by Jane Thynne
Someone has been saying some very unkind things about you.
Leni Riefenstahl told her Himmler had suspicions about Clara’s Aryan status. That meant right now they would be scrutinizing her identity documents. Despite the forger’s skill, who was to say that the fake Ariernachweis would not be just as easily spotted as the one demolished by Conrad Adler? After all, the Gestapo had a string of fine art experts on their books, precisely for the task of examining documents. And yet . . .
To be apprehended for false identity was so much less grave than being arrested as a spy. The penalty for false identity was imprisonment, a camp perhaps. Please God, that they suspected her only of being a Jew. Because to be convicted as a spy was far worse.
But nothing so bad as if they suspected her of an attempt to kill the Führer. There was only one penalty for that.
She turned the problem over and over in her head, looking at it from different perspectives, examining it like a jewel of many facets. Questions revolved in a dizzy, sickening whirr. Would they have actually found the tiny scrap of paper that she had so precisely, carefully concealed deep in her jacket pocket? She remembered Steffi telling her that the Gestapo had become adept at ripping the linings of coats and jackets, running their fingers along the seams in the hunt for hidden valuables. If they found it, what importance might they place on it? Would they suspect Benno Kurtz? She was glad she had not actually had the chance to contact him before they took her away; if he was anything like as resourceful as he sounded, he would be able to bluff his way out. But what would it mean for Erich, and his hopes of SS leadership school, if his godmother was arrested as a spy?
Eventually, she gave up and ran through the store of images that, like a series of glittering stones, lit the path back to her own childhood. Her early theatrical career, the films she had acted in, coming to Berlin and meeting Helga Schmidt and Erich. Loving Leo. In her head she played the adagio of Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto, the one that Leo so cherished. He said it was the closest that music came to prayer. She teased out each note in her memory, forcing her limbs to relax into its yearning. She thought of the first time she had seen Erich, on an outing to the funfair at Luna Park, and the following years, his voice breaking, his shoulders broadening, his life opening out before him.
Everything hung in the balance now. Her whole existence might soon be unstrung, like a necklace snipped and its pearls sent spiralling over the ground.
The table in the interrogation room was pocked with burns, sending the ominous message that the interrogators were far from cautious about where they stubbed their cigarettes. A low cloud of tobacco smoke, acrid in the mouth like petrol, hung in the air, barely troubled by the draught from an open window. The officer slouched in a chair with his legs crossed had an unhealthy, jaundiced look to him, as though he spent his life in the artificial glare of a Gestapo spotlight. His face might have been plucked straight from one of the cabinets at Himmler’s Ahnenerbe, with skin stretched taut over the cadaverous cheekbones, pale scalp beneath his freshly shaved skull and a yellowish tint of ivory to the eyes. One of his ears was cabbaged, suggesting that physical violence was a familiar medium for him.
He rocked back in the chair when he saw her, and twisted his cigarette to join the others in the ashtray on his desk.
‘Sit down, Fräulein Vine.’
She wondered how senior he was. Not very, or he would have been at home asleep, rather than doing an interrogation night shift. The look of brute malice in his eyes seemed to confirm that.
‘My name is Kriminalsekretär Riesbach.’
Her guess was correct. He was relatively low-ranking, which made it all the more important that she gauge her response carefully. There had been a rash of Ufa performers arrested recently, hauled in for questioning about activities detrimental to National Socialism, and their brash, actorly manner, their namedropping and threats, only served to irritate the rank and file policemen, who treated them more harshly as a result.
‘Perhaps you can explain why I’m here,’ she said quietly.
‘I was rather hoping that you would explain that to me. But maybe you will need some encouragement.’
‘Could you tell me why I was arrested?’
Riesbach made a clumsy play of reasonableness, as though he had decided that because she was an actress, a degree of play-acting was appropriate. He spread his hands.
‘Why not? A loyal patriot advised us that we should keep a watch on you, Fräulein Vine. From your file I see it’s not the first time you have come to the attention of the authorities.’
‘That was a mistake. I was released immediately and without charge.’
A frown descended on Riesbach’s brutish features. He was pretending puzzlement.
‘Have you ever heard of the saying No smoke without fire?’
‘Yes. It’s a common cliché.’
‘So what are we to make of this? Another arrest. Another patriot who believes you are engaged in actions against the well-being of the Reich.’
‘Actions?’
‘Espionage, woman!’ His face flushed and his voice rose to an angry bark. ‘This patriot believed you may not be loyal to the Reich. That you may in fact be an English spy.’
Stay calm. Don’t react instinctively.
‘That’s an outrageous accusation.’
Indignation and fear was the only correct response. The response of the innocent.
‘I’m glad you see it like that. I feel the same. But then we found this.’
With a flourish, he reached beneath the desk and pulled out a book, light blue with darker blue lettering, that Clara recognized as her copy of The Thirty-Nine Steps. Her lips blanched with fear and reflexively she bit them to force the colour back into them.
Riesbach opened the book carefully at the frontispiece, as though examining some precious, ancient manuscript.
‘You can imagine my colleagues’ excitement when they found an English novel which appears to belong to the library of the Foreign Minister. Unfortunately, when they telephoned the Herr Minister’s home, only Frau von Ribbentrop could be found and she was not pleased to be contacted in the middle of the night.’
The figure of Frau von Ribbentrop in a dressing gown, summoned to the telephone to explain why an actress should be carrying one of her husband’s books, would indeed be formidable. Clara could only imagine her response.
‘My men decided to postpone their questions, for the time being at least.’
So she had been saved. Saved by the foul temper of Annelies von Ribbentrop.
‘But please don’t think that our enquiries have ended there.’
A twist of pure pleasure spread across Riesbach’s face as, like an amateur magician, he produced an envelope and tipped it out on the table. It was Clara’s tiny matchstick of paper, carefully unrolled to reveal the line of numbers. How foolish to underestimate their efficiency.
He poked at the paper with an extended finger.
‘I wonder what this might be?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘Strange, when it was found in the pocket of your own jacket.’
‘I’m sorry. I’m very tired. I can’t remember.’
This was inadequate, but the only answer Clara could summon while her brain moved at lightning speed to explain away the code.
‘A list of numbers. What should we deduce from that?’
‘It’s probably a telephone number. Fans pass me their numbers all the time. They push notes into my pockets.’
‘Good try, Fräulein. We rang it already. Or tried to. That doesn’t work.’
‘Then, I’m afraid . . .’
‘Perhaps you need to take a closer look?’
As Clara bent to examine it, Riesbach moved abruptly forward, reached over and swatted her upwards, across the face. The impact of the ring on his knuckle sliced the skin on her cheek. The blow took her by surprise and she reeled backwards.
‘Perhaps that will refresh your memory.’
‘
It hasn’t.’
‘You’re an actress, Fräulein. You’re supposed to remember things. Another one might help.’
A second blow, this time on the side of the head, making her ear ring and forcing her to clench her teeth.
‘That’s not a helpful technique.’
‘What innocent person walks around with a list of numbers in their pocket?’
She decided to keep her head very still, as though facing an aggressive dog, in an attempt to forestall another attack. They had taken away her watch but the clock on the wall opposite told her it was five am.
‘As I said, Herr Kriminalsekretär, people put things in my pocket all the time.’
The door clanged and another man entered the room. Although Clara did not turn, she could tell that he was senior, by the way that Riesbach half rose, before the newcomer jerked his head abruptly and leaned against the wall, arms folded.
‘Carry on, Dieter.’
Riesbach’s tone modified, marginally, and took on an air of aggrieved bureaucracy.
‘I was asking the prisoner the significance of a list of numbers found on a piece of paper in her jacket.’
The newcomer interrupted.
‘The charges before you are very serious, Fräulein.’
Clara did not look round. From the corner of her eye, she could make out that the senior man had a hard face and a toothbrush moustache. His voice was more educated than Riesbach’s, exuding the deep tedium of the early hours.
‘Charges?’
‘Allegations, precisely. The charges will come later. You need to talk to us. One way or another, we are going to require some answers.’
Clara continued staring rigidly at the clock. She was cold, in her sleeveless evening dress, and her flesh rose in goose bumps, but shivering would look like fear. She wrapped her arms round her in an attempt to keep warm.
‘Not cooperating is not going to help you, Fräulein Vine.’
The senior man’s tone said he was bored, his civility in short supply.
‘Playing dumb might work at the Ufa studios, but it won’t work here.’
‘I have cooperated in every way.’
‘Fine.’ He scraped a chair by its legs across the room and brought it right next to her, his face so close that she could feel his breath on her cheek. He smelt of tobacco and good aftershave.
‘Perhaps you think I’m a little slow.’
‘Not at all.’
‘Only, as Kriminalsekretär Riesbach says, we are puzzled by this piece of paper that was found in the pocket of your evening jacket. Dieter, can you fetch the jacket?’
‘No need. The paper’s right there.’
‘I said fetch the Fräulein’s jacket.’
With sullen menace, Riesbach got reluctantly to his feet and left the room. As he did, the tall officer rose swiftly and moved to the door. He pulled it shut, came back to Clara and put his face even closer. Forcing herself to look at him, she saw two different eyes. One brown, one blue.
Such a distinguishing feature would make undercover work impossible.
That was what she had thought when she passed a man in the corridor of D Section in London. Could it be possible that the same man, with his narrow tawny moustache and mismatched eyes, was standing right in front of her? Could a man trained in the depths of British Intelligence have been transplanted to the Gestapo in Berlin?
As if to confirm it, he spoke in English, very quietly.
‘I’m going to let you out. Go quickly. Find somewhere to stay out of sight. If my senior officers object there’s every chance you will be picked up again.’
Clara could barely move. She was paralysed with fear.
‘Who informed on me?’
His voice was so low she could barely catch it.
‘It must have been someone close to you. I heard Dieter say it was the last person he would have suspected. Now go.’
As she rose, the door clanged open and Riesbach returned, Clara’s evening bag in one hand and her jacket suspended like a rag from his other fist. Springing to his feet, the senior officer snatched it from him, tossed it across the desk to her and turned to his colleague with an expression of barely suppressed fury.
‘For Christ’s sake, Dieter! All your talk of codes. One look at this and I can tell the lady is plainly innocent. Did you even bother to examine this nonsense?’ He picked up the piece of paper, held it tauntingly in front of his baffled colleague, before screwing it into a ball and tossing it out of the window.
‘Have you never in your life seen a line of Reichslotterie numbers?’
Chapter Thirty-five
Dawn had broken as Clara hurried through the east of the city. A sheet of clouds was pulled across the sky, lanced with sunlight that left their vapour pearlescent. Early workers were beginning to arrive at the textile factories and hooters were sounding. A horse-drawn milk cart was making its rounds, awaited by hausfraus touting capacious blue cans for their deliveries, and the first queues for bread and groceries were beginning to form. Here in the east, Albert Speer’s construction work was well underway and blocks of houses were being razed, the dust blooming into the air. Twisted metal and hunks of mortar lay alongside pathetic domestic debris – a stray kitchen sink, a banister, a wardrobe mirror, a cot. Everywhere, it seemed, life had been turned inside out and what was previously concealed was now on full display.
Clara wiped the place on her cheek where Riesbach had hit her and tasted metallic blood on her finger, but she barely registered the injury. Her mind was racing with the question of who might have betrayed her.
I heard Dieter say it was the last person he would have suspected.
Was that because the informant was the wife of a senior Government minister? Had Magda Goebbels reported her, out of a mistaken paranoia that Clara had slept with her husband? Or, more likely, had Conrad Adler decided to punish her, merely because she refused to become his mistress?
Although the Gestapo officer had told her to stay out of sight, she had no idea where to go. She had no desire to return to Griebnitzsee, nor would she dream of seeking shelter with Erich and his grandmother in Neukölln. For a moment she contemplated visiting the Adlon and finding refuge in Mary’s room before remembering that Mary would be far away by now, on her way to London. And that she badly needed a change of clothes. She decided to return to her old apartment in Winterfeldtstrasse and seek at least temporary sanctuary while she worked out what to do next.
In Nollendorfplatz, early morning commuters were already streaming into the station with its high glass dome, the red and yellow trains clanking along the elevated section. Clara walked swiftly along Potsdamerstrasse, but as she turned the corner into Winterfeldtstrasse, a figure stepped out of the shadow of a recessed doorway.
‘Do you have a death wish?’
Conrad Adler was still in the suit he had worn the previous evening at the Führer’s film screening. His coat was draped over his shoulders and, by the look of it, he had not slept all night. He appeared far older than before. His face was shadowed with stubble and his eyes bloodshot.
He gripped her roughly by the arm and pushed her back into the porch, away from the road.
‘You’re a fool, coming back here.’
Anger rose in her. Fury at the treacherous sexual attraction she had felt for this man who, if her suspicions were correct, was prepared to dispose of her at a moment’s notice and consign her to a horrible fate.
‘I’m a fool ever to have listened to a word you said. I expect you’re wondering why I’m walking the street considering you handed my name to the Gestapo. You were hoping I’d be sitting in Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse by now.’
As if on cue a car proceeded slowly up the street and pulled to a stop further down the road opposite Clara’s apartment building. The engine died, but no one got out. Adler pulled Clara closer into his arms. In their evening clothes they resembled a pair of lovers who could barely bring themselves to separate after dancing until dawn. His face was just inches from
hers and she detected his shock at the purpling cut on her cheek.
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘I was informed on and arrested. I know the informer was you.’
‘That’s ridiculous. Why would I have you arrested?’
‘There’s no telling what someone like you would do.’
‘Someone like me?’
‘Magda Goebbels told me someone was spreading rumours about me. You must think I’m naïve. Listening to your talk, having dinner with you, riding with you, when all the time you’re working for Heydrich.’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘Leni Riefenstahl overheard you and Heydrich discussing me.’
Adler’s grip on Clara loosened slightly. Outwardly, he was composed, but his eyes were alive, calculating.
‘I can’t deny that I have undertaken some work for Heydrich. But I promise you, Clara, for what it’s worth, I have not informed on you. I knew nothing whatever about you until we met on the night of the Führer’s birthday.’
‘So how did you know where to find me now?’
‘Goebbels insisted I attend that goddamned film evening. He had the nerve to suggest I might find it educational. When you left the Chancellery in a hurry I followed you, and saw you being picked up. Later I enquired at the police station and was surprised to discover you had been released. I guessed you might head for your old apartment.’
‘And how did you know this address?’
‘I’m a bureaucrat, Clara, remember? I told you. I did my researches.’
He reached his coat round so that it draped over both their shoulders, and arm in arm they turned back down the street.
‘My car is parked round the corner. It would seem you might need a change of plan.’
Adler’s lakeside villa was the epitome of good taste. It was painted a buttery yellow and framed by magnificent Blutbuchen – blood-red beech trees that flamed against the sky. At eight in the morning the air was fresh and still. As she climbed out of Adler’s car, Clara would not have been surprised to find a servant at the porticoed entrance, but it was Adler himself who pushed open the door and ushered her inside.
