Traitor's Gate Read online

  Dressel knelt beside Joachim and felt his chest. No movement in the lungs. Then he grabbed his wrist and frantically searched for a pulse. He glared at the guard. ‘You fool! His heart has stopped. Find a doctor!’

  Conrad waited. And waited. He imagined Joachim cowering behind some bins in an alley, the wail of the cat, the discovery. It had probably been foolish to help Joachim escape, but he had had at least to try. Now he would have to face the consequences.

  But it was Joachim who would be suffering at that very moment. For nothing more than spreading gossip. Conrad felt a flash of anger. His cousin was harmless; he wasn’t a threat to the Nazi state, he couldn’t be. But the Nazi machine of brutality and violence would grind him up like so many of its other weak and innocent citizens.

  At last he heard footsteps in the corridor, and prepared him–self for the next stage of his interrogation. It was Dressel, the red-haired officer who had arrested him, and he looked harassed. ‘Come with me,’ he said and, accompanied by two guards, led Conrad along the corridor and down some back stairs to the basement.

  Conrad shivered. It was noticeably colder down here. By this time it was late; he wasn’t sure how late because they had taken his watch. He was led along a brick corridor lined with cells from which emanated snores, muttering and groans. Dressel paused outside an open door.

  ‘Get in!’ he commanded.

  ‘You can’t lock me up,’ Conrad said. ‘I demand to see someone from the embassy. Have you even informed them that I’m here?’

  ‘In!’ he repeated, and shoved Conrad through the door. The guard slammed it behind him.

  Conrad looked around the small room. A table, a chair, a wooden bunk without blankets, a high tiny window at ground level with the world outside and a single light bulb burning from the ceiling.

  Conrad began to pace. The British Embassy was only round the corner and a couple of hundred yards up Wilhelmstrasse, but it felt as if it was on another continent. No one would even know he was there. The hotel would probably inform the police if he didn’t return in the morning. A fat lot of good that would do. Theo knew he was coming to Berlin, but it would take a few days for him to wonder why Conrad had not been in touch. Only Joachim knew where he was. Conrad shuddered. Poor Joachim.

  Some graffiti caught his eye, scratched into the wall. ‘This is a murder cellar’ and ‘Down with Hitler’. Conrad wondered where the writers of those words were now. Were they dead? Or were they in one of those mysterious concentration camps, which were the subject of so much speculation and rumour?

  As the night wore on he tried to suppress his fear. Spies in Germany were beheaded, he knew. But he wasn’t a spy. All he had to do was convince the Gestapo of it. He quit pacing, and lay down on his bunk, still dressed in the dinner jacket he had worn to the Kakadu, huddled into a ball against the cold.

  It reminded him of those nights in Spain before an offensive, lying awake on the cold ground, trying not to think of the battle the following day, of the risk of death or, worse, of being horribly maimed. He could almost smell the thyme. He had developed his own brand of optimistic fatalism back then, a belief that whatever would be would be, but that he was going to survive, whatever the odds against it. It might have been illogical, but it had worked. He couldn’t banish the fear. All his comrades were afraid: fear was good; fear sharpened the senses and quickened the legs. But some men had gone beyond fear; they were the ones with death in their eyes, and they never lived more than a few days.

  Sometime in the small hours he heard steps along the cor–ridor and the sound of someone or something being dragged. Was it Joachim? Then the voice cursed in a coarse Berlin accent. It wasn’t Joachim, but some other poor blighter. There was the sound of a blow, a cry and then a cell door clanged shut.

  Half an hour later, more footsteps, rapid this time, purposeful, coming down the corridor towards his cell. As they neared, he heard a voice he recognized. He sat up on his bed to face the door.

  It was flung open, and there, erect in the smart field-grey uniform of a lieutenant of the Wehrmacht, stood the familiar figure of Theo von Hertenberg.

  3

  ‘Thank God you’re here,’ said Conrad. He should have known that it would be Theo and not the British Embassy who would rescue him.

  ‘Be quiet!’ Theo shouted. Behind him were two uniformed guards and Dressel. ‘Follow me!’

  Conrad was taken upstairs, his black bow tie, his watch, his passport, keys and wallet returned to him. All this time Theo ignored him, but went through the paperwork of his release with Dressel, who seemed distinctly unhappy. Within a few minutes they were out on the street.

  ‘Get into my car,’ Theo ordered. A sleek silver Horch convertible was waiting on the opposite side of the street from the Gestapo HQ.

  Conrad did as he was bid, and Theo pulled away. It was only when they were a good way down Wilhelmstrasse that Theo relaxed. ‘Sorry about all that shouting,’ he said. ‘I needed to humour these Gestapo boys: they like that kind of thing. Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I am.’

  ‘Did they hurt you?’

  ‘No. They didn’t touch me. Got a cigarette?’

  Driving with one hand, Theo fumbled in the pocket of his uniform with the other for a cigarette case. Conrad took it gratefully and lit up. He hadn’t seen Theo for five years, but his friend had changed little, at least physically. He was tall and slim with delicate, high cheekbones and a rather long pointed nose; even the fine duelling scar along his jawline seemed to have been carefully crafted rather than slashed. There were small changes: his high forehead had become higher as his dark hair receded, and creases around his mouth had become lines. And of course he was wearing the uniform.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Conrad. ‘I knew I would be glad to see you in Berlin, but I had no idea how glad.’

  ‘It was lucky I was able to get there in time.’

  ‘You know they’ve got Joachim Mühlendorf as well? Couldn’t you spring him too?’

  ‘I’m afraid Mühlendorf is dead, Conrad.’

  ‘No!’ Conrad was stunned. Torture he had expected. But not death. ‘They... killed him?’ He could barely take in what he had been told. ‘I thought they might rough him up a bit, but not that. Don’t they have trials and that kind of thing in this country any more?’

  ‘He died of natural causes. A heart attack.’

  ‘You don’t believe that, do you?’

  ‘Actually, I do. They were pretty angry about it. They had just started interrogating him and hadn’t got anything out of him yet.’

  ‘The poor devil.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Conrad.’

  They drove on in silence as Conrad struggled to absorb what had happened to his cousin. After all the death he had seen in Spain he should have become inured to it, but he wasn’t. He wasn’t at all.

  Five minutes later the car pulled up on a dark road a few yards off the Tiergarten. It was dawn and the birds in the bushes and trees of the park were making a racket. Conrad checked his watch: a quarter to five.

  ‘Whisky or breakfast or both?’ Theo asked.

  ‘First whisky and then breakfast,’ said Conrad.

  ‘Come on.’ Theo led him in the side door of an imposing villa and up the stairs to his expensively furnished apartment. He poured Conrad a stiff whisky and went through to a small kitchen where he began to fry bacon and eggs.

  Conrad gulped the whisky down, the spirit burning through his body. Joachim. Poor bloody Joachim.

  The bacon sizzled. Theo, the army officer, looked faintly ridiculous wielding a frying pan.

  ‘I can’t get used to seeing you in uniform,’ Conrad said.

  ‘Don’t knock it. If I wasn’t wearing this, I wouldn’t have been able to get you out.’

  ‘But I don’t understand why you are wearing it.’

  ‘It seemed the best option,’ Theo replied. ‘I was trying to pass my law exams but it was made clear to me that that would be impossible unless I joined the Na
zi Party. That I wasn’t prepared to do. But if you’re in the army, then you’re exempted from joining the Party, so I did my training and became a reservist. And guess what? Last year they called me up. So now I am a lawyer in the War Ministry wearing a uniform.’ Theo prodded the rashers of bacon. They smelled delicious: Conrad realized he was hungry. ‘Anyway, you wore one in Spain, didn’t you?’

  Conrad snorted. ‘A uniform would be overstating it,’ he said. ‘And that was a big mistake.’

  Theo glanced at Conrad. ‘I was surprised you went. You used to believe that war was wrong whatever the cause.’

  ‘It seemed like a good idea at the time,’ said Conrad. ‘It wasn’t.’

  The uniform was so unlike Theo. It wasn’t that Theo’s background wasn’t warlike. Far from it. Theo’s family came from Pomerania, part of the old Kingdom of Prussia. Most of his ancestors had been officers in the Prussian army, from the von Hertenberg who had commanded a division under Frederick the Great at Rossbach in 1757, right down to his father who was promoted to major general after his exploits at Tannenberg in 1914. Theo himself had been a keen fencer when he was at the University of Heidelberg; he had been a member of the renowned Vandalen student corps, in which role he had sustained the duelling scar. But like so many of the other undergraduates of that time, when he arrived in Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar he consciously reacted against the values of his upbringing.

  In the early 1930s Oxford was changing: Oxford bags were out; grey flannel trousers were in. The decadence of the bright young things of the twenties was giving way to a new, serious breed of undergraduate, dismayed at the poverty and unemployment they saw all around them and determined to do something about it. Which wasn’t to say that Theo and Conrad hadn’t drunk themselves stupid on many occasions; they had just done it after meetings of the Labour Club or lectures on Indian independence. At such times Theo had a tendency to muse on the poetry of Rainer-Maria Rilke or the philosophy of Hegel, musing which impressed some but which Conrad was convinced didn’t quite make sense. But since Conrad had usually had a few drinks too, he couldn’t prove it. Any of Theo’s friends then, of whom there were a great many, would have been surprised to see him in the uniform of the Third Reich.

  ‘How did you know I had been arrested?’ Conrad asked.

  ‘I got a call from a friend in the Gestapo.’

  ‘I was afraid they would be after you. I’m sure Joachim must have told them about seeing you in the Kakadu the other night.’

  ‘It’s difficult to arrest serving army officers,’ Theo said. ‘Even for the Gestapo. Here you are.’ He handed Conrad a plate, and they both sat at the small kitchen table.

  ‘Mm,’ said Conrad as he took his first mouthful. ‘Thanks, Theo, this is wonderful.’

  ‘So Mühlendorf told you about the evening in the Kakadu? He really made a fool of himself.’

  ‘He more or less admitted that. He had a message he wanted me to pass on to you.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘Tell Hertenberg I’m sorry about the other evening. Tell him I must see him before I go back to Moscow and I have friends who can help him. He didn’t say what his friends could help you with.’

  ‘Or who they were?’

  ‘No. What did he tell you in the Kakadu?’

  ‘Oh, nothing, really. Just some wild rumours he had heard.’

  ‘About a plot to remove Hitler?’

  Theo frowned. ‘Did he tell you that?’

  ‘No, it was the Gestapo who asked me whether I knew anything about a plot.’

  Theo’s frown deepened.

  ‘Is there anything in it?’ Conrad asked.

  ‘Of course not,’ said Theo sharply. ‘There are always rumours like that, spread by people with vivid imaginations who know nothing. People like Mühlendorf. First the SS is behind the conspiracy, then it’s the army, then it’s Göring or Goebbels or even the Kaiser. There’s never anything in any of them.’

  ‘What about Johnnie von Herwarth? Who is he?’

  Theo leaned back in his chair and lit a cigarette. ‘Conrad, it’s really best if you forget all about what Mühlendorf said to you. There was nothing in it, it was just gossip, and he shouldn’t have repeated any of it. He was indiscreet; it got him killed. Sadly, that happens in this country these days.’

  ‘But why did he want to speak to you in particular?’ Conrad persisted. ‘He hardly knew you. He said something about deciding when he was in Moscow that you were the best person to talk to.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s something you should worry about,’ Theo said.

  ‘He was my cousin, Theo. And he’s dead. So I probably should worry about him.’

  ‘I’m sorry he’s dead, Conrad. But I had to vouch for you just now to the Gestapo. So, for my sake, forget all this happened. Don’t talk to anyone in this country about it, either. And certainly don’t write about it. Do you understand, Conrad? It’s important.’

  Conrad did understand. Germany was a dangerous place, even if you were a well-connected diplomat like Joachim. He had no idea what strings Theo had had to pull to get him released, and he had no desire to jeopardize Theo’s safety. ‘I imagine you had to go out on a limb for me, Theo. Thank you.’

  Theo smiled. ‘When you’ve finished that have a hot bath, and then bed.’

  Conrad felt filthy and exhausted after the night’s events. ‘I will. Thanks, Theo.’

  But even though he owed his freedom to Theo, he knew that he could not simply push what had happened to Joachim out of his mind.

  4

  ‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.’ The pastor repeated the familiar prayer in unfamiliar German words as he scattered earth on to the coffin six feet down in the frozen earth. Conrad hunched his shoulders in the stiff breeze that blew in from the Elbe, bringing with it stinging drops of rain. They were in the small, exclusive cemetery next to the small, exclusive church where Mühlendorfs had been christened, married and buried for generations.

  A miserable day for a funeral.

  Conrad closed his eyes and thought of the Joachim he had known since he was a boy. He could almost hear his cousin talking excitedly about the latest book he had read. Joachim had introduced Conrad to the adult realm of ideas with an enthusiasm and vigour that Conrad found impossible to resist. He didn’t want to resist. Shakespeare and Goethe; Kant and Locke; Keats and Schiller; Newman and Luther; Bentham and Marx; Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Balzac; Joyce, Kafka and Mann: they read them all and discussed them all. It was Joachim who had first lent Conrad the Communist Manifesto, and who ensured that when the socialist creeds swept Oxford University in 1930, Conrad was already well versed in the necessary texts.

  Without Joachim, Conrad’s life would have been different. Poorer.

  The pastor’s words stopped and Conrad opened his eyes. There were very few mourners there: a dozen members of Joachim’s family and no more than a half a dozen others, one of whom was Dressel, the Gestapo officer. The Mühlendorfs had tried to keep the ceremony a quiet family affair. They were ashamed of their son in life and even more ashamed of him in death.

  The cognac flowed freely at the gathering afterwards in the tasteful Mühlendorf mansion, which clung to the wooded slopes of the hill above Blankenese, a former fishing village on the north bank of the Elbe. The conversation, following the tension at the graveside, was light and brittle, as was the laughter. Conrad would have cut the reception if he could, but he was duty bound to represent his mother, so he decided to stay for an hour, and then he would escape to the station and the train back to Berlin.

  He felt a touch on his elbow. It was his uncle Manfred, a bulky man with a neatly trimmed, pointed beard. ‘Let’s get away from here,’ he said, and he led Conrad out into the garden.

  The rain had stopped, but the breeze was still blowing. Below them was the broad highway of the Elbe, dotted with ships big and small, old and new. Ship-owners like Manfred Mühlendorf enjoyed living here: they could watch their vessels moving back and forth to the great po
rt of Hamburg, earning good money in front of their very eyes. A dark shower cloud was scudding in from the North Sea to the west, like a giant ball, rolling up the thin bars of sunlight reflecting off the river in front of it.

  ‘You were a good friend to my son,’ Uncle Manfred said, his voice catching. ‘I always thought you were a good influence on him.’

  ‘He was my cousin. And he was a good influence on me.’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ said Conrad. ‘He was a brave man, at the end.’

  ‘Brave?’ said Uncle Manfred, puzzled.

  ‘You know I was there when he was arrested?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, he was arrested by the Gestapo because he was overheard by one of their agents gossiping about a rumour he had picked up in Moscow. There was probably nothing in it. But they arrested him anyway and tortured him and he died.’

  ‘But they said he was discovered in a well-known haunt for homosexuals with another man...’

  ‘I know what they said, but that’s not what happened. I was there. Do you believe me or do you believe them?’

  Manfred looked closely at his nephew. ‘I believe you.’

  Conrad stopped and faced his uncle. Manfred Mühlendorf was a powerful man. ‘So what are you going to do about it?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, are you going to let the state kill your son without kicking up a fuss?’

  ‘What can I do?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Conrad. ‘But I do know that you can do something. It’s only because people like you don’t do anything that these bastards can get away with it.’

  Uncle Manfred frowned, but he was listening.

  ‘You have contacts in the government, don’t you? This country has been turned into one great armaments factory. Your ships must carry some of that material.’

  ‘They do. Quite a lot of it.’

  ‘Then make a fuss, Uncle. Joachim was a brave man. He deserves it.’

  As he sat on the train from Hamburg to Berlin staring out of the window over the endless North German Plain, Conrad wondered whether Manfred Mühlendorf would do something. He hoped he would. It would only be a gesture, he wouldn’t be able to bring Joachim back to life, but a gesture would be important. Conrad had known that the Third Reich was brutal: that was why he had come to Germany, to see that brutality at first hand. Well, in that he had succeeded. But he couldn’t understand how the Germans had let this Third Reich emerge. He knew them well: they were a cultured, moral, law-abiding race. True, some of them had tendencies to militarism, but Marx and Engels were German, as were Bach and Beethoven, and Goethe and Rilke.