band of Hitler Youth streamed past; boys of nine or ten wearing swastika armbands and brown shirts and shorts. Conrad was glad to see that their marching step was pretty ragged, and they still acted more like a bunch of chattering schoolboys than the fanatical automatons they were being groomed to become.
‘Do you know Berlin?’ Foley asked.
‘I came here for a few months to research my thesis,’ Conrad said. ‘My mother is from Hamburg; I was actually born there. We left when war broke out.’
‘I was studying philosophy in Hamburg in 1914,’ said Foley. ‘It’s a wonderful place. But I was slow to leave: damned nearly didn’t get out. Your father is Lord Oakford, isn’t he? Arthur de Lancey as he was then.’
‘That’s right.’
‘I came across him during the war. Not in the trenches, although I did my stint there. Like him, I caught a bullet and ended up working for the general staff. Unlike him, I didn’t earn a VC catching it.’
‘That was military intelligence, wasn’t it?’
‘That’s a rather grand name for what we were doing,’ Foley said. He glanced up, his mild eyes meeting Conrad’s through his spectacles.
For a moment Conrad wondered whether the man was trying to tell him that he was still in intelligence. It seemed highly unlikely. Foley looked to be in his fifties, a nondescript pen-pusher if ever there was one. Conrad shook himself; he was imagining it. His own father had left the Intelligence Corps in 1919, never to go near it again. Foley must have done the same.
They passed the junction with Wilhelmstrasse, a few yards down which stood the British Embassy. ‘I thought you said you worked in there?’ Conrad asked.
‘That’s a simplification,’ Foley said. ‘I’m actually the Passport Control Officer. My job is to grant visas to anyone wishing to visit Britain. Or anywhere else in the Empire, including Palestine. Our office is on Tiergartenstrasse. It’s another lovely building; my predecessor bought it for a song in 1920.’
They walked through the tall columns of the Brandenburg Gate and entered a construction site. In front of the Reichstag building, still empty since the fire in 1933, stood the Siegessäule, a two-hundred-foot-high monument built in the 1860s to commemorate Prussia’s victories over Denmark, Conrad’s very own war, and Austria. It was known by irreverent Berliners as the ‘Siegesspargel’ or ‘Victory Asparagus’. Now the whole edifice was clad in scaffolding. And the road through the Tiergarten had been transformed into a straight, ugly scar, bordered on either side by the stumps of recently felled trees.
‘This is Hitler’s latest grand plan,’ said Foley. ‘He’s going to move the Siegessäule to the middle of the park and create a broad avenue from there to the Brandenburg Gate for his army to march along. In the meantime all this work is an infernal nuisance; it really fouls up the traffic.’
They crossed the road into the park, weaving through the stationary cars whose engines growled with impatience. ‘You must be quite busy at the moment,’ Conrad said. ‘I imagine there’s plenty of demand for visas.’
‘Rather. There seems to be no end to the queues. Jews mostly.’ He sighed. ‘Sadly we reject most of the applicants.’
‘Why?’ asked Conrad.
‘Quotas,’ said Foley. ‘Strict quotas, and getting stricter all the time. I could issue my annual quota of visas many times over, I could tell you. I ask for more, but they give me less. There’s unemployment in Britain and Arabs are rioting in Palestine, so there’s no room for more penniless Jews.’
‘I suppose it’s understandable,’ said Conrad.
‘No. No, it’s not,’ said Foley, a flash of anger in his eyes. ‘We have to help these people or many of them will die. I know of a number of cases of applicants we have rejected going to concentration camps. Many commit suicide. Most Jewish Germans have been blind to what has been happening. Until
‘Do you know Berlin?’ Foley asked.
‘I came here for a few months to research my thesis,’ Conrad said. ‘My mother is from Hamburg; I was actually born there. We left when war broke out.’
‘I was studying philosophy in Hamburg in 1914,’ said Foley. ‘It’s a wonderful place. But I was slow to leave: damned nearly didn’t get out. Your father is Lord Oakford, isn’t he? Arthur de Lancey as he was then.’
‘That’s right.’
‘I came across him during the war. Not in the trenches, although I did my stint there. Like him, I caught a bullet and ended up working for the general staff. Unlike him, I didn’t earn a VC catching it.’
‘That was military intelligence, wasn’t it?’
‘That’s a rather grand name for what we were doing,’ Foley said. He glanced up, his mild eyes meeting Conrad’s through his spectacles.
For a moment Conrad wondered whether the man was trying to tell him that he was still in intelligence. It seemed highly unlikely. Foley looked to be in his fifties, a nondescript pen-pusher if ever there was one. Conrad shook himself; he was imagining it. His own father had left the Intelligence Corps in 1919, never to go near it again. Foley must have done the same.
They passed the junction with Wilhelmstrasse, a few yards down which stood the British Embassy. ‘I thought you said you worked in there?’ Conrad asked.
‘That’s a simplification,’ Foley said. ‘I’m actually the Passport Control Officer. My job is to grant visas to anyone wishing to visit Britain. Or anywhere else in the Empire, including Palestine. Our office is on Tiergartenstrasse. It’s another lovely building; my predecessor bought it for a song in 1920.’
They walked through the tall columns of the Brandenburg Gate and entered a construction site. In front of the Reichstag building, still empty since the fire in 1933, stood the Siegessäule, a two-hundred-foot-high monument built in the 1860s to commemorate Prussia’s victories over Denmark, Conrad’s very own war, and Austria. It was known by irreverent Berliners as the ‘Siegesspargel’ or ‘Victory Asparagus’. Now the whole edifice was clad in scaffolding. And the road through the Tiergarten had been transformed into a straight, ugly scar, bordered on either side by the stumps of recently felled trees.
‘This is Hitler’s latest grand plan,’ said Foley. ‘He’s going to move the Siegessäule to the middle of the park and create a broad avenue from there to the Brandenburg Gate for his army to march along. In the meantime all this work is an infernal nuisance; it really fouls up the traffic.’
They crossed the road into the park, weaving through the stationary cars whose engines growled with impatience. ‘You must be quite busy at the moment,’ Conrad said. ‘I imagine there’s plenty of demand for visas.’
‘Rather. There seems to be no end to the queues. Jews mostly.’ He sighed. ‘Sadly we reject most of the applicants.’
‘Why?’ asked Conrad.
‘Quotas,’ said Foley. ‘Strict quotas, and getting stricter all the time. I could issue my annual quota of visas many times over, I could tell you. I ask for more, but they give me less. There’s unemployment in Britain and Arabs are rioting in Palestine, so there’s no room for more penniless Jews.’
‘I suppose it’s understandable,’ said Conrad.
‘No. No, it’s not,’ said Foley, a flash of anger in his eyes. ‘We have to help these people or many of them will die. I know of a number of cases of applicants we have rejected going to concentration camps. Many commit suicide. Most Jewish Germans have been blind to what has been happening. Until
Similar Books
