exclaimed. ‘I can remember you and I, Mother, sitting at a board meeting in, I suppose, ’34 or ’35 while a company accountant said we were as wealthy as the Rothschilds and the Rockefellers.’
‘But one wouldn’t wish for that now, though, darling. It would be too much . . . grotesque.’
‘I agree,’ Gerhard said. ‘I am tempted to say we should give all the proceeds to charity. But I leave that decision to each individual.’
‘There is one problem . . .’ Isidore said. ‘Until Konrad von Meerbach is formally declared dead, he retains his majority shareholding in the company, which means that the bulk of proceeds from any sale go to him.’
‘That’s outrageous!’ Trudi exclaimed, and Saffron agreed.
‘There must be some way you could get around that, Izzy,’ Gerhard said.
‘We cannot pay him, of course, since we do not know where he is and his known bank accounts have been frozen by order of the US Treasury. And you all have a claim against Konrad for embezzling assets in which you
had an interest, so you could demand his money as compensation for your loss. But I think that the fairest solution is for Konrad’s money to be put in trust for his children until such time as there is proof that he is dead, or still alive.’
‘Then perhaps Mother, Trudi and I should take a vote, since we are the other shareholders present,’ Gerhard said. ‘The motion is simple – do we agree that Isidore should proceed with the sale of the Meerbach Motor Works, and the Schloss Meerbach? All in favour, raise your hands.’
The vote was unanimous.
‘In that case, let us adjourn for lunch.’
‘Before we do,’ Isidore said, ‘there’s one last item of business to consider, isn’t that right, Countess?’
‘Oh yes, so there is, I’d almost forgotten,’ said Alatha. ‘Excuse me one moment . . .’ She got up from the table and walked to the door, opened it and said, ‘You may come in now, gentlemen.’
She returned leading four men, who all bore the tough, craggy look of men who’d done many years of hard, manual labour, and not stinted on tobacco or alcohol during that time. They were wearing suits whose fabric, never high quality to begin with, had been made shiny in places with wear. But the suits were cleaned and pressed and the shoes beneath them shone as brightly as a guardsman’s boots.
As they reached the table and stood, shuffling nervously, Alatha said, ‘Would you like to do the honours, Herr Schinkel?’
‘Thank you, Countess,’ said the biggest of the four, a tough, almost menacing figure, who was holding a polished wooden box in hands so ingrained with oil that no amount of cleaning could ever completely remove the stain. He approached Gerhard, who rose from his chair to greet him.
The two men shook hands and then Schinkel said, ‘Me and the lads here all served in the Luftwaffe. Not pilots like you, of course. We were mechanics.’
‘You should be proud of that,’ Gerhard said. ‘We could never have left the ground, let alone come home safely, without the work you men did.’
‘Thank you, sir.’ Schinkel’s face was softened by the smile that crossed it. ‘Much appreciated.’
‘And sincerely meant, I assure you. Now, what can I do for you?’
‘Well, me and the lads, we were all proud of you. Having a famous ace like you, part of the family we’ve worked for all our lives—’
‘And our dads before us,’ another of the men said.
‘Well, it meant a lot to us.’
Gerhard’s face fell. Hearing him be accused of treason, however unjustly, must have been almost as shaming for these men as it had been for him.
‘I’m sorry if you ever felt that I let you down. I promise you that—’
‘Oh no, sir, we never felt that, not for a single second. See, we were all socialists, the proper kind, not like Adolf’s lot, National Socialists, my arse . . .’ Schinkel suddenly realised he’d let himself get carried away. Blushing like a maiden, he gulped and said, ‘Sorry, Countess, ladies.’
‘That’s quite all right, Herr Schinkel,’ said Alatha. ‘Any man who speaks well of my son can do no wrong in my eyes.’
The men all laughed. ‘Stop cursing and tell him what we’ve done,’ another of them said.
‘Yes, well, when we heard you were coming back home, after all these years, we made something for you. As a token of our appreciation, like.’
Schinkel held out the box.
‘Thank you,’ said Gerhard, opening it.
The inside of the box was lined with rich, black velvet that set off a gleaming metal flask within. Gerhard lifted the flask out of the box. It was made of two parts: the main body was matt, and as Gerhard looked at it more closely he saw it was brushed steel, but worked to a finish as perfect as any precious metal in a jeweller’s store. A second, gleaming piece of metal, which Gerhard thought must be chrome-plated, fitted like a lid across the top, with a screw-cap in the middle to let drink in and out.
Though it was small and slender enough to fit inside a jacket pocket, the flask was surprisingly heavy in his hand. He said as much to Schinkel, who nodded.
‘That’s because it’s milled from solid steel, just like one of our engine blocks. We thought it would be fitting.’ He paused and added, with a nod towards the flask, ‘We wrote something for you too.’
He turned the flask over and there were three words: Immer in Einsatz.
Gerhard smiled and showed it to Saffron.
‘“Always in action”,’ he said, in English. ‘It’s the motto of the Luftwaffe.’
‘Well, you can forget about going into any more action, darling husband of mine,’ she replied, speaking in German so the men would understand. ‘I worked far too hard to keep you alive to let you get into trouble now.’
As Gerhard gave a rueful shrug, the men all laughed. Then he said thank you once again and then, as any good officer should, took the trouble to speak for a moment to each of the men, inquiring about their families, asking them if there was anything he could do in return and making a careful mental note of their replies. Saffron, too, joined in the conversation, making sure that they knew that even though she was British, she was touched by their loyalty to her man.
Athala escorted the men from the room, assuring them that the cook had prepared a hearty lunch and that they were not to stint on the beer.
‘I have it on good authority that if you skip work this afternoon, the boss will not mind.’
Gerhard, meanwhile, had gone to speak to Isidore.
‘I hope it wasn’t too hard for you, hearing all that Luftwaffe talk.’
‘My dear boy, if it had been hard for me, I would not have let them in the room. No, I was just musing on the irony that you and I, who are by far the most decorated warriors that this household has ever seen, also share the distinction that the Nazis wanted to kill us.’
‘Very true,’ said Gerhard, ‘but listen. Those were good men, and there are thousands more like them. So whatever we do with this company, and whoever we sell it to, none of our people must end up unemployed. Do you hear me? Not one.’
*
An hour later, the family were taking coffee in a small sitting room when Saffron approached Gerhard and Isidore, who were chatting about the upcoming Olympics in Helsinki.
‘I’m sorry for breaking in,’ she said. ‘But it seems to me that there’s one important matter arising from this morning’s meeting that we really need to discuss.’
‘Go on . . .’ Isidore said, with the air of a man who knew what was coming next.
‘It’s Konrad. He’s like a ghost hanging over everything. We don’t know if he’s alive or dead. If he’s alive, we don’t know where he is, or what he’s doing, or even what he’s stolen from everyone else. We have to find out.’
‘Maybe,’ said Gerhard. ‘But do you really want to go looking for him?’ He gazed into Saffron’s eyes. ‘You have never met Konrad, but if you did, you would see at once that this is a man driven by hate, like other people are driven by desire for money, or fame, or sex. And I think that Francesca has become like him. I saw it in their eyes when they came to my trial. They wanted me to suffer. That was all that mattered to them. I don’t want you to become their enemy, too.’
‘I already am,’ said Saffron. ‘In Francesca’s eyes, I stole the man she loved from her when I fell in love with you. And my father took Konrad’s father Otto from him.’
‘If you know that these people hate you, Saffron, is that not an argument for leaving them alone?’ Isidore asked. ‘Gerhard was telling me how much you long for a peaceful life. Konrad is a very dangerous man. If we begin a serious search for him, who knows how he might react?’
‘Yes, there’s a risk,’ Saffron said. ‘But it’s one we have to take. We won’t have peace until we deal with Konrad. We should talk about that. We need to make a plan.’
‘Very well then, we will talk,’ Isidore said. ‘But not in Germany. Even now, you know, I don’t feel entirely safe. There are people here for whom nothing has changed. But I will be
back in Zurich this weekend. Perhaps then . . .?’
‘Fine,’ said Saffron. ‘Zurich it is.’
The Mau Mau had yet to strike at their colonial rulers, yet the idea of their presence somewhere out there, watching, waiting, preparing to strike, had spread fear like a viral epidemic, infecting the entire white population. People were demanding that something must be done, though no one knew quite what. The authorities could not strike back at an enemy they could not see. But as the cries for action grew stronger it was decided that a Special Constabulary would be formed.
At two o’clock one morning, with the waning moon no more than a silver sliver, Kungu Kabaya and Wilson Gitiri crouched in a drainage ditch that ran beside a dirt road. Across the way stood a small mud-brick building with a corrugated iron roof: the local police station.
Three weeks earlier, workmen had erected a second building. It was a low, squat structure made from reinforced concrete and it stood about twenty yards away from the station. Wooden posts, ten feet high, had been driven into the ground at regular intervals, forming a perimeter around the new structure. Barbed wire was strung between the posts to form a protective fence, with a double gate facing the police station, also constructed of wooden poles and barbed wire. It was secured by a heavy chain.
A convoy of trucks had come and gone. Their cargo had been unloaded. The natives who transferred a stream of heavy wooden crates from the trucks to the new building were believed to be loyal to their white masters. The contents of those cases were supposed to be secret, as was the purpose for which they were intended. But the terrifying power of the blood oaths outweighed any loyalty to the Crown, and there were precious few secrets from the Mau Mau any more.
Kabaya checked his watch. ‘Go,’ he whispered.
Gitiri raised his head above the side of the ditch, looked around to make sure no one was watching and ran across the road, bent low, before coming to a halt beside the fence. He was carrying a pair of long-handled cutters. They made short work of the barbed wire and Gitiri fashioned an opening big enough for a man, or a case filled with rifles, to get through. He turned towards the ditch and gave a quick thumbs-up.