Michael Ridpath - Shadows of War

A start, but nothing to indicate why he could possibly be as important to the outcome of the war as Theo implied.

If Conrad went back to London, that was where his enquiries would end. He might be able to find out a little more about Charles Bedaux from friends of friends in business, but to investigate the man properly he needed to go to Paris. And the only time he could do that was right now.

He asked the waiter where the nearest post office was. It was only a few minutes’ walk away, just behind the royal palace. It took a while, but eventually his call was put through to Sir Robert Vansittart in London.

Van sounded harassed, but eager to speak to Conrad. ‘Any luck?’

Conrad remembered Van’s instructions not to be too specific on the telephone in case of listeners. Which, in this case, was very fortunate.

‘Yes, I would say so. It turns out our man was a fraud.’

‘Are you certain?’

‘Quite certain. Our friends haven’t had a chance to chat with their hosts much, but it’s likely they will eventually. The shopping list was found.’

‘I see. What about the beer?’

Conrad smiled at Van’s reference to the beer hall bomb. ‘No idea who spilled it.’ He thought a moment. ‘My old friend thinks it was the publican, but that’s just speculation.’

‘The publican? I think I know to whom you refer. It sounds odd. You are suggesting they spilled it on purpose?’

‘That’s what my old friend guesses.’ Conrad thought he had done a pretty good job of conveying Theo’s answers to Van.

‘You are flying home today, are you not? Come and see me straight from the airport and you can brief me directly.’

‘That might be difficult,’ said Conrad. ‘The thing is, I need to go to Paris this afternoon.’

‘Paris? For what purpose?’

‘Something my old friend told me. Difficult to discuss over the telephone. But I can explain everything when I get back to London.’

It was unlikely that concern over Conrad’s absence from his unit was high on Van’s list of priorities.

It wasn’t. ‘All right,’ Van said. ‘How long will you be?’

‘Not sure,’ said Conrad. ‘Two or three days.’

‘Be sure to report back here when you return.’ With that Van hung up to turn to more important matters of state.

Berlin

There was a spring in Theo’s step as he made his way down the Kurfürstendamm. The moon peeked out behind clouds, giving the street a dim, blue, illicit glow. In the blackout, the Ku’damm had lost its bright lights and its glitter, but the pavement was crowded and there was an air of tense excitement, of danger, of pleasure snatched in wartime, which Theo found exhilarating.

He needed cheering up. He had flown in to Tempelhof from Schiphol and delivered Lord Oakford’s message directly to Colonel Oster. There he had learned that the offensive on the western front had been postponed, and as a result General Halder had ordered all plans for the coup to be burned. A wave of disappointment had washed over Theo. He had known it all along: the general was a damned coward. All the generals were cowards.

But tonight Theo was going to enjoy himself.

He grinned at the image of the familiar cockatoo, drunk but happy on its sign above the doorway, and descended some steps. Inside, the Kakadu was doing great business. The trademark barmaids — brunettes alternating with blondes — were having trouble keeping to their pattern behind the bar. Theo winked at Mitzi, one of the Kakadu’s Eintanzers , wearing a typically absurd dress that laid bare her smooth pale flesh in all kinds of unexpected places. Heinie got him a table, not too far from the floor, and he ordered a bottle of ersatz champagne, a kind of fizzy alcoholic apple juice.

Theo lit a cigarette and examined the crowd. Plenty of uniforms: the grey-green of the Wehrmacht, like his own, the blue of the Luftwaffe and the occasional black of the SS. And there were girls. Lots of beautiful girls, doing their bit to encourage their fighting men.

He could feel her coming. There was a lull in the conversation, men’s eyes flicked to follow her, women’s eyebrows knitted a millimetre or two. She was tall, she was blonde and she was cool, so cool. She wore bright red lipstick, her high cheekbones were accentuated by clever use of make-up, and she never smiled. Ever.

Hedda didn’t need to smile to get what she wanted.

And what she wanted, Theo was pretty sure, was him. At least for that night.

He stood, pulled out a chair for her, poured her a glass of bubbles and lit her cigarette. ‘I’m glad you could make it,’ he said.

‘Günter is away for a couple of days. On exercise. A couple of nights.’

She didn’t smile, but there was something in the way she examined him that made him feel taller, stronger, more virile. They had met on the street during an air-raid scare in Berlin in September. They had both ignored the sirens and stared upwards at the searchlights and the flashes of anti-aircraft guns seeking out phantom British bombers. Theo had offered her his umbrella, to protect her from the bombs. She hadn’t laughed at this rather feeble joke as he had hoped she would, but she had coolly looked him up and down and then accepted it. Theo knew she was married, but it was only after their third night together that he had learned her husband was a Sturmbannführer in the SS Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler. It made her even more alluring.

‘So where have you been, Lieutenant von Hertenberg?’

‘You know I couldn’t possibly tell you that,’ Theo said.

‘Is it a secret?’

Theo looked straight into her cool blue eyes. ‘Yes.’

‘Are you some kind of spy?’

Theo’s brain tumbled. Was she joking? How the hell did she know that? He had never talked about any of his work. Perhaps that was how she knew; he wasn’t full of the usual soldier’s gripes.

He kept his face frozen. ‘Are you?’

She held his gaze and then blinked. Once. ‘Let’s dance.’

Hedda wasn’t exactly a great dancer. She didn’t have much of a sense of rhythm, but she did know how and when to press her body into her partner’s. Theo delighted in the surreptitious glances of the other men on the dance floor as they looked away from their own partners towards his.

He was horny. She was horny. This was going to be a good night. Theo deserved a good night after what he had been going through.

And then suddenly Theo thought of Millie, of her dress wrapping itself around her legs in the wind on the beach at Scheveningen, of her cheek as it turned away from his lips. The music jarred, Hedda’s legs knocked into his knee, his hand on her back felt the stickiness of sweat. Was it hers or his?

She sensed something. Hedda could always sense something. She had somehow sensed he was a spy. What the hell was he doing with the wife of a Sturmbannführer in a nightclub full of SS officers? He tried to imagine Millie in the Kakadu and he couldn’t.

She stepped back. One long, exquisitely plucked eyebrow arched inquisitively. ‘Theo?’

He pulled himself together. He couldn’t allow sentiment to spoil his evening. ‘I think we need some more champagne, don’t you?’

Zossen, Germany, 13 November

It had been a long, hard night with Hedda and Theo was feeling the fatigue. He could barely keep his eyes open as he drove the thirty kilometres south of Berlin to Zossen, which was the wartime command centre for the Wehrmacht. He had passed through the high-wire perimeter, two checkpoints and walked along boards laid over marshland to a large A-framed building, inside which he had taken a lift down to underground concrete corridors. There, in a tiny office, he had found Major Liss.