Until a few years previously, the formidable, eight-storey Bauhaus building towering over Torstrasse and Prenzlauer Allee had been a Jewish-owned department store selling fancy watches, perfumes, clothing and accessories to Berlin’s affluent middle classes. Now, however, the building had been stolen, looted and Aryanized and its arching marble chambers were in the process of being transformed into the headquarters of the six-million-strong Hitler Youth. The location was an intensely appealing one for Baldur von Schirach, the plump blond Nazi Youth leader, not only because it was plum in the centre of a solidly Jewish area of town, thus rubbing the swastika banner firmly in the faces of the residents, but also because it overlooked the grave of Horst Wessel, the young activist and thug whose messy death in a brawl had made him the unlikely candidate for first Nazi martyr.
Being a temple to youth, the building was also an inspired venue for Emmy Goering’s orphan fundraiser, despite the institutional air and the fact that the Hitler Jugend was generally dedicated to more hearty entertainments such as ten-mile runs and folk singing. Posters of wholesome youthful activities – mountain climbing, rifle shooting and tank driving – were bizarrely interposed on the walls with studio stills of that evening’s A-list entertainers, Ludwig Manfred Lommel, Jupp Hussels and Heinz Rühmann.
In many ways a comedy cabaret was a risk. Humour was more dangerous than dynamite now and an explosive joke could land its teller in a camp, yet Emmy Goering’s choice of repertoire lay closer to home. While Joseph Goebbels had recently launched a newspaper diatribe about ‘tearing out subversive comedy at its roots’, Hermann Goering saw jokes as a valuable escape valve – a way for the population to express their daily exasperation about the shortages and petty bureaucracy without ever truly challenging them. So in some ways the evening itself was a big joke at Goebbels’ expense, a fact not lost on the Propaganda Minister, judging by his thunderous expression as he hobbled through the crowded foyer.
Unusually for a Nazi entertainment, a very superior white burgundy was circulating, fresh from some Rothschild cellar, as the stars assembled in the lobby, bathed in press flashlights, ready for the next day’s papers. While the performers may have been glamorous, most of the VIPs looked as if they had been pulled straight off the suspects’ line at a murder trial, as well they might have been. Von Ribbentrop, the Foreign Minister, was sounding off to Robert Ley, head of the German Labour Front, with a wine stain on his white SS summer uniform and a sadistic glitter in his puffy drinker’s eyes. Alongside them was the mentally unstable Bernhard Rust, whose rumoured fondness for small boys had, through some bureaucratic mischief, led to him being made Education Minister. Rudolf Hess, who would not understand a joke unless it was summarized, analysed and costed on a ministerial briefing paper, was glaring impatiently across the throng at Heinz Rühmann. Hess had ordered cuts to Rühmann’s latest film, The Gas Man, because the actor performed a Nazi salute that was unacceptably sloppy, and even though the star had divorced his wife at the regime’s request, questions about his allegiance were still circulating.
‘Rühmann will be fine,’ murmured Irene Schönepauck, coming up to Clara as she skirted the crowd. Irene’s Schwarzkopf-blonde hair was styled in a Dutt, the braided bun that was every Nazi’s favourite hairstyle, though a stripe of brunette at the hairline suggested her own darker roots. Her eye-catching form was encased in a shimmering fuchsia cocktail dress and she smelled of talcum powder and Chanel No. 5.
‘Hess might hate Rühmann but he’s on the Führer’s list.’
The list of approved performers had been compiled after prolonged consultation between Hitler and Goebbels. For comedians a slot on the list meant exemption from military service, but it also meant exemption from most kinds of comedy, as anything remotely political was deemed foreign, Communist or Jewish. Usually all three. In particular, all jokes about the army were off-limits. Any suggestion of undermining the armed forces or questioning the war meant death. Wartime humour – at least the official Party version – was no laughing matter.
‘You know who really makes the boss laugh, though?’ Irene gave a demure smile in deference to the cameras around them. ‘Goering. Hitler can’t get enough of Goering jokes. He loves anything about Goering’s medals. He had his photographer make up some tinfoil medals and presented them to Goering for him to wear on his pyjamas. Poor Hermann had to laugh along. So humiliating.’ She glanced around.
‘Watch out. Here comes the Merry Widow.’
Irene skipped smartly away and Clara turned to see a figure in black, evening gown stretched tightly across her pregnant belly and her hair furled savagely from her face, heading towards her. Irene’s nickname was cruelly accurate. It was going to take more than a comedy cabaret to cheer the existential misery of the Propaganda Minister’s wife.
‘Fräulein Vine. What a coincidence. We were talking about you on the way here,’ said Magda Goebbels resentfully, as if it were Clara’s fault. ‘Apparently my husband has plans for you.’
‘I’m flattered.’ Clara’s gayest smile. ‘Plans in what way, or shouldn’t I ask?’
‘Oh, don’t worry. It’s a perfectly respectable way. Joseph was talking about your role in his new film, Jud Süss.’
Magda’s voice was thick, clotted with alcohol. She must have been drinking all afternoon. She had one elbow cupped in her hand and was smoking aggressively.
‘He never stops talking about it. He thinks it’s going to be a historical masterpiece. Right up there with Battleship Potemkin. His own epic contribution to film posterity. At least I think that’s what he said. It’s probably dreadful. What do you make of it?’
Clara thought of the script in the leather bag. How the dead weight of it had winded the man who accosted her in the darkness.
‘The dialogue’s a bit leaden.’
‘Is it? Perhaps you should decline it then. Joseph did mention that your career is taking you in new directions. Not literally, one assumes. Do tell me you’re not leaving us.’
There was an undercurrent of hysteria in Magda’s voice. It had been there for years. As if the moorings of her life were shifting, the ground still giving way beneath her as marriage to an overbearing, abusive man took her ever further from the life she once expected. Unimaginably far from her early days as Magda Friedlander, student of Hebrew, engaged to a young Zionist, dwelling in the Jewish quarter of Berlin.
‘I don’t have any plans.’
‘Well, I’m sure that puts all our minds at rest.’
For a second Magda remained silent, a pensive scowl on her face, and Clara wondered what she really believed. Did she see Clara as a convinced Nazi, a loyal follower of the Führer like herself, or did she suspect there were depths that Clara kept well hidden, secrets far below the surface, just as Magda did herself?
True Berliner humour was black as tar and sharp enough to cut yourself on, but that kind of joke was in shorter supply than petrol now and instead the evening was dominated by anodyne jests about Neville Chamberlain ‘the umbrella fella’, Winston Churchill ‘the drunk’ and anti-Semitic clichés. The crowd, fuelled by fine wine and coaxed by the presence of celebrity, laughed easily and BDM girls, dressed as usherettes, only with WHW tins instead of cigarettes in the trays round their necks, barred the end of each row until every guest had made their contribution.
As the curtain fell, most of the audience held back to make way for the top brass and senior Nazi officials, who processed like clergy leaving a church before the congregation. Joseph Goebbels left by a side door, followed at a short interval by a brunette with a high flush on her cheeks who had not yet mastered the art of an inconspicuous exit. Eventually, as the vast throng of guests streamed into the damp evening air, Clara spotted the person she had come to see.
Emmy Goering.
The Reich Marshal’s wife was, as Clara had expected, only too happy to grant her request.
‘Of course I will. After all it was me who gave you the idea in the first place. I’m glad you’ve come round to my way of thinking. We all have to do what we can. Where have you been, anyway?’
‘I was in Lisbon.’
‘Another of Goebbels’ entertaining missions?’
‘Only a short stay. I bumped into some old friends of yours. The Duke and Duchess of Windsor.’
‘Did you! What a charming couple they are. How were they?’
‘They’re off to the Bahamas.’
‘Thank God. At least they’ll be out of England and well away from the first phase, though, as the dear Duke said, a short burst of heavy bombing will be exactly what England needs to see sense.’
‘The Duke said that?”
‘His very words. Now if that’s all, my husband will be waiting . . .’
‘Actually, Frau Goering . . .’ After everything Emmy Goering had done, it seemed almost greedy to ask more, yet in the matter of influence, as well as intelligence, Clara had learned that the more one asked, the more one generally received.
‘I hate to mention this, but there is another matter I wanted to raise with you. I have a godson called Erich Schmidt. He’s almost seventeen, a very bright boy, an intellectual really, right at the top of his class – and he absolutely worships the Herr Reich Marshal.’
Emmy Goering’s face softened in an indulgent smile. There was nothing unusual in that. Such was her own adoration for her husband it was impossible for her to envisage anyone not sharing it.
‘Working for the Luftwaffe is Erich’s greatest dream. Ernst Udet gave him an autograph once and Erich still has it posted on his wall. But the thing is, Doktor Goebbels has made some remarks about my godson – comments that make me think perhaps he might look . . . unfavourably . . . on Erich if at any time I didn’t please him.’
Emmy Goering’s face changed in precisely the way Clara had hoped. Her entire body seemed to shudder at the womanizing tendencies of Joseph Goebbels. Anyone who knew the Propaganda Minister would understand Clara’s insinuation: that he was perfectly prepared to use an innocent boy to bend an actress to his will. And every bit of what she had said was true, after all. Yet it helped that the Goerings and the Goebbels were hardened rivals from a private feud that had simmered since the early days of the Reich and any opportunity to thwart the Propaganda Minister would be seized with relish.
‘That man! Will nothing stop him! I will see what I can do. If your lad comes under the protection of the Luftwaffe, there’s very little Goebbels can do about it. Give me his name and address.’
Clara took out her pen.
‘And if he’s a bright boy, as you say, we don’t want to waste him on the front line. There’s a Luftwaffe leadership school right here in Berlin. They take them in the Air Ministry. He’d be round the corner from you. At least to begin with. And then . . . Well, who knows what’s going to happen in the next few months? Now that’s an interesting pen you have. So pretty.’
Ignoring Emmy Goering’s outstretched hand, Clara bundled Ian Fleming’s fountain pen quickly back into the bottom of her bag.
Mission accomplished, she was almost at the door when Irene caught up with her again.
‘What did you think? That was about as funny as a night in the cells, wasn’t it? Thank God it’s over.’
They clattered down the steps and towards the doors together.
‘By the way, did you see Max? Did you get your coffee?’
‘Oh, yes. Thank you for fixing it. Melitta coffee on prescription!’
‘Max is an amazing doctor. Such a clever man. Though to tell the truth he frightens me rather.’
‘Me too.’
‘He’s so intelligent you feel him working out every thought in your mind, don’t you? At least, I do. When I saw him I said, if you’re looking for something deep in my soul don’t bother, Max. My soul’s as deep as a puddle.’
She gave a little, self-deprecating laugh.
‘He’s Walter’s oldest friend, though, so I suppose we’ll be seeing more of him. Walter actually lived with his family for a while, and he totally adores him. He even took Max on that operation he did in Venlo last year.’
‘Venlo?’
‘You must have heard about it. Last November? It was Walter’s finest hour. Venlo’s a little town on the Dutch border and Walter masterminded an operation there to catch two very important British spies. They were posing as businessmen from The Hague. Captain Sigismund Payne Best and Major Richard Stevens. I only know their names because Walter loves boasting about them. His plan was so ingenious. He led them to believe he was a disaffected officer wanting to plot a coup against the Führer and when they came to the meeting place they were arrested and brought over the border to Germany. It was a triumph. Walter did the interrogations himself and the men confessed everything. They gave away the entire British network in Europe. Every single name. Can you imagine? It’s going to be impossible for the enemy to rebuild. The Führer was delighted. That’s why he awarded Walter the Iron Cross.’
A peculiar stillness, like the moment before a detonation, overcame Clara.
‘Max got one too. He had to go in disguise, of course. He impersonated a military officer. He called himself Colonel Martini, isn’t that funny? After the cocktail! Walter thought it would be useful to have a psychiatrist there when they met the enemy spies. You know, so he could tell what they were thinking. And it was useful, apparently. Walter thinks the world of Max. When I mentioned I’d suggested you see him, he agreed it was a wonderful idea. It was he who managed to get your appointment brought forward.’
Beneath Clara’s rouge, all colour had drained. The old feeling, the sensation that had haunted her through the years, returned with savage intensity. A high, singing note of danger.
What a fool she had been.
It was evident to her now that Schellenberg had been on her trail all the time. Before Paris. Before Lisbon. Right from the time of his career triumph last year when he had captured two British agents and brought them back in glory to the Reich. Clara pictured the men in their prison cell in Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, tied to their chairs as the beatings rained down. Necks squeezed repeatedly to the point of strangulation. Blindfolded. Fingernails pulled. Muttering names, choking out their contacts, their faces draped in blood.
The honey trap in Paris had not been Goebbels’ idea. It had been Schellenberg’s all along. The oldest espionage tactic in the book. Set a spy to catch a spy. It was not Reuber’s allegiance he suspected – no doubt the Gestapo already had concrete proof of his treachery – it was Clara’s. Probably even the watchers Hans Reuber had seen in the streets of Paris had been there for her and not him. For a moment the horror arose that she might have led German agents to the safe house above the café in the Rue Vavin and compromised the brave Frenchmen hiding escapees there. She tried to reassure herself how careful she had been to follow all procedure. How silent and empty the streets had been the morning she met Ned.
Yet all the time Schellenberg had known.
Black with one sugar?
He knew far more than her coffee preferences; he knew everything about her. She thought of his face like a priest’s, calm and patient, presiding over more horrors than most people ever had the misfortune to witness. A man who had spent so long peering into the abyss that now it looked back at him.
How idiotic to imagine that she might have outwitted him. How credulous to accept his blandishments; the fanciful idea that he had wanted her to join his intelligence service. That they were going to work together. That he would run her as his agent. He had known her name for eight months. Even before he met her, he had her grilled by his personal psychiatrist. He would always find her. She would always be in his mile-long shadow. How long would it be before he brought her in?
A light rain was falling and there was a scramble for the limited number of taxis available as the guests dispersed into the nocturnal gloom. Declining Irene’s offer, Clara decided to walk. Her entire body was racing with adrenalin, and the need to process what she now knew. Her mind dashed through the possibilities, searching for the right course of action like an animal trapped in a maze. There was nowhere to hide or escape. She could do nothing, immediately, but make for home. She pulled her hat down, turned up the collar of her evening coat and hurried west, past the Schloss, the historic residence of Prussian emperors, across the Schlossbrücke and over the Spree with its greasy waters and soot-blackened walls.
The streets were dipped in shadows. Silence slid along the pavement and through the blackout blinds, while inside the apartments all ears were listening for what might lie beyond it: the distant drone of bombers, the thud of the propellers, the drums of metal beating against the sky. Others lay in bed dreading different sounds, of sudden shouts and boots on the stairwell. Yet everything was quiet for now. The only voices on the streets belonged to advertising posters proclaiming Berlin raucht Juno! or the slogans of Party propaganda, Smash the Enemies of Greater Germany! Victory is with our Flags!
A sharp wind had got up, slamming into the trees on Unter den Linden, sending sheets of rain scurrying across the street. A cat passed, like a shadow. At the top of Wilhelmstrasse Clara turned left, past the British Embassy, now boarded and abandoned, alongside the Reich ministry buildings looming oppressively, their blinded windows sweeping upwards, crowding out the sky.
Past Voss Strasse and the Air Ministry, she miscalculated, deviated right and was aghast to find herself approaching the dingy, five-storey edifice that formerly housed Berlin’s School of Arts. The building where Berlin’s students had once studied Holbein, Dürer and Caspar David Friedrich was a forbidding, Wilhelmine construction, a warren of corridors with doors leading off and the high vaulted halls of a railway station. Except that this was a place no traveller would voluntarily visit and the destinations of those arriving were generally grim. For in an act of horrifying remodelling, 8, Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse had been transformed into Gestapo HQ and darker arts were now practised within its sombre walls.
The building was blacked out but still alive. It was the one place that never slept, beating on through the night like a malign heart. Even at that hour people were coming and going in the gloom, rifle-bearing sentries standing like statues flanking the doors. It was too late to turn round. As the click of Clara’s heels rang unnaturally loud on the paving, she could not help but be conscious of the deep underground beneath her feet, the subterranean network of tunnels like mediaeval catacombs linking Heydrich’s headquarters next door with the central office of the Sicherheitsdienst behind. Directly beneath were a series of tiled cells, claustrophobic dungeons where she had herself once been briefly imprisoned. The thought of it quickened her steps, as though the pavement itself might abruptly crater and send her spiralling down into darkness.
She passed the front doors and could not help glancing sideways at one of the guards. The soldier’s face was a flat, impassive shield but his Weimaraner dog registered her presence and cocked its ears, nose sniffing the air.
At the end of the street a clanking and hissing sounded in the air, emanating from the network of railway tracks alongside the Anhalter Bahnhof. The rails were singing as a series of covered wagons rattled along the track; a freight train perhaps, bearing weapon parts or troop supplies to the distant outposts of the Greater Reich. Clara heard the groan of metal and the clicking of point switchings. The air was acid with dust.
She felt a throb of danger she could not explain. Diverting into an alley she became aware of something behind her, a scratch on the stone, too slight even to be a tread. A rush of something intangible spiked the air but when she looked round, the street was empty.
Nothing at all.
All the same, she checked and rechecked her surroundings with practised care. What reason was there for anyone to be around here, in the governmental centre, well past midnight? A snap that sounded like the breech of a gun accompanied the rustle of movement and her gaze slipped past the entrance to an apartment block, froze for a second then doubled back. There it was. A shift in the texture of the darkness. A smudge of deeper grey against the gloom.
Fear soaked like grime through the pores of her skin.
How long had this man been there, gliding behind her? Since the moment she left the cabaret? Or since last November, when Schellenberg had first heard her name on the lips of two British agents and set about finding the truth?
Clara quickened her step but another glance behind revealed that the man was keeping pace. His face was not visible but there was something about him, some aspect of his demeanour that clung in her subconscious.
She strained, as though her memory was a muscle, to reach the part of her brain that said where she had seen this figure before. His shape had snagged in her brain, unpinned to any location, date, or name. In her mind she heard Leo Quinn’s voice.
‘You should always encode the memory. It’s basic training.’
One of the first things an agent learned was to create context. To make connections in the brain so that a name belonged to a face, and if not to a face then to a location, an object, or anything that meant when they were encountered again they could be categorized. That was how memory worked, after all. Proust needed that madeleine to bring the story of his younger life surging back to him. Songs, names, tastes and smells were all ways into memories that might otherwise be wiped out. But with this person Clara had neglected the basic steps. She had not provided context. She knew she knew the man, but she didn’t know why or how.
She tried to reason. This man knew how to remain invisible, which meant that he minded about being seen. That in itself was strange. The Gestapo didn’t much care if their surveillance was detected; in fact it was better that way. They liked their prey frightened because frightened people were more likely to make mistakes.
Besides, if Schellenberg wanted to arrest her he had an army of SS men to do it here in Berlin, complete with cars and dogs and the dungeons of Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse in which to inter her. Why put a tail on her?
It was not until she had neared the canal that a gap in the clouds allowed a sliver of moonlight to reach down and pick out a speck of light.
A luminous swastika.
Instantly the shape fitted into the jigsaw in her brain and realization dawned with a fresh horror. That anonymous cast, the lean, pale face. The regular features. Dark hair with a widow’s peak. He could have been anyone – a bank clerk, a shop assistant, a low-ranking ministerial official overburdened with orders for Wehrmacht supplies and making his way home after working late. Yet while he may have appeared unremarkable, in fact he was quite the opposite. He was the man on the train, the one who had accosted her in the street outside her apartment. The S-Bahn man.
He had emerged from the railway sidings by the Anhalter Bahnhof. He had almost certainly been loitering by the train tracks waiting for a woman to pass. It didn’t even need to be her. He had seen a lone female and she was his prey.
Incredulity bubbled in her mind. How ironic, that a life lived in the shadow of a murderous regime might be ended by an act of random violence. That despite the attentions of Germany’s head of counter-intelligence, she should become the ultimate quarry of an amateur, dying alone on the street, blood inking the cobbles. That after years of evading imprisonment and pursuit in the Third Reich she might face death by a lone psychopath, rather than at the hands of Nazi thugs.
There was no time to think. Hands shaking, fighting the panic, she ran. The man followed, a hundred yards behind, picking up speed with long, loping strides. He was younger than her, and she was in heels.
Running was hard. The air seemed to have a clogged, distorted texture so that she was moving in slow motion. Sweat was trickling down her back and between her breasts and fear was humming in her blood. Panic dulled her senses.
She reached the Tirpitzufer, where the serried buildings of the Abwehr, the German intelligence service, stretched behind a length of chain-linked wire. A litter of white fragments scattered the street in front of her like torn-up tickets, and she realized they were petals, remnants of the roses that had been thrown at the Führer’s car during the recent celebratory parade. The BDM girls had been drilled to cast flowers in a spontaneous act of enthusiasm and tiny children had been permitted to break through the police cordon and approach the Führer’s car with posies. Now the flowers were brown at the edges and soaked by the rain into a treacherous mass of decay.
She slipped and fell.
Staggering to her feet she ran across the road, but her slip had allowed the man to gain ground so now he was at most fifty yards behind. Ahead of her lay the greasy waters of the Landwehrkanal, the moon splintered in its oily surface, a flight of steps leading down. The towpath was liquefying in the worsening rain, the mud glittering like pulverized diamonds. Even in normal times there was no lighting along the canal bank, but now the shadow was massed and bulky, the willows above shuddering in the wind.
Blood rushed in her ears and, swifter than any human speed, a succession of images sped through her mind. Herself and the ten-year-old Erich on the roundabout swings at Luna Park, spinning faster and faster, and in the process spinning her own life out of its orbit. How would Erich survive? She hoped Emmy Goering’s intervention would spare him from the worst of any action and keep him out of the clutches of Goebbels. From what she knew of her godson he would detest being stuck in an office away from the fighting, but his obedience and sense of duty to the Fatherland was stronger than any other sentiment within him. Stronger, she felt sometimes, than love.
Then came the faces of the people back home. Angela and Kenneth. Her father. The journalist Rupert Allingham, who had first suggested she try her luck in Berlin. Her old acting friend Ida McCloud, who had long since given up the stage for the job of vicar’s wife, an occupation that perfectly matched her deportment.
And Ned Russell.
That conversation they had, the morning in Lisbon, looking out at the harbour and waiting for the Windsors to board their ship. His large hand entirely enclosing her own. His talk about migratory terns, compelled by instinct to cross the globe, from wintering to breeding grounds, ending up at the same place each time. The crystal compass in their beaks guiding them through the invisible magnetic fields, connecting to magnetic north.
You know you have someone to return to.
Ned said he felt serene when he thought he would die, but there was no such serenity for Clara. She picked up her pace, but the path was slippery with darkness and her steps were sludgy, fenced in by railings blooming with rust. The way was narrower now, veering in towards the bank. The canal was clogged with weeds and smelled of rotting wood and dank slime. She was aware of the murk of movement and debris floating past, the surface arrowed with trails from half-submerged planks and other discarded objects. Suicides, perhaps, pecked by fish. This grim spot was a favourite for those Berliners desperate to end their lives. An image of herself flailing, sinking, flashed through her brain and galvanized her.
She was in a horror film, a pathway of jagged shadows and tilted perspectives, the way ahead fraught with uncertainty. Then, suddenly, a crust of mud gave way beneath her and she skidded, costing her precious seconds, and before she knew it the man behind had gained ground and in the next second he was standing over her.
The universe condensed around her so that it was just the two of them. A man and a woman. A scream froze in her throat. She saw nothing but the wild white of his eyes. She hit him with her fist once, in the windpipe, and he grunted and stepped back, then staggered forward again towards her. Another thrust, straight to his chest, pushed him dangerously close to the slow darkness of the canal, but he sidestepped and recovered himself.
As if from far away she heard the man’s voice raised in protest, but she was locked in a cocoon of survival, her mind focused only on self-preservation. As he advanced again, she recalled their last encounter. This time she had no heavy bag to defend herself, but digging in her pocket she found something else. Ian Fleming’s pen.
It’s useful in emergencies but be careful how you handle it. It emits a large amount of tear gas if you press the clip.
Grappling with it, she reached up and pressed the clip hard, releasing a burst of vapour in the direction of his face. The man reeled and reached out a hand to his eyes, then lurched forward, clamping a hand over her mouth.
‘For God’s sake, stop! Listen to me! It’s not what you think.’
It was an English voice. A voice that carried in its ether a world deeply known to her and, in the subconscious split second that she heard it, a tumult of images attached themselves; of London squares and pubs and parks. Of terraces and teashops and Victorian churches of hearty brick. Of grammar school, and the 5.15 from Waterloo to somewhere in the suburbs. The very sound of it silenced her.
‘I didn’t mean to scare you, Miss Vine.’
The use of her name shocked her into speech. She sucked in a deep breath.
‘I . . . don’t . . . believe . . . you.’
Her chest was heaving. She could feel the blood pulse in her throat. The words came out as gasps.
‘It’s the truth.’
‘Who are you?’
‘My name is Kolchev. Ljubo Kolchev. I work at the Romanian Embassy.’
The Romanian Embassy? What had Hans Reuber said? A British agent. He’s posing as a press attaché at the Romanian Embassy.
‘Real name Wilson. Roger Wilson.’
‘What do you want?’
‘I’ll tell you. Only please, let’s keep walking. It’s less conspicuous that way.’
They stumbled on through the rutted mud, then he led the way up from the towpath and she saw no option but to follow. He had dragged a handkerchief from his pocket and was rubbing at his eyes, trying to dissipate the tear gas.
‘Bloody hell. Where did you get that stuff? I’m half blind.’
She gave no reply, so he added, ‘I mean you no harm. You must trust me.’
‘I have no intention of trusting you.’
‘For God’s sake.’
His face was beaded with sweat, his voice at once urgent and aggrieved.
‘How can I convince you?’
‘You’d better make it good.’
‘I know where you work.’
‘Like anyone who visits the cinema.’
‘I know your address.’
‘So does everyone with a telephone directory.’
‘I know your code name.’
That mystified her.
‘I don’t have a code name.’
‘But you do. You must know. It’s been in place for years. I heard you mentioned by your code name long before I knew it was you.’
‘What is it then?’
‘Solitaire.’
Solitaire. In a flash she was back in 1933, and Leo Quinn was preparing to return to his work with the British secret service. Ten minutes earlier she had refused his proposal of marriage in order to stay in Berlin. She heard his protest. Do you really want to be a solitary? On your own? Because that’s what staying in Germany will mean, Clara. You’ll be a solitary. A solitary. What harsh, ungilded truth that name contained. It was the word they used for a lone operative, an isolated agent in the field. For years the word had burned in her as though it was written in fire, but now, hearing it spoken out loud, she wanted to cry because it was the last gift he had given her. Solitaire. Leo had made a name for her because she wouldn’t take his own.
They were walking northwards up Hermann-Goering-Strasse. To the left lay the crepuscular gloom of the Tiergarten and to the right slumbered the long back gardens of the ministerial palaces. Wilson was still panting from the chase. Ruefully he rubbed the place on his throat where she had hit him.
‘Christ. I’d rather go ten rounds with Max Schmeling. You winded me pretty effectively before. I should have remembered what you were like.’
‘So it was you that night. In the street. I thought you were that man who has been attacking women on the S-Bahn.’
‘I suppose your caution does you credit.’ There was a resentful note to his voice. ‘It’s not been easy. I’ve been frantic at work, so there hasn’t been much opportunity to track you down. I’ve been trying to get in touch for weeks. I found you on the train, but we were interrupted. Then I approached you in the street, but you left me pretty much doubled up in pain. By the time I tried again you’d disappeared to Paris.’
‘How did you know I was in Paris?’
He was brushing the mud off his lapels.
‘I had a message from Hans Reuber. He was worried. He’d been told to expect you in Paris and assumed you were somebody’s spy. I couldn’t give anything away. I couldn’t tell him your precise status – I wouldn’t do that, Miss Vine. But I did my best to allay his fears.’
So that was how Reuber had known that Clara was not working for the Nazis. It was not an unguarded slip on her part. Not carelessness or intuition. He had already been reassured about Clara’s allegiances.
‘Then before I knew it, you’d vanished.’
Despite everything, she was not prepared to lower her guard. She would not tell him she had been in Lisbon, or what had happened there.
‘You’d better tell me what you wanted me for.’
‘To warn you, firstly.’
‘About the two agents captured at Venlo?’
‘So you heard.’
‘Are they still alive?’
‘I hope so. They’re in Sachsenhausen. Schellenberg was responsible for interrogating them. He wanted as many names as possible.’
The leaden confirmation of her fears resounded within her.
‘And they gave him mine?”
‘We can’t be sure.’
‘What do you think?’
‘We have no proof.’ Wilson shook his head. ‘What we do know is that the damage inflicted on Britain’s espionage network in Europe has been immense. Disastrous. That’s why they want to contact you so urgently.’
‘Who does?’
‘London. They want you over there.’
‘What for?’
‘They need to reactivate you.’
She was silent a while.
‘I don’t know. I need time to think about it.’
‘Time? There’s no time. Besides, you’ve had all the time you need, surely. You’ve been shutting yourself up in that apartment for months, going to work every day like a good citizen, keeping your head down. You must have done your thinking by now. You must have worked out what drives you.’
Wilson was right, she could no longer stay still. The forces that drove her were the same as they had always been; friends murdered, forced into hiding or exile, the comfortable laughter of their persecutors, England, and a father who would rather appease a regime of murderers than stand up to them. Erich in a Luftwaffe uniform. A man who loved Latin and another who told her there was someone to return to.
‘Who exactly wants to see me?’
Wilson’s voice, already quiet, lowered further.
‘Winston Churchill.’
That silenced her. Eyes widened, she turned and stared at him but he carried on walking, a faceless mass with a luminous swastika bobbing in the dark.
‘Are you saying the Prime Minister has a message for me?’
‘A direct request. He wants to meet you.’
Shock caught the breath in her throat.
‘What for?’
‘He’s establishing a new agency. They’re calling it the Special Operations Executive. And they want you to join them.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘They believe you have exceptional access. They’ll never be able to insert another agent with the connections that you have in Berlin. It’s not that we won’t get people in – there’ll be foreign workers sent to Germany for forced labour and we’ll be able to place some agents in that way to sabotage railways, power lines, telephone networks. To organize supply lines and link up resistance groups. But those are all low-level. To have a woman like you in the upper echelons, who’s been there from the beginning. That’s invaluable.’
Clara felt unsteady on her feet, as if the paving stones of Hermann-Goering-Strasse had tipped and tilted beneath her.
‘So . . . what exactly will they want of me?’
‘If, as seems to be the case, the German counter-espionage services are suspicious of you, then you’re highly vulnerable, Miss Vine. You may be able to duck and dive for some time, God knows you’ve managed so far, but it might be that you find yourself in situations that are somewhat more challenging than a ministerial drinks party. So the SIS want you properly trained. They have a place out in Hertfordshire, at Knebworth.’
‘What would I learn?
‘How to kill with a single blow. Forge papers, make skeleton keys, pick locks. Morse code. Break into properties. Use a weapon. There are various psychological tests too. They get their people to walk along the tracks of the London Underground in the face of an approaching train.’
‘Did you do that yourself, Mr Wilson?’
He shrugged, his face professionally deadened, blank enough to resist a Nazi interrogator, let alone an actress on a Berlin street. Roger Wilson was far too well versed in reserve to give away secrets. She wondered how old he was, and with what psychic blows that composure had been hammered into him.
‘The idea is to test your control under stress, but from what I’ve seen tonight, I think you might be able to handle that.’
‘How would you get me out?’
‘Not sure yet. I warn you, you may not have much notice. You need to be ready to leave immediately.’
‘Not immediately. I still have some matters here to settle.’
‘Does that mean you’ll come?’