Free Midnight in Berlin by James MacManus Page A

irritation.
    â€œI thought we had a grapefruit knife,” he said. “You know, the one with the curved blade.”
    â€œIt got lost in the move, like a lot of other things.”
    She reached over and used her knife to cut the remaining grapefruit into separate pieces.
    â€œI don’t suppose I’ll be seeing much of you for a few days,” she said.
    â€œYes, I’m sorry. It’s going to be busy.”
    â€œI’ll be going out tonight. The cook will leave something for you in the oven.”
    Macrae looked up in surprise. “Where are you going?”
    â€œSome of the wives are having a night out.”
    â€œReally? Where?”
    â€œI don’t know, a drink at the Adlon maybe and then dinner somewhere.”
    Sir Nevile was smoking a cigarette when his staff assembled for the morning briefing. This was highly unusual and against his own strict orders. He looked as if he had slept little and they noted that he had cut himself shaving that morning. Before him lay a pile of German newspapers and to one side a file of cables that had come in overnight from the Foreign Office.
    They took their coffees and found seats around the long polished mahogany table, which had been a focal point of the British diplomatic day in Berlin since the embassy was first established in 1872. That had been in Bismarck’s time of the Second Reich. Now they were to hear how His Majesty’s Government intended to deal with a crisis in its successor.
    Sir Nevile thanked everyone for coming at such short notice. It was important, he said, to set the current developments in German politics in context.
    The door opened and Halliday came in, looking less like a poacher and more like a sheepdog that had lost its flock. Shaggy and shambolic were adjectives that inevitably came to mind when the SIS agent appeared. Macrae noted Sir Nevile’s obvious irritation. The ambassador had paused midsentence and waited while Halliday poured a cup of coffee and sat down.
    â€œSorry I’m late,” he said.
    â€œI was just saying that it is important to place the current developments in context. There is a great deal of sensational reporting in the German press this morning and, from what I hear, the British press are no better.”
    Sir Nevile picked up a sheaf of documents and waved them at those around the table. He was the head of one of Britain’s biggest missions abroad, with a complement of over a hundred, if you counted the commercial and consular staff, and they all needed to know and understand the government’s reaction to what an irresponsible press in both countries was describing as a political coup and a Nazi purge.
    The
Daily Express
in London had a screaming headline above a crude cartoon showing a jackboot kicking open a door marked “War”. It was utterly irresponsible. A free press was all very well, but there had to be limits. The papers had no right to whip up war hysteria at a time when calm diplomacy was required.
    The eyes of the world were on Berlin. The staff around the table and the wider British diplomatic community had to understand what had been discussed well into the early hours of the morning. He had talked on a secure telephone line with both the PM and Sir Anthony Eden, the foreign secretary. The question that had been tossed back and forth was how to respond to Hitler’s sudden seizure of military power – indeed, how would the German army respond?
    â€œI wish to share a view that was agreed in London last night and that will be put to cabinet this morning,” he said. “You all know that the cause of this current crisis is the marriage of General Blomberg to a young woman who turns out to … have had a past.”
    He can’t even use the word “prostitute”, thought Macrae. A late-nineteenth-century mind shaped by the Victorian valuesof womanly virtue and gentlemanly conduct is seated at the head of this table trying to