The Diplomat's Wife

by Ridpath, Michael

  ‘I am.’

  ‘But when we set off, I never really thought either us would be in danger of losing our lives. I expected a hint of excitement perhaps, echoes of a dangerous past, but not men with guns killing people.

  ‘And I thought the story I was telling you was ancient history. I was happy to tell you secrets; I thought in doing that I was keeping the past alive. I didn’t want to take those secrets to the grave. But now I think I must. They are too dangerous.’

  ‘Why do you think they’re so dangerous?’ Phil asked.

  ‘I really don’t know,’ said Emma. She smiled wryly. ‘Of course, the answer must lie in the secrets themselves, and I have just said I am not willing now to divulge those. But I truly don’t understand why someone wanted to kill me. Or kill Kurt.’

  Phil did. He was pretty sure it must have something to do with Swann’s mole. Emma’s words implied that she didn’t know about the mole. In which case, shouldn’t he tell her? For her own safety.

  But could he trust her?

  Instinctively, he knew that he could trust her not to deceive him in a way that would do him harm. But she had her own agenda, an agenda she wasn’t willing to share with him. If he told her about Swann and his desire to find Lothar, he had no idea what her response would be, what she would do. Swann had suggested she would put herself in danger. Phil could believe it.

  Very well, she had her agenda and he had his. He was unwilling to betray his country. More than that, if there really was a mole in the heart of the British establishment, and Phil could help reveal his identity, he would do so.

  ‘Philip? You’ve gone quiet.’

  ‘Yes, I have,’ said Phil. ‘I was thinking about what you were saying.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And I understand it, I think. Or as much of it as you’re willing to tell me.’

  ‘Good,’ said Emma. ‘So when we get to Berlin, you should leave me. Take a flight back to England.’

  ‘I can’t abandon you, Grams! It’s not safe!’

  ‘It isn’t safe, Phil. That’s the whole point. I can choose to put myself in danger. It doesn’t matter much; I haven’t long to live anyway.’

  ‘I do wish you’d stop saying that!’

  ‘I do wish you’d let me say it!’

  That brought Phil up short. He was beginning to understand his grandmother. She was coming to terms with her death – and her life. His job was to help her do that.

  He nodded, lowering his eyes. ‘OK. I’m sorry. You can talk about your death as much as you like with me. I get that. You should just understand that I’ll be sorry to see you go.’ Phil could feel moisture seeping into his right eyelid. He blinked quickly, and was relieved not to feel a tear run down his cheek. Get a grip!

  ‘I know you will, darling,’ said Emma with one of her warmest smiles. ‘I know you will.’ She took a deep breath. ‘But there’s absolutely no point me telling you all this stuff if you go and get yourself killed right away, is there?’

  ‘No, Grams.’

  ‘Good. That’s settled, then.’

  But Phil wasn’t entirely sure it was settled.

  After dinner, going up the stairs to their rooms, Emma stumbled and fell backwards. Phil was right behind her and caught her. Emma glanced at her grandson with gratitude and also a hint of fear, fear of the thing growing within her brain.

  No. It wasn’t settled.

  * * *

  It was a long drive to West Berlin the following day. They passed within a few kilometres of Braunschweig on the way to the East German border at Helmstedt. Phil wondered whether Heike was back home yet, but he didn’t suggest stopping to find out. Maybe on the return journey, if Emma didn’t succeed in putting him on a plane back to London.

  An autobahn corridor led 170 kilometres from Helmstedt through East Germany to West Berlin. At the border, the West German police and then the East Germans checked all the drivers. The two control points were large complexes, capable of processing the thousands of vehicles that made the trip each day. Phil had made sure the TR6’s tank was full of petrol, but that was the least of his worries.

  What if the East German authorities realized that Emma had killed one of their agents in Annecy – or if not one of theirs, then an agent of one of their allies? Might they not arrest Emma and him? Why hadn’t he thought of this before?

  He glanced across at his grandmother’s tense face. She had thought of it.

  He needed to keep his wits about him in this last day or two he was with her if he wasn’t to make a mistake or to fail to catch her making one.

  He considered refusing to go ahead. They were several cars back in the queue. She would understand. But she would continue regardless, drive the car herself into whatever trouble was waiting for her.

  He took a deep breath. He would stick with her.

  The West German police waved them through with a cursory glance at their papers, which showed at least that Interpol wasn’t on to them yet. The young East German border guard studied Emma’s passport carefully.

  ‘Any guns or ammunition?’ he asked Phil in German.

  ‘No,’ Phil said, very glad that Emma no longer had that stupid revolver in her bag. The border guard looked as if he was quite capable of taking the car apart. But instead, he asked them to wait, and disappeared through a door, clutching both their passports.

  Phil resisted the temptation to exchange glances with Emma. He thought he was doing a better job of looking casual than he had at the crossing into Switzerland, but his heart was pounding.

  The young guard returned, handed their passports back to Phil, freshly stamped with transit visas, and told him to drive on.

  Phil waited a minute until turning to his grandmother. He meant to chastise her for not anticipating the risk that they would be arrested at the border, but when he caught her eye, they both burst out laughing.

  * * *

  There was no trouble at the checkpoint into West Berlin at the other end of the corridor.

  Emma navigated Phil through the suburbs of Berlin with the aid of a map she had brought with her from England, as, unlike Paris, the layout of the city had changed in unpredictable ways since before the war. It had been obliterated by the combined efforts of the RAF and the Red Army. Totally destroyed, and then rebuilt.

  He found driving in Berlin much easier than driving in Paris had been. He didn’t know whether it was because the drivers were stereotypically more disciplined, or whether he was just getting used to it. Emma guided them to the Kurfürstendamm, the glitzy shopping street in the heart of the western city.

  ‘Let’s try here.’

  It was the Hotel Bristol, a grand hotel with a modern, curved facade of white stone on the corner of the Kurfürstendamm and Fasanenstrasse, a bright café with a red awning on its first floor facing the main shopping street. Yes, they had rooms for Lady Meeke and her grandson, and the TR6 was once again whisked away by a white-gloved lackey.

  ‘The Bristol used to be on Unter den Linden when I was last here,’ Emma said as they waited for the reception clerk to summon a porter. ‘Or at least its ancestor was. Unter den Linden is now in East Berlin.’

  ‘I know,’ said Phil.

  ‘Your Hitch-Hiker’s Guide told you?’

  ‘It did,’ said Phil proudly.

  ‘Bet it didn’t mention the Bristol.’

  ‘No. But there’s a good youth hostel in Bayernallee we can try if this doesn’t work out. It’s expensive though. Fifteen marks a night.’

  ‘That is expensive,’ said Emma. ‘I think we’ll have to slum it here.’

  Phil dreaded to think how much his room cost at the Bristol. Probably half his entire holiday budget.

  At breakfast the next morning, they discussed plans for the day. Emma wanted to go to the British Airways office to book Phil’s flight.

  ‘I tell you what, Grams,’ Phil said. ‘Before we do that, can you show me around Berlin a bit? Like you did in Paris. And tell me what you can about your time here.�
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  Emma was about to protest when Phil stopped her. ‘I know there are things you can’t tell me. But I’d like to hear what you have to say; I want to hear more of the story.’

  There may not be another chance for you to tell me, Phil wanted to say, but didn’t. Emma heard the thought, though.

  ‘Yes, Philip,’ she said. ‘I’d like that.’

  They picked up a taxi from the hotel and passed along the road that ran beside the Tiergarten, a large wild park in the centre of the city.

  ‘Roland and I had a flat just down there,’ said Emma, pointing to a construction site. ‘It’s all changed now, of course. But it was a good spot. Handy for the park.’

  They got out of the taxi and walked into the park, under the scornful marble eye of a gentleman whose narrow beard was slung beneath his thrusting chin, rather like a necklace. He sat high up on a marble plinth, his clothes and a sheaf of marble paper flowing about him.

  ‘Richard Wagner,’ said Emma. ‘Very popular back before the war.’

  ‘I bet.’

  Emma seemed to know her way now, and led Phil along a bewildering network of paths until they arrived at a small garden surrounded by a thick hedge. Roses predominated, but carefully ordered beds of bright flowers, whose names Emma no doubt knew, rivalled them for the attention of the bees, tirelessly toiling at knee height.

  ‘There used to be a giant statue in the middle of this garden,’ Emma said. ‘An empress in a long dress and a big hat watching over the nannies who used to take their charges here. And me taking your mother, who was nearly two at the time. Otherwise, it hasn’t changed much.’

  They sat on a bench, letting the sun caress their faces.

  ‘This was where Lothar told me to go for my first meet in Berlin.’

  Thirty-Five

  November 1938, Berlin

  * * *

  Roland was posted to the Berlin embassy in October 1938, as first secretary. The embassy had had a tough time, working flat out in the weeks culminating in the Munich agreement that September, when the British and the French had allowed the Germans to take the German-speaking part of Czechoslovakia in return for a guarantee of peace. Not our finest hour, and something Roland and many of his fellow diplomats were furious about.

  But not the ambassador, Nevile Henderson. He wasn’t just pro-appeasement, he was pro-German, which was why he had been sent to Berlin in the first place. But right after Munich, he was diagnosed with cancer and sent back to London for treatment. Which was lucky, because Roland couldn’t stand the man. Personally, he was fine – charming, considerate, even honest in his own way – but professionally he was a disaster.

  My last meeting with Lothar had been in Paris, that September. Lothar had just been recalled to Moscow, and I had learned Roland and I were moving to Berlin. Lothar had hastily come up with a plan for me to establish contact with a new handler in Berlin. I was supposed to turn up at the Rose Garden every Wednesday at 3.30 p.m., and I had the usual idiotic phrases to remember, something about the weather being colder this year than last.

  And it was. Colder, I mean. Nobody met me the first two weeks, so Caroline and I had to hang about in the October damp for an hour, waiting. I brought Caroline along as an alibi, on the theory that a young mother looks much less suspicious than a single woman hanging about alone on a miserable October afternoon.

  Lots of suspicious things went on in the Tiergarten before the war. In the 1920s and early thirties it was the place for prostitutes and drug dealers to meet their clients and do their business. By the time Roland and I arrived in Berlin that had all stopped, to be replaced by a different kind of furtive behaviour.

  Everyone in Berlin assumed that nowhere indoors was safe from prying ears, either electronic or human, so the Tiergarten became the natural place for diplomats to meet. And not just diplomats: German government ministers and soldiers could be seen walking or riding together, deep in mysterious conversation. So why not spies like me?

  I persevered. My third attempt was in early November.

  I was sitting on a bench, trying to keep Caroline entertained, when I heard a familiar voice.

  ‘Hi there.’

  I looked up. ‘Kay? Kay! I wasn’t expecting you here.’

  She grinned. I don’t know whether it was my nervousness at meeting the new Lothar, or the general underlying anxiety permeating Berlin at that time, but it felt very good to see a familiar face. I stood up and hugged her. Then I introduced her to Caroline.

  ‘Shouldn’t we be discussing last year’s weather?’ I said.

  ‘Consider it discussed. And thank you for showing up. This must be the fourth week you’ve been here?’

  ‘Third.’

  ‘Well, I’ve just moved here from Paris. Arrived last Friday. And I’ve been promoted! It’s now my job to look after you.’ I had continued to meet Lothar at Kay’s flat in the Marais for the last two years. Sometimes Kay and I would meet briefly there, or at readings at Shakespeare and Company, but it was always Lothar I reported everything to.

  ‘That’s marvellous,’ I said.

  ‘Sure is. Since I’m American, it’s easier for me to operate here than for some of the others. I’m planning on enrolling at the Friedrich Wilhelm University on a language course. And it’s Kay Macdonald now.’

  ‘Scottish?’

  ‘Still American. But it sounds a whole lot less Jewish than Lesser. According to my new passport I was born in 1905 in San Francisco and my father was a pastor – also not very Jewish. San Francisco is a fine place to be born in, by the way. All the birth records were destroyed in the 1906 earthquake, so the FBI can’t check on me.’

  ‘Well, Miss Macdonald, it’s a pleasure to meet you. How’s Lothar?’

  Kay became more subdued. ‘He’s back in Moscow. He has been reassigned to a different department.’

  ‘Still in the Comintern?’

  ‘I have no idea. They don’t tell me that kind of thing.’

  ‘Kay?’ I said. ‘Is the Comintern really so separate from the Russian secret service?’

  ‘Sure,’ Kay said. ‘It’s entirely separate. I mean, obviously we are based in Moscow and we get help and funds from the Soviet Union, but we are working for international communism, not just for Russia, I can promise you that.’

  I wasn’t convinced, but I didn’t argue. At that point, Russia was the only communist state in the world, and given the recent spinelessness shown by the British and the French at Munich, the only country that could be relied upon to stand up against the Fascists in Germany, Spain and Italy.

  ‘What kind of stuff do you want from me?’ I asked her.

  ‘The same you gave Lothar in Paris,’ said Kay. ‘Seems it goes down very well with Moscow. Especially the information from your husband. They tell me the low-down you gave Lothar about the Munich negotiations was dynamite.’

  I was pleased to hear it. Relations between Roland and me had settled down over the previous couple of years. We never argued; I was unfailingly polite to him. We now shared a bedroom, although we slept in separate beds. The apartment in Berlin only had two bedrooms, and it seemed right that Caroline should have one of her own. But I never let him touch me. Although I smiled, laughed with him even, I knew he could feel my disgust. Yet he seemed to understand it. Respect it.

  We did have long conversations, though. Many of them were about politics and the international situation, all good information for Lothar. But, truthfully, I enjoyed those conversations for their own sake; Roland enjoyed them too. I even found myself looking forward to his return to the flat after a day at the embassy.

  At that point the Foreign Office was split. On the one hand were those who wanted to take a tougher line on Germany, like Roland but also Vansittart, recently demoted from the post of permanent undersecretary at the Foreign Office, and Ogilvie-Forbes, the new chargé d’affaires in Berlin who was standing in for Nevile Henderson. On the other stood those who believed appeasing Hitler was the only way to preserve peace, like He
nderson, and the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, and Roland’s bête noire, Horace Wilson, the Prime Minister’s right-hand man. The appeasers were gaining the upper hand, but it wasn’t always clear-cut. Although the new Foreign Minister, Lord Halifax, had supported the Munich agreement, he had done so reluctantly, and Roland thought he could be persuaded to take a harder line against the Nazis.

  Some British diplomats had made their feelings clear in a typically obscure manner. Their dress, which in Paris some had thought quintessentially English but others just ridiculous, comprised black homburg hat, starched white collar, striped sponge-bag trousers and a furled umbrella. After Munich and Chamberlain’s famous brandishing of his umbrella in celebration of peace with Hitler, many diplomats no longer carried theirs as a sign of protest. Even when it threatened to rain. Roland was one of these brave souls.

  It was all terribly complicated, and Roland enjoyed working it through in his mind with me.

  I enjoyed it too, for two reasons.

  Firstly, I knew Roland treated my intellect seriously, and he increasingly valued my opinion.

  Secondly, I passed it all on to Lothar. I still hated my husband for what he had done to me. Revenge, especially revenge in a good cause, which I believed this was, still tasted sweet. And it made living with him bearable.

  I did hate him, didn’t I? Sometimes I wondered. Sometimes, when we were at home at the apartment in the Rue de Bourgogne or at our new place in Berlin and he was telling me about some particularly ludicrous episode between the ambassador and his wife, or the Nazi popinjays with whom he now had to deal, I found myself smiling and meaning it. And when he complimented me on my suggestions for how he should deal with the appeasers in the Foreign Office I would occasionally feel a warm glow of pleasure run through me.

  No. Of course I hated him. After what he had done to me, how could I not?

  ‘More of that please,’ said Kay. ‘Also, they’ve asked for any information you can get on British attempts to undermine Russia – in particular, to support a coup against Stalin.’