The Berlin Girl

by Mandy Robotham

  ‘Here we are,’ Rubin announced, drawing up in a darkened suburban street, no hospital in sight. Max limped into the house with help, disappearing into a room with a grey-haired man, whom Rubin addressed as ‘doctor’.

  ‘He’s a good man,’ he told Georgie. ‘And discreet.’

  They were silent for a while, staring at the paintings on the parlour wall, the man’s wife supplying them with tea, a sympathetic smile but asking no questions; one who knew the value of necessary ignorance. The tea was hot and strong, acting like an antidote to everything that had happened. With each sip, Georgie’s heart was persuaded back into its rightful cavity. The more she went over each moment, the more surreal it seemed – a high-speed chase, being shot at. It meant something, and more than her being terrified. It meant that the Reich did not want anyone near their camp, witnessing what they were doing. It followed that they might not be ashamed, still be righteous as Nazis in their beliefs, but they knew the world at large would view their methods differently. Outsiders would think it wrong. Morally so.

  ‘It’s a long way from protective custody, isn’t it?’ Georgie murmured, turning to Rubin. She remembered writing a story in the days after Kristallnacht, reporting on Goebbels’s insistence that Jews would not be allowed to emigrate, imprisoned instead. She felt confused then: emigration was an easy way for the Nazis to rid themselves of a race they loathed. Only not the most permanent. And it was that conclusion which created a fresh dread.

  ‘Yes, it is,’ Rubin replied, and he pulled a package wrapped in filthy material from inside his jacket – the object of their mission, a treasure trove of communication. They sifted through the bundle: snippets of letters on scraps of paper, empty packets and even ragged patches of material addressed to a whole host of families; drawings and doodles – detailed or drawn in haste – simple lines depicting a prisoner laid over some kind of trestle, a guard and whip being employed. No animation was needed in reflecting the plain, abject cruelty. The various scrawled messages were not letters of love, though the words tried to give some cheer: ‘We’ll be out of here soon, I feel sure’, ‘Don’t worry about your papa’. Mostly, it aimed at simple information – this is what it’s like. The subtext for Georgie and possibly for Rubin, given the sad expression as he read, was far more chilling. This is only the beginning of what they can do.

  Max emerged from across the hallway, wincing with each step. The doctor handed him a small package. ‘One or two twice a day, until it starts to ease,’ he said. ‘Rubin will bring you back when it’s safe, and I’ll remove the stitches.’

  ‘Thank you. I really appreciate it.’ He was clearly in pain, but more relieved not to have an official German doctor quizzing him about a ragged tear to his flesh.

  Georgie drove them back to Frida’s flat, insisting on Max staying the night, on the sofa if necessary. She was tempted to offer Simone’s bed, but still wasn’t sure of their relationship and how far it extended. And he didn’t ask. Rubin said he would chance returning the car quickly under cover of darkness, strip the registration plates and get back to Sara.

  ‘We’ll meet in the office in the morning?’ he said. They all needed to unpick what had happened and what, if anything, they would do next.

  Never seeing herself as a natural nursemaid, Georgie had a sudden urge to make cocoa from her package of English goods – it was her mother’s natural panacea when anyone fell ill at home. She perched on one end of the sofa as Max lay with his leg raised on the cushions, and handed him a steaming cup.

  He sipped, closed his eyes and breathed deeply. ‘Nurse Young, now that is very good cocoa,’ he announced.

  ‘Less of the nurse, please. And when did you ever have cocoa at home?’ It was surely not sophisticated enough to be a regular in the Spender house?

  He raised his head, looked faintly insulted, but only sighed. ‘We had it in the infirmary at school,’ he said. ‘Matron Taylor put in extra milk for her “sicklings”, and sometimes she would sneak in a hug as she gave it to you. I loved her madly – we all did. The infirmary was full to bursting with not very sick boys.’ He smiled at the memory; in Georgie it sparked only sadness for him and those poor boys, missing their mothers, when hers was ever present. And eternally loving.

  ‘Well, that was certainly what you’d call a night,’ he added after a pause. Georgie nodded into her own cup. Nothing more to be said, not until the morning. She was suddenly so tired that even the memory of their near capture might not keep her awake. Draining her cocoa, she pulled herself from the sofa and held out her hand for Max’s cup. For a second, her mind was elsewhere, focused on some piece of life trivia, and that’s when it struck her.

  ‘I’ve got it!’ she cried. ‘I know who he is.’

  ‘Who?’ Max was roused from the soporific effects of cocoa.

  ‘The man in the car. It’s been driving me mad all evening. I was sure I knew him from somewhere. It’s just come to me.’

  ‘Who?’ Max repeated, with slight irritation. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

  46

  A Doctor’s Appointment

  Berlin, 29th May 1939

  ‘Doctor Graf,’ she announced to Rubin at the office the next morning. ‘It was the doctor from the Haas Institute driving away from the camp last night.’

  She and Max had discussed it the previous evening, and again at breakfast – whether or not to mention it to Rubin, a fact that could only increase his worry and anxiety without any real explanation. Doctor Graf may have been a visiting physician to Sachsenhausen, or attending a social event, as Georgie had done. But it didn’t seem likely. The fact she and Max had been led to him via Paul Adamson and his beliefs about wrongdoing at the institute made his presence suspicious at best. Georgie recalled their conversation on her visit to the clinic: ‘We pride ourselves on end-of-life care,’ Doctor Graf had said. His subtext then had been abundantly clear. One tiny step further was euthanasia.

  All three looked from one face to another, sharing thoughts again, Rubin’s features twisted as he absorbed this latest blow to his family’s existence. The Nazis were capable, certainly, but would they really do that? Killing for no reason other than infirmity, or what they saw as ‘defects’? Georgie watched him nod subconsciously to himself.

  ‘I think we need to look at our Doctor Graf again,’ Max said. ‘Don’t you?’

  All three felt a sense of urgency over Elias’s predicament, but it was frustrated by the demands of work and Max’s injury. His leg was clearly painful and took longer than expected to fully heal, his limp explained away to all – even those at the Adlon – as ‘a damn fool fall down the stairs’. Georgie was unsure whether he’d told Simone the truth, but she said nothing when they met in the flat over breakfast or dinner. The scar on his leg remained a deep purple welt, though he joked, ‘It’s the only war wound I’m ever likely to see.’

  With spectacularly bad timing, Henry requested Georgie do her own tour of several German cities, this time gauging opinion from any Italian connections she could discover, Germany and Italy having recently signed their own military alliance, known as the ‘Pact of Steel’. And while it was good to get out of Berlin again, what she did find among small pockets of Italian sympathisers was predictably brash and frankly dull. Among Germans, by contrast, Mussolini was seen as a pompous, blustering figurehead – their own version of the much-mocked Göring – and he was viewed as a weak link, not equal to the power of Hitler. It felt to Georgie like pedestrian journalism at best, and nothing like the mystery waiting back in Berlin.

  She returned to find it was Rubin who’d made the most progress. In his spare hours between newspaper work, he’d been able to keep a watch on Doctor Graf’s house; it didn’t take much to discover a medic’s home address, a large house on the edge of Lake Wannsee. Judging by the number of servants passing in and out, business at the Haas clinic was thriving. Rubin learned that Dr Graf was a creature of habit; he left at the same time every day, lunched at one of three different rest
aurants, and returned home by train to his wife between eight and nine every evening. His routine was predictable, including his twice-weekly visit to a small basement club amid the nightlife centre of Kurfürstendamm which – when he hovered around the back entrance – Rubin discovered was anything but upstanding. The good doctor had his peculiarities too.

  ‘We’ll have to get someone inside that club and engage him in conversation,’ Max said on regrouping in Rubin’s flat. Georgie’s paranoia over her office walls sprouting ears meant she felt uncomfortable talking at the bureau. And as much as they hated it, and railed against it personally, Berlin had all but shut down to Jews in public – even in permitted venues, the trio attracted unwanted attention. Being the kindest of souls, Rubin eased their guilt by suggesting his own home when Sara was at work. ‘I doubt the Gestapo are looking at us now – we have nothing left to give,’ he half-joked as he served up coffee, not intending to pull at their heartstrings, though his forbearance depressed Georgie further – and stoked her fury against the Reich.

  ‘There’s a fair chance Graf would recognise me from the clinic,’ Georgie said with secret relief. ‘Besides, I’m not enough of an actress to pull off the persona of a club girl.’

  At the word ‘actress’, Max shifted with optimism. ‘Will Margot be back from Frankfurt?’ he ventured.

  ‘Possibly,’ Georgie said. ‘Shall I give her a call?’

  ‘Do you think she’d do it?

  In the end, Margot was both – returned from Frankfurt and willing to help. ‘I worked the clubs as a budding actress,’ she said. ‘I know exactly what these fine professional men want from a place like that.’

  Max started, eyes wide with shock. ‘No, Margot, you don’t have to …’

  ‘Don’t worry, you rarely have to go that far,’ Margot assured him. ‘You take them to a certain point – it’s the tease they so often enjoy. Then they can pretend to themselves and their wives that they’re not actually being unfaithful. Poor sops.’

  Her expression, however, was anything but sympathetic. Time and distance had not healed her sorrow over Paul’s death; it was evident that if she could help flush out his killers then she would do almost anything. For such a young woman, Margot appeared to have a real measure on life, possessing a confidence Georgie often craved for herself. Still, for all her beauty and talent, Fraulein Moller cut a lonely figure. Her pain at losing Paul remained raw.

  It was two weeks later that Georgie found herself in the driver’s seat again, the mid-June sunshine and vivid memories of her last time behind a wheel prickling against her skin. At least Rubin was sitting beside her, sharing the anxiety of the wait. Max had casually meandered into the club off Kurfürstendamm an hour previously, at around four o’clock, followed by Margot several minutes later. She’d dressed perfectly for the part – the make-up and clothes of a good-time girl, available and happy to please. She glanced backwards on entering the basement club and Georgie caught a well-disguised wink. A short time after, they watched Doctor Graf slipping down the stairs, work briefcase in hand. Right on time.

  Then, that interminable wait again. Over an hour later, he emerged – with Margot on his arm, an inebriated smile on his lips, and the briefcase swinging by his side. Max was thirty seconds behind them, but at the top step, Georgie could see the strain on his leg was slowing his pace in trailing the couple. She started the engine and followed at a discreet pace, the agreed plan being that Margot’s charms would persuade Doctor Graf to take their celebrations to a hotel only a couple of blocks down. In advance, and under a false name, Max had booked a second-floor room facing onto the street. If Margot felt in any jeopardy, she would open the window and lean out, making a prearranged signal.

  Georgie and Rubin watched Doctor Graf – now very unsteady on his feet – negotiate the hotel steps with Margot’s help, Max following to observe inside the lobby. The rest, then, was up to the actress and her talents.

  More waiting. The itch inside her own skin convinced Georgie she didn’t possess the patience or courage for this kind of subterfuge. Rubin kept up the conversation, both with their eyes fixed on the hotel window. Why was it taking so long? More to the point, what were they doing in there? And what was Margot having to relinquish?

  It was another hour later when her slight form emerged through the hotel entrance and onto the dusky street, looking neither dishevelled nor distressed. She was alone, Max appearing in her wake and crossing the street towards the car, slipping into the back seat. Margot kept on walking, tipping her head to signal meeting a little way up the road. She climbed into the car several streets away and Georgie drove another few minutes, parking up in a wide avenue between the Tiergarten and the zoo, the boughs and sprouting leaves a convenient canopy to their discussion.

  ‘So?’ Max could hardly contain himself.

  Margot did look fairly pleased with herself, and – to Georgie – not as if she’d been exploited in any way.

  ‘He’s definitely well in with the Nazi command,’ Margot began, wiping at her bright lipstick with a tissue. Maybe she felt grubbier than she appeared, both inside and out. ‘Once he had some alcohol inside him, he couldn’t wait to tell me how important he was to Himmler and his “vital plan”.’

  ‘Plan? What vital plan?’ Max’s voice was sharp, almost interrogating.

  But Margot only looked back at him, narrowed her eyes. ‘It wasn’t that easy to get details, you know, especially as he got more and more drunk. I did gather it had to do with his skills as a doctor. He kept muttering about “the end being the solution to all the problems”, it being the beginning, or something like that.’

  Georgie and Max traded looks. Dark looks. Rubin was staring sideways through the passenger window but Georgie didn’t like to guess at his expression, or his thinking. If Doctor Graf was willing to end the lives of innocent old ladies, how much thought would he spare for Jewish prisoners? Beatings and ‘accidental’ deaths in custody, among the Gestapo especially, were commonplace. But could there really be an agenda, a strategic and precise plan? Despite what they knew of the Nazis and their methods, it still seemed unthinkable.

  ‘Did you get a look in his briefcase?’ Max pressed, though with little hope of a positive answer.

  Here Margot spread her lips, plucked out and held up a hair pin holding her style in place. ‘Of course,’ she said triumphantly. ‘He was out cold as I left him, but I only had a minute or so as one of the maids began knocking on the door. I found a lot of clinic paperwork – typed lists of clients, I imagine. There were a couple of handwritten sheets filled with mathematical formulas – I had no hope of understanding those. And one note, talking about “plans we must finalise with your help”. I didn’t understand what it all meant but I did recognise the signature.’

  ‘Yes?’ Now Max was on the edge of his seat, Georgie not far behind.

  ‘Kasper Vortsch,’ she pronounced.

  In one scarring jolt of her heart, Georgie’s head spun, and her entire blood supply seemed to drain into the car’s leather seat.

  ‘Now he is a Nazi,’ Margot went on, oblivious. ‘Some new attaché that’s risen up through the ranks very quickly. Himmler has taken a real shine to him.’

  ‘How do you know this man?’ Since Georgie had been struck dumb, Max was quick with the questions.

  ‘Oh, the usual parties – Goebbels loves to pepper his gatherings with his starlets. And like most of them, this Kasper does love a pretty girl.’ She looked disdainful then, perhaps ashamed at being lumped in with the stable of actresses used by Goebbels as glorified hostesses. Everyone in the car knew Margot was better than that, both at her job, and as a person.

  ‘Have you ever spoken to him?’ Georgie crawled out of her silent state. She felt sick again at her former naivety over Kasper.

  ‘Only a little,’ Margot said. ‘He’s very charming, but they all are, at first. He soon got bored of me and made a beeline for another actress – there’s one who’s half-English. According to the other girls, h
e’s got a thing about English women.’

  ‘Why?’ Max posed. It was a pertinent question, with England fast becoming the Nazi Party’s principal enemy.

  ‘Sees them as something of a challenge, I assume. A trophy. Hitler has his own Unity Mitford, and what’s good for the Führer …’

  There it was – that word again. Trophy. What little blood supply Georgie had left washed away entirely, her veins set with ice. Max shot her a look of concern.

  ‘Georgie?’ he murmured, his fingers crawling to place a hand on her shoulder only to feel how rigid it was.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she managed. ‘Um, we need to get Margot home. Make sure she’s safe. Then we’ll head back to Frida’s?’

  They convened around the kitchen table, Max instinctively adding brandy to their coffee. With the alcohol kick-starting her blood supply, Georgie opened the discussion. ‘As much as I already loathe the idea, I think meeting Kasper one last time is essential, perhaps the only way to find out any valuable information.’

  Rubin had been silent for the entire journey back to Margot’s and onwards to Frida’s. Now, he came out of his shell.

  ‘No, Georgie! Absolutely not!’ he said firmly, climbing to his feet, the chair scraping noisily behind. His normally soft features were set firm, eyes glinting under the harsh kitchen light. In a flash, he had become the father protecting a daughter no longer under his roof. ‘I’ve not said anything before, but now I can’t watch you putting yourself at such a risk. For what? Possibly a small titbit of information. It’s not worth it.’ He stopped, checked himself and sat down. His voice was suddenly small. ‘However much we know, whatever we find out, it won’t get Elias out of there.’

  Georgie was silent for a moment, stunned at his outburst. Then, it was her turn. It brewed from nowhere, but the torrent was unstoppable; fury not aimed directly at Rubin, but at all those men dictating what she could or couldn’t do in the world, for years now. Poor Rubin – suddenly he was that sneering editor back in London who questioned her very existence on the news desk, the countless others who always assumed she was the secretary, capable only of typing up someone else’s opinions. And, if she was honest, Max in his first incarnation at the London Ritz. It made her hackles stand at a full ninety degrees, her eyes blaze and her temper flare. Years of frustration bubbled to the surface.