The Winter Garden (2014)

by Thynne, Jane

  Above her, Victoria, the goddess of triumph, championed her four horses in the ominous direction of Hitler’s chosen Lebensraum in the East. Beside her the windows of the French embassy sent bright oblongs of light into the square. Clara kept to the shadows, calculating fiercely which route to take, longing for crowds and traffic to obscure the path between them. She could sense the man behind her, his step quickening, trying to make up the ground between them. She felt danger, thrumming in her skull, rising and jangling.

  No sooner had she emerged the other side of the gate than she had another choice to make. To her right lay the Platz der Republik and the Reichstag, heading northwards to Lehrter Bahnhof. To her left was a short walk to the bustle of Potsdamer Platz, where she could disappear down the U-Bahn. But if she went into the U-Bahn she risked being trapped. On impulse she took the choice right ahead of her and headed into the darkness of the Tiergarten.

  It was properly dark now. A hard moon slipped behind filigree clouds in the sky. The park was empty. No one wanted to be out on a night like this, still and bitterly cold with the taste of snow in the air.

  She headed resolutely off the paths, past heavy statues of forgotten German statesmen and bronze heroes struggling with wild boar and bears, threading her way deeper between the trees. Clara zigzagged from tree to tree, halting in the pool of deeper shadow cast by each trunk. For a moment she stopped, breathless, and thought about sinking down to the earth, huddling in the darkness and waiting for her follower to abandon his search. She dared to hope she had shaken him off. There was no crunch of footsteps on the fallen leaves, no human sound apart from the distant thrum of traffic. It was as though he had vaporized.

  As she stood there, motionless, she imagined for a moment that she had gone back to childhood and was in the nursery, tucked up in the eaves of the house. Night after night, as she curled in her warm bed trying to sleep, she would see shadows in the corner of the room rise up and form themselves into menacing shapes. Her fears would grasp her by the shoulders and shake her as she lay. Eventually her father would appear, sternly dismissive and almost as frightening as the shadows themselves. The experience was just night terrors, he would explain when he found her sobbing figure on the stairs. It was merely her own imaginings stepping outside of her mind and taking a shape of their own.

  ‘Your fears are nonsensical, Clara. You have always had an overactive imagination.’

  But this was no night terror. The man following her had a most deadly agenda.

  Clara wouldn’t have seen him if he hadn’t made a mistake. He was about a hundred yards away from her, still on the path, and he passed a lamp. For a split second his shadow twisted up under the light, revealing the brim of his hat, even though his face remained obscured. A moment later darkness swallowed him as he veered off the path in the direction of the trees. He was coming towards her. She remembered what Unity Mitford said to her about hunting. I learned an awful lot about being the prey. You’ve got to avoid sudden movement. That always draws the eye.

  If she was being hunted, she needed to remain where she was, completely still. Looking behind her she was sure she heard his step, but when she glanced, he was nowhere to be seen. She forced herself to be calm. She would stand completely motionless in the deep shadow. She bitterly regretted choosing the coat with the white fox collar. The fur gleamed in the moonlight and made her far easier to spot.

  Even while she tried her hardest not to move, Clara was cursing herself for choosing the route into the Tiergarten. The place was deceptively large. If you strayed off the paths, getting lost was a real possibility. The Tiergarten was no tame English park. There was something wild and impenetrable about it. It seemed incredible that in the heart of the city – and such an orderly, monumental city as Berlin – this wildness should be enclosed. Perhaps, Clara thought, it stood for something in the city’s soul.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by a crunch of twigs a few yards away and instantly she knew that he was perilously close. She needed to make a decision. Abandoning her stillness she lurched forward and ran. She ran, though her heels hobbled her and the darkness was so solid it stunted her movement, as though she was running through sand. She ran until her lungs were screaming for air and fear dragged her backwards like a tide, pulling her down into the sweet surrender of oblivion. All the time she ran, she strained for the pitch of his footsteps behind her confirming that he was gaining ground.

  She was terribly afraid. Fear rose in her gullet like acid, but in the midst of her fear she found anger, hard and cold as a stone. This was the man who had threatened Erich. Who had murdered Anna Hansen. If she slowed, if she surrendered to a man like this who thought he could dominate and destroy women, she would give up her life. She would give up her life, so hard achieved, to someone who wanted to save his own. The thought of Unity, who would even now be passionately regaling the Führer with the story of the photographs Clara possessed, spurred her further on.

  Ahead of her, the trees thinned and she saw a glistening blank stretch of water she recognized as the Neuer See, a favourite weekend spot for Berliners who loved to drink beer under the pine trees or hire boats to sail on the lake. Bobbing darkly at the water’s edge, moored to a post, there was, she could just make out, the dim shape of a rowing boat. A pair of oars were lying along its bottom. Clara thanked God that Erich had persuaded her that summer to learn to row. She knelt down and fumbled with the rope, but the knot which tied the boat to its mooring post might have been devised by an entire brigade of Hitler Youth. It was fiendishly complex and tightly coiled. Her fingers slipped helplessly as she grappled in the darkness with the damp and muddy strands. She sank back on her heels in desperation. A chance of escape was in front of her, but a single rope prevented her from taking it. Then she remembered Erich’s knife at the bottom of her bag and, unsheathing it, she marvelled at its sharpness in slicing through the rope in one blow.

  On the edge of her vision she saw something, a flick of shadow on the water, but it was only a heron, lifting off from its nest in the reeds. The boat rocked as she stepped into it, and reaching for the oars she fixed them into the rowlocks and pushed off into the night.

  Despite the cold, she was damp with sweat and hair clung to her face. Her head felt dizzy with the effort as she pulled faster through the black water that was heavy as cement. There was no sound but the splash of the oars as the water dragged against the blades. She had no idea where she was rowing to, but she felt sure that if she could only remain in the boat, on the water in darkness, then she would be safe. For a few minutes she let the oars drop and allowed the boat to drift free and undirected on the ripple of the lake.

  The crack of a shot changed her mind.

  Instinctively, she ducked down. Crouching against the wet bottom of the boat, she thought of the Beretta that remained, uselessly, in the hollowed-out leg of her desk. If only she had listened to Leo Quinn when he gave her that gun, together with the smooth leather holster that slid over the left shoulder. She had shrunk at that time from carrying death around with her, but now she realized that, like the cyanide tablet in Ralph’s heel, death and danger were constant companions. There was no virtue in being unprepared.

  Ralph might well know by now that she had vanished. Perhaps he would be searching for her. He might even have been to Winterfeldstrasse and discovered her hasty exit. Yet no matter how hard he was looking, his searches would never lead him to a lake at the heart of the Tiergarten. There was no one to save her now but herself. Around her was shifting darkness, and beneath her was bottomless black. The man who was pursuing her wanted her dead and would surely shoot again until he caught her. She thought of herself sinking beneath the choking weeds, sodden clothes weighing her down like chains, blood spiralling upwards towards the closing surface of the lake.

  The sound of the gun had, however, unleashed something else. An unearthly screech, followed by a cacophony of bird and animal calls rising up into the night, to be joined by the melancholy, plangent roar of
some caged creature, yearning for its jungle home. Clara glimpsed a tangle of lights stretching beyond the trees that she recognized as the western end of the Tiergarten, and realized just what she had heard. She was approaching the zoo, from whose walls the strange, night calls of animals would often startle Berliners out for an evening stroll, reminding them of the captives in their midst.

  The zoo. It was then that it came to her. The Ufa Palast am Zoo. Of course! That evening the Ufa Palast am Zoo was hosting the premiere of Lída Baarová’s new film, Patriots. The story of a brave German soldier captured by the French in the war, and befriended by a rebel French girl. The story was all part of Germany’s harsher policy towards France, and it must have seemed an ideal film to show to the city’s most prestigious visitors – the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Goebbels had mentioned that he planned a special evening for the royal couple. What had he said? I have a cultural treat in store that I think they will appreciate. If Goering could give them dinner at his hunting lodge then Goebbels could go one further, with an evening at the city’s plushest movie theatre, in front of an audience two thousand strong. It would be adequate recompense for the humiliation of the Olympics party, when Goebbels’ attempt to outshine his rival had descended into debauchery and farce. Hitler would not be there, but almost certainly Goebbels would have assembled as many top-ranking Nazis as he could muster to showcase his latest film triumph, plus, of course, his latest girlfriend.

  Clara sat up and began to row frantically, until the blades struck the shallows of the lake, and reaching the other side she jumped out onto the jetty. She ran along the sandy path to the park exit and, breath tearing her lungs, slowed to a jog, as she made her way across the Cornelius bridge. It wasn’t until she reached the safety of the streetlights that she paused and found a lipstick and comb in her bag. She peeled off the muddy elbow gloves and discarded them. The fur-collared coat, sodden and flecked with dirt, went over a nearby wall. Her shoes were soaked too, but less visible beneath the evening gown. Tidying herself as much as possible, she headed for Joseph Goebbels’ night of the stars.

  Ahead of her a phosphorescent glare lit up the sky. SS guards flanked the door. The name of the Ufa Palast am Zoo was picked out in lights over the turreted entrance. Giant posters of the film’s stars, Baarová and Mathias Wieman, towered over the excited crowd. Clara wondered if it would be possible after all to pull this off. Her dress was damp with sweat and water from the lake. She felt entirely wan, as though pain and fear had seeped into her pores and bleached all colour from her face. She slowed to a walk and as she approached the red carpet, an SS guard moved to bar her entrance but at that moment, cameras began to flash and she caught sight of Mimi Reiter, an actress she had worked with, who came up and kissed her.

  ‘Clara darling!’

  ‘Fräulein Vine! Could you smile for us, please?’

  The guard, bewildered for a moment, waved her through the velvet rope.

  Another shout came. ‘Fräulein Vine, look this way, please!’

  Clara posed automatically as the glare of a camera flash momentarily blinded her. Then, as another burst of flashlight lit up the faces of the crowd around, she saw him. He must have lost his hat at some point because he was bare-headed now and she could see his bullet skull and crop of silvered hair. The slit of a mouth and the eyes as pale as slivers of ice. It was the first time she had seen him in plain view, and the moment she did, she knew where she had seen him before. It was the man she had met at Ernst Udet’s party. The Luftwaffe officer who had seen Bruno at the Degenerate Art exhibition and reported him to the police. His name, what was his name? Rudolf Fleischer.

  So Fleischer was the man who had gone from an assistant to Heinrich Hoffmann to a big-paying job in Berlin. It made perfect sense. It must have been Fleischer’s expertize from Hoffmann’s laboratory which secured him a job in the Luftwaffe’s Technical Division. Yet no sooner had he secured this prestigious position than his past had risen up and threatened to engulf him. His old girlfriend Anna had stolen compromising photographs, which he should have ensured were destroyed. His solution had been to kill Anna. Only the photographs were still there, and he knew it was Clara who had them.

  Clasping Mimi’s arm, Clara progressed through the doors into the hall.

  The foyer of the Ufa Palast was given over to an immense party space. The walls had been hung with billowing lengths of rose damask and extravagant displays of pink hothouse camellias were unfurling in the heat. Waiters with silver trays of champagne slid through the crowd, and from above gilt chandeliers sent their sparkling light over the cream of the National Socialist regime. Germany’s new aristocracy had turned out to greet the English royals in full, glittering regalia.

  Rudolf Hess was there, a mad glint in his heavy-browed face, alongside his matronly wife Ilse, and Heinrich Himmler, his glasses a sinister glitter in the lights, was standing with his wife Marga. No amount of velvet and Russian lynx could prevent Marga Himmler from looking like the broad-beamed farmer’s wife that she was. Her hair was in Brunhilde braids and her face was as scrubbed as a scullery floor. Magda Goebbels had told Clara she always avoided Marga Himmler because she was very dull and talked only about pig-keeping. The only SS wife who could stand her was Annelies von Ribbentrop, who Clara could also see, eyes raking the outfits of the prestigious guests, like a general on guard inspection.

  In the absence of the Führer, the women had ignored his stipulations about dressing in Germanic clothing and had given free rein to their collections of haute couture. Shimmering Balenciaga gowns competed with dresses by Patou, Lanvin, Ricci and Chanel, capes edged with white mink and jackets with chinchilla cuffs. The jewellery on display might have been ransacked from a treasure chest compiled exclusively by Cartier and Van Cleef. Annelies von Ribbentrop was in a damson gown, with a sable stole. Inge Ley, the wife of Robert Ley and an actress herself, effortlessly outshone the other wives in a dress of wine-coloured chiffon, with a diamanté clip at the breast, her blonde hair polished to a shine. Among the politicians threaded the Babelsberg élite: Gustav Fröhlich beaming and toasting with his glass, Zarah Leander in a dramatically low-cut sheath, Brigitte Horney and Olga Chekhova with her sultry, Russian glamour. And in the midst of this sea of splendour the royal honeymooners stood, keeping close like a pair of orphans in a Nazi forest. They looked as though they would rather be anywhere than here.

  As Clara hesitated, Karl Ritter strolled past, the man who had risen from a captain in the Imperial Air Force to become Ufa’s top director, and beside him, laughing obsequiously at some joke, was Albert. Albert caught Clara’s glance out of the tail of his eye and gave a quick wave. It took all her strength to smile back, hoping that he didn’t see anything amiss with her damp dress, and that his eagle eye did not catch the splashes of mud on the hem.

  Yet there was no sign of Goebbels at all.

  Mimi squeezed her arm. ‘We’re late, damn it. The champagne’s running out and the film is starting. Are you coming in with me, darling?’

  The guests were being shepherded towards the doors of the auditorium but the more important people were hanging back, still drinking and talking, lingering until the last moment before taking their seats. The royal couple were cordoned by a sea of black uniforms, Wallis’s wide-jawed face drooping wryly in some private joke, her grim-faced husband at her side.

  Clara walked as swiftly as she could up the sweeping staircase. She needed to reach the circle because that was where Goebbels must be, ready to show himself off alongside the Windsors in the place of honour. In the royal circle, mahogany doors led to private boxes, each with eight gilt armchairs and a tray of refreshments laid out. The central box was reserved for the guests of honour.

  Clara tapped and opened the door. It was empty, save for a single figure.

  ‘Frau Doktor?’

  ‘Fräulein Vine. What a surprise.’

  Magda Goebbels was seated alone on a little gilt chair, her hands folded in fists on her lap. Her face was expression
less.

  ‘I was looking for the Herr Doktor . . .’

  Magda remained impassive. Her powdered skin was pallid. She wore her humiliation proudly, like pearls.

  ‘Perhaps you should try looking a few doors down.’

  Clara edged out of the box. Of course, it was clear to her now. Goebbels would be sitting with Lída. Even though Lída’s own husband was in the audience, the Propaganda Minister was exercising his droit de seigneur. His right to the attentions of the leading lady would go unchallenged.

  She hurried wildly along the corridor, knocking on every mahogany door and apologizing to startled faces until she reached the right one. It was at the far end of the corridor, and Clara’s knock was answered by the actress herself, looking flushed, in an ivory silk halter-neck dress that caressed every inch of her curves, a dazzle of diamonds at her throat. Beyond her, Goebbels jumped up, his features distorted with rage, his jacket in one hand, the very image of the adulterer uncovered. Within a split second he had resumed his professional smile, but fury still burned behind his eyes.

  ‘Fräulein Vine?’

  ‘Herr Doktor, I wouldn’t interrupt, but this is of the utmost importance.’

  For a moment she thought he would scream at her, but instead, frowning, Goebbels dismissed Lída with a wave. She flounced past Clara, her Slavic eyes flashing, leaving the box with a glare.

  ‘So what’s this about?’

  She proffered the evening bag full of shards.

  ‘I’ve found these negatives. I think they may be pictures of the Führer. I’ve no idea whether they are genuine. I was going to hand them over to the police but unfortunately, before I could, Unity Mitford found them in my apartment and destroyed them.’

  ‘Unity Mitford destroyed them?’

  ‘She smashed them to pieces. She is, as you said, an emotional woman. She felt if they fell into the wrong hands, they could do the Führer some harm.’