Winter of the World (63 page)

Carla was astonished. She thought she knew Werner. She would have been sure he would see this the way she did. ‘Actually, I have met them,’ she said. ‘They arrested my
father.’

Frieda was appalled. ‘Oh, Carla!’ she said, and put her arm around Carla’s shoulders.

‘We can’t find out where he is,’ Carla added.

Werner showed no sympathy. ‘Then you should know better than to defy them!’ he said. ‘They would have arrested you, too, except that Inspector Macke thinks girls aren’t
dangerous.’

Carla wanted to cry. She had been on the point of falling in love with Werner, and now he turned out to be a coward.

Frieda said: ‘Are you saying you won’t help us?’

‘Yes.’

‘Because you want to keep your job?’

‘It’s pointless – you can’t beat them!’

Carla was furious with him for his cowardice and defeatism. ‘We can’t just let this happen!’

‘Open confrontation is insane. There are other ways to oppose them.’

Carla said: ‘How, by working slowly, like those leaflets say? That won’t stop them killing handicapped children!’

‘Defying the government is suicidal!’

‘Anything else is cowardice!’

‘I refused to be judged by two girls!’ With that he stalked off.

Carla fought back tears. She could not cry in front of two hundred people standing outside the church in the sunshine. ‘I thought he was different,’ she said.

Frieda was upset, but baffled too. ‘He
is
different,’ she said. ‘I’ve known him all my life. Something else is going on, something he’s not telling us
about.’

Carla’s mother approached. She did not notice Carla’s distress, which was unusual. ‘Nobody knows anything!’ she said despairingly. ‘I can’t find out where you
father might be.’

‘We’ll keep trying,’ Carla said. ‘Didn’t he have friends at the American Embassy?’

‘Acquaintances. I’ve asked them already, but they haven’t come up with any information.’

‘We’ll ask them again tomorrow.’

‘Oh, God, I suppose there are a million German wives in the same situation as me.’

Carla nodded. ‘Let’s go home, Mother.’

They walked back slowly, not talking, each with her own thoughts. Carla was angry with Werner, the more so because she had badly mistaken his character. How could she have fallen for someone so
weak?

They reached their street. ‘I shall go to the American Embassy in the morning,’ Maud said as they approached the house. ‘I’ll wait in the lobby all day if necessary.
I’ll beg them to do something. If they really want to they can make a semi-official inquiry about the brother-in-law of a British government minister. Oh! Why is our front door
open?’

Carla’s first thought was that the Gestapo had paid them a second visit. But there was no black car parked at the kerb. And a key was sticking out of the lock.

Maud stepped into the hall and screamed.

Carla rushed in after her.

There was a man lying on the floor covered in blood.

Carla managed to stop herself screaming. ‘Who is it?’ she said.

Maud knelt beside the man. ‘Walter,’ she said. ‘Oh, Walter, what have they done to you?’

Then Carla saw that it was her father. He was so badly injured he was almost unrecognizable. One eye was closed, his mouth was swollen into a single huge bruise, and his hair was covered with
congealed blood. One arm was twisted oddly. The front of his jacket was stained with vomit.

Maud said: ‘Walter, speak to me, speak to me!’

He opened his ruined mouth and groaned.

Carla suppressed the hysterical grief that bubbled up inside her by shifting into professional gear. She fetched a cushion and propped up his head. She got a cup of water from the kitchen and
dribbled a little on his lips. He swallowed and opened his mouth for more. When he seemed to have had enough, she went into his study and got a bottle of schnapps and gave him a few drops. He
swallowed them and coughed.

‘I’m going for Dr Rothmann,’ Carla said. ‘Wash his face and give him more water. Don’t try to move him.’

Maud said: ‘Yes, yes – hurry!’

Carla wheeled her bike out of the house and pedalled away. Dr Rothmann was not allowed to practise any longer – Jews could not be doctors – but, unofficially, he still attended poor
people.

Carla pedalled furiously. How had her father got home? She guessed they had brought him in a car, and he had managed to stagger from the kerbside into the house, then collapsed.

She reached the Rothmann house. Like her own home, it was in bad repair. Most of the windows had been broken by Jew-haters. Frau Rothmann opened the door. ‘My father has been
beaten,’ Carla said breathlessly. ‘The Gestapo.’

‘My husband will come,’ said Frau Rothmann. She turned and called up the stairs. ‘Isaac!’

The doctor came down.

‘It’s Herr von Ulrich,’ said Frau Rothmann.

The doctor picked up a canvas shopping bag that stood near the door. Because he was banned from practising medicine, Carla guessed he could not carry anything that looked like an instrument
case.

They left the house. ‘I’ll cycle on ahead,’ Carla said.

When she got home she found her mother sitting on the doorstep, weeping.

‘The doctor’s on his way!’ Carla said.

‘He is too late,’ said Maud. ‘Your father’s dead.’

(viii)

Volodya was outside the Wertheim department store, just off the Alexander Platz, at half past two in the afternoon. He patrolled the area several times, looking for men
who might be plain-clothes police officers. He was sure he had not been followed here, but it was not impossible that a passing Gestapo agent might recognize him and wonder what he was up to. A
busy place with crowds was the best camouflage, but it was not perfect.

Was the invasion story true? If so, Volodya would not be in Berlin much longer. He would kiss goodbye to Gerda and Sabine. He would presumably return to Red Army Intelligence headquarters in
Moscow. He looked forward to spending some time with his family. His sister, Anya, had twin babies whom he had never seen. And he felt he could do with a rest. Undercover work meant continual
stress: losing Gestapo shadows, holding clandestine meetings, recruiting agents, and worrying about betrayal. He would welcome a year or two at headquarters, assuming the Soviet Union survived that
long. Alternatively, he might be sent on another foreign posting. He fancied Washington. He had always had a yen to see America.

He took from his pocket a ball of crumpled tissue paper and dropped it into a litter bin. At one minute to three he lit a cigarette, although he did not smoke. He dropped the lighted match
carefully into the bin so that it landed in the nest of tissue paper. Then he walked away.

Seconds later, someone cried: ‘Fire!’

Just when everyone in the vicinity was looking at the fire in the litter bin, a taxi drew up at the entrance to the store, a regular black Mercedes 260D. A handsome young man in the uniform of
an air force lieutenant jumped out. As the lieutenant was paying the driver, Volodya jumped into the cab and slammed the door.

On the floor of the cab, where the driver could not see it, was a copy of
Neues Volk
, the Nazi magazine of racial propaganda. Volodya picked it up, but did not read it.

‘Some idiot has set fire to a litter bin,’ said the driver.

‘Adlon Hotel,’ Volodya said, and the car pulled away.

He riffled the pages of the magazine and verified that a buff-coloured envelope was concealed within.

He longed to open it, but he waited.

He got out of the cab at the hotel, but did not go inside. Instead, he walked through the Brandenburg Gate and into the park. The trees were showing bright new leaves. It was a warm spring day
and there were plenty of afternoon strollers.

The magazine seemed to burn the skin of Volodya’s hand. He found an unobtrusive bench and sat down.

He unfolded the magazine and, behind its screen, he opened the buff-coloured envelope.

He drew out a document. It was a carbon copy, typed and a bit faint, but legible. It was headed:

Friedrich Barbarossa was the German Emperor who had led the Third Crusade in the year 1189.

The text began: ‘The German Wehrmacht must be prepared, even before the completion of the war against England, to overthrow Russia in a rapid campaign.’

Volodya found himself gasping for breath. This was dynamite. The Tokyo spy had been right, and Stalin wrong. And the Soviet Union was in mortal danger.

Heart pounding, Volodya looked at the end of the document. It was signed: ‘Adolf Hitler.’

He scanned the pages, looking for a date, and found one. The invasion was scheduled for 15 May 1941.

Next to this was a pencilled note in Werner Franck’s handwriting: ‘The date has now been changed to 22 June.’

‘Oh, my God, he’s done it,’ Volodya said aloud. ‘He’s confirmed the invasion.’

He put the document back into the envelope and the envelope into the magazine.

This changed everything.

He got up from the bench and walked back to the Soviet Embassy to give them the news.

(ix)

There was no railway station at Akelberg, so Carla and Frieda got off at the nearest stop, ten miles away, and wheeled their bicycles off the train.

They wore shorts, sweaters, and utilitarian sandals, and they had put their hair up in plaits. They looked like members of the League of German Girls, the Bund Deutscher Mädel or BDM. Such
girls often took cycling holidays. Whether they did anything other than cycle, especially during the evenings in the spartan hostels at which they stayed, was the subject of much speculation. Boys
said BDM stood for
Bubi Drück Mir,
Baby Do Me.

Carla and Frieda consulted their map then rode out of town in the direction of Akelberg.

Carla thought about her father every hour of every day. She knew she would never get over the horror of finding him savagely beaten and dying. She had cried for days. But alongside her grief was
another emotion: rage. She was not merely going to be sad. She was going to do something about it.

Maud, distraught with grief, had at first tried to persuade Carla not to go to Akelberg. ‘My husband is dead, my son is in the army, I don’t want my daughter to put her life on the
line too!’ she had wailed.

After the funeral, when horror and hysteria gave way to a calmer, more profound mourning, Carla had asked her what Walter would have wanted. Maud had thought for a long time. It was not until
the next day that she answered. ‘He would have wanted you to carry on the fight.’

It was hard for Maud to say it, but they both knew it was true.

Frieda had had no such discussion with her parents. Her mother, Monika, had once loved Walter, and was devastated by his death; nonetheless, she would have been horrified if she knew what Frieda
was doing. Her father, Ludi, would have locked her in the cellar. But they believed she was going bicycling. If anything, they might have suspected she was meeting some unsuitable boyfriend.

The countryside was hilly, but they were both in good shape, and an hour later they coasted down a slope into the small town of Akelberg. Carla felt apprehensive: they were entering enemy
territory.

They went into a café. There was no Coca-Cola. ‘This isn’t Berlin!’ said the woman behind the counter, with as much indignation as if they had asked to be serenaded by
an orchestra. Carla wondered why someone who disliked strangers would run a café.

They got glasses of Fanta, a German product, and took the opportunity to refill their water bottles.

They did not know the precise location of the hospital. They needed to ask directions, but Carla was concerned about arousing suspicion. The local Nazis might take an interest in strangers
asking questions. As they were paying, Carla said: ‘We’re supposed to meet the rest of our group at the crossroads by the hospital. Which way is that?’

The woman would not meet her eye. ‘There’s no hospital here.’

‘The Akelberg Medical Institution,’ Carla persisted, quoting from the letterhead.

‘Must be another Akelberg.’

Carla thought she was lying. ‘How strange,’ she said, keeping up the pretence. ‘I hope we’re not in the wrong place.’

They wheeled their bikes along the high street. There was nothing else for it, Carla thought: she had to ask the way.

A harmless-looking old man was sitting on a bench outside a bar, enjoying the afternoon sunshine. ‘Where’s the hospital?’ Carla asked him, covering her anxiety with a cheery
veneer.

‘Through the town and up the hill on your left,’ he said. ‘Don’t go inside, though – not many people come out!’ He cackled as if he had made a joke.

The directions were a bit vague, but might suffice, Carla thought. She decided she would not draw further attention by asking again.

A woman in a headscarf took the arm of the old man. ‘Pay no attention to him – he doesn’t know what he’s saying,’ she said, looking worried. She jerked him to his
feet and hustled him along the sidewalk. ‘Keep your mouth shut, you old fool,’ she muttered.

It seemed these people had an inkling of what was going on in their neighbourhood. Fortunately their main reaction was to act surly and not get involved. Perhaps they would not be in a hurry to
give information to the police or the Nazi party.

Carla and Frieda went farther along the street and found the youth hostel. There were thousands of such places in Germany, designed to cater for exactly such people as they were pretending to
be, athletic youngsters on a vigorous open-air holiday. They checked in. The facilities were primitive, with three-tiered bunk beds, but the place was cheap.

It was late afternoon when they cycled out of town. After a mile they came to a left turn. There was no signpost, but the road led uphill, so they took it.

Carla’s apprehension intensified. The nearer they got, the harder it would be to seem innocent under questioning.

A mile later they saw a large house in a park. It did not seem to be walled or fenced, and the road led up to the door. Once again there were no signs.