Legat spent the next hour in the office, translating the text of the Italians’ draft agreement from German into English. It wasn’t very long – less than a thousand words. As he finished each page he gave it to Joan to type. At various points, the members of the British delegation trooped into the office to read over his shoulder.
The evacuation will begin on October 1st.
The United Kingdom, France and Italy guarantee that the evacuation of the territory shall be completed by October 10th …
And so it went on, eight paragraphs in all.
It was Malkin, the Foreign Office lawyer, sitting in an armchair in the corner, reading through the pages and puffing on his pipe, who suggested that ‘guarantee’ should be replaced with ‘agree’ – a clever stroke, seemingly trivial, that completely altered the tenor of the draft. Wilson took it along the corridor to show to the Prime Minister, who was resting in his room. The word came back that Chamberlain agreed. It was Malkin also who pointed out that the whole thrust of the document implied that three powers – Britain, France and Italy – were making concessions to a fourth, Germany: a thrust which gave what he called ‘an unfortunate impression’. He therefore wrote out a preamble to the agreement in his Chancery Lane copperplate:
Germany, the United Kingdom, France and Italy, taking into consideration the agreement, which has been already reached in principle for the cession to Germany of the Sudeten German territory, have agreed on the following terms and conditions governing the said cession and the measures consequent thereon, and by this agreement they each hold themselves responsible for the steps necessary to secure its fulfilment.
The Prime Minister signalled his agreement to that as well. He also asked for the folder containing the 1930 Czech census results that was in his red box. Joan retyped the document from the beginning. Just after 4 p.m. it was finished and the delegation began moving downstairs to their cars. Chamberlain came out from his bedroom into the drawing room, looking tense, nervously smoothing his moustache with his thumb and forefinger. Legat handed him the folder. Wilson muttered, ‘Perhaps a better quotation from Shakespeare to have used at Heston might have been, “Once more unto the breach, dear friends.”’ The corners of the Prime Minister’s mouth turned down slightly.
His detective said, ‘Are you ready to go, sir?’
Chamberlain nodded and walked out of the room. As Wilson turned to follow him, Legat decided to make one last appeal. ‘I really think I would be more useful at the actual conference, sir, rather than hanging around here. There’s bound to be further translating to be done.’
‘Oh, no no – the Ambassador and Kirkpatrick can handle that. You man the fort here. Really, you’re doing a splendid job.’ He patted Legat’s arm. ‘You need to get on to Number Ten straight away and read them the text of our revised draft. Ask them to make sure it’s circulated to the Foreign Office. Well – here goes.’
He hurried after the Prime Minister. Legat returned to the office, picked up the telephone, and once again booked a call to London. This time, to his surprise, it went through.
For Hartmann, the existence of a draft agreement changed everything. Clever minds would now bend themselves to smoothing over points of difference. Iron principles would shimmer and then magically vanish. The most contentious issues of all, on which no accord was possible, would simply be ignored entirely and left to subcommittees to deal with at a later date. He knew how these things worked.
He edged away from the luncheon party, replaced his plate on the buffet table and slipped out of the room. He reckoned he might only have an hour or two at best. He needed to find some secluded space. To his left were a couple of closed doors and beyond them a gap in the wall. He walked towards it: the landing of a service staircase. He looked over his shoulder. No one seemed to have noticed his departure. He side-stepped quickly and began to descend. He passed a chef in kitchen whites climbing the stairs carrying a tray of covered dishes. The man ignored him. He continued on down, past the ground floor, all the way to the basement.
The passage was wide, the walls whitewashed, the floor smooth flagstones, like the cellar of a castle. It appeared to run the entire length of the building. He could smell food cooking nearby, could hear the metallic crashes of a kitchen. He walked on firmly, in the manner of a man who had every right to be wherever he wished. There was a loud murmur of conversation ahead, a clattering of plates and cutlery. He came out into a large cafeteria where several dozen SS guards were having lunch. The air was thick with cigarette smoke and the smell of coffee and beer. A few faces turned to look at him. He nodded. Beyond the cafeteria the passage resumed. He passed a staircase, a guardroom, opened a large metal door and stepped into the heat of the afternoon.
It was the car park at the back of the building. A dozen black Mercedes were drawn up in a line. A couple of the drivers were smoking. Faintly in the distance he heard cheers and shouts of ‘Sieg Heil!’
He turned around quickly and went back inside. An SS man appeared from the guardroom. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Hurry up, man! Can’t you hear the Führer is returning?’
He pushed past him and started climbing the staircase. He trotted up the steps quickly. His heart felt too full for his chest. He was sweating. He passed the ground floor and ascended the next two flights and emerged more or less exactly where he had been standing when the first session of the conference broke up. There was a flurry of activity. Aides were moving hastily into position, straightening their jackets, smoothing down their hair, looking along the corridor. Hitler and Mussolini came into view, walking side by side. Behind them came Himmler and Ciano. It was clear that the luncheon interval had done nothing to improve Hitler’s mood. Mussolini stopped to talk to Attolico but Hitler stamped on regardless, followed by the German delegation.
At the entrance to his study he halted and turned to look down the length of the building. Hartmann, no more than ten paces away, saw the irritation in his face. He began to rock up and down on the balls of his feet – that same strange unconscious mannerism Hartmann had witnessed on the train. From outside came a burst of even louder applause, and shortly afterwards Chamberlain appeared at the top of the far staircase, followed by Daladier. They, too, began to confer, standing together beside a pillar. Hitler watched the two democratic leaders for perhaps a minute. Suddenly he wheeled round, located Ribbentrop, and gestured angrily at him to go and fetch them. He disappeared into his study and Hartmann felt a rush of renewed optimism. The professional diplomats might imagine the deal was already done, but nothing could be settled until Hitler willed it, and he still looked as if he would like nothing more than to send them all packing.
7
It must have been after five when Legat finished dictating the final clause to the stenographer in Downing Street.
‘The Czechoslovak Government will, within a period of four weeks from the date of this agreement, release from their military and police forces any Sudeten Germans who may wish to be released, and the Czechoslovak Government will within the same period release Sudeten German prisoners who are serving terms of imprisonment for political offence.’
‘Have you got all that?’
‘Yes, sir.’
He tucked the receiver under his chin and began gathering together the pages of the draft. In the distance he heard raised voices. The door had been left half-open. There was some kind of argument going on in the corridor. ‘Engländer!’ a man was shouting in a thick accent. ‘Ich verlange, mit einem Engländer zu sprechen!’
Legat exchanged puzzled glances with the two secretaries. He beckoned to Joan to take the telephone, put his hand over the receiver, and said to her, ‘Get them to keep the line open.’ She nodded and slipped into his place at the desk. He went out into the corridor. At the far end of the passage, near the back of the hotel, a figure was gesticulating, trying to push his way past a group of four men in suits. They kept moving to block his path. ‘An Englishman! I demand to speak to an Englishman!’
Legat walked towards them. ‘I am English! Can I help?’
The man called out, ‘Thank God! I am Dr Hubert Masarík, chef de cabinet of the Foreign Minister of Czechoslovakia! These men are from the Gestapo and they are holding me and my colleague, the Czech Minister in Berlin, Dr Vojtek Mastny, imprisoned in this room!’
He was about forty, distinguished-looking, in a pale grey suit with a handkerchief in his breast pocket. His long, high-domed head was flushed. At some point his round tortoiseshell spectacles had been knocked awry.
Legat said, ‘May I ask who is in charge here?’
One of the Gestapo men swung round. He was broad-faced with a hard tight mouth and badly pockmarked cheeks, as if he had suffered smallpox in his youth. He looked ready for a fight. ‘And who are you?’
‘My name is Hugh Legat. I am the Private Secretary to Prime Minister Chamberlain.’
The Gestapo officer’s attitude changed at once. ‘There is no question of imprisonment, Herr Legat. We have merely asked these gentlemen to wait in their room for their own security while the conference is in progress.’
‘But we are supposed to be observers at this conference!’ Masarík adjusted his spectacles. ‘I appeal to the representative of the British Government to allow us to do what we were sent here to do.’
‘May I?’ Legat gestured to be allowed to pass. The three other Gestapo men looked to the officer. He nodded. They stood aside. Legat shook hands with Masarík. ‘I’m very sorry about this. Where is your colleague?’
He followed Masarík into the bedroom. A professorial figure in his sixties, still wearing his overcoat, was seated on the edge of the bed, holding his hat between his knees. He stood as Legat entered. He looked utterly dejected. ‘Mastny.’ He held out his hand.
Masarík said, ‘We landed from Prague less than an hour ago and were met by these people at the airport. We assumed we were being taken directly to the conference. Instead we have been forced to remain here. It is an outrage!’
The Gestapo man was standing listening in the doorway. ‘As I have explained, they are not allowed to participate in the conference. My orders are that they are to wait in their hotel room until further instructions have been issued.’
‘Therefore we are under arrest!’
‘Not at all. You are free to return to the airport and fly back to Prague whenever you wish.’
Legat said, ‘May I ask who issued this order?’
The Gestapo officer stuck out his chest. ‘I believe it comes from the Führer himself.’
‘An outrage!’
Mastny put his hand on his younger colleague’s arm. ‘Calm yourself, Hubert. I am more used to life in Germany than you are. There is no point in shouting.’ He turned to Legat. ‘You are the Private Secretary to Mr Chamberlain? Perhaps you might speak to the Prime Minister on our behalf, and see if this unfortunate situation can be resolved?’
Legat looked at the two Czechs, and then at the Gestapo man who was standing with his arms folded. ‘Let me go and see what I can do.’
The crowd in the park opposite the hotel was still large. They watched him leave without interest: yet another official in a suit; a nobody. He walked quickly, head down.
Max-Joseph-Strasse was quiet and lined with cherry trees flanked in turn by handsome apartment blocks of red and white stone. There was a smoky mellowness in the air. Pushing through the autumn drifts in the warm late-afternoon light reminded him of Oxford. Two well-dressed elderly women exercised their dogs. A uniformed nanny pushed a pram. It was only after he had been walking for about five minutes – after he had passed the obelisk in the centre of the roundabout and gone a little way towards Königsplatz – that he sensed that at some point, without noticing, he had crossed an invisible frontier into a darker and less familiar world. What he remembered as a park had become a parade ground. In a pagan temple, a black-uniformed soldier stood guard before an eternal flame.
He could tell the Führerbau by the crowd on the granite square in front of it. The building itself was classical, impersonal, of whitish stone: three storeys, with a balcony in the middle of the first where he could imagine Hitler appearing at one of those vast quasi-religious spectacles that filled the newsreels. He walked past the hanging flags and the bronze eagles to the edge of the second red carpet. He explained his official status to a sentry and was allowed to pass. An officer in an SS uniform just inside the lobby checked his name on a list.
‘Where would I find the British delegation?’
‘On the first floor, Herr Legat, in the reception room in the far corner.’ The adjutant clicked his heels.
Legat climbed the wide red-marble staircase and turned right. He passed an area of low tables and armchairs and suddenly there ahead of him was Hartmann. It took him a few seconds to be sure it was actually him. He was standing, holding a cup and saucer, talking to a silver-haired man in a dark blue suit. His hair had been receding when he was at Oxford but now he was almost entirely bald. His handsome head was cocked, listening to his companion. He looked stooped, strained, weary. Yet for all that something of the old aura still hung around him, even at a distance. He spotted Legat over the other man’s shoulder, registered him with a slight widening of his violet eyes, and gave a barely perceptible shake of his head. Legat walked on.
Through the open door he could see Strang and Dunglass. The British party looked up as he walked in. They had spread themselves around the large room. Henderson was reading a German newspaper. Kirkpatrick had his legs stretched out and his eyes closed. Malkin had some papers on his lap. Ashton-Gwatkin appeared to be reading a volume of Japanese poetry. Strang said sharply, ‘Hugh? What are you doing here? I thought you were supposed to stay at the hotel?’
‘I was, sir, but something’s come up. The Czech delegation have arrived at the Regina Palast and they’re being prevented from leaving their room.’
‘Prevented how?’
‘By the Gestapo. They want the Prime Minister to intercede on their behalf.’
There were groans from all round the room.
‘The Gestapo!’
Ashton-Gwatkin muttered, ‘Beasts …’
Henderson said, ‘I don’t see why they should imagine the PM can do anything about that.’
‘Even so, it will be hard to make an agreement without them.’ Strang sucked on the stem of his unlit pipe; it cracked and whistled. ‘I think you’d better go and soothe them, Frank. You know them better than the rest of us.’
Ashton-Gwatkin sighed and closed his book. Legat noticed that Dunglass was craning his neck to peer along the corridor, in the manner of one of those mystified-looking birds he liked to shoot.
Kirkpatrick saw it too. ‘What is it, Alec? Is something happening?’
‘Yes,’ said Dunglass. As usual he drawled without seeming to move his lips. ‘Hitler’s door is open.’
Hartmann thought that the passage of six years had barely changed Legat at all. He might have been crossing the quad at Balliol. There was the same odd combination of age and youth: the thick dark boyish hair flicked back off his forehead and the pale gravity of his expression; the lightness of his movements – he had been a runner at Oxford – encased in those stiff old-fashioned clothes. The sight of him caused Hartmann briefly to lose track of what von Weizsäcker was saying. He failed to notice Schmidt hurrying towards them.
‘Herr von Weizsäcker and Signor Attolico –’ Schmidt nodded to the State Secretary and beckoned to the Italian Ambassador – ‘excuse me, gentlemen: the Führer would like you to join the talks.’
The men sitting nearest them overheard. Heads turned. Weizsäcker nodded as if he had been expecting this. ‘Does he want anyone else?’
‘Only the British and French Ambassadors.’
‘I’ll fetch them,’ volunteered Hartmann. Without waiting for approval he set off towards the two delegations. He entered the French room first. ‘Monsieur François-Poncet?’ The boulevardier’s face with its old-fashioned wax moustache swung round to l
ook at him. ‘Forgive me, Your Excellency, the leaders would like their Ambassadors to join them.’ Even before François-Poncet was on his feet, Hartmann was striding next door. ‘Sir Nevile, a request from the Führer’s study – would you please be good enough to join the heads of government?’
Strang said, ‘Only Sir Nevile?’
‘Only Sir Nevile.’
‘At last!’ Henderson folded his newspaper and placed it on the table. He stood and checked his buttonhole in the mirror.
Kirkpatrick said, ‘Good luck.’
‘Thanks.’ He sauntered out of the room.
‘Does this mean there’s been a breakthrough?’
‘I fear I am only the messenger, Mr Strang.’ Hartmann smiled and bowed slightly. He glanced around. ‘Are you comfortable in here? Is there anything you need?’
‘We’re fine, thank you, Herr –’ Strang paused.
‘Hartmann.’
‘Herr Hartmann, of course, excuse me.’ Hartmann waited pointedly and Strang found himself obliged to introduce his colleagues. ‘This is Lord Dunglass, the Prime Minister’s Parliamentary Private Secretary. Sir William Malkin of the Foreign Office. Frank Ashton-Gwatkin, also of the Foreign Office. Ivone Kirkpatrick from the Berlin embassy I expect you know …’
‘Indeed, Mr Kirkpatrick. Very good to see you again.’ Hartmann went round the room shaking hands.
‘And this is Hugh Legat, one of the Prime Minister’s Private Secretaries.’
‘Mr Legat.’
‘Herr Hartmann.’
Hartmann held on to Legat’s hand a fraction longer than he had the others and tugged it gently. ‘Well, do let me know if I can be of any assistance.’
Legat said, ‘I should get back to the hotel.’
‘And I suppose I should talk to the poor old Czechos,’ said Ashton-Gwatkin wearily, ‘assuming I can find a telephone that works.’