Otto stared at his old friend, whisky glass in one hand, big expensive cigar like a small flagpole in the other. He still couldn't believe it.
They had sat down either side of the fireplace. Graf von der Weide, whose old Abwehr code-name had been ‘Meadow,’ smiled back at him from the other chair, as if willing him to open his mouth and start asking the questions that were whirling through his head at that moment.
The Count looked ten years younger. Gone were his priest robes of their beachfront kerfuffle. The fat had also gone and now his face was lean and adorned by a trim grey moustache so that with the tweeds he was wearing, one could have taken him for a retired English officer, or perhaps a senior officer in civilian clothes. Everything around him seemed to fit into that particular framework, too. The dog, the roaring, open fire, a rarity in Hamburg, the whisky, even the cigars. Otto noted that they certainly weren’t the cheap German products. Otto would not have been surprised if the Count had opened his mouth and begun speaking to him in English.
Instead, the Count reached over and patted his knee affectionately, saying in German, (though somehow his new clipped intonation sounded slightly English), ‘Bet you were surprised to hear from me again, you young hero, what?’
‘That is the understatement of the year, Count,’ Otto said, taking a gulp of his whisky, while the dog snored softly at his feet. ‘But… how…?’ Still the question he wanted to ask refused to formulate itself correctly in his jumbled brain.
‘All in good time,’ the Count said gently. ‘But first of all, I’d just like to hear something on Radio Hamburg.’ He flashed a glance at his expensive gold wristwatch. ‘It’ll be on in a minute.’
‘The radio?’
The Count held his hand up for instant silence. Somehow or other, Otto told himself, he had regained his old confidence that had vanished during his enforced leave of absence from the Abwehr.
The warning gong sounded. It was one o’clock.
‘Hello, Germany calling… Germany calling,’ a harsh nasal voice snarled in English, a voice which though Otto did not know it then, was to become the best-known, after Churchill’s, for years to come in England – and also the most-hated. The voice continued in English:
‘Let me tell you, my listeners, the good news first. The Pope in Rome has launched yet another peace offensive with the full support of the Führer and the German Reich. Germany is satisfied with her victories. But what of Churchill, I ask you. Does he want peace? Can a bloated plutocrat like that who turned his guns on the workers back in 1926 tolerate – ’
Otto let the words, only half of which he understood, run on, staring in bewildered at the entranced Count, yet oddly impressed too by that harsh, bitter cynical voice.
Finally, the studio gong sounded again and the bitter venomous propaganda broadcast to England, full of boasts, threats and cruel jokes about the ‘corruption in the British ruling-class’, ended. The Count rose to his feet and switched off the radio, saying, ‘The treacherous swine, though I suppose one ought to be grateful for small mercies.’
‘Treacherous swine?’ Otto echoed, completely perplexed now. ‘But he’s working for Germany.’
The Count ignored the comment. ‘Do you know what they call that swine in England?’ he asked.
Otto shook his head.
‘Lord Haw-Haw. People in the know say that he gets as many listeners when he broadcasts that vile rubbish as does our beloved Mr Churchill.’
‘Beloved?’
At last the Count seemed to become aware of his guest’s bewilderment. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘let’s refill our glasses, Otto, before I start. It’s going to be a long story, and I need you bang up-to-date.’
‘Start – start what?’
‘The account of how I came to join the British cause,’ the Count said with some dignity. ‘A warrior for Mr Churchill!’
‘Holy strawsack!’ Otto exclaimed. ‘You’d better get another bottle, Count!’
‘It was a strange journey, through the night from Dover.’
Otto nodded his understanding and settled back in the deep leather armchair, as the Count set about the account account of his mysterious business in England.
‘Hour after hour of journey, until finally that nice young officer who did the interrogation there at Dover – something like Captain Smith-Wanking, one of those double barrel names – helped me out of the car and I found myself in a remote country house, no sound save that of the sentries pacing the grounds. Very fine lawn they had, by the way.’
Otto sniffed. ‘Officers obviously have a different kind of war from us common blokes.’
The Count did not appear to hear. ‘But the occupants weren’t asleep, no, not one little bit,’ He wagged his finger at his handsome blond listener. ‘The English are a very alert and cunning people, perfidious Albion and all that.’
Otto thought of the sentries who fell asleep over their Bren guns at York, the drunken singing the night of his escape, but he said nothing; he was too intrigued by the story the Count was telling.
‘At first there were two of them there, obviously gentlemen out of the top drawer. One could see that immediately. The one was a dried-up fellow with thinning hair and devilishly clever eyes. Between you and me, I know now that he was the head of their Secret Service. They call him “C”. The letter stands for the English word “cunning”.’
‘How cunning?’
The Count did not react. ‘The other was clearly a military fellow in mufti. Also very smart though a little more direct than this Cunning chap. Kept getting up from his chair all the time and swinging a golf club all over the place as if the study were some tremendous links course or something. Spoke German, too. Well, at least, he said hello in German when I was escorted in by Wanking-Smith or Smith-Wanking or whatever he was called.’
(What the Count didn’t know, and Otto only found out years later was that the military man was a certain Col. Mason-MacFarland, the pre-war military attaché to Berlin, who had just been relieved of his post as head of the British Expeditionary Forces’ Intelligence Service. The other was, of course, General Stewart Menzies, head of MI6. – L.K.)
‘So all this swinging happened in the middle of the night?’ Otto asked slowly.
‘Yes, I suppose you’re right, my boy. Perhaps Mufti's German wasn’t so good after all. But one thing is for certain, he knew his Germany and he knew all about me,’ he lowered his voice dramatically. ‘Everything.’
‘Damn!’ Otto breathed, impressed.
‘Damn indeed, Otto. He knew all about my activities with the Abwehr, Old Father Christmas’s plan to – er – dispense with the Führer in May 1940 and my particular role in that unfortunate affair. The whole bloody lot.’ He nodded significantly.
‘Then the other one, this Cunning chap, said: “Count, we know that you are a good German, one with his heart in the right place, one of us in other words.” The man was obviously some well-born aristocrat, Otto, I could see that at a glance. One of us.’
‘Naturally,’ Otto said sarcastically, ‘a typical aristocrat like me – father unknown and mother earning her pennies on her back in bed.’
‘You are one of nature’s aristocrats, Otto. I have always told you that, but pray let me continue. After this Cunning had finished singing my praises, he came out with the reason for having me brought there.’
Otto leaned forward eagerly and his face was warmed by the fire. ‘Yes?’
‘He said he’d like me to meet a third party, who was waiting for me in the other room.’ The Count could hardly restrain his excitement now. There was almost a feverish glitter in his eyes. ‘A very important person indeed, he emphasized that, fixing me with a look like a cobra about to strike some petrified animal prey.’
‘Who was it, Count? Come on, spit it out! Not King George himself?’
‘No,’ the Count smiled triumphantly. ‘Someone far more important than he.’
‘Pee or get off the pot already!’
‘Don’t be so plebeian Otto,’ the Count teased.
‘Who?’
‘A certain Colonel Warden.’
‘Colonel Warden?’ Otto’s face fell. ‘And who’s Colonel Warden when he’s at home?’ he demanded, his honest young complexion reflecting his disappointment.
Instead of answering his question straight out, the Count teased his young listener a little while longer, while the logs crackled merrily and the setter continued to snore, occasionally giving out little pants, as if he were enjoying some erotic doggy dream. ‘A moment later Colonel Warden came into the room in person, exactly as I had always imagined him, though a little smaller than I had anticipated, with a lot of cigar ash on the lapels of his jacket. I had always thought he was a very tidy person somehow.’
‘Who?’
The Count feigned not to hear. ‘Of course, it was the middle of the night and he had been imbibing slightly. Not serious, of course, but I did think without the stick he might well have keeled over a couple of times.’
‘Who?… Who was it, in God's Name?’ Otto cried out in exasperation.
‘We, of course, rose and then this Cunning chap did the introductions, but naturally, as clever as he was, he couldn’t fool me. That cigar and whisky glass were sufficient. Even if they had covered his face, they would not have been able to fool me.’ He, winked knowingly. ‘I would have recognised who Colonel Warden really was anywhere and anyhow.’
‘HEAVEN, ARSE AND CLOUDBURST!’ Otto roared, springing to his feet, ‘WHO WAS THIS COLONEL WARDEN SHIT?’
Graf von der Weide looked up at his infuriated, red-faced young friend with a mild grin on his face. ‘I thought you would have guessed by now, Otto. I’m surprised at you. Colonel Warden was – of course – no less a person than their prime minister, Winston S. Churchill!’