who break the law are sent to a special prison camp at Oranienburg. I’ve heard conditions are pretty grim there, but nobody really knows, as everything we’ve heard about it is some kind of rumour. As far as I can see, the Nazi plan is to isolate the Jews from the population and strip them of their possessions and their livelihood. We’ve heard rumours about the possibility of mass deportations, but they’re only rumours. We’ve been progressively restricted in our contacts with German society, yet we can’t legally emigrate. I don’t understand it.”
“We’ve been reading about this in the papers for several years now,” said a fair-haired woman with a bright red headscarf wrapped around a tight perm. “I believe you, Pauli, but I lived in Germany ten years ago. Things were tense, but I know the Germans: they are fundamentally decent people. I know them. I have friends in Germany. They are not so unlike us; this is just so hard to understand.”
“Hard to understand, like a nightmare is hard to understand,” Pauli said. “In the last three months, I’d have to say that most people I’ve met don’t want to believe it. It’s too inconvenient. If they believed it, what would they do? It’s only been a year since Kristallnacht – the Night of Broken Glass. Jews right across Germany and Austria were driven from their homes, vandalized, robbed, and beaten while the police watched or helped. The rest of the world seems to have conveniently forgotten already. In Switzerland, we were treated with suspicion. We were almost sent back as vagrants. We were lucky; we went to a Swiss synagogue and were forwarded along a chain that led here; but even here, in the Netherlands, we aren’t guaranteed of finding a home. Yes, this is hard to imagine.”
The woman with the headscarf was not going to be put off. “I have a difficult time with all of this. I know the Nazis are criminal louts, but this is the culture that gave us Wagner, Goethe, Bach, the printing press. Germans are practically related to us Dutch. The Nazis are a stopgap, something to protect the Germans from communist anarchy.”
“They won’t last forever,” someone else chimed in. “Besides, the Germans were treated abominably after the war. The Treaty of Versailles was a travesty and they suffered so much. Hitler at least has led them out of all that. I’m sure the German people will sooner or later put a stop to all the rest of this. People all over the world just want to live in peace. We all know that.”
Pauli said nothing. He looked disbelieving and jaded.
Members of the circle swirled their drinks pensively or fumbled about busily lighting cigarettes or searching for lost items in handbags. Saul was the first to speak. “Well, Pauli, you’re here now, and you’re right, I don’t know what we can do, but we’re grateful that you are here tonight and that your family’s safe.” The others burst into smiles, relieved at not having to find a solution to the problems of Germany.
4
London, 6 January 1940
RORY LOOKED AT HIS WATCH as he waited on the sidewalk for Ewen Crossley, his immediate superior and an old friend from the Great War. It was not at all like Crossley to be late; the man was normally a stickler for timings. Rory shoved his hands into his coat pockets and shrugged, loosening his neck muscles. A minute later when his friend arrived, Rory was surprised to see that he had brought with him another man.
Crossley beamed. “Very sorry. I’m running late, Rory. Shall we walk?” Crossley swept the three of them along and set off at a brisk pace. His smile disappeared and he looked around furtively. “Let’s talk a little ways on, shall we?”
It was early morning, still cold and damp, with wispy remnants of the night’s smog lingering in the alleys. The closeness of the city unnaturally amplified the sounds of their footsteps. Despite the recent imposition of petrol rationing, London’s air was no more breathable than it had been before the war. Rory thought that wartime London’s streets had a severe feel about them, as if the entire metropolis was consciously readying itself for the coming struggle. Depressingly, it seemed almost everyone in London was once again wearing some kind of uniform. It wasn’t at all the same city Rory had known even five years ago. When he was last here, the city had the jostling self-assurance of one of the world’s great capitals. Now, like a failing invalid determined to beat a mortal illness, London had become grim and resolute.
Ewen Crossley seemed mildly apprehensive this morning. Rory’s old friend had at last been given a title in his new organization. His papers had come through. He was no longer officially a member of the Secret Intelligence Service working under cover of the Foreign Office. His new designation was the deputy director of operations in the Ministry of Economic Warfare. Crossley walked slowly beside Rory.
Beside shared military service, the two men had much in common. Both bore scars from their time in the trenches: Rory’s less obvious glass eye, and Crossley’s jagged scar, which ran from his left cheek to his ear. Rory was pleased to see that over the years the contour from Crossley’s wound had faded from a disfiguring angry red slash to a more subtle white line. Despite the scar, Crossley’s face was open and perpetually cheerful. His obvious good nature overshadowed the scar’s testimony to his violent past.
From appearances alone, the two friends might have been from different generations. Rory, wearing a stylish black fedora, strode forward with his hands thrust deep in his trench coat pockets. Crossley was bare-headed. His hair was still a thick disordered thatch but had uniformly turned grey – quite a difference from the shock of red curls on the man Rory had known two decades before. The other man was much stouter. He also wore a fedora, as well as a heavy wool coat and thick, round, tortoise-shell glasses. He said nothing and stared straight ahead as the other two talked.
Crossley swivelled about, looking up and down the street. Satisfied that there was no one within earshot, he slowed his pace and said, “Rory, I want you to meet Harold Thornton. Like me, Harold’s come over to join us from mi6. He’s part of the recruiting team, and I thought if we had our meeting while we walked to Aston House, we’d save time and get a lungful of fresh air while we’re at it.”
Rory and Thornton shook hands hastily. Rory nodded impassively and grinned as if at a private joke. He’d been expecting some kind of interview but was surprised at the matter-of-fact way his new employers had chosen to spring it. “Fresh air here in London? You’re kidding me, Ewen. Northern Manitoba, now, there’s fresh air.”
Crossley put his head back slightly and gave a good-natured obligatory laugh to the light-hearted but not very funny observation. “I suppose you’re right. Rory, now that we have some time, maybe you can give us an indication of what you’ve been up to for the last twenty-odd years.”
“Okay. Can I assume then that your interview’s officially begun?”
“You can’t have been a policeman all these years and still think I really wanted to go for a stroll to chat about old times, can you?” said Ewen, smiling. “I’ll be honest, Rory, I have to make a report to Harris. He needs to confirm what kind of work he can task you with. All the others are getting the same routine – only, with your background, we have much higher expectations.”
Crossley and Rory had known each other on and off since the Great War. Back then, Ewen Crossley had been in charge of training Rory for a clandestine mission in Imperial Germany. Their contacts had been infrequent in the intervening years; in fact, apart from Christmas cards, they had only met twice on business, but there was still a strong bond of trust between them.
“I haven’t seen you, Ewen, for what, five years now? But you know, even back then, in one way or another, we hoped the Nazis would somehow just disappear. We were all wishful thinkers. Somehow we hoped that the German people would simply overthrow them. I guess the signs were there to read if we’d cared to. Doesn’t seem like five years though, does it?” He paused and they walked
