by Andie Newton
‘Don’t look at me like that,’ he said. ‘It’s suspicious.’
I pushed my pad and pencil to the side. ‘What?’
‘I need you to find out information on Auschwitz…’
‘What kind?’ I said.
He put his arms on the table and leaned in, smiling, making it appear as if we were having a jolly conversation about the weather by pointing at the clouds. ‘There are whisperings about the prisons—’ he looked over his shoulder ‘—troubling plans.’
‘What are you saying?’ I said, and suddenly there was giggling behind me, and Christophe’s eyes flicked over my head.
‘Blimey,’ he said. ‘Louise.’ He laughed as if I’d just told him a joke. ‘Act natural. Here she comes.’ He slid out from the seat and walked off.
Moments later I heard the shuffle of Louise’s fat feet through the grass. ‘Hello, Ella,’ she said all cheery. The woman I’d seen her with earlier smiled beside her. They jabbed each other with their elbows as if they’d been talking about me.
‘Louise.’ I opened up to a blank page in my writing pad and took up my pencil.
‘Well,’ she said. ‘Aren’t you going to ask me who my friend is?’
The two of them looked at each other, smirking.
‘This is my friend from Belief and Beauty.’ Louise squinted her eyes. ‘You asked me who my best friend was once. This is her.’ I looked back at my paper and she reached over the table and tapped my notebook. ‘Don’t be rude. Say hello.’
‘I thought I did.’ I smiled at the friend. ‘Hello.’
She looked as homely as Louise did in the warm spring sun with her drab brown hair pinned loose behind her neck. She picked a few of the chamomiles and stuck them into the lapel of her jacket, but being playful didn’t suit her. ‘So, this is Hoffmann’s secretary,’ she said. ‘The one that delivered the White Rose leaflets to your whole building?’
My eyes jolted. ‘I’m not White Rose.’
‘You did deliver the leaflets,’ Louise corrected.
‘By accident.’ I scowled. ‘I was tricked by the mail clerk.’
‘Of course, that’s what I meant,’ she said. ‘But the truth is you still delivered them.’
‘Careful what you say, Louise.’ I sat up tall. ‘And how you say it.’ Bold talk, I thought, even for Louise. ‘This isn’t the first time you’ve said nasty things to me.’
‘What will you do? Take some of my duties away?’ She looked at her nails, which were freshly painted and well filed. ‘Shame. I should hope to be less busy.’ She looked at my pad of paper. ‘What are you doing out here anyway? I’m sure you have lots of work to tend to.’
‘It looks like she’s going to write a letter,’ the friend said.
‘To a friend?’ Louise cackled. ‘I’ve never seen you with anyone. Only heard you talk of this phantom friend of yours who you’d do anything for. Where’s she on this beautiful day?’
Louise turned to the woman, talking loudly. ‘She asked me if I had a best friend. I told her I was in the BDM and that I had lots of friends, but she said that’s not what she meant.’
Her friend looked confused. ‘There’s a difference?’
Louise’s eyes lit up. ‘That’s what I said!’
They both laughed, and continued as if I wasn’t even there, talking about the League girls twirling their batons in the chamomiles. They must have seen me roll my eyes because they stopped talking abruptly.
‘You’re right,’ Louise’s friend said as they walked away. ‘There’s no way she was in the BDM. She quit after the Youth League.’
I watched them walk off together, arm in arm.
The blank page before me was still a blank page, and out of nowhere a tear spilled over my cheek and ran down my face.
21
August
The moment I ascended the staircase in the V-building I felt Louise’s heavy gaze staring down upon me from the second floor. She raised one eyebrow before turning around to lean against the balustrade. Then I saw Erwin peep over her shoulder.
‘She’s coming,’ Louise said, and Erwin’s arms crossed.
Louise and Erwin had been openly dating for months. Part of me didn’t like them together since Louise already had a sore spot for me, and Erwin had probably worked out I’d used him. The other part of me thought they were both perfect for each other—the scratching noise between Louise’s thighs complemented Erwin’s piggy squeals in a comical, almost cartoonish way. And to think I paid her to dance with him at that NSDAP dance.
‘Good morning,’ I said as I brushed passed them. Erwin’s nose flared while Louise watched me with her wide eyes. Neither of them said anything. ‘Good morning, Ella,’ I said back to myself.
Hoffmann had just returned from a lunch meeting at the Führerbau. It had been three hours since his last real drink, so I poured him some whisky and set it on the glass table next to the leather lounge chair in his office.
Beads of sweat dripped from his scalp into his ears. He pulled his collar away from his neck, complaining about the warm room, but then lifted the glass by its rim with a shaking hand. ‘Thank you for this.’
‘Louise is upset at me again,’ I said, closing his door. ‘Hell.’
He chuckled. ‘Careful, Ella. You’re starting to sound like the men in the building.’
‘She’s dating Erwin, and I think he’s upset with me too.’
‘You don’t have to worry about either of them,’ Hoffmann said. ‘You’re the best secretary I’ve had. Erwin is a spoiled boy, and Louise, well…’ He looked over the rims of his glasses. ‘We know how she is.’
He pulled a folded piece of paper from his back pocket and flapped it in the air until it was flat. ‘I suppose this is why she’s upset.’ His voice gurgled with wetness. ‘The Japanese are coming, and you’re the chaperone.’
‘What?’ I snatched it from his hand: the meeting minutes. Mustard and cigar burns stained the edges, and a coffee ring darkened the middle with two different shades of brown. In the margin I saw Louise’s name crossed out and mine written instead.
‘But Louise has always been the chaperone.’
He downed the rest of his drink. ‘Not anymore.’ He motioned for a refill. ‘Hiroshi Ōshima, the Japanese Ambassador, is coming with his girlfriend or whatever she is, and she refused to come if Louise was the chaperone. Apparently they had some disagreements last time,’ he said, waving his finger at the whisky bottle. ‘So I volunteered your services.’
I grabbed the whisky bottle by its neck but my eyes were still on the paper. ‘But I don’t know Japanese,’ I said, pouring him another glass.
‘Don’t worry about that. They speak some German and you’ll know some Japanese.’
‘How?’
‘Japanese class.’
I sat down. ‘To learn Japanese?’ I knew that the Reich gave language classes when foreign dignitaries came to Munich. Mostly officers and NSDAP leaders attended.
‘I thought you’d be excited,’ he said. ‘Socializing and entertaining. Not a bad way to spend your weekend hours, is it?’
I rubbed the crook of my neck. I still had several hours of work left, followed by an evening rendezvous with Christophe. ‘I have a lot going on, that’s all.’
Hoffmann took off his suit jacket and got comfortable in his lounge chair. ‘Hard work is what you do best, Ella. Besides, the class won’t start up for a while. The entourage isn’t expected until autumn.’ He kicked off his shoes.
I went to the window to lower the shade; that was when I saw Louise marching up the Königsplatz with stiff determined legs, swinging her hips from left to right.
‘I can’t wait to try the sake,’ he said.
‘You’re going too?’
‘Well, you’re my secretary,’ he scoffed. ‘They can’t send you and not me, can they?’
I followed Louise with my eyes as she walked toward the Braunes Haus, thinking about Hoffmann’s intentions. Why was he happy with me working late and all weekend
when he had never been in the past? Then it occurred to me what he would get from his secretary escorting the Japanese—he could drink as much as he wanted, good Japanese sake, a rarity in Munich and only available to those in the entourage. He wouldn’t have to worry about being watched since everyone would be under the same drunken spell. I had long since proved my ability to work long hours and multiple jobs for multiple departments. I couldn’t blame him, I supposed. I watched Louise open the door of the Braunes Haus and disappear inside.
‘Oh… now I understand,’ I said, turning my back to the window.
‘What?’
I flashed him a fake smile. ‘Nothing, sir.’
*
After weeks of Japanese, I didn’t learn much more than how to say and bow a proper hello. And classes were often late and tiring with mostly old men talking about the war rather than how to speak that ridiculous language.
‘Konnichiwa,’ I said, practicing a handshake in the air. No, I’d bow. ‘Sayonara,’ I said, more forcefully, walking back to my office.
It was late, and Hoffmann had left, but his mess prevailed; a knocked-over rubbish bin spilled apple cores and cigarette butts onto the floor, and a slew of papers with the imprint of a shoe stamped into them bowed across the floor from his desk to the door.
My knees buckled, and I sat in the gap Hoffmann’s body had made in the divan cushions. He must have passed out, then realizing how late it was, made his way home; the whisky evidently still heavy in his system, by the looks of his office. He’d expect me to pick it up. I covered my eyes with the palms of my hands and yawned, listening to the tick from Hoffmann’s desk clock.
A few moments passed, and then I heard my door open and the tap of heeled shoes scoot across my office floor.
I stood up with a jolt. It was too early for the janitor and all of the workers had gone home. I went for the door that separated our offices, but tripped over Hoffmann’s rubbish bin and it banged against the side of his desk with a loud clang.
I lunged for Hoffman’s office door, swinging it open.
Nobody was there.
At first glance, my office looked normal. There hadn’t been much time to poke around before I shot up from the divan, unless they had been in my office while I was at Japanese class. I glanced back at Hoffmann’s dishevelled office; I was sure he had made most of the mess, but had he made it all?
It was then I smelled something in the air, the scent of someone other than myself hovering over my desk. Then I saw the leather desk mat on my desk pushed back and my heart sank. A list of my uncle’s ciphers that had been under there was gone. It was just a list of codes, a key I sometimes used. But it didn’t matter, if the ciphers fell into the wrong hands it would be dangerous, very dangerous.
I threw open my office door, frantically looking down both corridors before racing downstairs, past the building guard and out the front doors and into the street, arms pumping. Two officers were about to get into a chauffeured car, nothing out of the ordinary. But the bus? Louise was just boarding it, tucking papers into her canvas shoulder bag.
She walked the length of the bus and sat down in the very back, smiling like a fat-faced cat, patting her bag. As the bus pulled away from the kerb her eyes shifted toward mine.
I gasped.
The bus guzzled away, leaving a grey plume of exhaust that settled like fog.
‘That… that…’ I growled, fists clenched, cursing Louise in my mind.
Then everything grew very quiet in the street outside the V-building… static. The officers out front had walked away from their car and stepped onto the pavement, staring, studying, deciphering my actions.
*
That night I woke with a jolt, sweating from head to toe and gasping for air. I threw off the covers and sat in the dark, panting, remembering my dream.
Erik sat across from me at the conference table, which had been set for a very large meeting. Louise whispered into his ear and he tipped the table over, screaming madly. Suddenly Hans appeared with a leaflet in his hands. ‘I was never a Falcon.’ He laughed with Louise, and they pointed at my throat where I’d been stabbed with one of Hoffmann’s broken whisky bottles.
‘It was just a dream,’ I said, clamping my throat. ‘A Goddamn dream.’
An orange flame flickered near my window and the outline of Christophe’s face greyed with its light. ‘Looked like a nightmare to me,’ he said.
‘Jesus!’ I said, shouting into a whisper. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’
‘You missed the drop. I thought you might be dead.’
I put my hands to my eyes and rubbed them closed. ‘That’s comforting.’
He walked to the shelf above my desk and flicked the corner of my yellow scarf hanging out of its box.
‘I was at Japanese class,’ I said.
‘Where’s the bag?’ he asked. ‘The papers you promised me?’
I pointed under my bed to a laundry bag filled with men’s clothes, the papers stuffed in one of the trouser pockets.
‘I asked you months ago about plans for the prisons,’ he said. ‘Have you heard anything?’
I shook my head, still holding my throat where it was now tingling. ‘No,’ I said. ‘But you’re right. Something is going on. I’m dismissed from the administration meetings when the prisons are brought up. There’s no meeting minutes.’ I swallowed. ‘I’ll keep trying.’
He tucked his cigarette into his lips, slid the bag out from under my bed and heaved it over one shoulder. I wiped my head and my arms of sweat.
‘What’s going on with you?’ A slick of dark hair fell over his eyes. He brushed it back and I saw his scar.
‘My office was ransacked today.’ An icy chill bumped up my back, breaking the sweat, and I pulled the covers over my legs. ‘Someone’s on to me.’
His lit cigarette fell from his lips just as the bag thumped to the floor. He dropped to his knees, squaring his face with mine. ‘Did they get anything?’ A heavy, natural British accent replaced the German one. Christophe was the only person I spied for; all trails led to him. We both knew this, but the tone in his voice made me think he had never thought it could actually happen until then.
I jabbed him hard in the soft part of his chest. ‘Back off!’ I snarled. ‘Jesus.’ I had never talked to him with such veracity before.
He paused, waiting for the story. ‘Well?’
I picked his cigarette off the floor, pinched the part his mouth had sucked on and puffed on it until it glowed. ‘Erik’s secretary hates me, Louise, you know her. She went through my desk. She took a list of codes, but that’s it.’
A wave of relief washed over his face, then he snatched his cigarette from my mouth. ‘You’ll have to get her fired.’ He glanced at my breasts and his eyes widened. I looked down. Even in dull light their silhouettes under my cream camisole erased all imagination. He flicked his index finger at my chest. ‘Shag him and you can have the whole building.’
‘Ugh!’ I pulled the covers up to my chest. ‘Are all Brits this vulgar or just you?’
He paced around the room thinking, saying things in English before getting in my face. ‘Look, if you pissed her off, all right. But if she suspects you of being a resister, or worse, a spy for the British, then we have a problem. Either way, you need to get rid of her and get on with it. If not through Erik, then with a knife.’
‘I am not killing anyone!’ Louise probably had been searching my office for something to embarrass me with or get me fired. She resented the superiority I had at Nazi Headquarters; I had taken her spot in many ways. Becoming the Japanese chaperone, which had always been her job in the past, was most likely the last straw. Finding the codes might have confused her, but if I gave her some time, she’d just dig deeper.
‘I guess you have your answer then,’ he said.
I shook my head. ‘It’s not that easy.’
‘I’ve seen you work, Sascha. That night at the dance with Halder’s assistant—you’re no shrinking violet.’
‘With this one I am,’ I said. ‘He doesn’t even know my name, calls me Eva. He’s not the type that can be charmed with champagne, or just a dance—God!’ I put my hand to my forehead.
‘I can tell you’re worried,’ he said.
I glared at him for interrupting my thoughts.
‘Time to put your big-girl knickers on and do what’s necessary—not all of it will be pleasant. Understand?’
‘If you knew how old I was, you wouldn’t talk to me like that,’ I said.
‘If you knew how old I was we wouldn’t be alone in your room together! Just remember, if your cover gets blown so does mine, and a whole bunch of other people I can’t tell you about.’
‘Big-girl knickers? And when am I supposed to do this?’
Christophe shrugged. ‘Find a way to get rid of her—take her job if you have to. You do most of it already.’
Erik planned to accompany the Japanese entourage too. Louise wouldn’t be around to sabotage me, and if the sake was as good as I’d heard, it might be my best chance to cosy up to him.
The morning sunlight dawned on the Marienplatz and a soft orange glow filtered through my window. They day had begun, and I had to get to work.
‘You need to go,’ I said, waving him out of the room, ‘and I need to think.’
22
October
The Japanese had arrived. A bright Nazi-red carpet, specially rolled out for Ambassador Ōshima, ran from the double glass doors of the Regina Palast Hotel and into the street. Hoffmann and I stood at the end, sandwiched between the gutter and four toadies from the Wehrmacht with body-sized flags projecting from metal poles; the Nazi Cross in one hand, Japan’s Imperial Rising Sun in the other. Across the carpet, men from all departments, military brass to straight-faced officers of the Reich, lined the edge with the tip of their shoes touching the carpet.
