Chapter 30

Ministry of Defence, Buda Royal Palace , Budapest.
Tuesday 24 August, 1920.

From the back of the room, Trebitsch surveyed the twenty men. The Bavarians: Georg Escherich, Captain Ernst Röhm and General Ludwig Maercker. Next to Escherich, the Hungarian Regent Miklos Horthy with hook nose and dossiers; his Minister for War, Gyula Gömbös, fat faced with cubist hair casting many shadows. There was the Foreign Office secretary for press, Tibor von Eckhardt: handsome, intense, even when he smiled; an...