Читать книгу World War 2 Thriller Collection: Winter, The Eagle Has Flown, South by Java Head - Jack Higgins, Justin Richards - Страница 16

‘You have two delightful little boys, Veronica,’ said her father. He watched through the window of the morning room as the solemn ten-year-old Peter pushed his radiantly joyful little blond brother across the lawn on a toy horse. The children were in the private gardens of a big house in London’s Belgravia. It was a glorious summer’s day, and London was at its shining best. An old gardener scythed the bright-green grass to make scallop patterns across the lawn. The scent of newly cut grass hung heavily in the still air and made little Pauli’s eyes red and weepy. Cyrus sniffed contentedly. Their English friends urged them to come to London in ‘the season’, but the Rensselaers preferred to cross the Atlantic at this time of year, when the seas were calmer. ‘No matter what I’m inclined to say about that rascally husband of yours, at least he’s given you two fine boys.’

‘Now, now, Papa,’ said Veronica mildly, ‘let’s not go through all that again.’ She was wearing a long ‘tea gown’ of blue chiffon with net over darker-blue satin. Such afternoon gowns gave her a few hours’ escape from the tight corsets that fashion forced her into for most of the day. It was a lovely, loose, flouncy creation that made her feel young and beautiful and able even to take on her parents. She pulled the trailing hem of it close and admired it.

‘She’s given Harry two fine boys,’ Mrs Rensselaer scoffed. ‘Isn’t it just like a man to put it the wrong way around? Who endured that dreadful hospital in Vienna, when there was a bedroom and our own doctor waiting for her in New York City?’ They were getting at her again, but she was used to it by now. She noticed how much stronger her mother’s high-pitched Yankee twang sounded compared with her father’s softly accented low voice. She noticed all the accents much more now that her life was spent amongst Germans. She wondered if her spoken English had now acquired some sort of German edge to it. Her parents had never mentioned it, and she knew better than to ask them.

‘I couldn’t have come home to have the baby, Mother. You know I couldn’t.’ She suppressed a sigh. For six years they’d nursed this resentment, and still it persisted.

Her father watched the children cross the road hand in hand with their nanny and heard the front door as they came in time to have a wash before tea. He said, ‘I travel across the Atlantic regularly, Veronica, and your mother usually accompanies me. It’s ridiculous for you to go on pretending that you can’t come home for a visit when we come here to London every year without fail.’ He thrust his hands into his pockets. ‘By golly, when I first came to Europe, I sailed on a four-masted barque, now your mother and I sleep in state rooms with running water, and eat dinners that wouldn’t disgrace the Ritz.’

Cyrus G. Rensselaer was a distinguished-looking man in his mid-fifties. He had a shock of black hair combed straight back, pale-blue eyes, and a large moustache. He made no concessions to the warm weather: he wore a black barathea morning suit with a fancy brocaded waistcoat, and a loose tie with a silver pin through the knot. Yet there was a certain unconventional look to him – his hair was longer than was fashionable – so that sometimes, on the steamship coming over, fellow passengers thought he might be a famous musician or a successful painter. This always pleased Cyrus Rensselaer because he often said that he would have become a painter had his father not thrashed him every time he wanted to stop studying engineering.

‘I know, Father. You’ve told me all that in your letters. But Harry is a German; the boys are German. I think of Germany as my home now.’ The difficulty was that her parents spoke no foreign languages, and their one visit to Berlin for the wedding in 1892 seemed to have deterred both of them from ever going to the continent of Europe again.

‘You were able to go to Vienna and have the baby, darling,’ explained her mother. ‘Papa feels that coming back to New York wouldn’t have been all that much more of a strain.’

‘The baby was early, Mother. We were in Vienna and the doctor said I shouldn’t travel.’ She looked at her parents; they were unconvinced. ‘Harry was furious about it. He’d made all the arrangements in Berlin. Poor little Paul – Harry used to call him “the little Austrian dumpling” until I made him stop saying it.’

Her father pulled a gold hunter from his waistcoat pocket and looked at it. ‘Didn’t your Harry say he’d be back for tea?’

‘He’s lunching at the club.’

‘He likes clubs,’ said her father.

‘It’s some mining deal…’ explained Veronica. ‘Someone has discovered a cure for malaria. They think it’s something to do with mosquitoes. Harry says that if it works it will really open up the darkest part of Central Africa.’

‘It’s not a woman, is it?’ whispered her mother.

‘No, it’s not a woman, Mother.’

‘How can you be so sure?’ her mother asked.

‘I’m sure, Mother. Harry’s not so smart about women as he is about money.’

Mr Rensselaer did not like hearing Harald Winter praised, and he certainly didn’t like to hear him praised about his investing and banking skills, at which he considered himself pre-eminent. ‘I’m surprised your Harry isn’t investing in flying machines,’ he said sardonically.

Veronica looked up at him sharply. ‘You underestimate Harry, Papa. You think he’ll invest money into any crazy scheme put up to him. But Harry is clever with money; he would never put it into the hands of people like that.’

‘I’m darned if I ever know what to make of your Harry,’ said her father. ‘He spends money on such toys as this Daimler Mercedes and then takes you down to a cabin on the Obersalzberg and makes you manage with only a couple of local servants. I didn’t pay for your education so that you could wash dishes and sweep the house.’

‘It’s not a cabin, Papa, more like a hunting lodge. The land passed to Harry because of a bad debt. He gave it to Pauli as a christening present. Now he’s built the house there. I love going there. It’s the only time I have Harry all to myself. And we take two maids from the Berlin house, as well as the cook, Harry’s valet and the chauffeur.’

‘It sounds like a lot of work for you, darling,’ said her mother. ‘And walking for five miles! We could hardly believe it when we read your letter. We couldn’t picture you walking so far. Don’t you get lonely?’

Veronica smiled. ‘I have Harry and the children; how could I ever be lonely? And, anyway, we have plenty of neighbours.’

‘What sort of neighbours? Peasants? Woodcutters?’

‘No, Papa. Some fine families have houses there. It’s become very fashionable; musicians and writers …some of them live there all year round.’

‘It sounds like an odd kind of christening present. Harry should have sold it and put the money into some investments for your Pauli.’

‘I want Pauli to have it, Papa. Last year the woodcarver in the village carved a big sign – “Haus Pauli” – that will be fixed over the gate. It’s the most beautiful place in the whole world: meadows, pine trees, and mountains. Behind us there is the Hohe Göll and the Kehlstein mountain. From the window of the breakfast room we can see for miles, right across Berchtesgaden or into Austria.’

‘It’s southernmost Bavaria. I looked on the atlas. That’s too far for us to travel,’ said Rensselaer in a voice that precluded any further discussion.

The Scots nanny brought the boys in promptly at four. Their hands and faces were polished bright pink, and a brown circle of iodine had been painted on Paul’s newly grazed arm. It was always blond Pauli who fell: he was the unlucky one. Or was he careless or clumsy, either way he was always cheery and smiling. Peter was quite different; he was dark, sober, and composed, a thoughtful little boy who’d never been babyish like his young brother. They kissed their mother and Granny and Grandpa dutifully and then, in response to the bellpull, the maids brought high tea, with the best china teacups and silver pots. And there was Cook’s homemade strawberry jam, which went onto the freshly cooked scones together with a spoonful of pale-yellow Cornish cream.

Tea was poured, plates distributed, cakes cut, and sugar spooned out. Throughout the hubbub of the afternoon tea, Rensselaer remained standing by the window; his teacup and saucer and a plate with scones and cream were on the table untouched. He had started his engineering career out west, working in places where a man soon learned how to handle hard liquor, his two fists, and sometimes a gun. The way in which he’d gained admittance to New York’s toughest business circles, and then to its snobby society families, was as much due to Rensselaer’s clumsy honesty, disarming directness, and awkward charm as to his luck and mining skills. But he’d never acquired the social grace that his wife expected of him, and this sort of fancy English tea was a ceremony he didn’t enjoy.

‘Are you keeping up the Latin?’ Rensselaer asked Peter. He was a thin, wiry child, dressed, like his little brother, in cotton knicker-bocker trousers with a sailor-suit top. He had the same dark hair that his grandfather had, and the same pale-blue eyes. There was no other noticeable resemblance, but it was enough to make them recognizably kin.

‘Yes, sir.’ Peter was a graceful little boy, slim and upright, standing face to face with his grandpa and answering in clear and excellent English.

‘Good boy. You must keep up the Latin and the mathematics. Your mother always got top grades in mathematics when she was at school in Springtown. Did she tell you that?’

‘No, sir. She didn’t tell me that.’ There was an awkward relationship between Veronica’s parents and her sons. The Rensselaers were unbending, not understanding that children were no longer treated in the formal and distant way that they had treated their daughter.

‘And what are you going to be when you grow up, young Peter?’ Rensselaer asked him. How he wished the children hadn’t had these very short Prussian haircuts. He was used to children having longer hair. These ‘bullet heads’ were unbecoming for his grandchildren, and he resented Veronica’s allowing it.

‘I’m going to fly in the airship with Count Zeppelin,’ said Peter.

His little brother looked at him with respect bordering on awe, but Mr Rensselaer laughed. ‘Airship! That’s rich!’ he said and laughed again.

Pauli laughed, too, but Peter went red. To help cover his embarrassment, Mary Rensselaer said, ‘Would you like to come and see us in America, Peter? We’d love to have you visit with us.’

‘Next year I go to my new school,’ said Peter.

‘You’re boarding them, Veronica?’ she asked her daughter.

‘No, Mother. It’s a day school. Harry doesn’t like boarding schools except well-supervised military schools. He says there are always bullies. Harry says it makes the English the way they are.’

‘No harm those Germans of yours becoming more like the English,’ said Mr Rensselaer. ‘A little bullying at boarding school might have done that bellicose little Kaiser Wilhelm a power of good.’ He marked this observation with a sound that might have been a chuckle or a snort, then wiped his nose on a very big red cotton handkerchief.

Veronica glanced nervously at the boys, then said, ‘Harry says the Kaiser has done wonders for Germany. He’s brought us closer to Austria, and that’s a good thing.’

‘It’s a good thing for Harry, because of his business interests in Austria, but the Dual Alliance, as they call it, has frightened Russia and France into closer ties, and whatever France does, Britain does too. The Kaiser’s heading himself into a lot of trouble, Veronica. I want you to remember that when you are reading your newspapers.’

‘Harry says all that war talk is just nonsense the newspaper writers invent to sell their papers.’

Mr Rensselaer leaned down to talk to Peter. ‘You remember that your mother is an American, young man. And that makes you half American, too. Never mind about flying in airships with Count Zeppelin; you come to New York City and you’ll see things that will make your eyes pop. America is the only country for a young man like you: farmlands that stretch to the horizon and beyond, and railroads crisscrossing the whole continent. You come to America and discover what it’s like to breathe the air of free men.’ He reached out to put his hand on the child’s shoulder.

Peter pushed his grandfather’s hand away and turned on him. ‘I don’t want to go with you. I hate you. You’re a bad man to say nasty things about His Majesty. He’s my Emperor. Germany has to be strong, to fight the French and the English and the Russians. Then the world will respect the Kaiser. I’ll never go to America – never, never.’

The smile froze on Pauli’s face. For a moment the four grownups were too embarrassed to react. They watched this ten-year-old’s outburst without knowing what to do about it. Cyrus Rensselaer felt a sudden sense of isolation. He’d spent a lot of time looking forward to this meeting with his daughter and his grandsons. They were his only heirs. But instead of the two amiable, tousled, freckle-faced kids he was expecting to see, he was suddenly faced with two militant Teutons. Rensselaer was shocked and speechless. No one moved until six-year-old Paul – sensing that something awful had happened – let out a howl and began to cry more loudly than he’d ever cried before. Then the nanny grabbed the hand of little Paul and tried to grasp Peter’s hand, too, but he ran from the room and slammed the door behind him with all his might.

Veronica said, ‘Take them both up to their room, Nanny. You can tell Peter that his father will hear about this when he gets home.’

‘Yes, madam,’ said the nurse. ‘I really don’t know…It’s not like Peter….’

‘That will be all, Nanny,’ said Grandpa Rensselaer. When the children and nanny had gone, he went to the sidetable and poured himself a whiskey. He downed it in one gulp.

‘It’s the journey …and the excitement,’ said Veronica when her father turned back to face her. ‘Peter is usually the quiet one. Peter is polite and thoughtful. It’s Pauli who gets over excited.’ She spoiled the little one, and she knew it. Did this sudden outburst mean that Peter felt neglected and was demonstrating his discontent?

‘It’s that husband of yours,’ said Rensselaer. ‘You can see what sort of ideas he puts into the children’s heads …Count Zeppelin … airships, and all this nonsense about Kaiser Wilhelm, “my Emperor”. It’s time I had a word with your Harald.’

‘Please don’t, Father. It’s none of Harald’s doing. He spends little enough time with the children.’ She smoothed her satin dress nervously.

‘Someone’s been filling the boy’s head with mischievous twaddle,’ said Rensselaer.

‘It’s the school, Father. It’s the sort of thing they’re told at school.’

Cyrus Rensselaer’s influence and popularity were evident that evening. His twenty-two dinner guests provided a cross section of Britain at the height of its power. On Mary Rensselaer’s right sat an Indian prince, a delicate old man with an Eton accent so pronounced that sometimes even the other English guests had trouble understanding him. Facing her there was a weatherbeaten infantry colonel who’d soldiered through the empire. In Transvaal he’d won his Queen’s newly founded Victoria Cross, and in Afghanistan he’d left an arm.

Dominating the table with his anecdotes there was a plain-speaking Yorkshireman, sole owner of a steel works from which had come enough metal to build a complete Royal Naval Battle Squadron. And listening with delight there was a Peer of the Realm: a handsome, bearded youth who’d inherited half a million acres of northern England. He was rich on coal from a couple of mines he’d never seen, and on rents from a dozen villages that he couldn’t, when asked, name.

The women were as formidable as the men, and just as surprising. The Indian princess could speak a dozen languages, and her German was faultless. The wife of the steelmaster had been painted by Degas, and the bank official’s wife had been a lady-in-waiting to the late Queen. A buxom woman with a glittering diamond collar had run a hospital in the Sudan before marrying a man who owned several thousand miles of Latin American railways.

The dining room was designed to complement such eminent company: fine paintings, carpets, linen, crystal and silver. And the food and wines were memorable.

Harald Winter was overwhelmed. Even his Berlin-tailored evening dress felt wrong, especially when he found all the other men wearing white waistcoats instead of the black ones that were still fashionable in Berlin. In Berlin he was treated as a wealthy and influential – not to say powerful – man. But he felt diffident in the presence of these people. They were relaxed and courteous, but Winter was not such a fool that he didn’t see their arrogant self-confidence. Though they complimented him on his excellent English, he knew the way they ridiculed any sort of foreign accent. Their exaggerated politeness and modest disclaimers were the veneer that overlaid their rough contempt for foreigners such as Winter, and for his banking house, of which they all told him they’d never heard.

‘I’m completely out of touch nowadays,’ one of the guests – a financial expert – told him apologetically. ‘The only bankers I remember are the really big ones…. Getting old, you see.’ He tapped his head and turned away to speak with someone else. Winter felt humiliated.

Rensselaer was just as bad. He’d spent most of the meal talking to the Indian princess. Winter wondered if his father-in-law guessed that he urgently wanted to put a financial proposition to him. He’d been trying to have a private word with his host since arriving back from a disappointing business lunch. Was he avoiding him? Surely not. Rensselaer was as keen on a profit-able deal as any other man in the financial world. It was just as well they were house guests. Perhaps he could have a word with Rensselaer after these dinner guests had gone.

‘You look pensive, darling,’ Veronica told her husband when the men joined the ladies in the drawing room. ‘Is everything all right?’

‘Everything is fine,’ said Winter. It was no good telling his wife how much he disliked these people. Veronica and her family were the same as the rest of them, so he simply told her she was looking wonderful in her long pale-green silk dress. She’d never perceive the way in which these rich and powerful guests of her father’s despised the little German banker and the nation from which he came.

‘I’m not a pork butcher,’ he peevishly responded when the woman with the diamond collar asked him what he did for a living in Berlin. It was a silly remark and simply revealed his nervous exasperation.

‘My grandfather was a butcher in Leeds,’ she cheerfully told him. ‘Even now I can remember the wonderful roast beef we always had at his house.’

Winter was embarrassed at her response. He desperately tried to make amends for his gratuitous rudeness. ‘I have a bank,’ he said and, in keeping with this English obsession for modesty, added, ‘a very small bank.’ She laughed. No matter what one did, somehow the English always knew how to make a foreigner feel a fool.

The two boys, in the nursery bedroom at the very top of the house, heard the clatter of carriages and the sounds of the guests leaving soon after midnight. Peter, lost in a dream about airships, went back to sleep almost immediately, but little Pauli was still worried about his brother’s outburst that afternoon. Paul had none of the cleverness that distinguished his elder brother but, perhaps in compensation for this, the little blond child had an instinct about what went on in other people’s minds. He knew that his grandfather was deeply hurt by what his brother had said. Peter was like that: he had the capacity for cruelty that comes so easily to the self-righteous.

Now Pauli stayed awake worrying about what would happen to Peter. Perhaps he’d be sent away. He’d heard of children being sent away. They were sent away to jobs, and to schools, and sometimes sent away to the army or the navy. Pauli had no idea of what happened to those who were ‘sent away’ but now it was dark, and the flickering nightlight made strange shadows on the ceiling and on the wall, and all sorts of frightening ideas about being sent away occurred to him.

He called to his brother, but Pauli’s voice was faint and Peter’s sleep was not interrupted. Pauli got out of bed and decided to wake up Nanny; she’d be angry, of course, but he knew she’d pick him up and cuddle him and put him back to bed with reassuring words that sometimes little boys like Pauli want to hear in the middle of the dark night.

Pauli was halfway down the top flight of the back stairs by the time he fully realized that he wasn’t in his home in Berlin. He walked up and down the line of closed bedroom doors trying to decide which one to try. It was then that he heard voices from somewhere below. He continued down the servant’s stairs until he got to the ground floor. The voices were coming from a room at the back of the house. It was Grandpa’s study – a small back room where Cyrus Rensselaer went to smoke. Here he kept a comfortable old leather chair, a desk where he could write, and a locked cabinet that contained his very finest French brandy and his favourite sourmash bourbon, which he brought with him because the London wine merchants had never heard of it.

From his position on the landing, Pauli could squeeze into a space where empty steamer trunks were stored, and from there he could look through an open fanlight and see into the room.

Grandpa was sitting in the big leather chair, alongside the coal fire that was now only red embers and grey ash. Pauli’s father was perched on the edge of the writing desk. His father looked uncomfortable. Both men had cut-glass tumblers in their hands. Grandpa was smoking a big cigar and Daddy was lighting one too. Pauli could smell the smoke as it curled up into his hiding place. Grandpa took the cigar from his mouth and said, ‘Never mind all the stories about a cure for malaria, Harry. If you are trying to raise capital for your bank, it means your bank is in trouble.’

‘It’s not in trouble,’ said Winter. He tugged at the hem of his black waistcoat and silently cursed his Berlin tailor for not knowing that in England it was passé.

‘When people start saying a bank is in trouble, it’s in trouble.’

Harald Winter said, ‘It’s a chance to expand.’

Rensselaer interrupted him. ‘Never mind the bullshit, Harry; save that for the suckers. My friends in the City tell me you’re not sound.’

Winter stiffened. ‘Of course it’s sound. Half the money still remains in German government bonds.’

‘Damnit, Harry, don’t be so naive. It’s not sound because your aluminium factory may not be a success. Suppose the aluminium market doesn’t come up to your expectations? How are you going to pay back the money? Your investors think all their money is in government bonds. It’s bordering on the dishonest, Harry.’

Winter sipped his drink. ‘The electrolytic process has changed aluminium production. The metal is light and very strong; they’re experimenting with all kinds of mixtures, and these alloys will revolutionize building and automobiles, and they’ll find other industrial uses for it.’

‘Sure, sure, sure,’ said Rensselaer. ‘I’ve heard all these snake-oil stories…. There’s always a claim where some guy will strikegold or oil…and it’s always next week. I grew up on all that stuff.’

‘I’m not talking about something that might never happen,’ said Winter. ‘I’m talking about using aluminium alloys.’

‘Aluminium: okay. I made a few inquiries. In 1855 it cost a thousand Reichsmarks per kilo; in 1880, twenty Reichsmarks; now I can buy it for two Reichsmarks a kilo. What price will it be by the time your factory comes into full-scale production?’

‘I’m not selling aluminium, Mr Rensselaer.’ He always addressed his father-in-law as ‘Mr Rensselaer’, always expecting him to suggest he called him Cyrus or Cy as his friends did; but Cyrus Rensselaer never did suggest it, even though he called his son-in-law Harry. It was another example of the way Harald Winter was deliberately humbled. Or that was how it seemed to him. ‘I’ll be selling manufactured components that bolt together to make the rigid framework for airships.’

‘Then why the aluminium factory? Buy your materials on the open market.’

‘I have to have an assured supply. Otherwise I could sign a contract and then be held to ransom by the aluminium manufacturers.’

‘It’s my daughter I’m thinking of, Harry. You haven’t told her that you are going to put every penny you can raise into producing metal components for flying machines. I sounded her out this afternoon: she thinks you’re cautious with money. She trusts you to look after the family.’

Winter drew on his cigar. ‘These zeppelins are going to change the world, Mr Rensselaer. A year ago I would have shared your scepticism. But I’ve seen Zeppelin’s first airship flying – as big as a city block and as smooth as silk.’

‘And as dangerous as hell. Don’t you know those ships are full of hydrogen, Harry? Have you ever seen hydrogen burn?’

‘I know all the problems and the dangers,’ said Winter, ‘but, just as you have your contacts here in London, I have friends in the Berlin War Office. At present the General Staff is showing strong opposition to all forms of airship; the soldiers don’t like new ideas. But the Kaiser has personally ordered the setting up of a Motorluftschiff-Studien-Gesellschaft: a technical society for the study of airships. It’s still very secret, but it’s just a matter of time until the army orders some big rigids from Count Zeppelin.’

‘That’s all moonshine, Harry. I hear that Zeppelin’s second ship, which flew in January, turned out to be a big flop. They say its first flight is going to be its one and only flight.’

‘But Count Zeppelin is already building LZ3, and it will fly in about twelve weeks from now. Make no mistake: he’ll go on building them.’

‘Maybe that just shows he doesn’t know when he’s licked. And who can say how the airships will shape up when the army tests them?’

‘Do you realize how much aluminium goes into one of those airships? They weigh almost three tons. Thousands of girders and formers go into each ring. I’ve done some sums. Using Count Zeppelin’s first airship as a yardstick, I’d need only six-point-seven-three per cent of an airship’s aluminium requirement to break even and pay back the interest.’

Even Rensselaer was visibly impressed. ‘But we’re talking about every red cent you possess, Harry. Why not a smaller investment?’

‘I could have a smaller investment; I could do without the aluminium factory and be at the mercy of my suppliers. I could have half an interest and have only nonvoting shares, but that would mean someone else was making the decisions about who, what, why and where we sell. That’s not my way, Mr Rensselaer: and it’s not your way, either.’

Rensselaer scratched his chin. ‘I’ve spent half my working life trying to talk people out of these kinds of blue-sky investments. But I can see I’d be wasting my time trying to talk you out of it.’ Rensselaer got up from his chair for enough time to flick ash into the fire. ‘J. P. Morgan bought up steel companies to make U.S. Steel, and he’s made himself one of the most powerful men in the U.S., maybe one of the most powerful men in the whole damned world. It looks easy, but don’t think that you can corner the market in aluminium and become the J. P. Morgan of Germany. The European market just doesn’t work that way.’

‘I know that, Mr Rensselaer.’

‘Do you?’ He slumped back into his chair. ‘That’s good, because I meet a whole lot of people who try to get me involved in financing crackpot schemes like that.’

‘It’s just bridging.’

‘It’s not bridging, Harry!’ Suddenly Rensselaer’s voice was louder. Then, as if determined to control his temper, he lowered it again to say, ‘We’re talking about guarantees that will go on until 1916. Ten years! A hell of a lot of things could happen between now and then.’

‘I have most of it, Mr Rensselaer.’

‘You need nearly a million pounds sterling, Harry, and that’s a hell of a lot of dough when you’ve got no collateral that I’d want to try and realize on.’

Winter knew that his father-in-law had decided to let him have the money. He smiled. ‘It’s a great opportunity, Mr Rensselaer. You’ll never regret it.’

‘I’m regretting it already,’ said Rensselaer. ‘I’ve always tried to stay clear of government agencies in all shapes and forms. Especially I’ve avoided armies and navies. Now I’m going to find myself with a million pounds sterling invested in the army of the Kaiser: a man I wouldn’t trust to look after my horses. What’s worse, I’m going to have the security of my investment depending upon his bellicose ambitions.’

Rensselaer knew his words would offend his son-in-law but he was angry and frustrated at the trap he found himself in. When Winter wisely made no reply, Rensselaer said, ‘It’s for Veronica’s sake – you know that, of course – and I’ll want proper safeguards built into the paperwork. I’ll want your life insured with a U.S. company for the full amount of the loan.’

‘It’s the Kaiser’s life you should insure,’ said Winter. ‘My death would make no difference to the investment.’

‘Here’s to the Kaiser’s health,’ said Rensselaer sardonically. He raised his glass and drank the rest of his whiskey.

Winter smiled and decided not to drink to the Kaiser’s health. In the circumstances it would seem like lese-majesty.

Little Pauli crawled out of his hiding place and went slowly upstairs, trying to figure out what the two grownups had been talking about. By the time he found his bedroom again, only one part of the scene he’d witnessed was clear to him. He shook Peter awake and said, ‘I saw Daddy and Grandpa. They were smoking cigars and talking. Daddy made Grandpa drink to the health of His Majesty the Emperor. He made him do it, Peter.’

Peter came awake slowly, and when he heard Pauli’s story he was sceptical. Little Pauli hero-worshipped his father in a way that Peter would never do. ‘Go to sleep, Pauli, you’ve been dreaming again.’ He turned over and snuggled deep into the soft down pillow.

‘I haven’t been dreaming,’ said Pauli. He wanted Peter to believe him; he wanted his big brother to treat him as an equal. ‘I saw them.’ But by the time morning came, he was no longer quite certain.