Solitaire

by Jane Thynne

  ‘No, but children are.’ Engel hesitated. ‘Ever heard of the Lebensborn?’

  ‘A little.’ In fact, Clara knew all too much. The Lebensborn was one of Himmler’s organizations, a group of homes where unmarried mothers could give birth and surrender their babies to the Reich. Clara had visited one of these places once and the memory still haunted her.

  ‘The Lebensborn has a new venture. It’s to do with orphans of war. I’ve been commissioned to examine them. I have no choice.’

  ‘You don’t mind looking after sick children, surely.’

  ‘No. Only these children aren’t sick. And they’re not even Germans – at least, not yet.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘They’re from Poland. The SS rounded them up and the Lebensborn brought them to Berlin. They want us doctors to determine if they’re fit to be Germanized.’

  ‘Germanized? You mean they’re going to be turned into Germans?’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘Are their parents actually dead?’

  A lift of the narrow shoulder blades.

  ‘Who knows? It’s not what the kids say, though we’re not supposed to ask them any questions. Our orders are just to run the medical tests and the racial examination.’

  ‘What do you examine? Whether they have Aryan features?’

  ‘Oh, they have those of course. Blond hair, blue eyes, high brows. That was what got them here in the first place. But there are a host of other characteristics they need. We have a fresh batch brought here every day for observation.’

  His gaze was still fixed on the microscope in front of him, his long nervous fingers restlessly twiddling the dial.

  ‘We’ve been given a checklist of sixty-seven qualifications. History of illnesses, state of the teeth and vision, height and weight, precise eye and hair colour. We measure the seams in their skull and the shape of their calves. Their heart rate, earwax, fingerprints and blood group. We take full facial and frontal photographs to rule out Slavic traits. And they have to pass every single one of these tests.’

  ‘What happens if they fail?’

  At last he glanced sideways at her, his eyes behind their horn-rimmed spectacles impenetrable.

  ‘That’s the very question I’ve been asking myself. And the fact is, I just don’t know.’

  ‘Can you not enquire?’

  He hesitated. Nervous tension was coming off him in waves.

  ‘My colleague did. He was arrested last week for “unprofessional conduct”. We’ve not been able to discover where he’s being held. Another man – a distinguished paediatrician in my department – made a formal enquiry. The next day he was told he’s being reassigned for the war effort and should report to the German weapons and munitions factory in Borsigwalde to make shells. The fellow’s fifty-seven, for Christ’s sake. My good friend Ernst Haber also put in a request for more information. Yesterday he was summoned for Gestapo interrogation and chose to jump out of a window instead.’

  ‘My God, Franz.’

  Clara paused, to steady herself.

  ‘They really don’t want people finding out.’

  ‘Certainly seems so.’

  ‘There must be some way. Someone has to ask questions.’

  Engel stiffened, as though bracing something physical inside. It was the internal uniform that everyone in Germany wore, the straitjacket that kept the questions in and the knowledge out.

  ‘Do they? There’s nothing more dangerous than questions, Clara. Questions kill people. Take the advice of a doctor. Questions are dangerous for the health.’

  ‘Wait a minute. Do you have any paper?’

  Wordlessly he withdrew a prescription pad from his top pocket and Clara took it, wrote an address and pressed it into his hand.

  ‘Read this. Remember it. Then destroy it. It’s the address of a friend of mine, an American journalist. Meet her, and tell her what you’ve just told me. About the job you’ve been asked to do. About Max de Crinis and what has happened to your colleagues. If you can’t ask questions, Mary can. Questions are what she lives by.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  The Ministry of Propaganda at the heart of Berlin was not the kind of place anyone dropped by for a casual chat. It may have been decked out in the finest walnut and oak veneer with sleek minimalist pillars of fawn stone and shimmering marble floors. The throne room and blue gallery of the old Leopold Palace may have been renovated and their original frescoes restored at great public expense, but no amount of redecoration could disguise the sullen menace that hung in its marble corridors, nor the batteries of antiaircraft guns that festooned the government blocks outside. It was not a popular workplace. Joseph Goebbels believed in keeping his staff in a state of perpetual alertness, and to this end had recently reassigned some of his senior men to local factories where they were obliged to sign on as labourers in order to refresh their contact with the masses. As a result the Ministry had a high staff turnover and trouble hanging on to some of the more talented workers, as was evident to Clara when she arrived at five minutes to four o’clock that afternoon.

  Inside his glass booth, a guard was manning the reception desk. He had cauliflower ears and the face of a bulldog stung by a wasp.

  He stabbed a telephone and dialled, then grunted.

  ‘The Minister’s busy. You can wait outside his office.’

  A functionary materialized and escorted her through the echoing hall, hung with heavy wrought-iron lamps. Clara marvelled at the fact that Mary Harker came to this place every day to hear Goebbels rage against the international liars and counterfeiters of the foreign press, and dispense his minute daily ration of genuine news. But Mary was an accredited foreign correspondent and an American, protected by her nationality and the Nazis’ desire to keep the United States out of the war, and need never feel the German journalists’ shudder of fear. The horror that they might ask the wrong question or file the wrong report.

  ‘He’ll be along shortly. Stay here.’

  Clara stood in the corridor. A secretary clipped past, laden with files. In the distance a telephone rang. On a notice board instructions had been pinned concerning a couple of new crimes that had just been announced. There was a new criminal type called the Wehrkraftzersetzer, the citizen who undermined fighting morale, and another called the Enemy At Home, both of whom merited the death penalty. Harsher punishments had been introduced for women who engaged in sex with prisoners of war, deemed harmful to German womanhood and a betrayal of the Home Front. To distract herself, Clara picked up a paper, though it was too much to expect that she would find more cheerful news inside.

  The Völkischer Beobachter, the Nazi Party paper, had more crime and punishment than a whole Russian novel and that week’s edition was no exception. It being wartime, it carried a full page of death notices too. In a hero’s death for Führer, Volk and Vaterland my only son Rolf died in battle. In proud grief for our son Helmut who died for our beloved Führer. Yet alongside battle casualties, there were plenty of other kinds of death to read about. One incident in particular was dominating that day’s page three. A local prostitute, Ilsa Helton, had been found stabbed in the eastern suburb of Friedrichsfelde. Dead prostitutes did not generally make headlines, but under the standfirst S-Bahn Attacker Kills? the report revealed that police were exploring the connection between the assault on the woman and her proximity to the railway station. A man had been sighted near the tracks, with short black hair parted on the left and a pasty complexion. There was a photograph of the corpse. Looking at its raddled face, beaky nose and dull eyes, half hidden by strands of dyed blonde hair, Clara shuddered. The man on the train that night. The one who had subsequently accosted her in Potsdamer Strasse. It must be the same one. She knew for certain now that she had had a lucky escape.

  Joseph Goebbels appeared, surrounded by a flea cloud of assistants and hangers-on. Signalling curtly for them to leave he led the way into his office and slammed the door.

  ‘I’m surrounded by imbe
ciles,’ he commented, tossing the files onto his desk. ‘Dietrich. Not a brain in his head.’

  From this Clara surmised that Goebbels had returned from the afternoon press conference, generally conducted by Otto Dietrich, the Reich Press Chief.

  ‘He told me he has all his good ideas in the bath. I said in that case he needs to take a few more baths.’

  Goebbels’ office was large and well furnished. On the wall hung his latest acquisition – a Renoir head of a young girl that had recently decorated a Jewish-owned villa in Paris. There was a long mahogany desk containing more telephones than you would find in an entire apartment block, some of them connected directly to the Reich Chancellery, others to his home and country villa. Clara had heard there were microphones concealed in the lamps as well as a specially constructed Siemens switchboard with which Goebbels could plug into any conversation taking place anywhere in the building. She wondered if he knew about Schellenberg’s plan to install machine guns inside his desk to spray unwanted visitors with bullets. If Goebbels hadn’t heard of the idea yet, he surely would. He would probably do precisely the same and claim the copyright on it.

  Without looking up he said, ‘At least you’re back promptly. How’s that godson?’

  ‘Good, thank you for asking.’

  Their day at the races had ended happily, with Erich winning ten Reichsmarks and their dispute over his mother tacitly smoothed, if not forgotten.

  ‘He’s still at school, isn’t he? A fine student with a promising future, I hear.’

  She nodded. Goebbels couldn’t make it any clearer.

  ‘Let’s hope that remains the case.’

  He crossed his spindly legs, revealing Italian shoes polished like little mirrors, almost immaculate enough to obscure the fact that one was built up by several inches to match the other.

  ‘Anyhow. More important matters. What did you make of Reuber?’

  Clara gripped the arms of the leather chair, summoning a self-possession she did not feel.

  ‘From everything I can see he’s a loyal citizen if not a terrifically political one. The only kind of French resistance he was interested in was that offered by the ladies of the Folies-Bergère. And I shouldn’t think he met much resistance there.’

  A snuffle of agreement.

  ‘When I got him drunk, I made some slighting remarks about the Führer – quite necessary, I’m sure you understand, Herr Doktor – but Reuber would only talk about his loyalty to Germany. He wants to serve the Fatherland to the best of his ability. He got quite sentimental.’

  ‘So he’s loyal?’

  ‘Utterly loyal to his country. He feels deeply about it.’

  ‘And did you . . .?’

  Lascivious interest glimmered in Goebbels’ eyes.

  ‘As I said, Reuber was drunk, and you know what men are like when they’ve had one too many schnapps. His evening on the stage was the only performance he was going to be able to manage that night.’

  Goebbels tapped his fingers on the desk.

  ‘It’s just as I thought. Schellenberg’s neurotic, he sees spies everywhere. I’ve always kept a close eye on members of my Chamber of Culture. There’s not much that escapes my gaze.’

  He rose and crossed to a tall window disfigured by screeds of bombproof wire mesh. If he craned his neck he could glimpse the corner of the new Reich Chancellery, Hitler’s vast behemoth that now occupied the whole of Voss Strasse. Just yards away was von Ribbentrop’s Foreign Ministry and a few goosesteps down the street lay the monstrous bulk of Goering’s Air Ministry. The inner circle of the Nazi regime was knit as tightly as a fist and as if these buildings were not physically close enough, all were linked below pavement level by a spider’s web of tunnels and escape routes. Berlin’s underground was porous with basements, shelters and torture cells, like a dark twin to the ceaseless architectural construction rising above.

  But Goebbels was not thinking of this. A dyspeptic frown darkened his brow.

  ‘I’m reassured by what you’ve found on Reuber but, unfortunately, this is not the end of the matter. Schellenberg has asked to see you personally.’

  Shock ran through her like a shaft of ice and Clara had to fight to keep her composure. Had Goebbels not believed her account?

  ‘Can I ask why? Isn’t it enough that I give my assurance Hans Reuber is not a spy?’

  ‘It is for me.’

  She tried harder. ‘Surely Herr Schellenberg would take the assurance of a minister of your stature? I mean, he wouldn’t doubt the word of a senior minister?’

  ‘Of course he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t dare. It’s nothing to do with that. It’s something else.’

  ‘But what could Herr Schellenberg possibly want from me?’ Clara tried, and failed, to keep the note of panic from her voice until suddenly she realized there was no need. Her reaction was utterly natural. Panic was the proper response to an audience with a man like Walter Schellenberg, the man who, above all others in the Reich, was trained to instil terror into the people brought before him.

  ‘Don’t ask me. I was too busy to discuss it.’

  Plainly Schellenberg had refused to provide any further detail. Clara thought of Irene’s comment the other day. Walter never gets it wrong. He doesn’t even need to hear them talking. He can smell a spy, he says. Masquerading in front of Germany’s pre-eminent spymaster, a professional at seeing through the strategies of spies, who could tell a lie at a hundred paces, was impossible. She could never pull it off.

  ‘Is it really necessary? Just when I am being considered for this new film? Couldn’t you explain?’

  ‘Believe me, I’m not happy about it, either. I had half a mind to refuse him outright. Members of the Chamber of Culture are my domain, and they serve the Reich just as much as any member of the Wehrmacht.’

  Goebbels was fighting his own territorial wars, Clara recognized. His irritation at this invasion of his personal empire was countered by the fact that Schellenberg was under Himmler’s control and would thus be granted whatsoever he wished. For a moment, he remained surveying her with a kind of puzzlement, before striding to the door and opening it.

  ‘I don’t know why, but for some reason Schellenberg is particularly interested in you. He’s not to be thwarted. He’s even arranged your transport.’

  ‘To where?’

  ‘Lisbon.’

  ‘Lisbon?’

  ‘Do you need an atlas, woman? It’s the capital of Portugal. I assume you’ve heard of it. He’s there on some business and he wants to see you without delay. It must be important because he’s arranged for Hanna Reitsch to take you with her. She’s expecting you at Tempelhof tomorrow morning.’

  Back in the apartment Clara made toast and sank into her red velvet armchair, the words of Joseph Goebbels still ringing in her ears. For some reason Schellenberg is particularly interested in you. There could be nothing more alarming than that. Yet she attempted to console herself with the thought that Goebbels had seemed irritated, rather than suspicious, about the spy chief’s request. Surely if she had been found out, she would have been sitting in Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse with a body full of broken bones, rather than being flown to Lisbon in relative comfort by the Führer’s very own pilot. Or might it be that Schellenberg merely had suspicions of her activities rather than hard proof? Perhaps he wanted the pleasure of breaking her himself.

  To distract herself, she took a screwdriver from its place in the drawer and rolled back the Turkish rug that covered the far end of her sitting room. The floorboards were old and worn in places and a couple of them bore especially long cracks, so it was understandable that she should have covered them. One floorboard, two from the wall, must have had a heavy jar or bronze weight dropped on it at some time, because it was cratered and badly splintered at the join. This one she now crouched over and unscrewed, retrieving from the dusty compartment beneath it the weathered cardboard rat poison box that contained her shortwave radio set.

  That night there was no Mozart or Beethoven bl
asting from Franz Engel’s apartment to drown out her transgression but she calculated that if she kept the sound very low, crouching close to the set, she would be safe. Frau Ritter, the woman who rented the apartment directly beneath her own, was stooped with fatigue and always complaining of the exhausting nature of her two small boys. Surely she must sleep like the dead.

  Switching on the set, Clara turned the dial until the patrician tones of the BBC announcer resonated through the air. Compared to Goebbels’ pronouncements, with their edge of hysterical frenzy, BBC voices were sombre, funereal even, tonight more than ever as the announcer told Europe what it was waiting with bated breath to hear. The Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax had broadcast from London rejecting the Führer’s offer of peace. Hitler had announced that German troops of all arms now stood ready for the attack on Britain. The date of the invasion would be decided by the Führer alone.

  The doorbell rang.

  A shudder ran through Clara, transfixing her momentarily, and she dialled the volume to zero. What was she thinking of, using her set without Franz Engel’s music as camouflage? She had been far too complacent. Too trusting of the sour-faced Frau Ritter. Listening to a foreign station meant immediate arrest and if this was the police, then they would not hesitate to rip up the floorboards for further evidence of misdemeanours. She sat still as a hare, barely daring to blink. Half a minute passed until the doorbell rang again and adrenalin galvanized her to lift the set very softly and restore it to its hiding place, silently replacing the floorboard and tightening the screws. Then, using a small brush she kept for the purpose, she dusted them with a veneer of soot from the stove to hide any signs of recent disturbance. After all this, she finally opened the door.

  The bulb in the hall was broken, but a slice of light from her apartment illuminated a girl of around fourteen. That in itself was not a surprise. Children turned up constantly at the door, rattling their collection tins, with a tray of badges or lapel pins for one of the Nazi charities. But never at this time of night.

  ‘Fräulein Vine?’