by David Boyle
There was no doubt at all that she would have to leave and as quickly as possible. She could hardly go to the American embassy now. It would be shut and the reception desk closed. No, she would ask Sigrid what to do the next morning though, after her disappearance in the evening, she was not at all sure Sigrid would speak to her.
As she walked, she had thought back over the extraordinary events of the night. Was it possible that Sefton Delmer had taken it upon himself to reject Hitler’s peace offer, on his own authority? From the little that she knew of the inner workings of governments – mainly from talking to Ralph – it seemed extremely unlikely that he had been told what to say, one way or another. He would have needed to get instructions from the cabinet in less than an hour. It was a great weakness of authoritarian governments – she realised now – that, not only did they never dare to take a bold initiative like that, but they couldn’t imagine anyone else doing so either. Maybe Delmer had very cleverly forced Churchill’s hand, just by saying no all by himself – maybe Ralph had stormed out too early.
By the time she had turned off the main road and into her immediate neighbourhood, she had at least the outlines of a plan. She breathed just a little more freely. That was when she heard the steps behind her.
She stopped and turned around. The street was deserted and almost impenetrable in the blackout. She stopped and looked around again. Nothing. But when she started again this time, she could hear the echo of someone there. Was it a real echo? She varied her pace, but the echo did not change. She speeded up, but this time the footsteps went faster. She thought back to her training in London, remembering Baker Street, turned sharp left and doubled back. The steps seemed to disappear.
Now she was in her own street. She fumbled for the key to her room as she began to run as fast as she could. A man stood outside the front door. As Xanthe got closer, it was clear that he was in military uniform.
“Excuse me,” she said as she flung herself against the front door. It was unlocked as usual. She slipped straight through and upstairs to her room, where she threw herself and her handbag down heavily on the bed. There were none of the usual sounds. Mathilde must have been out. It was only a few minutes later that she heard the peremptory knock.
“Open please,” said a voice outside the room. Then another bang, more insistent than before.
“Who is it?”
“It is Gustav Stumpf. Open now, if you please.”
Xanthe’s heart sank. He was about the last person she wanted to see, and there was more than an element of risk.
“Oh please, Gustav. Can I talk to you later? I’m very tired and rather upset…”
There was another bang on the door. “I am afraid I must insist.”
With a sigh of irritated frustration, she got to her feet and walked a little giddily to the door. She turned the key in the lock.
There was Stumpf, in full uniform.
“Thank you, Fraulein Xanthe. Now, if you please…” He pushed past her and into the room. “Sit, please,” he said.
She sat on the bed, her apprehension growing.
“It is my duty to inform you that you are under investigation for espionage. So are a number of your American press colleagues. The investigation is in its earliest stages, and yours in particular may take some time.”
“Oh, for goodness sake, Gustav. They – we – are accredited correspondents. We’re not spies. You know that.”
“On the contrary, Fraulein, I know nothing of the kind. May I remind you of the punishment for espionage.”
“So, throw me out of the country. Nobody would be happier than me.”
“I regret that things are a good deal more serious than that. The punishment for espionage is death – and the courts tend to do what we tell them.”
She was not feeling emotionally strong enough at that moment and the news that Stumpf was assuming the power of life or death over her was just too much. She buried her face in her hands.
“This is not an admission, Oberleutnant. I’m just tired.”
“On the contrary, most agents break down sooner or later. It does not matter how well your American spymasters have prepared you.”
Perversely, the news that Stumpf had no idea who she had actually been working for cheered her enormously. She felt a little determination seep back into her will.
“We have arrested your friend Carl. It is sad; he has been a good naval officer, but he should not be so garrulous. Luckily, we have complete faith in our Enigma system. But that does not mean we can tempt fate.”
It was truly a devastating night, and now the news that the gentle Carl had been arrested and all because he had gossiped to her. Was it possible that the police had intercepted her note to Uncle Sam and put two and two together? Or was Stumpf just fishing again, because he had overheard them talking about Enigma on his way back to his seat?
There was silence in the room as Stumpf stood against the fireplace and Xanthe sat on the bed. Then he moved towards her and sat down next to her.
“Luckily, there is a way out for you, Fraulein Xanthe, you and your blonde hair. I can certainly find a way to delay the investigation. But you have to co-operate.”
“Oh, godammit, Gustav. I’m not a spy so how can I co-operate?”
“I think you know.”
He took off his cap and leaned back on the bed confidently.
“If you mean I need to sleep with you and you’ll promise not to have me shot, then it isn’t a very good method of seduction.”
“For goodness sake, you Americans are so melodramatic,” he said, undoing the buttons of his black tunic.
She could see a nervous and exultant glint in his eyes in his anticipation.
“Sorry, Oberleutnant. Please go. You’re out of luck.”
His face went red. For the second time in the evening, she was confronted by a man in incoherent rage.
“What is it about you that makes you think you can resist me?”
“Oh, I think…”
He pushed her backwards onto the bed. She screamed with anger and fear. In the moments afterwards she listened for signs of help as she resisted, but the house remained as silent as night.
“Over my dead body,” she said as she began to push.
“Don’t tempt me. That can be arranged too, if necessary…”
He hit her in the eye and she fell back. Then he was heavily on top of her, fiddling with her skirt, fumbling as she pushed him away. She could feel her strength ebbing. She realised she was about to faint. She felt on either side of her for some kind of weapon and her left hand grabbed her handbag. Was it heavier than it should have been? Then, with all her remaining strength, she slammed it against his head.
He fell back and, this time, she swung the bag by its handle and hit him again. Blood spurted from his temple and he fell awkwardly across the bed.
She struggled to get her breath back, once more listening for signs that they had been overheard.
“Now, please – please will you leave me ALONE!” she whispered, breathlessly.
There was no response. There was a great deal of blood all over the sheets and on her bag. His eyes were open with a glassy stare. It occurred to her that she might have killed him, and desperately searched for a pulse on his wrist. The blood was beginning to congeal on his head already. There was no pulse. He was still staring at her, but the look of tyrannical expectation had given way to one of blank, horrified surprise. She sat down trying to collect her thoughts. A mirror, that was what she needed, rooting around in the bag until she found a powder compact. She put it up to his nose. Nothing.
He was dead. She had killed an official of the Nazi party, and apparently with a piece of their top secret Enigma machine. She had to act, if she was going to survive. And she had to do so quickly.
*
She shook uncontrollably. You are a trained agent, she told herself. I’m not defenceless. I have resources. I can deal with this if I just breathe. If I just breathe calmly and slowly I migh
t just stop shaking. Don’t let the mice bite, she said to herself as her father used to – don’t let the mice bite.
She had only a few minutes. Stumpf obviously had some men outside and they would seek him out shortly, though they had clearly heard no signs of the struggle – or if they had, they must have assumed she was on the losing side. They would be suspicious if he did not emerge triumphant pretty soon. There was no time to pack, and it would anyway make sense to leave her suitcase behind. Packing it would imply that she intended to leave the country. It would give them a clue about what she was planning to do. She lifted the wobbly floorboard and extracted her notes. It was hardly a very good hiding place anyway.
She took some make-up and some dark hair dye she had been saving just in case. She dumped the bloodstained bag, transferring everything in it to a loose canvas holdall. She took her passport and papers and her notebooks, shoving them all in, with some clean underclothes and a different-coloured top, and the Enigma rotor.
She looked at herself in the mirror, the black eye where Stumpf had hit her was coming up beautifully, but there was nothing she could do about that. On a sudden impulse, she closed her eyes and shut Stumpf’s staring eyes, taking a rug from the other end of the bed and covering him as if he was asleep. It might give a few minutes delay. All the time, she was trying to imagine a way out of the house without being seen.
She knew there was a back door to the yard if she could get past Frau Menschler in the kitchen. She must have heard them upstairs and would be nervous, perhaps listening terrified next to the stove. But she tiptoed downstairs in her stockinged feet, carrying her shoes and with her bag over her shoulder, and there was no sign of her. Frau Menschler must have felt that discretion was the better part of valour.
Outside in the courtyard, there was another gate into the next-door street. Mercifully it wasn’t locked. She peered through it. Stumpf had clearly not imagined an ending to their encounter along these lines. There seemed to be nobody in sight. She slipped through and out into the blackout.
I’m a murderer, she said out loud as she felt safer in the pitch dark. I killed somebody, just because they wanted my body. I killed them.
Breathe, she told herself. You are just an ordinary foreign correspondent, out a little late. That’s all. She forced herself to put one leg in front of the other in rhythm. Don’t let the mice bite. One, two, one, two, three, four…
Turn left and then towards the Tiergarten and the zoo. People were driving past honking horns every so often, following the prospects of peace, but there was no real joy in the street. The news must now have spread that the British had rejected the offer. It was also getting late. The streets were darker than ever. The cars went by as black shapes and disappeared quickly into the gloom.
Then the sirens went. There had been no bombing so far – and in fact Hitler had promised there would be none. But the RAF still sent bombers over Berlin, still dropping leaflets, perhaps just to show that they could come at all. There was no panic, but people began to file out of the houses and into their basements just in case, this time, it was for real.
The cold air on her face was beginning to calm and revive her. Up ahead, down Unter den Linden, she could see the shape of the Brandenburg Gate and knew she was getting near the only place that could help her – the American embassy. How stupid she had been to fail to keep her last appointment with Uncle Sam.
She could see the shape of the Hotel Adlon now etched against the night sky, and imagined her colleagues descending into the air-raid shelter underneath the hotel. But she could not go to them for help. Not now Stumpf was dead.
The starlight caught the letters USA on the roof of the enormous embassy. No lights shone. Did everyone go home at night? She didn’t know.
Her heart was in her mouth as she crossed the expanse of tarmac outside the building and up the steps. The door was locked. The long queue of people begging for visas, there every day, would have been moved on by the police. The cavernous entry hall was empty. She rattled the door, tears rolling incriminatingly down her cheeks. Then she thumped on it.
“Uncle Sam!” she whispered, then louder in English: “UNCLE SAM! Help me – for goodness sake, help me!”
She felt the panic rising in her and fought to keep it down. What else could she do? She had to get out of Berlin.
It was then that she heard a small voice from her right. She looked round and there was a man beckoning to her. She hurried over.
“May I help you miss?”
She panted and fought to keep down the terror. He stood by her patiently, and said: “Perhaps you could come in here. I’m just the duty officer. I will find the First Secretary.”
“I will deal with this,” said a man in the shadows. “Miss Schneider, please come with me.”
“I came to see Uncle Sam,” she said, pathetically.
“I know who you have been looking for. I’m afraid he has been sent home during the election campaign.”
“The election?”
“As you may know, President Roosevelt is fighting for re-election on a keep-out-of-the-war ticket. You will understand what that means in practice.”
Xanthe nodded. She knew what it meant. It meant practical support for the British war effort would have to be suspended for some months.
“Now, if you would come with me to my office and, if you can be scrupulously honest with me, then I may be in a position to help you.”
Saying nothing and miserably grateful to this man, she followed him and sat in a hard chair beside his desk. The lights were off. An occasional searchlight lit up the sky through the window.
“I know who you are, Miss Schneider, and have some idea what you have been doing, which is why I would be grateful if you don’t compromise me by saying anything about it. What I want to know is what brought you here at this hour. I have some idea about that too, but would like the confirmation from you.”
She breathed deeply again and began to go through the story of the evening, starting in the Reichstag and Ralph’s fury when the British showed no signs of agonising, still less falling apart over the peace offer. She explained something about Stumpf. When she described his arrival at her flat, the official said: “Right, now we are getting to the nub of things.”
She told him what had happened.
He was silent. “Let me think a moment or two, Miss Schneider, if you would.”
She sat and stared out at the blackout through the window, at the searchlights, feeling numb but even so her heart was ricocheting inside her chest.
Then he got up.
“Right, Miss Schneider, we have very little time and we need to get you out of Germany if we possibly can. Excuse me while I make some arrangements.”
She waited in the dark for about ten long minutes, watching the big round clock face as the hands clicked round, before there was a flurry outside and he was back. With him was a young man in a black suit.
“Now, my car’s outside the back. I want you to go with William here. He will drive you out north of the city as if you were going to Sweden. We will then take you to a house out of town where you will be safe for a few hours, and where you will change your appearance to look like this.” He produced a passport with a photograph of a young lady about ten years older than Xanthe, with dark hair, called Shirley Johnson. She was also given various permits made out in her name.
“Listen, I don’t even know your name,” she said as the three of them walked quickly down the corridor. “I am more than grateful and I don’t deserve it. Why are you helping me?”
“Have you heard of an organisation called British Security Co-ordination? I understand my government has been co-operating with the British on various intelligence projects and you are, after all, an American citizen.”
This seemed peculiarly generous. Xanthe had never really known her own government to be generous. Imaginative, maybe. Inexorable, definitely, but generous?
“More to the point, I have strict orders not to allow – if
I can possibly avoid it – our relations with the Nazis to become part of the election campaign back home. The accusation and arrest of an American citizen on a murder charge, with strong implications of intelligence involvement – and I fear your story of attempted rape would not reach the press – would not be, shall we say, helpful to the US government right now.”
She understood. It was coincidental but helpful that she would embarrass her own government if she was caught. It was a very subtle balance but, as a result, they were therefore helping her.
“What I should also say is that we can’t risk being caught with you. So we will leave you by the Elbe in Wittenberge with enough money to get to Geneva, and onwards, and suggest that you leave there by train as soon as possible tomorrow morning.”
“And who is this Shirley? I ought to know.”
“Shirley, as far as she exists at all, is a secretary at the embassy. You will have limited diplomatic immunity, as this pass explains. Just keep your head down, stay inconspicuous, and hopefully I will see you again in Washington one day.”
*
She enjoyed talking to William as they drove out through the northern suburbs of Berlin. The All Clear sounded as they drove out of the embassy gates and onto Unter den Linden, the searchlight still played in the sky searching for the RAF, but they either had not come or had disgorged their cargo of propaganda leaflets already and left.
“I don’t know why they bother,” he said. “Have you read the leaflets? They’re pretty dire. They seem to have no idea of conditions here. They seem to imply that everyone is on the brink of starving to death.”
“I did see them. I agree with you. They’re not starving – though the coffee is repulsive.”
“Did anyone tell you the joke I heard in one of their music halls down south?” said William. “We are from Berlin and we are quite happy eating rats – but now we are being forced to eat ersatz rats!”
