‘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 from the Party. Röhm still has dreams of ditching Hitler and restoring the monarchy, but the Führer knows what he’s doing.’
‘I hope you know what you’re doing, Fritz,’ said Pauli. He was flattered that Esser had taken him into his confidence, for these were days when any small disloyalty was enough to get a man murdered.
‘I have a nose for what’s what. I’m not really a soldier; I’m a political person. I always have been,’ said Esser.
‘What will happen next? Your Hitler is certain to get a long prison sentence, isn’t he?’
‘We’ll bide our time,’ said Esser. ‘Adolf Hitler is the man Germany needs; we must wait for him, however long.’
‘For God’s sake, be careful, Fritz. You said Röhm is a ruthless bastard. If he finds out that you’re betraying him…’
‘I know how to handle him. He’s a homosexual, like Graf. There are too many homosexuals around Röhm; that’s one of the things I don’t like about the situation in Munich. I treat them all like spoiled brats. One day the Führer will deal with them. Until then those pansies need me. Röhm is hiding guns for the army – secret dumps all over the country. More than twenty thousand rifles, machine guns … even artillery.’ He grinned. ‘Without my office files they’d never know where anything is to be found.’
‘Alex Horner is here tonight. You should talk to him. One day he’ll end up as chief of the General Staff. There might be a time when an influential friend in the Reichswehr would be useful to you.’ Pauli wanted his friends to be friends with one another. It was something of an obsession with him.
Fritz Esser downed his drink. ‘Thanks, Pauli. But don’t worry about me. I know what I’m doing. Sometime we’ll go out and get drunk and I’ll tell you some stories about the Munich putsch that will make your hair curl. It nearly came off! I marched alongside the Führer. I was in Odeonsplatz when the police opened fire. The Führer was no more than thirty paces from me. He was still wearing his evening suit, with a trenchcoat over it. The man next to him was shot dead; he pulled the Führer down with him. Captain Göring was wounded. Only Ludendorff ignored the gunfire and marched on through the police cordon. It was a wonderful experience, Pauli.’
‘It was a fiasco,’ said Pauli, not unkindly.
‘One day you’ll regret you were not with us. We made history.’
‘Have another drink, Fritz. And then let’s see if we can find Alex. I want to get the two of you together.’
At that moment Pauli’s old friend Leutnant Alex Horner was smoking a cigar in Harald Winter’s study and being quizzed by Winter and old ‘Foxy’ Fischer. The study had never been refurnished since the Winters first moved in. The walls were lined with more or less the same books, and the floor covered with the same richly coloured oriental carpet. The same inlaid mahogany desk occupied one corner, and the only light came from the green-shaded desk lamp. Everything was clean and well cared for, but the footstools, like the polished leather wing armchairs, were scuffed and scarred by carelessly held cigars and the marks from drink glasses. The study, more than any other room in the house, had escaped unchanged over these eventful years, and Harald liked it all just the way it was; even the engraved portrait of Kaiser Wilhelm remained on the wall.
This evening the air here was blue with cigar smoke from the three men. The deferential attention the young man was receiving was flattering for him, but he was not surprised by it. For Leutnant Horner had recently been able to see for himself what was Germany’s most closely guarded secret: the newly established German military installations in Soviet Russia. Now the two men wanted a first-hand account of this astounding political development.
‘Did you visit all the factories?’ asked Fischer. He was seventy-two years old, totally bald and frail, but he would not give up cigars and brandy.
‘I really don’t know, but I went to some of the most important ones.’ Alex’s face had become hard and set into the inscrutable expression that the German army expected of its elite Prussian Officer Corps. His nose was wider, and the duelling scar that had been on his cheek so long had become more livid with age.
‘The Junkers airplane factories, near Moscow and Kharkov,’ supplied Harald Winter, to show he was already well informed. He looked