Chapter 16 Audrey Image

BERLIN, GERMANY | JANUARY 1939

Fräulein Jakob?”

Audrey turned at the sound of her newly minted name. She was Ada Jakob now, with a fresh set of identification papers in her pocketbook, carefully worn and handled by Aldous to appear several years old.

“Yes, Herr Weber?” Audrey asked.

Her new boss, Rolf Weber, was leaning against the door frame of his office. A tall yet distinctly porcine man, Weber was responsible for the Department of Property Reclamation, the government office in which Audrey was now employed as a Junior Inventory Specialist.

Once the cell had decided that Audrey should secure a position within the department to try to gather intelligence, Friedrich had told Weber all about Audrey’s inventory of the Kaplan household before he and Vogt moved in, embroidering the details to amplify her skill set. Not that it would have mattered to Weber. He had taken one look at her and hired her on the spot.

“I need you and Schulze to go through the files from ’38. Confirm, then collate the year-end figures,” Weber was saying now. “Broken up by category. I need it by day’s end. Then this afternoon you’ll be going out with Ebner for on-site orientation.”

“Yes, sir,” Audrey replied. She’d been in training for several days, but this would be her first on-site assessment.

Johanna Ebner stood at her desk. “Might I have a private word, Herr Weber?” she asked.

“Yes, of course.” He beckoned her into his office, and she followed, shutting the door behind her.

Alone, Audrey allowed herself to relax. Johanna was the Senior Inventory Specialist who had been overseeing Audrey’s training. She was rather aloof but had been patient with Audrey, who couldn’t help but note the resemblance between them. Audrey guessed the young women Weber employed were all slim and blond.

A tsk from reception piqued Audrey’s ears and she walked through the doorway to find Frau Schulze, Herr Weber’s secretary, at her desk shaking her head. Audrey guessed she was in her fifties. She had iron-grey hair, was built like an icebox, and gossiped worse than a fishwife, which Audrey hoped would come in handy. If Frau Schulze could supply useful information for the resistance, Audrey could keep her distance from Weber.

“Did you catch that?” Audrey asked. “About the numbers?”

“Yes. He’s got some big meeting on the books for tomorrow. Guess they want a progress report. Come here, we’ll see to it.”

She crossed the room to a large beige filing cabinet and began withdrawing various folios. As Frau Schulze handed them to Audrey, she tried hard not to think about how many ruined Jewish lives the pile represented.

“He calls her in there a lot, doesn’t he?” Audrey said quietly.

“Yes, it’s rather obvious, isn’t it?” Frau Schultze whispered. “I’ve walked in more than once to find him with his arm slipped around her waist. With all the advances he makes on her, it’s a wonder he ever gets any work done. Though Johanna, she doesn’t seem to mind.”

“You don’t say,” Audrey mused. “But isn’t Herr Weber married?”

“Oh yes, he is. Doesn’t seem to make a jot of difference to him though. The one before Johanna—Ursula, her name was—finally had enough and left. To be frank with you, I’m glad I’m old enough to not be of any interest to him.” She tutted again. “My advice? Make sure he keeps his hands where you can see them when you’re in there alone, Ada, if you know what’s good for you. Pretty thing like you, with eyes like that. Well, none of the girls he hires are ugly ducklings, now are they?”

Audrey turned her attention to the files in front of them, picking up one with the name COHEN. “So what’s the big meeting tomorrow?” she asked, offhand. “That we’re preparing all this for?”

Frau Schulze didn’t glance up from her work. “There’s to be a new decree in February. For the surrender of precious metals and stones in Jewish ownership. They’re to turn them in.”

Audrey thought of the stolen pile of Ruth’s jewels and felt the familiar stab of rage, but she focused on her mission.

“Who’s attending the meeting?” she asked, hoping Frau Schulze might know who Weber’s associates were.

“Oh, the usual,” she said with a wave. “So that’ll be a whole other kettle of fish now,” she continued. “You and Johanna will have to record the metals and stones specially. There’ll be a new process for the reclamation because we’ll need to compare your inventory to the property registry from last year. We can be sure a fair number of them lied. So more goddamn paperwork.”

Audrey watched her, this unremarkable office worker in her blue blouse and grey skirt. She thought of how many small cogs like Frau Schulze there must be in government departments and the SS, all turning in unison to propel the limbs of this monstrous machine.

Frau Schulze caught herself and flashed Audrey a smile. “Don’t mistake me, I’m not complaining. It’s an honour to serve. Heil Hitler.”

Audrey nodded, her head bobbing up and down like the puppet Ada Jakob was, wooden and hard and painted the colour of obedience.

“Heil Hitler,” she said.

After lunch, Audrey plastered a smile on her face and went with Johanna to conduct an assessment of a Jewish home. As they walked along the snowy streets toward the upscale Mitte neighbourhood, their heels clicking fast on the pavement, Audrey tried her best to engage Johanna in conversation, but her colleague answered in single, passionless words. It occurred to Audrey that Johanna might not be as detached from the impact of what they were doing as she pretended to be, that the job might cost her something.

“Here we are,” Johanna said finally, consulting the clipboard in her hand to confirm the address affixed to the large, stone row house before them. She withdrew a small envelope from a file on her clipboard and shook a key out of it. “And here you go.”

Audrey fingered the bevelled brass key in her hand and considered who it belonged to. A father who pulled it out of his pocket as he ascended these same steps at the end of a long day of work? A wife whose thoughts were already focused on what to make for dinner when she turned it in the lock after returning from the market or synagogue? The key felt unfamiliar in Audrey’s hand, as though she were wearing someone else’s ring, and she wondered whether the owner would ever hold it in their hand again.

Once inside, she took in the surroundings.

Johanna brushed a stray blond hair off her forehead, then handed the clipboard to Audrey. “All right, Ada. It’s pretty straightforward, though it requires an eye for detail. They want to know everything, so you’ll list the contents of the home by room, just because that’s easiest in the moment, then back at the office we’ll recategorize them. I’ll shadow you to make sure you don’t miss anything. And you know we need to record the gold and jewels separately now.”

The brusqueness with which Johanna spoke dispelled Audrey’s earlier suspicion—or hope—that she was bothered by this.

“You’ll need to learn this quickly.” Johanna paused. “I’m resigning tomorrow. So, it’ll just be you. Until he finds someone else.”

“What? Why?” Audrey asked, surprised.

“It’s time for me to move on,” she said firmly.

A string of questions formed in Audrey’s mind, but Johanna’s expression was set. There would be no further inquiry. Audrey turned back to the room, wondering if Johanna’s news had anything to do with Weber, and began to snip off the dangling threads of this family’s life. She moved through the main floor and noted the tableau before her eyes: an unfinished meal in the dining room, forks and knives haphazardly strewn across the freshly starched lace tablecloth. The food hadn’t yet begun to smell. The family must have been interrupted by the police in the middle of their dinner just last night. She could see, through the veil of the present, the family seated, talking about or perhaps ignoring the question of what would become of them. She could hear the pounding on the door as their fate demanded entry, see the wide, fearful eyes that snapped toward the hallway, knowing there was no possibility of escape.

The candles in the centre of the table were nothing but messy pools of hardened wax, burnt down to their nubs. Audrey imagined the unfinished plates of food lit in the glow from those candles as they burned into the night, lighting the table for no one, finally extinguishing and sending grey curls of smoke up to the ceiling in the early hours of the morning. She stared at the yellow wax and wondered where the family was at the moment the last candle went out. In a holding cell somewhere in the basement of the Gestapo headquarters on the Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, a place people at work had talked around, but never about? On a train careening toward Dachau?

Aware that Johanna was watching her closely, Audrey forced herself to breathe. She was Ada now. She could not show emotion. She focused on the assessment, opening hutch drawers, inspecting the inventory of silverware, counting the crystal glasses, and noting the number of chairs at the table. With a steady hand, she filled out the survey.

Then she made her way upstairs. The upper floors were in less disarray than the dining room and sitting room. The bedrooms were much the same as those in the Kaplans’ home, but young children lived here, four by the looks of it. Two rooms boasted two beds, each with toy chests at the feet. Audrey picked up a bear that was perched on one of the pillows. She ran her hand over it, let her own humanity seep through Ada’s harsh exterior before placing it back down, hoping the child would return one day, cuddle it to sleep once more.

In the doorway, Johanna let out an odd noise, like a cough or cry.

“I’ll meet you downstairs,” she said to Audrey as she fled the room.

“Are you all right?” Audrey called.

She made a sound that Audrey took as an affirmative. With a sigh, Audrey completed her inventory of the second floor, then scanned her notes. An index of these people’s lives, reduced to an itemized list.

These may have just been things, but they told a story, didn’t they? Around that dining table that sat ten people, there were conversations, birthday celebrations, family arguments, and Passover dinners. In the bedrooms, childbirths and lovemaking. There were special occasions that called for pearl necklaces and cuff links. Music coaxed out of the pianoforte. Diamond earrings given from a husband to his wife on a special anniversary, never dreaming they would one day adorn the ears of anyone but his love.

Audrey knew the valuables would be assessed and distributed or left in place for an incoming officer, depending on Weber’s instructions. The items would take on new identities then, generate new stories for imposter families as the rightful owners’ memories turned to dust and eventually blew away.

Could she really do this? Could she go into these homes over and over, cataloguing the remnants of people’s lives? If it meant finding some piece of information that would end this nightmare, she had to. She took a steadying breath, then went back downstairs to find Johanna. She was standing over the kitchen sink, and Audrey caught a whiff of vomit. Johanna looked up and began to cry.

“What’s wrong?” Audrey asked. “Are you ill?”

“I only put up with it because I need the work. I don’t even fancy him. But he offered me a pay rise, and my father’s gone, and it’s just me and my mum. She cleans houses, but it’s not—and I don’t—” She broke off in a fit of sobs, leaving Audrey scrambling to understand.

“What is it?” she asked. “What’s he done?”

“It’s his child. Rolf’s. Herr Weber’s.”

Audrey glanced at her flat stomach. “You’re—you’re pregnant?” She knew very little about pregnancy beyond how it came to be. She didn’t know it could make a woman sick.

Johanna nodded.

The hair rose on the back of Audrey’s neck. Was this a trap? Had Johanna been told to concoct this story, fake her emotions to test Audrey’s allegiance? She had disappeared into Weber’s office for some mysterious conversation right after he’d mentioned the assessment. And wasn’t Audrey doing the same? Fabricating lies to extract the truth. Still, her gut told her this might be real. And so she stepped out onto this high wire behind Johanna, balancing with enough care that she could still hop back to safety should the rope prove unstable.

“He didn’t force you, did he?” she asked gently.

“No,” Johanna gasped. “Not as such, anyway. But…” She pressed her lips together. “Men like that, these men in the higher ranks… they don’t give you much choice. Not truly.”

Vogt’s face flickered.

Be a good girl, now.

Ludwig and Claus were right; this was Weber’s routine. She wondered how many Johannas there were within the Party and the government administration, how many derailed lives and illegitimate babies, all because these men in power simply took whatever they wanted. Weber had made a career of appropriation in more ways than one.

Johanna fished a glass out of the cupboard, filled it with water, swished, and spat. She dabbed her face with a hand towel embroidered with someone else’s initials.

“It’s not just me,” she said, sniffling. “There was Ursula, before me. I knew why she left, knew I was next. And I still let it happen.”

“Oh?” Audrey prompted.

“It happened in bits and stages, before I really realized what he was doing. He picks us for what we look like, to impress those friends of his in the Führer’s office. He’s a bad man, and I’m a fool. It’s your first week, Ada.” Her little nose was swollen, eyes raw as a winter night. “If I were you, I would leave. Find a job elsewhere, any job that’s not near him.”

Audrey’s mind spun far beyond the walls of the kitchen.

She’d been tasked with becoming the bait to Weber. That’s what she’d agreed to do. Johanna’s presence had allowed Audrey to remain at arm’s length from him, and her departure meant Audrey’s buffer from Weber’s advances was gone—but it also opened the door to get closer to him, walk the razor’s edge of seducing him just enough for him to let slip something that might be useful to the resistance. She would be next, just as Johanna had been after Ursula. An unnerving awareness engulfed her—who would be her own replacement? And why?

Johanna reached for Audrey’s arm and held fast. “You seem like a nice girl. He will take advantage. Be careful.”

Audrey’s heart beat fast. The weight of her mission settled on her shoulders, pressing down like a hot iron, branding her.

“I will,” she lied.