It was even hotter in Serbia than in Tuscany. Fortunately, the royal quarter at Dedinje was above the city, where its palaces had the benefit of the hilltop breeze and tree cover. The red tiles of Belgrade could in places be glimpsed shimmering below them to the north like the roof of a furnace.
Martin paced a cloister-like walk between the royal palace and the house chapel. It would soon be three o’clock, time for his appointment. Prince George and Princess Marina were being entertained on the other side of the complex by the Regent, Princess Marina’s brother-in-law, leaving Martin to get on with some real business.
The chimes from a stable clock below the palace caused Martin to check his watch by reflex. He strode to the end of the walk and pulled open the heavy chapel door. Within its thick marble walls the chapel offered refuge from the heat, though it took a while for his eyes to grow accustomed to the gloom. It was a dimness deepened by the sombre Orthodox murals which turned the chapel into a gallery of saints. Guttering candles, the glint of gilding and small, high windows offered the only illumination. The still air was thick with the scent of incense.
Martin could not control his historical instincts. He was so deeply into attempting to identify the subject of various icons that the clash of the door made him jump. Turning, he saw the slight figure of a teenager momentarily outlined by the sunlight before the door closed again. The boy went to a prie-dieu and apparently occupied himself in prayer. Martin waited patiently, as he knew he must do, for several reasons.
The young figure eventually rose. ‘Mr Tofts?’ he queried.
‘Your majesty.’
‘Take one of these seats if you will.’ The king’s English was cultured and indeed perfect.
As Martin settled, the king continued, ‘King Maxim, my godfather, writes that you too were once at Medwardine.’
‘Yes sir, between 1923 and 1929. Some years before your own time there.’
‘Indeed. My time in the junior school was brief … my father’s murder, you understand. Nonetheless, I have some good memories. There were still boys who remembered yourself and my cousin Leopold … kindly, I should say.’
Martin caught the emphasis in the boy-king’s voice. He and Leo had been notorious in their day, and the king had apparently heard all about the foibles of his royal predecessor at King Edward VI’s School.
Now his eyes had adjusted to the gloom of the chapel, Martin could clearly see the face of Peter II Karageorgevich, king of the South Slavs. He was a solemnly handsome young man approaching his sixteenth birthday. He had a sensitive face. Despite being in tennis whites, he also had the dignity of bearing that went with his position and lineage.
‘Mr Tofts, King Maxim tells me I should trust you as a friend to my country and an enemy of the fascists. Now you will know that my cousin Paul, the Regent, favours a closer alliance with the German Reich and the Italian Empire.’
‘But not you, sir.’
‘I am in no position to determine the policy of my country, though were I able to, I would not align it with such powers. I was sent to England to be schooled, Mr Tofts. There I learned that, for all Great Britain is a world empire, it treasures more its own inheritance of freedom than its dominions and colonies. It seems to me that such an empire is more likely to be a friend to my land of Yugoslavia than these strutting dictators, with their intention of enslaving the world.’ The king sighed. ‘But what can I do? The Italian and German armies are on our borders, and within our realm are many Germans. The Axis powers have already allied with the Croat separatists who would tear my kingdom apart.’
‘Sooner or later, the moment of choice will come for you, sir.’
‘Both the regent and I know this, Mr Tofts. He is not unsympathetic to the British Empire. His wife is, after all, the sister of Princess Marina of Kent.’
Martin was well aware of the relevant genealogies, as also of Eric Kirby’s opinion that Prince Paul was a pragmatist who would seek a living arrangement with the Axis, rather than attempt to defy the Germans. It was the young king who was the wild card, though it would be two years yet before he was of age to take the throne.
Prince George was in a very good position, as the regent’s brother-in-law, to sound him out on Yugoslavia’s intentions. But Eric had instructed Martin to open up a new avenue by making direct contact with the king-in-waiting.
Martin sat in silence as the young king pondered his words. Finally he said, ‘Do you believe in honour, Mr Tofts?’
‘Yes, sir, I do.’
‘My cousin Paul tells me I am a romantic. He feels that my exposure to your English cricket at Medwardine infected me with impractical ideals, by which I think he means that no king can afford to play the gentleman.’
‘Knowing Maxim of Rothenia, sir, I would differ with him. There was never a greater gentleman than King Maxim Elphberg.’
‘But he is a king now without a kingdom, Mr Tofts.’
‘Yet he has his honour, sir. And by doing what was honourable in his day, he has left a legacy which one day will serve his country as much as his dynasty.’
‘I would be such a man, Mr Tofts. But I fear it will mean some painful choices on my part.’
‘I expect you’re right, sir.’
‘So what should I do?’
‘I have some suggestions from my masters in Whitehall. I am expected to be in Central Europe regularly from now on. If you name a go-between you can trust, I will undertake to convey high-level intelligence direct to you, so that you may know independently of the regency what is happening, and judge the course you wish to follow. Our embassy here has been active, much more so than the Germans, who rely far too heavily on the Italian government’s assurances. My government is willing to open its files to you. It asks nothing in return other than your discretion.’
The king’s face cracked into a suddenly boyish grin. ‘Ah … discretion! That at least I can promise you. Discretion is what such children as I have to cultivate, or we never become adults. It has been good to speak openly to you, Mr Tofts, very good. Will we meet again?’
‘I don’t know, sir. But I hope we do. In the meantime …’
‘I have a faithful friend and tennis partner who studies also alongside me in the palace school, the Count Antonić. We share many ideals. He is just another boy my age, and as a result not one who might be suspected of being an emissary from the great powers. Can your agents meet with him, do you think?’
‘I will look into the possibility, certainly.’
‘Excellent.’ The king thrust out his hand. ‘May God be with us in the difficult days to come.’
Martin took the proffered hand and bowed over it. ‘And God save the king of the South Slavs.’
***
Martin had been away from Germany for eighteen months. It was the increase in the number of uniforms in an already overdressed nation that caught his attention. The Hitler salute was also universal, or maybe it struck him that way because he was not associating in this visit simply with academics and aristocrats.
He was journeying inconspicuously in second class as a commercial traveller, on very convincing if forged papers. Crossing by rail into Austria a fortnight before, he had seen the thoroughness of its Nazification after the Anschluss of the previous year. He also saw at first hand the stigmatism under which its large Jewish community now laboured. Vandalised Jewish businesses in Vienna remained shuttered, and many formerly family-owned stores had been Aryanised.
Martin stayed long enough in the city to find a base and set himself up in a modest furnished apartment. His plan was to get himself known locally in order to put some flesh on the artificial identity he had adopted: one Werner Aschenheim, in reality a Rheinpfalzer boy who had shared his birthday but died not long after. He excited no suspicion when he registered with the local police in Josefstadt. He went out of his way to strike up an acquaintance with the NSDAP block warden, establishing himself as a good fellow and a cheerful anti-Semite.
Martin would need an address on the southern fringe of the Reich as a way station in his planned travels. Now he was heading towards a quite different address, where an eager welcome awaited him. His heart lifted.
He had asked Leo not to have a car meet him at the Hauptbahnhof in Worms. He did not want his arrival to be in any way noticeable to the Gestapo, ever-vigilant as it was at railway stations. Nonetheless, his papers were scrutinised twice between the train and the station exit. He eschewed a taxi and hauled his luggage to the cathedral, where a black tourer was waiting for him in a prearranged rendezvous.
‘Mister Tov-utz!’ came a cheery greeting, far too loud, from the front of the car.
As Martin dumped his bag in the back and took the front seat next to Waclaw Corbichec, Leo’s Rothenian chauffeur, he observed that secrecy was a habit even some homosexual men needed lessons in mastering. ‘Call me Herr Aschenheim, Waclaw.’
‘Of course, I forget!’ answered the Rothenian, in a German as imperfect as his English. ‘His highness very excited. Not that he ever say, of course. We hurry, yes?’
Martin was quite fond of Waclaw, whom he had hired as one of his diggers nearly a decade before, in his early days as a field archaeologist. Waclaw had been Leo’s minder and driver since their days in Oxford, and he could be trusted implicitly. He was an intensely physical man with a considerable sex drive. As a young man, Martin had found it deeply arousing to have Waclaw’s powerful body submissive under him. Though the days were long gone when he and Waclaw had shared a bed — beds had indeed rarely played a part in their coupling – their affair had left a legacy of mutual affection.
The drive to Heilbrod took the best part of an hour, during which Waclaw gave his candid opinion on what was happening in Germany. He rarely left the estate anymore. ‘Too often trouble, Mister Tov-utz sir. Those Sturmabteilung, they go looking for Poles to beat up. They not know the difference between Rothenischer and Polacsz, or care much I think. Best I stay with his highness. The Heilbrod people are good.’
‘How’s young Gottlieb?’
Waclaw smirked. ‘Growing up, sir. Quite a man now.’
‘Are you and he …?’
‘Oh yes, sir, still together.’
Leo had made it a policy to employ male servants from outside the province whose proclivities matched his own. Not only did that enhance the safety of his position in the present circumstances, it also resulted in the number of pregnancies amongst the females employed on the Heilbrod estate being rather less than the national average. The trick was to find young men who were homosexually inclined, but not too eccentric in their way of life.
As it happened, Waclaw had a talent for attracting the right sort of working-class boy, as exemplified by young Gottlieb, whom he had discovered surviving on the streets of Cologne a few years earlier. For the first time, Waclaw had fallen in love. He had been so smitten by the half-starved boy that he had cajoled Leo into taking him on initially as a page, though Leo had some reservations about the sixteen years Gottlieb claimed to possess. By now, however, the boy must be in his later teens, and the relationship with Waclaw had become as intensely physical as his others. The Rothenian gave Martin a very frank appraisal of his young lover’s capacities in bed, which by his account seemed limitless.
‘But he is very faithful, sir. Theodor the gardener, he follow Gottlieb round, but my boy, he tell him to get lost. “I am Waclaw’s, he ten times man you are!” We are so happy. I want to take him to Strelzen to show him my city, but our prince only goes to Ceresczhalsch on the lake when he returns home to Rothenia. But maybe Gottlieb and I make a holiday soon. It would be nice to get out of this madhouse of a country, sir.’
It was evening by the time the car reached the valley on the margins of the Pfalzerwald in which Heilbrod nestled. The westering sun lit up the honey-coloured limestone of the long house, much changed from the dilapidated state in which Leo had found it in 1930. The gardens had been expanded. Great fountains now played in the long canal that fronted the house. The interior and furnishings had been meticulously restored to their Louis Quinze rococo. A new gallery at the rear of the old house displayed some of the choicer items from Leopold of Thuringia’s celebrated art collection.
Waclaw drew up at the terrace steps. He was being looked for. A young footman in white gloves and a Thuringian-red tailcoat was beaming down at them from the balustrades.
Martin did a double-take. ‘Is that Gottlieb?’ he had to ask.
‘Oh yes, Mr Tov-utz sir. He quite the looker, no?’
Martin had to agree. The skinny adolescent had filled out into a vision of youthful beauty, enhanced by the elegantly tailored livery Leo issued to his servants. But the young man’s open, frank face was quite as attractive as his body. Somehow Gottlieb’s rough start in life had not ruined him.
Leo came out at that point, followed by three of his dogs, and stood next to Gottlieb, putting his hand on the boy’s shoulder. Their grins were identical, addressed each to his own lover. There could have been no more charming a welcome for either man.
Gottlieb skipped down the steps to get the car door for Martin, while Waclaw hauled the suitcase to the terrace. The two servants exchanged a brief kiss when they thought they were unobserved, then disappeared chatting into the house, leaving Martin and Leo face to face. The two men paused briefly before embracing long and hard.
‘Welcome home, Marty.’
‘It feels like home, my prince. It really does. With the world going crazy outside the park palings, I do so need a dose of Heilbrod’s magic.’
Hand-in-hand, they sauntered into the once-gloomy entrance hall, which Leo had improved with polished marble and gilded chimneypieces. Somehow it was a room which was blessedly cool in summer, and yet warmly welcoming in winter. The dogs clicked after them across the porphyry floor tiles.
***
Martin leaned up over Leo to plant a long, lingering kiss on his lover’s lips. They had gone straight up to Leo’s bedroom after Martin’s arrival, to make love and then doze all afternoon.
‘What time’s dinner, sweetheart?’
‘Whenever you want it. No rules here, you know that. There aren’t any guests, and my good lady wife, her imperial and royal highness, is of course far away in Thuringia.’
Martin gave his lover a quirky look. ‘How’s it going with young Flavia Helena?’
Leo had married on his return from Beirut. ‘Better than I could have expected. Doro’s a sensible little Hapsburg girl, and her daddy, Archduke Lajos, explained to her that cousin Leopold was of course like that, but since the marriage settlement would be imperial in scale … the rest naturally followed.’
‘It’s inhuman … sorry, but it is.’
‘No dear, it’s royal. Which is to say the same thing, for even nowadays kings and princes don’t have the luxury of behaving like real people, for all their luxurious lives. The archduke and his wife, poor things, were chased out of Austria in 1918, so they know all about poverty. Fortunately, with a house near Hentzen, they didn't have things too bad, and Maxim helped his sister. Then Old Lajos moved back to Nagykàlnok in Hungary. They raised the girls there with expectations that proper marriages would be their only chance to live up to their lineage.
‘Neither Archduke Lajos nor Archduchess Helena twisted the girls’ arms. It was just understood that I was the most eligible prospect in Europe and would be the jackpot for one of them, if she could live with my being queer. They didn’t have to force the issue. Their mother talked to Maxim, the girls knew I was in the market, and Doro had the stomach for it.’
‘It doesn’t say much for her.’
Leo tutted. ‘Marty, that’s not nice. You’re too much the romantic. She knows I’m a homo, she even knows about you. She’s happy to cohabit at the major feasts of the church. When we do, I’m charming and generous, while she’s cheerful and interested in my schemes and plans. What more does one want in a marriage?’
‘Children?’
‘Now there’s a question. I rather think Doro may eventually want children to add to the dogs and horses. She’s a good horse breeder, by the way, quite talented for such a young woman.’
‘How old is she? I knew she was young.’
‘Nineteen. The oldest of the Nagykàlnok girls.’
‘So the marriage wasn’t consummated?’
‘Well what do you think, sweetheart? It was all done very quietly at Medeln. When the festivities were over, she and I retired to our bedroom in the château of Tarlenheim for a nice chat, and after a decent interval I made up my bed in the servant’s night room next door. We left for Heinrichshof the following day, where she has her wing of the castle and I mine.’
‘Could you actually do it with her?’
‘I really don’t know. The whole idea’s a bit perverted … in my eyes at least. Intellectually I know how it’s done, but the doing of it fills me with no great anticipation. I wonder if I could get it up.’
Martin, deeply uncomfortable at this speculation, shut Leo’s mouth with a kiss before turning him on his stomach and demonstrating that he at least had no problems in that department. Leo’s shifting and moaning beneath him, his tight clenching on Martin’s erection, the scent of their sex, caused Martin, as always, to lose himself. His mind shut down. His whole universe had become the way the soft, slim body below him moved on his cock, and when he finally could not hold out any longer, the intense orgasm he always experienced with Leo left him both exhausted and content, in a perfectly mindless state.
They lay slumped and slick with cooling sweat in the great bed, Martin holding Leo tight round his rib cage, still buried inside him and reluctant to emerge.
Eventually, Leo groped towards the bedside table and found his watch. ‘I suppose we’d better think about eating. It’s getting on for six.’
‘No … I’ll do you again.’
‘That’s physically impossible. But I’ll do you, if you promise to get dressed afterwards and go down with me for dinner.’
A tight hug and a kiss on the back of the neck gave consent. They made it to dinner at seven.
The château of Heilbrod prided itself on a certain subdued style. Only Gottlieb was on duty in the dining room, silently removing plates and bringing in dishes. They kept to English, which the boy did not know. The cuisine was Leo’s preferred French. His Heilbrod chef was an artist from Alsace.
The two men ate alone in the smaller dining room, which doubled as a breakfast room, and Martin took a guilty pleasure as much in the company of his lover as in the luxury of the food, wine and surroundings. He had seen little enough of it for quite a while. Though his profession made a virtue out of physical hardiness, he was still sybarite enough to enjoy himself when the occasion permitted.
The pictures hung around the room were the British and American pre-Raphaelite religious canvases that Leo had recently taken to collecting. Martin commented on a remarkable depiction of St Augustine of Canterbury preaching to the court of the King of Kent. ‘Is that a Holman Hunt?’
Leo smiled. ‘I bought it for sentimental reasons. You remember the copy of his Light of the World which was in our fourth-form dormitory?’
Martin laughed. ‘The one you said put you off sex with boys for a whole year?’
‘I picked up this one for a song the last time I was in London. The Victorians are so unfashionable nowadays. Everything has to be modern, though of course in the Reich, not decadent or Jewish. But those Breker nudes the Party applauds seem degenerate to me, pervert though I am. All those improbable muscles, as if carved out of frozen testosterone. It makes you wonder about the orientation of the Führer.
‘In the meantime, of course, our genuinely degenerate Reichsmarshall is buying up any sort of art that takes his fancy. Regrettably, he sees me as a rival, but even that has its advantages. The gift of a pair of Nuremberg altarpieces and a Gauguin indirectly purchased the exit visas of dear Dr Gasse and his family. They’re now safely in the States, where he’s found a position in Princeton.’
Dr Gasse had been the librarian and archivist of Heinrichshof, and an international scholar of ancient languages. The deteriorating position of Jews in Thuringia had caused Leo to move to protect his old friend the previous year.
Leo continued, ‘I feel half guilty that these chaotic times present so many opportunities. You know the government is privately auctioning off proscribed works of art in Switzerland? There was a huge one in Lucerne at the end of last month. The government was unloading Picassos, Matisses and Modiglianis, all works withdrawn from public galleries. My agents picked up some at undreamt-of prices.’
‘And what happens to the money?’
‘Supposedly it goes to the galleries from which the works were withdrawn … but who knows. The art sales are driving market values down, so I can’t pass up the opportunity. I’ll buy what I can and stack it in my Zurich vaults as much for safety’s sake as for an investment. You know the ministry simply piled four thousand “degenerate” canvases in the yard of the Berlin central fire station and set light to them? It’s true, one of my dealers saw it happen. The things these new barbarians will do defy belief. They’ve despoiled the art in Jewish collections of course. Their agents have been offering my people anything I want at discounted prices, but I’ll touch none of it.’
Martin grimaced. ‘I know it’s all horrible, darling. The Nazis seem keen to make as much profit from the Jews as they can. Was old Gasse able to take his money out with him?’
‘Oh no. Almost all of it had to be surrendered along with his possessions, even his books. His big house in Ernsthof was confiscated too, the one his grandfather built. That’s been sold to a party official, I’ve heard, and probably not at the market value.’
Martin mused, ‘They’re amassing as much cash as they can from their brigandage. Do you know, some idiot in the Bank of England surrendered to the Nazis the gold bullion it held from the Czechoslovak government. Would you believe a lot of it was shipped out before our Eric got wind of it and stopped it? The Nazis are putting together the biggest war chest ever seen in history. It’s going to finance their conquest of Eastern Europe.’
‘You think that’s the plan?’
‘Didn’t you notice that Hitler stopped his ranting against the Bolshevik threat at the beginning of June? And the increase in stories of so-called Polish atrocities against Germans in the republic? He’s got Poland in his sights next, and he’s not going to want to fight Russia over it. He’ll do a deal with Stalin, or so Eric thinks.’
‘I stopped reading the Völkischer Beobachter quite some time ago, so I’m a little out of touch with his views. I’m sorry, Marty, but we here at Heilbrod are not as well equipped to know what’s going out there as we should be. My contacts are all in the art world, or my relatives, too many of whom are deeply enamoured of the Third Reich.
‘You’ll remember when I was invited to Berlin a couple of years ago to that reception hosted by Göring. Prince Auwi was there. You’d expect a son of the emperor would have more pride than to sell his soul to Nazism, but he didn’t think it beneath him to wear a party uniform and act as the Reichsmarshall’s social secretary.
‘It was clear to me then that the Nazi leadership was making a bid for social respectability, for all their avowed contempt of the aristocracy. It worked too. Many of us have taken out party membership. Young aristocrats have not only joined the forces, but even the SS.’
‘I met the prince of Hesse in Florence in a black uniform.’
‘There you are. You see what I mean. I can’t honestly read Phli. Is he stupid? Or is it caution? Do you know that he was involved in the twenties, when he was quite a pretty boy, with that English writer Sassoon? I gather from Maxim that Sassoon says he dropped him because he finally realised that Phli was thick as two short ones, as we used to say in Medwardine. But clearly he’s not so thick as to neglect to bury his former bohemianism under a veneer of party respectability.’
At that point young Gottlieb gave a polite cough and asked Leo if he would like coffee and brandy in the dining room or the library. Leo smiled and opted for the library.
Ten minutes later they were settled in the house’s western pavilion, which Leo and Dr Gasse had turned into a showcase for the pride of the Thuringian manuscript and incunabula collections. ‘I can’t find a suitable replacement, unfortunately. People like Dr Gasse are rare. Welf von Tarlenheim says he’s looking out for someone, but in the present conditions no one in his right mind would come to Germany. There are a number of academics the Nazis have discharged from their university jobs, but frankly, I don’t want to draw attention to myself by employing a socialist. So nothing happens here beyond the books getting dusted by the staff.’
Leo surveyed Martin quietly for a while. ‘Now, darling, I think it’s time you told me what you’re up to. Not everything, of course, but enough so I know what I can do to help.’
Martin smiled at his lover. ‘There’s going to be war in Europe, Leo. It’ll probably be worse than the last one, what with the gas and the bombers. Eric believes it can’t be long delayed, now that the French and British are finally facing up to the horror of it.
‘You know how old Maxim was a British intelligence agent sent to Rothenia before the war? I’m doing the same, though a lot more efficiently I hope. Maxim claims I’ll be better at it than he was: homosexuals have a natural facility for living two lives, he said. They must if they wish to survive. Well, we know that’s true, don’t we.’
Leo was frowning. ‘It’ll be dangerous, darling. More dangerous than I can comfortably contemplate, but you know I’ll help as far as I can. That may not be very far. I have few contacts and no influence in the Reich.’
‘But masses of it in Rothenia,’ Martin contradicted. ‘That’s where Eric is sending me. I’m to use it as a base for intelligence gathering, and we’ve set up an identity for myself as a German commercial traveller in hosiery.’
‘Is that wise? What do you know about stockings?’
‘More than most policemen, I’d guess. But it’ll let me travel in the south of the Reich and the countries around about, and I have other identities for places such as Rothenia.’
‘You’re not unknown in Rothenia, Marty. People still remember your excavations at Old Hentzen. You’ll be recognised.’
‘But I’m nearly a decade older than I was then.’
‘… and still quite as gorgeous a man. You must have seen the way Gottlieb was looking at you.’
Martin laughed. ‘There’s only one man I want. I think you realise that.’
‘Yes I do. And you know how I feel too … always and forever.’ Leo reached across the table and squeezed his lover’s hand.
Leopold of Thuringia was a striking man, if not classically handsome. It was the luminosity of his large eyes that captivated. Surveying his slim and elegant prince with some satisfaction, Martin noticed his hairline was receding a little, but otherwise Leo was recognisably the boy he had fallen in love with sixteen years before. He loved him now, despite all their many vicissitudes.
‘What are your plans, Marty?’ Leo asked.
‘To spend some time here with you, while I can. But I must get into Rothenia before the borders are closed, and that could be any time soon.’
‘You can use my house at Ceresczhalsch.’
‘I think I’ll head first for Templerstadt, Leo.’
‘How will I get in touch with you?’
‘It’ll have to be I who contacts you. The less you know of my doings and plans, the safer it’ll be for both of us. What are you going to do?’
‘Until you turned up, I was thinking about Heinrichshof and inspecting Doro and the horses. It’s been a month, and she has some interesting commercial plans.’
‘Plans?’
‘The military is buying up all the horses it can get, and prices are high. Doro has bought and expanded a local stud to produce draughthorses. It could make a tidy few Reichsmarks. The enterprise is already off the ground.’
‘Do you need the money?’
‘Not really. But it gives her life some meaning, and it would be cruel not to encourage her.’
The two men were silent for a while. Martin could tell that Leo had other things on his mind than his wife, and he thought he knew what they were. When Leo began, he found he had read his lover’s mind correctly.
‘When I was at Medeln for the wedding, the old abbess had just died. I picked up no hint that the new abbess had any inkling of the strange forces we experienced that evening nine years ago. A pity, as old Maria Nativitata was our only link — however reticent she might have been — to the Crown and its whereabouts. I think the Tassilisner Kron may be very important over the next year or two. Rothenians are going to be subjected to a brutal tyranny, during which the Crown may be their only link to their national soul.
‘You hear the radio and read the press here. That vile man Rosenberg has a hierarchy of Slavic untermenschen, defined by the degree of German civilisation they’ve experienced. At the bottom of course are the Poles, for whom he reserves his particular venom, though the Russian Bolsheviks may be below them in his deranged mind. At the top are our friends the Czechs. He’s fitted the Rothenians in alongside Slovaks as less sophisticated, but at least exposed to German culture. He and his masters intend to reduce them to slaves and their countries to colonies. It’s already begun in Bohemia and Moravia. Soon it will be Rothenia’s turn.’
Martin sighed and agreed.
Leo continued, ‘You have your mission to pursue over the coming months … maybe years. But so too do I. I’ve not forgotten those strange events of 1930, and I intend to take up our old pursuits where we left them off. It may be, darling, that we’re working to the same end in this.’
‘Maybe so. To the struggle, then.’ Martin raised his brandy glass.
***
‘Communication,’ stated Leo. ‘It’s an issue we’re going to have to address.’
Riding the tree-shaded hills behind Heilbrod, they had paused to look down on the house and gardens. It was the second day after Martin’s arrival, and he was becoming increasingly reluctant to leave Leo’s side. He felt like a diver on the edge of a very high board struck by sudden nerves.
‘What do you mean?’
‘To whom do you report in England?’
‘Well, Eric I suppose. I’m not in military intelligence, unlike Harries. He’s a captain of some sort.’
‘Harries was that man who went with you to Florence, the one you didn’t think much of?’
‘That’s going a bit far. But I couldn’t see the point of him. He seemed the strong-arm type, and if he had a native command of any European language, he hid it well.’
‘Is he supposed to go undercover?’
‘No, I guess not. He went on to Brdo when the Kents travelled with Prince Paul to his summer residence. That’s when I said goodbye to Marina and Georgie, leaving with him my report for Eric.’
‘So … in default of a royal prince to carry your despatches, how are you going to keep in touch with London?’
‘Eric sent me off in a hurry. He had SIS provide me with a variety of valid papers and passports, including a Swiss one. But we agreed that my chief task is to embed myself in Rothenia. I’m supposed to make contact with the Rothenian Secret Service while it’s still operational, and use their communications while I can. Maxim has kept up his links with some of his friends there, and I know whom I should talk to. They’ll give me support.’
‘Good. And how about communicating with me?’ Leo asked with a smile.
‘Ah, well. You’re in a peculiar position, dear. You are a great landowner, and one of the wealthiest aristocrats in the Reich, but you also have wide properties and interests in Rothenia. You can travel across the frontier without exciting undue interest. Because of that business with the fascists back at the beginning of the thirties, you’ve acquired a quite unjustified reputation as a man with right-wing sympathies. It might irritate you, but it’s useful in the present circumstances, isn’t it?’
‘It pains me, but I have to admit it. It’s one of the reasons I keep out of Thuringia. The gauleiter, Korngeibel … remember him? He’s always after me for party receptions. I’ve had to be politic about accepting some. I can’t reasonably object to sponsoring the party’s Winter Collections, and contributing. I’m ashamed to say I possess the gold party button.’
Martin was surprised. ‘What! You joined the party?’
‘God, no! But they hand the trinkets out to those they think are sympathisers who can offer them something. The other thing is that I can’t evade call-up as a German citizen of military age, so I may have to use my avenue to Korngeibel one day. Better he than the thug who’s party boss here … a monster called Bürckel, as ruthless and greedy as they come. I won’t let him near my collection. Fortunately he was sent off to Austria to incorporate it into the Reich.’
Martin commented drily, ‘I saw his work at first hand. Ugly.’ He pondered a while. ‘Darling, when I leave here, it’s best you don’t know my plans. But if you tell me your intentions, I can at least find you when I need to. It may also be best if I communicate with you through Waclaw Corbichec. He can be my messenger.’
‘And when do you leave?’ Leo could not keep the yearning out of his dark eyes. The lurch it provoked in Martin’s heart was a foretaste of many separations to come, he feared.
‘Sooner than I’d like. I’ll stay here till the end of the week, but then, Rothenia.’
Posted 4 December 2024