* * * *
World War Two Will
Not Take Place
By Bill James
* * * *
BOOK ONE
* * * *
ONE
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M |
ount flew to Berlin-Templehof in the afternoon, pass-ported as Stanley Charles Naughton, businessman. Section kept a service apartment under the S.C. Naughton name off Hindenburgdamm in Steglitz, a sedate, tree-lined suburb to the south-west of the capital. Mount had used it several times in the last couple of years and considered the address still reasonably anonymous. The apartment itself was on the second floor in a very modern, New Objectivity - Neue Sachlichkeit - style block, built in the late 1920s or early 1930s, Mount would guess, though much of the district’s imposing grey stone and red-brick property went back to mid nineteenth century. It was a suitable kind of prosperous, developing area for the pied-a-terre of a British company’s visiting executive. But no matter how right it might be, Section wouldn’t lease this kind of accommodation for more than three years. An unusual pattern of usage - or more a non-pattern - might get it noticed. There’d be a change soon.
Mount knew what his mission was, of course. Stephen Bilson had briefed him earlier today in that painstaking style of his. But Mount had wondered (1) whether the objective was achievable; and (2) whether, even if it were, it would make much difference to the general international condition of power and politics.
Mount often wondered if his journeys and various activities for the Section had much point. But, as Stephen Bilson told him not long ago, ‘In this kind of work little is absolutely plain, Marcus.’ The suggestion here was that, looking back later on, Mount might hindsight-understand how seemingly useless operations fitted into a master plan. And Mount would admit SB’s hint usually turned out true - or as true as anyone could expect in this kind of work, where so little was absolutely plain, or absolutely true, or absolutely anything. Bilson had served in France throughout the war and was at the Somme. He may have often wondered how - or if - some slaughterous spell of combat contributed to a general strategy. During such bloody fighting he’d picked up two medals, even if, at those moments, he hadn’t properly understood this or that battle’s objective.
Just the same, Mount continued to think his present mission especially dud and doubted it would ever be proved otherwise. Bilson’s decision to send him to Berlin had been too rushed, too impulsive. These were untypical words to use about SB, who habitually displayed absolute calm in all weathers, and whose thinking was methodical, sane, clear; except, obviously, at those times - fairly frequent - when it had to get professionally serpentine and, or, fog-producing, in the nation’s interest.
There’d been an episode at another airfield yesterday: Heston, not far from London. Mount and Bilson had gone there together. Would it be exaggerating to describe SB’s reaction to events at Heston as near panic? Mount didn’t want to call it that. He needed something to believe in and, often, SB and his level-headedness and medals had been it. However, standing with Stephen Bilson then, on the rim of the crowd at Heston, Marcus Mount had thought he detected a quite swift, painful change of reactions in his chief: a move from satisfaction bordering on relish, towards anxiety bordering on despair. Mount had tried to work out what caused this, and when. Bilson had seemed fine, and more than fine, while they waited for the Lockheed to appear out of the clouds and make its descent. This seemingly bland mood persisted right up until the plane completed its landing and the Prime Minister appeared at the top of the steps, waving his peace piece of paper. But, surely, that’s what SB had schemed for. Why should it distress him now, offend him now?
Chamberlain had done the job that Stephen, in his devious, oblique, commanding style, must have managed him into doing, or helped manage him into doing, at any rate. Shouldn’t Bilson feel and display delight? Some details of the PM’s performance were, on the face of it showy and vulgar - did Chamberlain need to beam so manically, flourish the document so frenetically? - but that, surely, could not cancel the central, core worth of what he’d achieved in Munich. Politics would always be vulgar, and war politics especially. Chamberlain had the kind of face that found excitement or enthusiasm difficult to register. There seemed to be something permanently cowed and nervy to him, even when he talked as if he had nothing to be cowed and nervy about. At Heston, in fact, he had a kind of triumph to report, didn’t he? Did he?
When the next morning - this morning - Mount had spoken in the Section to Oily Fallows and Nick Baillie, about the Heston events, he’d said: ‘Of course, I might be wrong about a swing of attitude in SB. He’s not easy to read.’
‘Harder than The Waste Land,’ Fallows said.
‘He’s sending me to Berlin at once - “Sub rosa, entirely sub rosa.” But the whole thing at Heston should have been a celebration,’ Mount said. ‘He’d actually created the scene,’
‘Well, yes, in a sense,’ Baillie said.
‘I’m sure Chamberlain wouldn’t have gone and acted compliant, except for him,’ Mount said. ‘And wouldn’t have come back with promises for the adoring crowd and the relieved country, but for him.’
‘They’re known to have private conclaves, yes,’ Baillie said. ‘Stephen hates war.’
‘He was good at it,’ Fallows said.
‘He wouldn’t want more,’ Mount said.
‘But he’d also realize that war might be inevitable, and a delay would give us more time to stock up on the arms and barrage balloons and gas masks and bianco,’ Baillie said.
‘That’s presumably why he wanted to be there for the PM’s return at Heston,’ Fallows said. ‘He’d like to see the completion of his work at first hand. He took you with him, Marcus, to learn in a very vivid way what his purpose was, and what the Section’s purpose should be - and perhaps to pass on that message to the rest of us young underlings. Did he say, “Marcus! Come along, sonny boy, and witness the sterling results of our work?’”
‘Normally, he’d hate to join any public display for fear he’d get identified,’ Baillie said. ‘But he must have thought the PM’s mission exceptionally, uniquely, successful - demanding his formal presence at the welcome home. He’s persuaded Neville to stop a war.’
‘Or, at least, postpone a war,’ Mount said.
Perhaps Fallows and Baillie had it right. Possibly Bilson had wanted to educate Mount via the drama of Heston. And nobody could say it wasn’t dramatic. The happy tension could be felt, in fact, long before Bilson and Mount actually reached Heston yesterday in the car. The narrow approach roads to the airport were jammed with vehicles and people on foot determined to make a joyful reception for Chamberlain. And when Bilson and Mount did reach the airfield they found a huge gathering of excited folk had assembled. Mount felt a kind of carnival spirit. Among the crowd he saw what he judged from their formal clothes to be a party of Eton schoolboys. Good God, there would be more than a hundred! They’d obviously been given leave to witness these triumphant moments. News of the Prime Minister’s success in his talks with the Führer had, of course, reached Britain a good while ahead of his plane.
Like everyone else there, the boys continually stared up into the grey skies, looking for the airliner with the Prime Minister aboard. Such a turnout! And perhaps Chamberlain deserved it. Yes, perhaps, Mount decided. In a little while, he’d heard the aircraft’s engine, and then, after a couple more minutes, he spotted the plane descending majestically towards Heston. The Super-Lockheed 14 landed, taxied and came to a stop. Airport staff placed steps in position. The door opened, and Neville Chamberlain appeared and waved happily to the people. Instantly, a cheer of response erupted. The Etonians, in a group and obviously organized, yelled his name, with the accent heavily on the first syllable: Neville, Neville, Neville. He came down the steps and turned to where microphones had been placed on the tarmac. He waved a piece of paper. ‘This morning I had another talk with the German Chancellor, Herr Hitler, and here is a paper which bears his name upon it as well as mine. It asserts the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with each other again.’ He waved the paper once more. The crowd gave a huge, prolonged cheer.
It was not long after this that Mount thought he noticed the abrupt and huge change in Bilson’s mood. Mount wondered whether SB objected to that noisy claque of Eton schoolboys. But Bilson himself had, of course, come from one of the top public - meaning private - schools or he’d never have been invited into his present job. He’d know - just as Mount knew from his own school days - that the kids of well-heeled families could be especially excitable and loud. Bilson’s attitude on social class might be complex, though. Apparently, he’d insisted on joining up as an ordinary soldier in 1914. The commission didn’t come till well into the war - late 1916.
He and Mount had watched the Prime Minister’s Daimler eventually move off on the way back to London. Other cars tagged behind in a triumphal procession, some carrying Press and broadcasting people, but most simply enthusiasts and sightseers. Several drivers blared their horns repeatedly in salute. At least this made sure the string of vehicles couldn’t be mistaken for a funeral cortege, though the misery Mount sensed in Bilson might suggest a funeral was what it definitely was. Perhaps his sadness came from a larger cause than the schoolboys’ behaviour. Did Stephen think he’d suddenly glimpsed the end of that vastly variable and internationally disputed quality, British honour? He’d wanted proper recognition of what the PM had achieved, but not on such a noisy, delirious, unthinking, reverential scale.
This morning, the Press was almost uniformly enthusiastic about the Munich trip. The Times had headlined its report of the meeting ‘A Cordial Welcome From The Führer’, and the Labour Daily Herald had sent him off with the large type message ‘Good Luck’ and spoken of united, cross-party support for his efforts.
At Heston, yesterday, SB gave the Daimler and its tail of admirers and news hounds half an hour to get clear, then followed. ‘He’ll report to the king now and most probably to the Cabinet in the morning,’ he’d said. ‘Delight all round. Out on the palace balcony with all the majesticals for the crowd, I expect. Our monarch, Edward, and his wife, Wallis, are fond of Adolf, aren’t they? It’s part of their affection for Europe. She’s American. To her, Europe is Europe, whether it’s Hitler’s bit or someone else’s. They have minds that generalize - are not good at differentiating. They’ll be delighted with the outcome - pleased that the Prime Minister has preserved good feelings between the two countries. Come to me at noon tomorrow, Marcus. I’ll want you to get over sub rosa, entirely sub rosa, to Berlin immediately.’ He spoke it all in the same, matter-of-fact tone, as if Mount’s trip must naturally follow the PM’s encounter with the king and the Cabinet and all the majesticals - a natural, inevitable part of the same sequence.
Mount said: ‘May I ask what is the—?’
‘Noon. Silence on this, please, Marcus.’
But Mount had mentioned it to Nick and Ollie the next morning, this morning, as part of his account of the Heston sequence. ‘At first, Stephen seemed happily caught up with waiting for the Lockheed,’ Mount said. ‘Then, only minutes afterwards, it’s as if he suddenly had massive second thoughts.’
‘A revelation had hit him,’ Baillie said. Nick was usually quick and definite in his judgements. ‘SB might be the sort for epiphany-type revelations: super-balanced most of the time, but if that balance is disturbed by some epiphany - some massive revelation - his mind becomes very, very disturbed. This could shove our master towards breakdown, temporary or worse. It’s a familiar psychological pattern. It would be made worse, perhaps, when he heard the PM had been invited to the Palace to get the king’s thanks face to face. And the crowd outside yelling, “We want Chamberlain! We want Neville!” Then, later, much the same at ten Downing Street.’
‘Suddenly, this very unlogged, false-papers mission to Berlin,’ Mount said.
‘To do what?’ Fallows said.
‘He’ll brief me personally later today. For my ears only,’ Mount said. ‘I’m packed:
‘Skulduggery?’ Fallows asked.
‘I assume no weaponry,’ Mount said. ‘How does he get me something from the armoury if I’m not just sub rosa, but entirely sub rosa?’
‘Think you’ll need something?’ Baillie said.
‘It’s Berlin,’ Mount said.
‘Well, yes,’ Baillie said.
‘Maybe he’ll draw a handgun on the face of it for himself and let you borrow,’ Fallows said.
‘You think so?’ Mount said.
‘No,’ Fallows said. ‘You might go and kill someone and the gun could be traced to him.’
‘Who might I go and kill?’ Mount said.
‘That’s for you to decide,’ Fallows said. ‘Some SS thug giving you bother? How can I tell? You’re skimping the information, Marcus.’
‘I’m skimping because I haven’t got any,’ Mount said. ‘Not till I see him, and it might be half mystery even then.’
‘Be severe with him,’ Fallows said.
‘With SB?’
‘Come right out with it: “How’s about a pistol, plus fifty rounds and a silencer, then, SB?” And he’ll see the reasonableness of this and say, “Glad you asked, young Marcus. Have a brace and a hundred.” And you’ll reply, selflessly, “Won’t this leave you light on one gun hip, sir? I wouldn’t want to be responsible for that. A single will do, and the fifty.’”
‘I do love humour,’ Mount had replied.
Now, he took a taxi from Templehof Airport to the empty apartment. It was neat and spruce: the building management sent a cleaning firm in once a fortnight whenever the place stood unoccupied for a while. The wallpaper always struck him as William Morris-y: mostly dark green, plenty of lively leaves and stalks and gleams of sun through the foliage, very much pro-Nature, especially jungles. Mount could put up with the furniture. It had been bought to chime with the modernity of the apartment. A nest of three very black Bakelite tables sickened him a bit, but he liked the tall, slim hall mirror on a stand and the wide laminated birch and metal armchairs.
Several bronze and ivory statuettes of limbs-flung dancing girls cheered things up in the living room. This had two windows looking over the street. He raised the Venetian blinds. He’d leave these windows uncovered. The lights made an announcement: someone had arrived and required a visitor. It had been important to get an apartment on at least the second or third floor, so the message could be obvious, and so people walking the pavement couldn’t gawp in. This signalling mimicked brothels, though their lights would be red, of course. It was one of the most primitive taught procedures for getting in touch with an agent, and fairly safe, although lights on in the day could cause curiosity. Telephoning would not have been primitive. Nor would it have been safe. Calls were randomly listened in on. Telegrams, even coded telegrams, could be a giveaway. Perhaps someone would wonder why they needed to be coded.
Mount sat down for a while away from the windows and thought back. During the chat with Baillie and Fallows this morning, Baillie had asked: ‘Have you considered the Etonians?’
‘Considered how?’ Mount said.
‘The Times said a gaggle of senior boys had been allowed to cut school and get to the Heston party,’ Fallows said.
‘They intoned his name,’ Mount said. ‘At least a hundred.’
‘Yes, The Times reported it as “Neville” over and over,’ Baillie said. ‘This could be crucial for SB’s state of mind.’
‘Neville” over and over,’ Mount said.
‘The paper estimates 120 Etonians,’ Baillie said. ‘Might that have shocked SB? Perhaps made him wonder if he’d led Neville into a terrible error by humouring Adolf?’
‘I don’t follow,’ Mount said.
Fallows clapped his hands twice. ‘Ah, I believe I do. Very clever, Nick. Insightful. Look, Marcus, consider Sir Henry Newbolt.’
‘“A breathless hush in the Close tonight”?’ Mount said.
‘It’s public school cricket under way - probably Eton cricket,’ Baillie said. ‘We have a needle game, the result touch and go. And Newbolt proudly declares that because these schoolboys learned how to battle well at cricket, they’d be able to battle well as officers in a war and magnificently rally the ranks at bad moments. It’s where Britain traditionally got its army leaders: our public schools. They were first over the top out of the trenches. Why so many got mown down. But didn’t these braying Etonians at Heston turn all that inside out? They’d come to robot-bellow their support for murky deals, for appeasement, and their adoration of the PM and his bit of paper, gloriously wrung from Hitler and his troupe -by handing Hitler and his troupe everything they asked for. Did this sudden, shocking revelation appal Bilson, bringing on a collapse into confusion and regret, shame and a vast change of mind?’
Fallows said: ‘Or think of Rupert Brooke, public school poet and a First War officer, chortling at the start of hostilities in 1914: “Now God be thanked who has matched us with His hour.” These lads at Heston hailed a cowardly, feeble, eat-dirt hour. That’s what they’d been matched with. They exulted in the country’s humiliation. We imagine, don’t we, that SB’s purpose must be to get Chamberlain to keep Hitler quiet for, say, another twelve month, perhaps more, so we have time to build up strength. But what use is that if the potential officer class don’t want to fight - if the potential officer class flagrantly idolizes someone who’s cravenly dodged out of fighting? Might that shred SB’s strategy? And shred his morale?’
‘But if Chamberlain and Stephen had decided we should fight now, should try to block Hitler now, the situation would be entirely the same, wouldn’t it?’ Mount said. ‘If you’re right, the so-called officer class, the Etonians and Old Etonians, wouldn’t want to go to war tomorrow, any more than it would in a year or so’s time.’
‘The trip to Munich and early reports from there hatched a timorous, poltroon spirit,’ Baillie said. ‘Then it developed at a terrifying rate, overwhelming rate. True, we had the Oxford ‘33 union vote: “This house will in no circumstances fight for king and country, thank you very much.” But that was only powerless, mischievous undergrads wanting to shock, and before we really knew very much about Hitler. Now, we have the Prime Minister seeming to back the students’ attitude five years later when Adolf’s aims are a good bit clearer - and bloody alarming. Think of that Reich Chancellery meeting with armed forces chiefs last November, where he said Germany’s legitimate desire for more space for her people could only be realized through force. Only through force. He actually named Czechoslovakia and Austria as territorial hindrances, didn’t he?’
‘November fifth. Bonfire night!’ Fallows said. ‘Couldn’t be more apt. Try not to let any of them use that force on you, Marcus, even if you are gunless. Maybe at Heston SB saw the link with that Oxford Union idiocy, despite all these subsequent developments, and it devastated him. And you, in your intuitive way, Marcus, sensed the devastation in him, diagnosed the volte face. Bravo! And now, off to Berlin! Weird.’
‘Yes, fascinating, but not, not at all, unexplainable,’ Baillie had said, explaining. Mount’s description of SB’s sudden mood change at Heston had handed Baillie a chance to try a spot of amateur psychology. And so, the reference to that mighty, officer-quality cricket match in Newbolt’s Close. After this, Baillie had categorized SB as a probable stoic, and then discussed what might happen if stoicism fractured. Nick fancied himself as a psychologist/psychiatrist. It could get tiresome. But, although he had no training in such mysteries - his degree was modern languages: double First, Cambridge, in French, German, Italian - now and then he would come up with a believable X-ray of someone’s mind and motives. Perhaps he had SB right, Mount thought.
Stephen Bilson said, at the start of the noon meeting in Section earlier today, ‘I’d like you to get over to Berlin and see friend Toulmin. Russia. I’m interested in Russia, Marcus. Toulmin works mainly on Jerry’s Russian desk at their Foreign Office, doesn’t he?’ No mention of a handgun came throughout their conversation.
‘See friend Toulmin.’ Hence the signal with the living room lights now, in the Steglitz apartment. Instead, Mount might have loitered near the German Foreign Office, where Toulmin worked, and tried to intercept him on his way home, but that could be dangerous, too: Foreign Office staff came under routine surveillance periodically, like most government employees who possibly knew things worth knowing, and who might secretly hate what Hitler was up to, and try to undermine it, also secretly.
Of course, Toulmin was not Toulmin. SB collected antique clocks and took cover names for the Section’s foreign agents from famous old makers and styles. Apparently, there’d been a Toulmin in the eighteenth century, a dab hand at ebonized, bong-bong-bong-striking models. SB had one. The arrangement with the current Toulmin required him to check the Steglitz windows at least every other day and call in immediately if he saw the lights. He had a key to the apartment. His stipend took account of these little reconnaissance trips, with payments generously credited for sixteen days in every month, regardless of their length. He operated as second string in Berlin. The Section’s major voice had been dubbed Fromanteel, after another ancient clockman. SB had one of his, too. Fromanteel would spill only to Stephen Bilson in person, or so Bilson said: all secrets people loved to feel they owned an agent, monopolized his or her disclosures.
In any case, SB thought Toulmin more likely to be right for the kind of queries required now - the Soviet area - and Toulmin would talk to anybody from Section. Mount had dealt with him before. Oh, yes. Toulmin knew a couple of girls from the Toledo Club, and they brought them back to the apartment after drinks last time Mount was in Berlin. Toulmin had always used his cover name with them, so Mount considered the security risk very minor. One of the birch wood and metal armchairs had collapsed under Toulmin and Olga, a hearty brunette, when she so playfully straddled him on it. Neither seemed too badly hurt, although unprotected by clothes.
Afterwards, Mount divided up the chair wreckage into three lots and shared them around other apartments’ bins. That seemed to him the wisest solution: he didn’t want cleaners to find the fragments in the living room and speculate. When the lease ended there would certainly be inventory questions about the missing chair, possibly of a valuable design, so he’d put in a note to Section explaining it gave way under him -him alone - and must have had a weakness. He did not claim for injuries, saying he suffered only bruising and shock. There was no question of docking money from Toulmin’s little salary for the destruction, and, in fact, Mount had paid for both girls and the drinks under ‘reciprocal entertainment of various special contacts’ on his expenses account. ‘Various special contacts’ as a species did not reach agent status, but might provide miscellaneous items of information. No names needed to be given for them, not even as ancient clockmakers.
‘Yes, Toulmin, a reliable lad, I believe,’ Stephen Bilson had said at the private Section meeting with Mount earlier today. He looked as if he was pretty much recovered from whatever undermined him at Heston yesterday. Mount still found it difficult to read his face, but he’d thought it did now show the doggedness and resolution that was customary for SB, but which seemed to slip for a while at the airport. Baillie had often suggested to Mount that SB’s army experience in the war shaped his psyche, or reshaped it. Of course, this might be said about many who came back from the trenches in 1918. Baillie had done some research. SB started in the ranks as a rifleman, became a no-man’s-land sniper, then corporal in charge of a machine gun unit, then sergeant and sergeant major and, by 1916, had been commissioned in the field. He left the army in 1919 as a lieutenant colonel with the Distinguished Service Medal, earned as a corporal, and the Military Cross, as an officer.
Baillie, this would-be psychologist, but not a stupid would-be psychologist, reckoned that stoicism - the magnificent, unflamboyant ability to keep buggering on - was what carried Bilson forward in the war and remained his chief strength. This had been Baillie’s argument after the poetry babble about Sir Henry Newbolt yesterday. There might be something in it. ‘The point about stoicism,’ Baillie had said, ‘is it works well, as long as it works well. But if it weakens, or fails altogether, there’s not much left. The ex-stoic may become a breakdown case, his behaviour either fallen into paralysis, or gone wild, irrational, incoherent.’
Had this happened to SB? Was the Berlin assignment for Mount wild, irrational, incoherent? ‘You’re concerned about Russia? In which respect, sir,’ Mount had asked him.
‘Moscow cuddling up to Adolf. A potential pact. That respect. I want to know if it’s happening.’
‘Is it likely?’
‘We in our little game don’t necessarily deal in likelihoods, Marcus.’ He said this mildly enough, but it was severe, instructional, a right-hand jab at naivety. ‘Possibilities are our meat. We have to guess at which way things might go. We pick through these possibilities until we reach what looks as if it could be a likelihood. Or we hope we do. And if we do - and that’s not at all guaranteed, Marcus - we then tell our leaders about it. I’m afraid we might have overlooked a possibility. Or that I might have overlooked a possibility. And a possibility that could develop into a likelihood. My error. A bad one. I think I know how it happened. Get over there, will you, and send Toulmin sniffing.’
‘For what in particular?’
‘This love affair I mentioned. Stalin and Hitler.’
‘An alliance between Moscow and Berlin?’
‘An alliance, a treaty.’
Mount felt left behind. ‘Excuse me, sir, but don’t most people see Germany and Russia as out-and-out political enemies: one fascist, the other Commie?’
‘Yes, perhaps most people do see Russia and Germany as natural enemies. But I’d like you to ask Toulmin to find whether there’ve been any private dealings, or preparations for dealings, or soundings-out for preparations for dealings, or soundings-out for soundings-out for preparations for dealings, between Moscow and Berlin. That is his objective, and yours, Marcus. Discover whether a new agreement is being cooked up.’ Some of Bilson’s army experience poked through there. Troops had to have clear, simple objectives. Mount and, via him, Toulmin, were SB’s foot soldiers. ‘This is not an unhazardous one for Toulmin,’ SB said. ‘I hope we’re always careful in what we ask our agents to do for us. Make it plain that we’ll try all we know to protect him and get him, and any family, out of Germany if matters turn rough. And we’ll up his retainer, of course. Go very cagily, Marcus. Jerry is improving his counter-us operation all the time. Matters, when they do turn rough there, turn very rough. The Third Reich is a new Reich and still feels vulnerable. Therefore, it defends itself ferociously.’
Then, Bilson seemed deliberately to move away from the perils of the operation. He said: ‘An earlier German leader, Bismark, asked those around him, “What’s the secret of politics?” Answer? “Make a good treaty with Russia.” Perhaps Hitler believes likewise. You and Toulmin will, I know, find out. Off you go, lad.’
* * * *
In the evening, after making himself a meal in the Steglitz flat, Mount went to the nearby huge Titania-Palast cinema, also built in that New Objectivity mode. Hitler and the Nazis disliked the style’s plainness, coolness, lack of the ornate. They were Romantics - dark Romantics, but Romantics -driven by dangerous, passionate nationalism, dangerously boundless ambition, dangerous, master race, volkisch myth. Buildings should tally - should be something beyond the serviceable. Architecture should not just stand there and get used, it should assert, it should proclaim, the new, formidable, bold spirit of modern Germany.
There’d be no more New Objectivity architecture. In one aspect, Mount found this odd: an alternative translation of Neue Sachlichkeit was ‘New Sobriety’, and surely the teetotal Führer should have approved.
Mount watched Der Blaue Engel - The Blue Angel - part of a Marlene Dietrich festival: the first German sound movie, and mesmeric. He’d left the apartment blinds up and the lights on. Good job Hitler had got the electric industry working well after some bad interludes. Compare Musso’s success in making Italian trains run to time.
* * * *