by Jane Thynne
‘But that’s precisely what will stop him, isn’t it? The Soviet Union.’
‘I’m not so sure. We’re far too complacent about that. There’s speculation about a pact between Germany and Russia.’
‘Coming from a family like mine that’s always jawing about politics, I know that some people will speculate about anything. Doesn’t mean it’s going to happen.’
‘It might. And if it did, it would allow Hitler to continue his aggression towards the rest of Europe.’
‘The French seem very confident about their Maginot Line.’
‘Only because they underestimate the National Socialists. Don’t let yourself do the same, Mr Kennedy.’
Her mind went back to the document she had seen the previous year. A document which gave first-hand evidence that the leader of Germany did not intend to stop at achieving further Lebensraum for his people. That revealed in unambiguous terms Hitler’s ambitions to exterminate the entire Jewish race.
‘Their plans for the Jews go beyond anything you can imagine.’
She felt her voice rising, in her effort to persuade him.
‘Your father’s so influential. Please, go back to London, and beg him not to be deceived about the Nazis. Their ambitions are horrifying, and their efficiency is astonishing. It’s a savage, monstrous regime which poses a danger to the whole world.’
She picked up a beer mat and scribbled a name on the underside.
‘There’s an American journalist you must speak to. Her name is Mary Harker.’
‘Where would I find her?’
‘She stays at the Adlon in Berlin. She interviewed Goering just the other day. She’ll tell you how it is.’
At that point both of Kennedy’s arms were seized from behind and he was half-lifted into the air. His captors were a pair of young women who dragged him from his bar stool, laughing and beseeching him to join their table. Apologetically, Kennedy gave Clara a swift wave, and disappeared.
‘Bright lad.’ Epstein materialized at Clara’s side. ‘His father uses him as an unofficial diplomat. Probably the only diplomatic thing ever found at the Dingo.’
Already Clara was cursing herself for having spoken out.
‘I hope I didn’t talk too freely.’
Epstein regarded her closely.
‘I’m sure he was listening, whatever you said.’
‘He seemed quite relieved to escape.’
‘He’s probably a little wary of German actresses right now. His father Joe’s been having an affair for months with Marlene Dietrich at the Grand Hotel du Cap down on the Côte d’Azur. In fact, you’re lucky you met the son and not the father. Joe’s unstoppable. They say he sleeps with the friends of his daughters and the daughters of his friends, and just about every Hollywood starlet he can get his hands on.’
Suddenly Clara felt dizzy with the music, the colours and the press of people. Speaking English, not to mention speaking her mind, had been intoxicating, but ditching her normally cautious persona, even for a few minutes, had left her feeling exposed and disorientated. Bidding goodnight to Epstein she made her way up the narrow stairs and went to collect her coat.
The coat check girl had a sharp face, with kohl-lined eyes and heavily lacquered lips. She was wearing a modest little outfit with white collar and cuffs, but the modesty only extended as far as the briefest of skirts and a pair of fishnet stockings. As she handed over the coat she gave Clara a conspiratorial wink.
‘You have an admirer, mademoiselle.’
‘I shouldn’t think so.’
After the talk of Joe Kennedy, Clara was in no mood for admirers.
‘He was certainly very interested in you.’
‘Who was?’
The girl gave a slow, crimson smile.
‘A gentleman. He left just now. You’ll catch him if you hurry. If you want to catch him, that is.’
‘I’m pretty sure I don’t.’
‘Shame. He looked nice.’
Was this how all Parisiennes behaved, thought Clara? As though they were duty bound to establish an assignation? Sex, and the possibility of it, was never far from their thoughts. Perhaps that was the unspoken code of Paris.
The girl leaned over the counter, with a surge of sweat and perfume. Her breath smelled of French tobacco and garlic.
‘I didn’t hear him speak but he was foreign, I think.’
A sudden spark of excitement leapt in her. A foreign man had been looking at her. Could it possibly be Leo? Was that sense of him in the hotel a premonition? Some kind of subliminal awareness that he was near?
‘If he didn’t speak, how could you tell he was foreign?’
The girl pursed her lips into a magnificent pout at her expertise being called into question and gave a shrug that expressed her absolute conviction.
‘I know a Frenchman when I see one and this man was certainly not French.’
It had to be him! Surely this was why Major Grand had set up a meeting in Paris. He wanted to direct her to the place where Leo could be found.
‘What did he look like?’
‘He was wearing a Loden coat. No Frenchman wears a coat like that.’
But Leo did.
‘There was a look about him,’ the girl added. ‘He was interested in you. A woman can tell.’
Her pulse quickening, Clara bundled on her jacket and dropped a pourboire into the saucer.
‘Which way did he go?’
‘He turned left at the top of the stairs. Heading towards the Boulevard du Montparnasse. It was a few minutes ago. You’ll have to hurry if you want to catch him.’
As Clara emerged from the narrow stairway, the breath of raw night air hit her face. She looked the length of the street but there was no familiar figure of Leo waiting on the corner. Even from a distance, she felt sure she would recognize that brush of red-gold hair, and lean, sinewy frame, the hands, as always, plunged deep in his pockets. Decisively, she turned towards the Boulevard du Montparnasse and onto the Boulevard Raspail.
Paris at night, without a map to guide her and only the memory of a single previous visit to orientate herself, was a chiaroscuro world. The city of lights was unrecognizable in darkness. Restaurants were beginning to close, and shadows piled on shadows, deepening like layers of indigo gauze. Lamps cast pools of light on the pavements but between the high-sided buildings, narrow alleyways receded into blackness. Clara had memorized the route back to the Rue Jacob, but how, in this darkened city, amid unfamiliar streets, did she even begin to look for a single man in a Loden overcoat? Should she turn left, or right? Her only thought was to head in the direction of her hotel. If Leo had found her at the bar, perhaps he also knew where she was staying.
In the Latin Quarter faint traces of jazz leaked out of the basement bars and the bright neon of La Coupole hung in the still night air. She passed the vast shadows of the Luxembourg gardens, scanning the streets around her constantly. The ghost of Leo was around every corner. Memory played tricks and sleights of hand, so that several times she thought she saw a familiar building, only to discover when she came closer that she had taken entirely the wrong turn.
At last she saw him. A figure in a Loden coat and hat, striding swiftly, a hundred metres away. Too far to hear her if she called. But almost as soon as she had glimpsed him, he was swallowed behind a passing van. She hurried on, her heart bursting with excitement. It was odd to be the pursuer rather than the pursued. She was so accustomed to the idea of surveillance that she had often thought herself into the shadow’s mind. How to hang back when approaching the quarry. Never get too close, yet never lose sight of the target. But this chase was different. Clara actually wanted to catch up, but the figure ahead of her seemed determined to evade her pursuit.
Towards St Germain, as the severe geometry of the mellow stone buildings gave way to a labyrinth of cobbled streets, following became trickier. Clara had lied when she told Goebbels that she didn’t need spectacles. In truth, it was getting harder to see distant objects at night
. In the darkness the faces of passers-by loomed dim and indistinct like figures in a painting by Edvard Munch. A drunk stumbled into a doorway. She turned her ankle on the cobbles – her heels were too high – and wished passionately that she had not chosen to wear the silk dress, which was now damp and flecked with dirt at the hem. Still she ploughed on, turning back once or twice to re-orientate herself until, eventually, she drew to a halt beside the shuttered grill of a shop. It was plain that the man she was following was lost from sight, and what was more, she had no idea where she was. She decided to retrace her steps to the nightclub. At the very least, there she could find a taxi and return to the hotel in the Rue Jacob.
Just then, out of the corner of her eye she caught it. The whisk of a coat around a corner. She glanced down a thin alleyway, no wider than an arm’s stretch, and saw him again, slipping like a blade of shadow until, at the end, the view opened up to the broad span of the Seine and the man before her had vanished.
He must have crossed the river. Clara walked swiftly across the Pont des Arts towards the classical façade of the Louvre and into the Cour Carrée, the magnificent cobbled courtyard in the western wing. Then, at last, she saw him. Leaning against the pillar, his exaggerated shadow lying diagonal along the ground, his overcoat slung elegantly like a cloak over his shoulders. As he cupped his hand to light a cigarette, the flame leapt up to his face and she realized that it wasn’t Leo at all.
‘Fräulein Vine. What a surprise to see you here.’
It was the handsome, sardonic face of Conrad Adler.
Chapter Twenty
The surprise was enough to stun her for a moment. The breath tore at her lungs from the speed of her long pursuit, and the blood was still pounding in her ears. Shock, and disappointment that the man she had pursued was so different from the one she longed to see, robbed her of speech. For a second the image of Leo still imprinted itself on her vision, so that she had to shake her head to dismiss it, before focusing on the man who genuinely stood in front of her. Obersturmbannführer Conrad Adler.
He was wearing a smart navy suit, rather than uniform, and the rigid perfection she had observed in him before was exaggerated in the lamplight, making the curve of his jaw and the perfectly carved planes of his face stand out in sharp relief. She slowed her pace as she approached him.
‘What are you doing here?’
Even to her own ears, it sounded curt, and although the urbane smile remained in place, she sensed that she had caught him unawares. Both of them were dissembling.
‘I might ask the same of you. When we met you didn’t mention that you were going to be in Paris. We could have shared the journey.’
She ignored the invitation to explain herself.
‘I asked why you’re here.’
‘I’m visiting the Louvre.’
‘It’s closed at night.’
He took a draw of his cigarette and exhaled a slow jet of smoke into the night air.
‘As a matter of fact you’re wrong. It appears to be open for business.’
He pointed to a truck, its back doors open and a ramp leading up. An arc light illuminated a path where large wooden boxes were being wheeled. A team of workmen moved swiftly, silently, stacking a succession of enormous crates. It was not hard to discern their contents. The Louvre was removing its treasured paintings, steadily and methodically, under cover of darkness.
‘Anyway, it’s fortuitous that I should run into you just now.’ Adler’s tone was mild and conversational, as though they had bumped into each other on the Ku’damm, rather than engaged in a close pursuit through a maze of Paris streets. ‘Because I’ve been finding out all about you. Researching you.’
‘Researching?’ she said mildly, attempting to suppress her alarm. ‘I can’t imagine why.’
‘But it was your idea! I was following your advice. You suggested that I might be out of touch with popular culture, so I decided to watch all of your films. Black Roses, The Pilot’s Wife, Es leuchten die Sterne. Now I’ve seen everything you’ve appeared in, I feel I know you so much better.’
‘You’ve actually been watching my films?’ she echoed, relieved.
‘Every one. Ask me anything. In fact—’ he drew closer, ‘why don’t we talk about it over dinner? You’re certainly dressed for it.’ His eyes trawled the length of her blue silk gown. ‘There’s a place I know. I think you might like it.’
In one way, there was nothing Clara wanted less than dinner with this Nazi official and his sharp, derisive sense of humour, yet having her hopes of finding Leo so rapidly dashed, a crushing emotional exhaustion had descended on her. She hadn’t eaten since the café that afternoon, and her senses piqued treacherously at what would no doubt be a fine French restaurant. And the words of Major Grand rang again in her ears.
‘Any way we have into the Foreign Ministry. It’s urgent, I don’t need to remind you.’
Conversation with a Foreign Ministry official, a man close to von Ribbentrop, who might be expected to know his mind and the chances of any Nazi-Soviet negotiations, might be the perfect opportunity.
And yet . . . what did Adler want? Was it her company or something more? If he was watching her in the Dingo Bar, did he overhear her incautious comments to Jack Kennedy?
She summoned a cheerful smile.
‘Well I am awfully hungry. And it’s not too late. Where’s this place you know?’
‘It’s called Lapérouse. It’s just across the river. Along the Quai des Grands-Augustins.’
She had fully expected Adler to frequent the Ritz, Maxim’s or Fouquet’s, one of the big statement places that Nazi officers favoured, the kind of place that spelt out Paris in neon letters to the wide-eyed foreigner, with a trip afterwards to the Folies-Bergères. Yet Lapérouse was clearly a place for the cognoscenti. The walls and ceilings were painted with eigthteenth-century pastorals of gods and shepherds. Through a swing door she glimpsed a floor-to-ceiling rack of bottles, their dusty bottoms gleaming like blackberries. Ancient gas lamps hung over tables laid with starched napkins. It was packed with diners.
As if reading her thoughts, he said, ‘Most Germans who come to Paris make for the obvious destinations, but I like this place. It was created by a man called Lefèvre who kept wines for Louis XIV. Flaubert, Zola, Victor Hugo, George Sand, all came here. Escoffier used to run the kitchen. In the back there are private rooms with couches where French aristocrats take their mistresses. A charming idea, don’t you think?’
He helped her with her jacket, lingering a fraction too long as he did and letting his hand slip down the silk of her dress. As the waiter showed them to a table in a small alcove, she glanced at her reflection in an ancient, mottled mirror and adjusted the clip in her hair, before chiding herself for her vanity. Why was she bothering to look her best?
Although Adler spoke flawless French, he inspired the same chilly deference in restaurant staff that Clara had seen directed at Germans throughout the city. Beneath a surface of unctuous servility, the familiar French superiority remained. The manager brought a bottle with a sepia label and Adler gestured for him to pour it for Clara. She took a sip, astonished at the mellow warmth that slipped down her throat, redolent of chocolate and spice.
He smiled at her reaction.
‘It’s a good burgundy. See the way it has legs?’ He pointed to the drip of wine, slowly funnelling its way down the glass. ‘A single drop is probably worth more than a month of most people’s salaries.’
‘Please don’t spend money on my account.’
‘Why not? If it gives me pleasure.’
She wondered how old Adler was. Mid-forties, she guessed. The steeliness of his Aryan looks and silvered hair marked him out from the more sallow complexions of the French around him. His grey, metallic eyes reminded her of the surface of a lake, sometimes flat and impersonal, occasionally bottomless. He looked so different from the other Nazis she knew. Unlike Goebbels with his endless sessions beneath the sun lamp, or Goering’s futile efforts on an exer
cise machine, Adler glowed with health and self-assurance.
‘That’s a beautiful dress you’re wearing. I hope the occasion was worth it.’
‘It was, thank you.’
‘My favourite colour. Prussian blue.’
‘I didn’t realize you were an expert on haute couture.’
‘I’m not. Prussian blue is famous. It was created by a Berlin chemist in 1706 and because we know the exact date it means we can use it to authenticate paintings. There are numerous apparently genuine Old Masters that have been betrayed by the presence of Prussian blue. Painters love it. Picasso could not have managed his Blue period without it. You can see it in Van Gogh’s Starry Night. As it happens, I can also see it in your eyes.’
She couldn’t help a wry smile at this flirtation. Perhaps it was the fact that they were not in Germany, or the delicious aromas of the cooking rising around them, but she relaxed.
‘That’s a first. No one has ever described my eyes as Prussian blue before.’
‘With a few small flaws.’
‘You spoilt it.’
‘Not at all. Everything’s more beautiful for having flaws.’
The waiter appeared and Adler gestured towards her.
‘Duck with olives? Would you like lobster? I haven’t had lobster for such a long time. The Führer hates to think of them suffering.’
She shook her head. The scale of this hypocrisy seemed too great, just then, to merit comment.
Once he had ordered, he surveyed her, deadpan.
‘I’ve been longing to know. What news of Love Strictly Forbidden?’
There was a curl of soft sarcasm in his voice, and despite herself, Clara was nettled.
‘Actually, I’m starting work on a new film with Leni Riefenstahl.’
‘Now that lady even I have heard of.’
‘It’s about the Ahnenerbe.’
His eyes widened at this information.
‘Himmler’s organization?’
‘Yes.’
‘I wouldn’t have thought that was a fit subject for entertainment.’
