“I need to see him as soon as possible.”
“He says he can’t come to Berlin. He’s in the country. The whole unit was given leave after Munich.”
“All right,” he said carefully. “Let’s see if he will have us to stay. A weekend maybe. It’s the hunting season.”
“Why do you want to see him so badly?”
“Nothing to do with you, my dearest. I just need to talk to him.”
“You really mean that?”
“Yes, I do. It’s urgent, very urgent.”
Sara knew her brother would never cooperate with the Gestapo. He would play them along, feed them false information, try to gain privileges of better food and maybe a little exercise, try to escape again. Then they would kill him.
She would know the moment it happened. Twins are like that. It had been like that all her life. She had always known when Joseph was in trouble, when he was hurt – and he had known the same about her.
A symbiotic force bound twins, an elemental shared existence that was as strong in life as it had been in the womb. When the Englishman had told her that Joseph was dead, she had almost wanted to believe him, because at least it would mean his suffering was over. But deep down she had known he was still alive, as she knew now.
When they were children, their favourite game had been hide-and-seek in the big house on the outskirts of Hamburg that her parents had bought when the money began to come in from the export of clothes to the newly-arisen Soviet Union. The twins had grown up in that rambling old place, with its cellars and attics full of family junk from centuries back, and the garden that sprawled down to the river through a wood made up of magnolia trees. Whenever they played with their friends, somehow she was always the seeker – and she always knew where to find her twin. On one occasion he had hidden in the water tank in the attic and totally submersed himself, using a straw to breathe. She had been drawn to the attic, sensing his presence, and had looked everywhere, until she suddenly knew he was in the tank.
Afterwards he had gone downstairs into the kitchen, still dripping wet, and for the first time she had seen her mother lose her temper and try to beat him with a wooden spoon. How old were they then? Ten or twelve maybe, and Joseph was too big and strong for a beating; he had just laughed and run away. Later, when he had got changed, he had come up behind his mother in the kitchen and surprised her with a big hug. He had held her, with his arms tight around her waist and his head buried in her back. She had cried. If only your father were here, she said, but that was what she said all the time, about everything.
Poor Mother. Father had gone to the factory one morning as usual and found it had been requisitioned. They had just moved in and taken it over. There was a party official in his office, a competitor, as it happened. The man had warned him that he would be arrested for economic sabotage if he complained.
Father did complain. He fought back. He said that even in Hitler’s Germany in 1936, the year of the Olympics in Berlin, a whole Jewish business could not just be taken away overnight. But he was wrong. He had gone to the party offices in Hamburg and had never come back. He just vanished. At first, they thought he had been taken to a camp, but the authorities denied it.
Then Sara’s mother heard he had fled to Russia. Whatever it was that happened in the party offices, he had left there and then. He had little money and no clothes, but he had been right. He knew they would have come for him that evening at home and they would probably have taken them all. As it was, Mother had collapsed when she heard the news and had a stroke shortly after. She lived in a chair in the kitchen, semi-paralysed, unable to speak, and spent her time staring at the magnolia trees in the garden.
They said her mind had gone and that she could not even recognise her own children. But of course she did; there was a flicker in those grey eyes when Sara gave her soup or when Joseph brought her chocolate and kissed her grey head. She would smile then, a smile that began in the eyes and lifted her face until her lips parted. She might have lived for years like that with her children looking after her.
But Joseph had been stupid. Sara tried to remember how old he had been when he began putting those leaflets around and defacing party posters. He must have been just nineteen. He and a few friends, including his girlfriend, had held secret meetings under the magnolia trees planning sabotage. She had told him to stop and warned him about the girl. He had just laughed and told her to look after their mother.
Then it happened, just as she knew it would. A Kommandant from the Gestapo had come to the house with two men when it was still dark and dragged Joseph from his bed. They had beaten him in the hall, kicking him with their boots. Their mother had been upstairs, asleep, and never heard a thing.
Sara had watched it all from the top of the stairs in her dressing gown. She had seen the look the Kommandant gave her as they dragged him away – a murderous look that said, “We’re going to come back for you.” And six months later they did.
She was arrested not in the morning, as they usually did, but in the late afternoon when she came back from her job as a typist in a brick factory. It was a warm evening in June and the magnolia trees in the garden were still in blossom. They brushed aside her protests and gave her ten minutes to pack a small suitcase and say goodbye to her mother. The poor woman was sitting as usual in the kitchen and did not know what was happening. That was a blessing.
Sara was put in a car and driven straight to Berlin through the night. The next morning, she had found herself in a small room in the Prinz-Albrechtstrasse headquarters, where they showed her a letter from her brother. The offer was simple: collaborate and he will live. Refuse and you will join him in the concentration camp. That’s how her life in the Salon had begun.
And that’s where she would have to stay as long as he was alive. Joseph wouldn’t want that. In fact, she knew very well that he would be furious with her. He would tell her to escape, to risk everything to flee Germany. If he knew she had a travel permit, he would go mad if she didn’t use it. But she couldn’t, not just yet.
It wasn’t sentimental. It was a cold calculation. There was just a chance that she could say something to Heydrich. He had not been near her for weeks now, but he would come back for her. He always did. And after she had done all those dirty little things that he liked, he would smoke and drink and watch her dress and talk. He would talk of music, how his father had given him a violin as a parting gift when he joined the navy. He would talk of his love of Mozart, especially his favourite violin concerto, number six. Then he would move on, his voice edged with anger, to talk of his wife Lina, who was being unfaithful with not just one lover but several.
He could have had them killed, he said, but they were all in the party, and quite senior as well. But he loved his two boys, especially the youngest, Heider, who was now four years old and beginning to show real promise on a small flute. This was always a one-sided conversation, a long monologue from a man who merely required her to listen, smile and nod her head. He would talk like this for an hour or so, as if he had just dropped in for a chat with an old friend. She found the conversation utterly bizarre but understood that her role was to sit and listen to a man who had no one to talk to, no one to trust, no one with whom to share the small confidences of family life and memories of a happier past.
Sara felt that if she timed her approach carefully, she might just find a spark of humanity in the man, a flicker of life on a frozen planet, anything that would allow her to persuade him that her brother was just a stupid boy who did not deserve the death awaiting him in the labour camp. She would beg him, plead, promise to do anything for him.
If there was any consolation to be found in all this, it was that her mother had died. They said it was shock or grief, or whatever it is that kills a mother when her two children have been dragged off by the Gestapo. The neighbours found her in her kitchen chair with her eyes wide open, still staring at the magnolia tree.
19
The invitation to join the shooting party arrived in a f
ormal typewritten letter to the embassy addressed to Colonel and Mrs Macrae. Colonel Florian Koenig invited them for a weekend at the end of the month, it said, but a handwritten addendum at the bottom of the page read, “Bring that antique rifle of yours; there are plenty of deer on the hills above the tree line and boar in the woods below.”
Macrae and Primrose arrived at the lodge in time for dinner. Gertrude was the same ethereal presence, looking, as Primrose observed while they changed for dinner, as if she had dressed up as a ghost at a fancy-dress party. Koenig seemed preoccupied and said little at drinks before dinner, offering only a toast to welcome them.
The meal passed with desultory conversation about the weather, and only when the subject of the hunting season arose did Koenig appear interested in the presence of his guests. He talked animatedly of the fine stag to be found on the high ground and the driven boar hunt that had been arranged for the next day.
“And what are we ladies supposed to do while you go slaughtering wildlife?” asked Primrose.
“We are to join them,” said Gertrude, who appeared interested in what was going on for the first time. Her ghostly pallor had been replaced by a semblance of colour. She was smiling at last. “We are going to show the men that women can shoot just as well as they can.”
“I don’t think I know how,” said Primrose. “My husband is the marksman, aren’t you, darling?”
She reached out across the table, sliding her hand towards him in a gesture of affection he found embarrassing. He placed his hand on hers briefly.
“I am sure Gertrude will lend you her rifle. What is it, by the way?” he said.
“I have a .22 – a lady’s gun. It doesn’t kick,” said Gertrude.
“But no good against boar,” said Koenig. “I will lend you something more suitable, a .303.”
“Thank you but no. A .22 will do fine. I want to give the boar a chance. This is supposed to be a sport, isn’t it?”
She spoke in a tone that suggested to Macrae a history of discord in the house over the ethics of hunting. Koenig shrugged, dropped his napkin and rose from the table.
“It’s no sport for the boar if he is left wounded by a pellet from a .22,” he said. “But as you wish, my dear.”
Macrae had expected Koenig to suggest a nightcap to talk about the folly of Munich. Instead, their host left the dining room with the suggestion that they all go to bed early.
They assembled the next morning in front of the lodge, with sunlight filtering through the trees and the ground glittery with a sharp frost. An open Mercedes truck with seats built into the back was panting outside the front door, puffing exhaust into the cold air. They clambered in and a chauffeur drove them over the hill into a lightly wooded valley.
Koenig explained that the four of them would conceal themselves in two hides about four hundred yards apart on opposite sides of the valley. The hides were camouflaged to look like large bushes and were made up of wooden platforms, to give elevation when aiming. Koenig said that beaters would flush boar and roe deer from their cover in the wood and they would shoot the animals, always taking the boar first, as they ran towards them. Macrae and Gertrude would go in one hide, he said, and he would take Primrose into the other.
“What about the beaters?” asked Primrose. “Aren’t they in danger when we start shooting?”
Koenig explained that a horn would sound to signal that the beaters had cleared the wood. This would be just before the quarry broke cover. He repeated the instruction to shoot the boar first. They were faster and infinitely more dangerous than deer. A wounded four-hundred-pound boar with tusks a good eight inches long could easily demolish a hide if it chose to. Then it would turn on the occupants.
“So you see, my dear, there is an element of sport in the hunt.”
He was speaking to Gertrude, who tossed her head and shrugged. She was wearing headscarf, gumboots, corduroy trousers and a waterproof jacket. She had slung her .22 rifle over her shoulder like a marching soldier. Macrae realised the gun was less a threat to a boar than a rebuke to her husband.
They heard shouts and ringing bells coming from the far end of the wood. They tramped off to their positions and climbed into the hides. Macrae laid his Lee–Enfield on a narrow wooden plank and eased the barrel through a screen of bushes. He peered through the sight.
The edge of the wood was about a thousand yards away. The boar would come along the valley and swerve up the sloping sides when they realised that there were hunters concealed ahead of them.
A boar travelling at thirty miles an hour showing only his snout and tusks would not be an easy shot. The hide was tough and only a direct hit would kill the animal. Once it had swerved sideways, the boar would be showing its flank and shooting would be easier, but there would be more chance of wounding the beast. Macrae did not want to leave a wounded animal to die a lingering death. He would take the boar head on at the outside range of his rifle, about eight hundred yards. He should be able to get off three or four shots before the animals realised the danger ahead and changed course.
He loaded the gun, slipping the magazine with five bullets into the chamber. Solid .303 rounds, three inches of pointed brass of the kind that had carried death across the trenches. The sniper heard only a crack as he fired. The target would hear a fizzing hum if the bullet missed. Macrae had missed many times, but he had also killed many men with this gun. And that is why he had never used it since. It had accompanied him on his travels in its leather case stamped with his initials “NM”, and he had taken it out and cleaned it, but never once had he fired it – until he had taken Koenig’s stag. It was a fine British rifle, with superb optical sights that had helped him become a sniper with one of the highest kill records in the British army.
He looked across at Koenig’s hide across the valley. The sides were not camouflaged and in the distance he could just make out two figures blurred into one on the platform. He swung his rifle up, looking through the sights. Koenig was showing Primrose how to hold his rifle. He was standing behind her, leaning into her, one arm with hers under the barrel and the other under her right arm around the trigger guard. Koenig’s head was on her shoulder and he was talking to her, guiding her through the manly art of aiming and firing a Mauser sporting rifle.
What was he saying to her? Aim for the forehead just above the eyes, hold the butt tight into your shoulder and squeeze? Or was it I’ve missed you, I want you come to my room tonight when he’s asleep, Gertrude never sleeps with me these days?
“See anything interesting?” said a voice at Macrae’s shoulder.
He put the rifle down. Gertrude was holding out her hip flask.
“No, just aligning the sights.”
Gertrude smiled. “She isn’t the first and she won’t be the last. Here, have a bull shot,” she said.
She lifted the head of the flask, created a cup, poured a measure and handed it to him. Macrae drank, grateful for a pause in the conversation. He struggled for a response to a statement that invited no reply and decided to give none. He felt the vodka and beef broth burning the back of his throat. He winced and she smiled, taking the flask and drinking straight from the neck. Sounds of shouting and bells grew louder from the wood. They turned to take up their positions.
“You don’t like shooting, do you?” she said.
“Why do you say that?”
“Female intuition.”
“I haven’t used a gun in twenty years – except for that stag,” he said.
“So why now?” she asked.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, buried far from rational thought, lay the awkward answer to that question. He pushed it aside. There was an easier response.
“I don’t like to disappoint my host,” he said.
Macrae looked through his sights again. The hunting horn sounded three times, long wailing notes like the trumpets that had sent men into battle for centuries. He slid his rifle into his shoulder and took up his position. There was a shot beside him. Gertrude stepp
ed back, reaching for the binoculars.
“Too soon,” said Macrae, squinting through his sights.
The woman was obviously trying to ruin the shoot. Boar were breaking in numbers from the wood, fast-moving dark creatures, mostly males with tusks. But they were too far off for a clean shot. The boar came up the valley, powerful heads bobbing up and down with each stride. Their speed was surprising. Macrae trained his sights on the lead animal, bringing the cross hairs to bear on a large tusked head. He aimed and fired, feeling the familiar kick against his shoulder. The animal somersaulted and slid along the ground. Boar began breaking right and left across the valley. Macrae could hear shots from Koenig’s hide. He looked back through the sights at the boar that had now scattered over the valley floor and up the hillsides. He fired four more shots in quick succession, snapping the bolt back each time to inject a new cartridge into the breech. The boar fell cleanly, shot not through the flank but each time through the head, close to the eye. He pulled out the magazine, slotted in a new one and swept his telescopic sights up the hill.
There they were, fleeing boar heading for the safety of the summit and the far side beyond. He had once shot a German soldier running from a camouflaged forward observation post. The man was an artillery spotter. When he realised he had been seen, he ran madly back to the safety of his lines, ducking and weaving. He had been hindered by a heavy uniform, which was probably why Macrae had missed with his first shot. The man had tried to strip his jacket off while running, which made his movements improbably erratic. He had thrown his jacket and rifle away and was almost at the trench when a bullet struck his head, toppling him forward.
Now he fired five more shots, taking a boar with each one. The range was about five hundred yards, he guessed. He could hear shots from Koenig’s hide but had seen no sign of his kills.
He stood up, straightened his back and put his rifle down. His hands were trembling. He felt faint.
“Did you say you had not used a gun for twenty years?” Gertrude was looking at him, frowning and smiling at the same time, the note of incredulity clear in her voice.
Midnight in Berlin Page 28
