“But this is where you gentlemen come in.” Dortinger was finally summing up. He had walked away from the protection of his podium and changed his tone of voice. The old goat always seemed to cheer up at the end of a lecture. Maybe he was happy it was over. Neumann glanced at the lecture schedule in his notebook and mentally rolled his eyes. Over the next two days they had another two hours of this insufferable man on the timetable. There was a price for everything.
In the hallway on their break, amongst a milling, stretching, and chattering crowd of police officers, Neumann lit a cigarette. It would be a mistake, he thought, to look too bored by any of this. The Bavarian beside him had made a stupid mistake. In the worst case, simple boredom could be interpreted as disloyalty. One thing could lead to another, and disloyalty in the SS had only one punishment. At best, the other students would ostracize the Bavarian for being a know-it-all. There was a danger in that too, thought Neumann. Being isolated from one’s peers in this line of work could lead to problems down the road. He shook his head. In all other respects the Bavarian seemed intelligent. It never ceased to amaze him how naïve some men could be.
Neumann drew in a lungful of smoke and exhaled noisily. For some reason he felt jumpy. He’d been feeling that way a lot lately and it was hard to put his finger on why that should be. He knew he should just focus on what he was doing now, get his mind firmly settled on doing well on this course.
He flicked the ash from his cigarette. Perhaps he was putting too much pressure on himself, worrying about getting promoted. That was certainly part of it, but there was also the matter of Maida. She was really at the back of his mind. Maida had been out of sorts lately: distant and frequently surly, and she wouldn’t say why. It worried him. She was beginning to behave like the rest of her family. She claimed to be happy about being in Berlin, but even before they came here, he had begun to sense a gradual change in her.
Maida used to be a hot-blooded little vixen, but now most of the time she was cold and unresponsive. Some days she was downright sullen. It was a worry. She hadn’t made friends with any of the other wives of the officers on the course. He was certain she wasn’t having an affair. And then it struck him for the first time. Just possibly Maida had ceased to love him. Maybe whatever flame they had once shared was now gone. That wasn’t how things were for him. He had never seriously wanted another woman. He had always been faithful. He couldn’t imagine Maida with another man. He had done nothing to her to merit this. He had never been cruel or inattentive. He didn’t drink to excess. He was successful in his career. He was a good provider. He was a good father to their children. There had to be another explanation for her behaviour, but for the life of him, he couldn’t figure it out.
Down the hall someone was announcing, “Time, gentlemen. Time. Cigarettes and pipes out. Your next lecture begins in two minutes.” At least the next hour would be more interesting than the last period of National Socialist hot air. The timetable indicated this one was to be given by an Oberführer Heinrich Müller from the Reich Main Security Office. It was entitled Gleichschaltung “Building the Reich: Night and Fog in the Occupied Territories.” Silly sort of name, Neumann thought, but it was probably going to be something useful. Not like this endless crap about the meaning of being Germanic, the greatness of the thousand-year Reich, and the wisdom of the Führer.
As a group of officers stubbed out their cigarettes in the hallway’s steel ashtray, Neumann nudged the Bavarian police officer who had sat beside him. “You know, about Dortinger, he’s not a good speaker, but he’s a man with insight and the ability to see things clearly. We need more leaders in the police with that kind of aptitude. Don’t you agree?”
5
London, 7 March 1940
RORY FERRALL STARED DOWN listlessly at a scarcely touched pint of bitter and wondered not for the first time why he had been so quick to accept the request to come to Britain. It was a Saturday night, he was a stranger in a strange pub, and he was depressed and angry. Despite strenuous attempts to force himself to look on the bright side of things, it was a struggle believing that he hadn’t been duped.
He looked about him. The lights in the Ship and Flag were dingy, the room was draughty, and the beer lukewarm. Groups were seated in the corners talking animatedly. In an hour, he was supposed to go out to dinner at Ewen Crossley’s house in Ealing. Until then, he was stuck. Rory didn’t know anybody else. He was starved for conversation and needed a change of location, but going to a dinner party wasn’t what he wanted to do, not tonight. He always found it much easier to keep to himself when this kind of mood enveloped him. When he thought about it, his feelings were ridiculous. Tonight he was even angry at himself for feeling ungrateful about Ewen’s invitation. The Crossleys certainly didn’t have to have him, and he was sure that they were holding the party for him.
Rory had been in England for upwards of five months now, and the work he had expected to be assigned had only been hinted at in a few disjointed conferences. Twice, briefing officers implied that the war effort was going to get into high gear any day now and before long he would find himself feverishly engaged in work more suited to his background and talents. It all sounded empty.
He took a deep drink of his beer. He had left a career and a job that he enjoyed only to find he was working by himself in a shabby office analyzing outdated military reports and worthless diplomatic intercepts. The work was boring, probably pointless, and he couldn’t discuss it with anybody. How did he let himself get into this situation? He put the beer glass down. One was enough. Drinking to cheer himself up wasn’t an option.
Something had to give. He wanted a new job. He had no real desire to go back to war, but he certainly wanted a change from what he was doing. In a way, it was humiliating. He had been happy as a policeman. In Manitoba, he had a position of influence and value; more importantly, he had self-respect. Here, he found himself anonymously dropped into a junior position where he was subordinate in rank to younger men of lesser ability, and there were no tangible results for his efforts. It rankled him.
He toyed with his beer glass and listened to a small but boisterous trio of soldiers in khaki battle dress uniforms in the background. They were young Canadian officers on their first leave, obviously enjoying themselves. Other than troops at training centres, the Canadian Army was the only large armed organization left in Britain, and the newspapers made much of the fact that some of the Empire’s finest troops were manning Britain’s defences. What the newspapers didn’t say was that the Canadian Army in March 1940 was almost completely untrained. It had been hastily recruited and shipped over to England with only the most rudimentary preparation and none of its major equipment. Like almost all the troops left on this island, they weren’t ready to fight anybody yet.
Rory looked vacantly at the blackout curtains over the windows. He wasn’t in a situation much different than these young men, except that they all seemed to be good friends and they had a sense of purpose, while he was living like some angry urban hermit.
The towns around London were rapidly filling up with troops such as these from the Dominions and the Empire. In the last few months, thousands of similar young men had been arriving across the country, most of them untrained but enthusiastic and willing to risk their lives in the service of a higher cause. In spite of their enthusiasm, so far the war effort looked like a huge bungle.
He knew he should go over and say hello to them, introduce himself as a fellow Canadian, a veteran, someone who was proud that they had volunteered to come here. It was the right thing to do: wander over, engage them in friendly conversation, and have a sociable drink with a few of the boys from back home. They were probably people he would like. Twenty-five years before, he had been in exactly the same situation. But tonight he was feeling tense and irritable. He needed a change.
He