There were not enough handcarts in town, so people took it in turns to move their goods. The process took hours, but by midafternoon the last pile of possessions had gone, and the keys had been left sticking out of the locks on the front doors. The policemen went back to London.
Ethel stayed in the street for a while. The windows of the empty houses looked blankly back at her, and the rainwater ran down the street pointlessly. She looked across the wet gray slates of the roofs, downhill to the scattered pithead buildings in the valley bottom. She could see a cat walking along a railway line, but otherwise there was no movement. No smoke came from the engine room, and the great twin wheels of the winding gear stood on top of their tower, motionless and redundant in the soft relentless rain.
CHAPTER FIVE – April 1914
The German embassy was a grand mansion in Carlton House Terrace, one of London’s most elegant streets. It looked across a leafy garden to the pillared portico of the Athenaeum, the club for gentleman intellectuals. At the back, its stables opened on the Mall, the broad avenue that ran from Trafalgar Square to Buckingham Palace.
Walter von Ulrich did not live there-yet. Only the ambassador himself, Prince Lichnowsky, had that privilege. Walter, a mere military attache, lived in a bachelor apartment ten minutes’ walk away in Piccadilly. However, he hoped that one day he might inhabit the ambassador’s grand private apartment within the embassy. Walter was not a prince, but his father was a close friend of Kaiser Wilhelm II. Walter spoke English like an Old Etonian, which he was. He had spent two years in the army and three years at the war academy before joining the Foreign Service. He was twenty-eight years old, and a rising star.
He was not attracted only by the prestige and glory of being an ambassador. He felt passionately that there was no higher calling than to serve his country. His father felt the same.
They disagreed about everything else.
They stood in the hall of the embassy and looked at one another. They were the same height, but Otto was heavier, and bald, and his mustache was the old-fashioned soup-strainer type, whereas Walter had a modern toothbrush. Today they were identically dressed in black velvet suits with knee breeches, silk stockings, and buckled shoes. Both wore swords and cocked hats. Amazingly, this was the normal costume for presentation at Britain’s royal court. “We look as if we should be on the stage,” Walter said. “Ridiculous outfits.”
“Not at all,” said his father. “It’s a splendid old custom.”
Otto von Ulrich had spent much of his life in the German army. A young officer in the Franco-Prussian War, he had led his company across a pontoon bridge at the Battle of Sedan. Later, Otto had been one of the friends the young Kaiser Wilhelm had turned to after he broke with Bismarck, the Iron Chancellor. Now Otto had a roving brief, visiting European capitals like a bee landing on flowers, sipping the nectar of diplomatic intelligence and taking it all back to the hive. He believed in the monarchy and the Prussian military tradition.
Walter was just as patriotic, but he thought Germany had to become modern and egalitarian. Like his father, he was proud of his country’s achievements in science and technology, and of the hardworking and efficient German people; but he thought they had a lot to learn-democracy from the liberal Americans, diplomacy from the sly British, and the art of gracious living from the stylish French.
Father and son left the embassy and went down a broad flight of steps to the Mall. Walter was to be presented to King George V, a ritual that was considered a privilege even though it brought with it no particular benefits. Junior diplomats such as he were not normally so honored, but his father had no compunction about pulling strings to advance Walter’s career.
“Machine guns make all handheld weapons obsolete,” Walter said, continuing an argument they had begun earlier. Weapons were his specialty, and he felt strongly that the German army should have the latest in firepower.
Otto thought differently. “They jam, they overheat, and they miss. A man with a rifle takes careful aim. But give him a machine gun and he’ll wield it like a garden hose.”
“When your house is on fire, you don’t throw water on it in cupfuls, no matter how accurate. You want a hose.”
Otto wagged his finger. “You’ve never been in battle-you have no idea what it’s like. Listen to me, I know.”
This was how their arguments often ended.
Walter felt his father’s generation was arrogant. He understood how they had got that way. They had won a war, they had created the German Empire out of Prussia and a group of smaller independent monarchies, and then they had made Germany one of the world’s most prosperous countries. Of course they thought they were wonderful. But it made them incautious.
A few hundred yards along the Mall, Walter and Otto turned into St. James’s Palace. This sixteenth-century brick pile was older and less impressive than neighboring Buckingham Palace. They gave their names to a doorman who was dressed as they were.
Walter was mildly anxious. It was so easy to make a mistake of etiquette-and there were no minor errors when you were dealing with royalty.
Otto spoke to the doorman in English. “Is Senor Diaz here?”
“Yes, sir, he arrived a few moments ago.”
Walter frowned. Juan Carlos Diego Diaz was a representative of the Mexican government. “Why are you interested in Diaz?” he said in German as they walked on through a series of rooms decorated with wall displays of swords and guns.
“The British Royal Navy is converting its ships from coal power to oil.”
Walter nodded. Most advanced nations were doing the same. Oil was cheaper, cleaner, and easier to deal with-you just pumped it in, instead of employing armies of black-faced stokers. “And the British get oil from Mexico.”
“They have bought the Mexican oil wells in order to secure supplies for their navy.”
“But if we interfere in Mexico, what would the Americans think?”
Otto tapped the side of his nose. “Listen and learn. And, whatever you do, don’t say anything.”
The men about to be presented were waiting in an anteroom. Most had on the same velvet court dress, though one or two were in the comic-opera costumes of nineteenth-century generals, and one-presumably a Scot-wore full-dress uniform with a kilt. Walter and Otto strolled around the room, nodding to familiar faces on the diplomatic circuit, until they came to Diaz, a thickset man with a mustache that curled up at the tips.
After the usual pleasantries Otto said: “You must be glad that President Wilson has lifted the ban on arms sales to Mexico.”
“Arms sales to the rebels,” said Diaz, as if correcting him.
The American president, always inclined to take a moral stand, had refused to recognize General Huerta, who had come to power after the assassination of his predecessor. Calling Huerta a murderer, Wilson was backing a rebel group, the Constitutionalists.
Otto said: “If arms may be sold to the rebels, surely they may be sold to the government?”
Diaz looked startled. “Are you telling me that Germany would be willing to do that?”
“What do you need?”
“You must already know that we are desperate for rifles and ammunition.”
“We could talk further about it.”
Walter was as startled as Diaz. This would cause trouble. He said: “But, Father, the United States-”
“One moment!” His father held up a hand to silence him.
Diaz said: “By all means let us talk further. But tell me: what other subjects might come up?” He had guessed that Germany would want something in return.
The door to the throne room opened, and a footman came out carrying a list. The presentation was about to start. But Otto continued unhurriedly: “In time of war, a sovereign country is entitled to withhold strategic supplies.”
Diaz said: “You’re talking about oil.” It was the only strategic supply Mexico had.
Otto nodded.
