‘[So what do you say, Mr Sawyer?]’
‘[Are you offering me a job in Berlin, Herr Hess?]’
‘[I could give the job to any one of a thousand, ten thousand, young people in Germany and each of them would be loyal to the great cause. But I am looking ahead to the days when the cease-fire will have taken permanent effect. Not long from now Britain and Germany will be instrumental in building a strong Europe, a coming together of the two dominant nations of the modern age. Imagine a joining of the cultures that between them have given the world Goethe and Shakespeare, Wagner and Gershwin. The challenges ahead will require the best young people from both countries to take up positions in the capital cities of their former enemies. I simply suggest that you might like to be among the first. What do you say?]’
If he had asked me what I thought, rather than what I was going to say, I could have told him the answer was no, then and there. But thinking and saying were not at all the same.
I found his company intimidating, intrusive and coarse, making me dissemble. All through these high-flown ideas he was chewing and swallowing the sticky cake, using a fingernail to dislodge the crumbs from between his front teeth. He also had a disconcerting habit of approaching and standing too close when he spoke. I could smell his breath and a scent of some kind of oil he used on his hair. He was not wearing the Luftwaffe uniform on this day, but was in dark-grey trousers and a beige shirt, with a tie clipped neatly to the front. He had a way of turning his head slightly to one side, then rolling his eyes back to gaze at me, which each time briefly gave him a frantic, somewhat deranged appearance.
‘[I think I really need time to consider, Herr Hess.]’
‘[Yes, indeed. I expected you to say that. What exactly do you need to think about and for how long?]’
‘[I love working for the Red Cross and I have not given a thought to leaving.]’
‘[All that sort of work will of course end when the war finishes. In the new Europe we will have no need of the Red Cross. One month from now you will be without a job. That must surely decide the matter for you.]’
‘[There would be other considerations, too.]’
‘[Name them.]’
‘[Well, for one thing, sir, I am married. My wife is expecting our first baby—]’
‘[She may come to Berlin too. Bring the child. There is no problem with that.]’
If until that moment a tiny particle of me might have been tempted, I knew that what he was proposing was out of the question. With the Nazi regime still in power, no matter what the ‘changes’ would turn out to be, Birgit would never return to Berlin. It crossed my mind to wonder if Hess might, perhaps, know something about Birgit’s background. After all, he claimed to have kept control of what he described as intelligence. It was a disquieting thought to have in the company of this powerful man.
Hess took a third cake, a rectangular piece of yellow sponge, coated with what looked like marzipan. He bit it in half, apparently disliked the taste and threw the second piece aside. It landed on the floor, close to the base of the large bookcase. He looked around for somewhere to dispose of the piece he already had in his mouth but finally spat it out on the carpet. He drained his coffee, swirling it noisily around his teeth, then refilled his cup.
‘[Whatever your objections,]’ Hess went on, ‘[you will come to Berlin shortly. All things will be possible soon. You need not decide until then. But let me tell you I have made up my mind. I think you are greatly suited to work with me.]’
‘[Thank you, Herr Deputy Führer.]’
I was hoping that would signal the end of the meeting, but Hess suddenly turned away from me and returned to the large window overlooking the stables.
‘[Ah!]’ he said expressively. ‘[We have important company. So soon. They were not due to arrive for another hour or so. Your Royal Air Force is reliable in some matters, I think.]’
I too looked through the window and in a moment saw what Hess was talking about. A short height above the pine forest, about half a mile away towards the west, a four-engined flying-boat, painted white all over, was passing right to left from our point of view. It was so low that for much of the time it was out of sight behind some of the hills in the near distance.
‘[I can’t see any markings,]’ I said. ‘[Why do you say it is the RAF?]’
‘[We should go down to the lake to be a welcoming party!]’ Hess said abruptly. ‘[I shall be there too, in good time, but I was not expecting the arrival so soon.]’
He indicated that I should leave the room. I opened the door and held it for him. He stepped through, leaving a hazy smell of body odour and hair-oil in his wake. There was no one else in the hall. Hess turned back to me and shook my hand again, with the same finger limpness as before.
‘[You must be there when the plane disembarks its passengers,]’ he said. ‘[I think you will find that on board there is a great surprise for you, Mr Sawyer!]’
He raised one hand, then hurried up the wide staircase, taking the steps two at a time.
Thinking that I should immediately report what Hess had been saying to me, I went quickly to Dr Burckhardt’s office and knocked on his door. When there was no answer I eased the door open and peered inside – the room was empty.
I went back to the wide hall, remembering that on the far side, beyond the staircase, there were doors leading to the outside. I hurried through, coming out at the top of a double flight of stone steps that descended to the perfectly laid driveway circling round in front of them.
Before me was an astonishing sight. Most of the people I had been working with in the house, plus many others, were hurrying down the sloping ground in the direction of the lake. Nearly all of them were on foot, scurrying across the grass towards the wooden landing-stage that stretched out into the lake. Clearly the plane had turned up before it was expected. Two black limousines were driving along one of the parkways, vanishing in and out of the trees as they too made towards the wooden pier. The white plane was in view now, the sound of its engines droning across the silent forests. The aircraft was heading away from us but flying low alongside the huge lake that was part of the mansion’s estate.
I walked quickly down the steps and began to cross the long sloping lawn towards the lake. In the far distance, the white aircraft was starting to turn, heading back to us.
As I watched it, I was stricken with a thought that almost paralysed me. I came to a halt, feeling completely isolated.
I had been fighting off a feeling of unreality all day, assuming that overwork and the late night were taking their toll. I had lost a great deal of sleep in the weeks leading up to the conference. There was anyway a sense of the fantastic about the whole day’s proceedings: the rapid progress towards completing the treaty, the huge house and its isolated grounds, the interview with Rudolf Hess. And on top of it all there was something Hess had said: his unusual emphasis on the RAF, his prediction that there was a surprise for me on board the plane.
I believed I knew what that surprise might be. I dreaded that I would be right.
Almost all my episodes of lucid imaginings directly or indirectly involved my brother and led to a confrontation, which in turn led to an abrupt return to my real life. I was certain as I stood there in the cool northern sunlight, watching the white plane skimming low above the tops of the trees, that when the aircraft landed I would discover that the pilot was my brother.
I glanced around at the placid Swedish scenery, the forest, the lake, the grand house, the scattered group of my colleagues hurrying down to greet the aircraft. How could I be imagining anything so subtle, complex, apparently unpredictable? Should I let the hallucination continue around me, or should I back away from it? Once before, ultimately to my regret, I had decided to let it run, but also, in the past, I had foreshortened the experience when I realized what it was. Both events had traumatizing effects on me.
Two of the Quaker negotiators from the document team had left the house behind me. Now they passed me on their
way down the long lawn.
‘[Mr Sawyer, are you not happy to be at the lake?]’
‘[Yes, I am going there now,]’ I said, forced to push my despair into the background.
I fell into step beside them. I knew neither of them well, although I had worked with them both in Cascais and here. Their names were Martin Zane and Michael Brennan, former construction workers from Pittsburgh who had moved to Britain at the outbreak of war. Until they became involved with the Red Cross peace moves they were working in London with the air-raid rescue squads. They had both undertaken crash courses in German at the beginning of the year so that they could work with Dr Burckhardt, but the language was still difficult for them. It would have been easier if we spoke in English while we were together, but the German-only rule was invariable. As a result, we said little to one another as we walked down to the lake.
We could see the flying-boat in the last moments of its landing manoeuvre, gliding towards us low above the trees then dipping its nose towards the still waters of the lake. It looked to me as if it was flying slowly, but as soon as the hydrodynamic underside of the aircraft touched the water an immense spray shot up on either side, to be thrown back by the propellers in long cylindrical vortices. After much bouncing and splashing the aircraft finally slowed until it was able to sail like a cumbersome boat.
I could see the two pilots, unidentifiable in their helmets, peering forward from their seats across the nose of the aircraft so as to guide it accurately. The plane, engines roaring, jinked from left to right as it manoeuvred closer to the long jetty. Two men on the side of the pier were standing by with boat-hooks, but they weren’t needed. The captain expertly brought the plane to a halt so that its hatch was against the end of the landing stage, the starboard wing shading the wooden walkway like a canopy. The hatch opened smartly from within. Two ropes were thrown out and the men quickly secured the fuselage.
As the engines fell silent and the propellers ceased we pressed forward for a better look at whoever the passengers might be. From the roof of the fuselage, immediately behind the cockpit, a tiny flagpole was pushed up, with the Union Jack fluttering. There was a delay while steps down from the aircraft were pushed into place and secured on the none too steady pier. While this was going on I heard the sound of a motor-car engine: an open-top Daimler drove quickly along the lakeside parkway and halted in a scattering of gravel close to the end of the pier. Rudolf Hess stepped out, resplendent in his Luftwaffe uniform, the Iron Cross at his throat glinting in the thin evening sunlight.
Two men from his entourage, dressed in black SS uniforms, flanked him.
Both pilots of the flying-boat had removed their helmets. They too were leaning towards the canopy on the landward side of the cockpit, so that they could watch the arrival of their passengers. I could clearly see both their faces. Neither of the pilots was my brother Jack.
A few moments later, preceded by a senior staff officer from each of the three armed forces and followed by a group of civilians, Winston Churchill stepped down on to the pier. He walked slowly along it, looking to neither right nor left, until he was met by the Duke of Kent. Churchill removed his hat, bowed deeply to the Duke and they chatted privately for a few seconds.
xxvi
Rudolf Hess and Winston Churchill sat side by side in the conference room. They both stared straight ahead at the photographers, neither of them acknowledging the presence of the other. The table where they were sitting was the one that had earlier been occupied by the negotiators from the Red Cross and the neutral states. The other two tables had been removed, but the spray of flowers remained. Both men were sitting with bound copies of the treaty in front of them, open at the first page of protocols. They looked as if they were about to sign the treaty, holding brand-new fountain pens, supplied for the occasion by the Red Cross.
The two photographers leaned towards them – flashes dazzled everyone in the room. The photographers moved back to the side table with their equipment, ejected the burnt-out bulbs and squeezed in new ones. They returned to the table where Hess and Churchill were waiting. They took similar shots, but this time from different positions. After the bulbs had been replaced again the negotiators and the auxiliaries posed in a group behind Hess and Churchill, while more photographs were taken. I, being tall, stood in the back row, towards the left end, between Martin Zane and Michael Brennan, about seven places away from Dr Burckhardt. The picture shows that I am smiling, like everyone else in the photograph; everyone, that is, apart from Churchill and Hess. The flashlight has bounced off Churchill’s spectacles, concealing his eyes behind two disks of reflected light.
When the cameramen left, we remained standing behind the two statesmen to act as official observers of the signing of the Treaty of Stockholm. Churchill first signed the version drafted in German; Hess signed the English version. After the signatures had been dried with blotting-paper rollers, the two versions of the treaty were exchanged and each statesman signed the copy that was in his own language.
Hess laid his pen on the table. Churchill twisted the cap on his own pen, then carefully placed it inside the breast pocket of his jacket and patted it with his fingers.
Both men continued to sit side by side, staring straight ahead. A Red Cross man went over to the table and turned the two versions of the treaty round, opening them at the witness page. One by one the rest of us moved forward, standing briefly in front of the two statesmen to lean over the bound copies and attest to the signing. I wrote my name at the end of the list, added my signature and wrote in the date: May 12, 1941. I was trembling as I did so, almost overcome with the emotion brought on by the immense importance of the occasion.
As the last witness signature was added, Dr Burckhardt indicated to the two statesmen that the ceremony was completed. Both stood. Hess was at least six inches taller than Churchill.
He turned to Churchill, clicked his heels together at attention, extended his hand, and said, ‘[Prime Minister Churchill, it is the greatest of honours to sign such an historical treaty with you. Let us pray that we are living in the first moment in a new destiny for our great European nations!]’
Churchill said nothing and kept his hand resolutely tucked into the flap of his waistcoat. I happened to be standing a short distance away from him. Realizing that he spoke no German – or was affecting not to – I said, ‘Sir, would you wish me to interpret for you?’
‘If you would be so kind,’ Churchill replied, not looking away from Hess. I translated what Hess had said.
Churchill replied at once.
‘Herr Hess,’ he said, ‘let us pray instead that our accord has more substance to it than the one you have made with Russia.’
‘[What is it you say?]’
‘He claims not to understand, sir,’ I said to Churchill. ‘Should I interpret for him too?’
‘I happen to know that the Deputy Führer speaks English perfectly well.’
‘The Third Reich is seeking peace in good faith,’ Hess said, contriving to look genuinely surprised and confused.
‘I know your game, Herr Deputy Führer. In a few weeks, when you have shifted your aggression to the east, everyone in the world will also know what you are up to.’
‘There is no need for that!’ Hess shouted, in English.
‘There is a need for an end to the war between us and that is what we have each obtained. What you decide to do next is a matter for you. I may add that after this hour, should one stick or stone of yours fall anywhere upon Britain, or upon our Commonwealth, or upon any of our allies liberated by the armistice, we will turn back on you with a simple fury that will never be surpassed.’ Churchill turned on his heel with a sprightly movement and spoke in an entirely different manner to Dr Burckhardt. ‘Thank you for what you have done, sir. I’m sure I can speak for the Duke when I say how much we are looking forward to dinner with you.’
They moved towards the exit, leaving Hess behind them. The peace was sealed, but not with a handshake.
xxvii
Dinner was served in the banqueting hall of the mansion, with everyone who was involved in the negotiations seated along the sides of one immense table that ran the entire length of the room. By contrast with the relaxed mood of the two previous days, Churchill’s arrival appeared to have split the conference into its three constituent groups. He had succeeded in creating a frosty, almost hostile atmosphere between the two main groups when until his arrival all delegates had mixed convivially with everyone else. He and the Duke of Kent, together with the ambassadors, the chiefs of staff and the secretaries from the Foreign Office, sat at one end. Hess and his similarly sized retinue were at the other. The representatives from the neutral states, the auxiliary negotiators and the document team occupied the middle ground.
Churchill was sitting on the opposite side of the table to me, about fifteen seats away. In spite of everything I still felt about his warlike nature I was dazzled by his presence. Although I had been closely involved with the preparations for the treaty, I suppose that I had never really believed Churchill would bring himself to sign it. Yet here we were with the process complete. Even as we were dining, the teams of constitutional lawyers from Germany and Britain were elsewhere in the building, engrossing the text, making it ready for release to the public record. Churchill appeared to be deep in conversation with the Duke, but I could not help noticing that from time to time he gave me a direct and unblinking stare, which I found disconcerting.
Hess and his group left without warning in the middle of the meal. During the first two courses he and his officials were deep in conversation, conducted with much intensity. They did not wait to finish their venison course. Without a word to anyone else at the table they suddenly rose to their feet, scraping back their chairs. They strode quickly to the exit.
At the door, Hess turned back, stamped his feet together and raised his right arm in the Nazi salute. The room fell silent. Hess held the pose for a moment.