Paving the New Road (48 page)

Alois Richter had been determined that his young guests should enjoy every minute of the reception, and so had insisted on taking a motor cab back alone to determine what was delaying Robert Negus. When after an hour neither had returned, Joseph Ryan and
the Greenway siblings had decided to abandon the ball. Leaving, however, had not been easy. Millicent Greenway had caught the eye of many gentlemen who had done everything civilly possible to prevent her departure.

In the end, Edna’s concern outweighed any obligation she felt to fulfil the social contract of a full dance card, or be gracious to Richter’s potential clients, and she simply walked out with Clyde and Milton.

The chauffeur, not expecting to be required for several hours, was nowhere to be found, and so they left without him. In his style, the poet drove without any pretence of patience.

But as they neared the mansion, Milton slowed suddenly and pulled over. “Isn’t that Eva?” he said, pointing out the figure that hurried down Schellingstrasse. “Good Lord—she’s walking that bloody dog.”

“Stasi doesn’t walk,” Clyde murmured, twisting to see.

Edna leaned out of the window and called out.

Eva stopped. She seemed relieved.

“Eva darling,” Edna said. “What are you doing out here on your own?” She opened the car door. “Come on, we’ll drive you home.”

Eva looked at the open door. She shook her head, smiling and pointing.

“Are you meeting someone?” Edna asked, looking carefully at the girl.

Eva pointed in the direction she was going, and waved.

Edna shut the door slowly, her brow furrowed as she watched Eva walk towards Hoffman’s Photographic Studio with Stasi on a lead. Suddenly Edna was cold, her mouth dry with a creeping dread. “Drive home quickly,” she said.

Milton obliged.

The house was quiet and dark when they pulled up. “Something’s not right,” Clyde muttered. “They wouldn’t have just decided to go to bed.”

“Let’s see if there’s anyone home.” Milton ran up the stairs and knocked on the door. There was no response and he pounded again. After a couple of minutes he turned back to Clyde and Edna, perplexed. “Where the dickens is everybody?”

And then they heard the bolts being moved. The door opened.

“Rowly … Bloody hell!”

Rowland grabbed Milton’s shoulder and used it to steady himself. The poet moved in to help him. Edna and Clyde followed.

“Close the door and lock it.” Rowland said, before they could ask anything.

Clyde complied without hesitation. “What the hell happened?”

Rowland wasn’t sure where to begin.

“Rowly, where’s Alois?” Edna asked. “Didn’t he come back?”

Rowland leaned heavily on Milton.

“Give him a chance, Ed,” the poet muttered. “Come on, mate, you’d better sit down.”

If Rowland’s mind hadn’t been exhausted by pain he might have stopped them going into the drawing room.

Edna didn’t scream. She didn’t make a sound, but simply stared in horror and grief at the body of Alois Richter, lying in a pool of blood which had been smeared across the floor when Rowland had slid out from under it. Clyde pulled her away and she pressed her face into his broad chest, her breath rasping as she tried to obscure the image with darkness.

Milton eased Rowland back into the armchair, his eyes stopping on the revolver which lay on the table beside it. “We need to find you a doctor, mate.”

Rowland shook his head as he attempted to stand again. “We have to get out of here.”

“Suppose you tell us what happened, Rowly,” Milton said, pushing him down firmly.

Rowland closed his eyes. He tried, beginning with the photograph he had found in Richter’s study, and Röhm. And then Richter’s arrival, his murderous intent. He wasn’t sure he was making sense. He said nothing of Eva.

Edna left Clyde’s protective embrace to go to Rowland. Her eyes were still dry, wide with shock in a face that was so ashen that her lips appeared blood red. Her hand seemed unsteady as she smoothed his hair. Rowland wondered whether she was shaking; aware that it might instead be him. For what seemed like a long time she said nothing. Then, “My God Rowly … what … Eva was here.”

Rowland did not reply.

“She was wearing my dress and she had Stasi. It wasn’t you … you didn’t shoot Alois.”

“Does it matter who actually shot him, Ed?”

She looked at him, biting her lip to stop it trembling. “No … I’m just glad someone stopped him … that you’re alive. We need to call a doctor, Rowly—you’re covered in blood.”

He shook his head. “It’s not mine,” he said, trying not to look towards Richter’s body. “We’re in serious trouble, Ed. We must get out of here before the servants return in the morning or Röhm begins to wonder why Richter hasn’t reported the murder of Robert Negus.”

Clyde stood. “Rowly’s right, we may only have a couple of hours.” He was calm and practical. “Ed, you and Milt go up and pack a trunk.”

“A trunk?”

“We can’t very well escape Germany dressed in white tie and tails. Get enough clothes for all of us and don’t forget our papers and overcoats … they’ll cover these get-ups initially at least. The money Rowly withdrew is still hidden in the car.” He glanced back at Rowland. “I’ll look after Rowly.”

Edna bent down and kissed Rowland’s forehead. The tears had come now.

He smiled weakly. “I’m all right, Ed … really.”

She touched his arm gently, her eyes lingering on his chest, where Röhm’s cigarettes had burned a blistered swastika. Edna swallowed, struggling to believe what had happened.

“Ed,” Clyde said sternly, as he poured Rowland a drink. “Go. Quickly.”

She followed Milton up the stairs and Clyde placed the welcome glass into Rowland’s left hand. “Here, get this into you … it’ll take the edge off. How does your arm feel?”

“Wretched … it hurts like the blazes … I can’t move my flaming fingers.” He let his head fall back against the chair. “God.”

“We’ll find someone who can help, Rowly,” Clyde promised. “I’m going to duck into the kitchen to see if I can find something for those burns … Look at me … can you hang on for a while—honestly?”

Rowland nodded. “I think so.” Perhaps it was Clyde’s calm that allowed him to let down his guard. He permitted the panic to creep audibly into his voice. “What the hell are we going to do, Clyde?”

“We’ll have to find somewhere to hide until we work out how to get out of this godforsaken country.”

Rowland groaned. “Where could we possibly hide?”

Clyde tapped the glass in Rowland’s hand. “Drink,” he instructed. “And chin up, old mate. I have an idea.”

It was just past midnight when they pulled into the decrepit street. In the light of day, the window boxes had given the grimy buildings an incongruous appearance of life, but at night the geraniums were not visible. It seemed a forgotten place, empty and abandoned. But Clyde had not forgotten it.

He instructed Milton to park the Mercedes in the alleyway between two factories and he got out alone. Praying that the Underground had not relocated, he replicated the knock that they’d heard when he and Rowland had come here before.

The gun was trained through the door before it was fully opened. Clyde had expected that. Eisen’s bulk filled the doorway. He spoke in furious German.

“We need help,” Clyde said, hoping the man understood at least that. “Please.”

Egon Kisch squeezed past Eisen. “Mr. Ryan,” he said quietly. “What are you doing here?”

Clyde told him quickly. “We have nowhere else to go, Kisch. We need somewhere to hide.”

Kisch translated for his comrades. Eisen frowned and protested, but Kisch seemed to wield greater authority and spoke for them.

“Where are your friends?”

“In the car.”

Kisch nodded. “Bring them in. Eisen will get rid of the motor car.”

Clyde took the trunk and the cash from the vehicle before relinquishing the Mercedes’ keys to Eisen.

Any doubts the men of the Underground may have had about the veracity of Clyde’s story were set to rest by the physical state of Rowland Sinclair.

They took them up to the concealed attic. Beimler, who had escaped Dachau, had now fled Germany, but Heinrich remained in hiding. Kisch shook his head grimly as he examined Rowland. “If that arm isn’t set correctly you may never use it properly again, or you may lose it altogether,” he said. “Just two days ago, we had a doctor, but he has escaped to Vienna now.”

“Well, we’d better find another one,” Milton said tensely. “Just look at him …”

“That is not possible.”

“Rowly needs his arm,” Clyde insisted. “Can’t we—?”

“We cannot risk taking him to a doctor … So many are with the Nazis, and the Jewish physicians are watched … It is too much of a risk.”

Rowland pulled his arm away from his chest slowly. “Nancy,” he said quietly. “She trained as a nurse.”

“You need a doctor,” Clyde replied.

“I’m not expecting her to operate.” Rowland flinched as Edna held a soaked cloth to the burns on his chest. “She just needs to pull a bone into place … Surely they teach you that in the first week.”

Milton glanced at the men in the room. “Will they allow us to bring her here?”

“Who is she, this Nancy?” Kisch asked.

“Nancy Wake,” Rowland replied. “She was the girl who scrubbed the Königsplatz with me and Heinrich. She’s Australian originally, now French. She can be trusted.”

“And she’s a journalist,” Milton added. “It mightn’t be a bad idea for you to tell her what’s really going on in Germany.”

Egon Kisch put it to his comrades and for a while they debated the idea of allowing Nancy into their sanctuary. Though he could understand, Rowland did not interfere to argue on his own behalf.
Considering what was at stake, he could understand their reluctance to take such a chance on another stranger. Heinrich argued for the idea, recounted the public stance in the Königsplatz with nothing to gain and much to lose. Kisch, too, seemed inclined to take the risk.

Eventually they all gathered around Rowland again. “We must know exactly what happened with the SA.” Kisch pointed at Rowland’s arm. “Why this was done to you.”

Rowland nodded though he was not entirely clear on the incident himself. He took a chance and told the band of fugitives who they really were and why they had come. He spoke slowly, stumbling frequently when pain challenged his coherence. Kisch translated into English so that the Australians could follow the conversation. Rowland explained what they had done at the book burning. Then he recounted the intrusion of the SA at Richter’s mansion, the exception the Brownshirts had taken to his painting. “They broke my arm to make that point.”

“And the cigarette burns?” Kisch asked, as spokesman for his comrades. “The SA uses such tortures to coerce information. What did they wish you to reveal?”

Rowland shook his head. “Röhm recognised me from the night of the book burning. He was angry that we had made a fool of him.”

“And then they just left?” Kisch prompted.

“They thought I was dead.” Rowland rubbed his face. He was suddenly unbelievably tired. And dizzy. “Of course, Herr Richter tried rather hard to finish the job … but I got hold of his gun.” Rowland did not see any reason to mention Eva. It was essentially the truth.

Kisch and his comrades conferred. One man suggested they try to set the bone themselves, contending that if they pulled hard enough it should all snap back into place. To Rowland’s relief, the proposal
was not popular. Heinrich, who remembered the young woman who had joined Rowland and Göring in the Königsplatz, argued for allowing Nancy Wake into the abandoned factory to help.

Kisch concurred strenuously. “If we allow this man—who put himself in danger to save Comrade Beimler—to lose his limb or worse, what then are we fighting for, comrades? Is there any point to resistance if we are too frightened to help one another? If we cannot aid a comrade for fear, then Hitler is already the master of our souls!” The writer’s oratory moved the men in hiding and soon helping Rowland Sinclair became a statement of their own resistance. Possibly it helped that Eisen had not yet returned.

Kisch turned to Milton. “Do you know where to find Miss Wake?”

Milton stood immediately. “Yes. It might take me a little while without the motor.”

Kisch frowned. “We have a bicycle … Can you operate one?”

Milton nodded. He’d had a job delivering telegrams during the Great War … He’d lasted a week, but he’d learned to ride a bicycle.

“It is better you should change clothes,” Kisch said, looking the poet up and down. “You are a little overdressed for cycling … I find coat-tails can get caught in the chain.”

39

FIRST AID AT HOME