I hurried into the compartment bathroom, carrying his suitcase. The suitcase contained an SS uniform, complete with shoes, and my satchel. I reached inside and ran my fingers over the scarf wrapped around the ransom money, my tattered notebook, and the Luger. He had returned everything.
I changed into his spare SS uniform and placed the satchel in the suitcase. It fit. We were much the same height and build. I swept my hair into the hat and eyed myself in the mirror. I did not look like a man up close, but with the hat brim pulled down, I might be mistaken for one.
I shoved my dress inside the suitcase, then stepped into the compartment just as a woman with two small children entered. I touched the brim of my hat respectfully and went out into the corridor. The children giggled. I hoped that they had not caught me out playing dress up.
Lars spoke to my SS tail on the train, as planned, and he faced away from me. That left only the man on the platform to deceive. I turned away and hurried to the next compartment.
When the conductor shouted “All aboard!” I stepped onto the platform.
I walked toward the main hall, avoiding the man stationed there. He wore an SS dress uniform and would be required to salute me. My voice as I returned his “Heil Hitler!” would give me away as a woman. Lars and his companion exited the train before it left the station. As far as anyone knew, Adelheid Zinsli was on her way to Switzerland.
I stepped into the ladies’ room. If anyone was in there, I would have to apologize and leave, but I thought that would cause less trouble than coming out of the men’s room in a dress. Luckily, the bathroom was empty. I hurried into a stall and changed out of the SS uniform. I repacked the suitcase, shoes on the bottom, black wool uniform in the middle, and SS hat on top.
Giving the SS team time to leave the station, I transferred two small film canisters from the suitcase to my satchel and dropped Lars’s suitcase at Left Luggage, tucking the claim check into my dress pocket. I slung the satchel over my shoulder.
I could not hope to get Anton before lunch, when Lars pulled his man off surveillance, but I longed to see him now.
Instead I called Boris at the hotel.
“Hello?” His voice was ragged with worry.
“I was detained.” I dared not give specifics in case the SS was listening.
Boris knew what that meant. “Are you—” Boris’s voice broke. “—well?”
“I am,” I answered quickly, to spare him. “Meet me at the dining room where I had wine with my friend.”
“I will be there soon.” I felt grateful for our argument over Sefton. It had given us a place to meet that we both recognized without explanations.
A quick stop at the chemist, then I hurried to Hotel Adlon. When I walked into the lobby, Lars strode toward me. He caught my eye, then turned and headed for the bank of telephones. I glanced around for Sefton. Not there. I did not want him to associate me with Lars, or Lars to associate him with me.
I walked as slowly as I could force myself to the telephones. Soon I would have Anton.
Lars stepped out of a booth. We were alone in the hall. “She’s in her room. I’ll pull my man to the outside of the building in an hour. It is too dangerous for me to remove him entirely.”
“Thank you.” I wondered what the consequences would be for him when Anton slipped through the SS’s fingers.
“Be careful.” He stepped close, eyes worried. “If you are caught, I cannot free you. Adelheid is supposed to be in Switzerland. And your face is recognized at SS headquarters.”
“I know,” I said, smiling. “Mother.”
He ducked his head. “You need one, with the risks you run.”
“The only one who could have filled that role did not. And she is dead. So do not try.”
His face grew serious. “It’s hard not to. Snatching him is dangerous.”
“True, but I have done it before. And taking out your information puts me in as much danger as anything else I do.”
“If there were any other way.” His tone was pleading.
“I take the risks I take. And that is enough said.”
“When will I see you again?”
“I will write you a love letter from Switzerland, with no news, but an address.”
He glanced around the hallway. No one. I pressed the claim check for his suitcase into his palm and his hand lingered on mine. “We can set up a time for you to return to Berlin via letters,” he said.
“Or you to visit Switzerland.” I thought of his life here and the risks he ran. “You can walk away.”
He shook his head almost imperceptibly.
“Safe passage.” He embraced me quickly. “And for the sake of God, take care.”
30
Lars bowed and clicked his heels together softly. After he walked out the splendid front doors, I waited a minute to make certain that he did not return, then hurried to the elevators. He assumed that I came to the Adlon to see Frau Röhm, but instead I took the elevator straight to Sefton. I had an hour before the SS man would be gone, and I needed it.
Sefton answered on the first knock. Did he ever leave his room?
“Hannah, it’s only been three days and here you are in front of my door again, catching me barely dressed.” He tied the belt of his paisley dressing gown, clearly just out of bed. I smiled. That’s what reporters without responsibilities were allowed to do, stay up late interviewing sources and drinking. “Is this a proposition?”
“Something like that. May I come in?”
He stepped aside, shaking his head.
I hurried into his room. His typewriter and a messy stack of paper covered the desk, but everything else was immaculate. Housekeeping standards at the Adlon were impeccable, as always.
“How secure is your room?” I whispered.
He scratched his head. “Not as secure as I’d like.”
“Get dressed and meet me behind the building. We need to take a walk.”
I circled the Adlon and waited in the back by the entrance to the kitchen.
He appeared more quickly than I expected, and clean-shaven too. “Shall we?”
We ambled down the broad boulevard of Unter den Linden. Traffic was light, and we both checked to see if anyone followed.
Finally he glanced over, amused. “You’d better have something good, Hannah, waking me so early.”
“It is almost lunchtime.” Once again I envied his schedule. “And I do.”
I palmed the two film canisters in my satchel and slipped my hand into his tweed jacket pocket.
“What did you just drop in there?”
“Film.” I explained what was on it, keeping Lars’s name and rank secret.
Sefton’s jaw dropped. I reached over and closed it, my fingers skating over a rough patch of stubble he had missed.
“Can you get them out?”
“Of course. Can you get more?”
“Not yet.”
“Who is your source? What’s his name? Can I speak to him?” His words tumbled over each other.
“You only assume that my source is a man. And you know I will not tell you.”
“How can we get more from the source? Can I meet him or her or the family dog or whatever it is?”
“The source does not know who you are, and does not want to.” I suspected he would work directly with Sefton, but I intended to keep them apart until I learned whether I trusted them both. I wanted the blood of neither on my hands.
We stopped in the shade of a linden tree. “Do you trust him?”
“Or her. I do.”
“Do you trust me?”
“Strangely enough, I do,” I lied. I had not liked his reactions when we talked about Anton or Mouse. I would find out for myself if the information I had given him made it to Britain. Then, perhaps, trust would follow.
“Will you act as a go-between?”
Automobiles drove by. He waited. I wanted to say no, to get Anton, Boris, and myself out of the mess that Germany was becoming, and never come back. But
I thought of Lars, risking his life to procure the files, and Sefton, risking his life to get them to England, where they might persuade the world to deal more firmly with Hitler. And I thought of the unpublished Röhm letters I had kept to protect Anton’s and my life, even though they might have affected the Nazi rise to power. My conscience knew how much I had to answer for.
“Hannah? Once you start, you cannot go back.”
“I know.” I had been inside Gestapo headquarters. I knew what would happen if we were caught.
“Will you do it?” He stuck his hands in his jacket pockets. “Don’t take it lightly.”
“I have something to take care of first. I will be out of contact for a while. Do you have an address where you can be reached, somewhere more secure than the Adlon?”
He handed me a card. “That’s my address at the paper in London. Mail is intercepted before it gets there, then forwarded to my real office.”
I memorized the information and handed back the card. “I do not want it to be found on me, in case something goes wrong.”
“Wise decision. We’ll get through this.”
I hoped so.
We headed back toward the Adlon.
“Now, what cracking adventure are you having this afternoon? Something I can help with?”
I shook my head. Too dangerous. I could not risk Sefton and Lars seeing me with the other.
We separated a few blocks from the Adlon. I walked the rest of the way alone.
I paused in the doorway to the dining room. Elegant diners talked in low voices, light glinting off silver and crystal. I remembered the well-appointed breakfast room at the Hanselbauer, bodies on the table. Money did not buy safety anymore.
Boris sat alone at a table, napkin spread on his lap. His skin was paler than I’d ever seen it, eyes swollen from lack of sleep. He too had spent a long day and night while I was with the Gestapo and in Lars’s apartment.
I hurried to him.
“Hannah!” Even though he kept his voice low, the emotion in it caused diners at nearby tables to turn. The Adlon dining room was no place to express strong emotion.
I clung to him, and his arms were so tight around me, I could barely breathe. Yesterday I had been certain that I would never see him again.
“We are making a spectacle of ourselves.” I forced myself to step back.
“I don’t care.” He pulled out a chair for me to sit and took my hands again. “What happened yesterday?”
I told him of my meeting with Frau Röhm, how she must blame me for her son’s death, and the steps she had taken to exact revenge.
“A trap?”
“The church was a trap. The mill was a trap. The telegram was a lie.” I swallowed my bitterness and anger. Her day would come. I would see to that. “She set me up as Mouse’s murderer, and when the police did not catch me at the mill, as she had intended, she turned her dirty work over to the SS.”
He shifted closer to me. “How did you get free?”
A white-gloved waiter presented me with a menu before I could answer. I ordered a pot of tea. Boris ordered something for our lunch, but I was too intent on his face to know what he ordered. The waiter collected the menus and left us alone.
“Now,” Boris said, turning to me. “How did you get away?”
I told him of my interrogation and my release. I did not tell him of Lars’s involvement, although I think he guessed. Once we were in Switzerland, I promised to tell him everything. There had been too many secrets between us.
We sat in the Adlon dining room, positioned where we could see the elevator. I barely tasted my food. Lars said that they had eaten here every day. I may have missed them by minutes the day I met Sefton and Bella. I fought to stay calm as I listened to the genteel chink of silver on china and the low laughter of the well heeled. Everyone else was so serene, but I itched to see Anton.
Once again, I told Boris how to slip the sleeping powder I had purchased at the chemist into her tea. I could not do it. She would recognize me.
“Relax.” He ran his hand up my arm. “If they don’t come for lunch, they’ll be down for dinner.”
Where were they? If Lars’s man was correct, they had not left their rooms all day, and it was almost three. I ordered another tea.
Frau Röhm and Anton exited the elevator. Tears sprang unbidden to my eyes. He was alive.
Anton wore a Bavarian costume: white shirt, lederhosen, and long white socks. I imagined she had tried to make him wear an alpine hat too. He was pale, as if he too had not slept much in the past week. But he looked whole and healthy. I longed to cross the room and sweep him into my arms.We had not been separated for even a few hours for three years, and so much had happened.
Boris followed my gaze. He reached over and patted my hand. “You need to work on your poker face.”
I dropped my head so that he could not see my tears, and she could not see my face. Anton was safe, and so close. Once we drugged her, we would be on our way. Anton, at least, would stay in Switzerland for a long, long time.
She made her slow way across the lobby, holding his hand. She looked so old and frail that I almost pitied her. I was about to steal the only remnant she had of her own son, and with him dead only days. Then I remembered the Gestapo cell, where she expected me to die.
I palmed a tiny packet of sleeping powder and slipped it into Boris’s hand underneath the table. A quick rip of tearing paper. “The whole packet.”
He did not remind me that I had told him this many times.
But they did not sit. Instead they wheeled and headed toward the kitchen. Boris and I rose as one. I grabbed my satchel and ran for the kitchen as they disappeared through the swinging doors.
Boris stayed two steps ahead. We pushed through the door. Halfway across the room she headed for an old-fashioned wooden door with a wrought-iron handle. The wine cellar. And it ended in a tunnel that led to another building.
The cooks paused in their work, staring at us with surprised eyes while Frau Röhm slipped through the door with Anton, Boris and I steps behind. She had disappeared, spryer than she looked.
I pelted down the stairs. The smell of damp earth and old wine struck me. Dusty wine racks formed a maze. The low ceiling was almost invisible in the darkness. Boris ducked to keep from scraping his head and kicked a basket. Corks ran across the floor like rats. I bit back a scream. This was no time to lose my nerve.
At the end of a dark row I spotted her, Anton in tow. I raced forward, Boris still two steps ahead. Anton lunged toward me, one hand reaching to pry off her thin fingers.
She pulled a small pistol out of her handbag and jammed it into his side.
31
I stood close enough to hear Anton’s intake of breath, but I dared not reach for him.
I froze, afraid to move. His wide eyes told me that he believed she would shoot him, as did I.
“She said they would kill you if I tried—”
Her hand tightened. He fell silent, his eyes sending an apology to me for not escaping. I swallowed tears.
“I am proud of you.” I stepped toward him. “You did the correct thing.”
“They killed my son.” She dragged him past more racks. His white socks glowed in the darkness. “And it’s your fault. If you had married him earlier, he would be alive.”
“You cannot know that,” I said in my most soothing tone, reaching for my Luger, hidden in the satchel. “Whatever Hitler says, your son was killed because he was too powerful. He was a threat. His . . . marital status had nothing to do with it.”
“That’s what you say. But you lie.”
The tunnel pressed in close. She blamed me for her son’s death, as I had blamed Lars when I thought he had killed Anton. What would I have done to exact revenge on him? She would do no less, and probably more. “You cannot hurt your grandson,” I pleaded, hoping to remind her where the barrel was pointed.
“I can. It will be no harder than killing a mouse.”
I flinched; Boris
tensed next to me.
“You are wilier than I expected.” She stepped backward. “But then that’s the same problem my son had with you.”
I kept my voice level and reassuring. I had to keep her calm. “This is not Anton’s fault.”
“But he is yours.” She looked quite mad, and she had Anton at the other end of a gun. Boris cursed under his breath, but I did not listen. I had to hold her attention. Anton looked between us, clearly trying to decide whether to flee. I shook my head. She would kill him.
We crept farther into the labyrinth, a fortune in dusty wine bottles stacked around us. The immense wine cellar held many places to hide, and if she got through the tunnel and out onto the street, we might never catch her.
“He is yours too. Your grandson. He is all you have left of your Ernst.” And all I have left of mine.
“Ernst was no more his father than you are his mother.” She laughed, a high cackle quickly eaten by the close space.
I followed, mere paces away. Boris stayed in front of me. I knew he wanted to protect me, but I needed him out of my way so I could move closer to Anton.
“If your son was not his father—” I stepped forward “—then why not give him to me?”
“Because you want him.” She jammed the barrel harder against his side. He cried out.
I fought a flash of rage. I had no time for it. Later, I promised myself, later I would. I sidestepped Boris and held my hands palms up near my shoulders to show that I was no threat. I wished that Lars’s men were still inside, that they could step in and stop her. But I had them sent away.
“I will kill him before I let you have him.” She backed down the dark mouth of the tunnel, dragging Anton with her. He pulled away, and she yanked him back. “Or if he fights me.”
My stomach roiled with panic. What if she shot him in front of me? She would revel in my suffering as his body fell. “If you want to hurt me, shoot me. This has nothing to do with him.”
A Night of Long Knives (Hannah Vogel) Page 27
