Our Friends in Berlin

by Anthony Quinn

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Anthony Quinn

  Dedication

  Title Page

  March 1941

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  May 1935

  13

  14

  March 1944

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  May 1948

  23

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  About the Book

  London, 1941. The city is in blackout, besieged by nightly air raids from Germany. Two strangers are about to meet. Between them they may alter the course of the war.

  While the Blitz has united the nation, there is an enemy hiding in plain sight. A group of British citizens is gathering secret information to aid Hitler’s war machine. Jack Hoste has become entangled in this treachery, but he also has a particular mission: to locate the most dangerous Nazi agent in the country.

  Hoste soon receives a promising lead. Amy Strallen, who works in a Mayfair marriage bureau, was once close to this elusive figure. Her life is a world away from the machinations of Nazi sympathisers, yet when Hoste pays a visit to Amy’s office, everything changes in a heartbeat.

  Breathtakingly tense and trip-wired with surprises, Our Friends in Berlin is inspired by true events. It is a story about deception and loyalty – and about people in love who watch each other as closely as spies.

  About the Author

  Anthony Quinn was born in Liverpool in 1964. From 1998 to 2013 he was the film critic for the Independent. He is the author of six novels: The Rescue Man, which won the 2009 Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award; Half of the Human Race; The Streets, which was shortlisted for the 2013 Walter Scott Prize; Curtain Call, which was chosen for Waterstones and Mail on Sunday Book Clubs; Freya, a Radio 2 Book Club choice, and Eureka.

  ALSO BY ANTHONY QUINN

  The Rescue Man

  Half of the Human Race

  The Streets

  Curtain Call

  Freya

  Eureka

  For Doug Taylor

  March 1941

  1

  The pub, on a cobbled street off Cheapside, would empty in the early evening as City people hurried home to beat the blackout. The upper room had a low-lit, secretive air, which he had come to realise was something the new recruits preferred, the danger notwithstanding. There was nothing like a creaky staircase and Victorian gas brackets to enhance the mood of conspiracy.

  Dressed in his ARP warden’s overalls, the tin helmet shading his brow, Hoste had passed through the work-weary crowds unnoticed. Back in civilian life he had been unremarkable too, a man of average build, five nine, with close-cropped brown hair, pale eyes, ‘no distinguishing features’. It was not uncommon for him to meet someone three or four times before they actually remembered who he was. He had learned the advantage of his anonymous looks; you could be absorbed into a crowd without the least trouble. People would squint at him, wondering when – where – if – they had met before, and shrug. They couldn’t swear to it.

  Through the pub’s window, criss-crossed with white blast tape, he saw the lights of office buildings gradually wink out. The landlord came up the stairs, muttering to himself. As he unfurled the blackout curtains to shield the windows, an air-raid siren started up its vile drone. ‘I can time it to the minute,’ the man said, with a morose half-laugh. Hoste sat there watching him, and took a swig of his pale ale. It was odd how extraordinary things became so quickly the norm. London had experienced its first raids only last September, and yet it felt like they’d been blacking up windows and hiding lights for years. They lived like moles, burrowing through the dark. Before returning downstairs the landlord dimmed the wall lamps, as if the room were being prepared for a seance.

  His guest arrived some minutes later. He was a shortish, pudgy man, perhaps fifty, sweating beneath his heavy tweed suit. Wary eyes darted behind his spectacles. He gave his shirt collar a loosening tug, pinking the flesh on his neck. Hoste inclined his head in greeting and gestured to the chair opposite his own. The man looked around the room, evidently relieved to find themselves the only occupants.

  ‘Mr Kilshaw?’ Hoste didn’t offer him his hand. ‘Jack Hoste. I believe we have business to discuss.’

  Before they got down to ‘business’, Hoste asked him for some personal information. It was standard procedure in recruitment, he explained, to run background checks; it helped him weed out cranks, fantasists, delusional types. Doing this straight away saved so much time. Kilshaw responded with a comradely chuckle. It seemed to break the ice. He was a director at an engineering works in Watford, he explained. Married, with two children. Secretary of his Rotary Club. When Hoste asked whether he had ever belonged to a political party, the man hesitated, then shook his head. ‘Will that count against me?’

  ‘On the contrary. It makes you less liable to suspicion.’

  Once the preliminaries were done, Hoste leaned back in his seat and spread his hands in invitation. ‘So. What do you have for us?’ A little twitch of excitement flashed across Kilshaw’s face. This was his moment. Living in Bushey, he began, had enabled him to keep watch on developments at the de Havilland aeroplane factory at Hatfield. He had been apprised of the latest prototype, known as the ‘Mosquito’, supposedly capable of a speed of more than 400mph. It was still at the planning stage, he gathered, but once production began it would not take long to get them operational. Hoste asked whether the prototype was being developed as a bomber, a night fighter or a photo-reconnaissance plane.

  Kilshaw shrugged: he didn’t know. Hoste said, ‘Such intelligence would be of significant use. You have access to the factory?’

  ‘No. But as an engineer I have contacts there.’ His voice dropped to an undertone. ‘Are you intending … ?’

  Hoste shook his head. ‘That’s not in our remit. My business is to build a network of loyalists. This is a long game.’

  They talked on for a while, mostly about the fifth column. Hoste assured him that, in the event of a successful invasion, those loyal to the Fatherland would be already equipped with means of identification – papers, or a discreet badge. By the end of their meeting Kilshaw evidently felt emboldened, for he now said, ‘Would there be any form of … remuneration? For the risk, I mean –’

  ‘Of course. Depending on the value of the intelligence a stipend is possible. We are more than obliged; we want to reward our agents for their work.’

  Hoste decided they should conclude there. It was important not to rush this sort of negotiation; it required stealth, a degree of nous. He knew well the danger of committing oneself too early: recruiter’s remorse. He stared over the rim of his glass at the new man and, feigning unconcern, said, ‘By the way, one more thing. Have you ever come across the name Marita Pardoe?’

  Kilshaw protruded his lip, repeated the name, and grimaced. ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘No matter,’ Hoste said briskly. They both rose and stood facing one other across the table. He saw Kilshaw tentatively lift his hand to shake on the deal. Hoste knew better than that. Straightening, he raised his forearm in a stiff salute.

  ‘Heil Hitler.’

  Kilshaw, momentarily thrown, stole a glance at the door. The risk! When he saw the coast was clear he mirrored Hoste’s salute. ‘Heil Hitler.’

  ‘Hardly got a wink last night, they was
making such a racket.’

  Hoste was seated behind a couple of women on a bus bumping along to Waterloo. They were talking about the night’s five-hour raid by the Luftwaffe.

  ‘Yeah, I know. Between that and his nibs snorin’ his ’ead off …’

  There was a long pause before her companion replied, her tone more meditative than indignant, ‘This war. I can tell you, gives me the sick.’

  The bus had halted, the road ahead a minefield of broken glass and debris. It stuttered forward again, steering around a huge crater. Hoste gazed out of the window. The city seemed to him like some creature woken from a terrible dream, stunned to find itself so bedraggled and bruised. As he stepped off the bus the morning air stung his eyes with its bitterness. Greasy coils of black smoke and brick dust drifted off the bombed buildings about him.

  Around the corner, a shift in the usual perspective stopped him in his tracks. Sometimes, when deep fatigue set in, his dreams would start up their hallucinatory dance while he was still awake. He blinked, sharply: this was no dream. One entire side of Medway House had disappeared, exposing a wall of mauve Victorian brick unseen in sixty-odd years. A fire crew were just packing up, their hoses coiled like green intestines about the pavement. Hoste was still in his ARP uniform – he had been on duty all night himself – so he ducked beneath the rope and approached. His footsteps crunched over glass. He looked up at what remained of the block’s scarred face; every window had been blown out, like eyes made sightless.

  Another ARP warden had noticed him standing there.

  ‘Direct hit. Took that side clean off. They’ve only just put it out.’

  ‘Casualties?’

  ‘Four dead. Some injuries. Most of ’em had gone to the shelter.’

  Hoste continued to stare, apparently in a daze. The man looked at him again.

  ‘You know the place?’

  After a pause he nodded. ‘I live here … I mean – lived here.’ He wasn’t looking at the man, but he caught his whistling intake of breath.

  ‘Sorry. That’s bad luck.’

  ‘Not really,’ said Hoste. ‘On another night I might have been in there.’

  He began walking towards the wide front door, which was hanging off its hinges. Behind him he heard the man mutter a warning about its being unsafe – falling masonry – but Hoste ignored him. He stepped inside the ruined shell and looked around. A chaos of plaster and wood and brick lay strewn about. Black cinders whirled down mockingly through the air, and a steady drip of water came from where the firemen had drenched it with their hoses. He clambered across the hall to check the staircase, its iron banisters twisted and buckled from the blast. How often had he tramped up and down these stairs? He looked up, and saw a gaping wound that let in the sky. His rooms had been on the sixth floor, and he tried to imagine the scorched and blackened husk of what remained. What had he lost? His clothes, of course, photographs, nothing of any great value. Some books, a few German Baedekers, which he wouldn’t be needing in the foreseeable future anyway. The furniture was the landlord’s. The rest – his files, papers, correspondence – was locked up in his office at Chancery Lane. It was the luck of the draw. Buildings like this came down overnight, every night, and people had to go and live elsewhere. He wondered if it said something about him that he wouldn’t miss it much.

  Back outside he took another long look. They were unlikely to let it stand, such was the damage. He could feel the brick dust at the back of his throat, and he spat. As he walked away he remembered, on his bedroom wall, a little watercolour of the Bay of Naples. His mother had painted it when she was on her honeymoon. He hadn’t really looked at it for years. But it occurred to him now it was something he’d have liked to save.

  It was only when Hoste was heading back across Waterloo Bridge that he realised it was a Saturday. There would be no use in calling at the Section. His chequebook was at the office, but his keys had been in his rooms and the banks were closed. He stopped to think. Was there anyone in London he might apply to? The problem in his line of work was that you didn’t tend to make many friends. It hadn’t bothered him before – it didn’t bother him now – but he did feel in need of a wash and brush-up.

  He remembered then that Traherne lived in St James’s, not far from here. It was just the sort of place he would live, now he thought of it. He checked in his pocket for coins and stopped at a telephone box on the Strand, but he couldn’t reach the operator. The lines were down; the raids had probably hit the exchange. He would have to take a chance. Bone-weary, he caught a bus trundling west on the Strand.

  ‘My dear man,’ cried Traherne, rearing back at the sight of him. ‘You look like you’ve been dragged halfway round the park.’ Hoste began to explain what had actually happened, but was cut short. ‘Come in, come in!’

  Traherne, in his dressing gown and pyjamas, presented a boyish figure. His fine, caramel-coloured hair was tousled from bed. He led his guest through a panelled hallway and up a flight of stairs, chuntering away. ‘Bombed out, eh? I did hear the place getting fairly knocked about.’

  As he pushed open the door to his flat he turned suddenly to Hoste. ‘How did you know to come here, by the way?’

  ‘Oh, I recall you once told me you lived on Jermyn Street, so I walked up and down looking for your name on a doorbell. There it was.’

  Traherne looked at him slyly. ‘Trust you to chivvy a fellow out! Here, sit down, I’ll make us some tea.’

  While he was gone Hoste took in his surroundings – the marble fireplace and its fender, art deco mirrors, glinting drinks trolley, old master prints on the walls, the soft patterned carpet underfoot. Hoste had not encountered taste in such casual abundance. He supposed there must be family money to go with his education (Christ Church) and his spell with the Guards. Traherne was in his early thirties, a shrewd, raffish, clubbable sort of man who belonged so comfortably to the world of ‘influence’ that no one seemed able to resent him for it. Hoste still regarded the younger man as his patron; they had become friendly with one another, if not actual friends. All the same, he could never have imagined himself pitching up on the man’s doorstep like this to beg for help.

  ‘Here, drink this,’ said Traherne, pouring his visitor some tea. ‘I’ll run you a bath. I dare say you’ll need some fresh kit?’

  Hoste gave a grimacing smile, and plucked at his sleeve. ‘This uniform is all I have left.’ And it reeks of dirt and smoke, he thought.

  Traherne looked wonderingly at him for a moment, and laughed. ‘Well, that – and your sangfroid. Must say, I’ve never seen a fellow so nonchalant after losing all his worldlies … We should put you on a poster promoting the “Blitz spirit”.’

  Ten minutes later Hoste was submerged in a steaming tub. He wasn’t sure how Traherne had finessed such luxury – this wasn’t the usual couple of lukewarm inches of bathwater – but he had no intention of objecting. The bachelor ease was evident, too, in the bottles of cologne, the Floris soap, the badger-hair brush and cut-throat razor. ‘Help yourself,’ he’d said, and Hoste did so, giving himself what his barber in Holborn would call ‘a right old shave’.

  ‘I’ve dug out a few things for you,’ Traherne said as he emerged from the bathroom. ‘Lucky we’re about the same size.’

  ‘This is awfully good of you,’ said Hoste, following him into the bedroom. On the bed, laid out with military regimentation, was underwear, socks, twill trousers, a shirt and collar and tie, even a pair of conker-coloured brogues.

  ‘They might be a squeeze,’ Traherne said doubtfully. ‘I have improbably dainty feet.’

  The shoes pinched a little, but Hoste was too grateful to pass them up. Once he was dressed Traherne pulled open his wardrobe, revealing a long queue of coats and jackets, of a quality Hoste could tell at a glance was far beyond his means.

  ‘Not the velvet smoking jacket, I think,’ Traherne said, pushing it down the rail with a snigger. ‘Here, this might suit. Relic of Oxford – done stout work for me!’

  It
was a jacket of dark green tweed, nicely tailored with leather buttons and a neat ticket pocket on the right. A scent of hair oil and warm afternoons rose from it. Hoste put it on, and Traherne took an admiring step back.

  ‘My word, you do cut a dash.’

  They returned to the living room and had another pot of tea. It felt strange to be sitting there in another man’s clothes, like an actor in rehearsal. Since they knew little of one another personally the talk soon turned to work. Traherne was eager to know how the latest recruitment had gone.

  ‘Promising, I should say. Engineer, lives near Watford. Reckons he can get out blueprints of the Mosquito – from the de Havilland factory.’

  Traherne squinted in surprise. ‘D’you believe him?’

  Hoste nodded. ‘He seemed too nervous to be making it up.’

  There was a pause before Traherne spoke again. ‘How soon can you complete your report on him?’

  Hoste made a brief calculation. The only key to his office had been lost in the inferno of his flat, so a locksmith would have to be found. ‘Tuesday lunchtime.’

  ‘Good. I think we should move quickly on this one. Will you send it directly to me?’

  They were preparing their goodbyes at the threshold of the flat when Hoste remembered something else.

  ‘He hadn’t heard of Marita, of course.’

  ‘As a matter of fact there’s news on that front. We have a lead.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘All in good time. Castle will send you the memo. First you must go home and get some –’ He caught himself, and slapped his hand to his forehead. ‘Beg your pardon, my dear fellow, I wasn’t thinking. Where will you go?’

  ‘Oh, a hotel, for the moment.’ He cut a glance at his colleague. ‘I’m sorry to ask this, after all you’ve done, but I’m rather – short –’

  ‘Of course! – I should have thought.’ He dashed back down the hallway, returning moments later. ‘There’s five pounds and some change. Will that be – ?’

  ‘It’s plenty. Thank you. I’ll get it back to you on Monday –’