by Jane Thynne
Even from the outside, she could never have guessed at the sumptuousness revealed within. Everything spoke of long, deep-established wealth. The thick carpet and the carved, mahogany banister. The walls lined with ivory silk and the table bearing a bowl of white roses and a platter of fruit. Even the light felt expensive here, pale lemony sun gilding the burnished wood, glancing off the oak panelling and illuminating the paintings, row on row of them, hung in frames of clotted gold. The air smelt of citrus oils and sandalwood.
A dog came to greet them, a silvery Weimaraner with a coat like polished steel, his body highly sprung, lithe and muscular like the precise canine equivalent of its owner. The dog’s eyes were piercingly pale and amber-coloured, his spine undulating beneath the pelt. When he came to a stop next to his master, the tendons on his legs stood out like strings on a bow and Adler placed a tender, proprietorial hand on him.
‘Most hunting dogs have an unrivalled instinct for prey, but this one is an exception. He doesn’t like to run with the pack. He’s a very individual animal. He goes where he pleases.’
As if in demonstration, the dog trotted off again.
‘Wait here.’
He disappeared down a corridor and Clara heard the distant clink of china. In his absence she looked around her. There was a roll-top desk in the corner on which stood an SS-issue Olympia typewriter, specially fitted with its SS double lightning flash key. There was a stack of official-looking papers beside it, a tortoiseshell inkstand and a brass reading lamp. A glass paperweight like a teardrop, inside which a flower was imprisoned. And the tooled Cartier box containing the diamond earrings she had refused.
She drifted across to the paintings, gleaming like gems in their polished setting, their pigments almost alive. They were portraits mostly, ordinary seventeenth-century citizens gazing out at the painter with inscrutable eyes, enclosed in a soft glow of shining domesticity. The men were playing cards or the lute, and the women were immersed in the simplest of tasks – stitching, pouring milk, reading letters.
‘The Dutch Golden Age,’ said Adler, over her shoulder. He was carrying a tray bearing coffee, rolls and a bottle of cognac. He proceeded to pour a glass and handed it to her.
‘Northern European realism is my greatest love. It was a time when artists moved away from religious painting to the detail of their own lives. Vermeer, of course, is the master.’
He swirled the cognac around in his glass and then swallowed it.
‘It troubles me that Hitler should love Vermeer. Does it devalue the art, do you think, when evil people love it?’
Clara looked up sharply. She had no idea where this was heading.
‘Perhaps Hitler approves of seeing women in a domestic setting,’ he mused. ‘Maybe he thinks the paintings express some time-honoured concept of Germanic tradition. Whatever his notion, he obviously has no real idea of what Vermeer is about. Nor have any of them.’
Adler continued to fix her with an odd, speculative look.
‘I ask myself, is Wagner’s music less ravishing because it is adored by a sadist like Himmler? Is a Vivaldi concerto as beautiful when it is played by a psychopath like Heydrich? Does a vicious thug like Goering sully the Titians and Rubens he professes to adore?’
Adler’s eyes were intently on her own, as though his life depended on her answer.
‘What do you think? Tell me, Clara. It’s a question that torments me.’
‘Of course not. An object can’t be accountable for who loves it, any more than a person can.’
‘I’m glad you think that. Because that’s their crime as far as I’m concerned. It matters far more to me than their politics or their ambitions. I’m not a political man. In my opinion Germany is the greatest nation on earth, and she deserves her empire. No empire is achieved without the spilling of blood. But these men have committed a crime against civilization. They have no respect for art, no true understanding of it. It’s a commodity to them, like iron or steel. The masterpieces they squabble over are pearls before swine. Goering, that fat sentimentalist, may profess some scintilla of cultivation, but he’s no better than a child running his fingers through a jewellery box, picking out the biggest, most glittering stones. Hitler is a peasant, and has a peasant’s appreciation of art. Goebbels may have the wit to perceive, dimly, the value of some work, but he has become a vandal. You heard about the bonfire? Four thousand artworks? Irreplaceable. All in an attempt to impress the Führer.’
‘And how do you propose to stop them? By advising Rosenberg on which works are the most valuable?’
If this barb struck home, Adler barely flinched. He seemed distracted, as if some long suppressed confidence was now tumbling unstoppably out of him. He refilled her glass.
‘I’ve never spoken about this before. Or only once, and that was during my stay in London. I was with a man from British Intelligence, as it happens.’
A tremor went through her, and she hoped that his sharp eyes had not detected it.
‘Why would you meet with British Intelligence?’
‘It wasn’t my idea. A chap called Erich Kordt, one of Von Ribbentrop’s entourage, had put feelers out. Kordt’s an Oxford man and a convinced Anglophile, and he engineered a meeting. The fellow I met seemed to think I would want to work with them. He told me I was too intelligent not to.’
‘And what did you say?’
‘He was right, of course, about my intelligence. It’s impossible to avoid the fact that the National Socialists are by and large a group of ignorant thugs. There’s no real intellect among them. Cunning perhaps, in the case of Goebbels, but a notable lack of brain cells elsewhere. That’s why Frau von Ribbentrop is so dangerous. She has all the intelligence her husband lacks. I often wonder what she suspects of me.’
It was very still in the villa. Only the distant ripple of birdsong pierced the air.
‘So . . . did you accept his offer?’
‘Of course not.’
The anguish left his face and he gave a dazzling smile. ‘What a suggestion, Clara. Can you imagine the penalties for that kind of thing? In fact, Kordt must be a quivering wreck now, imagining that I will report him, but so far I’ve not felt the need to tell anyone.’
He cast his evening jacket aside and wrenched off his tie.
‘Eat something, won’t you?’
She took a roll, helping herself to the thick pat of butter and wondering where it came from.
He scrutinized her as she ate.
‘Are you tired?’
‘I think the nerves are keeping me awake.’
He came in front of her, touched the abrasion on her cheek left by Riesbach’s knuckles and turned over her wrists where the handcuffs had left a sore red bracelet of skin. Then he bent and kissed them.
‘I can’t imagine what they did to you in that prison. I would like to kill the brutes who put their clumsy hands on you. Do you want to sleep?’
‘I’m not sure if I could.’
‘In that case, we shall have to decide what to do with you.’
She gazed at him directly. The air between them seemed to shimmer with expectation.
‘Do with me? What do you mean?’
A small smile lifted up the corner of his mouth.
‘There’s something you should see.’
He pulled her towards a door. Inside was a small, windowless, wood-panelled room, like the chapter house of some mediaeval castle. The burnished walls were hung floor to ceiling with paintings, every surface covered and canvases stacked two or three deep. Yet it was not the number of canvases that surprised her, but the paintings themselves. They were portraits mostly, almost all of them women. An ochre nude of a woman reclining in a posture of luxuriant abandon. Another woman, the neck sharply turned away, the skin pale and luminous as a pearl. A couple, clinging to each other in the wreckage of a world, unsettled and utterly alone, both fascinating and repelling. The figures were spiky and angry and their quality intense and stunning, unlike anything she had seen before. Adler’s
personality flared out of them savagely, in bold brushstrokes and angular lines.
‘I come in here when I need to escape. Whenever I have attended meetings with Heydrich or wasted my time with von Ribbentrop, I know that I can return here and shut myself away. I find it useful to immerse myself in art. It cuts me off from the ugliness of everyday existence.’
In one portrait she recognized something. A pose from a film she had made called The Pilot’s Wife. The girl in the picture was Clara, but as she had never seen herself, caught in a few deft strokes, a figure whose stark lines and angular intensity reminded her of Egon Schiele. There was a sadness in her eyes, as if she was mourning something, and a defiance too.
‘Why keep these pictures secret?’
‘Isn’t it plain? Mine’s a dangerous art. It’s what those barbarians would call degenerate. Hitler fears us, and I understand why. Modernists are angry and self-loathing. We paint our own crisis of spirit. Our work emits the scent of our unconscious. The Nazis want art that’s full of sunlight and pure maidens, whereas we see man how he is. Flawed, miserable, ignoble, compromised.’
‘You didn’t tell me you were an artist.’
‘I was at the Berlin School of Arts when the Gestapo moved in in 1933. I remember staring out of an upper window when they took all the Modernist work down to the courtyard and destroyed it. Do you know what happens when paintings burn? You see flashes of colour as the pigments ignite – peacock blue, emerald green, violet, rose, all glowing like liquid jewels. It’s the chemicals, you see. For a moment there are these gorgeous flickering embers, as the paint bubbles and sizzles, then in an instant it’s all soot and dust. When they trashed the art school I knew I had two choices – I could be like Emil Nolde: change my style, stick to insipid watercolours and pastorals. I could be like Otto Dix and agree to paint family portraits of the von Ribbentrops and their children. Or I could hide in plain sight. I think that’s what they call it. I could wear their colours, like that little hare I told you about in the fields back home. I would focus on the Old Masters and allow everyone to believe I had abandoned my own work.’
‘There was another alternative.’
He frowned.
‘And what would that be?’
‘If you thought they were barbarians, why get involved with them? Nobody forced you to advise them on which masterpieces to steal.’
‘I told you. I’m not political.’
‘You didn’t have to work with them. You didn’t have to stand by while they ride roughshod over every law and civil right. While they arrest and murder thousands of their own citizens. You could have left the country.’
‘You think I should have run away?’
‘You’re already running away. You’re hiding from everything the Nazis represent. You shut yourself in here and pretend the world outside doesn’t exist. That you don’t bear some responsibility for it.’
‘But my dear Clara, it was my responsibilities that kept me here. There was the estate to look after. That’s my patrimony, you understand. The von Adlers have lived in Weimar for generations. It was unthinkable. No, I knew my passion must be concealed. You see,’ he gave her a quick, sharp glance, brimming with meaning, ‘concealed passions are nothing new for me.’
He moved towards her, easing his fingers through her hair, pulling it away from her head so that it kindled against the light and revealing the side of her neck.
‘I love the place where the skin is translucent and you see the blood beneath,’ he murmured. ‘It’s like seeing through you.’
She felt desire quicken in him, his breath hot on her skin.
‘You don’t want me, Conrad.’
He drew back, his perfect face clouded with incomprehension.
‘Why not? That would be particularly irrational and whatever else you know about me, I am a rational man. Besides, I like you.’
‘You said human emotions were entirely untrustworthy.’
‘Perhaps I’m coming round to them.’
There was barely any room to move in the close, contained space. Running his hands down her shoulders, he eased the straps of the evening dress from her shoulders, so that it fell from her and lay in a puddle of silk at her feet. Then he drew her towards him and kissed her.
Just for a moment she responded, then she pulled herself free. He laughed and spread his hands.
‘Very well then. First things first. I also want to paint you.’
She sat for him in the drawing room beside a wall of Delft tiles, bathed in the pure light coming in from the lake. As his hands moved over the paper, Clara felt his eyes sweep over her, taking in every detail of her colouring and complexion, right down to the dusting of freckles on her nose and the flecks of darker blue in the iris of her eye. It was the type of close attention that would serve a policeman well, but in Adler the appraisal seemed entirely non-judgemental, as though he was simply evaluating her living flesh, assessing her proportions.
‘I still want to know. Why you were in Paris, if you were not following me?’
A distracted shrug.
‘I told you. I was advising on a collection.’
‘For Goering or for Hitler?’
‘Clara Vine, this persistent line of questioning does not suit you. Especially when you should be grateful to me.’
‘Grateful to you? Why?’
He sighed, and dashed down his pencil.
‘All right. I’ll tell you.’
Reaching behind him he found an old shirt, daubed with paint, which he tossed towards her. Instantly, she covered herself up.
‘It’s true, Goering and Hitler are engaged in a race. Their intention is to carry off every piece of art they desire to the Reich. But my business in Paris was something different. You see, when I first met you I recognized your name.’
‘That’s not entirely unusual for me, though it might be hard for you to understand.’
‘Be patient, woman. Let me explain. When you asked me what I was doing in Paris, I told you I was advising on a collection. I have allowed you to think that collection was one of paintings. But it wasn’t. It was names. And when I first met you, it wasn’t your Christian name I recognized.’
‘You’d heard of my father? That’s no surprise.’
‘Perhaps I should explain what I was advising on and why. Shortly after I returned from England, Reinhard Heydrich contacted me. To say it was a surprise is an understatement. A call from Heydrich is not the kind of invitation you put on the mantelpiece. But I went along to his office in Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse and saw to my dismay that he had my file open before him on the desk. Always a bad sign.’
What had Leni Riefenstahl said? In Heydrich’s mind, information is power. He has a locked safe that he refers to as his ‘poison cabinet’ where he keeps all his files on the senior men.
‘But contrary to my expectations, he began to compliment me on my memory.’
‘Do you have a good memory?’
‘Exceptional, actually. I’m a freak of Nature. As a child it was called an eidetic memory because I could recall images and objects with high precision. Even the minutest details. It’s declined a little with age, but it is a talent all the same, and it was that talent Heydrich wanted. He knew I’d spent two years mingling with British society, reading British newspapers, meeting British aristocrats, politicians and writers. He pointed out that my enthusiasm for that country was flagged in my file as a warning. There had been fears that I intended to make London my home. Suggestions I preferred the British way to life in the Reich.’ A gruff chuckle. ‘I was able to reassure him on that score.’
He glanced out of the window at the splendour of the gardens beyond, the manicured lawns, clipped hedges and sculpted trees.
‘Who would forsake somewhere like this in a hurry?’
‘So what did Heydrich want?’
‘He told me something in deep confidence. It wasn’t a confidence I wanted, but once I had it, I was bound by it. Heydrich knew he had me captive simply by telling m
e his plans. That’s how it works with secrets. Once you know them, you’re trapped.’
His eyes shifted as if passing over private thoughts.
‘Heydrich is creating what he calls his Black Book. A collection of all the most significant enemies of National Socialism in Great Britain.’
‘You mean, in case of invasion?’
‘Should his plans go ahead. Ultimately his deputy, Walter Schellenberg, will be in charge of this operation. Schellenberg is Chief of Amt VI – that’s the Foreign Intelligence branch of the Security Service, but in the meantime Heydrich wanted my advice. I’d spent two years immersed in British society so I was perfectly placed.’
His gaze was distant, as though he was seeing far beyond the boundaries of the Reich to England, and all the people and parties and places he had once enjoyed.
‘Take your film about the Ahnenerbe, Clara. Germans travelling the globe, studying different societies. Well, what Heydrich wanted from me wasn’t so different. He has compiled a picture of British society, made up not of old bones and skulls, but names. On that day in his office he gave me his Black Book and asked me to provide notes on which of the names inside it were friendly to the National Socialist government and who might prove hostile.’
‘How many names?’
‘Two thousand, eight hundred, to be precise. Both British subjects and European exiles, who are to be arrested or taken into protective custody in the event of a successful German invasion. The people deemed enemies will be arrested immediately. Churchill. Eden. Duff Cooper. They’ll be seized within days. Churchill will be placed in the hands of Foreign Intelligence and the rest turned over to the Gestapo for imprisonment. The others, lower down, will merely be placed on trial.’
‘Who are they?’
‘I recognized most of them immediately. H.G. Wells, Virginia Woolf, Noël Coward, E.M. Forster, Aldous Huxley, Stephen Spender, Sigmund Freud, Rebecca West. And when I heard your name I recognized it too.’
