Black Roses (27 page)

With difficulty Leo wrenched his thoughts back onto the subject of this conversation. Hitchcock was referring to the communication Leo had sent a week ago to London and was now regretting.

The message had come back that Leo was to “maintain contact”. His next report must be written the day before Bag Day, the day the diplomatic bag went to London, which was tomorrow. He should be aware there was increasing Gestapo surveillance of foreigners. Telephones would be tapped and there would be routine shadowing of people with embassy or journalistic links. It went on to say his source should be made fully aware of the operational difficulties and take all the “requisite precautions”.

‘That’s good.’

Hitchcock was lighting another Corona. He would never have bought his own cigars. He was probably making the most of the Embassy’s supplies.

‘Yes, and it’s a stroke of luck for us to find a source so close to the high command. That kind of high-grade intelligence is going to get increasingly valuable, I’d say. Head Office are beginning to wake up to the realities of this regime. There’s talk of budgets being increased.’

Leo was only too aware that Clara was a valuable prize. The opportunity she had to peer below the surface of Nazi society, and glimpse the fault lines and the fractures that lay beneath, made her an extraordinary asset. Unique probably. But hearing Hitchcock talk about her put Leo’s teeth on edge.

‘Pleased to hear it.’

‘In fact, while you’re at it, there’s something else I’d like you to take a look at.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Probably nothing. But they’re quite interested in London. He’s a walk-in. He says he represents the Red Front Fighters Union. He wants paying for identifying Communist contacts in Britain.’

‘And would he be in a position to know?’

‘Yes, but they want us to check him out first. I wondered if you’d see him. You might need Xantener Strasse.’

The apartment in Xantener Strasse was in an anonymous beige building situated a block south of the Ku’damm. It was a tall, nineteenth-century block, with frosted glass in the front door, and a long, dark hallway lined with pocked tiles. The owner of the bakery next door lived on the ground floor and the rest of the block housed the kind of transient population that passes through any large city, travelling salesmen, the proprietor of a ceramics factory in Munich, a visiting academic from the University of Hanover. Neighbourliness was in short supply, which made it pretty much ideal. The British apartment was on the third floor and contained a bedroom, a bathroom, money and a small amount of tinned food. As far as the owner of the block was concerned it belonged to a Herr Edvard Zink, who ran a small company supplying cigarettes and spent most of his time away, leaving the apartment deserted, apart from the occasions when Herr Zink’s employees spent the odd night in Berlin. The company’s brass plaque was by the bell. It was generally used as a safe house by whoever needed it.

‘There’s a lot of interest in that direction just now,’ said Hitchcock. ‘It’s down to the Nazis’ haul after the Reichstag affair.’

He was referring to the day after the fire, when vans of storm troopers had descended on the headquarters of Social Democrat organisations and the KPD, the German Communist Party, seizing the members and carrying off lorryloads of documents.

‘There was a cache of papers seized by the SA from the KPD. Goering claims there were plans for attacks on public buildings and assassinations of public figures. London takes the Comintern threat seriously, as you know. Guy Liddell from B division has been invited over to discuss the haul with Rudolf Diels. I take it you know who I mean?’

Leo nodded. It was hard to miss the man Goering had appointed head of the political police, if only because his hatchet face was badly marked by duelling injuries inflicted when he was a student. Diels was a lawyer by training, an expert on building up information to incriminate political radicals and, if that didn’t frighten them, the three long curving scars that puckered and bisected his visage never failed to induce a shiver. The challenge was to tear your gaze from those scars and fix instead on his narrow, calculating eyes.

‘The Prince of Darkness? Friendly chap. I think I saw him talking to the Ambassador earlier.’ Leo stood, hands in pockets, studiedly neutral.

‘Yes, well. From what they say, apparently there’s records of Soviet funding for organizations in Britain and details of individuals who pose a threat.’

‘You’d think if we’re talking about threatening individuals, there’s no shortage of them right under our noses.’

‘Price of liberty is eternal vigilance and all that,’ said Hitchcock, tapping the side of his nose in a way that irritated Leo intensely. ‘Names have come up that need checking out.’

‘Right.’

‘So you can take care of the walk-in then? You’ll set up a meeting?’

‘Sure. Ask him if he likes Rilke.’

‘Rilke?’ Hitchock’s face expressed a mixture of suspicion and incomprehension that made Leo think of the line in that
Schlageter
play: “When I hear the word culture I reach for my gun.” Already several senior Nazis had been heard parroting the line for their own amusement, but it could have been coined for Hitchcock too.

‘He’s the Germans’ favourite poet. Tell him there’s a bookshop on Leonhardstrasse which has a great selection.’

‘Right you are.’ Hitchcock cast him a quizzical glance, then patted him on the back. ‘Good man.’

They went back into the ballroom, and Hitchcock said, ‘Ah, I see old Mickey Mouse has arrived.’

It was fascinating to see Goebbels close up: the huge ears, which had earned him the nickname, the tight, clever-looking face, the alert brown eyes. But it was his companion whom Leo was looking out for. Sturmhauptführer Müller, a dark, good-looking brute in his forties, was whispering into the little minister’s ear. He was a burly, muscular man with a tan that suggested a life outdoors and a physical energy only just confined by his perfectly pressed uniform. At once Leo’s senses were on the alert. Every instinct in his body united and he felt a stab of emotion, which he identified as professional attention. He signalled to the waiter for another glass of champagne.

So this was the man who had taken an interest in Clara. What had she said? “It’s difficult to go on meeting a man who expects something.”

He knew exactly what she meant, but he had ignored her perfectly normal female delicacy. It was hardly a surprise that Müller should take an interest in her. There was something about those dark brows, not the plucked, pencilled lines German women went in for, and the violet eyes beneath them. Something that suggested turbulence barely contained, along with the petulant lips and the curly hair that constantly escaped from its style. That scent she wore, with its spice and vanilla, that you caught a snatch of when close. He pictured again the flush on her cheeks and the filmy eyes as she left the art gallery and yet again regretted being so curt with her. God knows what she thought of him. But there was no choice. It was the only way. The sooner she understood what she had signed up for, the better really.

Leo accepted another glass from the waiter and took a large gulp. An agreeable numbness was starting to take the edge off things. It was time to concentrate on his duties as a host. Yet it was impossible to stop thoughts of Clara running through his mind. He heartily wished he had never mentioned her existence to Head Office, only at the time it had just seemed too promising an opening to ignore. With the result that he had raised expectations and placed her under a threat she couldn’t properly understand.

The nature of that threat had in a matter of months become only too plain to him. Since their seizure of power, the brutality the Nazis had employed on the streets had become legitimized, and violent interrogation, torture and arbitrary imprisonment were now the norm. The mere fact of being female did not guarantee decent treatment. The first reports from women who had been arrested in the recent crackdown suggested they suffered the same beatings and savagery as their male counterparts. The fate of a woman found spying didn’t bear thinking about.

A sick feeling of disgust arose in him. He felt contagious. As though merely by meeting Clara he had infected her with some kind of disease that also ran through him. He looked across at the circle of National Socialists laughing and drinking and standing slightly apart from them he saw Bella Fromm, the upmarket gossip columnist from the
Vossische Zieitung
, spikily aquiline with her raven hair, and the hooded eyes that implied, before she had written a word, the profound scepticism she felt towards the new regime. Then he thought back to the problem of the message from Head Office.

“The source should be made fully aware of all operational difficulties and take the requisite precautions.”

What did those “requisite precautions” include? There were so many skills Clara would need to learn. To listen out for the click on the telephone line that suggested the police were present. To cultivate that sixth sense that recognized a pattern and when it was changed. To vary her route, think before speaking, never relax and as much as she could, with the figure and face she had, avoid attracting attention. Most of all she must never underestimate the savagery of these thugs masquerading as statesmen with their medals and armbands, sipping His Majesty’s champagne. In truth, the best precaution for a woman like Clara was to be as far away from here as possible, in England preferably, performing in
Hay Fever
or whatever that play was she had talked about. He thought again of the moment she had come to him at the office, eyes shining with some defiant emotion, and he wondered what had provoked her desire to help.

‘You’re miles away.’

A woman touched him on the elbow. It was Rupert’s friend. Mary Harker. She had what Americans called ‘the girl-next-door look’. Not exactly attractive, with her glasses and stubborn straw coloured hair which stuck out awkwardly and looked like she brushed it once in the morning, and then not again all day. She had sallow skin and a beaky nose, but they were more than compensated for by a sweet, down-turned, deprecatory smile. From what he knew of Rupert’s romantic tastes Leo didn’t rate her chances of a long-lasting relationship with his friend, but he couldn’t help warming to her.

‘I enjoyed the other evening. Rupert pretended he needed an early night, but that lasted about two minutes before he gave in and took us off to a nightclub. We were there until three a.m. and totally bleary when we rolled into the press conference the next day. We could hardly keep awake, which wasn’t helped by the fact that we had to spend hours taking notes on the precise division of the Propaganda Department into ministries for the press and film and broadcasting and paperclips and so on. Infernally boring! How about you two? I bet you went dancing.’

‘I went straight home.’

‘Did you? And I was sure you two were going to sneak off somewhere!’ She gave him a knowing look, which Leo blanked.

‘How is she anyway? Clara?’

She was persistent. Leo had to give her that.

‘I really wouldn’t know, I’m afraid.’

‘Ah well.’ She gave up. ‘It’s quite a turnout tonight, isn’t it, considering the low opinion they seem to have of you Brits. That chap over there told me that there’s a gigantic conspiracy of international Jewry being organized from London.’

‘So I hear.’

He lit a cigarette for her and they stood companionably, looking out at the assembled throng. The senior Nazis progressed around the room in a complicated gavotte, designed to avoid encountering each other.

‘They don’t look like they’re enjoying themselves much, do they?’ he observed.

‘I guess a British Embassy cocktail party is a long way from a Bavarian beer cellar.’

‘I hear there was another wave of arrests last night.’

‘I heard that too,’ she said. ‘It came up in the morning press conference. But when my colleague from the
New Republic
asked Goering about it, he said there has been no violence, the violence is over and anyone suggesting that there is still violence will face reprisals.’

‘Violent reprisals, I take it.’

Leo noticed that Goebbels and Müller, in order to avoid crossing paths with Goering, were heading straight for them. Müller, immaculate in his SA breeches and knee boots, was already smiling speculatively in their direction. Seized by a violent aversion, whose cause he could not precisely define, Leo took Mary’s elbow and hastily turned away.

The photographer from the
B.Z. am Mittag
was a fussy little man with a pernickety expression and a relentlessly worried manner. He had good reason too, considering that he had taken the best part of twenty minutes to set up his equipment in the drawing room of the Goebbels’ home, where Clara was to be photographed wearing the designs of the first collection. There were a couple of large cameras on rickety tripods and both had to be fitted with the correct lenses, and then the lights placed in precise locations around the room. The curtains had to be drawn too, to get the light exactly right, and he was issuing his harried assistant with increasingly sharp orders as the lady of the house waited impatiently upstairs. Clara had compounded the problem herself by arriving late and Magda was at her most imperious, brimming with irritation. She was sitting at her dressing table, primping her hair with aggressive little jabs.

‘I’m sorry I’m late. I overslept a little, I’m afraid.’

In reality Clara had sat in a coffee house by the tram stop, collecting her thoughts and bracing herself for the morning ahead. She regretted her bad temper with Leo the day before. At first she had put it down to tiredness or a lack of breakfast. But the truth was, she knew it wasn’t that. It was Leo’s assumption that she would be willing to do anything that was necessary with Müller. Did he realize what he was asking?