Death of a Unicorn

‘My view entirely, and I think also my masters’. When I reported Naylor’s appointment as editor as evidence of an incipient pro-Washington line, my control was not remotely interested. Again I think we can assume that my side thought that Brierley had been up to something that might embarrass the British Government.’

‘But he hadn’t anything to do with the Government.’

‘Not then, perhaps, but in an earlier stage he had been in their employment, like a great many other men of his age. He had been a soldier. He had been on the staff of the British Control Commission in Germany. The morsel I have to contribute is that he was in the department concerned with the confiscation of Nazi-owned property and its return, where possible, to its rightful owners.’

‘Was he stationed in Hamburg?’

‘Don’t know. Why?’

‘That’s where he used to go.’

Was it, indeed? It would certainly fit in. There would have been excellent opportunities for corrupt officials to acquire property in Hamburg, and also to arrange for the owners to disappear and not come back.’

‘Oh, God. He got money from the Jews.’

‘Uh?’

‘Something somebody said about Mr B.’

Did they now? Can you tell me more?’

‘I’m afraid not.’

‘You see where this might lead us? The Cold War in full swing, West German democracy just staggering to its feet, to the accompaniment of bellows from the East that the Allies were deliberately reviving the menace of National Socialism in order to attack Mother Russia once more. Suppose it is now made public that a British official had, while still in Government employ, used his position to help Nazis to conceal their ownership of property, to realise their assets and to transmit funds after them. Look at the fuss there’s been about Klaus Barbie, thirty years later. From what I learnt from my control it appears that my side may already have had wind of this as an opportunity to embarrass the British Government, a view with which Whitehall apparently concurred, to judge by their treatment of you after the shooting. It also strikes me as significant that Brierley was killed in South America, admittedly in a country which had a fair record for not harbouring war criminals, but tolerably neutral ground for parties who may not have much trusted each other, one coming up from, say, the Argentine and the other down from Barbados. Does the theory distress you, Mabs?’

‘I don’t know. I haven’t had time to get used to it, and I’m not going to this morning. I shall have to be off in ten minutes, Ronnie. I’ll tell you one thing, though. I simply don’t believe in Nazi art-hoards. People didn’t realise what that sort of thing was going to be worth. I know, because we have a phrase in my family about selling the Canalettos. We say it whenever some hideous expense crops up and we’ve got to find money to meet it, so I know what that sort of thing used to fetch. Mr B sometimes brought little objects back from his trips to Germany, and I think he may have sold quite a few at Sotheby’s and places, but we’re talking about hundreds of pounds, or thousands, not hundreds of thousands.’

‘Oh, I quite agree. You’ve got to remember that until the last year or so those people didn’t think they were going to lose the war. They might have got hold of a few bearer bonds, by way of insurance, but a corrupt middle-rank official, say, would be much more concerned to conceal what he was doing from the German authorities. He would cover his tracks by bureaucratic means. His loot would be shops and factories and houses and so on, absolutely valueless in 1946, but beginning to be worth something by the Fifties. Do you know, I think one might be able to construct quite a reasonable documentary out of all this. I wonder whether I have the energy.’

‘Of course you have. It would be terribly interesting.’

‘It would be particularly interesting, my dear Mabs, if you were to appear on it and tell the world in the discreetest of possible ways some of what you have just told me.’

‘Ronnie!’

‘Brood on it, my dear. As one who has some experience of public soul-baring, I can tell you that it can be a therapeutic experience. But we have drunk from the same cup and eaten from the same cold pie and I will keep faith. Kipling, in spite of everything, is still the only British writer fit to stand in the same room as Shakespeare. Oh, my dear Mabs, I am glad you came. I did my best to fight you off, you know. I should have known Fred was not much use as a Maginot Line against the Millett blitzkrieg.’

‘I’m glad to hear it. I’m going to put the fear of God into him on my way out. I am also going to arrange for regular meals to arrive for you for the next fortnight, and for a doctor to come and look at your foot.’

‘This is all quite unnecessary.’