Even now, a year later, he still didn’t understand her. All he knew was that she wanted to leave him.
‘You have to accept it, Conrad,’ Anneliese said. She had switched to German, which soon attracted the attention of the two men at the next table. ‘We shouldn’t see each other anymore.’
‘No, I don’t accept it.’
A tear leaked out of the corner of her eye.
She pushed back her chair and rose to her feet. ‘Goodbye, Conrad,’ she said, bending to kiss his cheek, and then she was gone.
Conrad stared after her. ‘Leb wohl,’ Conrad repeated.
She hadn’t said ‘Auf Wiedersehen’, or ‘when we meet again’.
He had lost her.
14
The Ritz, Paris
Fruity Metcalfe sloped into the lobby of the Ritz and headed straight for the bar. He had had a perfectly bloody day and he needed a drink. Several drinks.
He liked the bar at the Ritz. It was always lively. Although a lot of English soldiers thought that the French officers’ uniforms looked a bit effete, they certainly added colour. As did their women. Throw in a few Americans and one or two Englishmen, plus Fruity the Irishman, and you had quite an atmosphere.
‘Un Johnny Walker avec soda, Marcel,’ Fruity said to the barman while taking possession of a free stool. ‘Un grand, s’il vous plaît.’
Fruity sipped his drink with pleasure. A bloody day.
There had been trouble at the mission at Vincennes. Fruity had expected to help the duke draw up his report for the Wombat on their visit to the French lines, but the duke had rebuffed him. Which offended Fruity. Fruity had been a first-rate officer in his time, and it was important to convey accurately what they had seen, especially along the Meuse on the border with Luxembourg and Belgium. Frankly, there was a bloody great hole there that the Germans could stroll through any time they liked, once they had penetrated the forests of the Ardennes. The French troops were mostly reservists: fat, untrained and unfit. The anti-tank defences were pathetic: positioned in the wrong place, in plain view; and in many cases the anti-tank traps and the barbed wire were on top of each other, which meant they could be knocked out simultaneously by well-placed artillery fire. General Huntziger, Commander of the 2nd Army, oozed complacency. The French 9th Army, just to the west of the 2nd, commanded by the obese Corap, was only a little better.
All this, Fruity and the duke had discussed. And frankly, Fruity wanted to have a part in writing it down. He wanted to be doing a soldier’s work in this phoney war.
Instead of being a bloody tourist. A tourist who had to pay for himself. Because the other thing Fruity had learned that day was that no one was going to pay him for what he was doing. The War Office had refused his demand for payment, telling him he was not in France in an official capacity, and the duke had changed the subject when Fruity had raised it. He was so damned mean! Mean about bills, mean about paying his staff. Mean about everything apart from Wallis. One of her Fulco di Verdura brooches would keep Fruity going for the duration.
Not for the first time, the Little Man was taking advantage of Fruity.
He ordered another whisky.
It was not as if Fruity had a private income. His wife did, but a chap needed to pay his own way. He loathed being beholden to Baba. She was loaded. She was the daughter of Lord Curzon, the grandest Indian viceroy, but her real wealth came from a settlement from her mother, an American department-store heiress.
He hated leaving her alone in London. Not just because he missed her — which he did, very much — but also because he had no idea whom she was seeing. He just hoped it wasn’t Tom Mosley again. He was sure he didn’t know who all his wife’s lovers were, but he knew enough of them, and Tom Mosley was the most serious. She had started writing about weekends with Lord Halifax, the Foreign Secretary and another former viceroy. He was about as high-minded as they came, so she ought to be safe with him, although you never knew with Baba.
Fruity needed another whisky. And he needed to take his mind off his woes. He spotted a sociable American he had had a drink with the week before, and called out to him. ‘Let me get you one, old man. What will you have?’
At least the duke was paying his bloody hotel bill.
Kensington Square, London
‘A glass of sherry, Conrad?’
After all he had been through in the last twenty-four hours, Venlo and then his conversation with Anneliese, Conrad felt like something stronger, but he accepted his father’s offer.
Lord Oakford was pleased to see his son. Conrad was relieved that he wasn’t in one of his frequent black moods. He poured Conrad a glass from a decanter with his one remaining arm, and then a glass for himself.
‘I’m sorry I’m so late for dinner,’ Conrad said. ‘Thanks for waiting for me. I wanted to see Anneliese.’
‘Oh, how is she?’ said Oakford.
I don’t know how she is, thought Conrad. I don’t understand her! Why can’t she just agree to marry me? Why does she have to run away to New York? Why won’t she see me again? What’s wrong with her? Doesn’t she know I love her? Doesn’t she know I’ll do anything for her?
‘Oh, you know,’ he said.
Oakford looked at him sharply. Conrad stared into his sherry glass.
‘I heard about Venlo,’ Oakford said.
‘I wondered,’ said Conrad. He had scanned The Times that afternoon in the club. As well as a description of the Munich beer hall bomb, it had reported a confused incident at ‘Venloo’ involving kidnapped Dutchmen. Clearly his father knew the real story.
‘I knew you were going.’
‘I thought you might.’ Conrad sipped his sherry.
‘Why didn’t you drop in and see me before you went?’
‘It was all fixed up rather quickly,’ Conrad said. ‘One moment I was at Tidworth, the next I was in Whitehall, and before I knew it I was in an aeroplane bound for Holland.’
‘What happened?’
Conrad hesitated and then decided to tell his father everything. For three years in the early 1930s Lord Oakford had been a minister in the National Government. He was a close friend of Van and Lord Halifax, and he had helped Conrad arrange the visit of emissaries from the German conspirators to Britain the year before. He knew secrets.
Oakford listened with interest. ‘A shambles,’ he said when Conrad had finished.
‘My thought exactly,’ said Conrad.
‘So the Germans have nabbed our agents. Presumably the Gestapo will interrogate them? Will they talk, I wonder?’
‘One has to assume they will,’ said Conrad. ‘Do you know a Major McCaigue? He debriefed me with Van.’
‘I’ve met him once or twice. A good man. Works for the SIS, the Secret Intelligence Service. They’re under a lot of pressure at the moment. They have a reputation for being all-seeing, but they didn’t spot the Nazi — Soviet pact coming, and this is a very public balls-up. On top of all that, their chief died last week, and they haven’t picked a successor yet. Did you contact Theo? Van said you were going to try.’
‘Yes,’ said Conrad. ‘He said he didn’t know whether Schämmel was genuine and he was going to check. I never found out his answer.’
‘Did you discuss peace terms with him?’ Oakford asked. He was trying to make the question sound casual, but Conrad could feel the quickening of his attention.