Woman in the Shadows (21 page)

T
he Residenz-Casino on Blumenstrasse, known as the Resi to its clientele, was the place all of Berlin went to drown its sorrows. It had a dance floor that could hold a thousand people, and the air was alive with music, laughter, and the clash of cheap perfumes. Shards of light splintered from the mirrored globes fixed to the ceiling's reflective glass, showering everyone below with dappled brilliance. The special attraction of the Resi, however, was the telephones. The dance floor was surrounded by a series of cubicles fitted with Bakelite receivers, which could be called from any of the other cubicles. There was even a system of pneumatic tubes suspended above the tables, along which gifts could be sent.

Wearing a black satin dress and a slender string of pearls, Clara sat in her cubicle and stared out at the dance floor below. She had spent the entire day clearing the mess of her apartment, folding clothes that had been torn out of the dressers systematically back into drawers, and rehanging her dresses, throwing away the fragments of smashed crockery in the sink, trying to determine what, if anything, had been taken. The answer still, it seemed, was nothing. Once she had established that, the other question was whether anything had been left behind. She had made a thorough inspection of the hidden places in the apartment, behind the radiators and the panels in the bathroom. She had unscrewed the light fixtures and the telephone receiver and checked the underside of the bedside table. But there was nothing. In one way the burglary bore the hallmarks of a Gestapo raid. They could be heavy-handed in their operations and were never too concerned with tidying up afterwards because they knew no one was going to file a complaint. Yet if it was the Gestapo, the sheer chaos in her apartment told her that this was no ordinary search. It was sufficiently unsubtle to be a message to her. A warning almost. But a warning of what? Once more, Archie Dyson's words rang in her ears.
Lie low. Do nothing
. But it was clear to her now that doing nothing wasn't working.

Rudi, who had come up a second time, ostensibly to give her a letter, surveyed the scene of the crime avidly. No one had come past his cubicle on Saturday, he repeated. He would have seen them. Perhaps they came in the window on the stairwell. Clara examined it. Outside was a tiny ledge with a railing, which could easily be accessed by a determined burglar, but the fitting was clogged with verdigris, which showed no sign of having been disturbed. They must have come in from the ground floor. Had they dressed up as maintenance men and pretended to repair the lift while planning how to gain entry later? Had they arrived on Saturday night, when Rudi was always out, or waited until Sunday morning, when he was still in a drunken stupor?

“What did they take?” Rudi asked.

“Nothing important,” Clara replied coolly. She knew better than to give her block warden any additional information.

“Perhaps you had nothing they wanted.” He shrugged, his little eyes darting pruriently around for evidence of female immorality. His eyes lit on a bra that had been left dangling over the back of a chair. He departed reluctantly, saying the handyman was coming to fix the door that afternoon. As soon as he had gone, Clara had ripped open the letter he had brought to find a short note from Ralph, inviting her for a discussion on her “latest role.”

THE RINGING OF THE TELEPHONE
on her table cut through her thoughts, and she picked it up.

“Devilishly good fun these things, aren't they? I think all bars should have them. Then old married couples would never need to sit next to each other in silence. They could just pick up the receiver and say ‘Mine's a gin and tonic.' ”

Ralph's jocular tones were unmistakable. He could be any Englishman, out for a night on the town, determined to enjoy every minute of it. The sound of his voice cheered her instantly.

“Where are you?”

“Look to your right.”

He was sitting several tables away, his arm flung over the back of the chair, a bottle of champagne and two glasses in front of him. He was wearing evening dress, his thick hair trained back with brilliantine and tie loosened. He was a tourist, determined to have the time of his life in Berlin, and screw the politics.

“Care to join me? To tell the truth, I've an aversion to speaking on the telephone.”

She moved over to his table, and he kissed her on the cheek, a swift, masculine brush of warm skin and cologne, then poured the champagne. He took a sip and gave a little shudder.

“Filthy stuff they serve here.” She noticed his eyes roving across the room as he talked, lingering on an exceptionally lovely woman in a low-cut dress propping up the bar. “How was Munich? Pretty place, isn't it?”

“Very. They have some fascinating art down there. Have you been busy yourself?”

“Nonstop. The Luftwaffe was holding some maneuvers near Frankfurt to show off their new planes. They invited a handful of foreign air attachés, and I went along too. They do have some impressive machines. Particularly the Messerschmitt fighters and the Dornier bombers. There must have been thirteen hundred aircraft there at least. They're very proud of them.”

“And they want everyone to know it?”

“The Luftwaffe has decided it's time to flex its wings in public. They were hoping to get the Duke of Windsor along too, but the poor wretch was down a mine in Düsseldorf or somewhere.”

“Seems like everyone feels sorry for the duke.”

“Rightly so.” Ralph smoothed his mustache insouciantly. “It's incredible how much fuss the British press are still making about his private life. To think we're on the brink of an international crisis that could threaten tens of thousands of lives and all the British public seem to care about is the state of their ex-king's morals.”

“Do morals not matter?”

He caught her eye and frowned. “I'm talking about sexual morality. What two people do in bed with each other is a matter for themselves only, I always think. Don't you?”

For some reason, his remark stirred something in her and she shifted in her seat. At that moment her body felt ripe, ready, and perfectly alive, as though it was responding to him on a purely animal level. She amazed herself. How could she possibly feel this way, given Ralph Sommers's infuriating manner? The burglary had left her feeling more vulnerable than ever before. She couldn't walk down the street without fear of being followed. Perhaps it was like what people said about pilots or soldiers—that they never felt so alive as when they were under threat. She only hoped he didn't notice her blush.

“Mind you,” he continued, “the British newspapers are only making up for lost time. They didn't mention Wallis for years, when the whole of Europe knew. Now they're taking the same approach to rearmament. There's a wall of silence. The press derides Churchill when he talks about the dangers of German militarism because they don't dare tell the truth. It's as though they think the public can't take it. Well, they'll have to, soon enough.”

At that moment there was a shout from across the room and Ralph broke into a warm grin. He waved to a table of men a few feet away who were laughing in his direction and gesturing that he should join them. Instantly he was transformed again into the genial man-about-town, a socialite enjoying the high life in Berlin with a pretty actress beside him in crimson lipstick and a tight satin dress. Anyone looking at them would think they were an attractive couple, out for an evening's entertainment. Turning back to Clara, he leaned towards her, patted her hand, and said, “This is no good. We can't talk here.”

“Why did you ask me here then? It has to be the least private place in Berlin.”

“Precisely for that reason. You mentioned you might be watched. I wanted to see if you were.”

“And was I?”

“Only by me.”

Leaving the Resi, he flagged down a taxi and they drove to Duisburger Strasse. His apartment was cold and dark. He snapped on the lamp and helped her off with her coat.

“Sorry. You were probably expecting a lovely dinner. Instead of which you get an old bachelor's flat with nothing in the kitchen but half a bottle of bourbon.” He poured a generous slug into a glass, placed it on the coffee table, then rooted around in the cupboard and came up with some biscuits, which he laid before her like a trophy. “So. Any progress with our Oberst Strauss?”

She delivered her triumph coolly. “Frau Goering has invited me to a reception for the duke and duchess at their hunting lodge. Strauss will be there too.”

He nodded. “I'm impressed. All the Luftwaffe chaps in Frankfurt were talking about Goering's little party. It turns out to have some strategic significance. Apparently Hitler is to put some important proposal to the duke later, when he travels down to Berchtesgaden. Goering's reception is a buttering-up exercise.”

She sat down and crossed her legs. “I do hope you're going to tell me what this is all about.”

“All in good time. You mentioned Strauss took you in a plane the other day, but you said you were hopeless with names. I assume that was the opposite of the truth.”

“It was a Henschel Hs 126. A two-seater. It's the third prototype and one of ten being tested.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Excellent. Just as I thought.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“It's my understanding that Strauss reports to a new division of the Luftwaffe called the Squadron for Special Purposes. It's allied to the intelligence service. A special operations unit run by a man called Theodor Rowehl. He's been recruiting pilots and developing aircraft with the aim of developing aerial reconnaissance.”

Ralph pried a Senior Service out of its packet, sent the pack across the coffee table, and lit one for her.

“You do understand what I mean by aerial reconnaissance?”

“You could try explaining.”

“The Germans first tried it in the war. They fitted miniature cameras to the breasts of pigeons and flew them over the battlefield.”

“Pigeons!” Clara couldn't help laughing, but he was serious.

“It's true. It was ingenious but pretty rudimentary. Things have got a lot more sophisticated since then. You see, Clara, the blitzkrieg strategy which our friend Udet pioneered requires detailed knowledge of the terrain. If you're going to swoop down with a payload of bombs, you need to know beforehand exactly what you're going to attack. You have to have detailed aerial photographs.”

“I see.”

“So they need to experiment with aerial photography. But until now German military intelligence has had a problem. They can't make flights with standard Luftwaffe aircraft because this would be a violation of other countries' airspace, not to mention a pretty clear warning sign of their intentions. So they've been using cameras hidden in passenger and commercial aircraft. Already they've taken pictures of Poland, Belgium, France, and Russia, mapping out factories, power stations, railways, reservoirs, and ports.”

“But why?”

“Why do you think?” he continued briskly. “The plan is to select targets in case of war.”

He turned a quizzical eye at her to check that she was following.

“So this is serious?” she asked.

“It's deadly serious. And if it comes to war, General von Fritsch, the army commander, says the side with the best photographic reconnaissance will win. It's a race, and at the moment the Germans are miles ahead. Our Air Service recognizes how desperately important it is that we develop our own photographic reconnaissance. We need to keep track of the German military preparations, where troops are being deployed, ships prepared, where aircraft are being assembled. We need the ability to look right into factories and see what machines they are building. To be able to tell whether a building on the ground is a military installation or simply a factory. Do you follow me?”

She nodded. The bourbon and cigarettes were making her head swim slightly. She had eaten almost nothing all day. “You said the Germans had a problem?”

“That's right. The Luftwaffe want to develop their own aircraft for aerial reconnaissance, but they're limited by two things—the performance and range of the aircraft and the scope of the camera. So they're busy on two counts. They're intent on developing the right aircraft for the job, and they're working on camera lenses that can see positions with pinpoint accuracy. That's the hardest thing, because above eight thousand feet most camera lenses become fogged with condensation. At lower altitude the plane is all too visible.”

“And what exactly does Arno Strauss have to do with all this?”

“Strauss is in charge of developing and testing the cameras on the new aircraft. Recently I've had word that he's masterminding something far more exciting. An advanced aerial reconnaissance camera with a lens more powerful than anything we've seen before, fitted into a camera the size of a lady's handbag. German cameras are the best in the world. You've heard of Zeiss? Along with Leica they make the most sophisticated lenses. Anyhow, it's taken years for the Zeiss photographic division to develop this. It also uses infrared film, so they can take pictures at night. It's a whole new way of seeing, apparently, and it's going to be of massive assistance to them.”

He leaned closer, cradling his whiskey in his hands. “What we need, what I would really like, is to find out more about that camera.”

“You seem to have plenty of access. You were just telling me how the Luftwaffe show you all their new fighter planes.”

“This is top secret, Clara. For Nazi eyes only.”

“Then I don't see how I could help.”

“Let me explain. This camera sits in a bay behind the backseat of the aircraft, right next to where the machine gun is placed in a bomber. My man says that Strauss is due to trial the camera within the next two weeks, probably in a Henschel 126, like the one he took for your joyride. What I really need is to get some more details on this camera. To understand what it's capable of. Depth of resolution, focal length, and so on. It could make all the difference.”