Midnight in Berlin (3 page)

He had seen those heads fall backwards or sometimes simply explode, scattering blood and skull fragments. Usually the range was too long for a certain hit. At eight hundred yards, the sniper version of the Lee–Enfield was at its outside range. Then the sniper needed to calculate the strength and direction of the wind; even a strong breeze could make a difference over half a mile of open ground. And all the time the sniper knew he too was being stalked by enemy marksmen. You fired a single shot, then ducked down to seek a new camouflaged position.

He had enjoyed the job. The killing was easy, and his reports were praised for their meticulous attention to detail. He recorded long-range shots at periscopes raised in second-line trenches, because he had a theory that the shattered glass would be driven into the eyes of those peering into the bottom half. That report had been well received and circulated to other units on the Western Front. It was ghoulish, unfair and not at all sportsmanlike, but, as Macrae told himself, there was nothing fair or sportsmanlike about life in the trenches. He also knew that he would never become a prisoner of war. If the Germans captured a sniper, they shot him out of hand.

Primrose's family had reluctantly assented to the match. They were wealthy landowners in Somerset and she was their only daughter. He was a doctor's son from St Andrews in Scotland. But there were few eligible bachelors after the slaughter in France, and in any case Primrose quietly told her parents she would never speak to them again if they withheld their consent. The wedding took place in London early in
1918. The honeymoon was spent on the ship to India, sailing via the Suez Canal and Aden. This was his new posting and, as he told his bride, a miraculous chance to escape the slaughter in Flanders and start a new life.

That was twenty years ago, since when he had returned from India to command a field battery unit at Aldershot. He had been promoted to major and then again to lieutenant colonel when he was made a military attaché, a hybrid role reporting to both the ambassador and his military masters in London.

His first posting had been to Budapest, then Vienna. Primrose had put up with the rigours of life as a soldier's wife. But the further they travelled, the more distant she became. She grew tired of the circle of wives in India and even more so back home in the regimental world of Aldershot. The impetuous sexual adventurer Macrae had met in the darkness of a Surrey garden became a bored housewife whose indifference to her marriage slowly turned into resentment.

Macrae had finally suggested they sit down and discuss their problems. He had just come out of the bathroom into the bedroom and was towelling himself dry. She was sitting in front of the dressing table wearing a black petticoat. Black was her favourite colour. The portrait of her brother by her side of the bed was framed in black. Her dog, a Labrador, had been chosen for its colour. They were going that night to what she called another BBDP – bloody boring dinner party. It was always the same people, the same gossip, the same under-the-table grope from some senior officer, and the same food, she used to say. The Foreign Office must issue their diplomatic wives with a menu card limited to smoked salmon and lamb chops.

“I want you to have an affair,” she had said without looking round from the dressing table.

He sat on the bed in shock.

“What on earth are you talking about?”

“Don't look so surprised. I'm going to, so you might as well too. It could improve things, don't you think?”

“And who exactly are you going to have an affair with?”

She stood up and turned to face him. “I don't know. Does it matter?” She went into the bathroom.

He had briefly wondered if his wife was going mad. It happened a lot to Foreign Service wives when they got back from India, it was said. They were given a lot of strange pills and quietly sent to rest homes in the Home Counties.

“Do you want a divorce?” he had said when she reappeared.

“Don't be silly. What would be the point? Men are all the same. You're a bit hopeless but you're still my husband – and always will be.” Then she had kissed him, a full-throated, passionate kiss.

The memory made him smile. There was a clatter of plates from the kitchen, a crash and a muffled curse.

“I'm going for a walk,” he said. “Do you want to come?” It was half past four and dark outside. The temperature in Berlin would be falling below zero soon.

She popped her head out of the kitchen.

“It's bloody freezing out there. I'm going to unpack.”

Macrae walked up the Charlottenburger Chaussee under the glare of street lamps and the lights from a stream of traffic. On the far side of the Brandenburg Gate he could see the illuminated outline of the Hotel Adlon.

He had been to Berlin just once before and then only for a day-long meeting at the embassy for military attachés in the region, those from Vienna, Budapest, Prague and Warsaw.
To save money, he had arrived from Vienna that morning by train and returned on the last train at night. He had learnt nothing at the meeting he did not know and seen nothing of the city. He had tried to return, but Colonel Watson was possessive about what he called his patch and had declined to arrange a meeting. Now Macrae was going to explore the secrets of a city that had surrendered the chaotically creative pleasures of the Weimar Republic to the joyless diktat of the National Socialist Party. A cocktail at the Adlon would be a good start.

Two doormen in dove-grey uniforms and top hats stood by the red-carpeted steps to the entrance of the hotel. Two sets of doors opened onto a large lobby flanked on one side by a gleaming mahogany reception counter and concierge desk. Three heads came up to observe Macrae as he looked around for the way to the bar.

“The bar is through here, sir,” said the concierge in perfect English.

He hurried forward to usher Macrae into a richly carpeted room, framed by four marble pillars, that stretched the entire width of the hotel. Elegant palms rose from large urns at the foot of each pillar. A long bar stretched down one side of the room, with leather-topped bar stools. At one end, a large spray of pink and white long-stemmed flowers added a splash of colour to the room.

Macrae seated himself at the bar and looked at a long menu of drinks handed him by one of three barmen.

“Evening, sir. What will it be?”

The barman had an American accent. Macrae wondered if all the hotel staff spoke English. Maybe it was a requirement of the job.

“A gimlet, bitte.”

“Gordon's or Plymouth?”

“Plymouth.”

“Coming up.”

Hollywood B movies were very popular in Germany and every barman in Berlin seemed to have studied the dialogue in the inevitable bar scenes.

The barman mixed the drink, made a theatrical gesture of polishing the bar in front of Macrae, placed a small drink mat down and set the glass upon it. Macrae put a twenty-mark note on the counter, which was accepted with a nod.

He sipped the drink and looked around the room.

“New in town?” said the barman.

“Yes.”

“Business?”

“Sort of.”

The barman laughed.

“If you are a journalist, they're all over there,” he said, nodding to a group of men on the far side of the room.

Macrae looked over at half a dozen middle-aged men, their heads bent forward over a coffee table, talking quietly and nodding to each other as if to prevent anyone hearing their conversation. Occasionally they sat back, laughed, raised their glasses, drank, lit cigarettes and then leant forward again. They looked like a flock of birds feeding in a field.

“Who are they?” said Macrae.

“Americans, British, all the big names. They're here every evening.”

“You know them?”

“Sure, I know them, and I know what they like to drink.”

He began to recite a list of names and cocktails.

“Shirer likes a whisky sour; he's CBS. Then there's the
Times
man from London; he's straight whisky on the rocks.”

“And who's that group over there?” said Macrae, cutting in.

The barman leant forward confidentially, taking a quick look at either end of the bar.

“Arms dealers. From all over.”

“And there?” said Macrae, nodding to a third group who had drawn two tables together and sat in a circle, looking serious.

“Businessmen. There's a lot of business in this city, if you know the right people.”

“You said Shirer, didn't you?”

“Yes.”

“Which one is he?”

“That's Shirer in the middle,” said the barman.

“A small favour,” said Macrae, taking his card from his wallet and putting it on the counter. “Send this over to him, would you?”

“Sure,” said the barman. “Any message?”

“No.”

The barman frowned, looked at the engraved card, glanced up at Macrae as if to confirm his identity and walked over to the journalists' table.

Shirer was round-faced, balding, with a moustache. He looked up at the barman, took the card, listened for a moment as the barman whispered in his ear, then looked across the room and nodded in the direction of the bar.

Macrae ordered another drink. The gimlet had worked but he would need a second for the walk home.

She was asleep when he got back but had left his bedside light on. There was a tumble of fair hair over her face. In sleep she looked younger than her forty years, a face unlined, the skin shiny with night cream. She had miscarried late in pregnancy while in India and had insisted on seeing the foetus
of a baby boy almost fully formed. The authorities would not allow a burial in the cemetery, so she had servants dig a grave in the garden and placed a small cross over it. She had called her baby Richard. They had never tried again.

The portrait of her brother stood on her bedside table. He was sure she talked to him every night before sleeping. Good-looking boy, aged just nineteen when he was killed. He had been in a shell hole, stranded for two days between the lines while an artillery duel raged. Two of his own men died trying to reach him. Then they gave up.

Macrae went to sleep wondering whether he should have sent his card to Shirer. His broadcasts from Berlin had become famous in America and he was said to be very well informed. The Germans were keen to promote their version of events in Europe to an American audience and they were greatly helped by the support of such celebrities as Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh.

Shirer might be useful. Joseph Goebbels himself was said to feed him stories. The American correspondent was adept at sifting the truth from the propaganda and if you listened carefully to his broadcasts you could detect his own views on the rise of the Third Reich.

Shirer was smart and well connected, but if all went well, Macrae wouldn't need him. He had his own man well placed to know what was going on, a source nurtured over the years he had spent in Budapest and Vienna. It would be risky making contact again. He'd have to be careful. Berlin was a dangerous city.

Beside him Primrose turned, talking to herself in her sleep, long muttered conversations he had often heard but could never understand.

Berlin got to work early on winter mornings. From around seven, office workers streamed in from the suburbs by tram, overground and underground trains to staff commercial and government offices, cafés, shops and the big department stores. The biggest of all, Wertheim's in Leipziger Platz, had a brilliantly lit quarter-mile frontage and employed a thousand people. At the other end of the square another huge store, Tietz, had sought to trump its rival by offering free breakfast to the first fifty customers to enter.

Berliners were constantly reminded that the efficient transport network was the creation of the National Socialist government. The days of the Weimar Republic, when overcrowding and strikes made public transport both uncomfortable and unreliable, had gone. Not only could workers get into the city on time, but those employed in the industrial belt further out could rely on trains and buses to take them to huge factories such as I. G. Farben, the chemical plant that alone employed three thousand people.

The tented cities for the homeless and unemployed around Berlin's lakes had been swept away to beautify the
city for the 1936 Olympic Games. There were to be no homeless or unemployed in the new Germany. The rearmament programme had created jobs for all – at least for men – and cheap housing developments meant a home for every worker.

This was part of the National Socialist government's economic miracle, and those who did not choose to contribute to its success found the government had thoughtfully provided another option – incarceration in a labour camp.

The throng of commuters of all ages who poured out of the train stations and bus terminals were almost all male. The few women to be seen were working on the food stalls selling bratwurst, coffee and warm pastries. The most prominent of the many government posters on walls, pillars and the sides of buses proclaimed that a woman's place was at home with her children. Those women who did work were reminded in similar fashion that trousers were not to be worn and that skirts must fall to at least an inch below the knee.

One exception to the all-male morning rush hour could be seen on the corner of Wilhelmstrasse and Prinz-Albrechtstrasse, where a long queue of men and women formed outside a graceful five-storey building that had once been the School of Arts and Crafts. Here, in the decadent decade of the 1920s, painters, sculptors, weavers and potters had learnt their craft and exhibited their creations. Now it was the headquarters of the Geheime Staatspolizei, better known by its widely feared abbreviation, Gestapo.

There was no signage to announce the identity of the building, and the men and women waiting to enter for the day's work looked no different from any other government employees. A casual observer might have noticed there were rather more women among them than was usual. The observer would not have been able to see that within the building the
regime and the rules were very different from that of a normal government office.