The Forgotten

by Mary Chamberlain

  He wasn’t cut out for the murky world of intelligence. He couldn’t lie to save his life. It wasn’t right. He gulped his beer, swallowed too hard so it clogged his gizzard. This pain was how he felt, choked and angry. He’d been pushed into a corner by the Russians, he knew that. His idiocy had led to Lieselotte’s death, and now his damned weakness had been manipulated by his own side. He slammed his fist on the table, making the glass tilt. He grabbed it before it toppled, ignored the scowls of the bartender. He didn’t want to do this. He should have accepted demotion, imprisonment, or any other punishments the army meted out to those who broke the rules. Risked the wrath of his father, sullied the family reputation. Could he run away? Go AWOL? Desert? Join the French Foreign Legion? Did he have the courage? No. He was a coward, drifting flotsam swallowed by any strong-armed current. He couldn’t even say no. Perhaps he could pretend he was a refugee and hide out in some DP camp. They’d shoot him if they found out. He’d prefer that.

  He swallowed his beer, went up to his room, lay face down on the bed, pulling the pillow over his head. Screwed up his eyes and wept.

  §

  The lieutenant said his name was Anatoly.

  ‘One Minox camera. Two cartridge. Our list.’ He handed John a slim package. ‘There is kiosk by the Kochstrasse U-Bahn. Every Friday at 5 p.m. on time you pick up copy of the Deutsche Volkszeitung. You slip cartridge inside, hand seller money, he give you paper. New instruction. New film.’

  He wasn’t much older than John, but he was confident, assured. He handed over the slim package and John slipped it inside his pocket. Anatoly nodded. The evidence was out of sight.

  ‘No talk. No questions. You pay man at kiosk, you go. Understand?’

  John had been assigned a driver, Corporal Baxter, from Arbroath.

  ‘My orders, sir,’ he said, handing John a sheet of paper. Fridays. 16:15 pick-up. 16:30 collect Birdcage as instructed. 17:00 transaction. 17:05 return barracks. ‘Until further notice.’

  The meetings with the handler came later. John never knew where or when. A shadow from a portico, an unexpected companion at the bar, a do you have a moment? at the end of the day. Certainty. Uncertainty. It blanked his mind so only memories remained, piled high in the rubble of his life.

  Lieselotte. Had she been recovered from the canal? Buried with a name? Or was she fished from the water and dropped in a communal grave? Not knowing chewed at him, grieving drowned him, tear by tear. And all the time. This mission. His official job hadn’t changed, appearances were being kept up, except there was probably a handwritten note of it in some War Office file and a duplicate in MI6. At what point would the Russians realise he was spinning them along? That he was passing them duds? How long before the garrotte tightened round his neck too? How long before his body was tossed into the slurry of the Landwehr canal?

  Fear was a gale that blew his breath away. Fridays it was a tornado, spinning him round, John caught in its eye, not knowing where he’d land.

  The film was in its envelope, the checklist marked up. He had no idea what it contained, what messages were sent. It was in his breast pocket, ready to be whipped out and inserted in the newspaper. He could feel that final rush of adrenalin as he prepared to step out of the car. Corporal Baxter slowed down. The kiosk was shut.

  ‘Don’t stop,’ John said. ‘Drive past.’

  ‘Round the block, sir?’

  5 p.m. on time.

  ‘No,’ John said. ‘Return to barracks.’ Baxter did a U-turn, and they passed behind the back of the kiosk. Anatoly was leaning against it, lighting a cigarette, hands cupped over the match, eyes focused down. He looked up as John drove past, shook the match dead and threw it into the gutter.

  §

  Orders were orders. Major Buchanan didn’t waste time.

  ‘Your translation duties are terminated with T-Force,’ he said. ‘You’ve been reassigned. International Military Tribunal. Nuremberg. Start Monday. Leave tomorrow. Thank you, Second Lieutenant.’ He held out his hand, and John took it. ‘It’s been a pleasure working with you. Good luck.’ He saluted, turned, walked away.

  Not a word more, or less. Terminated. Boom. Nuremberg must be three hundred miles away at least. A good day’s travelling, straight into the fray. The trials were scheduled to start in November. He wasn’t sure he had the guts for it. But he wasn’t sure how long he could have lasted doing what he was doing. It would have taken very little to flip him over. Perhaps they saw that.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  London: September 1958

  ‘Lieselotte?’ Her breath bubbled, had no depth, no strength. She leaned towards him, spine frail, spindly. ‘Lieselotte?’

  Two query lines creased his forehead. ‘Yes.’

  She studied his face, as if she could see her sister etched between his brows. She had to be sure.

  ‘What was she like, this Lieselotte?’

  John raised his shoulders. ‘She was lovely,’ he said. ‘But I didn’t really know her well.’

  ‘No,’ Betty said. ‘What did she look like?’

  ‘Oh.’ He rubbed his chin with the palm of his hand and she heard the scritch of his whiskers. ‘It’s been a while. I need to think.’ He paused, looking at her, his upper lids half closed. ‘She was about your height, I’d guess. Maybe a little shorter. Brown hair, brown eyes. Slim…’ He paused, added, ‘I think you’d call it petite. She reminded me of a ballet dancer. And she could dance.’

  ‘You went dancing?’

  While she’d sat by herself, alone, frightened? The resentments, the anger against her sister rose to the surface. Of course Lieselotte hadn’t wanted her clumsy, two-left-footed sister there. How dare she.

  ‘No,’ John said, waving his hand as if to bat away her thoughts. ‘We didn’t go dancing. That wasn’t possible. But she danced. And sang, too.’ He sighed. ‘It was a way of connecting, that was all. Why are you asking?’

  ‘Where were you?’ Betty said, ignoring his question. ‘Singing and dancing?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘If you don’t know the place, it’s meaningless.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘All right. We were in a huge park in the centre of Berlin, called the Tiergarten.’

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I know where the Tiergarten is.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ He rubbed his chin again. ‘I didn’t know you knew Berlin.’

  ‘Du hast nie gefragt.’ You’ve never asked. She used the familiar, ‘du’. She’d have to tell him now, anyway, and it seemed right to talk in her native tongue.

  He cocked his head to one side, a curious pigeon. ‘Of course, you speak German.’ His voice was low, as if he was talking to himself, and Betty wondered if she’d heard him right.

  ‘Why do you say that?’ she said.

  ‘I can’t tell you how I know,’ he said. ‘Not now, at any rate. Not here.’

  She was so close to him, her face tight against his, apprehension plunging inside her like an axe in a mineshaft.

  ‘What do you know about me?’

  Dee knew a bit about her, but not everything. Not the personal stuff, the woman stuff. Or about Vasily. She’d never shared her past with anybody. What did John know? How had he found out?

  He looked around him, left, right. ‘Let’s go somewhere quiet,’ he said. ‘We have to talk.’

  ‘Nobody can hear us.’

  ‘We could be seen.’ He paused. ‘Could we go to my rooms? Everywhere else will be shut. Could you bear it?’

  She picked up on his fear now, this lurking unseen presence in the peace of Soho Square on a late summer’s afternoon where the insects buzzed and the pigeons wooed and the sparrows flitted from tree to tree. There was her own fear now, that tumbril of anxiety that she’d had the night Lieselotte had left and not returned. This man linked the two. Because although his description of Lieselotte could match anyone in Berlin, and goodness knows Lieselotte was a common enough name, Betty had no doubt that he was ta
lking about her sister.

  Did he know that?

  Lieselotte had been pregnant. Did he know that, too? She clasped her hands over her stomach. She should tell him she was expecting his baby. She needed help, and it wasn’t fair that she should shoulder this alone. But he’d rejected her once. She wasn’t sure she could take it twice.

  ‘All right,’ she said. She followed him out of the square and walked beside him in silence, the ten minutes it took to reach Bury Place and his rooms.

  He made a pot of tea, pulled out some malt bread from the pantry, slathered it with butter which had turned a little rancid. Betty scraped it off. They sat at his table, on opposite sides. Behind him was the clock, marking time, soundless. An eight-day clock with its neat, modern mechanism tucked away at the back, its smoked glass face and elegant numerals.

  ‘Who are you?’ she said.

  ‘You know who I am,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not sure I do,’ she said. ‘How did you know I was German?’ She wondered if he was some kind of spy, except that would be too absurd. What on earth would he want to spy on her for? Besides, he was a teacher, for heaven’s sake.

  He lifted his cup, put it back crooked on his saucer so it rocked. He settled it, long fingers round its rim. He’s playing for time, she thought.

  ‘I can’t tell you that now,’ he said. ‘It involves someone I met in Berlin, from those days.’

  ‘You’ve just lured me here,’ she said. ‘You’re not going to give me anything, are you?’

  ‘I’ll give you what I can.’

  She pushed her chair back, walked over to the shelf, picked up the clock and put it down on the table. ‘Start by telling me how you got this clock. And how you met this Lieselotte.’

  He looked up, searching her face. You’re so transparent, she thought. You’ll make up anything. He was a fantasist, unbalanced.

  ‘Don’t lie,’ she said.

  He reached for his cigarettes, offered the pack to her.

  ‘No thanks.’ Who needed cigarettes now? Buying time again. She wouldn’t make it easy for him.

  ‘Not long after I arrived in Berlin,’ he said. ‘My sergeant got his demob papers. We went to celebrate, in the Kurfürstendamm. Some of the bars had re-opened in the cellars and Arthur and I went to one, the Blaue Engel.’

  She could feel her teeth grinding, jaws clammed tight.

  ‘We drank champagne.’ He looked at her, as if to apologise. ‘It was so cheap. A criminal luxury, really, when all around us was shattered and people starved.’ He took a drag on his cigarette. ‘Let alone those poor so-and-sos in the camps. And all those murdered.’ He shuddered, paused. ‘I don’t think there’d ever been a war like this one. Looking back, I don’t know how we could have drunk it, but the likes of Arthur had been fighting for years. I guess they thought they deserved it.’

  ‘Spare me your sensibilities,’ she said. ‘Your justifications.’

  He stubbed out his cigarette, took another from the pack. He’s nervous.

  ‘Perhaps we’d had too much, I don’t know. But all of a sudden a young woman appeared. My sergeant thought she might be on the game, you know? He told her to go away.’ John batted his hand, as if he was reliving the scene. ‘But she sat down and pulled out this clock from her bag.’ He reached over, ran his hand around its circular rim. ‘I was taken with it.’ He looked up at Betty. ‘I was taken with her, too. She was so pretty, sitting there. So neat. Innocent, or so I thought.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  He fidgeted in his chair. ‘No reason,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t have said it.’

  ‘But you did.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ He paused. ‘I’ll come to that. Will you hear me out?’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I bought it. Five cigarettes. Simple as that.’

  ‘Simple?’ she said. ‘Everything has a story. Everyone has a story. Did you ask her?’

  John picked up the teapot, took it into the kitchen. ‘Would you like a top-up?’

  She didn’t answer, waited while he poured on more hot water, came back.

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘I planned to,’ he said. ‘I planned to ask her. I wanted to see her again, so suggested she gave me German lessons. She agreed, and we met at the Brandenburg Gate, walked in the Tiergarten.’ He stirred the tea, poured himself another cup. ‘But our conversation was awkward, until we started singing. Sounds silly, but there’s German songs and English songs that are the same. We shared a birthday and—’

  ‘Wait,’ Betty said, holding up a hand. ‘Tell me. When was her birthday?’

  ‘February nineteenth,’ he said. ‘Same as mine. Same birthday. Same year. That’s what broke the ice. And then she danced.’ He looked up. ‘A polka. Can you believe that? It was a joyous moment.’

  Lieselotte had looked happy, for one second, that last night, before she went to see him again. Betty had no doubt that John was the soldier she had planned to meet.

  ‘We forgot where we were, who we were. Why both of us were there.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Then we agreed to see each other again, and she suggested the Lichtensteinbrücke. She said it would be quiet, and we might be able to walk along the Landwehr canal.’

  He was cradling his cup, but his hand trembled. She let him steady himself.

  ‘Only she didn’t come. Instead, two Russians were there, and they took me to her.’ He put his hand over his eyes, dragged it over his face. ‘She’d been murdered.’ His voice grew soft, quavered. ‘Raped, murdered.’

  Betty stood up and walked over to the window, staring into the chasm of the street below, the blackened buildings, the sombre porticos of the British Museum. She wanted to howl like an animal, rip out her heart and every ounce of feeling she possessed, rid herself of the agony of knowing.

  ‘You see,’ John was saying, ‘it may have been an ambush. It was an odd place to meet. It was isolated, out of bounds, almost. Perhaps I had been lured there—’

  A dam broke within her. She spun round, flew at him, hammering her fists into his shoulders, his body.

  ‘She was my sister.’ Her voice was loud, choked with sobs. ‘She was my sister.’

  He sat back in his chair, hands up to protect his face. ‘What? Your sister?’

  ‘This was no ambush. She’d never lure you there. That’s not who she was. She hated the Russians, after what they did to her.’

  ‘I didn’t know that, Betty,’ he said. His voice had a catch in it and she watched as he struggled with his words, small beads of sweat glistening on his forehead. He looked at her, examining her face, her eyes and nose and mouth. ‘How is that possible?’ He breathed out, pulled his handkerchief from his pocket, wiped his forehead. ‘I’m so sorry. If I’d known she was your sister I’d have broken the news more gently.’ He stiffened in his chair, holding out a hand towards her. She looked at his hand, at his frame sunken in misery. She felt a sudden rush of tenderness towards him, an urge to touch his hand, hold it, squeeze out all this sorrow. His fingers flexed. She waited until he withdrew it.

  ‘I couldn’t be sure, at the time,’ he was saying. ‘That it wasn’t a set-up.’

  Her lips tensed up and she bit down hard, trying not to cry. ‘She was happy to meet you. She went out to sell another clock, then was going to join you after.’ Her hair loose, and Mutti’s comb holding it in place. ‘We needed the money, from the clock. From your lessons.’ Betty hadn’t told a soul this, not to her father, not to Dee. ‘You see, she was pregnant.’

  And so am I.

  His eyes were moist when he turned to her. ‘Oh my God.’ He raised his hands, palms facing out. ‘The baby wasn’t mine. I swear.’

  Of course it wasn’t his, she knew that. She didn’t want to hear his denials, his excuses.

  ‘And then what?’ she said. ‘What happened then?’

  ‘I can’t tell you what happened after.’

  ‘Why not?’

  He took a deep breath. She knew he wasn
’t going to answer. This was her sister. Did he enjoy this mystery? This cloak-and-dagger war? Was he doing it to hurt her?

  ‘It’s all top secret, that’s why, to do with my job, in the war. I said that earlier. They wanted information, that’s all I can say.’

  ‘Who’s “they”?’

  ‘The Russians.’

  ‘What information?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that either.’

  ‘You can’t tell me anything,’ she said, fury and exasperation bubbling. Her head tensed and she felt dizzy. ‘You could be making this up. For all I know, you could have killed her and blamed it on the Russians. How convenient.’

  ‘Please, Betty,’ he said. ‘You must believe me.’

  ‘And now?’ she said. ‘What’s this got to do with now?’

  ‘One of the Russians I met that day is in London, and has made contact with me.’

  ‘Why?’

  He wet his lip, fiddled with the packet of cigarettes in front of him. He took one out, lit it. The ashtray was brimming over with butts.

  ‘They think I owe them. Can help them again.’

  ‘Do you? What with?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘But I have to play them along.’

  ‘Who says?’

  ‘Please, Betty. I didn’t want to get you involved. I can’t tell you anything.’ Betty could hear the clang of a fire engine in the distance, and below in the street, the distinctive chug of a London cab. A cool breeze crept in through the half-open window, made her shudder. ‘Except that they have you in their sights.’

  ‘Me?’ She laughed. ‘You’re out of your mind. Why on earth would they want me?’ She watched as he sat down again, his mouth playing with silent words. ‘I can’t tell you,’ she said, mimicking his reply before he said it. He breathed in, and she saw the veins on his neck swell and pulse.

  ‘What I can tell you,’ he said, ‘is that you are their route to your father. What I can’t tell you is why.’

  She could feel her guts tighten.

  ‘My father? What for?’ The Nazis. It had to be that. He said he never knew. But she saw how terror drove people into silence, fearful for their families. There were plenty who believed, too. Waltraud. The Baumanns. Perhaps her father. ‘War crimes,’ she said. ‘Is he a war criminal?’ On Sark? Perhaps he committed some crime before he went there.