Midnight in Berlin (27 page)

Koenig rolled up the map and took another scroll from the shelf. He unfurled it and Macrae saw a map of modern Germany. Once again, Koenig's finger moved from city to city, explaining the successful development of industry and tourism in a loud voice but laying bare in whispers the plans for a coup against the Führer of the Third German Reich.

The key factor was the number of generals with operational command of infantry or armoured units who were prepared to back their leaders, prominent but unnamed figures with senior commands in the military. The names of Erwin von Witzleben, commander of the Wehrkreiss 11 Brandenburg Division, based just outside Berlin, and Eric von Brockdorff-Ahlefeldt, commander of the Potsdam garrison, went into Macrae's notebook. In Berlin itself the finger paused and began tapping. Count Helldorf, with overall charge of the police, was another disaffected Nazi who would join the coup.

The plan was to arrest Hitler the moment he gave orders for “Case Green”, the invasion of Czechoslovakia. The Führer would not give the order explicitly in his speech to the faithful in Nuremberg, but if his words were unambiguous in that respect, the plotters would move that night. Otherwise, they
would wait until Hitler had committed himself to military action and then seize him.

Macrae looked around the room. The attendant had shuffled off, presumably satisfied that the two well-dressed gentlemen in the medieval map room were amateur cartographers.

“What will you do when you have arrested him?” said Macrae in a quiet voice.

“We have decided not to kill him. That is very important. It would just turn him into a martyr. He will be put before a People's Court and tried for treason. The judges have already been assigned. There will also be a panel of psychiatrists under an eminent professor, Karl Bonhoeffer – have you heard of him?”

Macrae had not. He put the name into his notebook.

“I am giving you his name so that you may see that this operation has been well planned. Bonhoeffer is very respected in his field and he has seen the early reports of Hitler's mental condition when he was in a military hospital after the war. He has concluded the man is mad.”

Macrae knew that the British foreign secretary, Lord Halifax, had reached the same conclusion, but that had not dissuaded the government from its policy of appeasement.

“You mentioned the leaders of the operation …?” Macrae left the question dangling. Koenig smiled.

“You would not expect me to reveal that, would you? Let me ask you a question instead – when will the British and French make their intentions clear?” Koenig looked over Macrae's shoulder and suddenly raised his voice. The attendant had returned and was lounging by the door. “And that concludes my little talk on these medieval maps, which show how our great Third Reich has its roots planted in the history of the First Reich. Thank you for listening.”

Koenig walked from the room, pausing to give an exaggerated Hitler salute, which was enthusiastically returned. The scene reminded Macrae of a Charlie Chaplin film, characters creating comedy through the absurdity of unreal and outrageous behaviour. Chaplin had said in Hollywood recently that Hitler seemed to be impersonating him rather than the other way round.

They met an hour later in a coffee shop on the second floor of the KaDeWe, the largest department store in Europe. Koenig had chosen the venue for the anonymity conferred by crowds of women shoppers struggling to find seats in the cafeteria, with bulging bags and small children eager for ice cream and chocolate biscuits.

They ordered coffee and glasses of iced water while waitresses moved past with trays of sandwiches, cakes and glasses containing elaborate ice-cream creations.

“You see, we can still give our people the luxuries of life,” said Koenig. “We don't spend
all
our money on arms. You were about to tell me something?”

“I thought you were about to tell me who was going to lead the operation.”

Koenig frowned. “There are two commanders who will lead, but they want to know for certain that the British will make their move.”

Macrae sipped his water. He looked around as if trying to catch sight of a lost child or a harassed wife; at least, that is what he hoped any casual observer would think. He turned back to Koenig.

“The navy will bring forward their autumn North Sea manoeuvres. The deployment will be unannounced,” Macrae said. “The day before the Nuremberg rally, the Home Fleet
will leave its base in Scapa Flow. The battle-class cruisers will be in plain sight of your coast the next day, when your Führer is due to speak. This is a clear breach of diplomatic protocol.”

“The Royal Navy?” said Koenig. “Yes, of course.”

He sipped his drink. He took a guarded look at the crowded tables around them. Take your time, thought Macrae. You have much more to lose than I do.

“Your navy is the one force that Hitler respects.” Koenig's voice was once again a whisper. “He has no time for the British soldier, still less for the French, but your navy is different. The sight of those ships off the north coast will enrage him. He'll go mad. He will order counter-manoeuvres, but we have nothing like your heavy cruisers – yet. The papers will be full of it. British provocation. Britannia shows her true colours. There will be an official protest from the Foreign Ministry. Goebbels will have a fit.”

Koenig was excited. He was sitting up straight in his chair and Macrae could see his mind was racing ahead to the effect the news would have on the conspirators. Britain had finally nailed her colours to the mast – literally. Her ships had sent the signal they had waited for. At last the oldest European democracy was going to stand up to a maniac who was using bluff and terror to pursue a master plan that could only lead to a new war. Koenig gulped his coffee down and raised the cup for a refill. He reached into his pocket and produced a diary and began making small entries.

Macrae felt deeply ashamed – that he had had to lie to stiffen the sinews of the German resistance, that his own government had no intention of doing anything that might meet with Hitler's disapproval, that he had accepted his wife's infidelity with the man sitting across the café table from him. He had never gone along with that tired old apology for criminality, namely that the end justifies the means. On this
occasion, he reluctantly had to admit that Halliday had been right. The lie about the Royal Navy had worked.

“I wouldn't write this down,” said Macrae.

“I'm not – just making diary marks. Today is the eighth of September. The closing rally when Hitler speaks is on Monday the twelfth, and then the White Ensign will be flying in sight of our ports. Excellent!”

The waitress arrived with fresh coffee. Koenig paid her, refilled both their cups and drank his quickly. He seemed to be about to leave.

Macrae had planned to confront him quietly and with dignity in the museum. Are you conducting an affair with my wife?
Conducting an affair.
What a ridiculous phrase; it made the lovers seem like principals in an orchestra. In fact, what they were doing was fucking each other in borrowed apartments, in other people's beds, and for all he knew his own bed. This wasn't an affair of the heart; this was just two people turning to each other for the satisfaction they could not find at home. And that was what hurt most of all. It wasn't as if they made much of a secret of it.

There had been no opportunity in the map room. Now he wanted to put the question to Koenig here, in a crowded cafeteria full of mothers with their ice cream-slurping, chocolate-smeared children, the middle-class Berliners enjoying the fruits of National Socialist rule. It would be a simple question, posed with calm to avoid a scene: “I have meant to ask you, Colonel Koenig, are you fucking my wife?” That was reasonable enough, wasn't it? Husbands had a right to ask that question of their wife's lover, didn't they?

“I must go,” said Koenig. “This has been very satisfactory. We must stay in touch. I will contact you.”

“Thank you,” said Macrae, and he rose to follow him from the room.

There was a singer at the Salon that night, the Marlene Dietrich lookalike, who was so admired by the Nazi High Command. It was close to midnight, but there she was, sitting on a bar stool, wearing black jacket, fishnet stockings and black top hat in a pale caricature of the original. The smoky voice and the famous numbers were a passable imitation of the real thing. Macrae closed his eyes and listened.

An army coup would end all this. The Salon, the girls, the Gestapo that used the place for blackmail, extortion and probably worse – the whole ghastly edifice of terror would crumble into dust. A Germany without Hitler was a pleasant dream, although there were some in London who wondered whether a new regime would be any different. Driven by that aggressive Prussian gene, wouldn't a collection of generals embark on similar plans of conquest in the east? Maybe, but at least the Jews might be spared the fate that any sane person could see awaited them in the Third Reich.

The Jews, they were leaving as fast as they could but already the exodus had been slowed. There were still roughly six hundred thousand in Germany and time was running out. Halliday had picked up hints of new and more ominous plans being drawn up by the Gestapo to deal with what was casually called the Jewish Problem. Heydrich was supposed to be in charge. Heydrich, the man who ran this brothel. Heydrich and his Jewish whore. He opened his eyes and looked around.

Sara was in the corner listening to the singer. She smiled and slowly walked over and sat down. The sight of her next to him, smiling at him, those dark eyes on his, her hand beneath the table taking his, made him suddenly feel happy, a surge of simple pleasure at her presence.

“Can I get you a drink?” she said.

“A whisky would be good. Highland Park, if they have it.”

She raised her arm and made a signal with her index and forefinger. Moments later the Highland Park arrived. A good malt spoilt by two large ice cubes. The song that Marlene Dietrich made famous while still unknown herself, “Falling in Love Again”, floated across the room.

“You like our new singer?”

“A poor copy of the original.”

“Germans like her songs. They close their eyes and dream of the good old days. They're a sentimental people.”

“I don't see much evidence of that in Berlin.”

“That's because you're not looking.”

“Where should I be looking?”

She got up, brushed the creases from her skirt and looked at him, eyebrows raised, as if mocking his question. Then she smiled at him, inclined her head slightly sideways and turned to walk towards the fanlight door at the end of the room. He drank the whisky in one, got up and walked after her.

It was well after midnight when Macrae got to Halliday's apartment, not far from his own house in Charlottenburg. He rang the bell insistently for five minutes before the door opened. Halliday squinted at him from a darkened hallway, his bulk mostly covered by a faded paisley-patterned silk dressing gown.

“I know it's late. I'm sorry,” said Macrae.

Halliday stepped aside without a word, waved him in and pointed to a door across the hallway.

The sitting room was sparsely furnished and spotlessly clean. Crowded bookshelves rising from floor to ceiling covered one wall. A desk and a chair had been placed by the
window and a sofa and two armchairs were arranged around a coal fire, from whose dark embers a slight warmth emanated.

The only other furniture was a trolley in one corner, which contained bottles of whisky, vodka, gin and brandy, and soda siphons. The floor was of dark polished wood which, without the presence of carpet or rugs, gave the room an institutional feel, that of a headmaster's study perhaps. There was not a painting, photograph or ornament to be seen. For a moment, Macrae found it difficult to imagine the shambolic character of Halliday living in a room stripped down to such spartan essentials. Then he realised that this was where Halliday played the endless game of bluff and counter-bluff, betrayal and deceit, a game that could only be won without distraction – save that of the drinks trolley.

“Do you take water in your malt?” Halliday was pouring generous measures into two crystal tumblers.

Macrae nodded and sat down. He had asked for a large glass of water but Halliday had dismissed this request, saying that anyone who came banging on his door after midnight was going to join him in a large whisky or leave immediately.

It was three in the morning when the two men finished talking. The fire had lost all warmth, the room was cold and the whisky bottle stood empty on the tray.

Halliday had sat in his armchair, eyes closed, legs splayed out in front him, listening as Macrae explained Koenig's detailed analysis of the mechanics of the putsch and the careful planning that had gone into it. Occasionally Halliday raised a hand and, with eyes still closed, said quietly, “Repeat that last bit, please.”

At one stage he had risen, gone to the desk, taken out a notebook and scribbled some notes.

Through the blur of fatigue and whisky, Macrae took a certain satisfaction that he was briefing a British intelligence agent with information that would soon be on the desk of Sir Stewart Menzies in London. Usually, it was the other way round.

It was when Bonhoeffer's name came up that Halliday rose from his chair and went to pour the last of the whisky.

“You know Hitler was in a military hospital at a place called Pasewalk at the end of the war?” he said. “Temporarily blinded by mustard gas. That's when he began ranting about defeat and the fall of the monarchy as being the fault of Jews, communists, Marxists, trade unionists – he blamed them all. A lot of people think he went clinically mad in that place and has stayed mad ever since. If a psychiatrist like Bonhoeffer is involved, it means they must have obtained his hospital records. He wasn't classified insane at the time but he was certainly mentally unbalanced. So, they are going to put him in a lunatic asylum? Interesting. Well, we must to bed.”