Munich

4

The Prime Minister had worked throughout the flight and now he was finished. He closed a census report listing every county of the Czech Republic and the exact proportion of its population that was German-speaking and replaced it in his dispatch case. He screwed the cap back on to his fountain pen and returned it to his inside pocket. Then he lifted the red box from his knees and handed it to Legat who was waiting in the aisle.

‘Thank you, Hugh.’

‘Prime Minister.’

He carried the dispatch box to the back of the plane, locked it and stowed it in the luggage rack, then fastened his seat belt. From the pressure in his ears he guessed they must be descending. All conversation in the cabin had ceased. Each man was peering out of his window, alone with his thoughts. The plane jolted and shuddered in the clouds.

For a long time, they seemed to be diving towards the bottom of a rough sea. It was easy to imagine the vibrations tearing off an engine or a wing. But at last they dropped out of the base of the cloud, the shaking stopped, and a drab olive-green landscape appeared beneath them, scored by the clear white line of an autobahn running as straight as a Roman road between conifer forests and across hills and plains. Legat pressed his face to the glass. It was the first time he had seen Germany in six years. For his Foreign Office entrance examination, he had been required to translate Hauff into English and J. S. Mill into German. He had accomplished both tasks with time to spare. Yet the country itself remained a mystery to him.

They were losing height fast. He had to pinch his nose and swallow hard. The plane banked. In the distance he saw the factory chimneys and church spires of what he presumed must be Munich. They straightened, flew on for a minute or two, passed low above a field dotted with brown cattle. A hedge flashed past, there was a rush of grass, and then – once, twice, three times – they bounced along the ground and braked so hard he felt he was pitched forwards against the seat in front. The Lockheed skittered over the airfield, past terminal buildings that looked bigger than at Heston – two or three storeys, with crowds of people packed along the terraces and on the roof. Swastika banners hung from the parapet and fluttered from flagpoles alongside the Union Jack and the French tricolour. Legat thought of Wigram and was glad he was not alive to see it.

The Prime Minister’s plane came to a stop at Oberweisenfeld airport at 11.35 a.m. The engines whined and died. Inside the cabin, after three hours of flight the silence was a noise in itself. Commander Robinson emerged from the cockpit, bent to have a word with the Prime Minister and Wilson, then walked past Legat to the back of the plane, unlocked the door and lowered the steps. Legat felt a blast of warm air, heard German voices. Wilson rose from his seat. ‘Gentlemen, we should let the Prime Minister disembark first.’ He helped Chamberlain on with his overcoat and gave him his hat. The Prime Minister came down the slope of the aisle grabbing the headrests of the seats to steady himself. He was staring straight ahead, his jaw jutting, fixed, as if he were biting down on something. Wilson followed him and waited beside Legat while the Prime Minister descended to the concrete apron. He bent to peer out of the window. ‘My spies tell me you went to see Sir Alexander Cadogan last night.’ He said it quietly, without turning round. ‘Oh, God,’ he added quickly, ‘there’s Ribbentrop.’

He ducked through the door after Chamberlain. Behind him, Strang, Malkin, Ashton-Gwatkin and Dunglass were lining up to disembark. Legat waited until they had passed. Wilson’s remark had unsettled him. What did it mean? He wasn’t sure. Perhaps Cleverly had said something to him. He stood and put on his coat and hat, reached up to the rack and took down the Prime Minister’s red boxes. As he emerged from the plane a military band started playing ‘God Save the King’ and he had to stand awkwardly to attention on the steps. When they had finished that, and just as he was about to move, they embarked on ‘Deutschland über alles’. His gaze wandered across the crowded airfield in search of Hartmann – past the newsreel cameramen and the photographers, the official reception, the SS honour guard, the dozen big Mercedes limousines with swastika pennants drawn up side by side. He couldn’t see him. He wondered if he had changed much. The music ended to loud applause from the crowds in the terminal. A chant of ‘Cham-ber-lain! Cham-ber-lain!’ drifted over the concrete. Ribbentrop gestured to the Prime Minister and the two men walked across the apron to inspect the line of soldiers.

At the foot of the steps, an SS officer with a clipboard asked Legat for his name. He scanned the list. ‘Ah, yes, you have replaced Herr Syers.’ He placed a small tick beside it. ‘You are assigned to the fourth car,’ he said in German, ‘with Herr Ashton-Gwatkin. Your luggage will be taken to the hotel. Please.’ He tried to take the red boxes.

‘No, thank you. I need to keep these.’

There was a brief tug of war until finally the German let go.

The Mercedes was open-topped. Ashton-Gwatkin was already seated in the back. He wore a heavy overcoat with an astrakhan collar. He was perspiring profusely in the heat. ‘What an absolute beast,’ he murmured as the SS man moved away. He turned his hooded eyes on Legat. Legat knew him by reputation only – the most brilliant classicist of his year at Oxford even though he had left without taking a degree, a Japanese scholar, the husband of a ballerina, childless, a poet, a novelist whose lurid bestseller, Kimono, had caused such resentment in Tokyo he had had to be recalled – and now an expert on the economy of the Sudetenland!

Legat said, ‘The PM is hating every minute of this.’

Chamberlain was hurrying through his review of the SS formation. He barely bothered to glance at the young men in their black uniforms. He also ignored Ribbentrop, whom he detested. When he realised he was supposed to share the lead car with the German Foreign Minister, he looked around helplessly for Wilson. But there was no escape. The two men settled into the open Mercedes and the cortège moved off, slowly passing along the length of the airport terminal in order that the crowds could cheer Chamberlain, who politely raised his hat in acknowledgement. At the airport gate they turned south towards Munich.

Hartmann had booked their tickets during Hilary term 1932. They had just been to the Cotswolds to visit Legat’s mother in her cottage in Stow-on-the-Wold. She hated all Huns on principle; Paul she had adored. When they got back to Balliol that Sunday night, Hartmann had said, ‘My dear Hugh, as soon as finals are over, allow me to show you some proper countryside for a change – something that is not merely “pretty”.’ He had a girlfriend who lived in Bavaria: they could meet up with her.

It had never occurred to either of them that while life went on in Oxford in the same old way, Hindenburg might dissolve the Reichstag and provoke a general election. They had arrived in Munich on the same summer’s day that Hitler had addressed a giant rally outside the city, and however much they had tried to ignore politics and get on with their vacation, there had been no escape, not even in the smallest town. Legat remembered a blur of marches and counter-marches, the Storm Battalion versus the Iron Front, demonstrations outside buildings and arguments in cafés, Nazi posters – ‘Hitler over Germany!’ ‘Germany Awake!’ – that were put up by the Brownshirts during the day and torn down by the leftists overnight, a meeting in a park that had ended in a cavalry charge by mounted police. When Leyna had insisted that they go and stand outside Hitler’s apartment, and had shouted abuse when he appeared, they had been lucky not to be beaten up themselves. It was a long way from Hauff and J. S. Mill.

Translate into German: ‘The administration of a joint stock association is, in the main, administration by hired servants …’

He stared out of the car. All the way into the centre of the town, along Lerchenauer Strasse and Schleissheimer Strasse, the citizens of Munich lined the streets so that the motorcade seemed to travel behind a bow-wave of applause for the Prime Minister, borne along a surging river of red, white and black flags. Occasionally, when they swerved to take a corner, Legat glimpsed him in the front car, leaning out slightly, his hat permanently in his hand, circling it in the direction of the crowds. Hundreds of arms rose in the fascist salute.

Ten minutes after leaving the airfield, the convoy swept down Brienner Strasse and into Maximiliansplatz. It rounded the square and drew to a halt outside the Regina Palast Hotel. A huge swastika dangled above the portico. Beneath it stood the British Ambassador, Henderson, and Ivone Kirkpatrick, Head of Chancery at the Berlin embassy. Ashton-Gwatkin let out his breath. ‘I think I could rather get used to that, couldn’t you?’

He heaved his ungainly body out of the Mercedes. Ribbentrop was already being driven away. In the public gardens opposite the hotel the crowd was eight or ten deep, held back by a line of Brownshirts. They cheered. The Prime Minister waved. More flashes from the cameras. Henderson ushered him inside. Legat, a red box in either hand, walked quickly after them.

The large, galleried lobby looked as if it hadn’t changed much since the Kaiser’s day – a stained-glass ceiling, a parquet floor covered in Persian rugs, a plethora of potted palms and armchairs. Several dozen mostly elderly guests were gawping at the sight of Chamberlain. He was standing close to the reception desk in a huddle with Henderson, Kirkpatrick and Wilson. Legat stopped and waited nearby, unsure whether or not to approach them. Suddenly all four turned to look at him. He had the sensation that he was under discussion. A moment later, Wilson was heading across the foyer towards him.