The Versailles Legacy
(Work in Progress)
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PROLOGUE
Königsberg, East Prussia
October 1928
Erich went in late to supper. The mess was crowded, every officer under orders to escort the delegation, keep them out of trouble, keep them smiling. On all sides he heard English mixed in with German as he shouldered through to the empty dining room.
Everyone else had already eaten. The tables covered with pristine white linen now stood in straight measured ranks, ready for breakfast in the morning. He sat at his regular table, noise from the bar coming less stridently from the bar. An orderly snapped to his side. “Special menu tonight, Major. Schnitzel or fresh trout.”
“Bring me the trout, then.”
“The C.O. left word he wants to see you, sir. In the bar.” He gave him a conspiratorial smile. “League of Nations, sir. Reparations Commission.”
“Tell him I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
He wasn’t in a mood for this. He’d spent the day studying the mountains of files that accumulated on his desk in the week he’d been away in Heidelberg. He just wanted his supper.
Another delegation, another inspection. It had got to be such a bother. They kept coming back, like ants to a picnic, you wanted to swat them and get on with business. Ten years along, and they still thought they could make the Treaty work.
Treaty. A joke, if it weren’t such an outrage. Diktat was the word, decree not a treaty. Decreed by France to bury Germany under a tombstone of eternal debt.
He lingered half an hour over his meal before finally he went into the bar. Smoke raised a blue fog through the crowded room. Everybody smoked. Cigars, cigarettes, pipes. No concern for the non-smoker. The officers wore dress tunics, wives wore their nicest cocktail gowns to impress the adversary, laughing, chatting, flirting. It was all such a joke on both sides. Rules of the game ~ you smiled and lied and dodged.
The commandant stood over there near the end of the bar talking with a civilian.
He nudged through the crowd, nodded to friends, smiled at wives, probably the only man in the room who hadn’t changed to dress uniform in honour of the visitors.
The colonel brightened to see him approach. “Ah, Schellendorf!”
He joined him, and turned to nod to the civilian.
“Mr. Trudell,” said the colonel, “here is Major von Schellendorf, my logistics officer. He can answer all your questions better than I, he knows all the figures. Major von Schellendorf speaks English, he originally comes out of England, you see.”
“Ah yes, how do you do.” Prissy compressed mouth, blond hair and moustache, rumpled tweed suit, he looked like a broom salesman. “My word! But you were in the war on the wrong side!” Difficult north-country accent, perhaps Yorkshire. “Abandoned king and country and all that rot? Do they play cricket in Germany?”
Surprised, irritated, Erich beckoned the barman. “Myself,” he said in German, “I never cared for cricket. May I order something for you?”
“Whiskey?” In English. “Scotch, single malt? If they have it.” He hitched a hip to sit on a tall bar stool.
Erich translated to the barman, and ordered his usual lager.
The colonel excused himself to attend to some other social triviality.
Erich leaned an elbow on the polished mahogany bar. Yielding to diplomacy he switched to English. “What brings your mob of to Königsberg, Mr. Trudell?”
“Making the tour, the usual tour. Making certain our friends at Krupp’s are being good fellows as they allege, producing farm machinery rather than heavy armaments.”
He gave an ironic smile. “Allege? You don’t believe it?”
“Well, you know how it is, guilty until proven innocent and all that rot.”
Erich smiled and sipped his lager. “I didn’t know we had a Krupp works in East Prussia.”
“So you’re English. Cambridge accent, I think.”
“A year at Cambridge. Transferred over to Heidelberg, never went back.”
Trudell nodded and tasted the scotch. Nodded again, as if satisfied. “And then married your little wife, did you?”
“What?” He studied the bland, pink face. Something... something nasty, something insulting...
Trudell guarded his glass of scotch between soft palms. “Your family still lives in England, I understand.”
A shiver slipped down his scalp. “And how exactly would you understand that?”
“Well it’s no secret.” Another sip of whiskey. Now he squarely met Erich’s eye. “Keep in touch, do you?”
“My father does not communi—”
“Ah yes, Sir Edward Foster, an elder judge on the King’s Bench. And your mother?”
This was not chit-chat. He frowned at the line of sandy moustache under a pointed nose.
“I understand,” Trudell pushed, “your Mutti is not well.”
A skip of the heart. Mutti?
“Well,” the man added, “I do sincerely hope it’s not serious.”
“I have the odd notion,” he said cautiously, “that you could probably tell me.”
“The fact is, Major von Schellendorf, I do understand that they were rather shaken by your front line service in the war. And afterward by your failure to return home—”
“Germany is my home. I apologise to no-one. When I took my wife over to meet them, my father refused to see her, he—”
“Oh yes, I understand about the wife. Very sad. Very sad indeed. These old aristocratic Prussian military families, inbred over generations as it were. Aborted a child? Lost her father, murdered the same year I understand? Terrible tragedy. Terrible.”
He stood rooted in shock. Aborted? Murdered? Who could know of—?
“Listen, Major,” said Trudell, “I wanted to ask you about something quite different.”
Ah now.
“We’d be interested in knowing from the horse’s mouth, as it were, just precisely where the Fokker airplane parts are being produced.”
“Pardon?”
“Well it’s certain they’re being built and are going somewhere for some purpose that we don’t know about. Trouble is, we haven’t found the squadron in our travels and we’ve no authority to inspect in other countries. Russia, do you think?”
Noise surged throughout the bar, and the smoke grew thicker and the crowd seemed denser and the room had got too hot.
“So you see,” said Trudell quietly under the noise, “we need an inside source.”
“An inside...” He jerked around. “What?”
“Inside Germany. Source of information. Source of intelligence. Military.”
“You think I...?”
Trudell smiled.
It was not a joke.
He had to force his voice above a harsh whisper. “I have no way of... No possible—”
“Oh, you’ll find a way.” A new hardness glittered in the man’s hazel eyes.
“No! Nonsense! This is a bloody joke!”
“Understand me, Major.” His voice was quiet, and brittle as his eyes. “You’ll do as you’re told. Let me be quite clear. First, charges of capital murder, then your professional career shot down in the resultant scandal. It’s in my records, I have it, I need only bring it to public attention. We require a military man here in Germany and, like it or not, you are the chosen one. Very carefully chosen, may I say.”
His heart thundered like a kettle-drum from the wrecked side of his chest up into his ears. “I don’t...” He coughed. His voice would not come above a whisper. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh I think you do. The official certificate noted the father-in-law’s death as ‘brain storm’, which covers any number of sins, one could say. But Germans are so beastly precise about keeping correct records. Right? And we do have our own means of...” He shrugged, and sipped his drink.
For another horrified pause he stared at Trudell. Couldn’t utter a word.
The mild little fellow sat easier on his bar stool. “So now, Major, you know what we want, and we know you’ll get it for us. Or as certain as I sit here, this fascinating story will break in the London Times, all tied in with your father on the King’s Bench and your ailing mother with her charitable causes, and your stunning little wife at home in Heidelberg. Tell me Major, does Germany have a statute of limitations for capital murder?”
Erich did not move, could not breathe.
“The question.” Trudell let it float for a moment. Took a delicate sip of whiskey. “The question of the moment is the location of a military training squadron for fighter pilots. That’s all. Nothing more. A very small thing. A matter of trivial curiosity.”
His mind turned a dark loop, looking for a way out.
“Now,’” said Trudell in a crisp tone, “the mess subscribes to the Berliner Tageblatt. Read it. A Voigtländer camera, nearly new, will be advertised in the classifieds for sale. I understand that photography is your hobby, so it will seem natural for you to respond to such an advert.”
Erich couldn’t take his eyes from that fascinating line of moustache twitching over a lipless, grimly smiling mouth.
“You’ll respond using the name of Lazarus.”
“Nobody,” he managed to whisper, “calls himself Lazarus.”
“Exactly, old boy. Their response will be, ‘Yes, a Voigtländer for Lazarus’, completing the code. You will then follow instructions to provide the answer to the question. Right?”
He couldn’t breathe.
“Right.” The triumphant nail driven home.
The crowd in the mess was thinning. The officers had begun escorting the visitors to their night quarters. Come back he screamed in silence. Come back, come back, do not leave me with this...
“So!” Trudell pierced his skull again. “Capital murder versus peace and prosperity. Hmmm? A simple choice. You may have abandoned your country, Major von Schellendorf, but tit-for-tat, let me reassure you sir, your country shall never abandon you.” Smiling, he raised his glass in a one-sided toast, “Cheers!” and drank back the expensive single-malt scotch whiskey. Then, inexplicably, he turned to glance down Erich’s breeches. “The red stripe, isn’t it?”
“Truppenamt,” Erich retorted. Troop Bureau...
Part of the great conspiracy.
Nobody was fooled.
*
In the morning he came early into the exercise arena. Shafts of weak sunlight slanted through the east windows. Under the arched roof the air was brown and dim and hushed, soft sounds of hooves thudding in sand, leather creaking, and hollow bursts of deep horse-breathing.
Twelve riders worked in their own spaces, warming their horses in various figures, clockwise at different gaits. Kits in good shape, horses sleek, hooves well oiled. Erich folded his arms over the barrier and swept a hard gaze from rider to rider. Uniforms pressed, boots shining, white gloves white. Everything counted here. Today they succeeded or failed, twelve cavalry officers competing for a single opening on the national team, four years to prepare for the next Olympics. They rode close to the boards, skirting the jumps set up across the middle of the arena. Brush-jump, wall-jump, double-oxer, he’d personally measured each.
“I’m told you’re the horse-master here.”
Trudell stood beside him. He emulated Erich folding his arms over the boards, one elbow just touching Erich’s elbow.
Erich edged half a step away. “I’m Logistics, this is a supplementary duty.” He had no room for this little man. To hell with diplomacy, it was out the window.
“So what’s this lot?” Trudell asked.
“They’ve applied for the Olympic team.”
“I thought Germany already has a team.”
“One of the veteran riders is retiring.”
Trudell nodded. He was taller than Erich, but he looked spongy in a rumpled tweed suit. This morning he wore a brown fedora hat with a rim that shadowed his eyes and gave him the cinema look of a secret agent. “Germany,” he said mildly, “has no business sending athletes to Los Angeles. Germany’s bankrupt, or haven’t you noticed?”
He shrugged.
“Interesting,” Trudell mused, his eyes following horses.
“Interesting? What, that Germany is bankrupt? Interesting?”
“No, no, not that.” He turned to face Erich directly. “Such indignation, Major. No, I meant, interesting that you Germans think Germany ought not to be bankrupt. Not to be held responsible for the war at all.”
He would not rise to the bait. “Serbia, more like. And Austria.”
Trudell snorted. “Austria, my God. Their day is done.” He looked again to the riders. “I thought,” he said mildly, “they dissolved the General Staff. Yet there you are wearing the red stripe. I see it quite often in my travels these days.”
“It’s not General Staff, it’s... I told you I’m with the Troop Office, logistics, just another department.”
Trudell smiled knowingly. “Oh of course, why not.” His head bobbed in a series of small stiff nods. It seemed calculated as an insult.
“And I’m no turncoat.” It slipped out of him.
“Oh...” lazily... “I take turncoat as anybody who goes over to the enemy.”
“We were not enemies in those days.” He hated being thrown on the defensive this way. “The King of England himself was honorary colonel of the First Prussian Guard.”
“That may well be, but the moment the war broke out...” He shrugged and left it hanging.
That casual shrug, Erich mused, concealed a certain incipient peril.
He turned to the groom waiting by the barrier with Geselle. He did not want another word from this Mr. Trudell, whoever he was. Certainly not League of Nations.
The groom tightened the girth and held the bridle. Aware of Trudell watching, Erich swung up Cossack style without touching stirrups, deliberately grandstanding. He gathered in the reins. Geselle collected under him, ready to explode. And he thought, Should I? Jump the boards? But he let the notion pass and lowered his hands and with a shift of heels impelled the horse quietly forward on a loose rein. The groom swung the barrier open.
“You didn’t read that newspaper,” Trudell called after him in English.
He rode out to the centre of the arena and halted between jumps. The other riders brought their animals into a circle around him.
“Gentlemen,” he announced, “I am here to grade you. You will be judged on ability and presentation. If anyone questions my decision, he may lodge a written request with the Olympic committee to be tested at a later date by a separate judge...”
He concentrated on the work at hand. When next he looked, Trudell was gone.
* * *