The Other Side of Love (36 page)

From this, she surmised he was indeed trapped in Berlin until she could either smuggle him out a copy of Barbarossa or prove that such a plan against Russia had never existed.

On her third day, Kathe fished out an S key and therefore worked in the S archives. She had the opportunity to glance at a month-old Most Secret directive from the Fuhrer to General Keitel.

Sea Lion will be discontinued. Sea Lion formations will be released for other duties, but these movements must be camouflaged so that the British continue to believe we are mounting an attack against them.

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German, in my own country. Aubrey, you’re a man with nerves of steel.”

W

V

On her nightly visit to Kingsmith’s, Kathe passed on this information.

“Thank God for that,”

Aubrey said.

“Sea Lion’s the plan to invade us.”

“I still can’t believe Hitler’s sending those troops to Russia.”

“Here’s your shoe.”

Aubrey had asked for a pair of the shoes she wore to work. Now he pressed his thumb on the left heel, and it swung aside, revealing the miniature camera nestled into chamois polishing-cloth.

“Just like a jewellery-case. You’re a miracle-worker.”

“A nail-file and a couple of little hinges, that’s all. It should hold. Just don’t stamp down hard.”

“No Spanish dancing.”

She slipped on the shoes.

“Kathe, promise me you won’t rush into anything. All that matters is you don’t get caught.”

The air-raid sirens began howling.

“Our boys’re making themselves known,”

Aubrey said. Every once in a while RAF bombers and their fighter escort braved the long flight to Berlin on a so-called nuisance raid: they could wreak only a fraction of the Luftwaffe’s damage, but British leaders wanted to remind their own countrymen that the battle wasn’t entirely lopsided, wanted to unnerve citizens of the Third Reich.

“Usually it’s a false alarm.”

He listened with his head tilted. The candle-stub on the desk threw a highlight on one side of his face.

“No,”

he said. And after a minute she heard the faraway hum of aeroplane engines. Footsteps rang on the courtyard cobbles, and she recognized the gravel tones of Herr Herbst, the air-raid warden.

“Turn off that goddam flashlight and get the hell to the shelter!”

‘Without a light how’ll I find the goddam shelter?”

The drone of planes was becoming a roar. Anti-aircraft guns snapped. Explosions grew closer. The huge emplacement in the Pariser Platz opened fire with a series of throaty roars.

And all at once Kathe heard a sound she’d never heard before. A strange metallic shuffling as if a tin box were racing down a slide directly above her head.

Louder, louder.

Without realizing how it happened, she found herself with her nose pressed to the dusty oriental carpet. The window-panes were rattling, the blackout curtains flapped like raven’s wings. The warped doors of the heavy outdated display-case sprang open. Silver and china clattered. Time seemed to slow as she watched the display-case teeter back and forth. The candlestick toppled from the desk, dropping languidly, and a flame tongue touched the old rug. Aubrey’s hand clamped down. The flame was doused, and the odour of

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burned cloth filled the darkness. The case crashed down. Instinctively she flung her arms over her face to protect herself.

“Kathe?”

Aubrey’s voice was close to her ear, then his hand was travelling up her spine.

“Kathe, are you hurt?”

“God, that was close,”

she said breathily.

The near-hit had set off a strange reaction in her. Her brain held no hint of fear. However, her skeleton seemed to have liquefied. She was completely limp. Aubrey put his arms around her. His breath against her eardrum drowned out the barking ack-ack, the roar of planes, the more distant whistle of bombs. Disoriented, she clung to him. His arms tightened, and she was briefly positive that Wyatt held her. But this body was too narrow, and the cheek pressed against her own too lean. The smell of him was different, less salty. It’s Aubrey, you idiot, and he has an erection. She tried to pull away, but he held her close.

“You know I love you, don’t you?”

he said.

She had known subliminally for years. Because of her abiding affection for him, the knowledge saddened her, so she had banished it from her mind.

“Aubrey”

“No, don’t stop me. I may never get my nerve up again. I’ve always loved you. I always will love you.”

“Please”

“If anything happens to you, Kathe, part of me would die.”

“Trust me, we’re both going to make it.”

“Yes, and some day, some day when we’re very old, I’ll remember tonight, and the way you fitted in my arms.”

“You’re part of me, too, Aubrey, but”

“But you’re still in love with Wyatt,”

hAfinished.

“It’s so ridiculous,”

she sighed.

“

Striking a match, he lit the candle.

“All I ask’, he said,

“is that when the war’s over you put me at the top of the list of replacements.”

She brushed plaster dust from his crisp German-cut hair. With his sensitivity, he must be aware that she also had inherited an adamant heart.

A few minutes later the all-clear wailed. Kathe hurried around the shop to mingle with the people emerging from the shelters. The pavement was dangerous with broken plate glass and bits of rubble. Fires gave off black smoke and a reddish light; firefighters aimed hoses at blazing buildings. A crater yawned in the middle of the broad boulevard. The tall, rather unmilitary-looking corporal was winding his way around the rubble and branches that surrounded the hole. Don’t you worry,”

Aubrey said to nobody in particular.

“We’ll pay the terrorbombing bastards back.”

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7

Raid or no raid, tardiness was not tolerated in Hall Six. The following morning, Rathe arrived at work promptly. As usual, she took a universal key from the rack, fumbling in the mass of metal. She had gone a few steps before she glanced at the manila tag. She would be filing archives in

“Ba’. It took a moment for the letters to sink in. Ba. Barbarossa.

She rushed down the narrow linoleum-floor aisle. The bottom drawer of this cabinet had one of those red-typed warnings:

TO BE OPENED BY AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY

Heart pounding, she forced herself to move at a normal pace to the lavatory. As usual, the white-haired attendant was pushing a sodden mop over the floorboards - the other clerks swore the crone was a Gestapo plant. Rathe used one of the two open stalls. Under the pretext of changing the knitted bands used for sanitary protection, she managed to slide the camera from her heel into her palm. Looking up, Kathe saw the rheumy old eyes fixed on her.

Her mouth dry, she said:

“Thank heavens! Five days late, but I finally came round.”

The old woman stared at her for another moment before she went back to her mopping.

A great heap of memos between august officers of the OKW and Hitler regarding the Baltic States - Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, all three seized by the Russians earlier in the year - were Kathe’s task to file. Each time she wove back and forth, she eyed the forbidden drawer. But evidently the guards had been delivered a pep talk.

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The new round-shouldered private kept lumbering up and down the aisles near her. She had no chance to see whether her key would open the forbidden drawer.

Lunch-time in the basement canteen was staggered. Kathe had been assigned one o’clock. As the hands of the electric clock jumped inexorably towards the hour, the miniature camera weighed down Kathe’s pocket as though the tiny object had the specific gravity of a heavier planet. She would never be able to smuggle it through the Blitzmadchen’s search. She dared not risk repeating her lavatory manoeuvre.

“Fraulein Kingsmith,”

said the wen-nosed supervisor when Kathe went for a fresh batch of papers to file.

“You eat now.”

“I forgot my money,”

Kathe muttered.

“Here, take a mark until tomorrow.”

The tone was magnanimous.

“Thank you, but … uh, well, I’m not hungry …

“

Kathe stared up at Hitler’s sepia photograph, hoping that others saw her blush as a sign she was too impoverished to repay a single mark. Til just keep on working.”

Among those who trooped out was the new round-shouldered private. With her watchdog gone, Kathe returned to the big oak filing-cabinet. Kneeling at the forbidden drawer, she made a prayer that her keys would work.

II

Her fingers trembled, and she had difficulty with the keys. Turning the universal one in the lock, she dropped the single key. Sweat broke out under her arms. She fumbled with the key, and then heard the tiny click. Her lips parting, she slid the drawer open.

These documents were not slipped info manila files but stored in large brown envelopes without any apparent designation. It’ll take days to search through them all. Her body temperature plummeted, and for a full minute she wondered about the OKW’s purpose in filing unmarked envelopes when there was no way to retrieve the papers inside. Then it hit her that in each left-hand corner was a lightly pencilled, parenthesized number.

The files marked with the nearly invisible (1) might be connected to the Reich’s Supreme Commander. Hitler.

She pulled out the first (1) and hit pay-dirt. Three typed pages topped with Hitler’s eagle-and-swastika seal.

Most Secret The Fiihrer’s Headquarters

25 November, 1940

The armed forces must be prepared to crush Soviet Russia in a quick campaign. All available units will be deployed

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except those necessary to safeguard occupied territories. Great caution must be used that this attack surprises the enemy. The campaign must be ready to start in early spring. The date will be the decision of the Supreme Commander …

Kathe flipped through the other papers in the envelope, glimpsing maps with arrows for the disposition of troops against Leningrad, against Kiev in the Ukraine, Odessa in the south. Hunching over the drawer, she slid the camera from her pocket. Swiftly she photographed the pages, then replaced them, opening another file, also about Barbarossa.

“Fraulein?”

She jumped. God, God! How could she have forgotten Aubrey’s surveillance lessons? She pressed the camera to her palm, somehow managing that expression of bland assurance she’d seen so often on her mother’s face.

“Yes?”

The round-shouldered private edged closer.

“I thought you might like a nibble.”

He extended a small slab of brown cake.

Security was no tighter than normal. The new soldier had been trying to make contact, that was all. Sliding the drawer shut, she locked it with surprising ease.

“What an angel!”

Smiling, she took the cake in her free hand. The underbaked dough tasted as if kerosene had been used instead of fat.

“Delicious.”

He introduced himself as Lothar Raeder.

“Any relation to Grand Admiral Raeder?”

“Yes, but distant,”

he replied, his long-lobed ears reddening in a way that told her he was lying to impress her.

“I’m Kathe Kingsmith.”

“Yes, I recognized you,”

he said.

“I was an usher at the Olympic Games. You made the entire Reich proud.”

His timid admiration brushed across her brain like a primary colour. Here was the instrument of her deliverance. Fluttering her eyelashes, she asked if she could repay him with a cup of coffee after work. He beamed. Just then the supervisor came over to ask what all the noise was about.

As they filed out, Kathe moved very close to Private Raeder. With the other clerks, she crossed the hall to the cloakroom, spreading the contents of her purse and pockets on the long table. She submitted to the wandering hands of the Blitzmadchen. All the time she was clenching her back teeth. When she emerged, Private Raeder was leaning against the wall.

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She forced herself to wait until they turned on to Lutzowstrasse.

With a little shiver, she said:

“I swear it’s too cold to snow tonight. Lothar, do you mind?”

And without waiting for a reply, she slipped her hand into his pocket. The tiny camera was still there.

IV

“Kathe, you never should have risked it.”

Aubrey slid the exposed film from the camera.

“What if he’d needed his handkerchief? What if he’d worn his uniform coat? What if Sigi had come along?”

“He didn’t, he didn’t, Sigi didn’t.”

Success had keyed her up.

“The question is, how’s my photography?”

“I won’t know until I get home.”

“When are you leaving?”

Instead of answering, he dropped the camera in her hand with fine strips of film wound around a pin.

“Hide it in the safest place possible, do you hear? I hope there aren’t any further orders but, if there are, you’ll be contacted by the bald ticketseller at the Griinewald station.”

“That old martinet? Is he a British agent?”

“A loyal German whose son was killed in Flossenburg concentrationcamp.”