Midnight in Berlin (12 page)

There was a pause while the cabinet considered this view. Lord Halifax immediately agreed, allowing the prime minister to declare to his ministers: “No statement should be issued that would lead the public or the European powers to suppose that events are heading towards a general war. Nor must we mindlessly antagonise the German leader at the very moment we intend to negotiate a settlement of all his outstanding territorial claims.”

There was a ripple of unease in the room signalled by several ministers reaching for their carafes and pouring themselves a glass of water. This had gone further than most had expected. Chamberlain and Halifax had clearly agreed this approach beforehand.

Leslie Hore-Belisha raised his hand and the prime minister nodded. The minister for war was a difficult but useful member of his team. When he was transport minister he had caused a storm of controversy by suggesting that motorists might not in future be able to park their cars where they pleased on the streets of major cities. He had also introduced orange beacons to mark crossing points for pedestrians, which had made him very popular with the general public but less so with the motoring classes. Hore-Belisha was a man of ambition and energy, and was not afraid to speak his mind. He knew his colleagues described him as “one of our Hebrew friends” behind his back, and while he despised such casual anti-Semitism, he did not let it trouble him.

The prime minister had promoted him to the War Office because he believed Hore-Belisha was more concerned with reform of the army's top-heavy command structure than with rearmament. However his minister had of late been showing grave concern about the violent and degrading treatment of Jews in Germany and had written a number of newspaper articles on the subject. This troubled Chamberlain.

“I don't quite see the logic of condemning mob violence in Vienna while not addressing the cause, namely the Nazi aggression that has wiped Austria off the map,” Hore-Belisha said.

Chamberlain sighed. He looked at Halifax, who said, “Leslie, we have been here before. We knew that Hitler was intent on entering Austria and around this table we accepted the fact that the majority of German-speaking Austrians were in favour. Don't forget Hitler has announced a plebiscite.”

Hore-Belisha was about to reply when a voice from across the table cut in.

“In any case, what does my ministerial colleague propose we do about it? Why condemn an action that we are in no position to alter or challenge? It just makes dealing with Hitler so much more difficult.”

It was Sir John Simon, the guardian of the nation's finances and as such a man determined not to allow any expenditure on rearmament to unbalance a fragile economic recovery. Hore-Belisha had expected little else from the Treasury.

“Firstly,” Hore-Belisha said, “the idea of a Nazi plebiscite is a mockery, and we all know it; so let us not use that as a fig leaf for inaction. Secondly, I recognise that we are in no position to use military force to influence events in central Europe. We do not have that force to deploy anywhere in Europe, for that matter. The policy of appeasement is one thing, and I support it – up to a point. The reduction of our military capacity, which has been going on as a matter of policy for some years, is quite another.”

There was a further pause. Chamberlain looked at his watch. He was due to leave for Buckingham Palace to lunch with the King at twelve thirty. It was now just after noon. Damn. Hore-Belisha had obviously been talking to the arch troublemaker Winston Churchill, a thorn in the government's side and obsessive about rearmament. The problem with Winston was that he was still fighting the last war.

“And before anyone accuses me of taking a brief from Mr Churchill …”

Hore-Belisha left the sentence trailing and looked around the table. There was a general stir of unease, as if a rat had been spotted scuttling along the wainscoting. Every man in the room except one regarded Churchill as a warmonger, a man who could hardly wait to fight the next war, having
made such a mess of the last one with his ill-judged Gallipoli campaign.

“I would like to draw your attention to a confidential document I have received from our embassy in Berlin,” Hore-Belisha went on.

“May we know the author?”

It was Lord Halifax, looking affronted. Confidential cables from the embassy in Berlin should have crossed his desk before going on to any other department.

“Our military attaché in Berlin.”

“What's his name?” asked Chamberlain sharply.

“His name is Colonel Noel Macrae and this is his information on the disparity between the forces of HMG and those of Germany.”

Hore-Belisha read out a précis of the document. When he came to the current size of the army and the number of active divisions, there was an intake of breath around the room. Surely, Hore-Belisha thought, they must have known about the figures. Or did such information evaporate in the warmth of their clubs, where lunch was followed by a gentle rest in an old leather armchair, usually by a decent fire at this time of the year? He didn't belong to a London club, for the simple reason that while a prominent Jew might find a proposer and a seconder, somehow such candidates never found favour with the membership committees.

Chamberlain sat stony-faced while the figures were read out.

“My conclusion,” said Hore-Belisha, “is that we need from this day forward to launch a rearmament programme that will equip our ground and air forces with the minimum required to meet the German military machine. We do not have much time.”

Chamberlain looked at his watch.

“Thank you. That is most interesting, but it does not tell us anything new.”

“With respect, Prime Minister, it tells us that we need to introduce conscription immediately,” said Hore-Belisha.

“And what would Hitler make of that?” snapped Chamberlain. “It would give him the perfect excuse to call off all negotiations with us.”

The prime minister stood up, placing clenched hands on the table, and looked around, as if defying anyone to disagree with him. The cabinet knew that Hore-Belisha had touched on a raw nerve. The one strand of the appeasement policy about which Chamberlain was least sure, and thus most sensitive, was his adamant refusal to contemplate any form of conscription for men of military age.

The repeated proposal from senior generals in the army and civil servants in the War Office was for the compulsory enlistment of men aged between eighteen and thirty for one year's training. France had instituted such a policy and was urging Britain to follow suit. Chamberlain had consistently refused.

“Now, if you will excuse me, I have lunch with the King,” he said, and left the room.

Sara had gone straight from the Adlon to the Salon. She had drunk too much with that Englishman and she was hungry. It was only seven o'clock and there was a scattering of guests in the room. She sat at a table reserved for staff and ordered a steak and frites. The table was deliberately placed in the shadows at one end of the bar. The Salon did not stint the girls when it came to food. Guests ate well and the girls did likewise. Kitty Schmidt made sure of that.

Sara drank mineral water and looked around. There were three Italians at one table, all from the embassy. They were
supposed to be allies and friends of the Reich, but Bonner trusted nobody. The moment they got into the rooms with the girls, the cameras started turning.

On another table she recognised two executives from the Krupp steelworks in Essen. They would have come to Berlin to negotiate an arms contract and decided to celebrate with a night at the Salon. It was where everyone with the money and the contacts came. There was nowhere else like it in Berlin, or indeed Europe.

She knew the Krupp executives well. They were regulars. The elder of the two was a sadist who liked to bring his own riding crop and left the girls badly marked and unable to work for a day or two. Kitty Schmidt had taken him aside and said that he would be charged five thousand marks for every day the girls were off work as a result.

The strange things men wanted, thought Sara, and she smiled at the idea of that Englishman. What would he like? There was always something they wanted. Perhaps a fantasy with the girls dressed up as nuns or schoolteachers – they were the most common. It didn't matter, but Kitty Schmidt made sure the men paid for their pleasures. Everything from sodomy to lesbian shows was added to the drinks or dinner bill in the form of charges for fine wines and champagne. That was how the Salon did business. Elaborate receipts were given. It was all part of the pretence that the discreet house in a classy Berlin suburb was merely a restaurant and bar that stayed open later than most in Berlin and provided an occasional cabaret show for its customers.

The only thing Kitty Schmidt would not accept was a request, however delicately phrased, for male homosexual encounters. Any such suggestion and the client would be thrown out and reported to the Gestapo. Bonner had insisted on that.

A group of officers in uniform walked in, all very senior, judging from the insignia. Sara saw Bonner fussing around them, pulling out chairs, snapping at the waitresses. That could only mean one thing. Sara shifted her chair back into the shadows and watched as several girls descended on the group, taking their coats and hats. In the centre, as she had expected, sat Reinhard Heydrich in the all-black uniform of the Obergruppenführer of the SS.

The uniform told the story of the man and his organisation. The Totenkopf death's-head symbol was placed just below the swastika and stretched eagle symbol of the Nazi Party on the peaked cap. Oakleaf insignia on both collars were picked out in silver, matching the colour of the four diamonds stitched to the lower left sleeve. Boots, trousers, shirt jacket and tie were all of the deepest black. It was said that Heinrich Himmler had personally designed the uniforms. He had told a German radio station: “I know there are many people who fall ill when they see this uniform. We understand that and don't expect to be loved.”

Sara had seen Heydrich several times in the Salon. Every time he came in, the ceiling dropped, the walls drew in, the room seemed smaller, colder, darker. People looked at the new arrival and then quickly turned away. No one wanted to catch his eye. Voices dropped to whispers as guests shuffled their chairs forward and hunched over their tables.

None of them had heard of the English poet T. S. Eliot, still less read his poetry, but they would all have recognised the force of that most famous line from
The Waste Land:
“I will show you fear in a handful of dust.” That was Reinhard Heydrich, a man who could create fear with the flick of a finger.

He looked innocent enough, much younger than his thirty-four years. The receding hair was combed back and flattened with brilliantine, which emphasised the line of the
parting on the left side. A large forehead broke into a long aquiline nose running to a small, thin-lipped mouth. The nose looked as if it had been stamped on his face as an afterthought. It was too big for the rest of his features, which suggested both feminine delicacy and cruelty. The delicacy lay in the mouth, the cruelty in the eyes. Sara wondered whether the face looked so cruel because she had heard so many stories of his personal savagery, or whether those frozen features really were shaped by evil.

The girls in the Salon knew a lot about Heydrich. He was said to be obsessive about personal hygiene, taking a shower two or three times a day. He took fencing lessons twice a week and after those sessions he would personally clean and oil his sabre, wrapping it in greaseproof paper until the next lesson. His fencing clothes would also be washed, dried and ironed. Everything about the man was clinical, tidy and neat. The nails were manicured, the eyebrows trimmed. The black uniform was well fitted to his athletic body. There was method in the way Heydrich presented himself to the world: the uniform, the slim muscular build, the carefully groomed hair, the pale blue eyes and the cold hawklike features projected power and instilled fear.

Sara was tempted to leave quietly. Heydrich was drinking and laughing with Bonner and two other colleagues. They were raising fluted crystal glasses of champagne in a series of toasts. They'd probably come straight from headquarters and were celebrating the success of an operation. But departure meant leaving the shadows and walking close to Heydrich's table on the way to the fanlight door. He would see her, because he saw everything. He would call her over, offer her champagne, ask silly questions about how she was and whether she was enjoying her work. There would always be a question about her mother and her brother, as if they were
old friends whose welfare concerned him. Heydrich's attention to detail was well known. He remembered everything.

He would place a hand on her knee and slide it up under her skirt, all the time talking to the others and laughing and drinking. He would turn and look at her as his fingers tightened on her thigh, squeezing hard, and she would smile. And then he would loosen his grip, remove his hand and turn to the others, allowing her to slip away.

But even Heydrich had to be careful with Sara, in case whispers got back to Heinrich Himmler. Sara smiled at the irony; the man who had unleashed a wave of terror to force Jews to leave their country, the man who was said to be working on more sinister means to solve “the Jewish Problem”, could do no more than grope her under the table. She was Jewish and supposedly forbidden even to one of the most powerful men in the Reich. When Heydrich was drunk, such rules did not apply, of course. He would stagger back to one of the rooms with her, while his bodyguards waited at the bar. An hour or so later he would leave hurriedly, the peaked cap pulled well down over his face.

The greatest irony of all was that Reinhard Heydrich was said to be Jewish too. At least, that is what Bonner had told her one night when drunk. It had been late, well past midnight, and they were sitting at a corner table. Bonner was trying to please her. He wanted to be friends with his star attraction at the Salon. He wanted her to understand that he was doing his job, just as she was doing hers. In a slurred speech that kept repeating itself, he told her how much he admired and appreciated her work, and he knew she felt the same way about him.