The Pursuit of Pearls (35 page)

I
n the courtyard of the Schloss Bellevue, a fountain shot a shower of diamonds into the night air. High above, fireworks blistered the sky, and inside everything was candlelit—china, crystal, and flowers, all captured in an antique, golden glow. It could have been a tableau from another era as butlers dressed in knee breeches and powdered wigs welcomed men in eighteenth-century frock coats and women barnacled with jewels in long, sweeping gowns. The great hall was hung with art treasures and perfumed by elaborate sheaths of hothouse orchids, roses, and white lilacs. But despite the historical décor, nobody was giving much thought to the past. Not when the future hung so perilously in the balance.

A flurry of attention signaled the arrival of Goering's car, a distinctive aviation-blue Mercedes 540K cabriolet, dubbed the Blue Goose. Because he liked to drive himself, the vehicle had been modified not only with the standard bulletproof glass and armored walls but with a specially engineered seat broad enough to squeeze the corpulent minister behind the wheel.

Whatever his wife might claim, Hermann Goering's diet did not appear to have been much of a success. The minister's fat fingers were manacled with emeralds, and gems of sweat were already glinting as his gargantuan paunch preceded him out of the car and into the reception hall. His outfit of embroidered mauve frock coat, frilly cravat, and tight silk breeches did little to flatter him, nor did the floor-length white fur coat conceal his curves. Emmy, at his side, looked almost svelte in a low-cut eighteenth-century gown, the neckline drawn aside like a pair of theatrical curtains to reveal her powdered bust.

An extensive cast of diplomats, aristocrats, politicians, hangers-on, and members of the film and theater world had been assembled to greet the Yugoslav royals. Tonight was the summit of the state visit and the culmination of Hitler's attempts to flatter and intimidate Yugoslavia into remaining neutral in case of war. Yet alongside this important agenda, a range of lesser ambitions were on display. Joseph Goebbels, in white uniform and medals, was purposefully late. Magda lagged a deliberate few steps behind her husband with a dyspeptic glare. And von Ribbentrop had opted to accessorize his full Foreign Ministry fig with the magnificent diamond-studded Collar of the Annunziata, expressly to annoy his host.

Once the guests were gathered, a string quartet struck up a waltz and a host of Faith and Beauty girls, arrayed in taffeta dresses white as clouds, began to dance.

Clara skirted the edges of the packed reception, the reds and blues and golds unfurling and mingling before her eyes. The sparkle and glitter of the evening reminded her of the line from
Paradise Lost
about “barbaric pearl and gold,” yet it was impossible to concentrate fully on the scene when her mind was still in tumult. She was in possession of a secret more valuable than diamonds—the date for war—but there was nothing she could do with it. She could barely focus on anything, with the thought of Leo drumming in her mind. After the meeting with Albert Goering, she had gone to the Ufa studios in a daze and spent the afternoon buried in the costume department, selecting a dress for the evening ahead.

“You know what they're all gossiping about.”

The voice was icily familiar. Syrup undercut with steel. Clara turned to find Annelies von Ribbentrop, sheathed in gray lamé as tight as an aircraft fuselage, standing uncomfortably close.

“I don't, I'm afraid.”

“Oh, but I'm sure you do,” Annelies insisted, lips puckering into a smile. “All anyone's talking about is the pact.”

The pact.
Could it really be this simple? Was the alliance so far advanced that it was already a topic of casual party conversation?

“Don't tell me you haven't heard?” The malice in Frau von Ribbentrop's face glittered like the gemstones at her neck. “I thought someone who likes gossip as much as you would be bound to know before the rest of us. You always seem to have your ear to the ground.”

“Not in this case.”

She shook her head sorrowfully. “It's the pact between the Goebbelses. Joseph has signed a document with Magda agreeing to a year's good behavior, and Hitler has offered to act as guarantor. It's the only peace treaty Hitler has ever put his name to.”

Clara looked over at Magda Goebbels. Though she towered like a chessboard queen over her husband's pawn, she had evidently succumbed to checkmate. The pact might have been a small victory in her marital war, but she had plainly been obliged to attend the ball, and to add to her humiliation she was at that moment being introduced to Veit Harlan and his wife, Kristina Söderbaum, the director and star of
Die Reise nach Tilsit,
the film that Goebbels intended to commit his affair to romantic posterity.

“You wonder why Goering has to invite all these actors. I mean, I know our hostess feels more comfortable surrounded by fellow performers, but really, there must be the entire staff of Ufa here tonight. Was there some kind of round-robin invitation?”

“I was asked because the minister wanted some English speakers.”

“Oh. Of course.” A tight smile. “The English are all very well, I suppose, but must they endlessly try to butt in on our business? Threatening war over the return of a city like Danzig, which is German already. And when the Poles provoke us in the extreme. Hitler has been in love with England for years, but I tell him, it's unrequited. All these years he has paid court to England, admired her empire, entertained her aristocrats. And what does he get for it? My husband says all we ask of the English is that they recognize the Germans are also a great nation, with our own special sphere.”

Clara was saved from continuing this conversation by the announcement that dinner was to be served. Annelies von Ribbentrop disappeared to take her place at the top table, and Clara drifted towards the grand dining room, where a feast of clear soup, goose with potatoes, and lettuce, cheese, fruit, coffee, and pastries was waiting. Not to mention the kilo of Russian caviar that had been delivered that morning from the Soviet embassy.

They were only on the first course—
crabe royale à la mayonnaise
with asparagus—when there was a muffled cry and a shout, which caused heads to turn up to the balcony. The cry came from a beautiful young woman whom Clara recognized as the violinist from the string quartet. She was leaning over the balcony, screaming something and pulling from her lace-edged yellow jacket a flutter of paper, white and colored, that came drifting down onto the crowd below. The guests ducked and cowered, as if bombs, rather than leaflets, were being rained on their heads. One drifted to the table beside Clara, and the man next to her, a Dutch diplomat, picked it up and studied the headline:
HITLER
MEANS
WAR!
Then he dropped it again, as if he had received an electric shock.

Most of the guests politely averted their eyes from the girl on the balcony, but Clara watched, her heart in her mouth. For an instant the girl stood poised, as if she was planning to fly down to join them, before three soldiers arrived and seized her roughly, stretching her arms outwards like those of a crucified saint. The light shone a gold halo on her head, and the tendons stood out on her slender neck as her terror transmitted itself through the air. When they wrested her away, the girl's face was drained of color, but her expression was calm and transfixed. She submitted quickly, walking with dignity between the men, her upright bearing failing entirely to disguise her terror.

At the table, waiters leapt forward instantly, sweeping up stray leaflets like embarrassingly spilled milk. Goering's face was puce with fury, but for the first time that evening, Goebbels gave a thin, colorless smile.

Conversation started up again, and the clatter of cutlery resumed, but Clara's appetite had deserted her. It was impossible to eat with the memory of the girl's bloodless face in her mind and the thought of what she might now be enduring. She looked so young. The fact that she must have known the penalty for such a public protest was no consolation. Suddenly, it was as though all the colors in the room were vibrating and blurring into each other, the candlelight off the chandelier splintering into a thousand stars.

“Please excuse me,” she told the Dutch diplomat. “I feel a little dizzy.”

She escaped to the balcony overlooking the magnificent garden, which was lit that evening by a hundred lanterns, and waited for her head to clear. From the shadows beside her, a figure appeared.

“Hello, Clara. I thought it was you.”

The Russian actress Olga Chekhova was wearing a low-cut strapless gown with a full-skirted froth of gray tulle, studded with roses at the hem.

“Are you all right?”

“I needed some air.”

“I'm not surprised. That poor girl. One dreads to think…Breathe deeply, darling, and drink more champagne. It'll settle you.”

Olga came up and leaned her arms against the stone parapet with a sigh.

“I had to get away from Goebbels. Do you know, he uses me as an alibi? When he's been seeing that woman, Lida, he tells Magda that
I've
invited him for dinner. He does drop by my apartment, but he only stays a few minutes and then he leaves. So every time I see Magda she glares like a witch who has put a curse on me. Tell me. Is she watching now? Don't make it obvious.”

Clara peered back into the ballroom. “I can't see her.”

“Good. I wish I'd never come. I only came because the Yugoslav princess is half Russian and she's a fan apparently, but Goering hasn't even bothered to introduce me. He's been utterly boorish towards me, in fact. Quite rude.”

There might be no better opportunity than this, in the quiet gloom of the garden, for Clara to tell Olga what she knew.

“Actually, I think I know why.”

A sharp, interrogative look. “You do?”

“Frau Goering mentioned it to me and I haven't had the chance to tell you. The fact is, Olga, Goering suspects you of spying.”

In the darkness, the actress's expression was impossible to read, but she coolly opened her velvet evening bag and drew out a cigarette, lighting up before replying.

“Well, I can't say I'm surprised. Why should he be any different?
Everyone
suspects me of spying. You have no idea what a nightmare it is for me, Clara. I'm both German and Russian. In Moscow, they suspect me because I live in Germany; and here, people assume I will be leaking secrets to my brother, Lev, because he's close to the Russian government. And I can't say a word. How could I ever denounce Stalin while my relations are living in Moscow?”

“It must be hard.”

“Oh, don't worry about me. The truth is, Clara, it's you I'm worried about.”

The older woman inclined her head. The blithe precision of a Viennese waltz danced out of the open doors behind them, and a hundred pairs of gleaming shoes shuffled on the shining floor.

“The other day in the Adlon, you were talking to a man.”

“I thought you didn't see me. I called and you didn't reply.”

“Forgive me, my darling, I did see you. But I pretended not to hear. The fact was, I couldn't disappear fast enough. You see, I knew that man. The one you were with. He's a friend of my brother Lev.”

Clara looked out into the darkness. Her fingers were so tight around the stem of her glass that she almost crushed it.

“The man you were talking to is a senior officer in the Soviet secret service, the NKVD. I would recognize him anywhere, but I hardly expected to find him standing in the bar of the Hotel Adlon.”

In the second before Clara completely understood, it was as though she was standing in the shadows of the soundstage, looking into the dazzle of the set, trying to see a face against the light. Waiting for the face to take shape as her eyes adjusted.

And then she knew.

“Be careful, won't you?” Olga Chekhova touched Clara's shoulder lightly and walked away.

I
t was late by the time her taxi reached Griebnitzsee. A lustrous moon made the shadows denser, the darkness blacker. Firs crowded in across the narrow road. Silence came sifting down like snow, and a fine sheen of rain puckered the glistening surface of the lake.

Clara guessed now who it was that had given her name to the Gestapo, and the knowledge had made the world change shape and close in around her. Her adrenaline was firing like an electrical charge, sparking through her body, yet her mind remained focused and determined, rinsed clear.

The big villas with their gates and long drives were draped in darkness. Shutters were closed and curtains drawn. Either the owners were away or they weren't bothering to light the street for the benefit of a rare late-night passerby. Yet again Clara regretted moving to this isolated spot. In the city there would be noise and nosiness, but in Griebnitzsee there was only indifferent silence.

As she approached the house, she remembered another point on Leo's list.
Listen for what you don't hear.
Pay attention to anything unfamiliar, to the gaps in the surroundings. A whisper of anything that lies beneath the natural stirrings of the forest and the waves in the lake thudding against the jetty. She stopped for a moment, ears strained for any change in the texture of the silence. Anything that might make her senses prickle, the way they did when danger was near.

And it was there. The rattle of the front gate, which had been left unlatched. The gate that Clara always closed. Like a bat squeak of menace, it sounded a high note of alarm in her ears.

But it was not until her key turned in the lock that she realized he would be waiting for her.

HUGH LINDSEY WAS STANDING
in the drawing room holding the postcard of the Vermeer painting that Clara had propped on the mantelpiece. The lamps were unlit, but the flood of moonlight washing in through the long windows accentuated his face in unfamiliar chiarascuro.

“I like this one.
Young Lady Seated at a Virginal
. It's from the National Gallery, isn't it?”

“What are you talking about, Hugh?”

He continued as though she had not spoken. “Vermeer's ladies look so pure and innocent, don't they? But who's to say they are really? Isn't that what appeals to us about them? The suggestion of corruption underneath? This one here—this little musician—we know that she may have more than music on her mind, because there are erotic paintings behind her. There's Cupid and a procuress.”

Clara snapped the light on, causing him to blink.

“What are you doing in my house?”

“I've been here a couple of times actually, since I drove you that evening. I wish you'd invited me in then, but there was obviously something on your mind. I've been thinking about you. I've watched you.”

“You
watched
me?”

“Don't take it personally, Clara. I like you a lot. I know your family. But ideology means more than pure sentiment.”

“You mean Bolshevik ideology.”

“If you like.”

She remained where she was standing, by the door. Her legs were trembling too much to move.

“You probably don't know, but your dear Bolsheviks are planning to team up with the Nazis. There's a pact under way right now. What does that say about them that they're prepared to ditch their principles at a moment's notice?”

He smiled. “Principles are a luxury that other people pay for. Besides, this pact you're talking about—
if
it happens—will ultimately advance the cause of Bolshevism.”

“And how is helping Hitler going to advance your cause?”

“I'm no admirer of the Nazis, as you well know. But Stalin needs to protect the world from the expansion of British imperialism.”

“Protect the world? The English are the only ones who will oppose Nazism.”

“Oh, Clara, the English are hopeless. They have no idea of the Nazis' methods or intentions.” He looked around him, restlessly. “I suppose you don't have any more of those Gauloises with you?”

She reached in her bag and withdrew the packet, tossing it to him.

“Thank you.”

He pulled out his silver lighter and inhaled languidly.

“There's something about us English which makes us think that because we all go to the same schools and belong to the same clubs, White's or Brooks's, or the Athenaeum, or at a stretch the Reform, and because we share the same tailors, that we must also share the same mind. King, Country, Class, and Club, that's our religion. The effortless English gentleman. Born to rule the waves. The only rules being not to sleep with a colleague's wife and not to light one's cigar before the third glass of port. Our highest test of character is to be a good cricket umpire and play by the rules. Ideological dispute is the stuff of university common rooms. Well, I've never been part of that pompous, self-satisfied tribe.”

“So it was better to become a spy?”

He gave a gravelly, cigarette-choked laugh. “My dear, isn't that rather a case of the pot calling the kettle black? It takes one to know one.”

If Hugh Lindsey knew about her, what others might he be aware of? Despite his outward languor, she felt their two minds matching each other, calculating, intensely alert. Trying to compute which of them was the more dangerous.

“As soon as I realized what you were up to, I informed my friendly local Gestapo. But for some reason they allowed you to slip the net.”

Clara had heard that in extreme situations, fear would turn to anger, and now she felt fury, pure and hot, coursing like fuel through her veins. It was so difficult to equate the handsome, cultured, smiling being before her with the threat he posed.

“Why not have the courage of your convictions and join the Russians outright?”

“Perhaps. But how much more satisfying to destroy the citadel from within. It's rather a thrill, outwitting others. Hugh St. John Lindsey. Just the sort of chap they expect to mingle with them, attending their grand dinners at the Grosvenor House and the Dorchester and Claridge's, listening to their deeply misguided speeches.”

Claridge's.

“It was you, wasn't it? You were the man Lottie Franke met in London. The one she fell in love with.”

“There was a hotel dinner. The Faith and Beauty girls were being paraded like Hitler's little princesses. The pearls of the Reich. Well, a couple of nights in the company of the lovely Lottie was enough to settle that question. Lottie was like one of Vermeer's girls. An exquisite face and morals of the gutter. Did you see that photograph of her in the paper the other day—the one by Yva? It captured her perfectly, I thought.”

“But to kill her, Hugh? Why would you need to do that?”

“She was threatening me, I'm afraid. In the most extortionate way. She wasn't a nice person, Clara. She'd stolen from me.”

“I know all about that. She stole a jewel.”

“A jewel? No.”

For a moment he looked baffled, and his bloodshot eyes blinked as though Clara was speaking a foreign language. Then he smiled.

“Ah. That's what Gurlitt called it. A jewel. Because it is, in its way. One of the great gems of Western culture. It was a book.”

“A book? That can't be true.”

“But it is. I had come by a rather lovely manuscript. I knew what it was because, without being immodest, Roman literature of that era is my specialty. And this was a copy of the Tacitus
Germania
.”

“You're lying. I met an expert at the Ahnenerbe who told me it was in Italy.”

“As indeed it was. The Codex Aesinas. Hitler's dearest wish. The one manuscript above all others he would like to possess. But there was another codex. It had spent hundreds of years at a monastery in Austria until it came into the hands of an antiquarian dealer there. Who was unfortunate enough to have his collection thieved by Nazi louts and sent back to Berlin. I'd heard of it years ago, in Vienna, and once my contact described it, I knew exactly what it was. I just had to have it. I went to Austria to find it, but no luck. It had already been carted off back to Berlin. So I followed it, and once I arrived here I discovered I had come in the nick of time. The stash was being held in a warehouse in Kopernikusstrasse under the auspices of a dealer called Hildebrand Gurlitt. The riches there were mouthwatering. Paintings, silver candlesticks, porcelain, all sorts. But most importantly the
Germania
.”

The fragments that had been spinning around Clara's mind began to pair and come together.

“So that was what Goering wanted.”

“Goering wanted it passionately because the Führer wanted it too. The competition between them is pitiful. Goering was a regular visitor to the warehouse, and when he heard about the
Germania
he was determined to have it. He's engaged in some kind of race with the Führer, and knowing how much the Führer desired the Tacitus made it all the more desirable to him. I managed to buy it the day before he arrived. It was better in my hands than theirs, I reckoned.”

Clara felt a choking emotion. Pure rage that this man had dispensed with a life so casually.

“So Lottie had to die for that? Just that?”

“She stole my codex, and unfortunately she refused to hand it over when asked. I didn't want her to die. I wanted her scared. That's what I told the man. But he was a local Communist hoodlum, and he killed her in an excess of patriotism.”

“Is that what you call murder?”

“The chap assumed she was an enemy of the Soviet Union. Indeed she probably was.”

“And where is this precious codex now? The one that's worth a woman's life?”

“That's my greatest regret. It's lost. I'm afraid it will have to remain a casualty of war. It's a shame. I must be one of the very few people in the world who could recognize that codex right off for what it was. I was a Greats scholar at Oxford, you know. There was only one man above me. He took the Newdigate Prize. Just pipped me to it. And it still rankles, if I'm honest.”

Hugh had entered a kind of reverie. The whites of his eyes were cracked and yellowish, like the glaze on an old painting. Clara realized he must have been drinking all evening. He leaned against the mantelpiece and turned the photograph of Clara's mother around to face him.

“I suppose whether one likes Stalin or England, Fascism or Communism, it's all a question of taste, isn't it? Like the difference between Vermeer and Klimt…”

He took a swig of whiskey from a bottle on the mantelpiece, then replaced it with the deliberation of the profoundly drunk.

“I'm not proud of this, Clara. I've been a faithful servant of the Soviet Union since my twenties, and if Stalin wants me to dispose of British agents, that is what I must do. No matter how much I might personally like or admire them. I do like you, very much.”

He reached downwards, and she saw the sudden glint of metal in his hand.

“But I suppose betrayal is one of those things we English do so well. Like garden parties and well-made gentlemen's shoes.”

“You wouldn't shoot me, Hugh. Think how easily you'd be traced.”

“As a matter of fact everyone imagines I'm in Prague. I was obliged to leave my car in the care of the Adlon, and I'll be heading off tonight.”

She looked down at the pistol. It was bigger than the tiny derringer she had possessed. As Hugh moved the muzzle a fraction, pointing it more directly at her chest, a cold fear clutched at her. She looked over at the pictures of Erich and her mother on the mantelpiece and wished passionately that she had kept a photograph of Leo after all. Yet it was still Leo's face in her mind as the shot rang out.

THE NOISE FILLED
the room and blasted out into the darkness. Hugh Lindsey staggered, as if surprised, a dark trickle of blood beginning to stain his suit. As his body jerked sideways and backwards, and then crumpled to the floor, Clara looked around. The shooter's arm was shaking so much that the muzzle of the gun was a blur. The room smelled of gunpowder and perfume.

“I never thought I could shoot someone.”

Hedwig's voice was slightly trembly, but she lifted her chin resolutely. “All those lessons must have counted for something.”

Clara forced herself to remain calm. She wondered if Hugh might die, and how quickly, but looking at him sprawled awkwardly on his back, she saw that his skin was already becoming chalky, and his eyes were open and motionless, as if he were surprised. She moved swiftly to the front window and looked out.

“Don't worry,” said Hedwig. “They're always hearing shots round here. They'll think it's the Faith and Beauty girls having pistol practice in the forest. Either that or someone shooting geese.”

Clasping her arms around her chest, as if to protect herself from the trauma, Clara walked off into the kitchen. She felt a violent nausea at the sight of Hugh Lindsey lying there, and her own surprise at not being dead.

Something he had said, a comment she'd barely registered in the fear of the moment, now resounded.

I was a Greats scholar at Oxford, you know. There was only one man above me. He took the Newdigate Prize. Just pipped me to it. And it still rankles, if I'm honest
.

The Newdigate Prize was Oxford's great honor for poetry. John Buchan had won it in his time, and Matthew Arnold and Oscar Wilde. And, more recently, it had been awarded to another gifted student: Leo Quinn.

Hugh Lindsey must have fostered a grudge against Leo. A grudge that had stretched all the way from the golden stone cloisters of Oxford to the other side of Europe. And finally, decades later, he had found a way to take his long-desired revenge.

CLARA TURNED ON
the tap with trembling fingers and poured herself a glass of water, then turned to face Hedwig.