Flight from Berlin (19 page)

‘Have I missed a good joke?’ came a woman’s voice from the doorway. They turned to see a heavy lady with unruly silver hair, a long pearl necklace, and an old-fashioned cameo brooch. Frau Liebermann shook hands with them, offering the tips of her fingers, so that Denham half wondered whether she expected her rings to be kissed. She spoke in a singsong voice as though she were in a dream. He guessed she’d taken a sedative.

The whole family now sat looking at him and Eleanor, expectant, and not unhappy. Denham removed his notepad and Leica from his case.

‘Where shall we start?’

Hannah’s story was as grim as he’d expected. On the voyage from California she’d been kept under constant supervision, and her telegrams were censored. They’d forbidden her to win the fencing final, because a Jew could not be seen to take the gold, but she could win the silver. She was isolated from the rest of the team and given the world’s worst coach. And on the podium, she was to give the Hitler salute, which they’d even made her practise in front of them.

Roland, as Denham had guessed, was the bait they’d used to bring her back. He’d been kept for four days in the Gestapo’s basement cells. The young man’s eyes told him everything, and Denham knew better than to ask.

When she had finished, Denham took several photographs of them together in the sitting room with the blue horses behind them, and many of Hannah by herself posing with her foil. Afterwards Frau Liebermann insisted that he and Eleanor stay for lunch around a table laid in the grounds at the back of the house. Small white yachts in sail circled on the lake, brilliant against the afternoon sun.

Roland stood to pour wine for them all. Thistledown floated through the warm air and some landed in his black hair. As he poured Eleanor’s glass, his eyes met hers.

Ah well,
Denham thought, and looked away.
He’s much nearer her age than I am.

Herr Liebermann said a brief prayer in Hebrew when the meal of baked carp and potatoes in cream was placed in front of them; then he raised his glass. ‘To America,’ he said, smiling at Eleanor.

‘To America,’ they all said, and clinked glasses.

T
hey left the Liebermann house unseen by a disused door in the wall of the grounds and walked in silence for a while down the leafy avenue, which seemed even stiller in the heat of the late afternoon.

‘It’s happening, isn’t it?’ Eleanor said after a while, her head lowered.

‘What is?’ But Denham thought he knew what she meant.

‘Everything.’ She reached out and held his hand. ‘Us. You and I. Our fight against these bastards.’

‘Yes,’ said Denham. ‘It’s happening.’

A
t Berlin Zoo Station they made plans to meet that night.

‘Look after these,’ Denham said, handing her his shorthand notes and the Leica. ‘They’ll be safer at the ambassador’s house.’

Back home, he put his head around Frau Stumpf’s door. His landlady was sitting alone at her kitchen table in her long shawl, listening to radio music and staring at the wall, which was how he often found her. She seemed to jump when he entered, and then, unusual for her, avoided his eyes.

‘Good afternoon, Herr Denham. Yes, you have another telegram.’

He tore it open, and felt the niggle of worry finally hatch and spread through his gut.

NO NEWS STOP POLICE TO ISSUE MISSING PERSONS NOTICE STOP COME SOONEST STOP

Leaping up the stairs to his apartment, he tried to work out how fast he could get to London. First he would call Anna, then Tempelhof Airport in the hope that there was a seat on the evening flight.

From a crackling radio behind Reinacher’s door the voice of Goebbels resounded in the stairwell.
‘ . . . This day, I believe it is no exaggeration to say . . . that a hundred million people in Germany and beyond her frontiers . . . have been tuned to the broadcast of the eleventh Olympiad from Berlin . . .’

He put his key in the door to his apartment and pushed, not even noticing that the new lock wasn’t locked. His senses warned him but his brain was too slow on the uptake. He stepped into his sitting room and two men stood up.

‘Richard Denham,’ the nearer one said. He opened his jacket to reveal the warrant-disc hanging from an inside pocket. ‘You’re to come with us.’

Chapter Seventeen

G
estapo. Both men wore grey suits and black, snap-brimmed trilbies.

‘May I make a telephone call?’ Denham said. He felt a strange calm come over him, as if he’d expected them. Somehow, in his heart, he’d known it would come to this.

‘You’ll be back in the morning,’ the man said, stubbing his cigarette out on the rug. ‘You can telephone then.’

That, Denham knew, was a gross lie, but he wasn’t going to argue.

They escorted him downstairs, one in front and one behind.

A storm of applause was breaking across the speech on Reinacher’s radio as the speaker’s voice moved into high gear.
‘As for those seduced by the international Jewish press into doubting the Führer’s desire for peace . . . I say this: . . . let them come to Berlin! . . . Let them come to Berlin! . . .’

Frau Stumpf’s door was shut.

Outside, a grey Horch waited. The back door was held open; Denham got in and sat next to one of the Gestapo men while the other drove. How brisk and businesslike they were. No handcuffs, none needed. Such fear did these men inspire that citizens meekly did as they were told.

The smell of the car’s seat leather mingled with a faint odour of vomit.

‘I thought you boys only came at night,’ Denham said.

Neither answered.

The roads around Belle-Alliance-Platz were clogged with traffic as the evening rush approached, and the Horch was caught in a crawl behind a line of cars and yellow double-deckers. Neither Gestapo man seemed the least frustrated at their lack of progress. He wondered how long they’d been in his apartment. Both wound down their windows to smoke, but neither offered him a cigarette.

They turned onto the Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, plunged in shadow as the sun moved into the west. Göring’s new Air Ministry passed by on the right, wall after wall of granite, the city’s latest pharaonic monstrosity. The car slowed to a halt, and the gates of the darkened Gestapo building swung inward without a sound.

T
he mild-spoken Gallico had to raise his voice to be heard over the laughter, piano music, and clinking glasses in the Adlon’s upstairs bar. Reporters from every newspaper, radio station, and wire service in the world seemed to be drinking there this afternoon. He hadn’t touched his beer.

‘Let me get this straight,’ he said, leaning towards her. ‘You go hiding in a rosebush and overhear a private conversation between—’

‘I wasn’t hiding.’ Eleanor was looking over the rail next to their table. She could see right down into the lobby, where a couple of army officers were lounging on wicker chairs near the pagoda fountain, their laughter becoming more boisterous with each toast of schnapps. ‘I went to apologise to Brundage, followed him in there, but lost him in the dark; next thing I knew there were these men’s voices . . .’

She quickly told him the rest.

Gallico gave a slow whistle.

‘Bad, huh?’ she said.

‘Throwing the Jews off the relay team in case they win and embarrass Hitler? Well, it doesn’t cast old Avery in the best light . . .’ He looked down into the lobby with a face that suggested several thoughts playing across his mind at the same time. A hearty laugh came from one of the officers at the fountain.

‘You’re not thinking I made this up to get back at that jerk?’ Eleanor asked.

‘No . . . I’m thinking of the politics. The UP boys have generally supported US participation in these Olympics. Now that our athletes are here in Berlin and winning medals, it could look, well, unpatriotic if we break this story now. And, sweetheart, I’m just wondering what they’ll say back home. The sour grapes between you and Brundage means you won’t be seen as the most impartial witness . . .’

‘Then
you
break the story.’

‘But I’ll need more proof.’

‘Confront him with it, Paul, and see how he reacts.’

Chapter Eighteen

T
he noise of teleprinter machines filled the corridor from behind closed doors. Beneath the wire-meshed electric lights rows of hunched figures waited on benches and lowered their eyes as the sergeant passed. Pushed along without shoelaces or belt, Denham walked in a rapid shuffle. They’d taken his tie, too
. I go to my doom looking a man who sleeps in his clothes
. The sergeant stopped outside a door marked
HAECKEL
, knocked twice, opened it for Denham, and closed it behind him.

Inspector Haeckel was a heavy man, with a grey moustache, a boxer’s jaw, and thinning hair. He had on the full black uniform: Sam Browne belt, shoulder strap, boots, gun holster, and an array of police decorations.

A minute passed as he scribbled away at his desk, dotting
i
’s, crossing
t
’s, not acknowledging his prisoner. Denham looked around, seeing a chair, which he was not being offered, and dark stains on the floor that made his stomach clench. On a cabinet to the right stood a row of trophies awarded for dog handling, except for one, which displayed two spent bullets suspended like grubs in a block of glass. On its base were engraved the names
RÖHM
and
HEINES
.

After a while the inspector selected a rubber stamp from a small rack, thumped a document, closed the file, and took another from his tray. Denham’s passport was inside, on top of what looked like a hand-filled surveillance sheet.

‘Richard Arthur Denham,’ he said, examining the passport, then glancing up for the first time. ‘As you are certainly aware, there is a press injunction on speaking to Hannah Liebermann. So would you mind telling me what you were doing at her home today?’ He had the gravel voice of a man accustomed to shouting.

Sound honest,
Denham thought.
No clever remarks.
‘I’m a reporter, Inspector, and she’s one of the best-known athletes at the Games. I wanted a few quotes for some copy, that’s all. Frankly, what reporter wouldn’t?’

Haeckel seemed uninterested and leaned back in his chair.

‘I’m not wasting time with you because you’re not my case, or not yet anyway. You see, the oddest thing just happened, Herr Denham, and maybe you could explain it to me.’

He stood up, not as tall as Denham expected, with a solid, rounded gut, and walked to the back of his chair to stretch his legs. Boots, belt, and strap creaked and groaned.

‘The minute my boys turned up at your apartment I get an urgent call from the SD, who send over this file on you.’

The SD?

‘That’s right. I’m to hold you until a certain SD officer gets here to interrogate you.’ He leaned over the chair and picked up a sheet from the file. ‘One, espionage of new German Zeppelin technology on board the
Luftschiff
Hindenburg
. . .’

‘What?’

‘ . . . two, using an identity not your own to infiltrate Reichsminister Goebbels’s reception on the Pfaueninsel; three, attending an illegal music event convened by antisocials known to the police’—the inspector closed the file—‘and this in the course of a few days’ surveillance . . .’

‘The espionage charge is nonsense.’

‘Is it?’ He picked up the paper again. ‘It says here that you breached a military regulation by taking a camera on board and gave your guide the slip in a restricted area. So what were you up to?’

He waved his hand, not interested in an answer, and sat down again to a fugue of leathery creaks and squeaks.

‘I’m a British subject, Inspector, and can’t be held—’

‘Your passport won’t save you from an espionage charge.’ He gave a quiet, hissing laugh. ‘Annoying as this is, the SD have done me a favour here. With an espionage charge we keep you as long as we like. But the SD want you
unspoilt
’—his eyebrows rose at this veiled slur on his professionalism—‘and that order comes from the top. So I’m curious, Herr Denham. What is this really about? Mm?’

Denham had absolutely no idea. The SD, the Sicherheitsdienst, was the state’s intelligence service, a cadre within the SS. That’s about all he knew. It was known to be a cut above the sadists in the Gestapo, attracting educated recruits.

‘You seem to know more than I do, Inspector.’

Haeckel picked up a rubber stamp and began twirling it between his fingers, still observing Denham, eyes narrowed like gun slits.

‘The SD don’t bother with lists of stocking-fillers like these. That is the type of donkey-work they leave to me. As for the espionage, an explosive bag of gas like the
Hindenburg
has the technological value of my mother-in-law’s arse. So they’re keeping me in the dark about something. What makes you special, eh?’

Denham gave a shrug, and Haeckel suddenly hurled the stamp towards his head. He flinched, and it struck the door with a
clack
.

‘A British agent, are we?’ he barked. ‘Or spying for the NKVD?’

Denham’s brain was spinning, and his face must have shown it. ‘I’m just a reporter.’

‘All right, all right,’ Haeckel said, stroking his moustache and seeming to have remembered in time his orders not to harm the prisoner. His face was crimson. ‘It will all come out in the end . . . makes no difference to me.’ He picked up the telephone and summoned the sergeant. Then he said, ‘When the SD are done with you, sir, you and I will go over every single thing said between you and that Liebermann woman. For as long as it takes . . .’

E
leanor rang the bell next to the ornate door of Kopischstrasse 5 and put her face to the glass. A small woman with trailing wisps of hair and a long shawl clutched to her chest shuffled out from a ground-floor apartment and opened it for her.