Traitor's Gate Read Free

but unlike London, which had been shrouded in low grey cloud when Conrad had left Liverpool Street station the previous day, the air here was fresh and clean. Even at this hour the Kurfürstendamm was busy; tall blue-uniformed traffic policemen expertly marshalled the cars, trams and buses swishing along the street. It had only just got dark, and the pavements were alive with people flitting in and out of the pools of light emanating from the shop fronts, cafés, restaurants, cinemas and theatres. Many wore uniforms: greenish-grey for the army, brown for the Party functionaries and black for the SS. Many didn’t. All of them had a sense of urgency, a sense of purpose.
    Conrad paused under a street lamp to consult the note Joachim had sent to his hotel, including directions to the club. A young man, barely more than a boy, wearing a sharp suit and a thin moustache was leaning against an iron poster column a few feet away. He hissed something to Conrad under his breath. Conrad smiled politely and went back to his note. Just then a fashionably dressed lady approached, sniffing loudly. The youth smiled and the two disappeared. Clearly some transaction had occurred or was about to occur, but Conrad wasn’t entirely sure what it was.
    With a jolt he noticed the advertisement revealed on the poster column, a grotesque caricature of a man with a beard and a hooked nose, holding out a handful of coins and grasping a map of Germany under his arm. It was advertising an exhibition called Der Ewige Jude – The Eternal Jew .
    Conrad walked a few steps further along the Ku’damm and turned off along a side street. Within a few yards he came across an illuminated sign of a jolly-looking cockatoo. He descended the neon-lit stairs and plunged into a dark, warm atmosphere of smoke and alcohol, of music and chatter. The place was nearly full and, as Conrad scanned the crowd, he spotted Joachim at a table near the back. Conrad wound his way through the tables towards him and Joachim leaped to his feet, his face breaking into a broad grin as he held out his hand.
    Conrad shook it warmly. His cousin was pudgier than when they had last met, and his slicked-back hair had thinned. He was dressed very properly in evening clothes, but his cheeks were shining and his white tie was slightly askew. Conrad noticed an open bottle of champagne on ice on the table, and he suspected it wasn’t Joachim’s first.
    ‘I’m sorry I’m a little late,’ said Conrad, in German.
    ‘I’ve been here a while,’ said Joachim, in English, with a grin. ‘It is wonderful to be back in Berlin after freezing Moscow. I know these places are a bit tame, but there is enough of an atmos­phere about them to remind me of the good old days.’ Joachim’s English was excellent, but his accent was unique: a mixture of Germanic precision and the affectation of a 1920s Oxford aesthete.
    Conrad scanned the dance floor and was relieved to see that the couples dancing were of mixed sex. Conrad had visited the notorious Eldorado Club in Berlin with Joachim in 1929 at the tender age of eighteen. To say that he had been shocked would be an understatement. ‘I imagine the Nazis have closed all your favourite old haunts.’
    ‘Many of them,’ said Joachim. ‘But there are still some inter­esting places to go. You just have to know where to look. Have a glass of bubbles, old man. It’s filthy stuff these days, I’m afraid, but you get used to it after a couple of glasses.’
    Joachim Mühlendorf was Conrad’s cousin, a diplomat in Germany’s embassy in Moscow who was on a week’s leave in Berlin. He was one of the few people with whom Conrad still corresponded, if only on an irregular basis, and when he had heard that Conrad’s move to Berlin coincided with his own leave, he had cabled Conrad insisting that they meet. Conrad was happy to agree: Joachim was always good company.
    Conrad’s mother came from Hamburg, and after the war the de Lanceys had often visited her