“Let me…”
“I’m fine,” George said coldly, glancing at her watch.
“Do you want a lift to Heathrow?” he asked.
“I have a taxi booked.”
George dragged the suitcase into the living-room, watched by Henry as he leaned against the door frame.
“George?”
She paused beside the table, contemplating the half-eaten doughnut and then turned to face Henry, a half-smile edging across her face.
“I’m sorry to have to ask you, but did you write a letter to Natasha?” Henry asked, meeting her gaze.
“What?” George’s face filled with blood and her eyes hardened. She shook her head slowly, looking away.
“You crawl back in here at eight o’clock having been – God knows where – holding a doughnut in your hand, something I’ve never seen you do in… what is it… six years, and you have the nerve to ask me if I’ve written to Natasha. I was looking at this doughnut wondering whose influence that could be.”
Henry swallowed and began to scratch at the infernal crusting stitches in his scalp. Glancing at the inexplicable doughnut on the table, he began to feel as though he was opening a door he might not easily be able to shut.
“Someone has sent her a threatening letter.”
He decided against saying any more.
“Why would I have cause to threaten her, Henry? Is there something you’re not telling me?”
Oh God, he thought, here we go again. He felt himself sinking into the quicksand. There was, of course, a great deal he wasn’t telling her, about many things.
But, irrespective of George’s reply, he already knew the answer to his question from examining her handwriting.
Forty-Eight
Steinhöring
Gudrun lay back on her bed beneath blinding ultraviolet lights, gravid belly and protruding navel clearly visible between a precisely parted pale green hospital gown, her eyes covered by ink-black protective goggles. Huber smiled as he approached, imagining his baby growing within her, being nurtured and stimulated with the very best scientific techniques that the Reich had to offer. He was wearing a long white coat over a drab brown suit.
“Afternoon, Matron,” he greeted her, formally, with a slight flexing at the waist.
Gudrun looked up and smiled. Huber reached over and switched the overhead lamps off.
“Doctor!”
Gudrun and Huber kept their relationship strictly formal in the project unit, at Bauer’s instruction. Fraternisation of any kind was forbidden in this tightly controlled scientific environment, quite unlike the openness and friendliness that existed in the neighbouring Heim Hochland nursing home, where pregnancies were prized above social etiquettes and moral posturing.
“Not again?” Gudrun sighed and grimaced.
Huber nodded, both hands pushed deep into his white coat pockets as he rocked on his heels.
“How are mother and baby today?”
“We are both well, thank you, Doctor.” Gudrun smiled at him warmly.
Gudrun stood up slowly, wrapped the hospital gown around her protuberant torso and then waddled off beside Huber. Every one of the remaining five beds in the ward was occupied and the pregnant women waved and uttered encouragement to Gudrun as she walked by.
“Good luck, Gudrun.”
“It won’t be so bad.”
“You’ll be back before you know it.”
Gudrun smiled back and waved, but her chin wobbled and she was, as ever, apprehensive about the imminent treatment.
“What does the ultraviolet light do?” Gudrun asked once they were out of the ward, her shoulder brushing against Huber.
“We are not exactly sure, but it has been shown at KWI to be effective in encouraging neuronal growth. It might help you slightly as well.” He smiled teasingly. “But it is mainly the growing brain of the foetus that is likely to benefit.”
Gudrun nodded.
“I miss you.”
“I miss you, too. It’s not too late to back out, you know,” Huber said, as they paused outside double wooden doors with circular portholes framing frosted glass. A black on white block letter sign read: Operating Theatre.
Gudrun smiled feebly.
“Where’s Oskar?”
“He’s inside, waiting for you.” Huber inclined his head towards the door.
Gudrun took a deep breath and the two of them locked eyes lovingly. With a nod of her head, they entered the theatre. Oskar Pahmeyer was seated on a stool at the foot of the operating table, evidently ready to perform a sterile surgical procedure. He was wearing a knee-length white theatre gown and long brown rubber gloves on his hands, which he kept folded in his lap. His face was covered by a broad, white linen mask beneath a tightly applied white theatre cap.
“Doctor,” Gudrun said, nodding in Oskar’s direction.
“Matron. You are looking very well today,” Oskar replied in a voice muffled by the surgical mask.
The overpowering smell of surgical spirits and iodine pervaded the stark environment of green tiles and gleaming stainless steel. Two nurses clad in white theatre gowns, caps and masks, helped Gudrun up on to the operating table, making her comfortable before placing her feet into the undignified and widely splayed stirrups. Gudrun looked to her right imploringly and locked eyes with Huber.
“Please come and hold my hand, Doctor. I am frightened,” Gudrun said, her chin quivering despite immense self-control.
The two nurses parted slightly with no more than a momentary glance between them, enabling Huber to stand at the head of the table and hold Gudrun’s hand.
“I will keep a finger on her pulse, Oskar,” Huber said, keeping his eyes fixed on Gudrun’s face.
Oskar began to clean Gudrun’s lower abdomen and perineum with iodine, leaving wet, brown smears on the pale skin of her thighs.
“What exactly does this do?” Gudrun whispered to Huber, turning her head to the side on the starched pillow.
Huber leaned closer until he could smell Gudrun’s hair and the familiar scent of her skin above that of the iodine and spirits. The fine skin beneath her eyes betrayed her anxiety and fear.
“Dr Pahmeyer is injecting thyroid hormone extract into the fluid around the baby. It stimulates brain growth.”
“I’m going to begin, Matron. This will hurt a little,” Oskar announced, hunched over between her legs, his eyes narrowed with intense concentration.
Gudrun squeezed Huber’s hand tightly and gritted her teeth.
“He lies, you know,” Gudrun whispered, trying to hold on to her composure. “It doesn’t hurt just a little.”
Suddenly her back arched up slightly and she stiffened as a jolt of pain shot through her body. Huber gripped her hand and decided that talking would be the best method of distraction.
“Thyroid hormone is extracted from dried cow and pig thyroids and has been used to treat underactive thyroid patients since the 1920s. Babies born with a deficiency of thyroid hormone have under-developed brains. In medicine we call this condition ‘cretinism’.”
Tears began to well up in the corners of Gudrun’s eyes as she tried to smile. Huber fought back an overwhelming urge to wipe away the tears before they ran down her cheeks. He wanted to lean closer and kiss her forehead. No, what he really wanted was to remove her from this operating theatre, this harsh clinical laboratory, this vast evolutionary experiment, and take care of her in his small but comfortable room on the top floor of Heim Hochland. He felt his jaw tightening in anguished frustration.
“Don’t stop, carry on,” Gudrun hissed through clenched teeth, her body as stiff as a girder.
“We are also injecting cells extracted from the umbilical cords of newborn babies, thought to be able to stimulate the growth of many different tissues in the unborn foetus, including, of course, the brain.”
Huber smiled and shrugged, his brief explanations of current scientific knowledge seemingly so trivial next to the suffering and danger his beloved Gudrun was being subjec
ted to. Huber felt the pressure in his jaws mounting as he tried to remain outwardly calm, while inside he was tormented by growing concern for her safety. His small, round glasses had begun to fog.
Would Oskar successfully avoid the placenta again? Would there be any bleeding afterwards? Would the noxious intervention stimulate premature labour? These thoughts swirled in his head in ever-diminishing spirals of mental torment, like a tornado devastating a small village.
A light dew of perspiration was forming on Gudrun’s upper lip, across her forehead and at the base of her neck and upper chest, making her skin glisten.
“It’s done!” Oskar announced with a detectable note of relief.
Huber felt Gudrun’s body relax like a balloon, suddenly deflating from potential bursting pressure. She closed her eyes in exhaustion. Huber looked up and met Oskar’s assured gaze. Oskar nodded as he stepped away and pulled off his blood-stained rubber gloves, leaving the nurses to cover Gudrun’s dignity and remove her trembling feet from the stirrups.
“Don’t leave me,” Gudrun whispered to Huber with eyes still closed, tiny tear droplets clinging to her eyelashes.
“Never,” Huber whispered back, squeezing her moist hand tightly.
“I want Matron to go back on a trolley or in a wheelchair, no walking for her until Friday,” Oskar said commandingly as he stripped off his theatre garments in the corner.
“Yes, Doctor. We have a wheelchair here to take her back to the ward,” one of the nurses replied.
Gudrun opened her eyes and found herself looking straight into Huber’s adoring gaze.
“If only you could come back to the ward with me and lie next to me while they play Mozart,” she said softly, with a slight smile.
Huber patted her hand and sandwiched it between his two hands.
“Mozart is good for the baby,” he said, nodding. “Perhaps we should introduce a little Wagner, for the Führer.”
Gudrun smiled weakly.
The nurses helped Gudrun into the wheelchair and disappeared out of the theatre towards the ward, leaving Oskar and Huber alone in the theatre. Oskar’s white undershirt was drenched with perspiration.
“I hate doing these things to Gudrun,” Oskar said, sitting down abruptly on a round stool and running his fingers through his hair, slick with moisture. “I am petrified that something might happen.”
Huber sank down against the cold green tiles of the theatre wall, resting his forearms on top of his bent knees.
“It’s a nightmare, Oskar. I cannot believe Bauer allowed her to enter the unit.”
“I feel for you, my friend,” Oskar said.
“Losing Liesel was bad enough, but I cannot bear the thought of losing Gudrun as a result of my own interventions.”
Huber’s head hung down and rested against his arms. He stared at the mottled black, green and grey anti-static theatre floor visible between his legs.
“They are not your interventions, Rolph, any more than they are mine. They are the product of a great many intellectual minds in the Reich, and responsibility lies with them – this is their project.”
“I am executing it, Oskar, so are you. We cannot so glibly claim innocence when things go wrong.”
“We are acting under orders. Bauer takes his from Himmler; you and I take ours from Bauer. I do not question the ethics of injecting thyroid hormone into a pregnant woman’s uterus, putting both her life and that of the foetus at extreme risk. I do it because I am ordered to for the good of the Reich and the future of our superior Aryan race.”
Huber looked up and pressed a clenched fist against his lips, staring emptily into the theatre.
“I wish I saw it that clearly, Oskar, but when it’s someone you love…”
Oskar slapped his thighs and then stood up.
“She only has a couple more treatments left and she is doing so well. Soon, it will be over, my friend.”
Huber nodded, unconvinced, feeling physically and mentally exhausted as Oskar sauntered over to him and held out a hand to lift him up from the floor.
“Come, my friend, you need a drink. Let’s retire to the Bräuhaus in Steinhöring for a few hours.”
Forty-Nine
After landing at Munich Airport, Henry and Natasha took a regional Bahn train across to Steinhöring. The route circumvented most of the substantial pear-shaped greenbelt of Azinger and Ebersberg Forests, before slicing through its green underbelly and arriving at Steinhöring station at one o’clock in the afternoon. Defying Bruce’s orders of meeting the local Polizei, Henrik set off on foot, having memorized a map of the tiny hamlet of Steinhöring in advance. Natasha followed, looking around eagerly. She had never been to Germany before.
It was a warm and sunny autumn afternoon, the air filled with the sounds and scents of harvesting on the numerous agricultural fields that surrounded Steinhöring. The smell of dust and freshly cut, dry grass mingled with diesel fumes.
“Where are we going?” Natasha said, pulling a wheelie-case behind her as she struggled to keep up with Henry’s determined stride.
She was wearing slim white cotton slacks and a loose yellow blouse, her hair tied up off her ears in a single pony tail that swung behind her head like a metronome with every step.
“Straight up Bahnhofstrasse which takes us, via some wicked S-bends, straight to Münchenerstrasse, which is where the town centre is.”
“Where’s the map?” Natasha asked with a suspicious frown.
Henry tapped his head as they walked. His scanning eyes took in everything: the two-storey white Bavarian houses with black tiled roofs and painted flower decals on window shutters; the tree-lined narrow roads; the close co-existence of rural and village life. He didn’t know what he was looking for: perhaps a smell, a sound, or simply the familiarity of some abstract association. He hoped that something might evoke a memory, similar to when he had stepped off the east coast train in Durham for the first time in almost forty years.
After only ten minutes of unhurried walking they reached Münchenerstrasse and could clearly discern that this was the commercial centre of the village. They stopped and looked left and right; the odours of garlic from residential cooking drifted across on the gentle afternoon breeze.
“And now?” Natasha said, releasing her grip on the wheelie-case.
“The roads in the centre of Steinhöring form a grid like the capital letter ‘A’. We just walk that until we find either a hotel, or the registry office.”
Henry walked to his right confidently. The wheels of Natasha’s case rattled across the paving behind him.
“Have you been here before?” she asked.
Henry looked around at her with a wry smile.
“Can I answer that in a few days?”
Natasha pulled a face at him. What did he mean by that, she wondered? They walked along Münchenerstrasse, Bergerstrasse and Abersdorferstrasse in an ‘A’ formation without finding a hotel or Gasthaus.
“I’ll ask at the bank,” Henry said, as they stood outside the Volksbank, a typical white gabled, slate-roofed building with Bavarian shutters and window-boxes filled with plump, red geraniums.
Natasha followed him in to the air-conditioned interior, filled with the murmurings of a few customers at glass-fronted counters. The smell of tobacco and garlic was strong.
“Guten Tag,” Henry said to the bald, rotund teller, who nodded in return. “Können Sie ein Hotel empfehlen?”
Natasha could see the bald man talking animatedly behind the glass, gesticulating with his hands, but she could not hear him.
“Ebersberg?” Henry said, straightening up. “Wie weit ist es?”
More nodding and indicating followed. The conversation continued for a while before Henry rejoined Natasha who had, by this time, sat down in a blue wrap-around seat near the door.
“You speak German, as well?” she said with raised eyebrows.
Henry nodded.
“God, is there anything you don’t do?”
“The nearest hotel i
s in Ebersberg, which is not too far, but as the registry office happens to be right next door, why don’t we start there?” Henry, said, ignoring her remark.
“Registry office for…?” Natasha asked.
“Births.”
Natasha stood up with a forced smile. They re-emerged into the warm sunshine beneath a pale blue sky, punctuated only occasionally by cumulus clouds that floated lethargically overhead. A bumble bee zig-zagged in lazily and perched on top of Natasha’s head. Henry stepped forward to flick it away.
“That’s good luck,” he said.
“I think ladybirds bring good luck,” she replied.
“What do bumble bees bring then?”
Natasha shrugged and pursed her lips.
“Hopefully not a sting in the tail.” She looked at Henry out of the corner of her eye.
Beside the Volksbank was a small, square, stone building with the words Geburt Eintragung chiselled into the keystone above an ornate entrance. It simply seemed too easy.
Inside, the building smelled of old books and damp dust, perhaps not an ideal combination in an archive. For a public building it was furnished with remarkably good quality antique side tables and chairs and a large tree fern in a brass pot.
“Kann ich Ihnen helfen?” said a tall, slender woman with rectangular black-framed glasses, hair pulled into a bun, bright red lipstick and a mole off centre on her nose. She stood as straight as a soldier, almost to attention, studying the two of them cautiously.
Henry broke into fluent German while Natasha stood idly by in his shadow, staring at the heavily framed paintings on the walls and the interesting turned solid furniture.
“Woher kommen Sie?” the woman behind the counter said, inclining her head slightly to one side, like a librarian.
“London.”
She smiled, stiffly. The door creaked behind them and all three glanced around as a portly man with an ear-ring and a Doberman on a chain-link lead squeezed in. He nodded to everyone, exuding a violent odour of garlic and onion.
“Guten Tag.”
Noticing that the clerk was busy, he moved to the back of the room and sat himself down discreetly in one of the heavy wooden chairs, trying to be unobtrusive. The only sound was the dog’s claws clipping the wooden floors.
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