The Winter Garden (2014) (50 page)

An intense cold had gripped the city, almost paralysing it. Puddles were covered with a brittle skin and cracked like a million broken mirrors when you stepped on them. A weak
sun hauled itself up in a bone-white sky. Winter was no longer hiding behind the veil of autumn but had finally shown its face. The previous night the sky had been clogged with snow like whirling
ash and by morning Berlin was black and bridal white, a city in chiaroscuro.

In Köllnischer Park in Kreuzberg the snow lay inches deep, blanketing the divisions and softening sharp edges. Little avalanches slid from nearby roofs with cracks like a gunshot. Statues
of dead statesmen stood awkwardly in the small square, covered with dustsheets of snow. Snow picked out the detail of tree branches and made the world simple again.

The three of them, Clara, Mary and Erich, were amongst a gaggle of people who had gathered to witness the unveiling of Berlin’s latest attraction. A bear pit containing four brown bears to
commemorate the seven hundredth anniversary of the city’s founding. The pit was far smaller than one might expect – just a patch of grass sunk deep into the ground on which a few rocks
had been scattered in a passing reference to the animals’ mountain habitat. The crowd were craning their heads over the railings, but the bears were disappointingly publicity-shy. All four
had taken shelter in the invisible depths of their den.

Mary had brought her camera and was angling for an artistic shot of the children’s faces framed by the bars. She had wholeheartedly embraced her new existence as a photojournalist. The
photographs she had taken of the Bride School had made a double-page spread in the
New York Evening Post,
alongside the scandalous story of the murders of Anna Hansen and Ilse Henning.
Ilse had been shot in the head while running through woods to escape Anna’s former boyfriend, Rudolf Fleischer. The death of a second Reich Bride was too much even for the domestic papers to
ignore and the Bride School had been besieged. Fräulein Wolff had been put in charge of handling journalistic enquiries, a task she accomplished by locking the school gates, barring brides
from leaving the premises and slamming down the telephone whenever it rang. As for Fleischer, Goebbels had acted quickly. He had been arrested at dawn, the day after the gala performance of
Patriots
. His Walther 6.35-calibre pistol matched the bullets that killed the two girls.

Clara shivered and rubbed her arms with her gloved hands. Of Fleischer’s other secret, the photographs of the Führer, there was no word. Goebbels was the custodian of those splintered
fragments now, and although they had not seen the light of day, the negatives remained a dark bond between Clara and him. Her decision to hand the pictures over might be enough for now to still his
suspicions about her, but there was no telling how long that would last. The Minister of Propaganda and Enlightenment was good at keeping secrets, she knew, and he must assume the same of her. This
particular dangerous secret would stay buried, deep, until it was needed. Her enemy was, for the moment, also her protector.

She looked down at the frozen puddles, peering through the panes of ice as if she might divine something stirring beneath them, and thought of Bruno Weiss. He had vanished from the Moabit
apartment and disappeared into the great underground network that spread through Berlin, an underground that was not just symbolic but actual, made up of brewery cellars and U-Bahn tunnels,
subterranean walkways and a maze of bunkers being built for war. She wondered how many people there were like Bruno, frozen beneath the surface of normal life until the time came for them to stir.
Let alone how many others like herself.

As she stared into the puddles, Erich stamped on them, turning them into great shards of glassy ice, and grinned. The snow bounced light into his face.

‘Here, Clara. You haven’t looked at it properly yet.’

He held out the gift that Ernst Udet had sent him. It was a model aeroplane, complete with a tiny tin figure of Ernst Udet himself that could be removed from the cockpit. Erich had been slightly
embarrassed at receiving a toy at his advanced age. Clara had given him plenty of lead soldiers over the years – smart little Wehrmacht figures in field grey with impressive rifles, and some
indeterminate enemy troops that looked suspiciously French – but Erich had donated them all to the HJ’s metal collection. Yet this was different. The Stuka was an artistic object, not a
toy, he rationalized, and any embarrassment was overwhelmed by his pride at receiving a gift from General Udet himself, along with a personally signed letter wishing him well in his future as a
pilot.

‘Are you looking forward to seeing your sister, Clara?’ he asked.

Mary and Clara exchanged a quick glance. ‘Of course.’

‘Does she look like you?’

‘Far more glamorous.’

‘No one could be more glamorous than you,’ he said, with a quick, loyal stroke of her lapel to show that everything was fine again between them.

‘You’d be surprised. Even though she’s my sister, she’s not a bit like me. She’s nothing like me at all.’

Which was true, and yet they were well matched. Angela was clever and curious and she knew Clara better than anyone on earth. Clara braced, as though tightening a buckle inside her, readying
herself. She would show Angela the sights of Berlin with all the insouciance of an actress only interested in her own career. She would let slip the names of leading men who she might, conceivably,
have an eye on. If Clara could deceive her own sister, she could deceive anyone.

‘Will I like her?’

‘I hope so.’

Angela and Sir Ronald Vine were flying in that afternoon. Angela had sent her usual, peremptory letter, requesting that Clara be at Tempelhof at two o’clock and accompany them to the
hotel. Unfortunately, Angela wrote, it looked as though she would be missing the Mitfords. Diana Mosley had returned to England and Unity was back in Munich. But the Goebbels had kindly offered to
throw a dinner for them at the Kaiserhof later in the week and Clara would be pleased to hear they had tickets for that evening’s production of
The Merry Widow
at the Wintergarten.
Would she like to come too? Angela had heard that it was the Führer’s favourite operetta. Clara thought she might as well go and see it. When war came there would be no more Merry Widows
in Germany. No one would dare.

‘Hey, look!’ said Erich.

One of the bears had emerged. Tentatively at first, the huge beast prowled the pit, peering up at the civilized citizens staring down at it, protected by a tangle of iron and barbed wire. The
bear’s breath hung in a cloud as it sniffed the air of its new captivity. The pit was ten foot deep at least, made of musty bricks the colour of dried blood.

‘Do you know, there hasn’t been a bear pit in Berlin since the Middle Ages,’ said Erich, solemnly.

The animal began to pace out the confines of its den, round and round, barging its dull, matted pelt against the walls, poking its long snout and tiny black eyes into the crevices, as if to find
some escape from its predicament. Children leaned over the railings, thrilling to the spectacle of such strength and vitality contained, recoiling in delighted terror as the bear reared up on its
great hind legs, pawing the walls with ugly, curving claws. They shrieked. Someone threw a pretzel. The bear dropped down again to resume its pacing, round and round the circle of the pit, issuing
small grunts from the narrow, crimson cave of its mouth. A ripple of laughs ran through the crowd.

‘Do you reckon it could escape?’ wondered Erich.

‘Of course not.’

But the more she watched, the more Clara wished it could. She had a vision of the bear leaping over the railings of its prison and disappearing into the city, running on its ugly, clawed paws
through the streets of Berlin, past the granite, Wilhelmine façades bristling with scarlet banners, disrupting the soldiers’ marches, scattering pedestrians, ripping down flags with
its dirty, yellow teeth and knocking over newspaper stands as it went. Up past Potsdamer Platz, the wind flattening its fur, skidding over tramlines, trampling the postcard racks with their
pictures of the Führer and sending the pretzel carts flying. Causing chaos in the Ku’damm and shocking the affluent shoppers in the west end. Then slowing, its clumsy bulk lumbering out
west through the leafy streets of Charlottenburg, before disappearing for ever in the grey-green depths of the Grunewald.

Erich linked his arm through hers. As he grew older such physical gestures between them had become increasingly rare and she felt a surge of love for him. She turned and smiled.

‘Don’t worry. We’re completely safe.’

And anyone watching would swear that she believed it.

In 1937, two versions of the Heinkel He III were fitted with hidden cameras and flown from Germany to begin the secret aerial reconnaissance of Britain. They were soon joined
by other aircraft and the resulting photographs were used to identify airfields, dockyards, factories, military installations and any other sites considered valid bombing targets in case of war.
Together they made up the first ever aerial survey of Britain.

One of the most important figures in assessing the secret build-up of the Luftwaffe, and understanding the importance of aerial reconnaissance, was Group Captain Frederick Winterbotham, who
joined the Secret Intelligence Service in 1929, and travelled widely in Germany between 1934 and 1938, when his cover was blown. His book,
The Nazi Connection
, details his meetings with
Hitler, Goering, Rosenberg, Hess, General von Reichenau and General Kesselring, all of whom believed he was sympathetic to their aims.

Ernst Udet continued in the Luftwaffe until after war broke out. He was blamed for the Luftwaffe’s defeat in the Battle of Britain and further despaired of the direction of the war when
Hitler attacked the Soviet Union. Increasingly unhappy, he committed suicide in November 1941, but the Party announced that he had died testing a new weapon.

In October 1937, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor toured Nazi Germany as personal guests of Hitler. There is a curious addendum to this episode. In 1945 the spy Anthony Blunt was sent on a secret
mission on behalf of the royal family to Schloss Friedrichshof, the home of Edward VIII’s cousin Philip of Hesse. Blunt’s mission was to retrieve certain letters and it has been
speculated, though never proved, that these included letters between the Duke of Windsor and the Nazi hierarchy. Some have suggested that this intimate knowledge of royal secrets delayed
Blunt’s unveiling as a traitor.

Unity Mitford remained a devoted follower of Hitler. In 1939, following the declaration of war between Britain and Germany, she went into Munich’s English Garden, took out a pearl-handled
pistol which had been a gift from Hitler and shot herself. Her attempt at suicide failed, however, and she was transported back to England with Hitler’s help, lingering on as an invalid until
1948.

Berlin’s bear pit still exists, at time of writing, in Köllnischer Park.

Once again my heartfelt thanks go to Suzanne Baboneau, Clare Hey and Hannah Corbett at Simon & Schuster and to Caradoc King.