Christopher Priest - The Separation

We drank a toast to the success of our own efforts.

Dr Burckhardt had sat down again when one of his aides walked swiftly across to him and leaned over to mutter something. Naturally I could not hear what was said, but Dr Burckhardt moved immediately to the Duke of Kent’s side and spoke quietly. The Duke nodded and smiled. Dr Burckhardt returned to his seat.

Moments later a new entourage of delegates entered the room, as unceremoniously as most of the others. But their arrival caused an undoubted stir throughout the room; the SS general beside me suddenly stiffened. The leader of the new arrivals walked confidently across to the head table to greet Dr Burckhardt and Count Bernadotte, who led him straight away to meet the Duke of Kent. Both men stood together, smiling and shaking hands with great amiability, clapping each other on the arms and shoulders. The room had fallen into silence. The new arrival was Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess.

Next morning the first round of negotiations began. We all had a part to play. As a junior official I was assigned to a document party in a side room, drawing up, presenting and endlessly revising a long series of detailed statements that were used by the senior representatives as position papers.

I was one of only a few Red Cross delegates in the working group: the rest were British and German officials from the embassies or their respective governments, together with constitutional lawyers from Britain and Germany, negotiation counsellors from the Quaker Society of Friends and observers from the five main neutral European powers: Sweden, Switzerland, Ireland, Portugal and Spain. Everything was conducted in German, fluently and naturally by all present, although we produced the position papers in both English and German. For the first hour or so we were stiff and formal with one another, perhaps watchful for one side or the other to seek special advantages, but as the hours went by we became familiar and friendly, forming ourselves into an efficient and harmonious group.

Although mine was only a small role in the proceedings, I felt I had been allotted an important and interesting task. On our team fell the responsibility of writing down the verbal agreements made by the principals. We worked out the form of words in which the tentative measures should be recorded, discussed them among ourselves for the variations and nuances of language, and finally sent them back to the principals for further negotiation and, it was hoped, eventual agreement. In this position I was able to see not only the details changing and growing as the talks went on, but also the larger picture taking shape. We laboured under pressure, as the various delegates and their advisers would hurry in with new notes and demand that everything be rendered into clear language with the minimum of delay. I worked with increasing excitement and dedication, realizing that I was playing a crucial part in bringing the terrible war to an end.

Our second-storey room was on the southern side of the villa, looking down across the wooded grounds towards the sea. There was a wide balcony outside and many of us took advantage of it, pulling our tables and chairs into the sunlight, working at our papers in the warm, wintry sunshine, breathing in the scents of the garden, hearing the great sea crashing distantly against the rocks below.

The only occasions when everyone was in the same place together were during the two main meals of the day. It was a sight whose strangeness never failed to impress me: there in one large room we had senior representatives from two opposing sides in a bitterly fought war mixing socially and congenially. Rudolf Hess and the Duke of Kent were often seen in each other’s company, their attendant officials kept at a distance, as if to protect the two men’s privacy. This ease was matched all through the various levels at which we worked. On my second evening, for instance, I was seated next to Generalmajor Bernhard Altschul from the tactical Luftflotte 4 based in northern France, in charge of many of the aircraft which were, at that time, attacking British cities almost every night of the week. He was a cultured and intelligent companion - it took a force of will to think of him as being responsible for the hundreds of civilian deaths and injuries that were occurring as a result of the bombing.

By the second day we were settling into a routine. It became possible to predict when there would be peaks of activity required of us and when there were likely to be quieter moments. One of these more relaxed periods came along about midway through the afternoon, so I grabbed the chance for a little solitude. I left the villa and walked through the grounds on my own, relishing the break.

It was a most beautiful spot, cool under the trees, warm in the sunshine. Beyond the thicket of trees was a short stretch of untamed land: long grasses and hardy-looking bushes growing wild, sloping down towards the top of the cliffs. Rough pathways had been worn through the vegetation, so I followed one of them and soon came to the spectacular rocky cliffs. I squatted down to watch the waves rolling in, the surf and spray exploding excitingly against the rocks. The scene had an almost hypnotic effect: the quiet sea with its glistening lights, the waves moving endlessly in towards the shore, gaining weight and height, rising and peaking before they hit the cliffs, then bursting outwards and upwards in a vast spray.

‘[This coast is known as the mouth of hell,]’ someone beside me said.

My reverie was instantly broken. I turned and looked up. It was Stellvertreter Rudolf Hess, who had walked up behind me unheard, the sounds of his approach muffled by the soft ground and the rush of the surf and spray.

I scrambled quickly to my feet, surprised and slightly alarmed.

‘[I was taking a short break, my gentleman Deputy Leader!]’ I said defensively.

‘[I am doing the same. You have been before, to this part of Portugal?]’

‘[No, sir.]’

‘[Let me show you the Mouth of Hell itself. I was here at this house last year. Another visit in the endless quest for peace. You were not present, I think, but you no doubt know who was resident here at the time. We shall have better luck this time with our efforts for peace, I believe!]’ He grinned amiably at me, a sort of uncontrived leering smile that revealed the narrow gap between his two front teeth. ‘[If we walk along the cliff we will find the natural feature after which the house was named.]’

Hess was alone. Unless the three SS officers who acted as his bodyguard were concealed somewhere about, he must have slipped away from them. It was unusual for any of the negotiating principals to be seen without their entourages. The previous evening, during an informal briefing by Declan Riley, the ancillary negotiators, of whom I was one, were warned not to engage in any conversation with a principal that could later be construed as a bargaining position. It had certainly never occurred to me that I might find myself having to heed that advice.

Hess indicated that we should follow one of the paths leading along the cliff top. I walked a few paces behind him. He seemed unconcerned about turning his back on me. He was solidly built but not stout, wide rather than muscular. He walked with a flat-footed gait, his back straight. Although his short bristly hair was still dark and thickly growing, the bright sunlight revealed a circle of baldness on his crown, oddly off-centre. It was, as I later learned, the result of an injury sustained in a bierkeller brawl during Hitler’s years of struggle for power. If reminder was needed of the Nazis’ violent background, it was there on the crown of Hess’s head.

Before we had gone far we approached the lip of an immense pit, a deep cavity in the cliffs whose presence was concealed from the house by a screen of low trees and bushes. When we had gained the edge, the huge size of the roofless cavern was revealed: it was almost perfectly circular, approximately a hundred feet in diameter and about the same in depth. The sea churned and boiled at the base of the cauldron: every wave that came in exploded into the immense fissure, bursting and spraying in all directions at once.