that Father’s clandestine activities would be discovered, and she desperately wanted him to remain with us in Switzerland. He would not. He felt he was needed by the movement, also he was worried about his mother. Father’s two sisters, Ursula and Sigrid, had both been killed in Allied air raids over Berlin, and Grandmother was entirely alone, having been widowed years before. So he went back. A disastrous decision, I’m afraid.’ Christian’s face tightened sharply, and he took a cigarette and lit it.
Victor had been listening closely. He shivered and his hands tightened around the glass. ‘And you never saw your father again,’ he asserted, his eyes glued on the young prince.
‘I did. Mother and Diana were not so fortunate. However, I’m jumping ahead of my story. Over the years my mother had always received messages from Father in various ways, but when he returned to Berlin in 1943 it was as if he suddenly dropped off the face of the earth. Months went by without any word from him. I was almost eighteen, and finally old enough to become my mother’s confidant. She told me of her worries, and against her wishes I followed my father to Berlin …’
‘How the hell did you manage that?’ Victor cried.
‘With my family’s connections I had access to a lot of people. They all helped. Also, the times were confusing and erratic, so it wasn’t too difficult to arrange. Mind you, it was very risky in more ways than one, I must admit. I got to our house in Berlin eventually, where I spent twenty-four hours with Grandmother. She told me that she had seen Father a few months earlier, but only briefly. Like us, she had received no word from him since. She had simply assumed he was travelling for the Krupp organization. The next day I was picked up by the Gestapo. Either by deduction, or through traitorous information, they had at last ear-marked my father as one of the leaders of the underground movement. He was on the top of their most wanted list, and they had obviously been watching the house for weeks. I was the guest of those gentlemen –’ Christian snapped off the end of his sentence and a grim smile flicked onto his mouth. ‘In any event, the Gestapo kept me for over six months, working on me day and night, before they finally released me.’ His eyes darkened. He lowered them and looked down at his legs. ‘I’ve not been able to walk properly since then.’
Victor felt a trembling inside, and his hands shook slightly as he lifted the brandy balloon to his mouth and took a long swallow of his drink, which he badly needed. Christian’s words, unadorned and spoken gently, were all the more deadly because of their quietness and simplicity. Oh God, oh God, Victor thought, how easily we forget. And yet it’s only a handful of years ago that the Nazis were committing all manner of unspeakable atrocities and brutalities, that this young man talking to me so calmly was turned into a permanent cripple by them. When he was only a boy. And who knew what torture had been inflicted on him. Jesus Christ!
No one spoke nor moved, and the only sound was the faint hissing of the logs in the fireplace, the distant ticking of a clock somewhere in the room.
Christian met Victor’s gaze with grave eyes, and his voice was controlled and steady as he went on, ‘I didn’t break, Victor. Still, I have never considered that a great act of courage on my part. You see, I knew so very little of my father’s activities, it was simple for me to keep repeating the same thing over and over again. After the Gestapo finally discarded me, Grandmother managed to nurse me back to partial health, though God only knows how, conditions and shortages being what they were then. In 1944, Dieter Mueller got a message to me … the blue gentians are in full bloom. Since my mother had told me Father’s code name, in case I needed to use it after I’d returned to Berlin, I knew immediately what the message meant. Father was safe. It was enough to bolster my courage and keep me going. Then, in the early summer of 1945, not very long before Berlin fell to the Allies, Father miraculously arrived at the house in Berlin. He did not explain where he had been and I knew better than to ask.’
Now Christian sat back in the wheelchair looking drained and exhausted. He finished sombrely, ‘Father was with us for two weeks. One morning he left the house, saying he would return later that day. But he didn’t come back … Grandmother and I never saw him again.’ Turning to Diana, Christian said, ‘Maybe you can finish the story, darling.’
‘Yes, of course I will. But are you all right, Christian?’ she asked.
‘Yes, I’m fine, I really am.’
‘You don’t have to continue.’ Victor sat motionless in the chair, his face serious and reflecting his disquiet, his immense sadness for them both. ‘I don’t know what to say, how to express my regret for having opened up so many wounds. It was thoughtless of me to pry. I’ve caused you such unnecessary heartache, making you relive these terrible events.’
‘Don’t chastise yourself, Victor dear,’ Diana murmured. ‘And you might as well hear the rest of the story, so that you can truly understand why Christian and I are so reluctant to constantly thrash it over. At first, Christian and Grandmother were not too worried when my father did not return that night. As a matter of fact, they weren’t particularly concerned even after several days had elapsed. After all, continually coming and going was Father’s normal pattern of behaviour. By this time, Grandmother knew a little about her son’s activities as a clandestine member of the underground movement, since Christian had filled her in, albeit in a sketchy way. Also, there seemed to be less reason for them to be alarmed, in that the Third Reich had collapsed, Berlin was in the hands of the Allies – the British, the Americans and the Russians were occupying Berlin. What could possibly happen to the notorious Blue Gentian now? He was amongst friends, wasn’t he? However, as the days became weeks, their anxiety increased, and inquiries were made. They turned up nothing. Father had simply disappeared. A few weeks later, another member of the underground movement, who had been wounded during the fighting in Berlin, finally came out of hospital. When he heard that my father was missing, he told Dieter that he had seen Daddy talking to some Russian officers in the part of the city which became the East Zone. That man, Wolfgang Schroeder, had seen Daddy only a few days after he had left Grandmother’s house, and they had actually exchanged greetings. Wolfgang said he was convinced my father had been a casualty during the last-ditch fighting in the final battle of Berlin. Dieter seized on this and set to work. Hospitals were searched, people were questioned, the dead were carefully checked. In fact, the whole of Berlin was turned upside down by Dieter and his friends. To no avail.’
Diana closed her eyes for an instant. When she opened them, she said in the lowest of voices, ‘Daddy was never found, his body was never found, and in the end we had to assume he had been killed during the last days of the war. Naturally, as things gradually became a little more normal, Mummy wanted to get back to Christian and Grandmother. We eventually packed up in Zurich and returned to Berlin. Slowly, we attempted to pick up our lives, to go on living as best we could, grieving for Daddy but having to accept the fact that he was gone. You more or less know what happened next, how we moved from Berlin to Munich, then to Wittingenhof. Nine years passed. Two years ago, Dieter came to see Mummy. He was excited, jubilant almost. It seemed he had a possible solution to my father’s mysterious disappearance, as well as information about his whereabouts.’
‘Your father had finally been in touch with Dieter then?’ Victor was on the edge of his seat, innumerable questions running through his head.
Diana shook her head. ‘No. But by accident he had stumbled on a strange story. Let me explain something. In 1953 and 1954, numerous Germans – civilians actually – who had been arrested for one reason or another by the Russians at the time Berlin surrendered were straggling back. They had been released from Lubyanka Prison in Moscow. Anyway, there was talk amongst them about a mystery prisoner who was kept in solitary confinement most of the time. Apparently he was an aristocrat, and a German. Furthermore, he had been in Lubyanka since 1945. The man had been seen occasionally by many other prisoners, and his physical description, his age, along with other details, fitted my father like a glove. This tale was told to Dieter by his
