The Pursuit of Pearls (37 page)

Clara stood frozen with indecision. Another train burst into the station with an upwash of warm air. The crowds swelled and cleared and the train departed. At that point, a hundred yards away at the end of the platform she occupied, a figure appeared. This time she could see his face. It was not the face of a phantom but a living breathing man.

A
t precisely the same moment, the police she had seen before arrived on the opposite platform, looked across, and shouted.

Springing up, Clara signaled to Leo that he should follow her. She ran back up the steps the way she had come, along the exit tunnel, trying to recall what Jochen had told her.

Almost half of Berlin lies underground.

She knew now why she had chosen the U5 line. It was not a random choice but a subconscious memory.

The green door to the air-raid shelter was entirely inconspicuous, just as he had said. A blank sheet of steel studded with iron rivets and a vast handle, newly set into the wall. She pulled it, and to her relief, it was unlocked. Seconds later, Leo caught up and they slipped through the arched entrance into the darkness, pulled the door closed, and flattened themselves against the damp brick.

Inside, the air was dank and claustrophobic, but a glimmer of light revealed luminous paint outlining doorways and exits, and a long corridor punctuated by thick steel doors. There were signs for washing rooms and lavatories. Bedrooms. And immediately before them an immense, shadowy space like a station waiting room fitted with wooden benches. An entire underworld hotel with accommodation for hundreds.

Leo looked different in the phosphorescent shadow, at once strange and familiar. The light emphasized his finely cut features. He had grown a mustache, which made him seem older, and a triangle of tanned skin showed at his throat. He leaned against her, enfolding her entirely in his arms, and she felt his heart slamming against his chest. She pressed harder into his body—the body she knew by heart—inhaling the warm, familiar musk, feeling the pull of yearning for him, even now, and the answering surge within him. There was not an inch of air between them. His cheek was rough with stubble as they kissed.

They tensed themselves for the tramp of feet in the corridor outside, listening for the stamp of heavy police boots, the hurrying footsteps to halt outside the door. But amid the regular flow of travelers, nothing stood out.

She whispered in his ear. “How many are following?”

“Three teams, I think. Two on foot and another one in a car. By now, there could be more.” His breath was hot against her ear, his entire body tense and alert. “I had to come back and find you. I needed to make sure you were safe. I couldn't return to England without knowing.”

“You're going to England?”

In the darkness she gripped his hand as if to lock him to her, the questions tumbling through her mind.

“My name's a priority on the Gestapo watch list.”

“If you're on a watch list, they would have stopped you at the border…”

“They spotted me at Tempelhof. They could have picked me up there, but they chose not to. I assume they wanted to see who I was meeting. I've put you in grave danger, my darling. We need to keep moving. We have to get out of the underground.”

THE S7 LINE TRAIN
was full of commuters traveling home to the western suburbs. Past the Zoo, Charlottenburg, Grunewald, Nikolassee, bodies rocked companionably on the wooden benches to the soothing rhythm of the train. The clattering of the tracks, the stops and starts, the squeal of brakes, and the station announcements. Leo insisted that they not sit or speak together, so she chose a spot three rows away and tried to keep herself from looking at him. The tension of being unable to hold or touch him was excruciating. It wasn't until the train approached its final stop that he rose, and she followed him up the steps and out into the prettily gabled station of Berlin-Wannsee.

Wannsee station, with its Gothic signs and arched windows, might have been straight out of a woodcut of a fantasy Germanic past. Even the air was different here, pure and green, infused with the watery scent of the Havel River, which lay to one side, pocked with sailing boats making their slow, scenic way in the summer dusk. On the opposite bank, a path meandered through dense woodland all the way to Potsdam. On Sundays the route was thronged with hikers, cyclists, and families out for a lakeside walk, but now, on a weekday evening, only the occasional dog walker could be seen along the leaf-strewn path.

They crossed the bridge, but it wasn't until they reached the cover of woodland that Leo allowed himself to speak. They walked, clasped close to each other, the filigree of branches above them framing a darkening sky.

“The night I received that call they told me that two of our agents had disappeared in Vienna. All we knew was that they had arranged a meeting in the Café Louvre, at the corner of Wipplingerstrasse and Renngasse, with a pair of German officers who were thought to be anti-Nazis.”

“I know the Café Louvre. I made a film in Vienna three years ago. We used to go there.” Clara recalled the pale spring light streaming through the generous windows, the violin-backed chairs, and booths finished in dark brocade along one wall. The schnitzel and creamy Kaffee mit Schlagobers.

“I went straightaway. I became a regular and made friends with the barman. A nice chap. Georg.”

Clara pictured Leo faux-drunk, boozily intimate, leaning against the bar late into the evening.

“Sure enough, Georg told me what had happened. He saw the agents arrive and sit at a table with two other men. And it must have been a trap. Because within minutes the door slammed open, there was shouting, and the Gestapo came in with guns and dogs.”

Clara imagined the dogs slavering, pulling against their leads.

“Our men were taken away, almost certainly to be tortured and shot.” Leo swallowed and paused.

“But Georg had noticed something curious. There was another customer in the bar, not a regular, and he was there as the arrest took place. Georg said to me, ‘Something like this happens, everyone tries to hide their face, but they're looking all the same. They can't help themselves. But this man, he didn't turn a hair. Just kept reading his book.' ”

“What does that prove?”

“That he knew the arrest was going to happen. That he was part of the trap. And Georg was doubly curious because the book this man was reading was in a foreign language. It wasn't English, he insisted, or French, or Hungarian, any other language he recognized. All he could say was that it was the language you found on tombstones.”

“Latin?”

“Exactly.” Leo stopped and turned to Clara, urgently.

“And there was only one person I could think of who would sit in a café, reading a book in Latin. As soon as I realized, I knew you were in danger. I had to get to you before he did.”

It was her turn to astonish him.

“Hugh Lindsey is dead, Leo.”

Jaggedly, she explained about Hugh, and the young woman he had had murdered, and about how he had tried to kill her too. As she spoke, Leo laced his fingers through hers and gripped her tightly, as if attempting some retroactive protection.

“I should have known,” he said bitterly. “I should have seen through Hugh much earlier. Good old Hugh. Everyone's best friend. Always the life and soul of the party, even if he did like one too many and was always the last to leave. If anyone had looked more closely, they might have sensed a vacancy in him. There was a kind of emptiness, which he filled with drink and liaisons with other people's wives. But nobody did look closely.”

“Why was that?”

“Because Hugh had the most lethal of all qualities. Charm. Charm deflects inquiry. We're taught about those types in training. They're dominant. They imagine they can calculate risks and manage them better than anyone else.”

“You knew him at Oxford, didn't you?”

“I liked him a lot actually, though we were intellectual rivals. We had some of the same friends, but we lost touch afterwards. Hugh lived a peripatetic existence. After Christ Church he traveled to Vienna, then went back to England and took up a job as a journalist. At the same time he began working for the Intelligence Services.”

“Like you.”

“Only, in Hugh's case, it was a cover for his work for the Soviet Union. He'd formed Marxist sympathies in Austria and began to spy for the NKVD. They managed to infiltrate him into D Section, and that gave him knowledge of our entire European network. Hugh knew I was in Vienna, and he let the police know too. I disappeared just in time.”

Leo pulled Clara to him, resting his chin on her head and kissing her hair.

“There was a day, when I was on the run, that I slipped into a cinema and saw a film of yours, and I felt you were right there, in my arms. It was so real, I could almost taste your skin and smell that perfume you wear. It was like…a vision. I knew I'd been wrong to enforce that vow of silence on you. I had a plan, Clara. I thought I knew best. But things don't always turn out the way you plan them. All I know now is that I want you with me in England. Safe. There's no telling when war could break out.”

“There is. Von Ribbentrop is flying to Moscow imminently to finalize a nonaggression pact. The Soviet Union will stand by when Hitler invades Poland. I've seen the memorandum. It's code-named Operation White. And they've set a date. September first.”

“Have you told anyone this?”

“Only you.”

It was darker now, the surroundings becoming monochrome. They had emerged at the spot where the elegant gray-green steel arches of the Glienicker bridge spanned the Havel. To the north the land rose up in densely wooded slopes to the landscaped park and fairy-tale turrets of the Schloss Babelsberg. To the east, a few fragile points of light signaled the outlying streets of Potsdam. Leo gestured to a car parked on the far end of the bridge, its engine idling.

“There was a man I knew in the German Foreign Office. I'd met him years ago in London, and I thought he might be sympathetic to us. He was unwilling to cooperate, though I sensed that he was not an ardent Nazi. So I took a chance and called him earlier today. He agreed to drive me across the border tonight.”

“Are you leaving?”

“No. You are. If we try to leave together, we risk attracting attention. You will take my place in the car. I'll follow.”

“How can you follow? You're on a Gestapo watch list. How long could you evade them?”

“I'm not leaving you here.”

“You don't have a hope of escaping them, Leo. This is your best chance.”

He squared his shoulders, wrapped his arms round her waist, and looked at her. The movement of his body against hers aroused the old, familiar feelings, the urgency of desire, the recognition that loving each other had become a part of them—the best part perhaps—and that what they possessed was solid and incorruptible. Clara yearned to stay suspended in that moment, for the earth to halt in its orbit and the stars above them to slow.

He said, “I've spent so much of my life in the shadows. Pretending. Deceiving people. That's the job, I know, but I don't want to live like that anymore. I want the most important part of my life to be open, public, dull even. I used to crave excitement and novelty, but now I want my life to be normal, or as normal as it could be alongside the loveliest woman in the world. I want a row of children with your eyes. As many as you like. I want to be able to say ‘Look, everyone, this is Clara Vine, who is not only the most beautiful woman you have met, but is also my wife.' ”

She glanced away, down to the river below, remembering her pact with the deity, that she would do whatever Leo wanted if only he was alive. That she would be the woman he wanted her to be.

“What good would it do if you were dead? How could we marry then?”

He carried on, almost as if she had not spoken. “There's a poem, by Martial, a Roman poet. He says we should not ‘miss the rich life within our reach.' You're my rich life. Take my place, Clara.”

He looked at her, as if trying to compress a lifetime's conversation into a single glance. As though his life depended on her answer.

“I'll come as fast as I can. But I can't leave Germany without saying goodbye to Erich.”

“Erich will understand.” The light in his eyes pierced as sharply as the first time she had met him. That same level gaze, whose intensity almost made her shiver.

“There are three surveillance teams looking for you. No one's looking for me. I can take the first train out of Berlin. I can leave Germany tomorrow.”

“No.”

“When war comes Erich will be called up, and I might never see him again. I have to see him before I leave. You must trust me, Leo. You do trust me, don't you? There's no point in anything if you don't.”

He cupped her face. Although his face remained controlled, a tremor in his hands betrayed the depth of his emotion.

“I do.”

“And you believe I'm capable?”

“That's one thing about you that I have never doubted.”

She linked her fingers into his, as tightly as if they had been parachute jumpers, planning to launch themselves together into the cold unknown.

“Go then.”

He walked along the bridge. She could see the soft glow of the car's gauges and the gleam of the leather inside. But whether Conrad Adler saw her, as the door opened and Leo got inside, it was impossible to tell. She stood watching, until the car's lights dimmed into the distance and finally faded from sight.

N
o event was more central to the outbreak of World War II than the Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact. Signed on August 23, 1939, it was an enormous coup for Hitler, turning Germany's greatest foe into an ally overnight and avoiding the danger of a war along the eastern borders of the Reich. Leni Riefenstahl records how she was present at the film evening at the Chancellery when Hitler's remarks about Stalin gave the first inkling of his intentions.

The
Sonderfahndungsliste G.B., The Gestapo Handbook for the Invasion of Britain
—was designed to be given to every soldier. It was a who's who of the British establishment, listing more than two thousand people, complete with photographs, home addresses, and private hobbies. It also probed every facet of British life, from political parties, police forces, and secret services to newspapers, radio stations, and trade unions.

The Rote Kapelle, the Red Orchestra, was a network of seven resistance groups with more than 150 members, including the fortune-teller Annie Krauss. They sheltered Jews and Communists and provided forged papers for those attempting to flee. More than 120 members of the Berlin group were arrested in 1942 and sentenced to death.

Alois, the half brother of Adolf Hitler, ran a restaurant at 3 Wittenbergplatz for many years. He was approached anonymously by the Rote Kapelle with an invitation to join them and circulate a typed flyer denouncing the Nazis' culture of lies. Instead he handed the note over to the Gestapo, and the leaders were ultimately arrested and executed.

Albert Goering, brother of Hermann Goering, took a different approach. The SS kept a file on him, and he was declared a “Public Enemy of the Reich,” but Hermann rescinded the arrest warrant. When he was arrested at the end of the war, Albert secured a speedy release by producing a list of thirty-four key figures who would testify to the numerous people he had helped. He refused to change his name after the war and died impoverished.

Magda Goebbels's affair with Karl Hanke came to an end when he volunteered for military service.
The Journey to Tilsit
was launched in November 1939 in Berlin. Magda Goebbels ostentatiously walked out of the premiere.

A large amount of the “Degenerate art” seized by the Nazis went missing. A celebrated haul was discovered in 2012 in the Munich flat of Cornelius Gurlitt, whose father, Hildebrand Gurlitt, had amassed 1,406 works by painters including Matisse, Chagall, Beckmann, Nolde, and Picasso while working for the Nazis.

Elsa Neuländer-Simon, also known as Yva, was a celebrated fashion photographer in Berlin and gave Helmut Newton his first apprenticeship. She and her husband were deported to the Majdanek concentration camp and murdered in 1942.

Leni Riefenstahl abandoned her film
Germania
on the outbreak of war.