Black Roses (29 page)

When he first accepted this job, before he came to Berlin, Leo had spent a couple of days in a shabby country house in Suffolk being taught the basics of the espionage agent’s craft. A genial colonel with a gun dog trailing at his heels, who might well have been the house’s owner, taught him all about communicating with Head Office and how to send messages in the diplomatic bag. A fey young man in a Fair Isle sweater, who looked more like an art historian than an intelligence agent, chatted about the political situation in Germany and quizzed him on how to assess the value of any information he might receive. The third part of the training, taught by a brusque character called Ralph Sidebottom, who had worked in Russia during the war, was what they called the Practical. Put that way it sounded more like a chemistry lesson than the grimly serious business it was, to do with disabling a man in a fist fight, executing a choke hold and handling a Beretta 418 pocket pistol, so small it could easily be concealed in the palm of a hand. But the main part of the Practical was about avoiding surveillance and general evasion, which was where the observation skills came in. Though in truth Leo’s preparation had begun much further back than that.

When he was a boy he had loved bird-watching. For several years he had even entertained thoughts of being a naturalist. It had started with
The Observer’s Book of Birds
, and progressed with a pair of binoculars and regular trips to the Essex marshes with his father, who would patiently lie alongside his son for hours in a hide, probably with no interest at all in lapwings or plovers, fortified only with a Thermos of tea and a bar of chocolate, until Leo would call it a day and the pair of them could cycle back to the station.

In time, academic work took over and Leo’s enthusiasm had waned, and it was only when he began this business that he discovered how many others in the job shared his early predilection. Not just Hugo Chambers, with his passion for exotic creatures like the Indonesian vole, but Maxwell Knight, the eccentric head of B5b, who kept parrots and snakes in his Sloane Street flat.

There was a reason, of course. Spies and naturalists had a lot in common. Love of travel, the ability to familiarize oneself with a different habitat, an obsessive attention to detail. Secrecy and camouflage became second nature. Anyone interested in wildlife knew the necessity of becoming invisible, or at least innocuous, to the creatures they studied, in order to observe them at close range. There were other things, harder to explain, concerning a sixth sense for the environment around you. Sometimes it was only by observing the small nuances of change, that you could tell when a bigger change was coming.

One of those signs was apparent at the café he passed in Leonhardstrasse. He had been in there once out of curiosity and found it an unglamorous place, specializing in towering steins of beer, wooden benches and the kind of food that restaurant guides liked to call unpretentious. But recently the place was gaining a popularity out of all proportion to its gastronomic merits. Every evening the tables were full of burly Brown Shirts showing off their women. A newly completed portrait of the Führer hung on the back wall. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that the fat, cigar-smoking, moustachioed proprietor was called Alois Hitler, and was lucky enough to be half-brother to the fellow in the picture. Leo chuckled to himself. He probably shouldn’t have chosen this street, but really, it helped to have a sense of humour in this job.

The bookshop two doors down from the café was empty and a bored salesgirl looked as though she was summoning extra sensory powers to speed the clock on its way to closing time. The poetry section was badly lit and right at the back of the shop, like one of those distant, windswept outposts of the Reich where no one important lived and no one else wanted to visit. But for Leo it was an old hunting ground. He leafed through a couple of books until he found it, a volume of Rilke with a slightly battered blue dust-jacket, pages beginning to fox at the edges. No one had bought it for the best part of a year and it seemed unlikely anyone would be buying it in the next ten years either. He leafed through until he came to what he was looking for.

Holding his place, he inserted a used envelope, addressed to Herr Zink, Xantener Strasse, 9, which was postmarked most unusually with a time and date two days from hence, replaced it carefully on the shelf and left the shop.

The man from the Red Front would want money, of course. And much of his information about Communist activity in Britain might be lies. But they couldn’t afford to pass up opportunities like this. All over Berlin, an invisible web was being formed of people who might be of help to British interests. A delicate, unseen network linking those from the very top of society, the aristocrats and industrialists who instinctively disliked Hitler, to others on lower rungs, men with grievances, drivers, publicans, policemen even. It wasn’t just information that Head Office was after. There were the men who might own garages or warehouses, where something could be quietly stored, or people who had access to documents, rubber stamps or printing materials. Nor would they stop at the willing ones. Sometimes there might be other ways to convince individuals to part with information. Homosexuals, petty criminals, and anyone who walked in fear of the State might be persuaded that helping out the British was in their interests. There were a variety of methods to employ. Bribery, threats, or promises for those in financial or moral trouble. As they said at Head Office, this wasn’t cricket.

Leo thought of Clara, and hoped she was safe at Babelsberg that day, acting out her light-hearted spy movie. He lamented the end of all those shadowy expressionist masterpieces Ufa was famous for, but the atmosphere that ran through Berlin now, of suppressed frenzy and suspense, more than made up for them. No wonder they didn’t need movies about murderers any more.

The Rio Rita Bar on Tauentzienstrasse had dazzlingly elegant panels of cream and gold on the walls and marble-topped tables surrounding an intimate dance floor where, in happier times, girls would circulate with champagne, fruit and fresh gossip. But now, despite the upmarket fittings, it had a melancholy air. A perfumed fug of luxury-brand cigarettes hung beneath the ceiling like a low cloud, and the tables were lit by red-shaded lamps, expressly designed to disguise the age of the businessmen and the weariness of the bar girls. The girls wore basque tops made of grubby feathers, like pigeons with tired plumage. A couple of them were at that moment sprawled at the back, legs akimbo, exuding a force-field of apathy that deterred anyone from approaching them before their shift began.

Helga looked around at the band, where a saxophonist in shirtsleeves was playing a melody as if it were the Last Post.

‘I used to work here for a while, but it’s changed.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘Not so much fun.’

Despite the lighting, she had on a pair of Zeiss sunglasses, and although she never normally wore one coat of make-up where two would do, it was impossible not to notice that her foundation could have been laid on with a trowel.

‘Thank you for coming to Luna Park the other day. Erich loved meeting you. He told Oma you’re almost as big a film star as his Mutti.’

‘What’s the matter, Helga? You don’t look yourself.’

‘Nothing. At least, well . . . we had a row.’ She lit a cigarette and Clara noticed that her hands were shaking. ‘Remember the picture Bruno did of me?’

‘The one that no one was going to recognize?’

‘That’s the one.’

‘So Bauer did.’

‘Not at first. I’m not that dim!’ she retorted with sulky indignation. ‘I hid the picture under the bed because I knew that even if he didn’t recognize me, Bauer wouldn’t like it. But he found it. And straightaway he recognized the signature and started taunting me, saying I was sleeping with Jews. The picture was
Judenkunst.
I had sold my body to a degenerate artist. He was really jealous. I was scared.’

‘What did you say?’

‘I said Bruno was just a friend. I had to. Though even being friends with a Jew could be disastrous for my career.’

‘How could it be?’

‘Don’t you see? They don’t like actresses who befriend Jews. Even if they can’t prove anything against you, at the very least they can starve you of publicity. Keep you out of all the film newspapers and magazines. Your picture doesn’t get taken. Your name never gets mentioned. You stop getting work.’

‘Surely not.’

‘Look at Henny Porten, a huge star, but married to a Jew, so she can’t work at all. She spends all her time now shut up at home. She’s thinking of leaving for America, but the rumour is they won’t give her an exit visa because it would be bad for business.’

‘But Bruno’s just a casual friend. You don’t have to go on seeing him.’

‘Makes no difference,’ she said, taking a mournful drag from her cigarette. ‘Bauer’s started calling me one of those sluts in furs.’

‘Sluts in furs?’

‘It’s what they call actresses who don’t fit the picture.’

She sniffed fastidiously at her glass of cognac, downed it, and signalled to the barman for another.

‘Bauer told me that women who sleep with Jews have their heads shaved and signs put round their necks and get dragged in carts through the streets.’

‘That’s just talk,’ said Clara, with a confidence she didn’t feel. ‘How many girls in carts do you see on the Ku’damm?’

‘He suggested I find myself a new career as a Telephone Girl, one of those whores who dress up as famous actresses on the orders of their customers. Because that was the nearest I was ever going to get to being a movie star.’

Suddenly Clara understood the reason for Helga’s pan-stick.

‘You’re not saying Bauer hit you?’

‘No.’ She shrugged. ‘Well, not because of that. It was something else.’

Suddenly all the feelings Clara had about her own mother, and the way she had always done what her father wanted, welled up. Their parents’ arguments were bitter and frequent, and on numerous nights the children had listened behind doors or from the banisters on the stairs. Her father had never stooped to physical violence, but his icy silence was a weapon every bit as brutal. Her mother would retreat, cowed by her husband’s fury, acquiescing to his overbearing demands. Clara had vowed she would never be like that. She would never let a man even think he could dominate her.

‘How dare he!’

‘How dare he?’ Helga gave a tired laugh. ‘What are you talking about? He can do anything he wants, can’t he? Who’s going to stop him?’

‘So if it wasn’t the painting, what provoked it?’

‘It was the night we went to the Sportpalast. It was a lovely evening, and there was tons to drink. You can’t imagine how glamorous it was. Zarah Leander was there and everyone was in a jolly mood. I was joking and I probably went too far.’

‘What kind of joke?’ asked Clara, though she had already guessed.

‘Lots of jokes. Everyone jokes, don’t they? But when we got home, Bauer asked me to repeat the last joke I told, so I did. “There’s two girls. One girl says, ‘At last I’ve met the perfect German man.” The other girl asks, “So what’s he like?” And the first girl says, “He’s gorgeous. He’s as blond as Hitler, as slim as Goering and as tall as Goebbels!’’.’ She spread her hands in petition to Clara. ‘Tell me that’s not funny! But when I told Bauer, he knocked me down.’

‘He knocked you down?’

‘He couldn’t stop himself. He said if I keep making jokes I’m going to find myself in a cell at Prinz Albrecht Strasse. He said people have got four months in a concentration camp for less. But he didn’t mean it. He can’t have. I mean, that would reflect badly on him, wouldn’t it?’

‘It’s not worth finding out.’

‘He said people will think he’s associating with a subversive. So I said if he felt like that, then why did he sleep with me?’

Clara could just imagine it. Helga’s eyes, flashing defiantly, the hint of mockery in her laugh. What effect that had on a man like Walter Bauer didn’t bear thinking of.

‘You have to stop seeing him!’

‘I can’t.’ Her shoulders sank. ‘Didn’t you hear the latest announcement? It went out two days ago. They pinned up the notices in the foyer at the studio this morning. As part of the Aryanization process you now need proof of descent to work in the film industry.’

Clara’s heart buckled. No one had asked for her papers, and they weren’t likely to as long as Klaus Müller was in charge of the studios. But that only served to remind her that she had agreed to keep seeing Müller. And the prospect of what he would want in return.

‘You have to take a form and give all the details of your grandparents,’ Helga was saying. ‘But I never even knew my father. Bauer takes great pleasure in that. The fact is he protects me. If I couldn’t get film work, I’d have to go back to taking my clothes off for fat businessmen in dives like this.’ She shot a contemptuous glance at the girls at the back, decked out in their feathery two-pieces. ‘And I need the work for Erich’s sake. I . . . oh, you wouldn’t understand.’

‘Try me.’

‘There’s no point,’ she said briefly, lighting up. ‘You have no children. You couldn’t possibly.’

‘All right, I don’t have children, but give me credit for trying to imagine what it means. I’m an actress, after all.’

‘What’s that got to do with it?’ Helga said scornfully. ‘Acting can’t tell you how something really feels. It can’t tell you what it means to have someone totally dependent on you, really needing you. The fact is, having Erich means I have to keep in work, and to keep in work I need Bauer.’

Clara laid a hand on her friend’s arm. ‘Then please, Helga dear, at least be more careful. I can’t bear to think of that man being violent to you.’

‘You’ll be glad to know we’re going to be filming in Prague. It will mean I can get out of town and away from that bastard for a while.’

‘Thank God for that.’

‘Yes. I know.’ Her face softened. ‘But, Clara, that’s not why I wanted to see you. The thing is, there’s something else. Something worse.’