“You’re not asking any more questions. Your brother is alive – for the time being. I want the truth about the Englishman.”
“And I want the truth about my brother.”
“I’ve told you. What more do you want?”
There was a silence.
“He wouldn’t take the pills,” she said.
Bonner finished his drink. She sat there on the chair a few feet away, the dressing gown half open so he could see the curve of her breasts and the creamy expanse of her thighs. Her brother was alive, but he wouldn’t live long if he didn’t cooperate. Neither would she, if Heydrich found out that she had somehow compromised the recording staff in the Salon. And he could guess how she had done that. He got up and left without a word.
At eight the next morning, Sara Sternschein joined the long queue outside the consular offices of the British embassy. The consulate, which occupied premises alongside the main building in Wilhelmstrasse, did not open for another hour. No provision had been made in the way of extra staff to cope with the number of people seeking visas or travel documents allowing entry to the United Kingdom. By nine, the queue stretched well down the street towards Unter den Linden. The German Foreign Ministry had objected to the unsightly scene, as had the Ministry of Propaganda across the road.
Jews were being forcibly encouraged to leave the country, but that did not mean that the authorities wanted foreign newspapers carrying photos and stories of them desperately queuing to acquire the necessary documents. The queue was therefore limited to fifty people. Those arriving after this number had been reached were given tickets and told to return that afternoon. The morning was warm but Sara wore a headscarf to cover the bruises on her face and to conceal her identity from those watching the embassy. They would be in the offices across the street recording all those in the queue. Later they would try to put names to faces.
She carried her British travel document in her bag. She needed more time now and planned to ask for an extension. Ahead of her, the queue was made up mostly of middle-aged women; all of them she judged to be Jewish. Their clothing was worn and stitched with the yellow star on the front. They all clutched large leather handbags that looked as if they had been handed down for generations.
Further down the street, at the main entrance to the embassy, she watched the diplomats, secretaries and other more lowly office staff arriving for the day’s work. She knew he would be among them.
It was around eleven o’clock when Sara finally entered the consulate and was ushered into a brightly lit office containing two desks. The walls were lined with grey metal filing cabinets. A large framed photograph of King George VI hung over the door at one end of the room. At the other end, by a small high window, a round-faced clock ticked loudly.
At each desk sat a grey-haired middle-aged woman. One appeared utterly immobile and sat staring at a document. The other had her pen poised over a scatter of documents in front of her. Every few moments the pen descended, moved rapidly to write something and then rose again. There were no other staff in the room. Sara watched for what seemed like several minutes and then coughed loudly.
“Please sit down,” said the woman with the pen, without looking up.
There were chairs in front of each desk. Sara sat in front of the woman who had spoken.
“Name and papers,” said the woman, again without raising her head.
“Sara Sternschein. I wish to extend my permit to enter the United Kingdom,” said Sara, and she pushed her document with the Foreign Office stamp and her German photo identity paper over the desk.
The woman studied her travel document briefly, then looked at her identity card. Her face reshaped itself with a frown that stretched from forehead to chin.
“Wait here,” she said. She rose and walked through the door.
Sara looked at her watch. It was eleven thirty. She hadn’t got home from the Salon until one in the morning and had risen at six thirty to make sure of a good place in the queue. She was exhausted and hungry. Breakfast had been coffee and some toast and jam. It seemed a long time ago.
She watched the clock on the wall until the hands moved to fifteen minutes before noon. She got up, flexing her arms backwards in a stretch, when a voice said, “Sit down, please.”
The second woman had not raised her head and continued to stare intently at a document. The voice seemed to come from the far end of the room. Perhaps King George had commanded her to sit down, or maybe the clock had found a voice. Sara sat down.
Ten minutes later, the door opened and the woman with the pen beckoned Sara. She followed her through an ill-lit grey-painted corridor and then opened a door into the sudden luxury of a large hall overhung with two chandeliers, which illuminated a tiled mosaic floor. A broad, carpeted central staircase rose between portraits of whiskered dignitaries. There were people everywhere, well-dressed men in suits with briefcases, young women clutching files, older women with trays of tea, moving across the floor and vanishing behind various doors around the hall or going up and down the staircase.
Sara had read a translation of Alice in Wonderland as a little girl and now felt that she too had fallen down a rabbit hole into a world of mad hatters and March hares. She followed the consulate woman through a door that led into a room furnished with two comfortable armchairs and a sofa arranged around an unlit fireplace. Sara noticed that a pot of coffee and two cups had been placed on a table by the window.
“Miss Sternschein, sir,” said the woman, and left.
“Thank you. Please have a seat,” said a familiar voice.
Noel Macrae was standing by the fireplace, smiling at her.
She sat down, feeling faint and in need of a strong cup of coffee.
“What are you doing here?” she said.
“I rather thought I might ask you that question. I thought you had left.”
“He’s still alive.”
“Who?”
“Joseph. They’ve still got him in Buchenwald.”
She was sitting with her head in her hands, her voice muffled.
“You’d better have some coffee. Here.”
He poured a cup, added two lumps of sugar and passed it to her.
“I came to extend my travel document. I can do that, can’t I?”
She looked up at him, trying to reconcile the man in the dark suit, ironed shirt and tie and neatly combed hair with the man in the Tiergarten, the man she had made love to under the winter trees with their leafless branches, the man she had taken to her room at the Salon and watched as he shed his clothes and lay on the bed, the bed provided by the Geheime Staats Polizei for the purpose of blackmail, extortion and murder. But she had not played their game, she had made sure the tapes were turned off. They had made love slowly, awkwardly, then with a fury that flickered like a flame long after their sweating bodies had cooled.
“It could be difficult,” he said. “The pass was only for two weeks. You told me you were leaving.”
“And we said goodbye. I know. But I’ve told you, Joseph is alive. I can’t leave now.”
“Who told you that?”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s true. He showed me a photograph.”
“He?”
“Bonner. In the Salon.”
“Bonner – he’s Gestapo, isn’t he?”
“Yes. Very senior. But that’s not the point. Joseph’s alive. I can’t leave.”
“We were given good information that your brother had been shot.”
“It was a lie. I was shown a photograph.”
A sound louder than the distant hum of voices and feet clacking on the tiled floor beyond the door now filled the room. It was an urgent rattle.
Macrae moved from the mantelpiece and sat beside her. She was shaking, her coffee cup rattling against its saucer.
“You say Bonner showed you a photo?”
“Last night. He was asking about you, wanted to know why there had been no tapes.”
He gently slid back her headscarf.
“And he did this?”
“Yes.”
Macrae took the document and stood up.
“The photo could be a fake.”
“It wasn’t. It was him. He looked like a skeleton, but he’s alive.”
“It could just be a lie to keep you at the Salon.”
She stared at the floor, still talking in a whisper.
“We’re twins. I know he’s alive.”
“Because Bonner told you?”
“I think he’s telling the truth.”
“For God’s sake, Sara, he’s Gestapo!”
“So am I, if it comes to that.”
“They forge documents, fix photographs. They’re good at it.”
She got up and looked at him. “He’s alive. I just know it.”
He took a step towards her, but she stepped back.
“I’ll do what I can about this permit,” he said.
“How long will it take?”
Macrae looked at the document, then up at the clock. It was almost noon.
“It shouldn’t take more than a day. But what’s the hurry? You’re not leaving now, are you?”
Sara shook her head.
“Meet me in the Tiergarten tomorrow, then – well after dark, say nine.”
“I’ll be at the Salon.”
“With those marks on your face?”
She looked at the mirror and touched the vivid bruises on her cheek.
“All right, make it ten.”
It had been a good season for grouse shooting on the moors in the north of England and Scotland that year, and by mid-September there was promise of excellent sport in the coming weekends. So there was some grumbling among members of the British cabinet when they were summoned on Saturday following Neville Chamberlain’s meeting with Hitler at the Berchtesgaden, to hear his report and decide on the next step. The newspapers had concluded that Chamberlain had been outmanoeuvred by the German leader and forced into more concessions over Czechoslovakia.
However, since the two had met in private with only an interpreter present, the reports were based on briefings by either side and thus contradictory. A private briefing paper circulated by Lord Halifax suggested a very different and more positive outcome. Either way, most cabinet members felt the meeting could well have waited until Tuesday for the usual cabinet session.
The news that a senior delegation of senior French ministers was arriving in London on Sunday to discuss joint guarantees to Czechoslovakia in the event of a German attack did not change this view. The French could wait until Monday as well.
The mood of the twenty ministers at Number 10 on a hot September Saturday was not improved when the prime minister launched into a long description of his wearying journey to meet Hitler in his mountain retreat. The flight had been an enjoyable experience, he said, the reception in Munich a deliberate snub, the following train journey uncomfortable and the final dash up the mountainside in a Mercedes frankly unnerving.
After Chamberlain’s account of his talks with a man he described as “the commonest little dog you ever saw”, it was Lord Halifax who summed up the British diplomatic position with a clarity that allowed everyone to break for lunch.
“Since one power dominates Europe and that power is Germany, we have no alternative but to surrender the Sudetenland region to the Nazis and submit to humiliation,” he said.
This was not a view shared in the British embassy in Berlin, at least not by Sir Nevile Henderson, who had been present, although outside the room, at the first round of talks with Hitler. The ambassador had concluded that peace was not just a possibility but the likely outcome of the diplomatic initiative that he was masterminding with his friend and ally Lord Halifax in London. The French had frankly given up. The American interest seemed to be to persuade European nations to raise their immigration quota for Jews from Germany without increasing their very own tight limit, and Russia was busy, as usual, purging its armed forces of the officer class.
This left the way clear to persuade President Beneš of Czechoslovakia to cede a large portion of his territory to Germany. It would not be easy, Henderson realised, but it could be done. He would be the man to make the president understand that without such a sacrifice they would all be consumed in the fires of another world war.
Henderson made a note of the phrase. It was not the cool language normally used by a senior diplomat, but that was exactly why it might make those hot-tempered Czechs realise that neither Britain nor France was going to bail them out.
It was exactly a week after Hitler’s speech at Nuremberg. Sir Nevile walked the corridor from his private residence to his office, where his secretary briefed him on his diary for the week ahead and he was dismayed to learn that Colonel Macrae had managed to insert a meeting just before the main morning session with all senior staff.
He considered cancelling but rejected the idea. Macrae was a problem, but he had been effectively dealt with by the prime minister and would be transferred when the crisis was over.
The two men exchanged minimal greetings and did not shake hands. Macrae sat on a chair in front the ambassador’s desk.
“Am I right in assuming that this conversation is of such a confidential nature that it cannot be raised in the staff meeting?” said Sir Nevile.
“I wish to apprise you of the balance of forces between Czechoslovakia and Germany and the likely outcome of any conflict between them. If you think that is a fit subject for the general staff meeting, I will of course raise the matter then.”
“Is this new information?”
“It is up-to-date information of which, I believe, His Majesty’s Government is not fully aware.”
“You’d better go on then, but briefly, please.”
“The Czech army has thirty-eight combat-ready divisions, of which fourteen are armoured and equipped with tanks of variable quality. The old T-21 is no match for what the Germans can put in the field, but the LT-35 light tank is a first-class weapon, especially in the hill country along the German border.”
Macrae paused. The ambassador had placed the palms of his hands together as if in prayer and was gazing at the wall behind him.
“The Skoda armaments factory in Sudetenland is the largest in the world and it is turning out high-standard military hardware, from mortars to machine guns and heavy artillery. The Czechs have slipped a little in developing their air force but have numbers of the B-534s, which are the best fighter biplanes in any air force. Morale in all services is high.”
“I appreciate the information, but what is your point?” The ambassador had placed his hands palm down on the desk, as if preparing to rise and leave.
“If I may finish, Ambassador. The fortifications along the border with Germany have been well designed in depth and consist of three lines of fixed emplacements and minefields capable of withstanding prolonged artillery barrage.”
“Forgive me if I repeat myself, but what is your point, Colonel?”
“My point is that the German High Command knows all this. They will not, indeed dare not, attack Czechoslovakia while Prague controls the Sudetenland. It is crucial to the defence of the whole country, and the generals have already told Hitler they would not be able to penetrate it.”
“Well, that is very interesting.” Sir Nevile looked at his watch. “We have a meeting in a few minutes.”
“A final point, Ambassador. If it is British diplomacy to strip Czechoslovakia of the Sudetenland, we will effectively deny them the ability to resist German invasion. If, however, we stand with the government in Prague, we will engineer a confrontation between Hitler and his army. His generals will never agree to a frontal attack against those defences.”
“Ah yes, that is one of your favourite theories, this fantasy of a coup. Product of an overactive imagination, if I may say so.”
“It is a fact, not a fantasy. Before I was allowed to address the full cabinet on the subject, I understand you cabled the prime minister saying that senior military sources had denied an
y disaffection within the High Command. Is that correct?”
“That is correct.”
“May I ask who those sources were – between us, of course?”
“My sources remain confidential.”
“May I suggest that those sources belong in the very realms of fantasy that you have just mentioned.”
“Are you accusing me of lying to the British cabinet?”
“Not at all. I am merely suggesting that certain people might view the information in your cable to the PM as the product of an overactive imagination, that’s all.”
The ambassador and his attaché stared at one another in an unblinking gaze that to an onlooker might have revealed animosity provoked by a professional disagreement. Both men knew it went much further. They hated each other.
17
Summer refused to give way to autumn in Germany that September. In balmy weather, crowds thronged the pavement cafés in Berlin during the week and streamed out to the lakes around the city at the weekends. Brewers and ice-cream manufacturers reported record sales. Leni Riefenstahl’s film Olympia, glorifying the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, had been released earlier in the year to critical acclaim and was still playing to packed cinemas across the country. The state-controlled press exulted in reports that the film had been admired in most Western countries for its technical and creative virtuosity.
To Macrae and most of the foreign diplomatic corps, it seemed that the German people would reach for any distraction to deafen themselves to talk of war. In the second week of the month, a hurricane had devastated the east coast of the United States, especially Long Island and southern New England, causing the deaths of six hundred people, many of whom were swept into the sea as huge waves pounded the shorelines.
The disaster eclipsed all other news in the German press and became a talking point for days. Goebbels flew film crews to America to report on the devastation and made sure the disaster was the lead item in cinema newsreels. It was whispered in the corridors of his ministry that he took pleasure in reminding the most powerful nation on earth that it was not immune from the heavy hand of Providence.
Midnight in Berlin Page 25
