by Jane Thynne
Clara looked up sharply. She had no idea where this was heading.
“Perhaps Hitler approves of seeing women in a domestic setting,” he mused. “Maybe he thinks the paintings express some time-honored concept of Germanic tradition. Whatever his notion, he obviously has no real idea of what Vermeer is about. Nor have any of them.”
He continued to fix her with an odd, speculative look.
“I ask myself, is Wagner’s music less ravishing because it is adored by a sadist like Himmler? Is a Vivaldi concerto as beautiful when it is played by a psychopath like Heydrich? Does a vicious thug like Goering sully the Titians and Rubenses he professes to adore?”
Adler’s eyes were intently on her own, as though his life depended on her answer. “What do you think? Tell me, Clara. It’s a question that torments me.”
“Of course not. An object can’t be accountable for who loves it, any more than a person can.”
“I’m glad you think that. Because that’s their crime as far as I’m concerned. It matters far more to me than their politics or their ambitions. I’m not a political man. In my opinion Germany is the greatest nation on earth, and she deserves her empire. No empire is achieved without the spilling of blood. But these men have committed a crime against civilization. They have no respect for Art, no true understanding of it. Art is a commodity to them, like iron or steel. The masterpieces they squabble over are pearls before swine. Goering, that fat sentimentalist, may profess some scintilla of cultivation, but he’s no better than a greedy child running his fingers through a jewelry box, picking out the biggest, most glittering stones. Hitler is a peasant, and has a peasant’s appreciation of Art. Goebbels may have the wit to perceive, dimly, the value of some work, but he has become a vandal. You heard about the bonfire? Four thousand artworks? Irreplaceable. All in an attempt to impress the Führer.”
“And how do you propose to stop them? By advising Rosenberg on which works are the most valuable?”
If this barb struck home, Adler barely flinched. He seemed distracted, as if some long-suppressed confidence was now tumbling unstoppably out of him. He refilled her glass.
“I’ve never spoken about this before. Or only once, and that was during my stay in London. I was with a man from British intelligence, as it happens.”
A tremor went through her, and she hoped that his sharp eyes had not detected it.
“Why would you meet with British intelligence?”
“It wasn’t my idea. A colleague named Erich Kordt, one of von Ribbentrop’s entourage, had put feelers out. Kordt’s an Oxford man and a convinced Anglophile, and he engineered a meeting. The fellow I met seemed to think I would want to work with them. He told me I was too intelligent not to.”
“And what did you say?”
“He was right, of course, about my intelligence. It’s impossible to avoid the fact that the National Socialists are by and large a group of ignorant thugs. There’s no real intellect among them. Cunning perhaps, in the case of Goebbels, but a notable lack of brain cells elsewhere. That’s why Frau von Ribbentrop is so dangerous. Annelies has all the intelligence her husband lacks. I often wonder what she suspects of me.”
It was very still in the villa. Only the distant ripple of birdsong pierced the air.
“So…did you accept his offer?”
“Of course not.”
The anguish left his face, and he gave a dazzling smile. “What a suggestion, Clara! Can you imagine the penalties for that kind of thing? In fact, Kordt must be a quivering wreck now, imagining that I will report him, but so far I haven’t felt the need to tell anyone.”
He cast his evening jacket aside and wrenched off his tie.
“Eat something, won’t you?”
She took a roll, helping herself to the thick pat of butter and wondering where it came from.
He scrutinized her as she ate. “Are you tired?”
“I think nerves are keeping me awake.”
He came in front of her, touched the abrasion on her cheek left by Riesbach’s ring, and turned over her wrists to reveal where the handcuffs had left sore red bracelets of skin. Then, to her astonishment, he bent and kissed them.
“I can’t imagine what they did to you in that prison. I would like to kill the brutes who put their clumsy hands on you. Do you want to sleep?”
“I’m not sure if I could.”
“In that case, we’ll have to decide what to do with you.”
She gazed at him directly. The air between them seemed to shimmer with expectation.
“Do with me? What do you mean?”
A small smile lifted up the corners of his mouth. “There’s something you should see.”
He pulled her towards a door. Inside was a small windowless, wood-paneled room, like the chapter house of some medieval castle. The burnished walls were hung floor to ceiling with paintings, every surface covered and canvases stacked two or three deep. Yet it was not the number of canvases that surprised her but the paintings themselves. They were portraits mostly, almost all of them women. An ocher nude of a woman reclining in a posture of luxuriant abandon. Another woman, her neck sharply turned away, skin pale and luminous as a pearl. A couple, clinging to each other in the wreckage of a world, unsettled and utterly alone, both fascinating and repelling. The figures were spiky and angry and their quality intense and stunning, unlike anything she had seen before. Adler’s personality flared out of them savagely, in bold brushstrokes and angular lines.
“I come in here when I need to escape. Whenever I have attended meetings with Heydrich or wasted my time with von Ribbentrop, I know that I can return here and shut myself away. I find it useful to immerse myself in Art. It cuts me off from the ugliness of everyday existence.”
In one portrait she recognized something. A pose from her film The Pilot’s Wife. The girl in the picture was Clara, but as she had never seen herself, caught in a few deft strokes, a figure whose stark lines and angular intensity reminded her of Egon Schiele.
“Why keep these pictures secret?”
“Isn’t it obvious? Mine’s a dangerous art. It’s what those barbarians would call Degenerate. Hitler fears us, and I understand why. Modernists are angry and self-loathing. We paint our own crisis of spirit. Our work emits the scent of our unconscious. The Nazis want art that’s full of sunlight and pure maidens, whereas we see man the way he is—flawed, miserable, ignoble, compromised.”
“You didn’t tell me you were an artist.”
“I was at the Berlin School of Arts when the Gestapo moved in in ’thirty-three. I remember staring out of an upper window when they took all the Modernist work down to the courtyard and destroyed it. I knew then I had a choice—I could be like Emil Nolde; change my style, stick to insipid watercolors and pastorals. I could be like Otto Dix and agree to paint family portraits of the von Ribbentrops and their fat children. Or I could hide in plain sight. I think that’s what they call it. I could wear their colors, like that little hare I told you about in the fields back home. I would focus on the old masters and allow everyone to believe I had abandoned my own work.”
“There was another alternative.”
He frowned. “And what would that be?”
“You didn’t have to become involved with these barbarians. Nobody forced you to advise them on which masterpieces to steal.”
“I told you: I’m not political.”
“You didn’t have to work with them. To stand by while they ride roughshod over every law and civil right. While they arrest and murder thousands of their own citizens. You could have left the country.”
“You think I should have run away?”
“You’re already running away. You’re hiding from everything the Nazis represent. You shut yourself in here and pretend the world outside doesn’t exist. That you don’t bear some responsibility for it.”
“But my dear Clara, it was my responsibilities that kept me here. There was the estate to look after. That’s my patrimony, you understand. The von Adlers
have lived in Weimar for generations. It was unthinkable. No, I knew my passion must be concealed. You see”—he gave a quick, sharp glance at Clara, brimming with meaning—“concealed passions are nothing new for me.”
He moved towards her, easing his fingers through her hair, pulling it away from her head so that it kindled against the light and revealing the side of her neck.
“I love the place where the skin is translucent and you see the blood beneath,” he murmured. “It’s like seeing through you.”
She felt desire quicken in him, his breath hot on her skin. She said: “You don’t want me, Conrad.”
He drew back, his perfect face clouded with incomprehension.“Why not? That would be particularly irrational, and whatever else you know about me, you know I am a rational man. Besides, I like you.”
“You said human emotions were entirely untrustworthy.”
“Perhaps I’m coming round to them.”
There was barely any room to move in the contained space. Running his hands down her shoulders, he eased the straps of the evening dress from her shoulders, so that it fell from her and lay in a puddle of silk at her feet. Then he drew her towards him and kissed her.
Just for a moment she gave in to him, then she pulled herself free. He laughed and spread his hands. “Very well then. First things first. I also want to paint you.”
—
SHE SAT FOR HIM in the drawing room beside a wall of Delft tiles, bathed in the pure light coming in from the lake. As his hands moved across the paper, Clara felt his eyes sweep over her, taking in every detail of her coloring and complexion, right down to the dusting of freckles on her nose and the flecks of darker blue in the irises of her eyes. It was the type of close attention that would serve a policeman well, but in Adler the appraisal seemed entirely nonjudgmental, as though he was simply evaluating her living flesh, assessing her proportions.
“I still want to know. Why were you in Paris, if you were not following me?”
A distracted shrug. “I told you. I was advising on a collection.”
“For Goering or for Hitler?”
“Clara Vine, this persistent line of questioning does not suit you. Especially when you should be grateful to me.”
“Grateful to you? Why?”
He sighed, and threw down his pencil. “All right. I’ll tell you.”
Reaching behind him he found an old shirt, daubed with paint, which he tossed towards her. Instantly, she covered herself up.
“It’s true, Goering and Hitler are engaged in a race. Their intention is to carry off every piece of art they desire to the Reich. But my business in Paris was something quite different. You see, when I first met you I recognized your name.”
“That’s not entirely unusual for me, though it might be hard for you to understand.”
“Be patient, woman. Let me explain. When you asked me what I was doing in Paris, I told you I was advising on a collection. I have allowed you to think that collection was one of paintings. But it wasn’t. It was names. And when I first met you, it wasn’t your Christian name I recognized.”
“You’d heard of my father? That’s no surprise.”
“Perhaps I should explain what I was advising on and why. Shortly after I returned from England, Reinhard Heydrich contacted me. To say it was a surprise is an understatement. A call from Heydrich is not the kind of invitation you put on the mantelpiece. But I went along to his office in Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse and saw to my dismay that he had my file open before him on the desk. Always a bad sign.”
What had Leni Riefenstahl said? In Heydrich’s mind, information is power. He has a locked safe that he refers to as his “poison cabinet,” where he keeps all his files on the senior men.
“But contrary to my expectations, he began to compliment me on my memory.”
“Do you have a good memory?”
“Exceptional, actually. I’m a freak of Nature. When I was a child it was called an eidetic memory because I could recall images and objects with high precision. Even the minutest details. It’s declined a little with age, but it is a talent all the same, and it was that talent Heydrich wanted. He knew I’d spent two years mingling with British society, reading British newspapers, meeting British aristocrats, politicians, and writers. He pointed out that my enthusiasm for that country was flagged in my file as a warning. There had been fears that I intended to make London my home. Suggestions I preferred the British way to life in the Reich.” A gruff chuckle. “I was able to reassure him on that score.”
He glanced out of the window at the splendor of the gardens beyond. “Who would forsake somewhere like this in a hurry?”
“So what did Heydrich want?” Clara prompted.
“He told me something in deep confidence. It wasn’t a confidence I wanted, but once I had it, I was bound by it. Heydrich knew he had me captive simply by telling me his plans. Isn’t that how it works with secrets? Once you know them, you’re trapped.
“Heydrich is creating what he calls his Black Book. A collection of all the most significant enemies of National Socialism in Great Britain.”
“You mean, in case of invasion?”
“Should his plans go ahead. Ultimately his deputy, Walter Schellenberg, will be in charge of this operation. Schellenberg is chief of Amt VI—that’s the foreign intelligence branch of the SD, but in the meantime Heydrich wanted my advice. I’d spent two years immersed in British society, so I was perfectly placed.”
His gaze was distant, as though he was seeing far beyond the boundaries of the Reich to England, and all the people and parties and places he had once enjoyed.
“Take your film about the Ahnenerbe, Clara. Germans traveling the globe, studying different societies. Well, what Heydrich wanted from me wasn’t so different. He has compiled a picture of British society, made up of not old bones and skulls but names. On that day in his office he gave me his Black Book. He asked me to provide notes on which of the names inside it were friendly to the National Socialist government and who might prove hostile.”
“How many names?”
“Two thousand, eight hundred, to be precise. Both British subjects and European exiles, who are to be arrested or taken into protective custody in the event of a successful German invasion. The people deemed enemies will be arrested immediately. Churchill. Eden. Duff Cooper. They’ll be seized within days. Churchill will be placed in the hands of Foreign Intelligence. The rest will be turned over to the Gestapo for imprisonment. The others, lower down, will merely be put on trial.”
“Who are they?”
“I recognized most of them immediately. H. G. Wells, Virginia Woolf, Noël Coward, E. M. Forster, Aldous Huxley, Stephen Spender, Sigmund Freud, Rebecca West. And when I heard your name, I recognized it too.”
“But…my father has been a fervent supporter of the National Socialists for years. It’s well known. He was a Nazi sympathizer right from the beginning. It would be absurd to arrest my father!”
“I’m not talking about your father.”
Adler walked across to the rolltop desk and felt in the top drawer. He retrieved a photograph of a woman, cut from the pages of a magazine—The Tatler it looked like. She was in evening clothes with a mink stole around her shoulders. Her hair was neatly pinned in a chignon, her eyebrows lifting slightly, as if in surprise.
“This is your sister, I believe.”
Angela.
CHAPTER
36
“I heard your sister was in Paris, so I made a quick visit. That was why I was there that night at the Dingo Bar. I was eager to see if what I had been told about her was true.”
Clara gave a sharp laugh of disgust.
“If Heydrich has my sister’s name in his Black Book, then that’s proof he has absolutely no idea about English society. My sister was a founding member of the Anglo-German Fellowship. She and my father held the earliest meetings at our family home. Her entire life is devoted to fundraising in support of closer ties between Germany and Britain. You c
ouldn’t find a more devoted admirer of the Nazi cause than Angela.”
“Or a more deceptive one.”
She stared at him. Tiny fragments of thought were glinting in her mind, like diamonds in rubble. The image of the maid at the door of Elizabeth Street. She’s visiting her sister. Dolly Capel in Dingo’s bar. I thought you were with her. What reason could her sister have for visiting Paris? Unless it was true that Angela concealed as great a secret as Clara herself.
Turning to the rolltop desk again, Adler took a piece of paper from a sheaf and read aloud.
“My inquiries in London, and later, confirm my view that Angela Vine is an agent of the British intelligence service, working undercover to infiltrate German-sympathizing factions within the British establishment.”
“That’s impossible.”
He continued reading. “She has held these views from the early days of the Reich. She reports on the activities of Nazi sympathizers to the British government. More recently she has been liaising with agents in Paris to assist resistance in the event of a German invasion.”
“But I…”
“You what? You never suspected that your sister had a talent to deceive?”
“If it’s true, why did I never guess?”
“Presumably that’s the idea.”
“I should have, though. I’ve known her all my life.”
“That’s probably the point. You were too close. You could never get perspective.”
“I can’t believe you would give my sister’s name to the Gestapo.”
“I didn’t produce these names. I was merely asked for my opinion. What these men and women stand for. Who they are and what they believe in.”
“Your opinion will be their death warrant.”
“They are known opponents of the Reich, and in the event of invasion their fate is unavoidable.”
“So you’d happily line them up for a firing squad!”
“Not happily.”
He walked over to the window and surveyed the patterned box hedges dividing the flower garden and the crystalline purity of the lake beyond. A man was raking the lawn, and Clara saw that it was Karl, the groom from the Reitclub Grunewald.
