by Jane Thynne
Everything hung in the balance now. Her whole existence might soon be unstrung, like a necklace snipped and its pearls sent spiraling over the ground.
—
THE TABLE IN THE interrogation room was pocked with burns, sending the ominous message that the interrogators were far from cautious about where they stubbed out their cigarettes. A low cloud of tobacco smoke, acrid in the mouth like gasoline, hung in the air, barely troubled by the draft from an open window. The officer slouched in a chair with his legs crossed had an unhealthy, jaundiced look, as though he spent his life in the artificial glare of a Gestapo spotlight. His face might have been plucked straight from one of the cabinets at Himmler’s Ahnenerbe, with skin stretched taut over the cadaverous cheekbones, pale scalp beneath his freshly shaved skull, and a yellowish tint of ivory to the eyes.
He rocked back in the chair when he saw her, and twisted his cigarette to join the others in the ashtray on his desk.
“Sit down, Fräulein Vine.”
She wondered how senior he was. Not very, or he would have been at home asleep, rather than doing an interrogation night shift. The look of brute malice in his eyes seemed to confirm that.
“My name is Kriminalsekretär Riesbach.”
Her guess was correct. He was relatively low-ranking, which made it all the more important that she gauge her responses carefully. There had been a rash of Ufa performers arrested recently, hauled in for questioning about activities detrimental to National Socialism. Their brash, actorly manner, their name dropping and threats, had only served to irritate the rank-and-file policemen, who treated them more harshly as a result.
“Perhaps you can explain why I’m here,” she said quietly.
“I was rather hoping that you would explain that to me, Fraülein. But maybe you will need some encouragement.”
“Could you tell me why I was arrested?”
Riesbach made a clumsy play of reasonableness, as though he had decided that because she was an actress, a degree of playacting was appropriate. He spread his hands. “Why not? A loyal patriot advised us that we should keep a watch on you, Fräulein Vine. From your file I see it’s not the first time you have come to the attention of the authorities.”
“That was a mistake. I was released immediately and without charge.”
A frown descended on Riesbach’s brutish features. He was pretending puzzlement. “Have you ever heard of the saying ‘No smoke without fire’?”
“Yes. It’s a common cliché.”
“So what are we to make of this? Another arrest. Another patriot who believes you are engaged in actions against the well-being of the Reich.”
“Actions?”
“Espionage, woman!” His face flushed, and his voice rose to an angry bark. “This patriot believes you may not be loyal to the Reich. That you may in fact be an English spy.”
Stay calm. Don’t react instinctively.
“That’s an outrageous accusation.”
Indignation and fear was the only correct response. The response of the innocent.
“I’m glad you see it like that. I feel the same. But then we found this.”
With a flourish, he reached beneath the desk and pulled out a book, which Clara recognized as her copy of The Thirty-Nine Steps. She bit her lips to keep the color in them, in case they should have blanched with fear.
Riesbach opened the book carefully at the frontispiece, as though examining some precious, ancient manuscript.
“You can imagine my colleagues’ excitement when they found an English novel which appears to belong to the library of the foreign minister. Unfortunately, when they telephoned the Herr Minister’s home, only Frau von Ribbentrop could be found, and she was not pleased to be contacted in the middle of the night.”
The figure of Frau von Ribbentrop in a dressing gown, summoned to the telephone to explain why an actress should be carrying one of her husband’s books, would indeed be formidable. Clara could only imagine her response.
“My men decided to postpone their questions, for the time being at least.”
So she had been saved. Saved by the foul temper of Annelies von Ribbentrop.
“But please don’t think that our inquiries have ended there.”
A twist of pure pleasure spread across Riesbach’s face as, like an amateur magician, he produced an envelope and tipped it out on the table. It was Clara’s tiny matchstick of paper, carefully unrolled to reveal the line of numbers. How foolish she had been even to hope it might escape them, or ever to underestimate their efficiency.
He poked at the paper with an extended finger. “I wonder what this might be?”
“I have no idea.”
“Strange, when it was found in the pocket of your own jacket.”
“I’m sorry. I’m very tired. I can’t remember.”
This was inadequate, but it was the only answer Clara could summon while her brain moved at lightning speed to explain away the code.
“A list of numbers. What should we deduce from that?”
“It’s probably a telephone number. Fans pass me their numbers all the time. They push notes into my pockets.”
“Good try, Fräulein. We called it already. Or tried to. That doesn’t work.”
“Then, I’m afraid…”
“Perhaps you need to take a closer look?”
As Clara bent to examine it, Riesbach moved abruptly forward, reached over, and swatted her upwards, across the face. The impact of the ring on his knuckle sliced the skin on her cheek. The blow took her by surprise, and she reeled backwards.
“Perhaps that will refresh your memory.”
She straightened, her hand to her cheek, and replied curtly, “It hasn’t.”
“You’re an actress, Fräulein. You’re supposed to remember things. Another one might help.”
A second blow, this time against her temple, making her ear ring and forcing her to clench her teeth.
“What innocent person walks around with a list of numbers in their pocket?” Riesbach demanded.
Clara decided to keep her head very still, as though facing an aggressive dog, in an attempt to forestall another attack. They had taken away her watch, but the clock on the wall opposite told her it was nearly 5:00 a.m.
“As I said, Inspector, people put things in my pockets all the time.”
The door clanged, and another man entered the room. Although Clara did not turn, she could tell that he was senior by the way that Riesbach half rose, and out of the corner of her eye she saw the newcomer jerk his head abruptly and lean against the wall, arms folded.
“Carry on, Dieter.”
Riesbach’s tone modified, marginally, and took on an air of aggrieved bureaucracy. “I was asking the prisoner the significance of a list of numbers found on a piece of paper in her jacket. I felt—” The newcomer interrupted.
“The charges before you are extremely serious, Fräulein.”
From what she could see the senior man had a hard face and a toothbrush mustache. His voice was more educated than Riesbach’s, exuding the deep tedium of the early hours.
“Charges?”
“Allegations, precisely. The charges will come later. You need to talk to us. One way or another, we are going to require some answers.”
Clara continued staring rigidly at the clock. In her sleeveless evening dress her flesh rose in goosebumps, but shivering would look like fear. She wrapped her arms round her in an attempt to keep warm.
“Not cooperating is not going to help you, Fräulein Vine.” The senior man’s tone said he was bored, his civility in short supply.
“Playing dumb might work at the Ufa studios, but it won’t work here.”
“I have cooperated in every way.”
“Fine.” He scraped a chair by its legs across the room and brought it right next to her, his face so close that she could feel his breath on her cheek. He smelled of tobacco and good aftershave.
“Perhaps you think I’m a little stupid.”
“N
ot at all.”
“Only, as Kriminalsekretär Riesbach says, we are puzzled by this piece of paper that was found in the pocket of your evening jacket. Dieter, can you fetch the jacket?”
“No need. The paper’s right there.”
“I said fetch the Fräulein’s jacket.”
Sullenly, Riesbach got to his feet and left the room. As he did, the tall officer rose swiftly and moved to the door. He pulled it shut, brought a chair up to Clara, and put his face even closer to hers. Forcing herself to look at him, she saw two different eyes. One brown, one blue.
Such a distinguishing feature would make undercover work impossible.
That was what she had thought when she passed a man in the corridor of Section D in London. Could it be that the same man, with his narrow, tawny mustache and mismatched eyes, was standing right in front of her? Could a man trained in the depths of British intelligence have been transplanted to the Gestapo in Berlin?
As if to confirm it, he spoke in English, very quietly.
“I’m going to get you out of this. Go quickly. Find somewhere to stay out of sight. If my senior officials object, there’s every chance you will be picked up again.”
Clara couldn’t move. She was paralyzed with fear. “Who informed on me?”
His voice was so low she could barely catch it. “It must have been someone close to you. I heard Dieter say it was the last person he would have suspected. Now go.”
As she rose, the door clanged open and Riesbach returned, Clara’s jacket suspended like a rag from his fist. Springing to his feet, the senior officer snatched it from him, tossed it across the desk to her, and turned to his colleague with an expression of barely suppressed fury.
“For Christ’s sake, Dieter! All your talk of codes. One look at this and I can tell the lady is plainly innocent. Did you even bother to examine this nonsense?” He picked up the paper and held it tauntingly in front of his baffled colleague before screwing it into a ball and tossing it out of the window.
“Have you never seen a line of Reichslotterie numbers in your life?”
CHAPTER
35
Dawn had broken. A sheet of clouds was pulled across the sky, lanced with sunlight that left them pearlescent and marbled as mother-of-pearl. Early workers were beginning to arrive at the textile factories and whistles were sounding. A horse-drawn milk cart was making its rounds, awaited by hausfraus toting capacious blue cans for their deliveries, and the first queues for bread and groceries were beginning to form. Here in the east, Albert Speer’s construction work was well under way. Blocks of houses were being razed, the dust blooming into the air. Twisted metal and hunks of mortar lay alongside pathetic domestic debris: a stray kitchen sink, a banister, a wardrobe mirror, a cot. Everywhere, it seemed, life had been turned inside out. What was previously concealed was now on full display.
Clara wiped the wound on her cheek where Riesbach had hit her and tasted metallic blood on her finger, but she barely registered the injury. Her mind was racing. Who had betrayed her?
I heard Dieter say it was the last person he would have suspected.
Was that because the informant was the wife of a senior government minister? Had Magda Goebbels reported her, out of a mistaken paranoia that Clara had slept with her husband? Or, more likely, had Conrad Adler decided to punish her, merely because she refused to become his mistress?
Although the Gestapo officer had warned her to stay out of sight, she had no idea where to go. She had no desire to return to Griebnitzsee, nor would she dream of seeking shelter with Erich and his grandmother in Neukölln. For a moment she contemplated visiting the Adlon and finding refuge in Mary’s room before remembering that Mary would be on her way to London by now. And that she badly needed a change of clothes. Clara decided to return to her old apartment in Winterfeldtstrasse and seek at least temporary sanctuary while she worked out what to do next.
In Nollendorfplatz, early-morning commuters were already streaming into the station with its high glass dome, the red and yellow trains clanking along the elevated section. Clara walked swiftly along Potsdamer Strasse, but as she turned the corner into Winterfeldtstrasse, a figure stepped out of the shadow of a recessed doorway.
“Do you have a death wish?”
Conrad Adler was still in the suit he had worn the previous evening at the Führer’s film night. His coat was draped over his shoulders, and by the look of it, he had not slept all night. His face was shadowed with stubble and his eyes bloodshot.
He gripped her roughly by the arm and pushed her back into the porch, away from the road.
“You’re a damn fool, coming back here.”
Anger rose in her. Fury at the treacherous sexual attraction she had felt for this man who, if her suspicions were correct, was prepared at a moment’s notice to consign her to a horrible fate.
“I’m a fool ever to have listened to a word you said. I expect you’re wondering why I’m walking the street, considering you handed my name to the Gestapo. You were hoping I’d be sitting in Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse by now.”
As if on cue a car proceeded slowly up the street and pulled to a stop farther along the road opposite Clara’s apartment. The engine died, but no one got out. Adler pulled Clara closer into his arms. In their evening clothes they resembled a pair of lovers who couldn’t bring themselves to separate after dancing until dawn. His face was just inches from hers, and she detected his shock at the purpling slash on her cheek.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I was informed on and arrested. I know the informer was you.”
“That’s absurd. Why would I have you arrested?”
“There’s no telling what someone like you would do.”
“Someone like me?”
“Magda Goebbels told me someone was spreading rumors about me. You must think I’m naïve. Listening to your talk, having dinner with you, riding with you, when all the time you’re working for Heydrich.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Leni Riefenstahl overheard you and Heydrich discussing me.”
Adler’s grip on Clara loosened slightly. Outwardly, he was composed, but his eyes were alive, calculating.
“I can’t deny that I have undertaken some work for Heydrich. But I promise you, Clara, for what it’s worth, I have not informed on you. I knew nothing whatever about you until we met on the night of the Führer’s birthday.”
“So how did you know where to find me now?”
“Goebbels insisted I attend that goddamn film evening. He had the nerve to suggest I might find it educational. When you left the Chancellery in a hurry, I followed you. I saw you being picked up. Later I inquired at the police station and was surprised to discover you had been released. I guessed you might head for your old apartment.”
“And how did you know this address?”
“I’m a bureaucrat, Clara, remember? I told you I did my research.”
He reached his coat round so that it draped over both their shoulders, and arm in arm they turned back down the street.
“My car is parked round the corner. From the looks of it, you might need a change of plan.”
—
ADLER’S LAKESIDE VILLA WAS the epitome of good taste. Its shutters were painted a buttery yellow and it was framed by magnificent Blutbuchen—blood-red beech trees that flamed against the sky. At eight in the morning the air was fresh and still. As she climbed out of Adler’s car, Clara would not have been surprised to find a servant at the porticoed entrance, but it was Adler himself who pushed open the door and ushered her inside.
Even from the outside, she could never have guessed at the sumptuousness revealed within. Everything spoke of long, deeply established wealth. The thick carpet and the carved, mahogany banister. The walls lined with ivory silk and the table bearing a bowl of white roses and a platter of fruit. Even the light felt expensive in this room, pale, lemony sun gilding the burnished wood, glancing off the oak paneling, and illu
minating the paintings, row on row of them, hung in frames of clotted gold.
A dog came to greet them, a silvery Weimaraner with a coat like polished steel, his body highly sprung, lithe and muscular like the precise canine equivalent of his owner. The dog’s eyes were piercingly pale and amber-colored, his spine undulating beneath the pelt. When he came to a stop next to his master, the tendons on his legs stood out like strings on a bow, and Adler placed a tender, proprietorial hand on him.
“Most hunting dogs have an unrivaled instinct for prey, but this one is an exception. He doesn’t like to run with the pack. He’s a very individual animal. He goes where he pleases.”
As if in demonstration, the dog trotted off again.
“Wait here,” Adler commanded.
He disappeared down a corridor and Clara heard the distant clink of china. In his absence she looked around her. There was a rolltop desk in the corner on which stood an SS-issue Olympia typewriter, specially fitted with its double lightning flash key. There was a stack of official looking papers beside it, a tortoiseshell inkstand, and a brass reading lamp. A glass paperweight like a teardrop, inside which a flower was imprisoned. And the tooled Cartier box containing the diamond earrings she had refused.
She drifted across to the paintings, gleaming like gems in their polished settings, their pigments almost alive. They were portraits mostly, ordinary seventeenth-century citizens gazing out at the viewer with inscrutable eyes, enclosed in a soft glow of shining domesticity. The men were playing cards or the lute, and the women were immersed in the simplest of tasks—stitching, pouring milk, reading letters.
“The Dutch Golden Age,” said Adler, over her shoulder. She turned. He was carrying a tray bearing coffee, rolls, and a bottle of cognac. He proceeded to pour a glass and handed it to her.
“Northern European realism is my greatest love. It was a time when artists moved away from religious painting to the detail of their own lives. Vermeer, of course, is the master.”
He swirled the cognac around in his glass, then swallowed it.
“It troubles me that Hitler should love Vermeer. Does it devalue the art, do you think, when evil people love it?”
