Berlin: A Novel

by Pierre Frei

  'Only as long as they don't catch us,' said Armand, quelling her exuberance.

  No one's going to catch me, thought Marlene, eager to do something. She asked Yvonne, 'Where do you go shopping around here?'

  At Printemps or the Galeries Lafayette. Or the Place Vendome if you have enough money.'

  One of the bicycle taxis took her into the city. At the Credit Lyonnais they changed her forged Swiss francs into French francs without demur, giving her enough for a pretty dress and a coat of inimitable Parisian chic to go with it, as well as a pair of divine shoes with high heels and a matching handbag in the Place Vendome, as well as silk underwear and stockings from Madame Schiaparelli's boutique in the Ritz Hotel.

  The muted sound of voices rose in the hotel bar. She sat down at one of the little tables. A couple of high-ranking German officers were drinking aperitifs with their women. Some French businessmen were pouring RICARD over a cube of sugar in a glass. The world was going to the devil in style. She ordered a glass of champagne.

  Two men were drinking whisky at the bar. Marlene saw the backs of their tweed jackets. One of them was watching her in the mirror. It was Frank Saunders. He nodded at her with an inquiring glance, and she inclined her head. He picked up his whisky glass and strolled over to her.

  'Changed your hunting grounds?'

  'What, with all the local competition?' She adopted his own light tone as if they'd last met only yesterday.

  'You have no competition at all.' He kissed her fingertips. 'How about it? I live just around the corner.'

  'Going there at once, are we, or can I finish my drink?'

  'Hey, sweetheart, you never used to be so touchy. Tell me, what are you doing in Paris?'

  'It's a long story. Are you still with the Herald Tribune?'

  'In charge of our office here. Fascinating job. As a neutral I have freedom of movement.'

  'I have something for you. Where can we talk undisturbed?'

  'Like I said, I live just around the corner.'

  'Not to fuck, Frank. To talk.'

  'The pianist at Harry's plays so loud you can hardly hear yourself speak. It's only a step away.' Saunders waved to the waiter and paid. 'See you tomorrow, Ernest.' He clapped his tweed-clad companion on the shoulder as he passed. A colleague. Reporter for the New York Times, writes novels on the side.'

  Harry's New York Bar was in the rue Daunou. A piano tinkled a metallic staccato as they entered. 'Two glasses of Scotch in the back room,' Saunders ordered. 'OK, shoot,' he said.

  'Which bit would you like to hear about first? Skeletons with skin stretched over their bones starving on watery soup? Guards beating helpless prisoners to death with their cudgels? Human subjects with their heads chopped off for use in experiments? Or just being kept in a cellar where the rats gnaw off your toes? The place is called Blumenau. It's one of their camps. They torture and murder human beings there.'

  'Sounds damn improbable. And what are you, a German civilian, doing in Paris in the middle of the war? Where did you come by this story? Are you sure of the details? Convince me.'

  She talked without stopping for half an hour. In spite of the horrors, she didn't forget to mention the forged money. Saunders pushed his whisky glass back and forth. He thought about it. 'Yes, this is what we must do,' he finally said. 'Listen. My secretary Nancy is blonde like you. With horn-rimmed glasses you'd resemble her passport photo. We can take the plane from Lisbon over the Azores to Florida and fly on to New York. As soon as we land I'll introduce you to the press and radio.' His enthusiasm was growing as he talked. 'Ex-wife of concentration camp commandant tells all. What about that? Good, don't you think? Sweetheart, it will be the sensation of the year, with your sex appeal. You'll get a fabulous fee. And most important of all, you'll be safe.'

  As simple as that.' Her tone conveyed the despair of all the maltreated people for whom there was no escape.

  'Nancy's hair is shorter than yours. Go to the hairdresser.'

  'Telephone!' called the barkeeper, holding up the receiver. After a brief conversation, Frank Saunders returned to their table.

  'I don't want to go to America,' said Marlene quietly. 'I want to stay here. And when the whole bloody thing is over I want to go back to Berlin.'

  'You'll be able to do that sooner than you dared to hope. That call was from my office. Hitler's declared war on the United States. The poor stupid sod doesn't know that means he's lost the war, of course. Sorry, I must go and pack. They're giving us just a few hours to leave the country.'

  'Will you publish the story?'

  'It's worth nothing without you there in person. You can't sell that kind of thing at home without sex appeal. Sorry, sweetheart. Try the Swedes. They have a gloomy Nordic taste for horror stories.'

  She walked away without a word. There was nothing more to say.

  She ran into Major Wachter outside the Cafe de I'Opera. It was too late to avoid him. 'You're not going to turn me down this time, are you?' he asked.

  'Very well, a cup of coffee.'

  'I don't even know your name.'

  'Helene Neumann. I'm from Berlin. I'm here looking for suitable quarters for the local headquarters of our Women's Association.'

  'I'm from Nuremberg. A toy manufacturer. I get around Paris a good deal as adjutant to the city commandant.' He waited for her reaction. 'We could have a lot of fun together,' he said.

  Still doesn't know how to win me over, she thought, analysing his advances to her.

  Adjutant to the city commandant - that must be an interesting post,' she said non-committally.

  'Paradise for a lover of French food and wine. The French are paying court to the victor. I accompany the general to dozens of receptions and banquets. Though sometimes I'd rather have a couple of good Nuremberg sausages and a beer.'

  She rose to her feet. 'Thank you for the coffee.'

  He leaped up. 'Shall we see each other again, Fraulein Neumann?'

  'Perhaps. I quite often come here for a cup of coffee. Good day, Major.'

  'I'll take you home. Just let me call an official car.' He was making for the nearest public telephone.

  Marlene beckoned to a bicycle taxi. 'Montmartre.' With a sigh of relief, she fell into the seat.

  'Spy, traitor, sale Boche!' hissed Yvonne. Someone had seen Marlene with the major.

  'You'll have to explain,' said Armand calmly.

  'He spoke to me outside the Louvre the day I arrived, absolutely insisted on carrying my case. Name of Major Achim Wachter. I ran into him by chance at the Cafe de I'Opera today. Was I supposed to run away? I accepted his invitation to a coffee. It wasn't easy to get rid of him.'

  'What do you know about him?'

  'Only that he's a toy manufacturer in civilian life, and at present he's adjutant to the city commandant.'

  'It's all a lie. She's working for the Germans,' cried Yvonne in agitation. 'Can't you see how cleverly she's wormed her way in with us? Joins in a couple of operations for the sake of camouflage. Then she'll turn us in to the Gestapo.'

  Armand was thinking out loud. 'The German city commandant's headquarters are at the Palais de Verny. The Marquis de Verny built it in the fifteenth century. We have a plan of the layout of all the rooms from the cellars to the attics, got it from the city archives. We know from the French staff that the general works in the library. and his secretariat is in the music room next to it. Intelligence has its offices on the second floor. The Military Police conduct operations from the south wing. What we don't know is the precise location of the cells down in the vaults where they hold people they've arrested until they hand them over to the French or German police, which is to say the SS. Madeleine, I'd like you to meet the adjutant again. The success of an operation to free detainees might depend on the answer.'

  So she drank her coffee in front of the Cafe de l'Opera every afternoon. She had to wait a week for the major to reappear. '1 was on leave, a quick visit home. use and the boys just didn't want to let me go. I hope you're not going to
run away again today. I have the evening off. Would you give me the great pleasure of dining with me?'

  He had ordered a suite in the George V hotel, with a silent waiter who poured the champagne and served dinner. There was freshly smoked Loire salmon, consomme of Limousin beef, and snipe with wild peaches.

  There he goes spending a fortune, and I'd get between the sheets with him for nothing but a sausage! She grinned to herself. She had decided to take the direct route. The direct route was by way of bed, and she knew from experience that it usually got her where she wanted. She ate with a hearty appetite, ignoring the culinary refinements. As a child of Ri benstrasse she knew that you don't live to eat, you eat to live.

  She let him seduce her for the sake of appearances. He fumbled and went to work on her as clumsily as most men. She gave in, with a sigh, as soon as she decently could. He didn't last long, and she was glad of that.

  'Do you always entice ladies into such expensive beds?' she teased him.

  'We're not allowed to entertain ladies at HQ.'

  'Even during the day?'

  'We could meet at a hotel in the day.'

  She drew a line with her finger from his breastbone to his navel. 'What can you be thinking of?' she cooed. 'That's not why I asked. I mentioned that I've been sent to Paris to find a suitable building for our Women's Association, didn't I? I'm an architect, so I'm interested in historical buildings. I know the Palais de Verny, I've studied the building plans and countless illustrations. I'd just love to get a close look at the way they built their foundations five hundred years ago. The architects of the past were ahead of us in many ways.'

  'Our safety precautions have been stepped up since we caught a burglar in the Grand Salon a few days ago.'

  'Please, Achim.' She blew into the curly hair on his chest and then went down lower. Her lips aroused him again. She rode him, her pelvis circling, and this time she could be said to have earned her dinner.

  'Come to my office on Tuesday,' he said as they parted. 'I'll see what can be done.'

  Tuesday was cold and wet. Marlene wore her new raincoat and elegant rubber galoshes, both from the Galeries Lafayette, for the first time. She slung her bag over her right shoulder as usual. Bertrand took her to the commandant's HQ by bicycle taxi. He said he would wait - 'Just in case'and lit himself a Caporal.

  An NCO took her to Achim Wachter, who was on the phone. 'What nonsense. Of course the man's not a British intelligence agent, just an ordinary burglar after the table silver. It's a bad mark for our Military Police that he got as far as the Grand Salon. The general's given orders for him to be handed over to the French police. No. of course we're not sending him over to the Gestapo. If you absolutely insist on interrogating the prisoner you'll have to come here, and make it nippy, if I may say so. The French are coming for him this afternoon. Your big boss in person, you say? You can send Himmler himself for all I care. Over and out.'

  He slammed the receiver down angrily. 'Forgive me. Our friends in the Gestapo want everything handed to them on a plate.' He kissed his visitor's hand. 'Frau Neumann, how kind of you to come. I told the city commandant what you wanted to see, as a qualified architect, and he gave permission. Corporal Lehmann, take the lady to Gaston.'

  'Yes, sir.'

  'Gaston is the caretaker here: he knows every nook and cranny. Please excuse me. I have business to deal with.' He stood to attention and clicked his heels. 'When shall we see each other?' he asked quietly, so that the NCO couldn't hear.

  'Soon.' She gave him a promising smile.

  Gaston was a bent little man with silver hair and a big nose. 'Bonjour, madame. Je suis entierement a votre disposition.' He greeted Marlene with an old-fashioned bow. He had obviously been given his instructions, for he hurried assiduously ahead of her up the curve of the marble stairway.

  It was a severe test of her patience. They had to go down the mile-long gallery of ancestors from portrait to portrait, and tour over forty rooms. Only after two hours was Gaston's repertory exhausted. 'Et maintenant j'aimerais voir le sous-sol. Les fondations m'interessent.' The oldest part of the foundation walls was beneath the south wing, she was told. They were Roman catacombs which later became part of the medieval fortifications.

  In the south wing, an officer from the Military Police met them. 'Frau Neumann the architect? Major Wachter said you'd be coming. I'm Captain Grosse. Down here, please.' Worn stone steps led down into the depths, where a brick vault opened up with passages running into it from right and left. An iron grating had been let into the mouth of the right-hand passage. The cells for prisoners are in there,' the captain told her. 'There's an interrogation going on in one of them at the moment, but don't let it bother you.' The guard by the grating saluted. 'Stand at ease, lance-corporal. The lady's an architect, she's going to look around down here a little.'

  'Yes, captain.'

  'It's a real labyrinth. Don't lose yourself, ma'am.'

  'I hope my tourist guide knows his way around. Thank you, Herr Grosse.' The captain disappeared up the steps. The young lance-corporal opened the grating for her. All going swimmingly, she thought.

  'The Frenchman can't come in here,' the guard said.

  'Monsieur Gaston, attendez.'

  The passage went round a bend that took her out of sight of the guard. Three steel doors, as recently installed as the grating. The detention cells! She memorized their location. The door of the middle cell was halfopen.

  A chair. A man sitting on it, his hands tied with a cord behind the back of the chair. A camp bed, and lying on it, carelessly tossed down, a dovegrey uniform coat, a peaked cap with the death's-head badge, and a belt with a pistol holster. Their owner was standing in front of the prisoner.

  'We can handle this in a civilized manner. So once more - who are you? Secret Service? British Military Intelligence?'

  'Je ne comprends pas, monsieur.'

  The interrogator swung his arm back, ready to strike. It froze in midmovement, Marlene too stood as if paralysed.

  Fredie was the first to recover. 'Hello, darling, what a surprise. Who'd have expected to meet you here? Well, never mind. Some things sort themselves out.' Marlene looked at the cell door. 'Don't bother. You'd get no further than the foot of the steps. You just stay here and listen. I could send you to Auschwitz on the next transport. Or much nicer, arrange a date for you with the executioner. I must tell you that Monsieur de Paris, as they call him, works fast and with precision. Of course if you like he can strap you to the board slowly and elaborately. That'll pass a few chilly minutes until the blade finally falls.' Fredie was relishing every word.

  She had got control of herself. There was total contempt in her voice. 'Still the same old bastard, Fredie.'

  'Brigadefiihrer Neubert, if you please. That is to say major-general. Blumenau is a thing of the past. They've appointed me head of the Gestapo here in Paris. Now and then I conduct interrogations personally.' He gave a nasty grin. 'So as not to get out of practice.' Her glance fell on his belt and holster. 'No, darling. You're not quick enough for that.' With one stride he was beside the camp bed.

  The couple of seconds were enough. She got her hand on the Beretta in her shoulder bag. Armand had practised the movement with her. She shot right through the leather. The bag and its contents muted the sound of the shot. Fredie fell on his knees. He looked up at her imploringly, about to say something. Her second shot hit him in the middle of the forehead.

  She acted fast and with circumspection. She undid the cord, and the prisoner rubbed his wrists. In her excitement she spoke in German. 'Quick, put this on.' She threw him Fredie's coat.

  The man understood. He buttoned the coat up to his chin, buckled the belt round it and put on the cap with the death's head. Luckily he was wearing grey trousers and black shoes. 'You keep quiet, I'll do the talking.' He seemed to understand that too.

  They approached the grating. 'I'll see the rest down here another time. Come along, Herr Brigadefuhrer. We must celebrate meeting again like this.
' Marlene kept up an uninterrupted flow of talk. 'How's your wife? It seems for ever since I last saw Nina. Monsieur Gaston, allez.' The little caretaker trotted after them. And your sheepdog Harro?' Up the steps, not too hastily. Marlene forced herself to keep calm. 'Such a nice creature.' One step at a time, over the black and white stone flags of the ground floor and so to the open double door. Another guard. 'What do you say to a glass of champagne in the Ritz, Herr Brigadefiihrer? It's not far on foot, and we can have your car follow us.' Out in the street at last. Stroll calmly on. Then a dive round the corner. A sigh of relief.

  The man she had rescued dumped his disguise in a doorway. Bertrand's bicycle taxi skidded into view on the wet carriageway. They were safe.

  Sleep, sleep was all she wanted. After twenty-four hours Armand broke the silence in the glasshouse. 'Get up, Madeleine, you have to get out of here. They're looking for you everywhere. You not only killed the head of the Paris Gestapo, it so happens that you rescued one of our most important men in the process. We're taking you to Provence. You'll be safe there until the war is over.'

  They played marches, Resistance songs, and over and over again the Marseillaise. The Parisians hailed the soldiers who had liberated them. The tall, thin general stood on a podium above the jubilant crowd. Armand, in the uniform of a colonel in the Free French forces, stood beside him. 'Madeleine, mon general,' he introduced her. The tall, thin general embraced Marlene and pinned an order to her blouse.

  She climbed down from the podium and stood in line with the others whom the general had decorated. The woman next to her had been given the cross of the Legion d'Honneur too. She wore American uniform. 'What's your name? Where are you from?' she asked in a husky voice.