Journey to Munich

by Jacqueline Winspear

  “Three visits to those Nazis? Easy?”

  “No, it was all show. They were playing us as if we were marionettes with strings to tweak. I just know they think we have paid money for old rope. Never mind that the Führer is impressed by my father’s aristocratic connections—there is something else going on. There’s not exactly a search party out looking for Elaine Otterburn—it could be her father’s associations here, and she is a socialite, after all. But I keep thinking they are giving us all enough of that old rope to hang ourselves.”

  “If I may say so, Fräulein Donat, you are not sounding very much like the shy daughter of a wealthy man.”

  She turned to Leslie. “Call it a woman’s intuition, then—and what a woman looks like has nothing to do with it.”

  The motor car jolted to a halt, and Leslie tapped on the window again. “Get around this holdup, Boyle. And forget the bloody traffic police—just get us to Dachau by the quickest route.”

  Maisie held on to the leather strap above her head and looked at Leslie. His skin had become more taut.

  “There’s something else you should know, Miss Donat, and this is in extreme confidence—not that you have anyone to blab to, thank goodness, and the papers are already on fire with speculation. We absolutely cannot have another delay in gaining your father’s freedom. We have received intelligence that within the next forty-eight hours Herr Hitler will effect an invasion of Austria, though as far as he is concerned it is a reunification. He has long wanted to annex the land of his birth and bring it under the rule of the Third Reich, and to that end he has undermined the leadership of that country. In short order, his henchmen will be in positions of power and his Gestapo will be rounding up anyone who does not meet the Aryan ideal of the perfect citizen. Needless to say, Czechoslovakia is hot around the collar.” He paused, looked at Maisie as if to gauge her reaction to his news, then continued. “What that means for us is that this diplomatic fly in the ointment could either be to our advantage or against us, dependent upon how our hosts react to the news. The Kommandant may be doubly magnanimous—we have to assume he is aware of political developments—or he may be so full of himself and Nazi power that he makes life difficult. With luck he will display only enough hubris to toy with you a little, as the major did earlier. That we can surmount. Do not rise to the bait. Smile along with him. Greet your father with joy, and then let’s get both of you out of this place before we all end up in chains.”

  It was as Leslie uttered the words in chains that the motor car turned the corner and the entrance to Dachau came into full view.

  The guardroom was a low building, its ground floor divided by an archway, with doors to the left and right. In the rural comfort of the Cotswold manor house, Maisie had seen photographs and been advised that she would enter by one door and leave via the other. The interview would take place on the first floor, not the ground floor. Two armed guards stood watch in the square turret above the archway, which reminded Maisie of a widow’s walk she’d seen on a house near the coast in Massachusetts. It seemed odd to her that such a memory should come to her then, of being in Boston with Charles and Pauline Hayden, and how they had welcomed her after James had died and she could not remain in Toronto. They had taken her to a fishing village one day, and she had asked about the small square room that seemed to be set into the roof of a captain’s cottage. They had explained that it was a widow’s walk, a place where a woman would go to look out for her husband’s vessel on the sea, as if she could will him home. She thought, then, that any room she occupied would be akin to a widow’s walk, for it was a long time before she stopped hoping for the nightmare to end and for James to come walking home toward her.

  Watchtowers with armed guards were situated to her right and left, and barbed wire seemed to run everywhere—along the top of fences, and even beyond, more barbed wire deterred escape. As the motor car came to a halt Maisie located the door to the left, where they would enter before being taken to the building’s first floor. She turned to Leslie as two guards made their way toward the vehicle.

  “Let’s get this over and done with, Mr. Leslie. I want to go home.”

  CHAPTER 12

  The guards separated as they came closer to the motor car, one to stand alongside Maisie’s door, the other by Gilbert Leslie’s door. Maisie thanked the guard as she stepped out of the vehicle onto the hard, cold ground. Feeling a few nuggets of loose gravel and ice underfoot, she held on to the motor car to steady herself. The guard reached as if to assist, but instead used his hand to instruct her to follow him. She looked across to Leslie, and nodded.

  As they approached the door to the left of the archway leading into the prison, one guard took the lead and one remained behind Leslie. Maisie framed a silent prayer in her mind: May this be over soon.

  The door was opened by a guard inside, and they were led past what appeared to be some sort of staff room for officers of the Schutzstaffel. The guards accompanied them to another room where the Kommandant was seated, alongside another man who was not in uniform but whose dark clothing and black leather coat gave him an aura of authority. Maisie felt her tension increase, and knew Leslie’s otherwise calm demeanor was strained; he rubbed his forehead several times, and clasped and unclasped his hands. She wondered who the second man was—she had not expected anyone bar the Kommandant or a guard or two until Leon Donat was brought to the room.

  Leslie took the Kommandant’s proffered hand. They exchanged what might have passed for pleasantries in another time or place. A comment on the journey, the traffic, the weather. Maisie—Fräulein Donat—was introduced. The second man gave the briefest nod by way of a greeting, and instead of offering his hand, held it high.

  “Heil Hitler,” he proclaimed, his eyes on the visitors.

  Maisie felt sick. Her skin grew clammy as she raised her hand and uttered words she most detested. As a child she had witnessed her grandmother, upon hearing a boy swearing on the street, take the urchin by the scruff of the neck, pull him inside the house, and proceed to wash out his mouth with carbolic soap. “I’m going to clean that mouth for you, my boy, and your mother will thank me for it,” said Becca. Maisie wondered how she might ever banish the taste of those words from her mouth. Perhaps it would take a good brushing with carbolic soap.

  The Kommandant spoke. “May I present my colleague, Untersturmführer Acker, chief of the Dachau Political Department. It is Untersturmführer Acker’s job to hear all cases at Dachau. His presence here is an important formality, as you can imagine.”

  Maisie nodded, biting her lip. Acker looked at her, drawing breath as if to speak—yet she felt compelled to say something before either Leslie or Acker uttered a word.

  “I have all the documents to secure my father’s release. I am very anxious to see him—it has been almost two years. Please, gentlemen, . . . please.” She took the sheaf of stamped, signed, and countersigned documents from her bag and laid it on the table between the two men. “I only want to go home with my father.” She thought she might stutter, yet played her hand. “I am his only family, but as you know, he has dear friends at home who want only to see him safe in his own country.”

  Leslie’s discomfort was palpable. She had no need to look at him to know he was afraid.

  Acker leaned over the papers, turning each one at a snail’s pace as he appeared to read. Maisie suspected he was not reading at all, just taking his time, as if turning a hidden screw in the room to ratchet up the tension and thus render both the man from the British consulate and the daughter of a prisoner even more ill at ease. Maisie took a deep breath, imagining an impervious circle of strength encompassing and protecting her. She pulled her shoulders back and stood taller, as if to counter the officer’s intention, which she believed was to make her feel small, insignificant.

  Acker bore a half smile as he looked up. It was not a smile intended to demonstrate kindness, or a friendly outcome to the morning’s events. It was a smile worn to invoke fear. He spoke in German, and
Leslie translated. Maisie suspected the officer could have conversed in English, had he wished.

  “Yes, indeed, all the papers are in order. I can see that.” He looked up from the desk, sat down, and pushed the open folder toward the Kommandant, crumpling the sheets in the process.

  Maisie heard an almost inaudible gasp from Leslie.

  “Naturally, in my position, I am always reticent to release a prisoner, especially when I know that man to be guilty.” He looked at Maisie as if daring her to counter his words.

  There was silence in the room. Leslie cleared his voice to speak. Instead, Maisie stepped forward.

  “Sir,” she said in halting German. “My father is a man of the world. He has respect for the people of the many countries he has visited during the course of his work. He can speak several languages, and in fact was disappointed that I have little of his talent—as you can hear, my German is very poor indeed. However, out of respect, I am doing my best. My father, as you know—and as his testimony maintained—was here in Munich only to do business. He was a victim, and has been proven innocent—hence the many papers you have in front of you. Now I want to take my father home.”

  Acker came to his feet once more, staring at Maisie. He raised an eyebrow. “Then let us bring him to you.” His smile was now unnaturally broad.

  Acker nodded toward the Kommandant, who instructed the guard to take the two English visitors to another room. The guard followed instructions, leaving them in a small square room. He said nothing as he closed the door and left them alone. Leslie spoke almost as soon as he heard the lock turn.

  “Miss Donat, I really must—”

  Maisie silenced him, placing a finger on her lips. With her other hand she gestured to two points on the wall where the plaster was mottled. Leslie flushed.

  “Good Lord,” he whispered. “Do you really think they . . . How on earth did you know?”

  “Didn’t you ever do that when you were a child, Mr. Leslie?” Maisie whispered. “One of the boys in my class at school drilled some holes in the wall between the parlor and the kitchen in his house, so he could listen to his parents’ conversations. I think he used some wire and an old tin or something to give a bit of volume, and he probably didn’t hear anything important, though he must have felt like a spy. I am sure our guards here are doing much the same thing, but they have more sophisticated tools at their disposal.” She kept her voice low. “The Germans are great engineers, you know—one day I am sure they will invent something that will do the job nicely. Anyway, let us take a seat here and wait in silence for my father, shall we? We are both rather tense, and it’s best we do our utmost to contain any doubt. I do not want to be weak in the face of his interrogators, and those who may have caused him harm.”

  “We have been assured—”

  She looked down at the ground as she spoke, so that Leslie had to strain to hear.

  “I don’t care what you have been assured, Mr. Leslie. I paid attention when we walked toward this building, which I hope very much to leave soon. I looked beyond this guardhouse into that vast expanse of concrete and those bunkers. I noticed some of the men out there, working, and for the briefest moment I knew that those are men subjected to terror. Now, silence, please. I want only to go home now, not to be here for any longer than I have to. And I want my father with me.”

  Leslie nodded, his gaze focused on the two mottled spots on the walls.

  Another twenty minutes passed. In that time, Maisie struggled to draw upon everything she had been taught by Khan, the teacher to whom Maurice had taken her to learn that “seeing is not something one necessarily does with the eyes.” Despite relentless cold drafts that seemed to seep from the outside and through the bricks, she cleared her mind, concentrating only on her breathing, tempering the sound of an inner voice that tested her, that gave her reason to feel fear. She envisaged all that she wanted to return home to—her father, Brenda, Priscilla, the Evernden boys, and those she loved at Chelstone. As time went on, she found her heart filled with renewed admiration for her dead husband, for his willingness to give his life in the service of his country, though only a handful of people knew the truth. She wondered how many men and women would risk their lives in ways that would forever be unacknowledged because, like James, they worked in a place unknown to all but a few. And when she returned with Leon Donat to England, he would enter into that same dark world—the quiet corridors of secrecy surrounding Britain’s defense of her realm.

  Maisie and Gilbert Leslie looked up toward the door as the key turned in the lock. Their eyes met, and they came to their feet in unison, as if there had been a prearranged agreement to appear impervious before the German guards.

  “Kommen Sie mit mir jetzt, Sie beide.”

  Come with me now, both of you. The words seemed to snap from the guard’s mouth. He stood back as they left a room that felt more like a cell, then pushed past to lead them to the office where the meeting with Untersturmführer Acker and the Kommandant had taken place.

  Both officers were staring at Maisie—Edwina Donat—as she regarded the man standing in the corner of the room. He held out his hands to her as she began to run toward him. Then she stopped.

  “Meine Tochter. Meine Tochter. Komm zu mir. Komm in meine Arme.”

  As Maisie heard the words—My daughter. My daughter. Come to me. Come into my arms—she stopped and looked at the man, feeling as if her heart would break into many parts. His skeletal hands and sockless feet drew her attention more than the small pyramids of bone that were once full cheeks. His eyes seemed burned into their sockets, and she could see the points of his clavicles prominent through the fabric of his collarless shirt and the threadbare jacket draped over his skeletal frame. The trousers he had been given seemed as if they would not even fit a twelve-year-old boy, and as he moved toward her, the soles of his shoes flapped away from the cracked and worn leather.

  And then, before she said a word, she wondered how she might save this man. She dropped her head, instead seeing the face of Francesca Thomas. Know him, Edwina. Know your father. Is this he?

  She turned to Leslie, then to the two officers. Time had become suspended, so still she could hear her heart beating, the blood coursing through her veins, the reverberation in her ears. Beyond herself, she was aware of the pleading of a frail man who was now taking her hand, placing it on his shoulder as if to persuade her to hold him, to give him comfort. She was aware that only one second, then another had passed, yet she knew she must speak her truth—if only for Leon Donat and his daughter.

  Maisie turned to Gilbert Leslie, then to the two officers who waited. “This man is not my father,” she said. “This is not Leon Donat.”

  And then she put her arms around the man and held him to her as she wept. “Es tut mir leid. Wahrlich, ich bin so sehr traurig.”

  Her German was perfect.

  I am so sorry. Truly, I am so very sorry.

  Two guards dragged the man from the room, and Leslie—the white pallor of fear now gone from his complexion, replaced by heightened color—stepped forward to gain the officer’s attention.

  “On behalf of His Majesty’s gov—”

  Maisie raised her voice above the cries emanating from the corridor as the man was dragged away.

  “Sirs, as you can imagine, I am very distressed—and I want to know where my father is. But, please, show clemency toward that man. He really does not know what he is doing or has done.”

  “Fräulein Donat, this is a very serious matter,” said Acker. “We must establish what has happened, how this man has been successful in appearing to be your father, and indeed locate your father, dead or alive. I say again, this is a most serious matter.” He nodded to Leslie as if dismissing him, and along with him, the issue of a British citizen who was now unaccounted for.

  “Gentlemen!” Maisie felt herself on the verge of shouting. Leslie reached out to place his hand on her arm, as if the movement would stop her speaking. “Gentlemen, as I was about to say—sh
ow some clemency, for I believe the man who was brought to me is indeed a man who fought for your country in the war, and now has a . . . a . . . compromised mental capacity.” She felt herself hesitate, as if her lips could only fumble over her words, which she spoke in English. Leslie translated. Maisie continued, making up the details with each second, melding her own experience with a new story for Edwina Donat. “I . . . I . . . my father, during the war, insisted I help in some way, so I visited men who had been shell-shocked, just to talk to them, read to them, to bring some comfort. So, you see . . . so you see, I know what I have seen. That man has, I think, been used by someone and, because he knew no better, was a willing puppet. You have given him new clothing, so he knew, somewhere in the outer reaches of his mind, that someone must be coming from beyond the prison. And that was I—so he called me ‘daughter’ not because I am his child, but because it was a safe word to use.” She paused, looked at Leslie, then at the officers. “This I believe. And now I must ask—do you know where my father is, or is this as much a shock to you as it is to me?”

  Leslie intervened. “Miss Donat, let us deal with this through diplomatic channels. I am sure the gentlemen will observe protocols with regard to the identification of the man we have just seen, and get to the bottom of why he is here—and why your father is not here.” He looked toward the officers, who were both standing at attention.

  “You will leave now,” said the Kommandant. He turned to Maisie. “As stated, we will conduct an investigation.” The men turned and left the room, and were replaced by guards who accompanied Maisie and Gilbert Leslie to their motor car.

  Maisie watched Dachau grow smaller and smaller as the vehicle drew away, beyond the bounds of the camp. The two guards were still standing to attention, watching them depart. They did not move, even when the motor car began to turn to join the road once more.

  “For goodness’ sake, Miss Donat, what the hell just happened in there? Are you absolutely sure that man was not your father? Because he looked like every photograph I have seen of Leon Donat since I was handed this case.”