The Age of Treachery

by Gavin Scott

  “We were all part of the Nazi regime, in whatever capacity we worked, if we were not in the resistance,” said Schopen.

  Suddenly Forrester was gripped by a seething impatience. Here was a good man, behaving as he thought was right – and in doing so denying him the help he needed. He wanted to shake him, to shout at him, to make him answer, and he felt in his bones how power corrupts. Instead he said, “I understand what you say, Professor. It makes perfect sense. May I tell you why I want information about this man? I may have given you the impression it’s for official reasons. But it’s not.”

  And he proceeded to tell Schopen the whole story, almost as if he was speaking to some sort of father confessor. When he had finished Schopen shook his head, smiling to himself.

  “We are in the midst of great historical forces,” he said, “and yet it is our own dramas which dominate our lives. Age merely shows what children we remain. We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.” Forrester held himself in check, waited.

  “The truth is,” said Schopen, “that in the midst of all the carnage I was outraged at Dorfmann’s advance within the university, and consoled myself by saying it must be because of his Nazi connections – for which pettiness I despised myself. Now he is the coming man, and again I despise myself for resenting his success. And you want to know if my suspicions of him during the era of the Third Reich were correct, so that you can save your friend. The truth is I don’t know; I looked the other way, as we all did, and immersed myself in the past. It seems petty to bring it up now.”

  Again, Forrester wanted to argue with him, to convince him to give way to denounce his enemy. But he knew his only means of getting at the truth was to let this man reach that decision himself.

  “Thinking is easy, acting is difficult,” said Schopen, “and to put one’s thoughts into action is the most difficult thing in the world. The truth is I saw Peter Dorfmann with certain people who seemed to me to be people of importance in the government. I formed the impression he was valued by them, cosseted by them, but that was only an impression, and no basis on which to denounce him.”

  “Can you give me any names?” asked Forrester.

  Schopen shook his head. “As I say, I looked the other way,” he said. “Perhaps I should not have done so, but I did.” He smiled sadly at Forrester. “Believe me,” he said, “I would tell you more if I knew more, but I do not.”

  Forrester believed him, and ground his teeth. Here was the tantalising scrap, the hint that something about Dorfmann was not what it seemed – and it looked as if, thanks to this man’s determination not to give way to envy, a tantalising scrap was all it would remain. Schopen saw the disappointment in Forrester’s face. “I’m sorry,” he said. “This must be very frustrating for you.”

  “Yes,” said Forrester, simply – and then a woman came up to them and spoke softly to the old academic.

  “A Goethe evening?” he asked her, surprised.

  “Yes,” said the woman. “The invitation comes from Colonel Tulpanov.”

  “Then I had better respond,” said the old man. To Forrester he said, “Our Russian occupiers place a great deal of emphasis on culture. I think they are trying to make us forget their behaviour when they first arrived.” Behind him, Forrester felt the girl stiffen. He had heard something of what the Soviet troops had done when they reached the city. But as he looked at her, something clicked in his mind.

  “Is this lady your secretary?” he asked.

  Schopen smiled. “Frau Kruger looks after all of us professors in the Literature Department,” he said. “Without her we would be like so many lost children.”

  “Were you secretary to the department during the war, Frau Kruger?” Forrester asked, but she shook her head.

  “I was working at Siemens during the war,” she said, “making radio equipment.”

  Forrester turned back to Schopen.

  “Do you know who Dorfmann’s secretary was?” he said. “Is she still here?”

  A shadow crossed Schopen’s face.

  “No,” he said. “Greta has left academic life.”

  Almost automatically, Forrester glanced at Frau Kruger for corroboration, but she avoided his eyes; however a few minutes later, as he was getting back into the jeep, she came running after him.

  “If you go to the Blue Cat Club around nine or ten, Greta Rilke will be there. She knows what happened.” And before Forrester could ask anything further, she had vanished into the crowds of students, each carrying his or her piece of cardboard, each searching for the wisdom that had eluded their nation for a generation.

  17

  THE BLUE CAT

  Forrester spent the rest of the day at the Control Commission and visiting the headquarters of the other political parties to see what else he could discover about Dorfmann’s activities, but came away with precious little: as far as the records revealed, he’d simply been an ordinary academic who’d been lucky enough to keep his head down and survive.

  In the early evening he returned to the villa on Fasanenstraße and fell sound asleep. At 8.00 p.m. Flint came in and woke him as instructed, and they set off through the ruins to find the Blue Cat Club.

  They heard the band first, clear in the frozen air, and Forrester was reminded of Noël Coward’s remark about the extraordinary potency of cheap music, especially when heard at a distance. Here, as it echoed down the wrecked street, it seemed to mock the devastation. The two men walked down cellar steps slick with melted snow, the walls dripping with moisture, but as the door at the bottom opened, a blast of warmth rushed up to envelop them.

  The cellar was packed solid with servicemen of all nations – French, Brits, Russians and Americans; the air was solid with cigarette smoke and down here the noise of chatter almost drowned out the music. Waiters carrying trays loaded with beers hurried through the room as customers yelled out their orders; there seemed to be a woman at every table, sometimes several, their carefully hoarded make-up doing its best to hide faces pinched by hunger.

  Flint went off to join a group of other drivers in the far corner and Forrester found himself a seat at a table being vacated by an American airman, who was leaving with a sloe-eyed blonde. As he ordered a beer from a passing waiter he heard a voice he recognised at the table behind him.

  “I can give you a hundred and twenty yards of copper wiring,” boomed the speaker, “in return for ten rolls of newsprint.” Forrester glanced around: it was the dark-haired captain from the villa on Fasanenstraße. The other man at the table said something in reply, and the captain said, “Alright, seventy yards for seven rolls. Done?” There was the sound of wine behind poured into a glass.

  When the waiter came back with his beer Forrester asked him if he knew a woman called Greta Rilke. “You’re listening to her,” said the waiter, and Forrester swung around to look at the singer.

  She was a slight brunette, with a face that reminded Forrester of a monkey. At first it was off-putting, but as she sang he was reminded of the French phrase “jolie laide”. There was a hint of savagery in that face, a hint of the primitive that held its own erotic charge. Her silvery dress hugged her thin figure, clinging tightly to her small breasts. She sang in German, English and Russian about love, betrayal, loss and longing. Her voice was low and husky, seemingly too deep for that fragile body. By the time her set was over Forrester had almost forgotten why he was there.

  There was applause for her act, but not wild applause; she was soon replaced by a big-bosomed blonde who to the crowd’s delight shook her ample body and ladled innuendo over every phrase. As Forrester was about to leave his table to find Greta, she sat down beside him, smiling at his surprise.

  “The waiter,” she said. “He will expect a good tip.” And as if in confirmation the man brought an ice bucket with wine and two glasses, winking as he did so. As Forrester poured out the wine, he introduced himself, explaining his mission and his meeting with Professor Schopen. Greta smiled sadly.

  “How I wish I was with h
im now,” she said.

  “Why did you leave?” asked Forrester.

  She looked him in the eyes. “The university couldn’t afford to pay me, I could not afford to eat, and they offered me a job here. Then the Russians came. You know what happened then.”

  Forrester did know. As Russian troops pursued the retreating German Army across Eastern Europe, there had been an almost systematic campaign of mass rape, often gang rape, if possible carried out in front of the husbands, fathers or children of the victims. It was part of the Soviet revenge for the horrors the Germans had inflicted on them in their years of victory. It had reached its climax when Berlin fell, when an estimated hundred thousand women were violated. Of these, several thousand had committed suicide. Whole families sometimes hanged themselves after a daughter was raped.

  Knowing what would befall them if they were seen by the Russians, women had hidden in attics, cupboards, laundry baskets, coal cellars; they appeared on the streets only when the Soviet troops were sleeping off their previous night’s drunkenness, and they stopped going to work.

  “I hid too, of course,” said Greta, “but they found the daughters of the woman in the apartment below. She thought it would save them if she betrayed me, and they dragged me out of my hiding place. There were six of them, and I knew at least one of them was a killer. The others would use me; afterwards that soldier would kill me – I could see it in his eyes. So I threw myself out of the window.”

  Forrester blinked. He could see the scene all too clearly. Greta smiled grimly. “The rubble saved me,” she said. “The fallen bricks came halfway up the wall of the house. I slid down to the bottom as the first soldier came after me, and then he stopped and saluted.” She let Forrester puzzle on that for a moment. “It was an officer, a captain. He had only slowed down because his car had to manoeuvre through the rubble. He glanced at me and saw something – I don’t know what, it was certainly not my beauty – but he motioned me to get into the car. And that was all there was to it. He took me to the house he had requisitioned and I became his.” She saw the expression on Forrester’s face. “Many women here in Berlin have done the same,” she said. “Better to belong to one of the invaders than be at the mercy of them all.”

  “And you’re still with him?” asked Forrester, and when she nodded went on, “He doesn’t mind you singing here?”

  “He likes it,” said Greta. “He likes to show me off, to say he has a famous singer as his mistress. I’m not a famous singer, of course, but that’s what he tells his friends.” She gave him a sharp glance. “He’ll be here in an hour,” she said. “Tell me what you want to know.”

  Forrester explained his mission, and watched a wary expression come into Greta’s eyes. “I know nothing definite against Peter Dorfmann,” she said, “but I think the reason he was favoured over Professor Schopen was that he was close to the Nazis.”

  “And you know that because…”

  “They used to collect him from the university. Several times I saw a big car arrive and he would go off in it.” She saw his scepticism and added, “The kind of car only the top Nazis used.”

  “Did you see anyone in the car?”

  “Only the driver. They were taking him somewhere, but he was not afraid. He always came back. This I saw several times.”

  Forrester contemplated this information – it was tantalising.

  “And there was nothing to suggest what he was going to do, where he was going?”

  “Nothing. Except the Viking book.”

  Forrester felt an almost visceral jolt. “What Viking book?”

  “I don’t know what Viking book, but it was his big secret. I came across it one day when I was bringing him a message. It was open on his desk and I looked at it. He was very angry when he found me.”

  “Tell me more about this book. What did it look like? Was it a printed book, or a manuscript?”

  “A manuscript, the kind that monks used to write. There were pictures of men in ships in it, dragons and such. The letters at the beginning of each sentence covered in leaves, and little heads and things. He had been tracing one of the drawings.”

  “Tracing?”

  “There was tracing paper in the book. He snatched it away when he saw me looking at it. After that I only saw it when he was carrying it to that car.”

  “And this big car was the only link with the Nazis? That you can be sure of?” said Forrester. “Did you ever see him outside the context of the university, for example? A party rally, a government meeting, something like that?”

  “The Press Club Ball, maybe you have heard of it, early in the war, before such things were stopped.” She smiled, reminiscing. “It was held at the Funkturm, very glamorous; all the film stars were there, and the professors in their best evening dress, and army officers in their dress uniforms, and diplomats with gold embroidery.”

  “And party big-wigs,” prompted Forrester.

  “That was the only time I actually saw him with them,” said Greta. “Or one of them, anyway.”

  “His name?” asked Forrester.

  “Walter Schellenberg,” said Greta.

  Forrester blinked. “The intelligence man?”

  “I don’t know,” said Greta. “He was in the uniform of the SS. A Standartenführer, I think. There was an admiral with them too.”

  “Not Canaris?”

  Greta shrugged. “It could have been,” she said. “I did not recognise him, but Walter Schellenberg was handsome and not easy to forget.”

  “And Dorfmann was clearly familiar with them both?”

  “So it seemed to me,” said Greta. “So I was not surprised when he was promoted. You see—” she broke off, as a Russian officer appeared behind Forrester.

  “Darling,” said Greta, and stood up to embrace him. He was quite young, his blond hair shaved close to his scalp. Greta made the introductions; his name was Captain Sergei Bolkonsky and he worked for a man named Tulpanov, who was the Russian Commissar for Culture in Berlin. Forrester remembered the invitation to the Goethe evening Professor Schopen had received from Tulpanov during their meeting. He had seen pictures of the Russian, a man with a brutal reputation who was competing furiously with the British and the Americans to make the Germans think well of the Russians, despite their atrocities, by keeping them entertained with opera, film and drama.

  Forrester made to leave, but Bolkonsky insisted he share a bottle with them, and quizzed him about Oxford. Despite the fact that Greta was, in effect, his concubine, he seemed inordinately proud of her, waxing lyrical about her talent as a singer, her knowledge and sophistication. Even the fact that she had been talking to Forrester did not appear to concern him; he was just proud of the fact she could hold her own in a conversation with such a distinguished man as he took Forrester to be. Gradually Forrester realised the young man was quite out of his depth here; he’d grown up on a collective farm and couldn’t quite believe he was in the almost mythical city of Berlin as one of the victors.

  When Greta performed her second set he watched with wide-eyed admiration, and confided to Forrester that he found it hard to believe a woman like Greta had consented to be his mistress. “She has taught me so much,” he said. Later he insisted they both accompany him to an artists’ club called the Seagull the next day, which his boss, Tulpanov, had set up to provide important German artists with perks they could not get elsewhere.

  “Some bad things were done when we first arrived,” he said, “but Colonel Tulpanov believes that if the significant people can be persuaded the Soviet Union is their friend, those things will be forgotten. Already, do you know, we have begun opera again, at both the national and the city theatre?”

  Forrester tried to look impressed, but the idea of these starved, desperate, degraded people who had tortured Europe for six years performing Mozart and Rossini amidst the ruins seemed grotesque.

  As they walked through the rubble-filled streets, shadowy figures slipped past, pushing prams laden with absurd items – ornate cl
ocks, huge gilt mirrors and aspidistras in brass pots – which they were prepared to barter in return for anything they could eat. Gaunt women hovered in wrecked doorways, offering themselves for a pack of cigarettes. A tram lurched past, sending out a shower of blue sparks, and then stopped in the middle of the road as the power gave out.

  It was one in the morning before Forrester finally got back to Fasanenstraße, and the minute he lay on the bed he immediately fell into a deep sleep.

  18

  THE BOUNCING CZECH

  Forrester awoke with a headache and a sense of being overcrowded with possibilities. He followed the smell of bacon and sausages down to a room full of officers tucking into plates brimming with beans, egg and fried bread all liberally garnished with tomato ketchup, took out a notebook, swallowed a mugful of tea strong enough to stand a spoon up in, and wrote down, almost at random, everything he’d heard about Dorfmann since he’d arrived in Berlin.

  Then he went through the list and circled several of the words. Among those highlighted were “Viking book” and “Schellenberg”. As he was doing this a voice said, “You don’t happen to know where I could get hold of twenty typewriters, do you?” and he turned to see the dark-haired officer whose conversations he kept overhearing all over Berlin. This time he introduced himself. “Captain Robert Maxwell,” he said. “They’ve put me in charge of one of the newspapers here, and I’m trying to get it up and running. I’ve got the coal for heating, I’ve got the electricity for the presses, I’ve got the paper and I’ve got the ink. But the bloody reporters are having to write their copy in long-hand.” Forrester stared at him. Suddenly he realised why the man seemed familiar.

  “We’ve met,” he said. “Back in England.” A shadow passed over Maxwell’s face.

  “Sorry, old man,” he said. “Can’t recall.”

  “But you had a different name,” said Forrester, trying to bring it back. Then it came to him: the man had been called Private Ivan du Maurier, and he’d been part of a labour battalion digging latrines at one of the country houses where Forrester had been on a training course. His name had stuck in Forrester’s mind because it sounded so upper crust, and the young private had announced it with a thick Czech accent – and indeed looked like a Czech peasant.