Munich Signature (34 page)

The tirades of the Führer were recorded and then shipped to various embassies around the world. In Paris, the broadcasts were played just after the evening meal, and members of the diplomatic corps cheered the vitriolic speeches as if they were boxing matches. A blow to the head of the Czechs! A crushing right to the jaw of the filthy Jewish swine! A left hook to the double-crossing French! Another blow to the Czech government of Beneš! And finally, a kidney punch to those soft-minded bleeding-heart Christians who defend the enemies of the Aryan race!

Thomas and Ernst vom Rath avoided looking at each other throughout these rebroadcasts. Both men smiled and commented on the mastery of Hitler’s latest illuminating speech. Some said Hitler had become the messiah of the German nation. Others flatly declared that he was the long-awaited embodiment of the German god.

Thomas shuddered at such words. He remembered the painting deep within the bowels of the Chancellery in Berlin. Hitler believed himself to be God. “To total victory or destruction!” he shouted.

And the voices of thousands echoed, “Hail Victory!
Sieg Heil
!” The voices in the embassy joined in the chant, “
Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!
”

Did the others see the fear locked in the eyes of Thomas? When the horrible charade sickened him to the point of madness, he forced himself to remember the generals of the High Command.
So near to the heart of this evil,
he thought,
how did they continue to hide their disgust?

It was still weeks before they would attempt to arrest Hitler, Göring, Goebbels, and the dreaded commander of the SS, Heinrich Himmler. How can they conceal such a plan for so long while performing their duties under the watchful eye of this satanic madman? And if these chanting thousands turned on them in the end, supporting their newfound god, what hope would there be? Would they not be executed as others who had already tried to stop Hitler? Would they all end up twisting on the end of a piano wire, then be hung on meat hooks for display?

The weeks since the bookseller Le Morthomme had been murdered had been a jumble of fear and questions. Why Le Morthomme had been eliminated had been easy to understand. The man had been the main contact between the German Abwehr and the British for years. But who had killed him was a matter of concern for Canaris in Berlin. The British had not wanted him dead. The only reasonable conclusion was that he had been snuffed out by Himmler’s Gestapo. If that was the case, however, why hadn’t Thomas been arrested? And why not Ernst vom Rath?

The elusive answer to this puzzle had left Thomas in a sort of purgatory. Like a turtle facing a barking dog, he had pulled in his head and arms and legs for fear of having them lopped off by the Nazis. Incredibly, nothing had happened after the shooting. The bookseller had been given a proper Catholic burial. There had been no arrests in the matter. Indeed, the young assassin had melted into the back alleys of Paris and had not been seen since. Perhaps someone had paid him off for his act of treachery against the bookseller. Although Thomas held the belief that the bullet had been meant for him, he did not tell anyone. The entire matter had been dropped. The incident had been swept under the rug of French bureaucracy. Only now Thomas slept with a loaded gun under his pillow—just in case the matter surfaced again. Just in case one of the dark-eyed French girls who smiled at him from across the terrace at the Café d’Eiffel happened to carry a loaded gun in her handbag.

***

It was a long drive back to London, but it was late and the highway was deserted except for the limousine.

Churchill held up the glowing stub of his cigar. “Mind if I smoke? Makes my secretary sick.”

Elisa did not answer. Relief had been replaced by outrage. “You are supposed to be a friend of my husband!” she said accusingly.

“I had nothing at all to do with this,” Churchill scowled. “Guilt is by association only, I assure you. And now, if Amos will kindly drop me at the mansion house at Chartwell, I shall settle with him later.”

“We were quite uncertain of nearly everything about you,” Tedrick said in defense. “Four days ago we discussed arresting you on a charge of espionage and murder.”

“What?”

“Hear me out, if you please,” Tedrick continued.

“Ridiculous!” Elisa sat forward angrily. “You deliberately held my husband back. Kidnapped me. Dragged me to the warehouse—”

“And if we had approached you with John Murphy at your side?” Tedrick asked. “What might he have done?”

“Every newspaper on Fleet Street would have had the story.” Churchill muttered.

“They will have it soon enough!” Elisa snapped.

“That must not happen.” Tedrick sounded thoughtful, almost apologetic. “That must never happen.”

“One wire to Murphy and—,” Elisa began.

“And a lot of people will die,” Tedrick finished.

Churchill chuckled and eyed Tedrick. “No doubt John Murphy would start the massacre with you, Amos.”

“There is some method to this madness.” Tedrick sniffed and looked pained. “We might not have paid one whit of attention to you if it had not been for Herschel Grynspan.”

Elisa gasped. “What does Herschel have to do with this? He is a child. A boy. His father was a tailor for my father in Berlin.”

“Yes, yes. We know all that. A long-standing connection.”

She did not attempt to hide her confusion. “But what has Herschel to do with anything? I have not seen him in nearly two years.”

“We thought you might have seen him last month. In Paris.”

“Herschel? In Paris?” Gradually it came back to her. The old tailor had sent his son to Paris. To an uncle or some relative. The boy had spoken of wanting to attend the university there, and then going on to Palestine.

“You do not deny that you have connections with him?”

“Well, no. I mean yes, I do not. I . . . I can’t quite imagine Herschel mixed up in—”

“Yes. He is quite mixed up. Yes, Elisa, quite. We believe it was he who murdered Le Morthomme, you see. There is some speculation that he might have meant to kill another.” He shrugged. “Regardless, surely you see the significance of such an event to us. Surely whomever he was working for understood how the death of such a man would cripple our communications with certain elements in Germany who are not, shall we say, favorably disposed to the Führer.”

Elisa frowned and gestured helplessly. From the beginning she had guessed the significant role Le Morthomme must play as a contact between someone like Otto in Vienna and the British Intelligence Service. The strange little bookseller had been an important link for many government agencies in Europe; she did not doubt that. But how could a boy like Herschel have any connection with such matters? And how had she been tied to him? “I—” she paused—“Until today I was not even aware that Le Morthomme had been killed.”

“Indeed. By whom, we are uncertain.”

“You said Herschel.”

“Yes. We think he held the gun and pulled the trigger. But we had another meaning when we asked who was behind it.”

“Ask Herschel.”

“We have attempted to do that. We have been to the house of his uncle in Paris. The boy has simply vanished. But he left behind a sheaf of love letters to Elisa Lindheim, addressed to the Musikverein in Vienna. All returned to him unopened.”

“Oh, Herschel!” Elisa felt ill. Maybe it was the reek of the cigar smoke. She leaned her head back on the seat and stared at the back of the chauffeur’s head. “What have you done, Herschel?” she whispered. Then she eyed the now-sympathetic Tedrick. “I have nothing to do with this. You must believe—”

“We were hoping you might fill in a few missing pieces.”

“In Austria I used the name Linder. Not a Jewish name. I have held a Czech passport since 1936. My father thought I would be safer that way. To a point he was right—of course, you know that too. Herschel was nothing more than a frightening annoyance. I never saw the letters he sent to me. A very wise and discreet friend returned them to Paris to discourage him from writing. I was Linder in Vienna, not Lindheim. I had Czech nationality until I married Murphy—which you now tell me was not a marriage at all.”

Churchill turned to glower at Tedrick. “You could have left that detail out, at least, Amos!”

Tedrick shrugged off Churchill’s disapproval. “There is one more piece of this puzzle, Elisa,” he said almost gently.

“Please, tell me. I need to understand this.”

“Thomas von Kleistmann.”

“Thomas? Yes. He is in Paris.”

“You know he has relayed some information to us through Le Morthomme.”

“No. I did not know. But Thomas is no Nazi.” She frowned. “How did you find out I knew him?”

“The Gestapo has a file on Thomas. The name Elisa Lindheim, Jewess, is quite prominent in their file. His file was photographed by one of our own agents when we were checking the authenticity of von Kleistmann’s offer to help us.”

“Then you know he is a good man. Suspected by the agents of Himmler, yet tolerated because of his father and the High Command.”

“You are in love with him?”

“Once . . . I was.” The question brought a flush of shame to her cheeks. She was grateful that the car was dark so they could not see. She could only guess at what had been in that file.

“He is quite important to us.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“He is as unsure about the reasons for Le Morthomme’s death as we are. He is a frightened rabbit. Afraid of his own shadow.”

“Then his shadow must be the Gestapo.”

“We tried to make contact with him. He is not sure—”

“Which side you are on,” Elisa finished for him.

“Quite right. Just as we have been unsure about you.”

“And now that you are convinced I did not put Herschel up to the murder of Le Morthomme, will you let me go? To America?”

The car pulled up to the mansion house before Tedrick could answer. Churchill turned to Elisa and took her hand briefly. “A beastly business,” he scowled. “I am sorry Tedrick here had to resort to such tactics. Good night.” He touched the brim of his hat and slipped out without a word to Tedrick.

Tedrick resumed the conversation after they were underway again. “It is not so simple as all that.” He snapped on a light and presented her with a thin folder from his briefcase.

Elisa opened it, surprised to see the American visa requests of her father, mother, and two brothers. Each was stamped
Denied.
She stared at them in disbelief. Why had they been refused? And now what were they to do? Was Murphy already aware that the applications had been turned down so soon?

“Mama,” she whispered, “what are we to do now?”

Tedrick cleared his throat and switched off the light. “Rather stiff about allowing Jews to immigrate to America, you see. Officials there have invoked the immigration statute about foreigners becoming a public charge. Or taking the jobs of citizens already there. They leave very little room for anyone, you see.”

Elisa held the folder in her sweating hands. She could barely speak. “Why . . . did you leave me those newspapers to read?”

“We thought you might be interested in the American sentiment. No use fooling ourselves, now, is there? It is as bad there as it was in Germany in the beginning. If you are set on running from the Nazis, America is not the place to run. John Murphy will not be able to pull the necessary strings to get your family through the immigration barriers, at any rate.”

“What are you telling me?” Elisa asked wearily. All she wanted was straight answers. This man seemed incapable of that.

“We are quite prepared to offer you and your family British passports.”

“And what do you want in return?”

“You need not deny that you have access to important information from the Reich. If you did not, President Beneš would be dead.”

“All right, then—”

“We need you to help us reestablish our link from this side.”

“In exchange for passports, safety for my family.”

“That seems like a fair price.”

“And for that, the payment?”

“A simple matter of crossing the Channel to Paris. Contacting von Kleistmann. Forging a vital link.”

And so it comes full circle
, Elisa thought as she replayed the events of the last few weeks. She was to meet Thomas once again and now she would be bartering for visas for Theo and Anna, Dieter and Wilhelm.

“When will you let me have the passports?” she asked quietly.

“We must be certain now that Thomas von Kleistmann is not the one who arranged for Le Morthomme’s murder. If that is the case, your duty is simply to report back here to me and to introduce him to his new contact in Paris—provided he is willing to continue on with us.”

“What about Murphy?”

“He will have to console himself without you for a while, I’m afraid. We have sent him wires already. You have a touch of influenza and are unable to travel right away. We can keep the hound at bay for a few weeks if you will write him a little note. Tell him you miss him. You are anxious to see him.”

Elisa pressed her fingers to her throbbing temples. She
did
miss him. Terribly. She
was
anxious to see him. “What about my own passport? Invalid, you said.”

“We might arrange something. Of course, you will want to arrange for a proper wedding. Or perhaps you will not. Few people have opportunity of making that choice twice.” He tried to be amusing, but his comment only drove Elisa to a sullen silence.

She had no choice at all. Not about anything. She had the strong feeling that her parents had been denied American visas for the sole purpose of giving Tedrick some control over her. She could understand why they had used the methods they had to separate her from Murphy. If he had gotten wind of any of it, it would have been plastered on the front page of every newspaper, and her photograph would have been sitting on the desks of Himmler and Goebbels in Berlin. She would never have been able to go to Thomas in Paris. Yes, she understood their game plan, but she could not forgive them for it.

“It seems that after checking on my qualifications—” she paused—“you have found me up to the job. Even if it is something I want no part of.”