in his hand, and he was wearing steel-rimmed spectacles to read from it.
‘Come along! This is a celebration. Drink! Dance! Have fun!’
Neither of the two men could decide how to respond to Peter’s friendly words, but both knew they were being mocked. As he turned his head, Graf’s spectacle lenses flashed with the reflections of the grand chandeliers, and his fierce eyes showed anger.
When the servant had poured wine for both men, Esser lifted his glass in salute. ‘Prosit!’ he said and grinned broadly. Peter bowed and took his leave of them.
‘The place is full of Jews,’ Graf told Esser once Peter Winter had gone. ‘And the Winter family have grown rich and fat feasting on the corpses of our comrades.’
‘Our time will come,’ said Esser. He put a thumb into his belt and stood surveying the dancers like a lion tamer.
Captain Graf was looking at the far end of the room, where four young girls in scanty sequined two-piece outfits had suddenly started their dance. Captain Graf didn’t share Esser’s appreciation for half-naked girls, and he turned away with a scowl on his face. ‘Jewish, capitalist filth!’ said Graf.
Esser grunted and continued to watch the floor show. The girls were Pauli Winter’s idea; they’d been specially brought over to the house from a Revue-Bar. Esser recognized the dancers, and the girls knew him. His face was known at every drinking place in Berlin, from the Kempi on Leipziger Strasse to the sleazy little bars on Invalidenstrasse where pimps plied their trade. Esser, unlike Graf, liked girls. He drank his champagne. He had long ago learned that everything of which Captain Graf disapproved was ‘Jewish, capitalist filth’, and until now he had never dared to contradict his boss. But the past year had seen a change in Esser’s loyalties. He’d been close enough to the Nazi Party leadership to know that Graf’s hero – and immediate commander – Röhm was not blindly loyal to Hitler. Soon there must come a confrontation between Röhm’s uniformed SA – Sturmabteilung – and the grey-faced civilians of the Nazi Party leadership, and Esser had decided that, whether Hitler got a prison sentence or not, his future was with ‘Der Chef’. ‘They are damned good dancers,’ said Esser defiantly and applauded the Revue-Bar girls. Captain Graf snorted angrily, stuffed his notebook back in his breast pocket, and strutted off towards the upstairs smoking room and bar.
Pauli Winter saw Graf’s tiff with Esser from the dance floor. Pauli was transformed. No longer in the haircut that he’d had since entering cadet school, which had made his skull into a furry pink billiards ball, his blond hair was long enough to fall forward across his eyes. His new evening suit – from his father’s tailor – fitted close upon his stocky, muscular figure, and many female eyes watched him with interest as he waltzed with one of the Guggenheimer daughters. His student life had revealed a new aspect of Pauli, for he was a sociable young man who enjoyed parties, girls, drinks, and dancing more than lectures and books. On this account his first exam results had been so poor that he’d not yet told his father about them. Sometimes he wondered why he’d let his parents persuade him to go to university, but they had been determined to get him out of the Freikorps. They were hypocrites. They applauded the way the Freikorps fought the communists but deplored Graf and the men who did the fighting.
It was not easy to adapt to the schoolroom again after the violent rough-and-tumble of the Freikorps. But Peter was at the law school, too, and Peter sorted out all the problems in that rather imperious way that he did everything. But even Peter couldn’t help Pauli get better marks. Company Law was not something that interested Pauli very much but, as usual, Pauli wanted to please his parents. He wanted to please everyone: he knew it was a foolish weakness, but he too often agreed to whatever was required of him rather than be subjected to long arguments.
When the dance ended, Pauli applauded the band and thanked Hetti Guggenheimer. She was a pretty girl – dark hair and large brown eyes with lashes that she too readily fluttered at young men. Hetti Guggenheimer was one of Pauli’s fellow first-year students. She was studying medicine and always got top marks. Hetti’s next dance was booked with someone else, but she went through the motions of referring to her card before excusing herself to Pauli. Pauli didn’t mind too much. There were lots of pretty girls here, and he was popular with the girls. Although he’d never grown as tall as his brother, Pauli had the American good looks of the Rensselaer family. His cheekbones set high in a bony skull, large intense eyes, and wide smile had made him look like the sort of actor that Hollywood casts as a cowboy. And, like the archetypal cowboy, he was soft-spoken, easy-tempered, and uncomplaining. Now, taking his leave of Hetti, he went back to where he’d left his beer and looked round the room. He saw Esser and Graf having what was obviously some sort of argument and watched Graf go strutting upstairs angrily. Pauli smoothed his disarrayed hair, tucked in his rumpled shirt, and went over to Esser. ‘Is everything all right, Fritz?’
‘Everything is just fine.’
‘I saw Captain Graf come past me. He looked angry.’
‘You know what he’s like, Pauli. His anger passes.’
‘You usually get along so well with him.’
Esser drunk champagne and Pauli realized that he was thinking about his reply. Finally he said, ‘Things have changed since the old days, Pauli. After you left us to go to school, the battalion became different.’ It was nearly a year since Pauli had left them to start the cramming course he’d taken before the entrance exam. Ten months of living with his parents. It seemed much longer. Much, much longer.
‘Different how?’
‘Too many youngsters. Spiteful kids who never went to the war and want to show how tough they are. And I miss Berlin.’
‘And Graf?’
‘He’s become too pally with Röhm, and I don’t get along with Röhm. He’s too damned ambitious to be a soldier. He plays politics.’ Esser looked round to be sure he wasn’t overheard. ‘I went to the Führer and told him what was happening.’
‘The Führer? Hitler?’
‘I told him that Röhm is looking for an opportunity to take over. With the Führer in prison, Röhm could take control of everything.’
‘Perhaps Röhm will be sentenced to a long prison term, too.’
‘It’s possible. But Röhm has remarkable friends and supporters: in the army, in the Bavarian government, and in the judiciary, too. They all know that sooner or later the Nazis will come to power.’
‘So you believe the Nazis will get into power,’ said Pauli. The idea of that small, cranky organization forming a government seemed unlikely.
‘Good men will be needed then, Pauli. Reliable men like you. When you’ve finished at law school, there will be a good job waiting for you.’
‘With the Nazis?’
‘All the top men are lawyers. I’m even thinking of studying law myself.’
Pauli slapped him on the shoulder. ‘You could do it, Fritz. I would help you.’
He laughed self-consciously. ‘I’d need coaching. I left school when I was fourteen.’
‘We’ll talk about all that next week, when we have lunch. So you are a Nazi?’
‘Yes, I am a secret member. That cunning bastard Röhm tries to keep us brownshirts separated
