Chapter 35
September was crisping the Berlin air and yellowing the leaves when Pug got back. Compared to London under the blitz, the city looked at peace. Fewer uniforms were in sight, and almost no trucks or tanks. After beating France, Hitler had partially demobilized to free workers for the farms and factories. His remaining soldiers were not loafing around Berlin. Either they were poised for invasion on the coast, or they garrisoned France and Poland, or they guarded a thin prudent line facing the Soviet Union. Only the air war showed its traces: round blue-gray snouts of flak guns poking above autumn leaves, flaxen-haired German children in a public square gawking at a downed Wellington. The sight of the forlorn British bomber — a twin of F for Freddie — with its red, white, and blue bull’s- eye, gave Pug a sad twinge. He tried and failed to see the wrecked gasworks. Scowling Luftwaffe guards and wooden street barriers cordoned off the disaster. Goring had long ago announced that if a single British bomb ever fell on Berlin, the German people could call him Meyer. The evidence of Meyer’s shortcomings was off limits.
But Pug wondered how many Germans would have gone there anyway to look. These were weird people. In Lisbon, when he boarded the Lufthansa plane, Germany had then and there smitten him: the spotless interior, the heel-clicking steward, the fast service of food and drink, the harsh barking loudspeaker, and his seatmate, a fat bespectacled blond doctor who clinked wineglasses with him and spoke warmly of the United States and of his sister in Milwaukee. The doctor expressed confidence that America and Germany would always be friends. Hitler and Roosevelt were equally great men and they both wanted peace. He deplored the ruthless of murder of Berlin civilians by British bombers, as contrasted to the Luftwaffe’s strict concentration on military targets. The RAF, he pointed out, painted the underside of their planes with a remarkable black varnish that rendered them invisible at night, and constantly changed altitude so that the A.A. batteries had trouble finding the range. That was how they had sneaked by. But these petty unfair tricks would avail them nothing. German science would find the answer in a week or two. The war was really over and won. The Luftwaffe was invincible. The British criminals responsible for dropping bombs on women and little children would soon have to face the bar of justice.
This man was exactly like a London music-hall burlesque German, complete to the squinting smile and the rolls of fat on his neck. Pug got tired of him. He said dryly that he had just come from London and that the Luftwaffe was getting beaten over England. The man at once froze, turned his back on Pug, and ostentatiously flourished an Italian newspaper with lurid pictures of London on fire.
Then when Pug first returned to the Grunewald house, the art museum director who lived next door, a vastly learned little dark man named Dr. Baltzer, rushed over, dragging a game leg, to offer his neighbor a drink and to chat about the imminent British collapse. Besides being obliging neighbors, the Baltzers had invited the Henrys to many interesting exhibitions and parties. Mrs. Baltzer had become Rhoda’s closest German fiend. Tactfully, Pug tried to tell his neighbor that the war wasn’t going quite the way Goebbels’s newspapers and broadcasts pictured it. At the first hint that the RAF was holding its own, the little art expert bristled and went limping out, forgetting his offer to give Pug a drink. And this was a man who had hinted many times that the Nazis were vulgar ruffians and that Hitler was a calamity.
This was what now made Berlin completely intolerable. The Germans had balled themselves into one tight fist. The little tramp had his “one Reich, one people, one leader,” that he had so long screeched for. Victor Henry, a man of discipline, understood and admired the stiff, obedient efficiency of these people, but their mindless shutting out of facts disgusted him. It was not only stupid, not only shameless; it was bad war-making. The “estimate of the situation” — a phrase borrowed by the Navy from Prussian military doctrine — had to start from the facts.
When Ernst Grobke telephoned to invite him to lunch shortly after his return, he accepted gladly. Grobke was one of the few German military men he knew who seemed to retain some common sense amid the Nazi delirium. In a restaurant crowded with uniformed Party officials and high military brass, the submariner griped openly about the war, especially the way Goring had botched the battle of Britain. From time to time he narrowed his eyes and glanced over one shoulder and the other, an automatic gesture in Germany when talking war or politics.
“We’ll still win,” he said. “They’ll try all the dumb alternatives and then they’ll get around to it.
“To what?” Pug said.
“Blockade, of course. The old English weapon turned against them. They can’t blockade us. We’ve got the whole European coast open from the Baltic all the way around to Turkey. Even Napoleon never had that. But England’s got a negative balance of food and fuel that has to choke her to death. If Goring had just knocked out harbors this summer and sunk ships — adding that to the tremendous score our U-boat and magnetic mines have been piling up — England would already be making approaches through the Swiss and the Swedes.” He calmly lifted both hands upward. “No alternative! We’re sinking them all across the Atlantic. They don’t have the strength to convoy. If they did, our new tactics and torpedoes would still lick them. Mind you, we started way under strength on U-boats, Victor. But finally Donitz convinced Raeder, and Raeder convinced the Fuhrer. After Poland, when England turned down the peace offer, we started laying keels by the dozens. They begin coming off the ways next January. An improved type, a beauty. Then — four, five months, half a million tons sunk a month, and
You disagree?” Grobke grinned at him. The small U-boat man wore a well-tailored purplish tweed suit and a clashing yellow bow tie. His face glowed with sunburned confident good health. “Come on. You don’t have to sympathize. We all know your President’s sentiments, hm? But you understand the sea and you know the situation.”
Pug regarded Grobke wryly. He rather agreed with this estimate. “Well, if Goring really will switch to blockade, and if you do have a big new fleet of ‘em coming along — but that’s a couple of big ifs.”
“You doubt my word?”
“I wouldn’t blame you for expanding a bit.’
“You’re all right, Victor.” Grobke laughed. “Goddamn. But I don’t have to expand. You’ll see, beginning in January.”
“Then it may get down to whether we come in.”
The U-boat man stopped laughing. “Yes. That’s the question. But now your President sneaks a few old airplanes and ships to England, and he can’t even face your Congress with that. Do you think your people will go for sending out American warships to be sunk by U-boats? Roosevelt is a tough guy, but he is afraid of your people.”
“Well! Ernst Grobke and Victor Henry! The two sea dogs, deciding the war.”
The banker Wolf Stoller was bowing over them, thin sandy hair plastered down, cigarette holder sticking out of his smile. “Victor, that is a beautiful new suit. Savile Row?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact.”
“Unmistakable. Well, it will be a pleasure to start ordering clothes there again. There are no tailors like the British. I say, how far along are you gentlemen? Come and join us. Just a few pleasant chaps at our table.”
“No thank you, Herr Stoller,” Pug said. “I must get back to my office quickly.”
“Of course. I say, Ernst, did you tell Captain Henry you’re coming to Abendruh this weekend? Victor’s an old Abendruh visitor, you know. By Jove! Why don’t you come along this time, Victor? Twice lately you’ve said no, but I’m not proud. You and your old friend Ernst can tell each other big sea lies all weekend! Do say yes. There will be just two or three other splendid fellows. And some lovely ladies, not all of them attached.”
Under Victor Henry’s quick glance, Grobke smiled unnaturally and said, “Well, that’s not a bad idea, is it?”
“All right,” said the American. It was quite clear to him now what was going on and why Grobke had called him. “Thank you very much.”
“Grand. Ripping. See you on Friday,” said the banker, clapping Victor Henry on the shoulder.
After this, the talk of the two naval officers was lame and sparse. Ernst Grobke busied himself with his food, not looking much at Pug.
That same afternoon, to Victor Henry’s surprise, his yeoman rang him and said Natalie Jastrow was on the line from Siena.
“Jehosephat! Put her on.”
“Hello? Hello? What happened? I was calling Captain Henry in Berlin.” The girl’s voice was muffled and burbling.
