by Jane Thynne
A glance at her watch. Fifteen minutes in. Hitler belched and not a head turned.
The final item concerned Stalin reviewing his troops in Moscow. He stood on the viewing dais on the top of the Lenin Mausoleum alongside a row of Soviet top brass – Molotov, Andreyev and the rest of the Politburo, breath frosting as they inspected a march past in Red Square. Every cinema-goer in Germany was accustomed to regular news of Russia. And even those who never visited the cinema could not escape it in newspapers and endless political speeches. The Russians were Bolsheviks. Slavs dominated by Jew devils. Stalin was controlled by the Jewish world parasite. This report, however, was different. Startlingly different. The script was conspicuously neutral. The customary snide remarks were absent and the cameras, usually angled to portray the podgy Stalin’s least flattering aspect, provided a more appealing perspective. The smiling Soviet leader with his bristling moustache appeared reasonable, if not benevolent. Strong but fair.
In front of her, Hitler shifted in the gloom, smoothed his hair with the side of his hand and leant forward. Instinctively Clara tightened her grip on the gun beneath her palm, and inserted her finger into the trigger. Hitler was speaking – far too softly for most to hear – but she caught his words.
‘That man has a good face. One should be able to negotiate with him.’
Then he rose abruptly and marched away without warning, prompting a scrape of chairs and a scramble of officers to their feet, a hurried clicking of heels and a raising of right arms as the Leibstandarte seamlessly opened the door and Hitler left the room.
For a second, a startled silence reigned, and then loud general chatter broke out. The relaxation at being out of the Führer’s presence, mingled with relief at being spared another film, prompted a feverish jollity. The lights went up. People pushed back their chairs and began to mingle. Others pulled out cigarettes and lit up greedily, the film forgotten.
Only Clara sat in silence. The significance of what she had just heard was dawning in her mind, drowning out the shock of her assassination attempt so narrowly averted.
One should be able to negotiate with him.
Why was Hitler talking about negotiating with Stalin unless the rumours of a Nazi-Soviet pact were not rumours at all? Unless an alliance between the Third Reich and Stalin was already underway?
In which case Major Grand was wrong and British Intelligence needed to know without delay.
Chapter Thirty-two
It was now nine fifteen. Dropping the gun into her beaded evening bag, Clara slipped discreetly out of the Music Room and retraced her steps through the reception hall of the Reich Chancellery, across the road to the Kaiserhof Hotel. She made for one of the polished telephone cubicles at the back of the lobby, its bottom half enclosed and the top half glassed, closed the door and pulled out the copy of The Thirty-Nine Steps, repeating to herself Thomas Epstein’s instructions.
When you have a message to convey, find the words you want to use, then select the page number, followed by the line, followed by the place that word occurs in the line.
She bent over the telephone directories, as though searching for a number. Then tearing out a page from her gilt-edged notebook and leafing quickly through the novel, she transcribed the words she needed.
Russia – page four, line seven and seven words along
Germany – page four, line seven and nine words along
Alliance – page four, line five, six words along
Very – page three, line three, two words along
Soon – page eight, line nine, first word along
477, 479, 456, 332, 891
Russia Germany Alliance Very Soon
She rolled the scrap of paper up to the size of a matchstick and inserted it horizontally deep in the bottom seam of her jacket pocket. Then she bundled the novel back into her bag, left the hotel and turned right, to make her way swiftly along the Wilhelmstrasse.
Berlin at night was the photographic negative of Albert Speer’s pearl-white city. The pavements were drowned in a crepuscular gloom, interspersed with pools of dense shadow. Barely any light issued from the office blocks that ran the length of the government sector. The Air Ministry was a looming cliff of darkness and blackout gauze had already been erected on the Propaganda Ministry’s windows. A few lights, however, were still visible in von Ribbentrop’s Foreign Ministry. Plainly its staff were working overtime.
Clara progressed north up Luisenstrasse, past the jagged shadow of the Charité hospital where Erich’s grandmother worked. In the courtyard she noticed one of the metal collection points – a pile of twisted saucepans and old tin cans destined for the Luftwaffe – and propping one foot against the wall she snatched off the calfskin holster and tossed it and the Derringer inside.
She hurried on as swiftly and inconspicuously as possible until a right turn along Torstrasse brought her to the Scheunenviertel, the Jewish quarter.
Fingering the matchstick of paper containing her code, she wondered if she would recognize Benno Kurtz when she saw him. He’s in his sixties, has a grey moustache. He was a good-looking fellow in his time and he still thinks a lot of himself. She would ask for a gin and tonic made in the English way – presumably nine-tenths gin to one-tenth tonic – and pay him with a banknote, the paper concealed beneath.
As she went she tried to remember what she could about the Ritz bar. It was, from what she could recall, as far from its Paris namesake as was possible to imagine. Its wallpaper, lit by a series of gas sconces, was mottled and peeling, and its hospitality extended to cheap chairs grouped round deal tables on a scuffed wooden floor. Yet the place was a Berlin institution, famed for its ancestry and the diversity of its celebrity clientele.
You didn’t need to be rich to drink there – the glass ‘hunger tower’ on the bar contained only humble delicacies like meat in aspic, bread dumplings, salted eggs, gherkins and pickled herrings – yet it attracted celebrities as diverse as Bertolt Brecht and the cabaret singer Claire Waldoff, to the less salubrious stars of the Berlin underworld. Its reputation had been formed in the Weimar era when Berlin was a sexual Wild West and that spirit lingered on in a variety of humorous signs taped behind the bar.
‘Prostitution is strictly forbidden. At least according to the police!’
With a customer base like the Ritz’s, no wonder it stayed open most of the night.
Five minutes later Clara turned into Mulackstrasse and glimpsed the hanging iron lantern at the far end of the street illuminating the entrance of number 15. But as she did, she became aware of a car behind her, its headlamps glittering on the cobbles.
Look out for a car travelling either too fast or too slow.
There was no other vehicle in the street. No jam up ahead. No parked cars to overtake. Yet the car behind her was moving at walking speed. It was not even driving as such, but cruising. When she slowed slightly, to allow it to overtake her, the car slowed too. She quickened, and like some devilish ballroom dance, it matched her pace. By now, Clara was just yards away from the hanging lantern of the bar. She guessed there were another twenty steps to go. Giving into the urge to glance behind her, she saw the car come to a halt at the kerb. It was a black Mercedes 260D with low-visibility headlights. Regulation Gestapo transport. She abandoned caution and began to move faster, the rapid thud of her heels on the paving echoing the beat of her own heart. Three feet from the door of the Ritz she moved across the pavement to allow a man coming from the opposite direction to pass. Then, with a slow horror that seemed to freeze time, she sensed two people approach from behind, and the man in front of her came to a stop, all closing ranks to form a trio that enclosed her entirely. Fear winded her like a fist in the stomach.
The two officers behind slipped their arms through hers, as politely as if they had been rivals competing for a waltz, and led her towards the waiting car.
Chapter Thirty-three
‘I hope you won’t mind if I don’t accompany you.’ Annie Krauss gestured slightly towards the velvet
-covered table. ‘I require a period of quiet meditation before my next customer.’
Baffled, Hedwig looked at Jochen but he was already moving towards the far end of the house. He had obviously been here before, because he led the way through a kitchen to a cellar door and then down two flights of narrow steps to a low-ceilinged room with bare walls. A single weak bulb illuminated a table on which stood a machine, several jars and stacks of paper.
‘What’s going on? I thought we were going to have our fortunes told?’
Jochen was sorting through a pile of papers on the table with his back to her.
‘I think mine’s already decided.’
Reality was dawning on Hedwig. Hard, unhappy reality.
‘This is to do with the people you were talking about, isn’t it? Are you going to tell me who they are?’
‘I can’t. None of us must know too much. They tell us to think of a stone thrown into a lake. The stone causes circles and then more circles that ripple out to the edge of the lake. We are in one of those circles.’
We? How happy she would have been a week ago, whenever she heard Jochen use that word. How she longed to go back to that time, when her only worry was whether he preferred brunettes or blondes.
‘And is Frau Krauss part of this?’ she said, incredulously.
‘Annie is a very valuable member of our group. She’s well respected in her profession.’
‘Everyone knows that.’
‘Precisely.’
His eyes were shining.
‘Everyone knows Annie Krauss, and that includes a lot of military men. Hard to believe, isn’t it? But the fact is, they flock to her. They like to think Germany’s destiny is dictated by the planets. Remember that quote from Shakespeare? They do teach you Shakespeare at that place?’
She nodded dumbly.
‘The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars, but in ourselves. These military men prefer to believe the fault for the Fatherland’s problems lies in the stars, rather than in themselves. Or in that ugly dictator in Wilhelmstrasse. Well, I’ll tell you something. Recently they’ve been consulting her about Hitler’s plans. They say he’s fully intending to invade Poland. They ask, what should they do?’
Hedwig fought the impulse to turn tail and run up the stairs out of the house.
‘And what does she tell them?’
‘She tells them an invasion is a bad idea. The heavens are against them. But she doesn’t say too much because she wants them to keep coming back. Every snippet of military detail they give away gets straight back to us.’
Hedwig picked up one of the leaflets on the table. It took the form of a newspaper front page except that it was much smaller, six inches by ten, and printed on rough, mimeographed paper. A headline read, Germany awake! We are Sleepwalking into War! Resist Hitler! and underneath was the sub-heading: Working for a New Free Germany.
‘Where do you leave these?’
‘Public places: phone books, cafés, doctors’ waiting rooms. We deliver them at night. We make flyers too. And documents. One of our people has a daughter in the Bund Deutscher Mädel, who takes them around wearing her uniform. It just looks like she’s delivering copies of the BDM newspaper.’
Jochen gestured at the mantelpiece where a bottle of cleaning fluid stood alongside a box of matches.
‘We keep these ready so we can burn them at a moment’s notice if we get an unannounced visit.’
Hedwig’s mind was a blur, the words collapsing before her eyes into tiny heaps of soot.
Germany awake! We are Sleepwalking into War!
‘So why did you bring me here?’
‘I was coming to that.’
He put the stack of papers down and perched on the edge of the table, arms folded.
‘That ball you’re going to.’
‘The dance for the Prince?’
‘The whole idea of the evening is to persuade the Prince of Yugoslavia to stand by while Hitler carves up Europe. There will be guests there from all over the world. Influential people from every country. They need to know that there’s some kind of resistance in Germany – that we’re not all on Hitler’s side – and that if he’s given carte blanche to invade Poland, he won’t stop there. The ball is a perfect chance. I have a friend there.’
The way he said ‘friend’ told her everything. There was an undercurrent of admiration. A whisper of enchantment.
‘It’s Sofie, isn’t it? From the orchestra?’
‘She plays in a string quartet that has been hired to perform at the ball. She will distribute the pamphlets.’
‘So what does that have to do with me?’
‘You have access. You need do nothing more than take the pamphlets in. I’d do it myself but there’s no way they’d let me into the Schloss Bellevue.’
Hoping against hope, she raised a protest.
‘What’s the point? What good can reading a pamphlet do? It’s just a piece of paper.’
She seemed to have hit on an important issue. Jochen was suddenly excited, impassioned.
‘Quite the opposite, Hedy! Reading is everything, Goebbels knows that. It’s why he controls everything we Germans can read. He burns books and censors the newspapers, so people can’t find any voices except his. We Germans have always been great readers. Literature is our lifeblood. But Goebbels would rather people sat and watched variety shows or romantic films than lose themselves in books. He knows that if you control what a nation reads, you control their souls.’
A terrible realization came upon her. Had Jochen only met her, had he only ever told her he loved her, because of what she might do for him? Had everything, from their first kiss onwards, been leading up to this?
Hedwig looked at him, a bright sheen of tears in her eyes, and summoned all her courage.
‘Tell me truthfully. Is this why you were interested in me? Because of what I could do for you?’
He ducked his head to evade her gaze, running his finger up and down the table as if the grain of the wood might spell out an answer. Then he stood up fully and put his hands on her shoulders, his gaze frank and unflinching.
‘It’s true. Robert wanted me to get to know you.’
‘Robert Schultz?’
Her childhood friend. A local boy who would scuffle in the schoolyard with a football and whose tawny hair and good looks had sometimes earned him an admiring glance from Lotti Franke.
‘Robert thought you might be useful to us.’
‘In that case . . .’
‘Stop!’
Misery and hurt pride welled in her throat, but Jochen pressed his hands into her shoulders so hard that it hurt and shook her a little.
‘That may be why he introduced us, but that doesn’t change how I feel. I love you, Hedy.’
A sudden ferocity, a mixture of anger and fear, rose in her. She had always been the one longing for his affection, cravenly seeking his love, but now she felt a new strength, born of bitterness.
‘Do you? Really? I’d say if you loved a person, you wouldn’t ask them to do something as dangerous as this.’
‘I used to think the same. But now I think it’s because I love you that I want you to do it.’
Was this what love meant? Being brave, taking risks? Living in fear? She remembered Lotti’s face on the last day she had seen her. Lotti was in love, and love had made her frightened too.
‘Have you gone mad, Jochen?’
‘No. I think we’re the only ones who are sane.’
Chapter Thirty-four
The Barminstrasse women’s prison in Friedrichshain was generally crammed to the rafters, but following an amnesty to celebrate the Führer’s birthday a large number of prisoners had been released in a spirit of joyful reconciliation, with the result that the place was emptier than usual and Clara had a cell to herself. The single bulb was kept on at all times, presumably for the purpose of sleep deprivation, but the light was failing miserably at its job, stuttering and blinking fitfully and casting only a purgatorial gloo
m around the narrow space. The window looked out onto a courtyard ten foot below. Previous prisoners had left their marks on the brickwork, a selection of clumsily scratched initials all that remained of their individual identities. Attached to one wall was a single wooden bench worn smooth. How many women had sat there before her, wondering what came next?
If the prison guards were surprised at the sight of a woman wearing a couture evening gown and diamond swastika brooch arriving in their cells, they did not betray it. Nor had the men who arrested her been rough, but instead icily polite. There was no shoving or wrenching of hair, yet her wrists had been cuffed, making it impossible to remove the code paper from her pocket, and as soon as she arrived both jacket and bag had been taken away.
Clara was desperately tired. Her eyes were gritty and exhaustion seeped upwards in her limbs, like a draught of sedative, and although she did everything she could to keep her mind alert, it was hard. From time to time she drifted into a light sleep, but was jarred awake when her head hit the wall or by sounds of shouts and crying from the other cells. A deep unflagging terror settled in her guts, yet still she tried to focus through the fog of shock that engulfed her. She dropped her head to her knees, hoping that the blood coursing round her brain would help her to concentrate. It was as though she was solving some dreadful cryptic crossword puzzle, whose clues and half-formed suppositions spun around, split apart and refused to come together in her brain.
How long had she been followed?
She knew now that the young man in the lobby of Winterfeldtstrasse was not a police tail, but an illegal fly poster, who also forged documents for Steffi’s resistance group. Yet the instinct that she was under surveillance had continued for weeks, even on the day she had spent walking through the city. Had the Gestapo been shadowing her all this time? Had they followed her to Paris? And if so, what exactly did they suspect?
