Shadows of War

by Michael Ridpath

  ‘Fruity!’ The duke himself bounded down the stairs, dressed in black tie and dinner jacket, his mane of thick blond hair carefully parted and combed. He smiled broadly at Fruity, showing off those perfect gleaming teeth, his blue eyes twinkling. ‘Are you ready?’

  Fruity grinned back. ‘I certainly am.’

  The duke turned to his wife.

  ‘Give my love to Charles, Dave,’ Wallis said. Fruity winced. The duke’s family and his closest friends called him by the seventh of his many Christian names, ‘David’, instead of the first, ‘Edward’. But Dave?

  ‘And to Fern,’ the duchess went on. ‘I haven’t seen her for years. See if you can arrange for all of us to meet up soon, will you, sweetheart?’

  ‘I will, darling. Let’s go, Fruity!’

  The duke’s Buick was waiting outside, piloted by his chauffeur Webster, with a former Scotland Yard detective in the front seat next to him. Fruity and the duke climbed in the back.

  ‘I was just writing up my notes for the Wombat,’ said the duke. ‘The Wombat’ was Major General Howard-Vyse, the senior British liaison officer at French headquarters.

  ‘I’d say it was rather a successful trip,’ Fruity said. They had just spent five days together touring a portion of the French lines.

  ‘I suppose so,’ said the duke. ‘But they are a frightful shower, the French, aren’t they? I’ve done my best to point it out tactfully, but it’s damned difficult.’

  It was their third trip. The duke had been given a job at the British Mission to the French headquarters at Vincennes, reporting to the Wombat. In that role he was to inspect the French lines in a series of tours, but he had also been given the task of reporting back to the Chief of the Imperial General Staff in London with an assessment of the strengths and especially weaknesses of the French defences.

  They had started near the Channel, where the powerful French 7th Army was poised to speed north following a German invasion of Belgium, and then worked their way east. Their most recent trip had been to the French 2nd Army stationed along the Meuse in the Ardennes, at the hinge where the Maginot Line along the Franco-German border met neutral Luxembourg and Belgium.

  The duke was right: the 2nd Army was a frightful shower led by a complacent idiot, a general named Huntziger. But Fruity enjoyed driving around the lines with the Little Man, hundreds of miles from Wallis. The further he strayed from her petticoats, the more the duke loosened up, the more fun he was.

  The Buick cruised down the wide avenue du Président-Wilson towards the centre of Paris. Headlights of oncoming motor cars were barely covered; strips of light spilled out between inadequate blinds in the cafés. Where London was battened down under a grim black cloak, Paris at night was lifting its hem to show some garter.

  The Little Man might have to rush back to Mrs Nibs after dinner, but that didn’t mean Fruity had to.

  ‘How was Bedaux?’ the duke said. ‘I haven’t seen him for nearly two years now.’

  ‘Back to his old self,’ Fruity said. ‘Has a finger in every pie. Knows everything. Dashing about the place: Holland, England. I even got the impression he was going to Germany.’

  ‘Really? How the devil does he manage that?’

  ‘He’s a Yank, isn’t he? Neutral passport.’

  ‘He’s a man of the world, if ever there was one,’ the duke said. ‘I look forward to seeing him again. That man certainly has imagination. And energy.’

  ‘And he was very keen to see you.’

  Very keen. Fruity was staying at the Ritz, and a few days before he had been accosted by Charles Bedaux, a fellow resident of the hotel. Bedaux was a Franco-American businessman, frightfully rich, who had amassed his pile from time-and-motion studies or something. He was a friend of a friend of Wallis’s and had made his chateau available for her wedding to the duke. It was a fine place on the Loire, and Bedaux and his American wife Fern had been the perfect hosts.

  It wasn’t their fault that the wedding itself had been a cringe-making disaster. Almost no one from England had accepted their invitations, and those who had had pulled out once they had recognized their error. The disapproval of the new king and queen, and of society, was powerful and pervasive.

  Of course, Fruity had done his duty to his old friend. He had been best man.

  They pulled into the place Vendôme and drew up in front of the Ritz. The doorman recognized the car and leaped for the duke’s door. Inside, the hotel was buzzing, but the chatter subsided a little as the former king entered the glittering lobby.

  ‘Your Royal Highness!’

  Fruity and the duke turned to see a short, powerfully built man with jug ears and thick black brilliantined hair bustling towards them.

  ‘Charles! Good to see you again!’ said the duke, holding out his hand. ‘You’re looking well.’

  ‘I am well, sir, I am well,’ Bedaux said in his European-film-star American accent, before turning to Fruity and shaking his hand. ‘I’ve organized a private dining room. A lot has happened in the world since we last saw each other. There is much to discuss.’

  6

  Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam, 7 November

  Conrad found no difficulty spotting the Englishman waiting for him in the passenger terminal at Schiphol Airport. He was tall, wearing a check suit, a monocle and spats.

  ‘Captain Payne Best?’

  The man reached for Conrad’s hand and shook it. ‘The very same. Lieutenant de Lancey, I assume. Welcome to Holland. The car’s right outside. Can I take your bag?’

  ‘I’m all right,’ said Conrad, gripping his suitcase.

  ‘Follow me.’

  Payne Best led Conrad out of the building to a car park and a sleek black American car.

  ‘Good to be back?’

  ‘Back?’ said Conrad. ‘I haven’t spent much time in Holland. Once on holiday when I was a child. Other than that just en route to Germany.’

  ‘But you do speak Dutch?’ Payne Best said.

  ‘Not as such, no,’ said Conrad.

  ‘I was told you speak Dutch.’

  ‘Danish.’

  Payne Best shook his head. ‘Typical of them not to know the difference between Dutch and Danish.’

  Conrad decided not to ask who ‘they’ were. The onset of war had led to a mushrooming of bureaucratic screw-ups, and this one didn’t surprise him. ‘Does it matter?’

  They climbed into the car. ‘My plan was that you should be my chauffeur when we go to see the Hun officers. But if you don’t speak Dutch, I’m not sure what we will do.’

  ‘Teach me the Dutch for “yes, sir” and “certainly, sir”,’ said Conrad. ‘I’m a good mimic.’

  ‘Sprechen Sie Deutsch?’ asked Payne Best.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Conrad in that language. ‘My mother is from Hamburg and I was actually born there just before the last war.’

  ‘Your accent is perfect,’ said Payne Best, whose German was also pretty good. ‘All right, we’ll stick to the plan.’ He guided the car out of the car park and followed a sign to ‘s Gravenhage, The Hague’s official name. He glanced at Conrad’s own suit. ‘Savile Row?’

  ‘Yes. Norton.’

  ‘We must get you something much cheaper and more obviously Dutch. I have a man who drives for me occasionally, and we’re going to make you look like him.’

  Payne Best put his foot on the accelerator of the powerful car, a Lincoln Zephyr, and they roared past lesser vehicles on the highway.

  ‘Can you tell me something about this Major Schämmel?’ Conrad asked.

  ‘We’ve met him three times,’ Payne Best said. ‘He seems genuine to me. Rhineland accent, I think. Intelligent. My only question is what someone of his calibre is doing in the Transport Division.’

  ‘Transport is important for a modern army,’ Conrad said. ‘Especially a mobile one.’ That was one thing that his regiment had drummed into its officers. Their battalion had been ‘motorized’ two years before, and had embraced mobility with enthusiasm.

  �
��Perhaps,’ said Payne Best. ‘We have been supposed to meet a general, but Schämmel has some excuse about why he can’t make it. Of course the excuses may be valid; I can understand how it is difficult to smuggle a general out in wartime. We were meant to meet him tomorrow, but Schämmel has postponed again until Thursday. The idea is to get the general to agree to fly to London.’

  ‘Does this general have a name?’ Conrad asked.

  ‘Not yet,’ said Payne Best. ‘Look here. I’m not entirely sure of your role in this operation, de Lancey. I was told you would just be watching. You won’t be involved in the negotiations, will you?’

  ‘No, I’ll leave that to you,’ said Conrad. ‘My job is to make sure that Major Schämmel is real.’

  ‘Have you had contact with these generals, then?’

  ‘Some,’ said Conrad. ‘But we don’t want Major Schämmel to know that.’

  ‘Where? In Germany?’

  ‘Rather not say, if that’s all the same to you,’ said Conrad with a smile.

  ‘Fair enough,’ said Payne Best, nodding to himself with what looked like approval. ‘Or, as we say in Holland: Zeker, meneer.’

  They spent the remaining half-hour driving very fast towards The Hague going over the kind of phrases that a taciturn chauffeur might say to his boss. Dutch pronunciation was tricky, but Conrad quickly picked up Payne Best’s accent. How good that was, he didn’t know, but to Conrad’s ear it sounded the genuine article.

  The countryside reminded Conrad a little of the levels near his family’s home in Somerset, which he knew had been shaped by Dutch engineers a few centuries before. Green, flat, waterlogged, criss-crossed with ditches and dykes, only the odd barn or copse broke the monotony. And the windmills. Somerset didn’t have the windmills.

  Once they reached The Hague, Payne Best drove to the C&A department store in the centre of the city and found Conrad a cheap off-the-peg suit and a flat cap. Not an actual chauffeur’s uniform, but rather the kind of thing that a mechanic might dress up in to look smart on a driving job. Payne Best paid.

  ‘Your name is Jan Lemmens,’ he said.

  ‘Do you have papers for me? What if I get stopped by the Dutch police?’

  ‘There’s a fellow from Dutch military intelligence who they insist comes along with us named Klop, although we pass him off as a British officer. He’s a good man. He’ll square them.’

  ‘All right. Where am I staying?’

  ‘I’ll take you there now. It’s a bit of a dump, I’m afraid. Too risky to have you staying at a smart hotel. The Hague is crawling with spies, don’t you know?’

  True to his word, Payne Best dropped Conrad in a small scruffy hotel near the Hollands Spoor railway station. ‘Lie low tomorrow. I’ll pick you up at half past nine on Thursday morning. Wear your new suit – perhaps crumple it tonight if you can; put it under your mattress. The plan is to meet Schämmel at three o’clock near the border.’

  Düsseldorf

  The man whom Captain Payne Best knew as Captain Schämmel eased off his headphones and stared at the notepad on the desk in front of him. Venlo. 3 pm. 9 November.

  He was in the small sitting room of a pension in Düsseldorf that had been turned into a communications room. Pride of place was given to the wireless transmitter which had been given to him by Payne Best and on which he had just confirmed the rendezvous. Accompanied by the general.

  The British were pleased. He was pleased. He was getting somewhere.

  He picked up one of the three telephones, the one with the direct line to Berlin. He was put through within a few seconds.

  ‘Heydrich.’

  ‘Herr Gruppenführer, this is Schellenberg.’

  ‘Ah, Walter. How did it go?’ The high-pitched voice of his superior immediately put Schämmel, whose real name and rank was SS Sturmbannführer Walter Schellenberg, on his guard, as it always did. You could never let your concentration slip for a moment in the presence of the head of the Gestapo.

  ‘I have set up a meeting in two days at Venlo. And I have just the man to play the part of the general.’

  ‘Do you think they suspect anything?’

  ‘No. And once I produce a general they will be happy.’

  ‘Good, good.’

  Schellenberg, the head of the counter-intelligence section of the Gestapo, knew his chief. Heydrich’s tone suggested that something was not in fact good. Schellenberg waited.

  ‘I was speaking to the Führer about this,’ Heydrich went on.

  Here we go, thought Schellenberg.

  ‘He is concerned about you flying to London.’

  ‘But if we are to get the British to tell us what they know about a plot to overthrow him, then we have to get them to believe we are real! They have insisted that the general comes to London, and if he goes, I have to go with him.’

  ‘I know that, Walter. But the Führer doesn’t like talking about plots to overthrow him, even fictional ones. He is going to Munich tomorrow, and he is back on the ninth. He will confirm you can go ahead then.’

  ‘Yes, Herr Gruppenführer!’ said Schellenberg and hung up.

  The whole plan had been Heydrich’s idea, and now he was talking about pulling the plug on it at the very last minute, just as Schellenberg was getting somewhere.

  But Schellenberg couldn’t worry about that; he had to assume that the rendezvous was going ahead. He needed to brief his ‘general’ and work on his strategy to negotiate with the British.

  And in a couple of days, with any luck, he would discover who among the German generals really were plotting to overthrow the Führer.

  The Hague

  Conrad waited in his pokey room for ten minutes and then headed back outside. The Hollands Spoor station was just around the corner and there were frequent trains to Leiden. It only took twenty minutes.

  Conrad had picked Leiden because of its proximity to The Hague and the famous university there. It was the sort of place where a doctoral student might meet an academic. Even when the doctoral student was actually a serving officer in the British Army? An intelligent German censor with time to check up on Conrad’s bona fides would never believe it. Conrad just had to hope that his telegram had been passed directly to the Abwehr and Theo.

  It was a reasonable assumption.

  Leiden reminded Conrad a little of Oxford. Lots of students acting as if they owned the place, lots of bicycles, lots of ancient buildings. But it was quieter, and prettier, and a network of canals threaded through the town. There was no war anywhere to be seen.

  Despite the November breeze, it was a pleasant walk from the station to the city centre. The Hotel Levedag was on the Breestraat just past the town hall. Conrad decided to be himself as he approached the man behind the desk, whom he guessed was the hotel manager.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ he said in English. ‘Are there any messages for me? My name is Conrad de Lancey, and I was intending to stay at this hotel tonight, but I had to change my plans and stay in The Hague.’

  ‘Certainly, sir. Let me check,’ the manager replied in good English. He studied a bank of pigeonholes and then rummaged around in a drawer beneath his desk. He pouted and grimaced. ‘Nothing, sir, I am sorry.’

  ‘Ah.’ Conrad was disappointed, but he wasn’t giving up. ‘What about for Professor Madvig?’

  ‘Is he a guest at the hotel?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said Conrad. ‘I was supposed to meet him here.’

  ‘Are you expecting a message from the professor?’

  ‘Either from or to,’ said Conrad.

  The manager looked at Conrad doubtfully, but then turned to have another look at the pigeonholes and a large ledger. ‘We have no record of Professor Madvig staying here or making a booking. Nor a message for him.’

  Conrad smiled. ‘I understand. I’m afraid there has been a frightful mix-up. I’ll come back tomorrow. And if someone does leave a message, can you keep it for me?’

  The hotel manager’s doubts were rising. Conrad had a feeling he wasn�
��t doing the secret-agent thing very well. Theo was the professional. It was too much for Conrad to expect his friend to get the message via Copenhagen to Berlin, and get to Leiden in a day.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Conrad and beat a retreat.

  He stood in the Breestraat and wondered what to do. A blue tram rattled past. It was past two o’clock and he was hungry. He spotted a café-restaurant, and crossed the street to examine the menu in the window, dodging bicycles whizzing past.

  ‘Don’t look at me,’ said a voice in German next to him. A very familiar voice. ‘The Diefsteeg, back towards the station. Ten minutes.’

  Conrad managed to suppress a smile, but showed no sign that he had heard anything. After a minute or so, he moved on to another café to inspect its menu. Then he strolled back along the Breestraat the way he had come.

  The Diefsteeg turned out to be a quiet narrow lane, paved with red brick and squeezed between blind sides of houses on one side and courtyard walls on the other. Conrad walked slowly down the alley. He saw a tall familiar figure ahead, sauntering towards him. Before Conrad reached him, the figure ducked into a little café. Conrad examined the sparse menu in the window for a moment and then followed him in.

  Theo was sitting at a table, back to the window, facing the door. He grinned when he saw Conrad. His dark hair had receded a little in the year since Conrad had last seen him, but the duelling scar along his jawline was still visible. And his smile was as charming as ever.

  ‘Professor Madvig, I presume,’ Theo said in English. ‘Or am I Professor Madvig?’

  ‘Sorry about that,’ said Conrad, taking a seat opposite him. ‘I think technically we are both supposed to be meeting Professor Madvig, whoever the hell he is. It was the best I could think of in the time.’

  ‘It worked,’ said Theo. ‘Fortunately I was in Holland anyway, so I could get here today. By the way, I think it’s better we speak English than German. Fewer Dutch people understand it, and it’s a little less suspicious.’

  ‘I’m glad you got the message. I was worried when you didn’t respond to the letter I sent you a few weeks ago. Did you receive it?’