by David John
‘So we steal a car,’ Friedl said. They were back in the town square.
‘Isn’t that easier said than done?’
‘We have a choice of three.’
Parked in front of the Hotel Westfalen-Stübchen were a rusted Citroën, a newish, dark blue Adler Standard 6, and a large farm truck with empty churns on the back.
Friedl walked smartly to the driver’s door of the Adler and opened it. ‘Who locks their car in a place like this? Get in.’
Denham threw the satchel into the passenger side and jumped in. Friedl felt in the glove compartment, then ran his hand under the dashboard, then under his seat. ‘They’ll be here somewhere . . .’
‘Hurry.’ The two Orpo men walked a few feet past the front of the car and entered the hotel.
‘Hey, if I’d left it to you we’d still be out there like rabbits in a field.’
He pulled down the shade, and the keys fell into his lap.
The starter motor fired the engine at once, and he reversed the car smoothly into the square. ‘German engineering,’ he said.
‘You’ve done this before.’
Friedl looked ahead, his mouth grim, his eyes determined.
‘Not much petroleum,’ he said, ‘but maybe enough to get us to Cologne. See if there’s a road map in here.’
Denham explored the contents of the glove compartment and found that day’s Völkischer Beobachter, a Party membership book with dues paid, and some group photos from a Strength Through Joy Rhine cruise.
‘Marvellous,’ he said. ‘We’ve stolen that Brownshirt’s car.’
Evening was drawing in as they turned onto the Cologne road, the sky a peach colour after the storm, with feathered, golden clouds.
It was after 11:00 p.m. when they saw the lights of Cologne’s suburbs winking in the distance. Friedl pulled over into a farm track. They tried dozing for a couple of hours in the car without much success. Denham knew he had to address their next, most immediate problem: money. They had no reichsmarks, and he couldn’t risk entering a bank in the morning and producing his passport to exchange currency. He got out and opened the boot of the Adler on the off chance it contained sequestered cash, but instead found something almost as useful.
‘You’re not fat enough for this,’ he said to Friedl, ‘but it might look all right with the belt tightened.’ Friedl turned to see Denham holding up the Brownshirt’s pressed, tailored, single-breasted, light brown dress uniform. ‘Think you could walk like a Nazi for a day?’
At 6:00 a.m. they abandoned the Adler beneath the Gothic shadows of St Kolumba on the Herzogstrasse and walked through the bright, fresh morning along Cologne’s old city streets towards the Hauptbahnhof, the city’s main station. Denham was wearing his grey wool-flannel three-piece suit and a hat, with no luggage except an old satchel. Friedl walked with his hands behind his back in a pair of tight-fitting squeaky brown jackboots, enormous loose breeches, and a tunic pleated around his waist with a belt.
Chapter Fifty
Martha gripped the steering wheel of her mother’s russet brown Hanomag with a pair of driving gloves.
For all her misgivings about having Martha along, Eleanor felt pride in this woman who had refused to be dissuaded. ‘If we save three people,’ Martha had said with an airy sense of her own immunity, ‘it’s something that just has to be done.’ And for the first time trust, as unexpected as friendship, had come between them. The fact that Martha was clearly enjoying herself was beside the point.
She glanced at Eleanor. ‘Put your dark glasses on.’
They had arrived in Grunewald at 6:45 a.m. and parked at the end of Winklerstrasse, inconspicuous among the other cars. Soon, they saw a dark grey BMW with an ‘SS-’ number plate, almost camouflaged by the half-tones beneath the trees, gliding towards the Liebermann house at number 80. Jakob and Ilse must have been waiting inside the gate, because they emerged almost immediately and got into the backseat of the car. The door was held open for them by an unsmiling, porcine man dressed in a seersucker jacket and walking breeches, as if for a hike. He slammed it shut after them and adjusted the passenger seat and mirrors in preparation for the long journey across the country to Frankfurt, and from there to Basel in Switzerland. A young SS man was driving.
Martha started the engine and moved off at a discreet distance, following the BMW through the tree-lined suburbs of Dahlem, Zehlendorf, and Kleinmachnow until Berlin became sparser and the car passed up onto the new orbital autobahn. Soon it turned off near Lehnin, and twenty minutes after leaving Winklerstrasse they were driving at top speed on Hitler’s broad new superhighway heading southwest.
‘Isn’t this thrilling?’ Martha cried.
Perspective and scale changed on the great road, making the scenery vaster and the objects on the human scale—the farmhouses, tractors, and telegraph poles—smaller, like models on a railway set. Martha managed to overtake a Deutsche Post truck, but it was soon obvious that the 1930 Hanomag’s vertical windscreen and two-cylinder engine weren’t designed for the velocities now possible, and they watched the powerful BMW speed away from them, accelerating up the distant slope of the autobahn like a grey billiard ball. Eleanor hoped that Ilse and Jakob would think of something—anything—to slow the progress of that car.
‘At least we know where they’re going,’ said Martha. ‘What’s the name of the place again?’
‘Klinik Pfanmüller,’ said Eleanor. Finding in her handbag the piece of paper Ilse had given her, she added, ‘Bockenheimer Landstrasse, Frankfurt-am-Main.’
Jakob and Ilse had told her that Hannah’s letters from the sanatorium were so brief and vague that they feared she was being kept under sedation, until one letter in January thrilled them and gave them hope. Hannah explained that she was healthy and well and that she’d befriended someone who’d agreed to post her letter, which would otherwise be censored and returned to her by Dr Pfanmüller, who had complete charge of her. She had everything she needed, but was isolated in the ‘Haus Edelweiss’ part of the complex and treated like a royal prisoner, not permitted to talk to other patients or take her meals with them. At night her door was locked; the grounds patrolled; the gates guarded. On the one occasion she’d protested she was given electrotherapy and sedated for two days. She took exercise but, as a Jew, was not permitted to use the swimming pool. Doctors injected her daily with vitamins, gave her mineral supplements and mineral-water baths, and kept her on a dairy-free diet with plenty of raw spinach, so she was in good condition. All this was to maintain the fiction that she was a patient in need of a cure, and so she was given everything a luxury sanatorium could offer. Although Dr Pfanmüller told her she’d suffered a mental breakdown, her treatment did not include any form of psychoanalysis. He seemed to take satisfaction in telling her that the interpretation of dreams and the analysis of the unconscious mind were decadent Jewish ideas with no place in modern medicine. She had the impression there were other inmates of the Haus Edelweiss who, like her, the authorities had deemed it impolitic to put in a KZ. Her own outlook was uncertain. She feared that they were simply waiting for her name to fade in the world’s memory before moving her to a women’s camp. In the meantime, she had her health.
‘What exactly is the plan when we reach the sanatorium?’ said Martha.
‘I’m still working on it,’ Eleanor said, feeling the knot tighten in her stomach.
The List Dossier was in her valise in the trunk of the car.
‘Whatever our plan, it’ll only succeed if that car hasn’t left by the time we get there,’ she said. And I hope to God Richard understood what I meant in that telephone call. She was afraid something terrible had happened to make him cross into Germany.
Beneath the high wrought iron arches of the Cologne Hauptbahnhof, a wagon-lit had just arrived from Paris. Yawning passengers were emerging amid jets of steam from cooling engines. Whistles echoed across the concourse as the early trains of the day chugged out to destinations all over the Reich, sending spark-filled spasms o
f smoke into the glass roof.
Denham had the creeping feeling that everything was being watched. Train guards, Reichsbahn inspectors, soldiers, Orpo men, and two conspicuous Gestapo in leather coats all seemed to be scanning faces. That Adler would have been reported stolen by now, and Rausch would guess who’d taken it.
‘The train on platform two is the seven oh five express to Frankfurt-am-Main, stopping at Bonn, Koblenz, and Mainz . . .’
He looked at his watch. It was 6:55 a.m.
Friedl mumbled, ‘We can’t cool our heels here waiting for someone to drop a wallet on the floor. How are we going to buy tickets?’
‘Wait a second,’ said Denham. He’d been watching a curious party of English Girl Guides in blue uniforms with knapsacks on their backs, embracing and taking leave of their hosts: German girls of the BDM—the girls’ wing of the Hitler Youth.
The English party seemed to be the charge of a middle-aged man with an RAF moustache. He wore a club blazer and a regimental tie with khaki, bell-tent shorts, and long socks.
‘Hello there,’ Denham said brightly, ‘on your way back to Blighty?’
‘Yes, as a matter of fact.’ The man gave him a toothy smile.
‘Look here, you couldn’t do an Englishman a favour, could you, and exchange some of this sterling for reichsmarks? No chance to get to the bank, you see, and my train leaves in a few minutes.’ The man hesitated. ‘Happy to make it worth your while,’ Denham said, beaming.
Seconds later he was pocketing a wad of crisp, unused reichsmarks.
He gave the money to Friedl to buy the tickets, and they walked separately through the barriers to the platform, without meeting the eyes of the guards.
‘We mustn’t sit together,’ said Denham as they climbed into the train. They chose seats in two adjoining compartments of the same carriage just as the whistle blew and the train shunted forwards with a metallic screech, couplings banging together, puffing its way out of the station, past the immense spires of the Dom on the right, over the bridge crossing the Rhine.
Frankfurt in three and a half hours.
Denham closed his eyes for a moment and breathed. The only other occupant of the compartment was an old lady in a cloche hat. He picked up that morning’s Frankfurter Zeitung, discarded on the seat. An article on the forthcoming coronation in London filled a whole inside page with a photograph of Their Majesties and a family tree stressing their German ancestry; Göring had declared himself delighted with recent test-flight manoeuvres over Spain of the new Heinkel IIIs and Junkers 52s; the Führer was to receive Mussolini on a state visit in September; the city of Coburg had proclaimed itself Judenrein.
The compartment door opened suddenly. Black uniform and cap.
‘Tickets, please.’
Relax, Denham told himself, and gave his ticket to the conductor. Relax.
He put the paper down and watched the suburbs of Cologne give way to the lush pastures and hills of the Rhineland. Soon his eyelids became heavy as he listened to the beat of wheels on track, and his chin fell onto his chest.
‘Can’t see ’em,’ said Eleanor. She was now at the wheel of the Hanomag, her eyes peering at the cars along the distant stretch of the autobahn. ‘They’re probably miles ahead by now.’ They had just passed Leipzig.
‘We’ve been driving for hours,’ Martha said. ‘I need the restroom.’ She’d taken off her dark glasses and seemed to be tiring.
‘I’ll stop there,’ Eleanor said, seeing a rest stop up ahead with a café and a gas station.
They stretched their legs while the attendant filled the tank, before getting in the line for the washroom just ahead of a coach full of Strength Through Joy vacationers. Then, while Martha went to buy some sweet rolls, Eleanor found a telephone booth in the gas station, got a stack of pfennigs ready, and placed a call to Berlin.
Richard had told her to make this call if she had a problem. Well, she had a problem all right. And this was the second time she’d tried the number.
‘Eleanor? My goodness.’
Rex was surprised to hear her voice—or as surprised as a reserved Brit could sound—but she interrupted before he asked too many questions. ‘I need to ask a favour of you . . .’
‘Is something wrong?’ A noise of typewriters in the background.
‘It really is a lot to ask . . .’
‘Try me.’
She hesitated, then said, ‘Could you come to Frankfurt by six p.m. this evening?’
Ten minutes later they’d rejoined the autobahn and were nudging the limit of the Hanomag’s unimpressive top speed when Martha shouted: ‘There they are!’
About a hundred yards ahead the dark grey BMW with the SS number plates was pulled over to the side of the road. The red-faced, porcine man was in his shirtsleeves, crouching next to the back wheel with the jack, and trying to heave a blown rear tyre away from the axle, while the SS driver stood behind him, holding a spanner. She could see Jakob’s and Ilse’s heads in the car’s back window as she passed.
‘Well done, Jakob,’ Eleanor said, watching in her rearview mirror. ‘Now, how did you manage that?’
The keening note of the steam whistle woke him as the train passed into a tunnel. He rubbed his eyes, confused for a minute. The old woman was still there, reading. And a man with a young boy holding a model glider now sat opposite, watching him. Maybe he’d slept through the stop at Bonn. The satchel and newspaper were still on his lap.
He got up to use the lavatory, and in the next-door compartment saw that Friedl was not in his seat. On the way back to his own compartment, he saw the carriage door at the end of the corridor open, and a black uniform with belt and holster stepped through, followed by another. Even from forty feet away he could see the diamond-shaped SD flash on their sleeves. The first man was large with a broken nose, and looked as though he could kill a man with his hands. He slid open the nearest compartment door and Denham heard him ask the occupants for their documents.
Beads of cold sweat broke out on Denham’s brow. He returned to his seat and picked up his paper. What to do? It was safer to jump off the train than show them his passport.
They had just entered the compartment next to his.
Stay calm. Completely calm.
A minute later his compartment door slid open, and the sound of the train picking up speed came in. The men stepped straight up to him, ignoring the old lady, the man, and the boy. ‘Mein Herr? Ihren Ausweis bitte.’
Denham reached into the satchel at his feet, without looking up from an article about a school for brides newly opened in Düsseldorf, and handed over the Sippenbuch with a slightly careless flick. If you must.
I’m done for, he thought. I am completely done for. I don’t look like Willi Greiser. I don’t even have a scar—
But of course, he did have a scar curving down his right cheek, from his eye almost to the corner of his mouth.
The SD man examined the document and Denham felt his gaze like heat. Fleeting shadows passed over his newspaper as the train sped along a tree-lined embankment. He kept his eyes on the article. Seconds passed, and the print began to swirl before his eyes.
‘Danke, Herr Standartenführer,’ the man said at last, handing it back with a click of his heels.
‘Heil Hitler!’ Denham said, with a casual raised palm. He resumed reading with his heart hammering in his ears.
Chapter Fifty-one
Denham hopped off the train before it had come to a full halt at Frankfurt main station and walked quickly beneath the high, iron-latticed roof to the barrier. Where in God’s name was Friedl? After the appearance of those two SD he hadn’t seen him again.
He passed the train guards without arousing suspicion and spent a minute glancing around the busy concourse, looking at faces. He waited, watching the passengers emerging from the train he’d just arrived on. Still no sign of him. Denham’s mind began to reel through every dire possibility. The young man had no papers to bluff with, nothing.
Too dangerous to sta
nd around. He would have to make a decision.
He was about to turn and leave the station when he saw a troop of five Brownshirts coming down the platform from the train, the last passengers. They were holding Friedl, had him by both arms, and were pushing him along. Hair a mess; buttons undone. He was dragging his feet, as if barely conscious. Denham could only watch, appalled. The bastards were laughing.
But something was not as it seemed. Now Friedl was laughing, too, talking in a boisterous voice. One of the men seemed to be using Friedl’s arm to steady himself. They shambled towards the barrier howling ‘Die Wacht am Rhein,’ an awful tune at the best of times. Friedl spotted Denham, flashed him a look of profound relief, then bid a lengthy and rowdy farewell to his new friends, embracing them.
‘What the hell happened?’ Denham said.
‘Don’t blame me,’ Friedl said, breathing beer into his face. ‘Someone passed along the train. Said the police were checking the men’s papers, so I moved . . .’ They emerged from the station arches and onto the cobbled open forecourt. ‘You,’ he said, pointing at Denham and swaying, ‘were asleep in a newspaper. Lucky for me those gorillas were in the restaurant car with no money for beers . . .’
Denham hailed a taxi. ‘You stink like the Schultheiss Brewery.’
Friedl gave a long, deep belch. ‘That’s method acting.’
Denham almost laughed. ‘Meet me in the lobby of the Frankfurter Hof in half an hour,’ he said. ‘I’m going to try getting a room. With luck we can have something to eat, take a bath, and get some sleep,’ he said, stepping into the cab. ‘Then we wait for Eleanor.’
The Frankfurter Hof, an ornate relic from the Second Reich, was a palatial edifice on the Kaiserplatz. The impression it gave was of a dowager marchioness overdressed for a royal wedding. The desk manager apologised, and hoped Denham would understand, because unfortunately the hotel was fully booked for the annual Hessian Vintners’ Guild conference being held today, and with guests departing on tomorrow’s flight of the Hindenburg to New York. But Denham smiled, explained that he was Willi Greiser, the press chief, and that he felt sure there was something the manager could do. A blink of the man’s eyes, and his voice changed to a smoother gear. As luck would have it, mein Herr, there had been a single cancellation. Denham paid in advance and was shown to a pilastered room with gilded claw-and-ball chairs, a divan, and heavy, gold-brocaded curtains. The bed could have been designed for a courtesan of Napoleon III, and it was exceedingly comfortable.
