by Otto de Kat
Henderson pointed to Oscar’s shoes.
“Just as well the boss has gone off to the mountains, Oscar.” Sweden’s neutrality was not to be compromised, least of all by a man’s footwear. “That colour would have had him putting on his sunglasses and turning the lights down – good grief.”
“I knew he’d be away, Björn, or I’d have worn my funeral shoes.” Which would have suited his mood rather better, he thought to himself.
Henderson and he were on good terms, they were the same age, and both had a stubborn streak to their character. Not for them the likes of ambassadorial or high office. Oscar harboured no resentment about this, the very idea of such a post was distasteful to him – having to attend tedious dinner parties and useless formal audiences in a straitjacket of directives and unattainable proposals, what could be worse? Still, there were several astute, upstanding men among the diplomats of his acquaintance.
Wherever he went, Oscar found ways of circumventing the Foreign Ministry’s rules. Or of breaking them, laughing them off. He was not supposed to consort with ambassadors and ministers more than was strictly necessary, but for reasons unknown, objections had never been raised to his presence among them, nor for that matter to his lower, or at any rate unclear, status. He had more or less conquered his own position, no-one knew quite how or when, but at a certain moment it was a fact. He was a diplomatic freewheeler, dispatched on far-flung assignments that were considered too delicate or challenging for ordinary civil servants. A diplomat with a special mission, an attaché, someone in possession of a laissez-passer. He knew everybody, but very few people knew him. His card said: Dr. O.M. Verschuur, Foreign Affairs, Kingdom of the Netherlands. That was all. Oscar Martinus Verschuur had earned his doctorate, summa cum laude, with a thesis on the Anglo-Zulu War in South Africa, paying particular attention to the battles of Isandlwana and Rorke’s Drift on 22 January, 1879. Unusual subject matter, brilliant analysis as well as presentation. A touch eccentric, a touch unconventional in the context of contemporary historical studies. He had done field research, seeking out the elderly survivors of the battle to hear their descriptions first-hand, and the resulting work, written in English, had the makings of a full-blown novel. His argument was that the defeat at Isandlwana marked the beginning of the end of the British Empire. “Here they come, as thick as grass and as black as thunder,” a British soldier had cried. It was a warning quoted by Verschuur during the public defence of his thesis, in response to which the audience froze. Kate had been watching him from the front row, her expression grave and tense.
Now he saw them all around him: German armies, as thick as grass and as black as thunder. Black and tightly packed, more than ever girded up for the inferno, waiting for Zero Hour.
“Operation Barbarossa, Papa, June 22nd, they’re going to invade Russia, Carl saw the order,” Emma had hissed at him, her face tight with shock and distress. “They’re going to invade Russia, Carl says it’s definite!”
Carl Regendorf, his son-in-law, was employed at the Foreign Ministry in Berlin, the only place where some elements of resistance against Hitler and Ribbentrop lingered.
Oscar had been with the Dutch legation in Berlin for a spell during the Thirties. Kate and he lived in Fasanenstrasse. The happiest years of their marriage, in the midst of a rising tide of violence and betrayal. Emma had met Carl at a dinner party at their house. Oscar had seen it all unfold that evening. Kate had been very concerned, but Emma and Carl were living life to the full, in perfect harmony. In the tumult of Berlin.
*
It was five days since Emma and Carl unexpectedly found themselves in Geneva: a tour of duty with Carl’s boss, Adam Trott. A special mission, during which Emma was permitted to accompany her husband as his secretary, a ploy they had used successfully before. Emma had telephoned her father from the hotel, and Oscar had taken the first train from Berne to meet them. They had been discreet, he thought, but was that true? Switzerland was rife with German spies, more so than any other country. It was in the restaurant, when Carl absented himself from the table for a moment, that she told him. Barbarossa. So that’s what they called it, the barbarians.
They had fallen silent when Carl reappeared, after which Emma made some remark about her mother. But her words kept pounding in his brain.
The train back to Berne took him past Nyon, Rolle, Morges, Lausanne. He noted the names of the stations, each one a small paradise, and was struck by the baffling ordinariness of everyday life as seen from his carriage window. Riding on a Swiss train often reminded him of being ill in bed as a child, listening to the reassuring street noises – the rag-and-bone man’s cry, the refuse collector ringing his bell – and feeling soothed and snug. Not today, though. On this train, passing through innocent stations along the lake, with hayfields creeping up the mountainsides and sailing boats on the mirror of water, Emma’s whispered message weighed like a stone on his heart. The content defied the imagination, while the fact that he knew became ever more terrifying. The long-expected attack on Russia was finally to be launched. And he knew the date and the hour.
Operation Barbarossa, a code name for murder, obviously, even as it was a childish appeal to old myths and legendary heroes. Super-kitsch, if it weren’t for the deadly intent. Emma had been incapable of keeping the news to herself. She had blurted it out to her father, who she was sure would know what to do. The fear in her tone had been unmistakable, as well as the urgent, unvoiced appeal for action.
At the station of Lausanne he had got off, feeling choked by the stuffiness of his compartment, and even more by the turmoil in his mind. He had no appointments in Berne that evening, so there was plenty of time for a stroll by the lake. Trees and bushes were heavy with blossom on this late afternoon of May 28, in the second year of the war. The boulevard was agreeably alive with strolling couples, cyclists, sailors, tourists. Oscar wandered off in the direction of the music he could hear in the distance. It came from the terrace of Hôtel Beau Rivage, where a small orchestra was playing English tunes – emphatically English, he thought. A few tables were still vacant. He sat down, ordered a glass of Dôle, and waited. Spring on the shore of Lake Geneva. As though time stretched out into forever.
He watched the gulls flying in wide arcs over the water. Where on earth did all those birds come from? They belonged by the sea, surely. He remembered standing at the window as a boy and throwing out crusts of bread for the gulls to catch, which they did with ease, somersaulting through the air, watching him with their orange beady eyes.
And so Oscar sat, wrapped up in his thoughts, at a neatly laid table not far from the band: violinists in dinner jackets, pianist in evening dress, trombone player in red. Uniforms of peace, clownish outfits of neutrality. He picked up a newspaper left behind on a nearby table. Die Nation, extra edition. “BISMARCK SUNK” was the headline splashed across the entire front page, with further down, in much smaller font: “Crete All But Lost”. News from the front: filed by a reporter, typeset by a compositor, delivered by a paperboy, only to be discarded on a white tablecloth beside an empty wine glass on a summer’s evening. Texts such as these circled the globe, and were read without their portent being properly understood by anyone. A banner of blank letters, bloodless, hollow: Bismarck destroyed, Crete all but lost. Oscar read the paper; he knew what it said, but felt nothing. Everything going on simultaneously, all the things happening around him, it was all too much to grasp. Man’s imperviousness to what was going on outside his field of vision was extraordinary. He traced a pattern of lines on the tablecloth with his fork, stared at the newspaper, laid the fork down, signalled a waiter and asked for the menu.
“This morning shortly after daybreak, the Bismarck, virtually immobilised, without support, was attacked by British battleships that pursued her,” Churchill was quoted as announcing to the House of Commons. “And I have just received news that the Bismarck has sunk.” Applause. Hear, hear. Shortly after daybreak, Oscar mused. The bleak morning sky over a stormy sea. And then sin
king, sinking to the bottom fast. Ears and eyes aflame, throats parched in terror and rage. How did such a calamity proceed, he wondered. The newspaper provided no answer, all was rumour and speculation. There were reports of hand-to-hand fighting in Crete, meaning the fixed bayonet, pistol in hand, grenade-packed belt, possibly even a knife between the teeth. Fighting and falling. Blown to bits, mown down, lost and destroyed. Headlines for polite discussion over a lakeside dinner. Shortly after dusk. Music.
Despondency crept up on him as he realised yet again how relentlessly things took their course, how simultaneously and obscurely, and how the significance kept eluding him of so many contradictory events taking place just a stone’s throw away. Nevertheless, he appeared unmoved as he pored over Die Nation, the only Swiss newspaper to persist in its anti-Nazi stance. On the whole the press took a back seat, leaning a little this way, then that. Shilly-shallying. Nothing new about human misery, sir, we have to put our foot down, we’re being inundated by refugees and it can’t go on; watch out, folks, let’s not rub our bad-tempered neighbour the wrong way; careful now, steady on. The hirelings of the press were forever glancing over their shoulders, unless holed up in their bunkers of shrewd impartiality. The journalists of Die Nation were the exception. Oscar had great respect for the editor, whom he had met in Berne. A driven man, who despised most of his fellow Swiss. He had visited the border crossings, had seen Jews being turned away without mercy. Anyone having witnessed that would never again rest easy, he had said. Murder at one remove: Death in a Swiss customs officer’s cap. His newspaper stood alone in daring to attack the government. Oscar did not always see eye to eye with the editor, although he too was critical of Swiss politics on various counts. In spite of the border restrictions, however, people still managed to get into the country. Oscar knew this; he worked closely with the people who smuggled them in, he knew the routes, the dangers, and the courage of certain Swiss men and women. On many a moonless night he had stood waiting for a small group to come over from France. Often in vain. Waiting was hardly a heroic activity, but each time just a few of them made it over the border it felt like a major victory.
His ruminations came to an abrupt halt. Something had stirred in the periphery of his vision. Then he recognised him. It was the way the man was lighting his cigarette, his head bent low as though scanning the ground at his feet. The same gesture had struck him at the restaurant in Geneva, during his lunch with Emma and Carl. He had been unaware of the man with the newspaper until that curious ducking of the head to light a cigarette. And so here he was again, on the far side of the terrace, engrossed in a magazine, a man like any other taking a rest after a stroll.
Oscar was unperturbed. Being followed was a frequent occurrence, he was used to it. At first he had found it intimidating and irksome, but in due course he was able to tell quite quickly whether or not someone was watching him. In Geneva, though, he was taken by surprise, engrossed as he was in the anticipation of seeing Emma and Carl again. He had promised himself he would provide Kate with a detailed description of how they looked, what they said, and how they were managing in Berlin. But as things stood, a letter was probably not an option. Oscar glanced at the shadow-man and considered actually beckoning him. Often an effective way of making the person back off in confusion. Could the word “Barbarossa” have been overheard? There had not been many people in the restaurant, and the sneak had been sitting at the next table. But no, Emma had spoken softly and rapidly, or rather, she had whispered. Whispering was suspicious, obviously, even if the man had been out of earshot. It would merit a brief report: O.V. with daughter in G. Whispered exchange in absence of C.B. Followed to L. then lost contact. 28.5.41. He would shake the man off, no trouble at all. He was trained in vanishing. This time he would fall back on the tried and trusted method of putting his hat and empty briefcase on the table, asking the waiter for the men’s room, going into the hotel, settling his bill there, and then making his exit by the back door. The Beau Rivage hotel had several back doors, so making a getaway without being spotted was not a problem. Not that it was necessary, beating a retreat, but he wanted to take some positive action. His vexation about the German watcher was greater than usual. He tried once more to recall exactly how clear Emma’s voice had sounded. Barbarossa. Although they had been speaking Dutch, that word could have been picked up by a German, any German. Especially a German. Barbarossa, what did that name remind him of? A medieval ruler, a tyrant of old, something Germanic, something from a revered past, something Hitlerian. Oscar’s brain, well-versed in history, took no time in coming up with the answer: the German emperor leading the crusades, twelfth century or thereabouts. That was the underlying idea, of course, it was all about a crusading ruler with endorsement from on high.
Oscar vacillated. Should he go or should he stay? Stay, there was no hurry. Take a long look at the menu, call the waiter, give him your order, ask for more wine, turn the pages of your newspaper at leisure. All of which he proceeded to do. The man sitting some metres away was as nothing to him, a mere smudge at the corner of his gaze. The marina facing the hotel was crowded with sailing craft and rowing boats. Children ran up and down the long wooden jetties. It was eight o’clock, evening fell as the darkness rose up in layers from the lake. The mountains on the far side melted slowly but surely from view.
The newspaper lay untouched on his lap as Barbarossa receded from his consciousness. His thoughts turned to her, and where she might be.
Chapter 4
She caught the hum of aircraft. English? Emma waited for the air-raid sirens to go off. They did not. Presumably Luftwaffe. Everyone was tense after the heavy bombing of the city a fortnight ago. Dahlem had not been hit, a pity in a way, as Himmler and Ribbentrop lived virtually around the corner. But the English obviously did not know that. Berlin-Dahlem, little more than a village until quite recently, had been quietly amalgamated into the city. The streets still smelled of earth and meadows, there was a church, a farmers’ market, there were gardens and old country houses. The U-Bahn had a terminal there, where Carl took the train to the Foreign Ministry every morning at seven.
Foreign affairs were becoming less foreign by the day, what with all the new German conquests, Emma remarked drily. They would be making themselves redundant next.
Carl had to smile at her laconic, un-German sense of humour, her plain speaking. Quick, fearless, and unwaveringly good-tempered she was. Like him. They were two of a kind, high-level poker players, leading intense lives on the edge of danger. Carl worked for Adam von Trott, the all-knowing, unflappable Trott, who knew everybody who mattered, who swept his associates along with him in his convictions. And his convictions were diametrically opposed to those of his superiors and the almighty superior in whose name all was directed and done.
They had just returned from Switzerland, their travel bags were still in the hall. It was Monday morning, June 2. They had taken the overnight train, and Carl had gone straight from the station to his office. Emma was exhausted; travelling by sleeper did not agree with her. She wondered what had been the matter with her father. She had never seen him so distracted, so utterly wrapped up in his own thoughts, like a mathematician brooding over a problem, and it had taken some effort to get his attention at all. But the news about Barbarossa had shaken him awake. On reflection, she couldn’t see how she could have been so reckless as to burden him with that secret. It had been going round and round in her head for days, she hadn’t known which way to turn. Her father might be able to do something – who else? The effect had been galvanising. Her distracted father, sitting opposite her in a world of his own, had come crashing back to earth on the instant. He darted a glance around him and asked in a low, urgent voice: “Are you quite sure about this?” She only had time to say yes when Carl reappeared, and quickly changed the subject: “What about Mama, when will you be seeing her again?”
She had kept putting it off, but at some point she would have to confess that she had told her father. She prayed that Carl woul
d understand. In the meantime her poor father would be beside himself with worry. What would he do with her information?
Ever since Carl came home with the news they had been in a welter of conflicting emotions. Carl had even raised a little cheer, despite the gravity. It would mean the downfall of the Nazis, the end of Hitler. The Russians were unbeatable, any invading army would be swallowed up by the sheer vastness. Adam was of the same opinion. Carl was his chief assistant, his junior by only a few years, intelligent, disciplined, sharp. Trott, however, was sharper, he could argue anyone into a corner. A man of many talents. Carl did not hide his esteem for Trott. Emma sometimes felt obliged to temper his enthusiasm, although she too admired the man for his intellect as well as his disarming powers of persuasion. They had accompanied him to Switzerland, which created a splendid opportunity for Emma to meet her father. Carl and he made regular trips to neutral countries, travelling even as far as Russia and America on diplomatic visits to embassies and conferences, their aim being to foster links with the enemy, their secret ally. Emma was many times alone. They had no children, having decided to postpone starting a family until the war was over. And that did not seem likely for the foreseeable future
Carl’s news was deeply distressing: Germany planning to invade Russia on June 22, the whole world taken over, all hell let loose. The ministries were abuzz with “Russia, Russia”. Trott was agitated in the extreme, for all that he never doubted the gangsters would lose in the end. He set up meetings, made efforts to speak with generals, visited friends all over the country. With Carl in his wake as his adviser. Was there any way of stopping the insanity? How many people would have to die first?
Emma went out into the garden, telling herself the bags could wait. Her father’s odd behaviour preoccupied her thoughts. It was not at all like him to be so remote, so timid almost. He had snapped back to his usual self the moment she told him, though. But his evasiveness rankled: she had been so looking forward to seeing him after more than a year’s separation. He had hugged her with a strange sort of detachment, shyly, like a boy. And it was quite soon after she blurted the news that he got up and left, saying a hurried goodbye. Her father was not the most accessible of parents at the best of times, but this was different. She tried to think of an explanation, but the mystery remained.
