Faith and Beauty (39 page)

The cartoon lasted nine minutes. Slightly shorter than her estimate. It was followed seamlessly by the trumpet fanfare and black and white spinning globe of the newsreel. The Ufa Tonwoche would contain, by Clara’s reckoning, at least five items. It was narrated in the usual tone of high-pitched, hectoring excitability – both pessimism and reflection were frowned on in news reports – and began with footage of military exercises taking place near the Polish border. Row on row of marching men and tanks were followed by a camera panning towards a stack of newspapers pegged to a kiosk. ‘
Warsaw Threatens Bombardment of Danzig
’, ‘
Three German Passenger Planes Shot at by Poles
’, ‘
German Families
Flee Polish Monsters
’, ‘
Why is Germany Waiting?
’ The customary crowd appeared, cheering and saluting. A country coaxing itself into a frenzy of adrenaline.

The next item was about the Ahnenerbe. A group of men in civilian dress were seen loading equipment into large trunks and the screen filled with a map of the world, marked by arrows pointing towards South America. Following the Ahnenerbe’s success in Tibet, another, even more expensive jaunt was underway to Bolivia, on the assumption that Nordic colonists had sailed there a million years earlier. The face of Doktor Kraus loomed on screen, explaining that through a series of expeditions, explorers would probe every corner of the earth to uncover music, folk tales, even paintings, that testified to the ancient preeminence of the German race. Hitler removed his glasses and took out a handkerchief to clean them. Others shifted in their seats. The adventures of the Ahnenerbe might have captured Himmler’s imagination, but nobody else was quite so enthralled.

Eight minutes into the newsreel. Clara’s hand beneath her jacket edged up the side of her dress with her fingers, eased the Derringer from its holster and slipped it into her palm. It was small enough to remain entirely hidden beneath her hand.
When you want to use it you move the hammer back to full cock position and pull the trigger. If you misfire, you can pull the hammer back and try again. But there’s only the chance for two shots. You can only make one mistake
.

Another twelve minutes to go.

The compilers of the newsreel always liked to mix in trivial items with the heavy news. It was a journalistic technique, Clara knew, called ‘light and shade’. The next item concerned a Hitler Youth marching band in Bremen that had won a national competition. The players were all gleaming tubas and knobbly white knees, toting their instruments like rifles, notes clashing like swords in the air. The youngest were still in the Pimpf and could not have been more than ten years old. At the sight of the smooth, clean faces, shining with ardent pride, Hitler replaced his glasses and peered closely. Clara thought of Erich and wondered what he would say to see her here, so close to his beloved Führer, and what he would think of her tomorrow. If he would ever forgive her.

A glance at her watch. Fifteen minutes in. Hitler belched and not a head turned.

The final item concerned Stalin reviewing his troops in Moscow. He stood on the viewing dais on the top of the Lenin Mausoleum alongside a row of Soviet top brass – Molotov, Andreyev and the rest of the Politburo, breath frosting as they inspected a march past in Red Square. Every cinema-goer in Germany was accustomed to regular news of Russia. And even those who never visited the cinema could not escape it in newspapers and endless political speeches. The Russians were Bolsheviks. Slavs dominated by Jew devils. Stalin was controlled by the Jewish world parasite. This report, however, was different. Startlingly different. The script was conspicuously neutral. The customary snide remarks were absent and the cameras, usually angled to portray the podgy Stalin’s least flattering aspect, provided a more appealing perspective. The smiling Soviet leader with his bristling moustache appeared reasonable, if not benevolent. Strong but fair.

In front of her, Hitler shifted in the gloom, smoothed his hair with the side of his hand and leant forward. Instinctively Clara tightened her grip on the gun beneath her palm, and inserted her finger into the trigger. Hitler was speaking – far too softly for most to hear – but she caught his words.

‘That man has a good face. One should be able to negotiate with him.’

Then he rose abruptly and marched away without warning, prompting a scrape of chairs and a scramble of officers to their feet, a hurried clicking of heels and a raising of right arms as the Leibstandarte seamlessly opened the door and Hitler left the room.

For a second, a startled silence reigned, and then loud general chatter broke out. The relaxation at being out of the Führer’s presence, mingled with relief at being spared another film, prompted a feverish jollity. The lights went up. People pushed back their chairs and began to mingle. Others pulled out cigarettes and lit up greedily, the film forgotten.

Only Clara sat in silence. The significance of what she had just heard was dawning in her mind, drowning out the shock of her assassination attempt so narrowly averted.

One should be able to negotiate with him.

Why was Hitler talking about negotiating with Stalin unless the rumours of a Nazi-Soviet pact were not rumours at all? Unless an alliance between the Third Reich and Stalin was already underway?

In which case Major Grand was wrong and British Intelligence needed to know without delay.

Chapter Thirty-two

It was now nine fifteen. Dropping the gun into her beaded evening bag, Clara slipped discreetly out of the Music Room and retraced her steps through the reception hall of the Reich Chancellery, across the road to the Kaiserhof Hotel. She made for one of the polished telephone cubicles at the back of the lobby, its bottom half enclosed and the top half glassed, closed the door and pulled out the copy of
The Thirty-Nine Steps
, repeating to herself Thomas Epstein’s instructions.

When you have a message to convey, find the words you want to use, then select the page number, followed by the line, followed by the place that word occurs in the line
.

She bent over the telephone directories, as though searching for a number. Then tearing out a page from her gilt-edged notebook and leafing quickly through the novel, she transcribed the words she needed.

Russia
– page four, line seven and seven words along

Germany
– page four, line seven and nine words along

Alliance
– page four, line five, six words along

Very
– page three, line three, two words along

Soon
– page eight, line nine, first word along

477, 479, 456, 332, 891

Russia Germany Alliance Very Soon

She rolled the scrap of paper up to the size of a matchstick and inserted it horizontally deep in the bottom seam of her jacket pocket. Then she bundled the novel back into her bag, left the hotel and turned right, to make her way swiftly along the Wilhelmstrasse.

Berlin at night was the photographic negative of Albert Speer’s pearl-white city. The pavements were drowned in a crepuscular gloom, interspersed with pools of dense shadow. Barely any light issued from the office blocks that ran the length of the government sector. The Air Ministry was a looming cliff of darkness and blackout gauze had already been erected on the Propaganda Ministry’s windows. A few lights, however, were still visible in von Ribbentrop’s Foreign Ministry. Plainly its staff were working overtime.

Clara progressed north up Luisenstrasse, past the jagged shadow of the Charité hospital where Erich’s grandmother worked. In the courtyard she noticed one of the metal collection points – a pile of twisted saucepans and old tin cans destined for the Luftwaffe – and propping one foot against the wall she snatched off the calfskin holster and tossed it and the Derringer inside.

She hurried on as swiftly and inconspicuously as possible until a right turn along Torstrasse brought her to the Scheunenviertel, the Jewish quarter.

Fingering the matchstick of paper containing her code, she wondered if she would recognize Benno Kurtz when she saw him.
He’s in his sixties, has a grey moustache. He was a good-looking fellow in his time and he still thinks a lot of himself.
She would ask for a gin and tonic made in the English way – presumably nine-tenths gin to one-tenth tonic – and pay him with a banknote, the paper concealed beneath.

As she went she tried to remember what she could about the Ritz bar. It was, from what she could recall, as far from its Paris namesake as was possible to imagine. Its wallpaper, lit by a series of gas sconces, was mottled and peeling, and its hospitality extended to cheap chairs grouped round deal tables on a scuffed wooden floor. Yet the place was a Berlin institution, famed for its ancestry and the diversity of its celebrity clientele.

You didn’t need to be rich to drink there – the glass ‘hunger tower’ on the bar contained only humble delicacies like meat in aspic, bread dumplings, salted eggs, gherkins and pickled herrings – yet it attracted celebrities as diverse as Bertolt Brecht and the cabaret singer Claire Waldoff, to the less salubrious stars of the Berlin underworld. Its reputation had been formed in the Weimar era when Berlin was a sexual Wild West and that spirit lingered on in a variety of humorous signs taped behind the bar.

‘
Prostitution is strictly forbidden. At least according to the police!
’

With a customer base like the Ritz’s, no wonder it stayed open most of the night.

Five minutes later Clara turned into Mulackstrasse and glimpsed the hanging iron lantern at the far end of the street illuminating the entrance of number 15. But as she did, she became aware of a car behind her, its headlamps glittering on the cobbles.

Look out for a car travelling either too fast or too slow
.

There was no other vehicle in the street. No jam up ahead. No parked cars to overtake. Yet the car behind her was moving at walking speed. It was not even driving as such, but cruising. When she slowed slightly, to allow it to overtake her, the car slowed too. She quickened, and like some devilish ballroom dance, it matched her pace. By now, Clara was just yards away from the hanging lantern of the bar. She guessed there were another twenty steps to go. Giving into the urge to glance behind her, she saw the car come to a halt at the kerb. It was a black Mercedes 260D with low-visibility headlights. Regulation Gestapo transport. She abandoned caution and began to move faster, the rapid thud of her heels on the paving echoing the beat of her own heart. Three feet from the door of the Ritz she moved across the pavement to allow a man coming from the opposite direction to pass. Then, with a slow horror that seemed to freeze time, she sensed two people approach from behind, and the man in front of her came to a stop, all closing ranks to form a trio that enclosed her entirely. Fear winded her like a fist in the stomach.

The two officers behind slipped their arms through hers, as politely as if they had been rivals competing for a waltz, and led her towards the waiting car.

Chapter Thirty-three

‘I hope you won’t mind if I don’t accompany you.’ Annie Krauss gestured slightly towards the velvet-covered table. ‘I require a period of quiet meditation before my next customer.’

Baffled, Hedwig looked at Jochen but he was already moving towards the far end of the house. He had obviously been here before, because he led the way through a kitchen to a cellar door and then down two flights of narrow steps to a low-ceilinged room with bare walls. A single weak bulb illuminated a table on which stood a machine, several jars and stacks of paper.

‘What’s going on? I thought we were going to have our fortunes told?’

Jochen was sorting through a pile of papers on the table with his back to her.

‘I think mine’s already decided.’

Reality was dawning on Hedwig. Hard, unhappy reality.

‘This is to do with the people you were talking about, isn’t it? Are you going to tell me who they are?’

‘I can’t. None of us must know too much. They tell us to think of a stone thrown into a lake. The stone causes circles and then more circles that ripple out to the edge of the lake. We are in one of those circles.’

We?
How happy she would have been a week ago, whenever she heard Jochen use that word. How she longed to go back to that time, when her only worry was whether he preferred brunettes or blondes.

‘And is Frau Krauss part of this?’ she said, incredulously.

‘Annie is a very valuable member of our group. She’s well respected in her profession.’

‘Everyone knows that.’

‘Precisely.’

His eyes were shining.

‘Everyone knows Annie Krauss, and that includes a lot of military men. Hard to believe, isn’t it? But the fact is, they flock to her. They like to think Germany’s destiny is dictated by the planets. Remember that quote from Shakespeare? They do teach you Shakespeare at that place?’

She nodded dumbly.

‘
The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars, but in ourselves
. These military men prefer to believe the fault for the Fatherland’s problems lies in the stars, rather than in themselves. Or in that ugly dictator in Wilhelmstrasse. Well, I’ll tell you something. Recently they’ve been consulting her about Hitler’s plans. They say he’s fully intending to invade Poland. They ask, what should they do?’

Hedwig fought the impulse to turn tail and run up the stairs out of the house.

‘And what does she tell them?’

‘She tells them an invasion is a bad idea. The heavens are against them. But she doesn’t say too much because she wants them to keep coming back. Every snippet of military detail they give away gets straight back to us.’

Hedwig picked up one of the leaflets on the table. It took the form of a newspaper front page except that it was much smaller, six inches by ten, and printed on rough, mimeographed paper. A headline read,
Germany awake! We are Sleepwalking into War! Resist
Hitler!
and underneath was the sub-heading:
Working for a New Free Germany
.