LITMIR.BIZ

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that the Police President employed, or from any of the other armed mobs who patrolled the city looking for victims and plunder. Moreover, Wels’s army was infiltrated by many Spartacists and the extreme-left Independents.

      It needed only one visit to the military governor’s office to convince Alex Horner that his officer’s uniform was not suitable attire. He bought a suit in a tailor’s shop in Friedrichstrasse – the first ready-made suit he’d ever worn – and went back to work feeling less uneasy. He did notice the way that the carefully positioned beggars watched him as he arrived. There were few beggars to be seen on the streets in these early days of the revolution. Most of the uniformed ex-servicemen who stood outside the department stores and food shops hoping for money still had enough dignity to be offering a tray of bootlaces, matches or candles. Yet these fellows made no pretence of being pedlars, and Alex was convinced that they were spies. Police spies, Bolsheviks, Spartacists and foreigners, too: the city was alive with spies of all shapes and sizes, and of every political colour. Berlin had always been a city of spies and informers, and it probably always would be.

      Berlin’s most serious problem was created by the naval mutineers who’d arrived from the Northern naval bases and settled themselves into the Imperial Palace. The fiasco of this People’s Naval Division turned sour when the sailors became more menacing and demanded their ‘Christmas bonus’. The sailors had been under the influence of Karl Liebknecht ever since occupying the Imperial Palace. And it was Liebknecht’s declared intent to bring down the moderate socialist government of Friedrich Ebert – a forty-seven-year-old ex-saddle maker – by anarchy and confusion. Having the sailors demand ever more money was very much to Liebknecht’s taste. If Ebert was frightened by the extortion and paid out the money, the government would demonstrate their weakness. If they moved against the sailors, it would be a sign that they were the sort of treacherous, reactionary, anti-working-class government that Liebknecht said they were. Either way it would make things easier for Liebknecht to seize power and set up his Leninist regime.

      It was December 20 when the sailors announced that they’d spent the first 125,000 marks the government had paid them for guarding the Imperial Palace. Now they wanted more money.

      Alex Horner was in the anteroom of the Chancellor’s private office when Otto Wels came out with Ebert. It was the first time Alex had seen the Chancellor at such close quarters. He was an imposing figure, broad and muscular, with jet-black hair and a large moustache and small beard. The government had agreed to pay more money, but first the palace must be evacuated and the People’s Naval Division reduced to six hundred men. The money would be paid only after the keys of the emptied palace had been given to Otto Wels.

      On the morning of the day on which Alex and Pauli met, Alex had hurried down to the lobby of the Chancellery in response to a phone call from one of the secretaries. A delegation of sailors was being taken to one of the drawing rooms that were situated to the side of the fine Empire vestibule. One sailor was carrying a leather case that he said held the keys of the Imperial Palace. They wanted their money.

      ‘Herr Horner is one of the military governor’s assistants,’ said the secretary who was dealing with the sailors. He was a sniffy little man with the curt and superior manner that distinguishes career bureaucrats.

      The spokesman for the sailors, a tall petty officer with crooked teeth, asked for Alex Horner’s identity papers. Luckily Wels had arranged such formalities as soon as the young officer got back to the revolution-stricken city. Taken to a Reichstag office by an attendant wearing the livery of the old regime, he’d been given a pass by a woman clerk wearing a red armband. It was an inexpertly printed card on stiff red paper. It said that Horner was ‘authorized to maintain order and security in the streets of the city’. Accompanying it was an identity card issued by the ‘Workers’ and Soldiers’ Council’ saying he was ‘trustworthy and free to pass’. Neither document mentioned his military rank, and if the woman issuing the papers to him knew him to be an army officer she gave no sign of it. From the way she handled the office files, it looked as if she was occupying the same desk as she had before the revolution. Most of the workers were doing the same thing that they’d done during the Kaiserzeit without the red bands and banners. For the Berliner, life was simply a matter of exchanging time for money and money for food. Even during the shooting, the buses ran on time and the water and electricity supply continued normally.

      Having scrutinized Horner’s papers, the petty officer showed him his card in return. ‘Petty Officer Esser’. How curious that so many of these revolutionary servicemen clung so tightly to the badges and titles and privileges of the old regime.

      Esser politely but firmly explained to Horner and the secretary that the political committee of the People’s Naval Division had decided that they’d not deal with Otto Wels, who, although a socialist, was ‘a class enemy’.

      ‘Then give the keys to Herr Barth,’ suggested Alex. He was grateful that the secretary had not revealed the fact that he was an army officer.

      ‘Herr Barth is in a meeting and cannot be disturbed.’ The secretary expected them to hand the keys to him and depart without further delay. Despite wearing a small red ribbon in his buttonhole – a sartorial accessory that had been adopted by many middle-class office workers during the previous few days – the man did not hide his impatience and his distaste for the unwashed revolutionaries.

      ‘Then get him out of the meeting,’ suggested Alex.

      The secretary shook his head to show that there could be no question of interrupting the commissioner. Emil Barth was amongst the most radical of the commissioners, but these wretched socialists had quickly adapted to the bureaucracy of Wilhelmstrasse: meetings, meetings, meetings. And the bureaucrats had easily adapted to their new masters.

      ‘That would be impossible,’ said the secretary. He was an elderly man with rimless spectacles, bushy eyebrows and a celluloid collar that was going yellow at the edges, like the documents that were to be seen on every side.

      ‘Try,’ suggested Alex, and the sailors vociferously agreed.

      Now there were more arguments and some telephone calls. Everyone who might have placated the sailors had gone to lunch, and the revolutionaries were becoming angrier every minute.

      Before the problem was resolved, a messenger came rushing into the lobby with an urgent request for Alex Horner. He must go immediately to the office of Herr Otto Wels. Wels had been kidnapped.

      It was not difficult to discover what had happened. Wels’s staff were standing in the corridor talking in loud voices. Some of the women were sobbing. They told how another group of sailors had entered the building by a side door, found their way upstairs, and demanded the Christmas-bonus money from Wels. Wels was heard to say they’d get no money until he had the key.

      Which of the sailors was the first to strike Wels makes no difference, for soon he was beaten and frog-marched back to the Imperial Palace, which the sailors obviously had no intention of leaving. According to a message that Alex received later that day from a paid informer, Wels was beaten with rifle butts and thrown into a rat-infested cellar.

      That afternoon a large party of the sailors went back to the Chancellery. They were in a bitter frame of mind. They pushed their way into the lobby, posted armed guards at every exit, and took control of the Chancellery telephone exchange. No one – not even the Chancellor – would be permitted to enter or leave the building. They had Wels as a hostage and they wanted their money.

      Pauli had listened to Alex Horner’s long story with intermittent attention. He’d studied the other people in the bar, with particular interest in the younger women. He’d had so little free time since the war began – so little time amongst civilians that he’d still not got accustomed to the shorter skirts and the display of female ankles. Women had worn full-length skirts since ancient Greece; surely there was something apocalyptic about the new fashion. If not apocalyptic, certainly provocative, especially when some of the younger ones wore these flesh-coloured stockings!

      Between them they’d finished one bottle of wine and were nearly at the bottom of a second one. Now Pauli realized that Alex had

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