Midnight in Berlin (46 page)

“Immediately, but we understand you will need a week or two to make your arrangements. Your replacement has been told to be in post at the end of April.”

“This is outrageous.”

“No more so than your recent conduct. You seem to have forgotten that we are a civilised, Christian nation. Good luck in your new post.”

And that is how his career in Berlin had ended. There was no appeal and no point in protest. The letter from the War Office had been signed by Hore-Belisha. When he had got the atlas out that night and showed Primrose where Lourenço Marques was, at the tip of the African continent, she had taken the book and flung it out of the window.

She had shouted at him, screamed and yelled, and finally walked out. She didn't come back that night. He had called Halliday, but there was no reply. He had gone to the Adlon for a few drinks and tried to think clearly. Maybe getting out of Berlin at that moment, the last peaceful springtime in Europe for many a long year, was no bad thing.

Maybe he and Primrose could consider themselves lucky to be able to sit out the coming war in the tropical splendour of Lourenço Marques, wherever that was. Maybe he would ask for a divorce. Maybe he should resign from the army and join Sara in London. Maybe he would ask Sara to come to Portuguese East Africa, because Primrose had made it clear she was not going. What had Sara said? She was going to
train as a teacher? Well, there should be plenty of teaching to do at the far end of Africa.

The maybes piled up in an untidy heap on the bar like olive stones. He chewed the thoughts over and spat them out one by one. He finished his drink and swept the maybes out of his mind. He knew what he was going to do. Whatever happened, it would not take him to the Pearl of the Indian Ocean.

He looked at his watch. It was almost ten-thirty. The civilian parades were well under way, but he knew Hitler would not appear until the military march-past began just before eleven. Göring and Goebbels would be vying for the attention of the spectators, each trying to stand slightly in front of the other on the platform as they saluted the parading schoolchildren and workers' organisations. Hitler would bide his time. He was a master showman who chose his entrance with care.

Macrae shook the bullets from the pouch and slid five rounds into the magazine. He would need only one or two at the most. Five rounds was a precaution in case anything went terribly wrong. But nothing would go wrong. He slid the magazine into the rifle, flipped the bolt up and moved it forward, injecting the first round into the firing chamber. The first and only round, he told himself.

The rifle felt better once loaded. It was ready to fulfil the purpose for which it had been designed by an American armourer called James Lee, whose gun was first mass-produced in a north London suburb called Enfield. A strange combination that had given its name to a great infantry weapon.

He took the rifle upstairs, walked into the drawing room and looked out of the French windows. He pushed a window open but did not step onto the balcony. There was just a chance that they would be watching windows, balconies and
roofs that provided a good line of sight onto the reviewing stand. Possible but highly unlikely. Heydrich and his Gestapo gang thought they had caught, tortured and killed or imprisoned every dissident in the country, and they were very nearly right.

Placing one foot on the low wooden sill of the window, he raised the gun and looked through the sights. There was a clear view of the lectern. He swung the weapon slightly to one side and saw Göring. The field marshal of the Luftwaffe had recently lost three stone at a health farm in the Swiss Alps but looked as absurd as ever in a light grey uniform that sagged under the weight of rows of medals.

Maybe he could take the field marshal out with a second bullet. No, he told himself, don't be greedy. It would be better if Göring were alive after Hitler had fallen. He would make a power grab using the forces of the Luftwaffe. Goebbels and Himmler would fight back with their own special forces. While the Nazis descended into murderous disarray, the army would move in.

And that was what the plan depended on. The more he thought about it, the more he was sure. The conspirators were still there waiting for the opportunity. The assassination would be their chance. They would arrest the leadership, declare martial law and install an interim military government. The whole Nazi house of cards would come tumbling down once the ace in the pack had been removed. Then there would be a bloody settling of accounts.

He put the gun down and looked at his watch. It was ten fifty. Time for a coffee. His hands were trembling slightly. He placed a finger under his wrist, feeling for the pulse. His resting heart rate was fast at eighty-six a minute. He would still have the coffee. Adrenalin was good. He wasn't nervous. What he was about to do was morally right, an imperative
that the gods of any religion would recognise. Macrae was neither religious nor superstitious, but that morning he felt the hand of history on his shoulder.

He swung the rifle up again and focused the sights on the spectators. Through the leaf cover he could see the ambassador wearing his usual red carnation. The rest of the embassy staff were obscured.

He went to the kitchen, put the kettle on and looked at his watch. It was ten fifty-three. Seven minutes to go. The coffee would not cool in time. He would burn his mouth trying to drink it. That would be a distraction. He turned the kettle off and took deep breaths.

Keep calm, he told himself. You will do this. There will be bloody chaos for a day or two. The embassy will sit tight. Primrose might even go to London as she planned the following morning, if the trains were running. He would follow when the fuss had died down. As for Sir Nevile Henderson and the prime minister – well, it didn't matter what they thought. They could go to hell.

He walked back up the stairs. There was a groundswell of expectant cheering outside. He swung the rifle up. There was no sign of the Führer. Any minute now. The noise became a roar, a wave of sound that broke over the centre of the city and swept out to the suburbs. The first of the tanks appeared, moving quite swiftly down the avenue, and began rolling towards the reviewing stand; brand new Panzer III tanks, better than anything in the British army.

Macrae stepped onto the balcony and raised his rifle. The noise became a crescendo as Hitler walked onto the reviewing stand and took his position at the lectern. He was wearing his usual army uniform with the peaked cap and Iron Cross 2nd Class. He raised his arm in greeting to the crowds lining the avenue.

The first tanks moved slowly past the stand, while behind lay a long ribbon of camouflaged armour and transport vehicles stretching into the outer suburbs. The intention was as clear as the message it conveyed. This was Hitler's birthday present to himself: an army that he, the Führer of the Third Reich, had forged out of the chaos of the Weimar Republic. It was an army that no one should doubt he intended to use.

Macrae tucked the butt of the rifle into his shoulder, leaning against the door jamb, and peered through the sights. He had Hitler in plain view now, his head and shoulders neatly bisected by the cross hairs. The Führer's stance on the platform meant he was presenting the rear and right side of his body to the rifle. Macrae shifted slightly, focusing the cross hairs on a point just behind Hitler's right ear.

A clean shot would spatter blood and brain over the lectern. Hitler would slump sideways, arms flailing instinctively for the lectern, and then fall to the floor. Death would be instant.

Macrae began to squeeze the trigger slowly, remembering the lesson that was drummed into every sniper:
Rush your shot and lose your target.
He felt the trigger stiffening against his forefinger. He shifted the aim slightly as Hitler moved a pace sideways, waving his arms, working himself into the paroxysm of oratorical triumphalism that characterised all his speeches.

The scream, the blow on his head and the whip-crack of the rifle shot came together with such force and shock that at first he thought he had somehow fallen from the balcony.

He was on his knees, the gun still in his hands, desperately scrambling to his feet. She was screaming obscenities at him. Primrose. She was standing over him, her red-lipsticked mouth opening like a bleeding wound, shouting terrible words he could not understand. She was kicking him, lashing out with her feet so furiously that her shoes flew off and over the balcony. She was swinging wild punches that pounded on
his chest as he tried to get up. He felt dizzy and sick as he forced himself up, reached for the rifle and swung the butt into her face, hearing the thud as it connected.

She fell back and he saw the spurt of blood from her mouth. She was lying there, her hands reaching for her mouth, dabbing at the blood, looking at it and still shouting at him. Had he fired the shot? He pulled back the bolt and a spent cartridge case flew out.

He stepped back onto the balcony, raised the rifle and looked through the sights. Hitler was still there on the reviewing stand, his right arm rising and falling. The shot had gone wide or high. No one had heard it. Behind him, Primrose was clambering to her feet, blood on her dress and face. He swung round and pointed the rifle at her.

It would be easy. An accident while he was cleaning the weapon. No one had heard the first shot; why should anyone hear the second? She had stopped screaming. She was talking quickly, taking huge deep breaths. He had been the only one missing at the parade. People had asked where he was. Then she had suddenly realised why. She had known what he planned to do. And she had come back to stop him, stop an act of insanity that would have had them both hanging from hooks in a Gestapo cellar, their lives slowly tortured out of them with cattle prods.

“They would have killed us all, don't you see? Every man, woman and child in the embassy.”

Fury robbed him of words. For a fraction of a moment, he wanted to tear her dress off and throw her body over the balcony. Blood was still coming from her mouth. She began to cry, sobbing violently. She walked unsteadily backwards, still looking at him, and collapsed on a sofa. He threw the rifle to one side and sat beside her, his arm around her, holding her tightly, seeing the blood seep into his shirt and trousers.

Hitler's birthday parade and the speech he made that afternoon dominated the British papers the next day. The coverage led on the awesome display of firepower and new weaponry on show. There were colourful sidebar stories about the Nazi leadership gathered behind the Führer on the reviewing stand, each trying to outdo each other with medals, ribbons and other insignia.

There were also lengthy analyses of Hitler's speech, which amounted to a brutal warning to the Western powers – meaning Britain, France and Holland – not to meddle in eastern Europe. Newsreels of the display that afternoon played in cinemas around the world, to emphasise the message.

Sara Sternschein cut out every story in
The Times
about the events in Germany and pasted them into a scrapbook, which she kept under her bed in her lodgings in a London suburb. She read the paper from cover to cover every day. It was part of her plan to understand the country that had offered her refuge, and to become English. One day she would show her son or daughter, whichever the baby was to
be, the cowardice and complacency of civilised nations like Britain when faced with such barbarism.

The Times
, which had been her guide and mentor since arriving in London four months earlier, almost seemed to sanction the Nazi land grab in Europe. Again and again, the leading articles in that newspaper argued that Hitler was no more than a nationalist leader with a legitimate desire to return Germany to its former status as a major power in central Europe. As for the Jews,
The Times,
like every other paper in Britain, scarcely mentioned their plight.

She didn't mind; she had cause to be very grateful. When the long conversations in that room had ended and she had told them everything about the Salon and its customers, they had asked her what she wanted to do. She had said she would like to train as a teacher.

They suggested that she might work in a unit translating German documents and tape recordings of broadcasts. She thanked them but declined. Her mind was made up. She wanted to be a teacher, to make a life and a contribution to the country that had saved her life.

It was Halliday, flitting in and out of London from Berlin, who had helped her. He was always there when she needed him. It seemed that he had never stopped following her from that time he saw her at the Ostbahnhof.

He told her he had been to school in a leafy suburb of London, a famous place that had once produced the well-known writer P. G. Wodehouse. He had made enquiries and there was a position for an assistant helping the modern languages teacher. She would be required to hold conversational classes in German with the boys and help the marking of written work. He would find her a room in the area, he said; it was not far from central London.

She had told him then what she should have told him
before. She would need more than one room. He had not understood at first, and then looked at her and became embarrassed. When, he had asked.

“I am due in five months,” she said.

She saw that he was trying to work it out. She could tell him the exact date. It was near midnight in the Tiergarten two weeks before Christmas. They had not even taken their clothes off, not properly anyway. Brandy and the warmth of lust had prompted what she thought would be a last meeting on a freezing night in the Tiergarten. Macrae had given her a Christmas present that night – the amethyst necklace. She had hardly had time to look at it before they parted but now she wore it all the time, the violet translucent stones a reminder of a time and place she could not forget.

It was at school one morning in the tea break that her usual cover-to-cover reading of
The Times
took her to a page listing the service appointments. This was tucked away behind the obituaries and before the weather news. The words made her sit back and grasp her cup of milky tea more tightly. Under “Recent Appointments” she read: