Black Roses

by Jane Thynne

  ‘Probably because she’s frightened.’

  ‘She’s right to be.’

  He hesitated a moment, then got out of bed and reached over to where his jacket hung. She saw the dull glint of metal and, to her alarm, realized he had drawn a pistol. He placed it on the sheet between them.

  ‘It’s a Beretta. A semi-automatic. It’s very simple. Here’s the safety lever on the back of the slide. Pull the slide back to chamber a round and only put your finger on the trigger when you’re ready to fire, then squeeze it, don’t pull it, it gives a steadier shot. I’ll give you a holster so you can carry it inside your coat.’

  ‘No, Leo!’ She recoiled in shock. ‘I don’t want to shoot anyone. Not for any reason.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Of course.’ She pushed the gun from her. ‘Put it away.’

  ‘All right.’ He replaced the Beretta, then reached out a hand and pressed it against her cheek. ‘If you do it then, Clara, you’re going to need to be careful. Very careful. Remember everything I’ve told you. And come here afterwards, so I know you’re safe.’

  It was late when she reached home and she felt glad that Frau Lehmann had furnished her with a key. She tiptoed up the stairs, desperate not to disturb the little dog, whose bark could wake sleepers as reliably as a Gestapo arrest squad. But the following morning, as she was sipping the bitter, over-brewed coffee that was always served at breakfast, Frau Lehmann approached her tight-lipped.

  ‘That friend of yours telephoned again, Fräulein Vine. Repeatedly. I think she had recently had a drink.’

  ‘Did she leave a name?’

  ‘She said you would know who it was. She wanted you to get in touch.’

  Helga. She must be dying for a talk. But Clara was expected at the studio by nine o’clock. She’d make it up to her at the weekend.

  Chapter Forty-six

  ‘Enjoy golf, do you, Quinn?’ asked Hitchcock.

  ‘Loathe it, actually,’ he replied.

  It was Saturday and the pair of them were driving out in Hitchcock’s cabriolet to Wannsee, the leafy area outside Berlin where the ambassador and his wife rented a villa next to the lake. This was their holiday sanctuary, the place they could relax, entertain, play tennis and sail their small motor boat with its Union Jack flag fluttering at the stern. Sir Horace’s favourite recreation, however, was golf. He was a good golfer, having spent much of his life in the diplomatic service on the links, yet for safety’s sake any embassy staff who received an invitation to a game were quietly instructed to lose.

  ‘You know he hates being beaten,’ grumbled Hitchcock, narrowly overtaking a family of cyclists at speed.

  ‘That’s not going to be a problem.’

  ‘For you, maybe.’ Hitchcock considered himself a superior sportsman. He had been tennis champion or something at Charterhouse and then a boxing blue and was almost congenitally incapable of losing at any game.

  ‘Look on it as a challenge,’ said Leo mildly.

  Hitchcock frowned. He was wearing regulation golfing attire of plus fours, argyle stockings, open-necked shirt and windcheater. His personal set of clubs in a stitched cream leather holdall sat in the back seat of the car. Leo, by contrast, had on his Saturday flannels, a sleeveless sweater and his worn tweed jacket. Hitchcock had lent him a pair of shoes, white and purple monstrosities with tassels. They were two sizes too big, like clown’s shoes, but there didn’t seem to be much choice.

  ‘It is a fairly decent course. Excellent greens. I’ve played there a couple of times. Won, actually.’

  ‘He’s probably heard. Perhaps that’s why he’s asked us.’

  ‘I assume that’s supposed to be a joke, Quinn. You know the only reason he’s asked us is because of your girlfriend.’

  Leo knew it was best not to react. Hitchcock was always jumping to conclusions where the opposite sex was concerned. He had that boorishness mixed with a dash of desperation that was common among ex-public school boys. The first night they had met, Hitchcock had insisted on drinking himself silly, then tried to persuade Leo to visit a brothel.

  ‘Indeed,’ he said quietly.

  It had been forty-eight hours since his night with Clara and he had barely slept. His nerves tingled with a mixture of exhilaration and anxiety. He was half dazed with pleasure, half stymied by fear at what might be yet to come. Clara’s information about Arlosoroff was obviously important, but the nagging worry that she would undertake Magda’s mission and place herself in even greater danger made him desperate to protect her. He cursed himself for not being more forthright and telling her not to involve herself. But what guarantee did he have anyway that she would follow his instructions?

  He had, of course, relayed the information about Magda’s affair the very next day. They were interested, but when he revealed that the man in question was Victor Arlosoroff, the room had suddenly reverberated with excitement. That the man they had just been warned of, the very Zionist agent whom the British were intent on tracking, should be having an affair with the Propaganda Minister’s wife, well, it beggared belief But so did many things that were happening in Berlin just then.

  A few hours later had come Sir Horace’s invitation to an unwelcome game of golf.

  The Wannsee Golf Club was everything Leo distrusted, a vista of silky grass, rich weekenders and sunlit greens. Sir Horace waited until he had teed up at the first hole, a simple par three, sent the ball arcing high over the fairway and landing straight on the edge of the green, before turning to the matter in hand.

  ‘I’m glad we had that little conversation the other week, Quinn,’ he remarked as they strolled ahead of Hitchcock along the shaven turf. ‘You followed up very well. Your news about Arlosoroff is a gift.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘We know what he’s doing here, of course. He’s aiming to negotiate with the Nazis over Jewish emigration to Palestine.’

  ‘Something we’re broadly in favour of, I take it.’

  ‘Sure. Though the Nazis, as you know, are making it fiendishly difficult. They don’t want the Jews to take their money with them, but they don’t like the alternative, which is a boycott of German goods round the world. So Arlosoroff’s plan is to hammer out a deal in which they would set up a special bank account, get the German Jews to deposit all their money there, and then use that money to purchase German goods, for export to Palestine. Germans happy, Jews happy, is the idea.’

  ‘Do you think it could work?’

  ‘Not a chance. It’s a pact with the devil. At best optimistic, at the worst naïve. Once the National Socialists realize the Jews will surrender the threat of a boycott, they’ll play fast and loose. A lot of Arlosoroff’s colleagues are already condemning him for even trying to fraternise with them. However . . .’ he paused, ‘that issue is not what’s concerning us right now. As far as we’re concerned, just now it’s very much in British interests that Arlosoroff should be discredited.’

  ‘Discredited?’

  ‘Perhaps side-lined is a better way of putting it.’

  ‘Because of the Communist ties?’

  ‘Because we can’t trust Arlosoroff as far as we can throw him. As you know, we recently intercepted a letter he sent, outlining plans for an armed uprising against the British mandate in Palestine. That was not entirely unexpected, there are rumblings like that going on all the time. But this looked like a serious threat and it could be extremely troublesome. Add on your friend from the Red Fighters’ Front and his warnings about Arlosoroff’s possible Communist links and it would be terrifically useful right now if the fellow was off the scene. Or even just compromised. And thanks to you, Quinn, it seems the perfect excuse has presented itself. Fancy a gasper?’

  Sir Horace halted in the dappled shade of a pine tree and extracted a silver box from his pocket. Leo took a cigarette, snapped open his lighter, then stood back to inhale.

  ‘So how exactly would we go about . . . compromising him?’

  ‘We shall have to give that s
ome thought. But it’s my feeling that it would help if your source were to let Goebbels know who his wife is fooling around with.’

  Leo stared at him aghast. ‘Let Goebbels know! With respect, sir, that course of action seems to me extraordinarily wrong-headed. And terrifically dangerous.’

  Sir Horace sighed and Leo divined in the milky vagueness of his eyes a shrewd cunning entirely at odds with his avuncular air.

  ‘Not at all. Quite the reverse in fact. It’s for her own safety.’

  ‘I’m not sure I follow your thinking.’

  ‘If Goebbels believes she has knowingly led him to Arlosoroff, he will trust her. It will cement her position. She will be useful to him.’ Observing Leo’s horrified gaze, he added, ‘It’s only an idea.’

  ‘It’s too dangerous.’

  Sir Horace stroked his moustache thoughtfully. ‘Isn’t that for the girl to decide? It might be she felt, as a decent, morally worthy person, that a husband would want to know his wife was betraying him. Yet she would not want to cause problems in her own friendship with the wife. So she could let him know discreetly. A note perhaps, something like that. Goes on all the time, I would have thought. Marital politics are always damned awkward.’

  ‘I’m sorry sir. I just can’t agree. Apart from anything else, it would probably cause the Goebbels to separate, and what use is Clara’s friendship then? Just being the daughter of a Nazi sympathizer would never be enough to secure her the kind of access she has now.’

  ‘That’s possible, of course.’

  ‘And why would Goebbels believe that Clara would betray her friend’s confidence? What possible motivation could she have?’

  Sir Horace ground his cigarette out on the perfect green.

  ‘What motivation does anyone have to do what the Nazis want? Fear. Pure and simple. Goebbels knows that.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry,’ said Leo, stabbing a tee into the grass. ‘I can’t ask her to take that risk. With respect, sir, I really must insist that she is protected from anything like that.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ said Sir Horace mildly, watching Leo flail his shot wildly out into the rough. ‘Just running an idea up the flagpole.’

  The ambassador stepped onto the green and performed an exaggerated waggle of his hips before sending his own ball soaring up the fairway. Leo watched him distrustfully. The proposal he had sounded out was suicidally dangerous. The leap from double-crossing Goebbels’ wife to performing what amounted to a triple-cross, was a lot to ask even of an experienced agent. It would require nerves of steel and a sober realization of the consequences. To ask it of Clara was entirely unacceptable. The memory of her sitting in bed beside him, and the horror on her face when he produced the pistol, caused a surge of protective feeling to rise that he must on no account betray. At the same time he felt a stab of tenderness, and a desperate urge to find the opportunity to be with her again.

  ‘I know her father, of course,’ said Sir Horace as Hitchcock joined them, brandishing a four iron. ‘Ronald Vine. I was at school with him.’

  ‘What’s he like?’ said Hitchcock.

  ‘Miserable beggar. A junior minister in the mid-twenties. He was badly affected by the loss of his wife, obviously, and consequently very devoted to the cause of Anglo-German friendship. You know the type. These people who go off on beer-drinking weekends and frightful hiking trips in Saxony. Only in Vine’s case, as we rapidly discovered, it went a bit further. There have been serious, high-level contacts with the regime here. We’ve had an eye on him because of who he is. He’s a name, and the Nazis want names. They’re after the highest society, the best people. Bank directors, members of the House of Lords, influential writers, industrialists. But from the sound of it, the daughter’s cut from a different cloth. She’s obviously got guts.’

  ‘She has,’ Leo agreed.

  ‘Curious that the daughter would go a different path from the father. What’s she like, Quinn? She’s sounds an unusual girl.’

  Leo considered. In one way, of course, Clara was like hundreds of other girls from her background, who lived in the Home Counties and attended bridge parties and played tennis and worked at small jobs which they gave up the moment they married. But there was something different about her too. To march out on her family and fiancé like that without a backward glance. To step into a different country with no idea of what to expect.

  ‘I think she is quite unusual.’

  ‘A cracker to look at, by all accounts,’ added Hitchcock.

  ‘Well, I hope you’re being nice to her. Access like that can’t be taken for granted. We’re lucky to have found her. And having a woman is a stroke of genius.’

  ‘In what way, sir?’ said Hitchcock.

  ‘Oh, the National Socialists are tremendously arrogant, you know. They think an awful lot of themselves. They would never expect a woman to get the better of them. It would be practically impossible for them to imagine that a girl in silk stockings and Elizabeth Arden face cream would be able to outwit them.’ He paused a moment to reflect on his own image. ‘A spy in silk stockings. What about that then?’

  ‘That’s exactly why we shouldn’t expose her to any unnecessary risk,’ said Leo tersely. ‘As you say, access like that is invaluable.’

  ‘It was just a thought,’ Sir Horace conceded. ‘Though I’m amazed at what you tell me about Frau Goebbels. Quite frankly, I’ve found myself next to her at a couple of dinners and she seems one of the most godawful frigid women you’ve ever met. You break the ice only to discover a terrific lot of cold water underneath.’

  The golf game went exactly as Leo had anticipated. His own performance was disastrous and Hitchcock could not restrain himself from offering tips. Hitchcock himself had enormous difficulty in managing to lose and at first he couldn’t help himself. Sir Horace watched his impressive swings with dismay until Hitchcock got the message and then overdid it, first by hacking out clods of turf, then deliberately mishandling a dogleg and landing in a water hazard, and then getting stuck badly in the rough. He took his frustration out in a heated argument with a caddy. Sir Horace and Leo managed to shake him off as they returned to the club house.

  They had reached the terrace when Sir Horace stopped and looked at him levelly.

  ‘You know I’m leaving next month?’

  ‘I do, sir. You’ll be much missed.’

  ‘Thank you. Though I’m not sure how much I’ll miss Berlin. Anyway, I’ve mentioned you to my successor, Phipps. He’s a good chap. Brother-in-law of Bobby Vansittart. He takes a robust view so keep in touch with him.’

  By this, Leo understood that the next ambassador, Sir Eric Phipps, was under no illusions about Nazi aims or methods. And Sir Robert Vansittart, the Permanent Under-secretary at the Foreign Office who was deeply suspicious of Germany, was known for having cultivated his own secret network of contacts in Berlin government circles.

  ‘And thank you for a jolly good game. Especially as you don’t get a round in too often.’ His gaze travelled down to Leo’s feet. ‘I must say those are most extraordinary shoes. Did you hire them?’

  ‘I borrowed them from Hitchcock.’

  Sir Horace cast a glance back at Hitchcock, who was hurrying pink-faced to catch them up.

  ‘Our friend looks in need of a drink. Now, what do you say to a quick gin and tonic here and then back to the house? As far as I know my lady wife is expecting us for lunch.’

  Chapter Forty-seven

  The light was falling by the time Clara arrived at the end of Helga’s road, past the water tower. Its gates were just closing and a police car was passing through. She wondered if what Helga had said about it being taken over as a prison was true. Vans bundled with prisoners could be glimpsed at all hours of the day and night she said, and though Helga was prone to exaggeration, there was something about the sight of the sentry standing to attention inside, and next to him a panting dog on a leash, that made Clara fear Helga had got something right for a change.

  She felt a little guilty
that it had taken her so long to come. She had called by on Saturday, but there was no answer from the bell, so she spent the afternoon walking in the Tiergarten instead and returned to find that Helga had telephoned Frau Lehmann several times again. On Monday she had not shown up at the studios and all of Tuesday had passed without any sign of her. Clara knew perfectly well that Helga only wanted to talk to her about Bruno. She just hoped she had managed to stop herself talking to Bauer about him too.

  Her first inkling of alarm came when she saw the huddle of people outside Helga’s apartment. Berlin had become a city of huddles, whether it was buying black market goods or sharing dramatic news, and a cluster of citizens signified trouble. Either trouble or tragedy. From their backs and craned necks alone Clara felt this particular huddle meant something terrible.

  And then she saw the shoes. And as soon as she saw them, she knew the truth. With a throb of fear, Magda’s words came into her mind.

  “Killing is not a difficult thing for them.”

  The old men in the street assumed Helga had killed herself, but this was no suicide. This was what Nazis like Walter Bauer did to people who crossed them. A gun in the night, a battered body that surfaced at a local hospital, or a mangled heap on the pavement. Perhaps they would bother to stage a story. The suicidal actress, the girl of unsteady mental state. There must be plenty of them in Berlin these days.

  Once she had sprinted up to the apartment, Clara was even more convinced. Nothing she found contradicted her belief of what had happened. Helga’s coffee still warm in the cup, her fur-collared coat laid out on the bed, and the postcard. Most of all the postcard.

  She thought again of the red shoes. Those shoes, which Helga had begged for a ‘special occasion’. Why would she wear them if she was intending to die? Killing yourself was not a special occasion. Helga had not wanted to die. She had tried desperately to get in contact. She must have been in constant fear of Bauer. Perhaps he had even threatened her with what he might do, yet in her time of greatest need, Clara hadn’t been there.