Nights in Berlin

by Janice Law

  I tried to conceal my alarm at this news. “Pawnshops and banks. They’re where the money is.”

  “The thieves were apparently looking for a camera. I think it must have been the one we redeemed.”

  “Luckily you have the film, so the camera is no use to anyone. And neither am I.”

  “Don’t be too sure about that,” Mac said. Promising me breakfast, he told me to stay in his room and out of sight.

  My own thought was to see if any of his shoes fit me and whether he’d left any money lying around. I had in mind to make a quick departure, and I was headed for the door, when I realized that I did not have my new identity card. Where was it? In the pocket of Muriel’s maroon frock. And where was that? Whisked away by Mac, who had a military affection for the clean and tidy. Just the same, I had almost made up my mind to run when he returned carrying a tray with tea, toast, a boiled egg, and a little dish of marmalade.

  He glanced at the shoes. “You wouldn’t get far, you know.”

  I shrugged. He was kind enough, but I didn’t feel guilty.

  “Eat up and then we’ll talk to the major. Oh, and clothes are coming. We’ll see about shoes later.”

  I suspected that all this was being laid on for some reason, but I didn’t discover what for until we got upstairs. Harold was looking slightly better. The tube-and-bottle affair was gone and only scraps were left on his breakfast tray. Mac put it out in the hall and set two chairs close to the bed.

  “How are you feeling?” Harold asked me.

  “Battered,” I said.

  “You should feel fortunate. The film is useful. They would have killed you for it.”

  “They are ex-Freikorps, I think.” I told them about the men who had come to Fritz’s flat, but I omitted the address and Fritz’s name and the Schmitt family business. They didn’t need to know about that—or that I had a safe haven there if I needed one.

  “A bayonet!” Mac said. “Well done.”

  Harold narrowed his eyes like a cat and said that it would have been best if I had come straight to the embassy. Or at least avoided the Adlon. “We had an agent in place,” he said. “We would have recovered the camera before morning.”

  “And I would have been flat broke in Berlin.”

  “Your uncle is somewhat feckless,” Harold admitted.

  “He is a con man. Whyever do you employ him?”

  Harold made a face, a subtle contraction of his mouth and chin. “You can’t be too fussy in the defense of the realm. Your uncle has contacts we need, and he is trusted by people we could not otherwise approach. Besides, we go back a long way. Friendships in wartime …” He paused for a moment. I’ve learned that people who’ve been close to some profound, true thing are reluctant—or unable—to explain it. Maybe that’s why there are painters. “Well”—Harold flapped his hand the way he did to dismiss objections or the objectionable—“you learn whom you can trust with the big things. Small things one learns to disregard.”

  Like fraud and entangling your nephew in a murder inquiry, I thought. So much in Berlin was a matter of perspective. “Now that you have your film, can I return to London?”

  “We have some film,” Harold said.

  Uh-oh, I thought.

  “We do not have all the information we would like.”

  I could hear Nan in my ear saying, You’ll want a lot less with more ease, but I was clearly learning discretion because I kept my mouth shut.

  Harold put on his most serious face, an expression that I saw Mac mirror—moment of truth! “Your uncle has disappeared. We’ve entirely lost contact with him.”

  “That’s hardly unusual for Uncle Lastings. He hasn’t been sending me postcards, either.”

  Harold leaned back on his pillows and shifted his wounded arm awkwardly. Mac rose to help, but Harold flapped his hand, determined to finish our conference. He had gone very white again. He gave whatever he wanted to say a moment’s thought and exchanged a significant glance with Mac before he said, “You are aware of the terms of the Versailles agreement?”

  Oh, right. In my recent circles we talked about little else, though I realized that Fritz’s father had gone on about the betrayal of the army and sang “Watch on the Rhine” when he was drunk. “Indemnities, the Rhineland?” I guessed.

  “Correct. And German demilitarization. Very important for our French allies, along with the Saar coal and Alsace-Lorraine. His Majesty’s Government is also vitally interested in all attempts of the Weimar Republic to rearm.”

  “But hasn’t their military been limited? How many men can they legitimately have?”

  “A hundred thousand. Seven infantry divisions, three cavalry.”

  That sounded to me like a great many soldiers.

  “They were also supposed to get rid of the general military staff. We suspect that they have simply reorganized. Similarly, although they did disband the Freikorps, paramilitary groups are building under the cover of veterans organizations, sports, and youth groups like the Wandervogel. They’re analogous to our scouts.”

  The penny dropped. “Uncle Lastings claimed to be funneling money to some of those outfits. Thanks to funds from the Society for a Christian Europe.”

  “A society that exists mostly in the mind of your uncle. But fear of the Reds is very real. The Weimar government sees Bolsheviks under the bed and so favors the right-wing fighters over the workers parties. Your uncle,” he added dryly, “perceived an opening into the shadow armies that could be profitable to all sides. You must admit that took some doing.”

  “So he was gathering information for you. Taking photographs of what?”

  “Installations, gatherings, documents.”

  “And they were onto him? So he shot two of them?”

  Harold nodded. “We don’t know exactly, but that is a likely scenario.”

  I honestly wondered when he’d had the time. With a lot of ex-Freikorps men on his tail, my uncle would not have much freedom to photograph secret documents. “He will be on the run. How is that useful to you?”

  “He has other material. We know that. He only needs a safe way to deliver it. Once we know where he is, of course.”

  I’d thought that my life—and my uncle’s—was rackety and improvisational, but it was nothing like His Majesty’s secret service or whatever they were called.

  “We need someone in plain sight,” Harold said. “Someone he’ll spot and who’ll set up a contact for us. That’s all that’s needed.”

  “And where would this be? He told me that he was leaving Berlin. He could be anywhere. He could be cooling his heels in London, for all I know.”

  “He is still in Germany. We know that he has not reentered the United Kingdom.” Harold seemed very sure about this, but then he should know with his knowledge of passports and border crossings. “We suspect he is still in the Berlin area. He has friends.”

  “You’d be better to enlist one of them,” I said. “My German is still weak. It’s obvious I’m foreign, and that police sketch has been in the papers. Besides, I don’t know anything about armies or politics.”

  “Your father was a soldier,” Harold said. “He fought in the Boer War.”

  “The Boer War was a long time ago, and nothing about my father inclines me toward the military.”

  Harold raised his eyebrows, and there was a brief but heavy silence.

  “If you won’t send me home, give me that identity card. I’ll make my own way.”

  “Sit down,” Harold said. “You are known to dangerous people, and I assume you won’t always have a bayonet handy. Mac and I have devised a plan. You should listen to it.”

  “I should leave.” I stood up and held out my hand. “You promised me papers. You’ve gotten the film.”

  “Right you are,” said Mac. He took the identity card out of his pocket and handed it over. “I give you
a day. Two at the most.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The Kripos, of course.”

  “We like to be cooperative,” Harold said in a weary tone as if this was all something I should understand already. “The police would be interested in your whereabouts. And if we couldn’t tell them that, we could at least enlighten them about your new identity.”

  “Nods as good as a wink to them,” Mac added. “All that about Prussian discipline and efficiency? Perfectly true. I didn’t believe it myself at first.”

  Harold cleared his throat. “In fairness to you, we should simply keep you here. Of course, you’re free to go, and you have papers, but if we should lose sight of you, I have Bernard Weiss’s personal phone number.” He gave a faint smile. “An interesting character—a Jew, a Prussian, and a cop all in one.”

  I sat back down, wondering if Nan would classify this as a blackmail, extortion, or a protection racket.

  “There’s a good lad,” said Mac. “We don’t want to see you hurt.”

  “I wouldn’t need to be hurt! There are daily flights from Tempelhof to London.”

  “We have a budget, you know,” Harold said. “The Leica rather depleted the incidentals kitty for the moment.”

  I’ll bet, I thought, but I didn’t say anything. As Nan used to tell me, If you can’t say anything nice, keep your mouth shut. Who would have thought that my peculiar education would prove so useful?

  “You perhaps have wondered,” Harold began after a moment, “why your uncle was so fond of visiting the Eldorado? Given that he had no interest in wearing women’s clothes or in men who did.”

  “My uncle would roger anyone,” I said.

  “We are aware of his somewhat catholic tastes, but trust me, even Lastings had his limits.”

  “All right,” I said. “Lingerie and feathers were not in his wardrobe. So what?”

  “Yet he always made time for a quick visit to the Eldorado, didn’t he?”

  “He liked lively nightspots. He enjoyed the cabaret there.”

  “That’s right. And some of his contacts also liked the Eldorado. What better way to hide in plain sight?”

  Talk about the rabbit hole. I’d realized that my uncle was a con man and a tomcat. Now it appeared that he ran some sort of spy ring peopled by chaps who liked to put on rouge and heels and dance with the “hostesses” at the Eldorado. Or perhaps they were the hostesses at the Eldorado. I seemed to remember Uncle Lastings taking the floor occasionally, just to be polite.

  “Your stratagem the other day suggested a safe place for you.”

  I thought that my next letter to Nan would certainly be full of interest. Defending my life with bayonets and high heels, consorting with both thugs and spies. She hadn’t been kidding when she said that travel was an education, but I was beginning to think I should have stuck to my books. I could be translating Greek plays and passing notes to pretty third formers and doing nothing more strenuous than fielding out by the cricket boundary. “What’s in it for you?” I asked.

  “Information, of course. With you in place at the cabaret, we hope some of your uncle’s contacts will emerge.”

  “It seems a pretty forlorn hope!”

  “Your uncle is in serious danger. He has twice put himself at the service of his country, and we are sure the information he is obtaining is of great importance. We are asking you to work for a time at the Eldorado. Hardly trench warfare.”

  Ah, the superiority of the ex-military. “I’m hardly a soldier, and I suspect my country would just as soon lock me up.”

  “All the more reason,” Mac broke in, “to build up a little useful credit.”

  There was that. And I did owe Uncle Lastings some interesting experiences. “I hate music, and I can’t dance. Especially not in women’s heels.”

  “We’re not expecting you to rival Hansi Sturm,” Harold said, mentioning the reining diva of the drag clubs. “No, no, no. And the proprietor of the Eldorado is most fussy about his hostesses. Trains them like geishas, I’m told. It was a great concession on his part even to consider you for the hatcheck counter.”

  Checking hats and coats. All right. It sounded useless to me, but it could be worse. I could be stuck in the embassy or, worse, in some Prussian correctional institution. “If I do this, how will Uncle Lastings’s contacts recognize me? How will they possibly know?”

  “They won’t,” Harold said. “You’ll have to spot them.”

  Chapter Nine

  Dear Nan,

  I am gainfully employed, checking hats and coats in an interesting club.

  Interesting certainly covered the Eldorado, which featured satin and feathers like a posh wedding and, on certain afternoons, enough tweeds and brogues with the lesbian crowd to clothe a grouse shoot.

  There’s a dress code, and I hardly think you’d recognize me when I’m behind my counter. But I have been kitted out gratis, so I’ve saved a little money.

  All true. Mac had disappeared for a couple of hours and returned with two complete sets of clothing. Pants, a shirt, a leather jacket, and a pair of sturdy shoes, plus a cocktail dress, heels, a hat, a short coat and, yes, a very nice pair of silk stockings. The dress fit, and if I still found heels tricky, these were a good deal more comfortable than Muriel’s. Mac also brought a cosmetic kit, a new razor and shaving cream, and a brush, along with a neat little suitcase, neither too smart nor too shabby, to hold the lot.

  When I was dressed with my face made up, we went aloft for Harold’s inspection. He was wearing his smart diplomat’s trousers and shoes but still had a pajama shirt over his bandages. “Let me see you walk,” he said.

  I obliged. The whole thing was so like a ridiculous costume party that I couldn’t help getting into the spirit of it.

  “What do you think?” Mac asked.

  “I think that a good sergeant can work wonders.” He nodded to me and added, “The army runs on its non-coms.”

  He might have given me a little credit, especially since I did my own eyes, but this was not the time to complain, because Mac had slipped me a few marks and promised to pay for my room.

  I have quite a nice room—and get this, Nan: My landlady is English! What do you think about that?

  Actually, I knew quite well what she would think: that her dear boy had rejoined respectability and civilization. Which was partly true. The landlady was Miss Clarice Fallowfield, unless, like Harold, she had a selection of monikers, and she might have, since I suspect she was employed by the embassy.

  Miss Fallowfield is tall, pale, and angular, with large hands. She has a long nose on a thin, aristocratic face and she has splendid manners.

  That was on the one side—the pearls and cardigan side. On the other, she smoked like a chimney and, when the occasion required, could swear like a sailor. She and Mac were old and trusted friends; I guessed from the war, for wherever else would debutante material like my landlady have met a slater from Glasgow? I’d noticed a picture on her living-room mantel showing four women beside a military ambulance. I thought she was one of them, back when her hair was still dark.

  Anyway, she and Mac understood each other, for they said very little when they met—a glance, a nod, a very good was all they needed to settle whatever needed to be decided. That was mostly, at the moment, about me. House rules: I was to come directly back after my shift at the Eldorado. There would be, in Miss Fallowfield’s words, a great hue and cry if I was not in on the dot. This was for my own protection.

  Of course, I would be a lot better protected back in Soho, but Miss Fallowfield took a strong line on duty, as in England expects every man to do, etc. Fortunately, she also ran a comfortable establishment with very decent food. She was amused by my working clothes and supplemented the initial frock with a couple of dresses cut down from her own wardrobe. Very Edwardian, very long, very old-fashioned.

 
When I pointed this out, she said, “It’s all costume, Francis. See if the punters don’t like a little variety.”

  I was embarrassed to say that she was right. The plum velvet proved a particular favorite, and I came back the first night I wore it with my little evening reticule—another present from Miss Fallowfield—loaded with tips. She was also sympathetic to my struggles with high heels. You need boots, Francis. They provide better ankle support. Too bad the Eldorado was strictly elegant footwear and that boots—particularly high ones with lots of buttons—were associated with a particularly notorious set of prostitutes.

  Other house rules: no boyfriends—no girlfriends, either, although I thought Miss Fallowfield might like the raffish Muriel. Afternoons I sallied out to one of the boy bars, and sometimes I was lucky and sometimes I was bored. But either way, by six o’clock, I was back at the flat turning myself into Dolly, the new and delightful English hatcheck girl, and by seven, I was at the Eldorado. I stayed on until three in the morning, when I usually shared a taxi home with Sabine, one of the hostesses.

  Sabine was slight with narrow shoulders and long legs. The first thing she did in the taxi was take off her shoes and give a sigh like a weary horse. Suddenly, Sabine was halfway back to Sigi. “How many miles do you think, Francis?” He’d ask me every night, for though he told me (and I believed it was true) that he lived for the evenings at the Eldorado, he found the endless rounds of the dance floor with the heavy-footed clientele wearying.

  At first I thought he fancied me, and then I hoped he might be Uncle Lastings’s elusive contact, but no. He just liked to chat. As Sabine, he’d talk to me about clothes and makeup. He was catty about my hand-me-downs from Miss Fallowfield; at the same time, he couldn’t keep his hands off the velvet frock—or the nice party silk, either.