by David John
‘I expect you put them onto him.’
Greiser laughed. ‘I had nothing to do with it,’ he said. ‘It’s true. I didn’t.’
‘We were eager for your press conference at the Adlon earlier,’ she said with acid innocence. ‘What made you cancel it?’
‘You didn’t hear?’ He swung her around to the music, screwing her hand hard into his grasp. ‘I had to attend to an athlete who suffered a mental seizure during a radio interview. I fear she may spend years recovering in a secure institution.’
She tried to release herself from his arms, but he yanked her back, slipping his hand lower. ‘What’s the matter? Afraid I’ll touch you somewhere you don’t want to be touched . . . ? You’d be wise to treat me a little more sweetly.’
‘Or what?’ she almost shouted. ‘You’re gonna put me in an asylum, too?’
She pulled away her hand. Again he tried to hold her tight around her waist but hadn’t reckoned on her swimmer’s strength. She slung off his arms and shoved him backwards, sending him bumping into a dancing couple. Her face was flushed and hot as she strode from the floor.
Outside the light was dimming, and stewards entered carrying tall candelabras, placing them around the hall so that the flames were reflected in the red marble. To Eleanor’s eyes they created a hellish glow.
Finally, she reached the British ambassador.
‘Sir Eric, may I have a word?’ she said, stepping into the man’s circle. He was listening to a tall patrician gentleman adorned with medals and ribbons, and a younger, elegant lady with waved hair. The tall man spoke in that potato-laden Brit voice she’d heard only in movies.
Sir Eric bowed to kiss Eleanor’s hand. ‘She walks in beauty like the night . . . ,’ he said. The trace of a smile played beneath his moustache as the taller gentleman was thrown off his stride by her appearance. Sir Eric introduced the couple as Sir Robert Vansittart, permanent undersecretary at the British Foreign Office, and Sir Robert’s wife, Sarita, who turned to her politely.
For five agonising minutes they solicited Eleanor’s opinion on the low cloud that had dogged the Games so far, and enquired after the comfort of her crossing, until finally their attention was drawn away, and she spoke quickly into the ambassador’s ear.
‘Sir Eric, it’s about Richard Denham, the English reporter you spoke to at that Goh-balls party earlier this week . . .’
‘Of course. I know Denham.’
She told him of the warning not to go near Liebermann, their defiance of Greiser’s injunction, and of Richard’s arrest by the Gestapo.
‘Extraordinary,’ Sir Eric said, his face as unfathomable as the Sphinx.
‘You’ve got to help me get him released, sir. His son has gone missing in London. He has to get home. And now that Liebermann herself has told the world what happened to her, why would they need to keep him? The facts are public knowledge.’
Sir Eric looked at her carefully. The difficulty of gauging him wasn’t helped by his monocle, which caught the light and appeared as a blank disc on his face.
‘How did you become an interested party?’ he asked, picking his words.
‘We’ve grown . . . close,’ she said.
The ambassador paused, as if choosing what to impart. ‘The Gestapo don’t have him,’ he said. ‘He’s in the hands of the SD, the intelligence service.’
‘How do you know that?’
He gave a discreet cough. ‘The worrying question—to which my sources found no answer—is what they want with him.’
‘Isn’t it about Liebermann?’
Sir Eric shook his head thoughtfully. ‘No. It must be something bigger than that . . .’
‘Meine Damen und Herren . . .’
A voice booming from the far end of the hall was making an announcement, which it repeated in French and then in English. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, Your Excellencies, honourable guests, please now extinguish your cigars and cigarettes. There is no smoking in the presence of the Führer.’
An excited murmur swelled around the hall.
‘My word. We’re honoured,’ said Sir Eric. ‘He’s not normally much of a partygoer.’
Two gigantic bronze doors swung open and some twenty helmeted SS in white parade gloves entered the hall. Spreading out, they positioned themselves along the walls and among the crowd. Eleanor noticed with some unease that one had stationed himself only a few feet behind her.
The guests waited, facing the doors. The orchestra fell silent. Ambassador Dodd came over to stand with Eleanor and Sir Eric, as far away from the doors as possible, and he and the Englishman exchanged a look of bemused tedium. She considered slipping away to powder her nose, but there was no chance now.
At last he entered, accompanied by an interpreter and two Olympic officials wearing chains of office. He looked awkward and ill at ease, Eleanor thought, in his white tie and tails, which didn’t fit him well: the coat was slipping off his shoulders.
‘He looks like a flea circus master,’ she whispered to Dodd.
The face was pale, with bags under the eyes. The moustache wasn’t as ludicrous as it seemed in caricature. Yet there was something outlandish about him, something about his gaze, which was expressive, hypnotic even.
Slowly he moved through the crowd, being introduced to various diplomats and ambassadors for sport. He nodded and listened, making it hard for her to connect him with the raving demagogue she’d seen on the newsreels. She wondered whether the Liebermann incident had sparked one of his famous tantrums earlier. It seemed impossible to imagine he’d taken the news calmly.
‘You don’t think he’ll come over here, do you?’ she asked Sir Eric. She felt the palms of her hands begin to sweat.
‘I fear he will, if he knows I’m here. The Germans are proffering their fishy hand in friendship at the moment.’
Eleanor shifted on her heels. She had a strong sense of something malefic at work in the room. Irrational, yes, but she noticed how most of the guests stood in silence, in thrall to some mystical will emanating from this man. She could see it in their eyes, including Martha’s: a type of rapture.
They waited, watching him come nearer. He gave a short bow when presented to a woman, kissing her hand; with the men he said hardly a word but looked into their faces with a pale blue beam. Every few seconds his hand would smooth the curious lock across his forehead, as if by nervous compulsion.
And then he was in front of them.
He recognised Sir Eric, took the ambassador’s hand in both of his, and fixed him with an intense stare. The translator at his elbow leaned in to hear.
‘Sir Eric Phipps,’ he said. ‘The Anglo-Saxons are much in my thoughts.’
‘And you in ours, Your Excellency.’
Hitler nodded slowly. ‘Do you know that today, for the second time, I watched the film Lives of a Bengal Lancer? My bid to discover how England gained her empire.’
‘How extraordinarily interesting.’
Still he held Sir Eric’s hand. ‘India, a nation of half a billion people, ruled by only four hundred English public servants? Erstaunlich.’ Astonishing.
It occurred to Eleanor how wrong-footed most people would have been by such remarks, but Sir Eric was an old hand.
‘Lives of a Bengal Lancer . . . My wife’s seen that only once, I think,’ he said. ‘She’s a Gary Cooper fan, too.’
The gaze swept across Sir Eric’s poker face, but nothing could be read.
Dodd was next, and made a remark about the American team being mightily impressed with the Olympic village. At that, a bothersome memory seemed to pop into the dictator’s head.
‘Yes-sy Oh-vens,’ he said, looking straight through Dodd.
It was at that moment that Eleanor understood with a shock that she was about to be introduced. She had not expected this at all and suddenly felt a powerful aversion to the thought of th
ose lips kissing her hand. There was no backing out, but was there a moment to be seized? Surreptitiously she prised open her handbag.
No one realised what she was doing until the very last moment, when the guard standing behind her darted forwards.
But it was too late.
There was an audible gasp from the people around her.
She had lit a cigarette in the Führer’s face.
Chapter Twenty-two
Denham was woken from a dreamless state by the voice of a man sitting at the end of his cot. He had no idea how long he’d been asleep under the harsh electric light.
‘They’ve patched you up, I see.’
He opened one swollen eye and saw the sheen of a jackboot. Fear surged through him, and he shrank against the wall with a moan.
‘It’s all right,’ Rausch said, reaching over and putting a hand on his arm. There was a stink of wine on his breath. His hair was dishevelled and his uniform was undone at the collar. ‘I’ve come to say a friendly hello, that’s all. Just a friendly hello.’ The man’s nails were bitten to the quick, Denham saw, and stained yellow from those noxious Murads.
Rausch leaned back, his head hitting the wall with a soft thud. ‘Do you know what trouble this is bringing me, Denham?’ he said, almost to himself. ‘Have you any idea what could happen to me? I’ll be thrown down here with you, that’s what. The Obergruppenführer is most displeased. Wants to have a go at you himself. Wants to twist it out of you. You wouldn’t want that, believe me, Denham. You wouldn’t want that.’ The blue eyes dilated, struggling to focus.
‘This started so well. Outstanding intelligence work. That’s what he said. Should have got me decorated . . .’ Rausch folded his arms and started shaking gently, so that whether he was crying or laughing Denham couldn’t tell. Spittle foamed at the sides of his mouth, and when he spoke again his voice was ill-controlled. ‘I was this close . . .’ He held his thumb and forefinger with a tiny space between them. ‘And then you entered the picture.’
Denham thought of protesting the truth once more, but getting the words out would have cost him too great an effort. And what was the point?
‘You’re one of those types, aren’t you, whom beatings only make silent. Isn’t that so? I’ve seen it before.’ He sighed. ‘You and I both, Denham. We’ll hang for this . . .’ His face reddened but he suppressed the rising sob.
A strange silence opened between them for a while.
‘This dossier . . .’ Denham whispered. ‘Why?’
Rausch slumped forwards and cupped his forehead in his hands so that Denham thought he was about to vomit, but then he said in a distant voice, ‘Wish I knew.’
He sat up, remembering something, fumbled in his tunic and pulled out a cigarette packet. ‘HBs,’ he said, opening it and offering one. ‘Your brand, I believe.’
‘Water,’ Denham croaked.
Rausch struggled to his feet and opened the cell door, swaying. ‘Water in here.’ Seconds later he was handed a jug. Denham sat up despite the hot knives stabbing at his ribs, and reached for it. It sloshed over the rim and onto Rausch’s hands, dripping to the floor. Cool, clear water.
But Rausch didn’t give it to him.
‘Tell me now, friend,’ he said, standing in the middle of the cell, his feet set wide apart to steady himself, ‘and spare us both. Once and for all. Where is it? Please . . . tell me where.’
Denham shook his head sadly without taking his eyes off the jug.
The interrogator staggered backwards, his eyes closed, as if seeing his own doom. His nostrils flared, and a drunken roar came from his chest. With a wide arm he bowled the jug, smashing it against the wall behind Denham’s head, covering him in water and pieces of earthenware. The next moment Rausch was on top of him, punching and screaming.
Chapter Twenty-three
The morning after the Chancellery reception Eleanor and Gallico found standing room only at the back of the tearoom in the old Hotel Kaiserhof on the Wilhelmplatz. The place was full of foreign correspondents and newswire photographers. It was a humid day, and the room already smelled of sweat, cigarette smoke, and whisky hangovers.
Willi Greiser entered to a barrage of shouted questions.
‘Sir, was Liebermann forced to compete?’
‘Can you confirm that her brother was shot while resisting arrest?’
‘Is she in custody? Sir?’
Eleanor noticed that he did not flinch but brazened the onslaught with an urbane smile, dismissing the matter of the Liebermann broadcast with a wave of his hand. Let’s not waste anyone’s time over such a thing. This guy’s good, she thought. Speaking smoothly in English with his German-American accent, he said, to popping flashbulbs, ‘After the great strain that training for these Games has taken on her mentally and physically, Fräulein Hannah Liebermann is now convalescing at a private sanatorium. She sincerely regrets any misleading impressions she may have given in her pressured state of mind, and has personally asked me to express her deep gratitude to the German Olympic Committee for once again allowing her the honour of defending her title for Germany.’
‘Boys, don’t fall for it . . .’ Eleanor mumbled.
Greiser then took questions only from the German reporters in the room, who, right on cue, got his propaganda machine rolling with something more palatable. The Völkischer Beobachter was eager to know whether Ilse Dörffeldt had recovered from her disappointment in dropping the baton in the women’s relay.
‘She was upset,’ said Greiser, ‘but the Führer himself sent a car full of flowers to console her.’
He answered two more servile questions from the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung and the Berliner Tageblatt while his eyes scanned the room, noticing that the foreign press corps had ceased their shorthand and become restless, whereupon he suddenly thanked everyone and turned his back on the instant uproar of unanswered questions about Liebermann. As he was striding towards the exit, a female voice carried high over those of the males.
‘Has the Gestapo tortured English reporter Richard Denham for speaking to Liebermann?’
Greiser was halfway through the double doors, but Eleanor saw his back tense and his neck stiffen. He’d heard the question.
The room fell still.
She had the sensation of a tide turning as every foot and chair scraped and shifted around and faced in her direction. Faces looked at her eagerly, notepads on knees and pencils at the ready. Then all the questions began at once.
‘Ma’am, who’s this guy? Colleague of yours?’
‘Did he get an interview with Liebermann?’
‘How long’s he been in the cells?’
And Eleanor found herself giving her own press conference, with Gallico standing behind her, amused and shaking his head at the ceiling. The room filled with the dry rustle of 150 pencils taking shorthand.
‘Did you say the Gestapo have got Denham?’ said a lanky, grey-haired Englishman pushing his way through the pack, his pipe smouldering like a paddle steamer’s. ‘Well, who the bloody hell’s getting him out?’ he shouted.
Early that evening Gallico rang the bell at the Dodds’ house on Tiergartenstrasse and invited Eleanor for a stroll. The humidity still hadn’t lifted. They bought ice creams from a stall near the Tiergarten and walked along the edge of the park, up the Hermann-Göring-Strasse towards the Brandenburg Gate. Cries of parakeets and howler monkeys reached them from the zoo.
‘So you gave Brundage a hard time?’ she asked.
‘Well, he denied everything of course and looked like he wanted the floor to swallow him up. First time we’ve ever seen him break a sweat . . .’
Gallico’s voice trailed off.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Sweetheart, listen,’ he said, hesitating. ‘You may as well hear this from me first . . .’
‘What is it?’ She felt her stomach turn cold.<
br />
‘There’s a report on the wire of an interview your husband’s given to the New York Post. Said your behaviour on board the Manhattan embarrassed him. Made him think you weren’t the blushing flower he married . . . He doesn’t want you singing with the Herb Emerson Orchestra anymore. Says he needs time apart.’
Eleanor exhaled loudly and realised she’d been holding her breath.
‘Oh,’ she said, almost wanting to cry with relief, but started giggling instead, to Gallico’s bemusement. ‘I thought you were going to tell me Richard had been . . .’ She put her arms around him and hugged him. ‘Thanks for letting me know.’
‘You’re not upset?’
‘Not at all. If anything, it just made my life a whole lot better.’
When they reached Unter den Linden Eleanor suggested a coffee at the Adlon. The first person she saw in the lobby was that lanky Englishman, Rex Palmer-Ward, talking to a group of reporters near the fountain. He spotted her and approached trailing a veil of sweet-smelling smoke.
‘My dear,’ he said. ‘There’s been a development.’
Chapter Twenty-four
Searchlights lit Berlin’s new showcase airport, creating a theatrical effect from the blood-red flags, silver eagles, and rows of regimented windows: the hallmarks of the brutal new style.
‘I haven’t packed,’ Denham mumbled to the three SD men escorting him in the BMW.
‘You’re going straight on the flight.’
One of the men showed Denham’s passport at the desk, then escorted him past the brass rail, out onto the runway, and towards the steps of the plane. Its silver fuselage glinted under the lights. The baggage hold was closing and the fuel truck reversing away. The propellers began to turn. In the door of the plane a young stewardess was beckoning for them to hurry.
Denham reached the steps just as the engines began to roar, but before he could climb inside, the SD man grabbed his elbow. With his other hand holding on to his trilby he yelled, ‘Make any attempt to reenter the Reich and it’s straight back to the cells. Understand?’
