by Ken Follett
Unfortunately, he was having trouble getting a message to her.
His letters were not answered. When he called the number listed in the phone book, a middle-aged woman who he suspected was Bella’s mother said with icy courtesy: ‘She’s not at home right now. May I give her a message?’ Bella never called back.
She probably had a serious boyfriend. If so he wanted her to tell him. But perhaps her mother was intercepting her mail and not passing on messages.
He should probably give up. He might be making a fool of himself. But that was not his way. He recalled his long, stubborn courtship of Joanne. There seems to be a pattern here, he thought; is it something about me?
Meanwhile, every morning he went with his father to the penthouse at the top of the Fairmont Hotel, where Secretary of State Edward Stettinius held a briefing for the American team at the conference. Stettinius had taken over from Cordell Hull, who was in hospital. The USA also had a new president, Harry Truman, who had been sworn in on the death of the great Franklin D. Roosevelt. It was a pity, Gus Dewar observed, that at such a crucial moment in world history the United States should be led by two inexperienced newcomers.
Things had begun badly. President Truman had clumsily offended Soviet foreign minister Molotov at a pre-conference meeting at the White House. Consequently Molotov arrived in San Francisco in a foul mood. He announced he was going home unless the conference agreed immediately to admit Belorussia, Ukraine, and Poland.
No one wanted the USSR to pull out. Without the Soviets, the United Nations were not the United Nations. Most of the American delegation were in favour of compromising with the Communists, but the bow-tied Senator Vandenberg prissily insisted that nothing should be done under pressure from Moscow.
One morning when Woody had a couple of hours to spare he went to Bella’s parents’ house.
The swanky neighbourhood where they lived was not far from the Fairmont Hotel on Nob Hill, but Woody was still walking with a cane, so he took a taxi. Their home was a yellow-painted Victorian mansion on Gough Street. The woman who came to the door was too well dressed to be a maid. She gave him a lopsided smile just like Bella’s: she had to be the mother. He said politely: ‘Good morning, ma’am. I’m Woody Dewar. I met Bella Hernandez in London last year and I’d sure like to see her again, if I may.’
The smile disappeared. She gave him a long look and said: ‘So you’re him.’
Woody had no idea what she was talking about.
‘I’m Caroline Hernandez, Isabel’s mother,’ she said. ‘You’d better come in.’
‘Thank you.’
She did not offer to shake hands, and she was clearly hostile, though there was no clue as to why. However, he was inside the house.
Mrs Hernandez led Woody into a large, pleasant parlour with a breathtaking ocean view. She pointed to a chair, indicating that he should sit down with a gesture that was barely polite. She sat opposite him and gave him another hard look. ‘How much time did you spend with Bella in England?’ she asked.
‘Just a few hours. But I’ve been thinking about her ever since.’
There was another pregnant pause, then she said: ‘When she went to Oxford, Bella was engaged to be married to Victor Rolandson, a splendid young man she has known most of her life. The Rolandsons are old friends of my husband’s and mine – or, at least, they were, until Bella came home and broke off the engagement abruptly.’
Woody’s heart leaped with hope.
‘She would only say she had realized she did not love Victor. I guessed she’d met someone else, and now I know who.’
Woody said: ‘I had no idea she was engaged.’
‘She was wearing a diamond ring that was pretty hard to miss. Your poor powers of observation have caused a tragedy.’
‘I’m very sorry,’ Woody said. Then he told himself to stop being a pussy. ‘Or rather, I’m not,’ he said. ‘I’m very glad she’s broken off her engagement, because I think she’s absolutely wonderful and I want her for myself.’
Mrs Hernandez did not like that. ‘You’re mighty fresh, young man.’
Woody suddenly felt resentful of her condescension. ‘Mrs Hernandez, you used the word “tragedy” just now. My fiancée, Joanne, died in my arms at Pearl Harbor. My brother, Chuck, was killed by machine-gun fire on the beach at Bougainville. On D-Day I sent Ace Webber and four other young Americans to their deaths for the sake of a bridge in a one-horse town called Eglise-des-Soeurs. I know what tragedy is, ma’am, and it’s not a broken engagement.’
She was taken aback. He guessed young people did not often stand up to her. She did not reply, but looked a little pale. After a moment she got up and left the room without explanation. Woody was not sure what she expected him to do, but he had not yet seen Bella so he sat tight.
Five minutes later, Bella came in.
Woody stood up, his pulse quickening. Just the sight of her made him smile. She wore a plain pale-yellow dress that set off her lustrous dark hair and coffee skin. She would always look good in dramatically simple clothing, he guessed; just like Joanne. He wanted to put his arms around her and crush her soft body to his own, but he waited for a sign from her.
She looked anxious and uncomfortable. ‘What are you doing here?’ she said.
‘I came looking for you.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I can’t get you out of my mind.’
‘We don’t even know each other.’
‘Let’s put that right, starting today. Will you have dinner with me?’
‘I don’t know.’
He crossed the room to where she stood.
She was startled to see him using a walking stick. ‘What happened to you?’
‘My knee got shot up in France. It’s getting better, slowly.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Bella. I think you’re wonderful. I believe you like me. We’re both free of commitments. What’s worrying you?’
She gave that lopsided grin that he liked so much. ‘I guess I’m embarrassed. About what I did, that night in London.’
‘Is that all?’
‘It was a lot, for a first date.’
‘That kind of thing went on all the time. Not to me, necessarily, but I heard about it. You thought I was going to die.’
She nodded. ‘I’ve never done anything like that, not even with Victor. I don’t know what came over me. And in a public park! I feel like a whore.’
‘I know exactly what you are,’ Woody said. ‘You’re a smart, beautiful woman with a big heart. So why don’t we forget that mad moment in London, and start getting to know one another like the respectable well-brought-up young people that we are?’
She began to soften. ‘Can we, really?’
‘You bet.’
‘Okay.’
‘I’ll pick you up at seven?’
‘Okay.’
That was an exit line, but he hesitated. ‘I can’t tell you how glad I am that I found you again,’ he said.
She looked him in the eye for the first time. ‘Oh, Woody, so am I,’ she said. ‘So glad!’ Then she put her arms around his waist and hugged him.
It was what he had been longing for. He embraced her and put his face into her wonderful hair. They stayed like that for a long minute.
At last she pulled away. ‘I’ll see you at seven,’ she said.
‘You bet.’
He left the house in a cloud of happiness.
He went from there straight to a meeting of the steering committee in the Veterans Building next to the opera house. There were forty-six members around the long table, with aides such as Gus Dewar sitting behind them. Woody was an aide to an aide, and sat up against the wall.
The Soviet foreign minister, Molotov, made the first speech. He was not impressive to look at, Woody reflected. With his receding hair, neat moustache, and glasses, he looked like a store clerk, which was what his father had been. But he had survived a long time in Bolshevik politics. A friend of Stalin’s since b
efore the revolution, he was the architect of the Nazi–Soviet pact of 1939. He was a hard worker, and was nicknamed Stone-Arse because of the long hours he spent at his desk.
He proposed that Belorussia and Ukraine be admitted as original members of the United Nations. These two Soviet republics had borne the brunt of the Nazi invasion, he pointed out, and each had contributed more than a million men to the Red Army. It had been argued that they were not fully independent of Moscow, but the same argument could be applied to Canada and Australia, dominions of the British Empire that had each been given separate membership.
The vote was unanimous. It had all been fixed up in advance, Woody knew. The Latin American countries had threatened to dissent unless Hitler-supporting Argentina was admitted, and that concession had been granted to secure their votes.
Then came a bombshell. The Czech foreign minister, Jan Masaryk, stood up. He was a famous liberal and anti-Nazi who had been on the cover of Time magazine in 1944. He proposed that Poland should also be admitted to the UN.
The Americans were refusing to admit Poland until Stalin permitted elections there, and Masaryk as a democrat should have supported that stand, especially as he, too, was trying to create a democracy with Stalin looking over his shoulder. Molotov must have put terrific pressure on Masaryk to get him to betray his ideals in this way. And, indeed, when Masaryk sat down he wore the expression of one who has eaten something disgusting.
Gus Dewar also looked grim. The prearranged compromises over Belorussia, Ukraine and Argentina should have ensured that this session went smoothly. But now Molotov had thrown them a low ball.
Senator Vandenberg, sitting with the American contingent, was outraged. He took out a pen and notepad and began writing furiously. After a minute he tore the sheet off, beckoned Woody, gave him the note, and said: ‘Take that to the Secretary of State.’
Woody went to the table, leaned over Stettinius’s shoulder, put the note in front of him, and said: ‘From Senator Vandenberg, sir.’
‘Thank you.’
Woody returned to his chair up against the wall. My part in history, he thought. He had glanced at the note as he handed it over. Vandenberg had drafted a short, passionate speech rejecting the Czech proposal. Would Stettinius follow the senator’s lead?
If Molotov got his way over Poland, then Vandenberg might sabotage the United Nations in the Senate. But if Stettinius took Vandenberg’s line now, Molotov might walk out and go home, which would kill off the UN just as effectively.
Woody held his breath.
Stettinius stood up with Vandenberg’s note in his hand. ‘We’ve just honoured our Yalta engagements on behalf of Russia,’ he said. He meant the commitment made by the USA to support Belorussia and Ukraine. ‘There are other Yalta obligations which equally require allegiance.’ He was using the words Vandenberg had written. ‘One calls for a new and representative Polish Provisional Government.’
There was a murmur of shock around the room. Stettinius was going up against Molotov. Woody glanced at Vandenberg. He was purring.
‘Until that happens,’ Stettinius went on, ‘the Conference cannot, in good conscience, recognize the Lublin government.’ He looked directly at Molotov and quoted Vandenberg’s exact words. ‘It would be a sordid exhibition of bad faith.’
Molotov looked incandescent.
The British foreign secretary, Anthony Eden, unfolded his lanky figure and stood up to support Stettinius. His tone was faultlessly courteous, but his words were scathing. ‘My government has no way of knowing whether the Polish people support their provisional government,’ he said, ‘because our Soviet allies refuse to let British observers into Poland.’
Woody sensed the meeting turning against Molotov. The Russian clearly had the same impression. He was conferring with his aides loudly enough for Woody to hear the fury in his voice. But would he walk out?
The Belgian foreign minister, bald and podgy with a double chin, proposed a compromise, a motion expressing the hope that the new Polish government might be organized in time to be represented here in San Francisco before the end of the conference.
Everyone looked at Molotov. He was being offered a face-saver. But would he accept it?
He still looked angry. However, he gave a slight but unmistakable nod of assent.
And the crisis was over.
Well, Woody thought, two victories in one day. Things are looking up.
(v)
Carla went out to queue for water.
There had been no water in the taps for two days. Luckily, Berlin’s housewives had discovered that every few blocks there were old-fashioned street pumps, long disused, connected to underground wells. They were rusty and creaky but, amazingly, they still worked. So every morning now the women stood in line, holding their buckets and jugs.
The air raids had stopped, presumably because the enemy was on the point of entering the city. But it was still dangerous to be on the street, because the Red Army’s artillery was shelling. Carla was not sure why they bothered. Much of the city had gone. Whole blocks and even larger areas had been completely flattened. All utilities were cut off. No trains or buses ran. Thousands were homeless, perhaps millions. The city was one huge refugee camp. But the shelling went on. Most people spent all day in their cellars or in public air-raid shelters, but they had to come out for water.
On the radio, shortly before the electricity went off permanently, the BBC had announced that the Sachsenhausen concentration camp had been liberated by the Red Army. Sachsenhausen was north of Berlin, so clearly the Soviets, coming from the east, were encircling the city instead of marching straight in. Carla’s mother, Maud, deduced that the Russians wanted to keep out the American, British, French and Canadian forces rapidly approaching from the west. She had quoted Lenin: ‘Who controls Berlin, controls Germany; and who controls Germany, controls Europe.’
Yet the German army had not given up. Outnumbered, outgunned, short of ammunition and fuel, and half starved, they slogged on. Again and again their leaders hurled them at overwhelming enemy forces, and again and again they obeyed orders, fought with spirit and courage, and died in their hundreds of thousands. Among them were the two men Carla loved: her brother, Erik, and her boyfriend, Werner. She had no idea where they were fighting or even whether they were alive.
Carla had wound up the spy ring. The fighting was deteriorating into chaos. Battle plans meant little. Secret intelligence from Berlin was of small value to the conquering Soviets. It was no longer worth the risk. The spies had burned their code books and hidden their radio transmitters in the rubble of bombed buildings. They had agreed never to speak of their work. They had been brave, they had shortened the war, and they had saved lives; but it was too much to expect the defeated German people to see things that way. Their courage would remain forever secret.
While Carla waited her turn at the tap, a Hitler Youth tank-hunting squad went past, heading east, towards the fighting. There were two men in their fifties and a dozen teenage boys, all on bicycles. Strapped to the front of each bicycle were two of the new one-shot anti-tank weapons called Panzerfäuste. The uniforms were too large for the boys, and their oversize helmets would have looked comical if their plight had not been so pathetic. They were off to fight the Red Army.
They were going to die.
Carla looked away as they passed: she did not want to remember their faces.
As she was filling her bucket, the woman behind her in line, Frau Reichs, spoke to her quietly, so that no one else could hear: ‘You’re a friend of the doctor’s wife, aren’t you?’
Carla tensed. Frau Reichs was obviously talking about Hannelore Rothmann. The doctor had disappeared along with the mental patients from the Jewish Hospital. Hannelore’s son, Rudi, had thrown away his yellow star and joined those Jews living clandestinely, called U-boats in Berlin slang. But Hannelore, not herself Jewish, was still at the old house.
For twelve years a question such as the one just asked – are you a friend of a
Jew’s wife? – had been an accusation. What was it today? Carla did not know. Frau Reichs was only a nodding acquaintance: she could not be trusted.
Carla turned off the tap. ‘Dr Rothmann was our family physician when I was a child,’ she said guardedly. ‘Why?’
The other woman took her place at the standpipe and began to fill a large can that had once held cooking oil. ‘Frau Rothmann has been taken away,’ she said. ‘I thought you’d like to know.’
It was commonplace. People were ‘taken away’ all the time. But when it happened to someone close to you it came as a blow to the heart.
There was no point in trying to find out what had happened to them – in fact, it was downright dangerous: people who inquired about disappearances tended to disappear themselves. All the same, Carla had to ask. ‘Do you know where they took her?’
This time there was an answer. ‘The Schulstrasse transit camp.’ Carla felt hopeful. ‘It’s in the old Jewish Hospital, in Wedding. Do you know it?’
‘Yes, I do.’ Carla sometimes worked at the hospital, unofficially and illegally, so she knew that the government had taken over one of the hospital buildings, the pathology lab, and surrounded it with barbed wire.
‘I hope she’s all right,’ said the other woman. ‘She was good to me when my Steffi was ill.’ She turned off the tap and walked away with her can of water.
Carla hurried away in the opposite direction, heading for home.
She had to do something about Hannelore. It had always been nearly impossible to get anyone out of a camp, but now that everything was breaking down perhaps there might be a way.
She took the bucket into the house and gave it to Ada.
Maud had gone to queue for food rations. Carla changed into her nurse’s uniform, thinking it might help. She explained to Ada where she was going and left again.
She had to walk to Wedding. It was two or three miles. She wondered if it was worth it. Even if she found Hannelore, she probably would not be able to help her. But then she thought of Eva in London and Rudi in hiding somewhere here in Berlin: how terrible it would be if they lost their mother in the last hours of the war. She had to try.
