And then to go and invade Russia – how brainless could you be? The beginning of the end, which would come in six months, he reckoned. At most a year and it would all be over. On the other hand, one couldn’t be sure. Huge armies had been formed – Trott knew the exact numbers – half the country was in uniform. The call of the Fatherland had been heard, and the answer was marching in the streets. Anyone voicing the wrong views was strung up with piano wire. Oh yes, there was music in execution, or imprisonment, or strangulation, or plain clubbing to death. That man with the newspaper, could he have been spying on his father-in-law? Likely enough, come to think of it. How careless of them to talk so freely. Just as well the tables were set fairly wide apart. The more expensive the food the more space there was between one party of diners and the next. Businessmen could not tolerate tables having ears. Nor could politicians. Perhaps that was why his father-in-law had picked that smartish restaurant.
Emma had mentioned something about her mother, which puzzled him. A looker? Her mother, quite a looker? Not like the Gestapo to pay compliments, why would they. She was blonde, though, which the Nazis favoured, perhaps that was what they were getting at. It was all very strange.
Blackout time. Carl pulled the curtains across the windows, which were papered over in black, but he stepped outside anyway to make sure not a chink of light was to be seen. Inspection was being tightened all the time, and the consequences of infringement were accordingly dire. Trott had told him a joke someone had made about seeing the light shining in a town-house window: “That lot must have signed a private peace treaty with the Allies.” Peace, a word of fairytale resonance.
When Emma and Carl first met it was still peacetime, but only just. Spring 1938, in Fasanenstrasse, a tree-lined side street off Kurfürstendamm. The Verschuurs had been recalled to the Netherlands, and were giving a round of farewell dinner parties.
Carl had already met Oscar Verschuur, having supplied him with intelligence on various occasions in the past. He had accepted the invitation with pleasure. He was the youngest person there, with one exception: Emma, his table companion for the evening. She would be his companion for life, too, although at the time he felt that the circumstances were not in his favour. That night, there had been no past and no future, only her presence beside him. Their exchanges had been mutually pleasing, candour being met with equal candour. Tones of voice, looks, gestures, smiles, and the silences in between, all were in agreement.
Oscar Verschuur had given a speech, thanking everyone for their friendship and support over the years, and had raised a glass to peace, or rather to what was left of it. Which was not very much, given the shameless stoking of the fires of war. Emma and Carl saw nothing and no-one. At their end of the dinner table, in the company of Dutch, French, German, Swiss, Portuguese, Swedish and British guests, a very different fire was being fanned. War and peace did not come into it. Emma’s German was fluent, better than that of her parents. Coming from her, Carl’s language sounded so much more pleasing than what he was used to hearing in public – the barking of commands, the voice of propaganda, the hysterical rants of the Idiot.
Saying goodbye to her, he was seized with doubt whether he had interpreted her behaviour towards him correctly. They stood by the cloakroom in the throng of departing guests, all of whom seemed to be shaking hands as though they were parting forever. Emma held his eyes, her expression intense, her hand resting on his arm.
“Will we meet again? Because I’m leaving in a few weeks.”
“Tomorrow?”
She smiled, thank God, and said: “Yes, fine.”
“Tomorrow” had turned into every day, and then into day and night. They had married before the year was out, as if the Devil himself were nipping at their heels.
Carl stepped inside after his blackout inspection to find Emma standing motionless in the hall, next to the unpacked luggage. When he went up to her he saw that she was crying.
“Well, Howard, how are things over there nowadays?”
David Kelly, head of the British legation, turned to the journalist fresh from Berlin with the eagerness of a sniffer dog. The round table in Björn Henderson’s study was just large enough to seat eight guests, several of whom knew each other quite well from other postings and earlier times. The travelling circus of diplomacy: dinner parties in Ankara, Buenos Aires, Belgrade or Stockholm, in disparate company and disparate settings, yet secure in an unchanging etiquette and a sameness of tone and vocabulary.
