More daydreams as we crossed the bumpy Irish Sea on the way to Holyhead.
The trip back to Berlin was not without some excitement. Me-109s followed our BOAC Dakota, buzzing us periodically just for the fun of it. The unspoken agreement against shooting down airliners was violated only once—the Germans thought Winston was on the plane. The pilots in the 109s would shoot us down only if they had orders to do so, and then they would have done it immediately. They were only playing, though it was scary playing. They departed rather quickly, their fuel tanks notoriously too small. Then a flight of three snub-nosed planes joined us. They looked like sawed-off Folk-Wulfes. When they came closer I saw a white star on their wings. They escorted us to Portuguese air space and then saluted us with a wag of their wings and peeled away.
“What were those Yank planes that escorted us?”
“Grumanns. F4F. They’re from the baby carriers the Yanks use on convoys these days. Merchant ships with flat tops. They’re killing off the U-boats. I called our Coastal Command to see if they could provide any escorts for us when the 109s showed up. They sent the Yanks.”
“Nice of them.”
Only while I was struggling through the Madrid immigration procedures, did I ask myself whom the Yanks were trying to protect. Probably the Irish ambassador.
That scared me.
I would have to lay in a supply of food shortly before the Rising and fill the auxiliary fuel tanks I had Franz install. Nonperishable food. Fruit at the last minute. Straight from Berlin to Nuremberg and then cut to the west and Basle. Four days, five days, probably under the hot summer sun.
A bomb from the RAF could wipe out this problem completely.
The day after I returned, Claus’s voice said on the phone, “One-thirty at the Adlon. If it is not raining, café outside.”
“Ja, ja.”
At that time the elegantly Edwardian Adlon was arguably the finest hotel in the world. Later the Russians would burn it to the ground for their newsreel cameras. I was punctual. Claus was waiting for me. He was certainly anxious, but his charm precluded any hint of it.
“It was nice to be home again?” he asked with his usual broad smile.
I yield to no one on our island of indirection in putting off the matter in question till after all the bullshite was over. Not this time.
“Winston listened sympathetically. He called upon God to grant you success. He wanted to know if the Pope had blessed you. He promised that he would issue no condemnation or dismissal. Once you were in charge and had begun to institute your reforms, especially withdrawal to the Rhine, he would be happy to hold conversations with you.”
“That is good, that is very good.” He sighed. “You are an excellent diplomat.”
“And, yes, to answer your question, it was good to see the Galway woman and the Old Fella again.”
He chuckled.
“I should understand the Irish by now.”
We ordered our standard beer and sausage, which I thought would be an insult to the world’s greatest hotel until I tasted the sausage.
“You have prepared a method for removing Annalise from Germany?”
I told him what I had done.
“You even bought the rings!”
“Naturally. I won’t propose real marriage as opposed to fictional until we are out of Germany. I would much rather, however, propose when the new government is in power.”
“Do you think that will happen, Timmy?”
“Churchill asked me that. I said there was some chance, greater if Hitler is eliminated.”
“He agreed with that assessment?”
“Yes.”
“Both of you give it more chance than I do … But speaking of Annalise, I have a second letter for you. Again you must not read it.”
He removed another letter, with seal on the envelope.
I signed my name over the seal.
“Does this replace the previous one or supplement it?”
“Reinforces it,” he said.
“Good,” I said. “I promise you, Claus, I will do my best, though I hope that I will not have to.”
“We have an addition to the plan,” he said, cutting the sausage so nimbly that one hardly noticed the absence of arm and fingers.
“It is called Operation Valkyrie, a plan for the army to take complete control of the country in a national emergency—like spreading revolt of foreign workers or a plot by the SS to seize total power. Once Hitler is dead, we send out the Valkyrie signal to all units. Even those leaders who are not with us will obey the plan—once a plan is ordered the Army will seize all SS leaders, all Gestapo leaders, all Nazi Gauleiters. In twenty-four hours the army will be in complete control. Marshal von Beck will be named as president and the socialist Julius Leber will become Chancellor. Everything must be organized in every city and province of the country, we must know who our enemies are and who our friends are, whom we can trust and whom we cannot be certain about. There is an enormous amount of work to be done so that we won’t fail after we succeed. I’m sure you can guess who is supervising the preparation of the organizational issue, but so much behind the scenes that she is invisible; she even wears gloves when she types so there will be no fingerprints.”
“I’m glad she is invisible.”
“Ja for twenty-four, perhaps thirty-six hours … what do you think of our plan, Timmy? No one will ever say it was a Putsch of a handful of disorganized madmen.”
“They will have to say that it was brilliantly organized,” I replied.
“It will work despite the cries of the Nazis and the viciousness of the SS. The people now want the war to end. They want to be protected from the Russians. There is but one small point …”
“The Führer?”
“Ja. He has to die. If he lives, millions would rally to him. Is he not the Führer? Otherwise we fail. And a couple of thousand of us will die horribly. At least we tried.”
“And you must be the one to kill him.”
“There is no one else. All other attempts have failed. I may fail too. I hope not … I know that he who acts will go down in German history as a traitor, but who can and does not will be traitor to his conscience. If I did not now act to stop this senseless killing, I should never be able to face the war’s widows and orphans.”
“God go with you,” I said fervently.
I walked slowly back to the Friedrichstrasse, my heart heavy. The Antichrist takes care of his own. The rising was typically Germanic—planned in elaborate detail and depending on one problematic and indeed mad act. It might be the best-organized rebellion in human history, but before it could even get started one brave man had to strike down a madman to change the course of history.
And my love working every night somewhere in Charlottenburg or Gruenwald to build the organization, with gloves to cover her fingerprints. I did not like that at all, but she had to work out her own destiny.
Late in the afternoon I took both my .25s and walked to the gun club.
Claus had killed in battle, though likely no one face-to-face. If I had to use these weapons for face-to-face killings, my shots must be deadly accurate to the center of the forehead. The .25 makes a small sound, like a tiny firecracker. The man I killed would hear it and then be dead.
I almost vomited on the sidewalk.
Yet if Annalise was in grave danger, I would have to do it.
My quick turnaround shots to fire at the head were accurate that day. But I was shooting only at lifeless targets.
Could I protect Annalise if someone was about to do her harm?
Hell, I’d tear him apart with my bare hands.
The raids continued almost every night, some of them heavy, others relatively light if an air raid can ever be called light.
In early December, I was feeling bored, homesick, lonely and sorry for myself—perhaps in reverse order. My morning mail contained an elaborate invitation from the Spanish embassy to a Christmas celebration at the Adlon Hotel. I was told that I might bring
a guest.
I liked the Spanish diplomats. They had been around a long time and seen a lot, including their own civil war. They had no illusions and disliked the whole Nazi scene.
I would invite Annalise to be my guest at the Spanish Christmas party.
Grand idea! But I had never learned her phone number. Nor did I have Claus’s number
So I had to wait for the usual mysterious call from Claus. A week later, time running out for a response, he was on the phone.
“I need a swim this afternoon.”
Then he hung up. No mention of time. I went over to the club at 12:30, fired my pistols for an hour and a half, becoming more deadly as I became more angry.
Damn Germans, always organized and always inefficient. We Irish were congenitally tardy but never by more than a half hour.
Did I really want a German wife?
Yeah, I really did.
I went into the beer room and ordered a stein and a platter of sausages.
Claus showed up at 3:15.
One look at his wounded body and his gaunt face exorcised my rage.
“What time did I say I would be here?” he asked cheerfully.
“You said afternoon.”
“I was not more precise?”
“Doesn’t matter,” I said with equal cheer. “I practiced my shooting.”
“I’m sorry. After I called you I had to see the doctor who supervises me. He said I should not swim this time of the year. There is much flu and I am subject to many infections because of my wounds. He tells me I must be very careful.”
I was glad I hadn’t said anything and felt guilty for what I thought. That’s what love does for you.
“I was thinking of inviting Annalise to the Spanish embassy formal Christmas party at the Adlon.”
“Splendid! Now you begin a courtship, nein?”
“I don’t have her phone number.”
“She refused to give it to you?”
“I never asked.”
“Ja, I write it out for you.” He removed a pocket notebook from his pocket and then wrote out the number, smoothly, efficiently, as though he had never been wounded.
“If she asks who gave you her phone number, you say I did. I don’t think she’ll ask. You will have a wonderful time at the party.”
If we go, I thought.
“How are the plans developing?”
He sighed.
“It is not easy being a revolutionary, Timmy. So many things to worry about. General Fromm, my superior, is one of us. He is a coward. If anything goes wrong, he will have us shot. Then the next day, he will be shot himself because he is too deeply involved already. He expects to be made a field marshal if we are successful.”
“What will you be?”
“Undersecretary of War. I will accept nothing higher. I am not leading this affair for power. Only to save the Secret Germany.”
His eyes took on the usual faraway mystical look that appeared when he mentioned the Secret Germany. Then the look faded.
“Yet sometimes I think that we will have to lose this war and be obliterated before there can be a new Germany born. We are a new country, only seventy years old, bound together by conquest. Perhaps the real Antichrist was Friedrich der Grosse. It might be that we must suffer more death and more rapes to be free to reshape our nation. Then and only then would the Secret Germany be free to emerge.”
[Looking back from the perspective of time, the Federal Republic has its imperfections. It may not be the Secret Germany of which Claus dreamed. Yet Prussia and part of Brandenburg are now in Poland. Militarism seems to be dead. Germany is a functioning democratic country, a little dull and boring, perhaps, but it is not a Fourth Reich and I think never will be. Was all the suffering of 1945 and after necessary? God knows, I don’t. However, if the Rising had been a success, as it almost was, the history of Europe would have been different. Better or worse? God knows, I don’t. R.]
“Those speculations are beyond me, Claus. I know that Germany would be a better place if there were more people like you.”
“I already have five kinder, Tim.”
I hadn’t meant that, but I let it pass.
So that evening after a lean supper of potatoes and vegetables, the best poor Magda could do with the supplies available even at the stores which served the embassies and before the air raids started, I called Annalise’s number.
“Annalise,” she said curtly.
“Timothy.”
“You should not have my phone number.”
“Claus gave it to me.”
“What do you want?” she demanded.
Do you really want to marry such an authoritarian woman?
No.
“The Spanish embassy has a nice formal Christmas gathering every year. Would you ever be my guest this year?”
She didn’t recognize the polite request form. It did not matter, however.
“That would be impossible, Herr Ridgewood. Good-bye.”
Certainly not. She was a Gothic witch, not a Gothic archduchess. How could I ever love her.
The phone rang again. If it were my former love, I would tell her off.
“Ridgewood.”
“Annalise, Herr Ridgewood, and I am weeping because I am such a fool. Yes, it would be wonderful to accompany you to the Spanish Christmas party—if you still want me as your guest.”
I struggled for the right words.
“I was hoping you’d call back. Certainly I want you to be my guest.”
“I have nothing to wear, however.”
“That’s what my mother, the Galway woman always says. I’ve learned to be skeptical about such protests.”
Then the air raid sirens began and we said good-bye.
I keep my rule about avoiding the shelters. But I went down to the crude shelter that Magda and Franz had made for me in the basement. Happy man that I was, I did not even hear the all clear in the morning.
On the Sunday night before Christmas in 1944, Franz proudly drove me through the Tiergarten and up the Kudamm to Charlottenburg—named after the wife of Friedrich der Grosse. He had put the canvas top on the Benz and turned on the heat. A layer of snow covered the ground and the ruins. My date was ready at the door to her apartment in a simple white gown, if any off-the-shoulder gown, however professedly modest, can be simple. She wore a green sash around her waist and a small red pin shaped like a Tannenbaum on her breast.
I gulped, I fear, audibly.
“I hope I do not discredit you, Herr Ridgewood.”
“It’s a credit to be with the most beautiful woman in the room.” I helped her on with her cloak and conducted her down to the car. Franz, approving my taste, bowed deeply.
We returned through the Tiergarten and the Brandenburg Gate and stopped at the front entrance of the Adlon.
“Remember, Franz, there is a shelter for employees under the hotel.” I gave him my card, complete with a large shamrock to show if necessary.
The Adlon and its employees were dressed in Christmas finery, the lights glowed softly. The Spanish colours of red and gold were everywhere.
“One advantage of this hotel,” I said, “is that it has the best bomb shelter in Berlin.”
“There will be no bombs tonight,” my wide-eyed, luminous date said. “There could not be.”
“How should I introduce you?” I whispered.
“Just call me Annalise.”
She charmed everyone. Even the ambassador’s normally disapproving wife congratulated me on her beauty. When we danced, she melted in my arms, though I felt the strength in her arms.
“I have never been in the Adlon. It is quite beautiful.”
She was a little child in wonderland.
I did not hold her too tightly as we danced. I did not after all own her. And never would, no matter what happened. But I did keep her close to me.
“Is it wrong for us to be here,” she asked, “when so many in Berlin are hungry?”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“Remember, tonight you are Irish. Your green sash matches mine. The Irish are representatives of their country and only do their duty when they represent their countries at diplomatic receptions like this.”
I learned a lot of casuistry from my years with the Jesuits.
just as the roast beef was being served, the RAF proved that my date’s convictions were wrong. The warning siren wailed and then almost immediately the more piercing scream of the “bombs falling” alarm followed.
Trust the Germans to have different sounds for different problems.
“I must ask all our guests to join us in the shelter below, where we will eat our roast beef and drink our wine.”
With practiced speed, the servants moved our wine and beef downstairs and we went into the shelter, the most comfortable in Berlin, as well as the safest. There were electric lamps everywhere, easy chairs, small tables for each pair of chairs, drapery on the walls and soft music.
After I had led Annalise to a chair, I checked the servants’ shelter to make certain that Franz was safe there, which was as well protected as ours but not so well furnished.
I returned to find my date, a glass of Spanish wine in her hand, engaged in animated conversation with the ambassador and his wife. She acted as if she was at the Adlon almost every week. They were discussing the future of Germany.
Could it last another year?
“When the Yanks come,” Annalise said, “it will be the end. We barely have the manpower to fight a two-front war, much less a three-front war. Many men will die. Many women will be raped.”
She patted my place on the chair next to hers, indicating that I should sit down.
“It is well with the good Franz?”
“He’s as safe as we are.”
The roar of engines came closer, almost overhead. Bombs fell quite close to us.
“I think it possible that formation of the Second Reich was not a good thing for Germany. It was a union forced by Prussia and still has to some extent the aura of Prussia about it. The real Germany, say the Rhineland or Swabia, the Secret Germany if you will, has yet to influence the soul of this new and somewhat artificial country.”
Irish Linen Page 25
