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Midnight in Berlin
By James MacManus St. Martin's Press
Copyright © 2016 James MacManus
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4668-9213-2
CHAPTER 1
The train arrived at Berlin's Anhalter Station shortly before noon, hissing a cloud of steam into the freezing air. They had left Vienna only a few hours earlier on a sunlit winter morning. Looking back, they could see from their carriage window the tower of St Stephen's Cathedral receding over the rooftops of a city that had lost, but not forgotten, the imperial splendour of an empire that had once ruled eastern Europe.
Berlin that Sunday morning was cold and empty, a monochrome city whose spires and steeples were lost in low cloud that vented occasional flurries of snow onto silent streets. Windows were shuttered as if those inside could not bear to look on such a desolate scene. Even the swastika bunting strung from lampposts along the route of a recent parade seemed about to wither and fall.
The embassy car crossed the River Spree before driving through the Brandenburg Gate and west along Charlottenburger Chaussee. They passed the gilded Victory Column that celebrated the Prussian triumph over France in 1871 and minutes later reached their destination – a four-storey house on a side street just off the avenue.
The driver opened the front door and began to unload the luggage. Colonel Macrae got out and held the door of the car for his wife. She did not acknowledge the courtesy and walked into the house, her pale, powdered face set in a frown. She had accepted the sudden upheaval as the lot of a diplomat's wife. This was to be their new home, and he watched as she marched up the stairs to begin a tour of inspection. He had told her only six days ago that he had been posted to Berlin and was expected to be at his desk in the embassy the following week. Surely she could follow on later, she had asked, say goodbye properly to their friends in Austria, have one last dinner party at the old house?
No. The orders from the War Office were specific: the military attaché and his wife were to be in their new residence within the week. The duties of both would start immediately, she to carry on the usual round of entertaining and he to continue the excellent work of his predecessor. Colonel Eveleigh Watson's heart attack had shocked the embassy and drawn unusual tributes from senior German officers.
Macrae went to the bottom of the stairs and raised his voice. "We have a lunch, dear – you remember, I told you?" He knew she would be somewhere on the upper floors pulling back bed covers, opening the curtains, turning on taps, running a finger over the furniture to check for dust. In fact, the house was spotless and the kitchen equipped with that most modern of conveniences, a refrigerator, which had been well stocked with perishable provisions.
There was no reply. He walked up the broad staircase to the second floor. A door on the landing gave onto a large L-shaped drawing room. Three sofas were placed around a fireplace. A large mirror stood above the mantel. The floor was polished wood. At one end, French windows and a small balcony overlooked the avenue.
He opened the windows and stepped out. Much of the Tiergarten park was heavily wooded, but on this stretch of the road the trees had been felled to make way for a row of houses, a police station and a kindergarten. To his right, he could see the Siegessäule, the Victory Column they had passed, a grandiose martial memorial rising 220 feet into the air.
He had read in a guidebook that the Nazis had somehow added thirty feet to the column when they moved it, stone by stone, from its original position in front of the Reichstag parliament building half a mile away. They said it was done to create space for Albert Speer's plans for the new Berlin.
A voice floated down, saying something about lunch. He looked at his watch. It was twelve forty-five. They were due at the ambassador's residence in a neighbouring suburb at 1 p.m. for what had been described as a small welcome lunch. They would be late.
"I'll wait in the hall," he said loudly, and walked downstairs.
By the front door he caught his reflection in the gilded hall mirror: a rakish hat pulled down over an angular face whose long nose pointed over thin lips to a jutting chin. At school they had called him Nosey, but he was tall for his age and a handy forward in the rugger first XV. Nobody had ever tried to bully him. He pulled the belt of his overcoat tight and looked at his watch. He had been told that the ambassador disapproved of guests arriving late, especially if they were on his staff.
Sir Nevile Henderson was well known on the diplomatic circuit in Berlin. He was always elegantly dressed in the old-fashioned style of an Edwardian gentleman: wing-tip collar, dark tie, waistcoat and watch chain. His one concession to colour was the red carnation he invariably wore in his buttonhole. He was unmarried and often invited a middle-aged lady on his staff, Daisy Wellesley, to act as his hostess. This somewhat unusual arrangement was the subject of quite unfounded gossip. It was also said, quite truthfully as it happened, that Sir Nevile provided only fine German wines, whether at lunch or dinner, for fear that French vintages might upset his official guests.
On this Sunday, Noel and Primrose Macrae were offered a light white Bavarian wine while standing around a log fire at the far end of the dining room. The table had been laid for seven, Macrae noticed. There were three other guests: the political attaché, David Buckland, and his wife Amanda, and a stout, middle-aged man with the veined nose of an habitual drinker, who clearly did not wish to be there.
He was introduced as Roger Halliday, "a senior member of the team". He certainly did not dress like a diplomat. His clothes looked as if they had been acquired at a flea market and flung on in the dark. The shirt collar was frayed, the cuffs protruded from an old hunting jacket that had lost its buttons. The jacket had deep baggy pockets, presumably once used for stowing the odd game bird. His hair was a mop of uncombed white, curling in lank waves over his collar. He looked like a poacher, thought Macrae. He guessed he was a member of the Secret Intelligence Service.
Macrae watched as his wife thawed out under the charm of the ambassador and the effect of the wine. Her face, which had been set in a frosty mask since they left Vienna, had relaxed.
Sir Nevile said he was terribly sorry about the abrupt move, which must have been very awkward. He hoped their new home had been made as welcoming as possible. Had they, by any chance, noticed the champagne in the fridge? Primrose said she had not, but thanked him for being so generous and thoughtful. Yes, she said, the move had been a bit of a struggle. They had not really had time to say goodbye properly to their friends, but when His Majesty's Government calls ...
She gave a tinkling laugh.
The ambassador smiled and gestured to the table, where plates of soup had been served. He tucked a napkin into his shirt collar and turned to Macrae.
"How long were you in Vienna, Colonel?" he asked.
"Three years, Sir Nevile," said Macrae. The ambassador liked his title to be used, even by his own staff.
"Good listening post, Austria," said the ambassador.
"Indeed, one probably learns more about what the German High Command is thinking in Vienna than here in Berlin."
Sir Nevile found the remark irritating. The British ambassador in Berlin did not need his new military attaché to tell him what was in the mind of the German High Command.
"Really," he said drily.
"German generals spend a lot of time there on military cooperation meetings, holidays, socialising, that sort of thing; they talk more freely there, in a way they can't here."
"So perhaps you would enlighten us and tell us what the High Command is thinking?"
Daisy Wellesley glanced at the ambassador. She knew that tone all too well. The lunch had taken a wrong turn. Other guests had fallen silent. This was not the cosy Sunday lunch she had been told to arrange for the new arrivals. The ambassador leant back. His sarcasm was as evident as his instant dislike of the new military attaché.
Macrae slowly raised a spoon of soup to his mouth and wiped his lips with the napkin. He looked at the ambassador, noting the club tie and the carnation, fresh that morning. All the man needed was a monocle to become the cartoon caricature of an English gentleman that featured in satirical continental magazines. I have three years working with this man, he thought. Dear God.
"The German army does not want war," he said.
"And who said there is going to be a war?" said the ambassador, allowing himself a slight smile.
"I thought British policy was predicated on the belief that we are dealing with a highly aggressive, militaristic regime and that we must use diplomacy to prevent German overreach? Which is the diplomatic term for war, I think."
"This is frightfully dull," interrupted Miss Wellesley. "Can't you men save this boring talk for the office? I want to tell Primrose about the new winter coat in Wertheim's. Do you know that department store, dear? It is absolutely wonderful. Bigger than Harrods. The weather is icy here and I am sure you are going to need a new coat, aren't you?"
The guests gratefully turned to the one subject on which everyone was happy to express an opinion, Berlin's long and bitter winters.
"We're on the central European plateau and there is not so much as a hill between us and Moscow," said David Buckland. "Frankfurt has the Main river and Hamburg the sea to keep them warm, but here we just have to buy ourselves new winter coats."
Macrae looked at the political attaché. He hadn't said a word until then and was obviously hoping to be helpful. He was young, probably late twenties, and almost certainly with a background at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford, but a possible ally nonetheless.
Daisy Wellesley guided the conversation from the weather to the latest rumour that Marlene Dietrich had been offered a huge sum to return from California to make another film in the Berlin studios. She had apparently agreed on condition that she bring with her a fellow exile, the director Josef von Sternberg.
"That put an end to it, I'm told," said Miss Wellesley.
"Why?" asked Primrose.
"Sternberg is Jewish," said Daisy Wellesley, regretting that she had mentioned the story. "Anyone for coffee?"
Sir Nevile suggested that he and Macrae leave the other guests and take coffee in his study. The two men settled before an unlit fire in a book-lined room.
Macrae declined the offer of a brandy but accepted a slim cigar. He knew Primrose would be keen to get back to the house and start unpacking. There were fires to be lit, clothes to be aired and books to be placed on shelves. Their new home was waiting for them and he was about to be given a lecture by his ambassador.
"I think I will have that brandy after all," Macrae said.
Sir Nevile looked pleased and poured a generous measure. He lit his cigar, puffed and leant back in the armchair.
"The German problem is not easy," he said.
"I could not agree more," said Macrae, glancing discreetly at his watch. Agree with everything the ambassador says and he could be out of there in twenty minutes. By then Primrose would have been bored to distraction by talk of new winter coats in Wertheim's department store.
"But I believe that we are on the right track," said the ambassador.
It was a question rather than a statement. The ambassador knew little about the new man or his views on official policy.
"That's good news," said Macrae.
Sir Nevile looked at his military attaché through cigar smoke, searching for a hint of irony in the remark.
"Herr Hitler is ill-educated, indeed hardly educated at all, but he knows his history."
"So I have heard," said Macrae, waiting for the history lesson that he knew was coming. That was the point of the talk. It was going to be an account of the rationale for British policy towards the Third German Reich. The ambassador drew deeply on his cigar, exhaled and began talking.
"I have had many meetings with the chancellor, and every time he rambles back to the way Frederick the Great in the eighteenth century created an empire here in central Europe. Then Napoleon came along in the nineteenth century and broke it up. Bismarck created a unified German state towards the end of the last century, which was once again broken up after the last war. The Treaty of Versailles – some people call it a peace treaty, I can't think why – gave France Alsace and Lorraine on Germany's western border and lopped off a chunk of the eastern territory and gave it to Poland. Then the Allies occupied the Rhineland."
The ambassador paused, eyebrows raised, waiting for a comment. Macrae said nothing.
"That's pretty crude history," the ambassador said, "but it's the way the chancellor sees it, and that's what matters. He calls all those territories the 'lost lands' and he wants them back. That is our problem."
"Well, he's got the Rhineland back, hasn't he? He just walked into it."
The ambassador shifted in his chair. That was the sort of facile comment one would expect from a reader of the Manchester Guardian, not a British military attaché.
"And what do you suppose we should have done about that?" he asked.
"He only had three divisions. A little show of strength from the French might have stopped him."
"The French weren't up for it and nor were we. Frankly, HMG didn't see much of a problem in the Rhineland – he was just walking into his own back yard."
"He seems to see most of eastern Europe as his own back yard."
The ambassador eyed Macrae. His first impression had been right; the man was going to be a problem.
"As I said, it is not an easy situation."
"So we are looking at another German Empire with Hitler as a new Bismarck or Frederick the Great?"
Sir Nevile was silent for a while, a theatrical trick he had learnt early on in the Foreign Service. Make the other chap wait for an answer – it adds weight when it finally comes, and gives time for thought.
"He greatly admires Frederick the Great," he said finally.
Two can play the history game, thought Macrae, who had abandoned the tactic of deferential agreement.
"That's the problem, isn't it? Frederick the Great loved war and Bismarck said you could do anything with bayonets but sit on them."
"We and the French lost over a million men in the last war. We cannot afford another one."
"But not peace at any price, Sir Nevile?"
"There is always a price to pay for peace," said the ambassador. "Now, let's rejoin the others, shall we?"
The two men stood up. Macrae finished his brandy. The ambassador paused at the door.
"One more thing. Just a bit of advice I give all new staff."
Macrae waited while Sir Nevile weighed his words. Finally, he turned and looked him straight in the eyes.
"Stay away from the Adlon."
"The hotel?"
"Yes."
"Why? It's the best in Berlin, isn't it?"
"It was once. Now it's full of journalists and racketeers."
"Racketeers?"
"Arms salesmen, conmen of every stripe. The journalists are the worst, though. The Gestapo bug the place. Hardly surprising, really. Best avoided."
"I'll bear that in mind," said Macrae.
They tried to celebrate their first night in their new home. Macrae lit the fire in the dining room and opened a bottle of champagne. Primrose found some tinned pâté and prosciutto in the fridge and served it on crispbread. The house remained chilly despite the fire. She wore a thick jersey over her dress.
"I am sorry," he said.
"It's not your fault. Ghastly lunches come with the job, don't they?"
"No, I mean I'm sorry we had to come here. I know you didn't want to."
"We must play the cards we have in our hand, mustn't we – that's what father used to say."
She got up, brushed crumbs from her dress and walked through to the kitchen. They had met at a summer ball in Surrey while he was on leave from France during the war. It was 1917 and almost every friend he had made at school had been killed or wounded. Primrose had lost her brother too, near Mons, in the final horrific day of that battle.
They had slipped out of the ballroom, walked into the welcoming semi-darkness of the garden and sat on a bench, sipping champagne and smoking. She was just twenty and was wearing a long white dress with a silver headband and a black armband. Most of the girls wore similar armbands, all mourning brothers, fathers, uncles lost in the carnage of the trenches.
"I feel the world is coming to an end," she said.
"I know. I hardly have a friend from school left."
They smoked in silence, watching the dancers move like marionettes in the well-lit ballroom. The band was playing waltz after waltz and the music drifted into the garden through open French windows.
"Come on," she said suddenly.
She got up, took his hand and led him into the darkness at the end of the garden.
She threw away her cigarette. "Hold this," she said, and handed him the fluted glass.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Midnight in Berlin by James MacManus. Copyright © 2016 James MacManus. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
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