Solitaire

by Jane Thynne

  ‘I’ve heard of them.’

  ‘I’m sure you have. A lady like yourself. God knows what this girl had to do to get one, but she must have regarded it as some kind of talisman. The ultimate protection. What does that American novel say? Diamonds are a girl’s best friend. Something like that. It was obviously what this young lady was relying on. She asked the Portuguese police to pass it to me, knowing that I would understand its significance. Which of course I did and we took her in straight away.’

  Clara picked up the brooch, as if to scrutinize it more closely. It was her own brooch, the one that Joseph Goebbels had given her in 1933. The same brooch whose receipt had been brought to her by Katerina Klimpel, in her desperate search for her elder sister.

  Schellenberg watched the blood suffuse her cheeks.

  ‘Pretty, isn’t it? You like it, I can tell. I have yet to meet the woman who doesn’t love diamonds. But this brooch is especially interesting. See the little mark on the back?’

  He turned it over and showed her three vertical scratches. Clara had always wondered what they represented.

  ‘These marks signify that this is the thirtieth brooch issued. This lucky lady came somewhere in a long line, though I daresay Jaeger’s have made many more since then.’

  He smiled pleasantly, his air of menace held lightly in check.

  ‘Now what shall we do? This girl is currently languishing in one of our cells and I’m in two minds whether to hand her back to the Portuguese or make an example of her in a People’s Court. There are any number of charges we can apply. Engaging in criminal activity, consorting with foreigners, degrading the name of the Reich. All quite serious and meriting a long corrective prison stretch. I think I’ll allow you to choose. If we’re to work together, I’m going to have to trust your judgement. Let this be our first project.’

  Clara allowed herself a moment’s reflection.

  ‘It would be tempting either to punish this girl or to keep her in custody. She was almost certainly up to something, as you say, and the likelihood is that she will talk before long, but if you want to know what I think, my advice would be to send her back to Berlin and release her without charge.’

  He frowned, puzzled.

  ‘Explain.’

  ‘You mention she’s a favourite of Goebbels. In my view, there’s absolutely no advantage in tangling with that particular minister. Not over something as trivial as this.’

  The frown lingered for a moment, then softened into an indulgent grin.

  ‘I see that as well as an expert operative I’ve found a diplomat too! In that case, for your sake, let’s do as you recommend. I’ll have the young lady returned to Berlin and I’ll order my agents to stop all action against her. Though if she should prove to be trouble, proceedings could begin again at any time.’

  He sighed and drew a hand across his brow.

  ‘Besides, believe me I have far greater problems on my plate than one of Doktor Goebbels’ young fancies attempting to pickpocket customers outside a casino.’

  Chapter Twenty-two

  The tram from the Germany Embassy to Lisbon’s Alfama district was dirty yellow and the lacquer on its wooden seats cracked and blistered. It climbed the vertiginous streets with alarming speed, rattling round the sharp corners, weaving its way up towards the pension, echoing the twists and turns of Clara’s mind.

  The brooch. The one that Goebbels had given her in 1933 and she had not expected to see again.

  Was the girl who had been apprehended outside the casino at Estoril actually Sonja Klimpel? All Schellenberg had managed to establish was that she was German, yet she must have understood the significance of the brooch because she had clearly gambled that it would protect her if she came face to face with the authorities. But what was Sonja Klimpel doing that would require protection? Was she genuinely attempting to rob the casino customers, or did she have some other business?

  She has no papers with her. Wasn’t even carrying a bag. And she won’t say another word, despite our most strenuous encouragements. If Sonja was refusing the encouragements of Schellenberg’s men, hers must be a pretty big secret. As Clara disembarked from the tram in the street where her pension was situated, something else came to her. The remark of Pedro, the patron, when she arrived.

  The occupant left in a hurry. Left their clothes.

  The street was deserted. She opened the heavy wooden door to the pension, crossed the small courtyard and passed quickly up the steps. Shutting the door of her room behind her, she closed the shutters, then looked for the fork she had seen on the tray. She placed it in the latch-hole, took it out again and bent the prongs halfway in an angle of ninety degrees, before snapping the handle off. Then she inserted the prongs of the fork in the latch-hole and threaded the handle of the fork through the prongs. The door was locked and the handle could not be turned.

  It was only then that she turned to the closet and inspected its contents.

  They were not the kind of clothes one would lightly abandon. A soft purple woollen jacket, of a quality one rarely saw any more, finely stitched, with the Adefa label in the collar certifying that it had only been made by Aryan hands. A printed summer dress and a chiffon blouse. A good maroon leather belt. And behind these clothes, hanging on a peg at the back of the closet, the bulge of something else – a distinctly upmarket knitting bag. She took it out and laid it on the floor. It was well-made and fashioned from soft ivory leather, with a chunky brass clasp and fake tortoiseshell handles. The leather was slightly scuffed and pleated at the sides and inside were knitting needles and several balls of wool of varying colours and thicknesses. Clara picked out the needles – no different from any of those one saw every day in Germany – and the wool was unremarkable too. Experimentally she picked up one of the balls and rolled it around in her palm. There was something strange about it. It felt heavy – heavier than it should. Grasping the end of the wool she tugged, unwinding the yarn with increasing urgency, until from the centre a small package tumbled. A chamois bag. She poured the contents into her hand and surveyed them in the sunlight that slid through the shutters’ cracks.

  They were diamonds. Dozens of them, flaring in the light. Some with a buttery tinge, others with a pure, crystalline fire. Flashing prisms that captured a rainbow in their sleek faceted sides. The ultimate weapon of war.

  She picked up the next ball of wool and found the same. Then another and another, until twenty bags lay on the floor in front of her with hundreds of carats between them.

  The audacity of it almost made her laugh aloud. What better place to conceal valuables than a knitting bag? Every German woman carried their knitting with them now. Everywhere you looked women were knitting feverishly away as if socks and scarves and vests were some kind of talisman that might protect their sons and husbands against the iron and fire of war. At a time when every bus and train passenger found themselves searched, when policemen would run expert hands down the seams of coats feeling for hidden valuables, or pluck the hat from your head to finger the lining, which official would interrupt a young woman in the virtuous act of knitting for the Reich? What better way to transport a cache of diamonds?

  As she stood in the darkened room, cradling the glinting grit in her hand, Clara thought of Jeanne Toussaint in the Cartier showroom in Paris.

  We have a plan, quite an audacious plan, but I fear very much that it will never come off now. We’ve left it too late.

  Jeanne loathed the Nazis and would do everything possible to keep her diamonds out of their hands. She was also a close associate of the Duke of Windsor. What had Wallis Simpson said, frustration vying with annoyance in her eyes?

  He won’t step on that boat until our things arrive.

  The answer came to Clara even before she was able to give it thought. The Duke of Windsor had decided to serve his country in the currency he uniquely understood. Sonja Klimpel had intended to pass these diamonds to the Duke so that he could transport them out of Europe, and she had gone to the casin
o to arrange a meeting. Only she had been arrested before she had the chance.

  And now there were plans to abduct the Duke of Windsor. It was imperative that someone get to him as soon as possible, but it was far too late to make her way to the English Cemetery and hunt out the grave of Henry Fielding. No time to leave a note for British intelligence operatives. Instead she opened the window and taking a handkerchief from her pocket attached it to the clothesline. H for help.

  As she did she realized that even if Ian Fleming did respond to her urgent message, he had already told her that the Germans had a ring of agents around the Windsors’ villa. Anyone approaching Cascais would surely be noted. How else could the Duke be warned?

  Then she remembered what the Duchess had told her about the boredom of their Lisbon life.

  If it wasn’t for the golf course and the casino we’d go quite mad. David adores the casino – he’s there almost every night.

  She would wait until nightfall. Thank goodness she had an evening dress and a pair of white silk gloves.

  Pedro was sitting by the door with his newspaper as she came down the stairs. The heat of the evening had encouraged him to shed his shirt, and he was wearing only a string vest, his torso glistening with a chequered sheen of sweat. He lowered the paper and raised an eye.

  ‘Off somewhere nice?’

  ‘Everyone tells me you can’t come to Lisbon without spending an evening at the casino.’

  The sky was clear and the first stars were burning as Clara made her way out of the station at Estoril. The moon was white as a knuckle in the sky. Shadows had swallowed most of the buildings around the square but the broad boulevard was well lit and from sheer habit she skirted the pools of light, crossing into the gardens, where she felt the slither of her thin-soled shoes against the gravelled paths.

  As she approached the casino, she knelt to buckle her shoe and gave an automatic scan of her surroundings.

  There was a pair of men on the corner, dressed in dark suits, who looked as though they were waiting for a tram, except that there was no stop. A couple standing on the steps of the hotel opposite, chatting softly. A gardener, washing down the cobbled path with a hose. From a bar on the far side of the square issued the muffled blare of conversation and the clink of bottles. But nothing else. Why would there be?

  She turned in the direction of the thick stripe of golden light that spilled out of the casino doors and down the wide marble steps.

  She had almost reached it when she felt a hand on her arm and turned with a start.

  ‘You’ve discovered my secret.’

  It was a fair-haired figure, with brilliant blue eyes, dressed in a satin gown of vivid rose pink, with matching elbow gloves and a pearl choker. A fox stole coiled around her shoulders. For a second, Clara didn’t recognize her until she realized that the slight woman in incongruous evening dress was the off-duty version of Hitler’s favourite pilot, Flugkapitän Hanna Reitsch.

  ‘I misjudged you, Fräulein Vine. I thought you’d be more interested in shopping – that’s what most ladies love about Lisbon.’

  The evening gown looked wrong on her, like a child dressing up. The dress, which met in a burst of frills at her bosom, and the pearls with their gentle lustre, were far too soft and frivolous for a woman as steely and unadorned as the aeroplanes she flew.

  ‘I’d never have guessed you shared my love of the card tables. Are you a fellow addict?’

  ‘I can’t keep away,’ Clara smiled.

  ‘Me too, though I have to keep it very quiet.’

  ‘Why should you? There’s nothing unladylike about cards.’

  ‘Oh, it’s not that! It’s just that nobody wants a pilot who’s a gambler. Would you? Who wants to take their chances in the air with someone who likes to play for high stakes?’

  ‘The Führer, for one.’

  ‘Oh, the Führer’s an exceptional man. He’s not a natural flyer – in fact, between you and me he gets very nervous when it’s time to board the plane, but he knows his destiny is written in the stars. Whenever he climbs aboard he reminds me that all of us are fated to give our lives for the Fatherland.’

  ‘That’s comforting.’

  ‘Isn’t it? I always associate the Führer with stressful situations.’

  ‘As a matter of fact, so do I.’

  ‘Do you? I’m glad it’s not just me!’ Delighted at this shared insight, Hanna gripped Clara’s arm. There was a schoolgirlish quality to her hero-worship that sat at odds with the technical brilliance of her flying skill.

  ‘What I mean is, whenever I’m in a difficult spot Hitler always comes to mind and he calms me. It’s as though he’s right alongside me. And I remember that if I’m serving my Führer and my Fatherland, nothing else matters.’

  ‘And that’s enough, is it? To calm your nerves?’

  ‘That and gambling. I’ve been longing for an evening at the casino. I’ve been testing a flying petrol tanker over the last few days and I tell you, compared with that no amount of losses at the card tables can scare me.’

  The casino was full. Within its claret walls, the rank, alcoholic tang of sweat mingled with perfume and the choke of cigar smoke. The murmur of laughter and the click of gambling chips, the muffled comfort of deep carpets and thick wads of money. The glint of the chandeliers was reflected in glasses of cheap champagne. Among the mahogany tables and studded leather chairs sat German businessmen, French executives and refugees spending the last of their fortunes in the hope of raising a bribe to pay for a visa. Nonchalant women in diamond wristwatches and men in evening dress with silk scarves. American consular officials and Spanish traders chatting to Portuguese good-time girls. But there was no sign, in any of that international throng, of either the Duke or Duchess.

  Clara and Hanna Reitsch settled themselves on barstools and ordered drinks.

  ‘Now what do you like to play? Backgammon’s my weakness.’

  ‘Give me a game of roulette any day,’ said Clara, pulling off her gloves.

  ‘What do you have in that bag? It’s not knitting, is it? How funny! I sincerely hope we won’t have time for that!’

  Glancing up the marble staircase Clara saw a door, one half concealed by the drapes of a velvet curtain, and the other half obstructed by a mountainous man with a heavy jaw and an eye-patch. What had Ian Fleming said about the man in British pay? He’s a German by heritage, name of Hertz. He manages the salle privée where the Duke likes to play. Pretty silent sort of fellow with a wonky eye, but utterly trustworthy. The man mountain had to be Hertz.

  ‘In fact,’ she turned to Hanna confidingly, ‘you know what I’d really like? A game in the salle privée.’

  ‘Oh, they won’t let you in there. They’re awfully stuffy about allowing ladies in. And besides, it’s so much more fun down here.’

  Already a couple of Casanovas along the bar were attempting to make eye contact, leering and tipping their glasses in what they must have assumed was an inviting manner. No doubt they thought Clara and Hanna, like so many of the other unaccompanied women, were out for a good time, allowing the pressures of wartime to loosen their manners and their morals. Clara amused herself wondering what they would have done if Flugkapitän Reitsch had chosen to wear her Luftwaffe uniform that evening. They would probably have had a stroke.

  ‘I’d like to try,’ said Clara, but Hanna was returning the men’s glances with an enticing smile. Compared with the Führer and his doomy prognostications, even the lamest barfly must make sparkling company.

  ‘Go ahead then.’ She crossed her legs, revealing a pair of stockings that were another benefit of her travels. ‘I’ll take my chances down here.’

  Clara mounted the staircase and approached the salle privée, but a few feet from the door she dropped one of her gloves. Immediately the man with the eye-patch moved to pick it up and when he stooped down she whispered, ‘Ian Fleming sends his regards.’

  Without a word Hertz straightened, focused his one good eye on her, smoothly dr
ew the velvet curtain and pushed open the swing doors.

  The Palacio salle privée was a cavernous space with gilt and dove-grey walls, dominated by a grand chandelier and to one side a kiosk where the cashier was flipping through piles of notes and exchanging them for plaques of red, yellow and white. The air was heavy with muttered concentration. Around the tables a mostly male cast was playing chemin de fer, blackjack and backgammon, and in the centre, at the top table, the diminutive figure of the Duke of Windsor was seated, fiddling with a jumbled pile of plaques as the croupier raked away his chips. Through the fug of cigar smoke Clara saw he had the despondent expression of someone who has been losing all evening and is clinging valiantly to the mood-enhancing qualities of alcohol.

  As she approached, a casino official made to restrain her, but the Duke glanced up and a momentary puzzlement pierced his official demeanour, before he said, ‘It’s Fräulein Vine, isn’t it? I’m losing my shirt tonight, Fräulein Vine. D’you have any clever theories?’

  The Duke’s delivery was a curious mix of standard upper-class English with a twang of something like cockney and a hint of American. That comment, I’m losing my shirt tonight, was like something he might have copied from a film. It was as though his voice, like everything else about him, had lost its identity and was searching for a new one.

  ‘I’m not sure I do, sir.’

  ‘Come now.’ He cast a glance round the table, openly relieved at the distraction. ‘Great thing about roulette is the novice knows just as much as the seasoned player. Sure you don’t have a pet system? Everyone else here seems to.’

  ‘Well . . .’

  Clara had always loved mathematics. She adored feeling the numbers twist and turn, warp and evolve in her mind until they fell into place. She liked puzzles too, all kinds of crosswords, codes and patterns. She understood that patterns governed everything in the universe, from predicting the weather to the petals in a daisy, and she enjoyed how they made the brain fizz with possibility, like a motor clicking into higher gear. When she was a child her formidable father had recognized his younger daughter’s talent and began setting her problems to be solved. It might have been a natural extension of his general approach towards her, because she was herself a puzzle to him, the only one of his offspring he did not entirely comprehend. So he resorted to drilling her in mathematics, teaching her theories, showing her the beauty and precision of numbers and how they interlocked like the facets of a perfectly cut jewel. Risk assessment, pattern identification, number games. She recalled a holiday in Cornwall when the three of them, Angela, Kenneth and herself, were buying ice cream and their father took the opportunity to teach her probability theory.