The police station was cold and smelled of stale smoke and cleaning fluid. The floor was scratched, its linoleum patchily worn. Elena was taken into a small side room and left standing. When the doors shut behind her, she felt as if deep water were closing over her head. She was so frightened, it was like drowning, except that she was still alive, still breathing, overbreathing, feeling her throat tighten.
Two men entered the room. They faced her, both of them fair-skinned, light-haired. No different on the outside from dozens of men she knew at home. Inside, she imagined them as unreachable to her as those students who had capered around the fires.
Neither of them spoke, they just stared at her. She felt as if she were suffocating. Was this the day she would die?
“I did not take anything from a woman,” she said again. “Anything at all.” Her jaw was so tight, so aching with tension that it was hard to frame the words.
“We know that, miss. What’s your name?” One of the men stepped closer to her, too close. His voice was soft, almost purring, but she could feel his breath on her face. She forced herself to look at him, at his eyes. This was it, the moment she had feared. She must not give away Jacob, Eli, and Zillah. She thought of Ian, lying bleeding on the floor of the railway carriage. Then Mike, the last time she had seen him, in uniform, going back to the battle line. Had he any idea he would never come home? Perhaps she would never go home either.
And then it struck her: They already knew the answers!
“Name?” the policeman repeated.
There was no point in lying. Her passport was in her bag and they had confiscated it. “Elena Standish.”
“Is that English?”
“Yes.”
“What are you doing in Berlin?”
“It’s a beautiful city.” She took a breath. Any mistake at all and she would end up doing the one thing she dreaded. It was always at the front of her mind. She had already failed Ian. His death was not her fault, but in a way, Scharnhorst’s was. Not that his death mattered, only that Britain must not be blamed for it. “I lived here when I was younger. My family lived here because of my father’s work.”
“So, you know the city.” There was triumph in his voice. He was still standing too close to her, crowding her. She refused to step back.
“Yes, some of it.”
He looked her up and down. “You must have been a child.”
“It was about ten years ago. I was seventeen when I came, twenty when I left.” So far, this was the exact truth. Always stick to the truth if you can. Easier to remember. Perhaps this was going to be all right.
“What did he do, this father of yours that came to Berlin?”
“He was a diplomat.” No need to tell them how high he was in the service.
“You mean a spy!” The man’s eyes gleamed as if he had made her give up valuable information.
“No, a diplomat. Trying to make things better between our two countries.”
He nodded, as if he agreed with her. He even smiled. Then he slapped her across the face, hard. It stung and knocked her off balance, making her fall back a couple of steps. The pain of it made her eyes water. Fury boiled up inside her. She wanted to shout at him, demand he explain himself. She wished to retaliate, but she did not dare to. The humiliation choked her. What was the best reaction? If she showed how afraid she was, he would know his tactics worked. If she didn’t, it would look like defiance. Next time, he would hit her harder. She moved her tongue around her mouth, tasting blood.
Was there any point in trying to reason with him? Was he beyond reach, too, like the book-burners?
“Is your father here with you?” the other policeman asked.
“No.” Keep it short. Give the bastards nothing else to contradict.
“You’re alone?”
“I’m twenty-eight!”
Another slap. This time she was less startled and it seemed to hurt a little less. What had angered him about that? It was only her age. Perhaps he did not need a reason? Was this what madness was like, the pain, the violence out of nowhere? It stung until she felt dizzy with it, and she wanted to strike him back. It was only the conviction that she would lose, and be hurt even more, that stopped her.
“Are you alone?” he said again, the words slow and careful, pushed between his teeth.
To acknowledge being alone meant that there was no one to help her. It made her even more vulnerable. But this was where they would catch her out. She must not betray Jacob, or the Hubermanns.
“Yes.” Don’t add anything. Don’t give him reason to hit her again.
“Who gave you the gun? Did you bring it with you?” There was a sneer with the last question. “Nobody noticed a pretty young woman carrying her handbag, and a rifle?” Now he was deeply sarcastic. “We are not stupid!”
She wanted to say that the very idea proved that they were, but she knew he would hit her again, perhaps a lot harder. “It would be impossible to walk around with a rifle,” she agreed. “At least I imagine it would. I’ve never tried.”
“Liar!” He hit her again, knocking her off balance, sending her sprawling onto the floor. She sat up quickly, and without thinking put her hand to her cheek. Holding it eased the pain a little, or perhaps she just imagined it did. Now there was more blood in her mouth and running down her chin. He saw her as weak, someone too afraid to stand up for herself. She could see it in his eyes. She stood awkwardly, holding on to the chair, and then sitting in it, a little dizzy, forcing herself to look at him.
“I don’t have a rifle! Or any other gun,” she said, stumbling a little over her words because her mouth hurt. “And if I had tried carrying around such a thing, as you said, you would have seen it.”
“We found it in your room!” he said triumphantly.
“In the hotel? Anyone could have put it there. I didn’t.”
“Then how did you know it was there?” He was smiling now.
“Because you just told me.” She met his eyes and stared straight at him.
He raised his hand to strike her again, but his companion caught it.
“She’s no use to us if she can’t speak,” he warned. “She’s not alone in this. Use your brain.”
The first man shook him off angrily, but he conceded the point.
“If you are not guilty, why did you run away?” the second man asked, his voice softer, his temper well in his control. He sounded as if he was merely interested, no more.
But it was a lethal question. There was no completely innocent answer.
“Because I was in the square and I knew someone had shot Herr Scharnhorst. I saw it happen. I saw the panic. I knew you would be looking for anyone who could be connected with it. I was not. I had no idea such a thing could happen. Or who would do it.” That, at least, was close to the truth. But she could hear the tight, high fear in her own voice. They must hear it, too.
“You didn’t think to hand the gun over to the authorities?” the second man continued, still smiling as if it were a casual conversation.
“No, I told you, I know nothing about a gun, but I was frightened at what I had seen in the square. It was a terrible thing.”
“I believe you. Where did you go, Fräulein…Standish? You say you know the city—do you have friends here in Berlin?”
Now she must invent, carefully. One slip and they would trap her. She had no doubt that they would hurt her, perhaps badly, if they thought it would help them. When she had arrived, she had just been a British tourist, inconspicuous, noticing and photographing the assault on minorities, particularly Jews. She had seen their faces and humiliation, old men stepping off the pavement into the gutter to let Brownshirt youth strut by. No one retaliated, no one tried to stop them.
She had been part of the “no one” who passed by, because Jacob had made her see that intervention only made things worse. They had no power. She burned with rage at the offenders, and pity for the victims. Now she was one of the victims, alone, so frightened her stomach churned and she found it difficult to draw in her breath. Her face throbbed where they had struck her, and she swallowed blood.
She could not hide her fear from them. The only good thing left was to make sure she did not bring anyone else down with her.
“Did you go to friends here in Berlin?” the man repeated.
“No. I just ran.”
“Why? Were you afraid they would not believe that you were innocent?”
He was clever. If she said yes, she condemned herself and them. If she said no, then why hadn’t she gone to them for help?
“I just ran,” she said again. “Then I got lost. I got…turned around. I couldn’t go the way I meant to. I found one house, or I thought I did, but there was no one there that I knew.”
“Were they Jews?” He asked the question without any emotion in his voice at all, nothing to indicate what his reaction would be, whether she said yes or no.
She thought of one friend she had known, in case he asked her. Better to have someone in mind. “No, they were Catholics.”
“And you thought they would help you? Or did you not plan to tell them that you were being hunted for murdering Herr Scharnhorst?”
“I didn’t murder him! I saw the gun and I was afraid. I just ran, because I couldn’t prove to anyone that I knew nothing about it.” She heard the desperation in her own voice. Why did he not believe her? Or was it that he really didn’t care? Innocent or guilty, she was the one they were looking for. Or perhaps anyone would do, if they satisfied the crowd. A hideous thought. It filled her with fear, and drove out everything else. Victory was not in getting the right person, it was in getting anyone who could be made to look right. She must get rid of illusions. These people would kill her, and they would kill others, too.
How easy it was to blame someone else when you were sick with fear, the sweat breaking out on your skin and instantly going cold.
The second man was nodding slowly. “You panicked, because you realized that the gun had been used to assassinate one of the Führer’s best men? You had not the courage to hand the gun over and trust our justice.”
Another trap. “I didn’t think,” she said, as if it were an admission. Did she have to apologize to these arrogant men? “I should have trusted.”
“Perhaps English police are not so trustworthy as we Germans?”
She looked at his face, his eyes, and had no idea if he was being sarcastic or not. She did not doubt he would do whatever he thought was in his own interest. Perhaps he was too afraid of whoever was higher up the chain of command? Perhaps they were all afraid, of one thing or another?
She said nothing.
“Are English police trustworthy?” he said more loudly.
“I don’t know.” She fumbled over the words. Her mouth hurt, her whole face hurt. “I have friends who say they aren’t.”
A tiny victory. It had given him no leverage.
“So, when your friends did not answer, where did you sleep? What did you eat? It has been several days. Someone helped you. Who?”
“Different people. I begged.” Did that sound believable?
The first man looked her up and down. “Don’t be stupid,” he said contemptuously. “She earned it on her back!” His meaning, and his disgust, were both plain.
Elena felt the heat rise up her cheeks. It was humiliating to be taken so easily for a whore, or perhaps just a desperate woman! How many such women might have slept with men for their own survival? Or even, more likely, to feed their children, or save someone else’s life. Wouldn’t a woman with a child to protect do anything necessary, no matter how repulsive? A child alone would die. Or worse.
She nodded her head very slightly. It was believable. Good, if he accepted it.
“Put her in the cells,” the second man ordered and turned away, clearly thinking of the next task.
It was a very ordinary cell: bare stone floor, one small window high up in the wall. Nothing to see out of it but sky. There was a cot along one side, and a bucket. Nothing else. They had searched her handbag and kept it, along with the photographs of the assassination and her passport. At least Jacob had copies of the pictures. They would be safe, as long as Eli and Zillah were. Perhaps Jacob would be safe because he was American? If he kept his activities quiet, wrote for American newspapers only, then his U.S. citizenship might protect him.
But her British citizenship had not protected her!
Was that because they really thought she had killed Scharnhorst? Would she have been all right, but for that?
Jacob was a Jew. She felt despair well up inside her as she thought of people she had seen beaten and humiliated in the street. Why? Just because they were Jews.
For the love of heaven, Christ himself had been a Jew! So had the Virgin Mary, and all the Apostles. Hatred was a kind of insanity, and there was no reasoning with it. It was corrosive like acid, burning all it touched, destroying in the cause of…what, inadequacy? People who were filled with rage because they had failed, they could not cope with defeat, hunger, or most of all, the consuming darkness.
Wasn’t she afraid? Yes. She was in a police cell, accused of something she had not done. The Nazis were terrible, beyond terrible. There was no word for them.
But they were still a minority. She knew the German people. They were as decent as anybody else. She had lived here and been happy. Stop the imagination. Think what to say when they questioned her again.
That time came sooner than she expected. She had gone over and over the possibilities in her mind. Her head ached from where the man had hit her, and from the turmoil of her own thoughts.
She was taken back to where she had been before, or a room exactly like it. She had been too frightened to take much notice. The same two men were there, and both of them looked in ill temper.
“Commandant Beimler wants to see you,” the man who had hit her said angrily. He seemed to resent the fact. Perhaps it was a reflection on his competence that she was taken out of his hands. Elena had no idea whether it would be better or worse for her. Perhaps it made no difference, except that this senior man might be cleverer, far more difficult to mislead.
She did not speak. Nothing could make it better, and a mistake would make it worse.
Elena was marched in silence, her hands manacled behind her back, along several corridors, across an open space almost like a barrack yard, and in through another door. This new building was cleaner and rather better cared for. The commandant must definitely be senior.
They stopped and one of the policemen knocked sharply on a door. Neither of the men reached for the handle to open it, until a voice from inside gave them permission.
She was pushed in roughly enough to feel the tweak of a muscle in her shoulder, but she tried to give no sign that it hurt.
Beimler, if it was he behind the desk, stood up, looking first at her, then at the two policemen who had brought her. He was tall with fair hair and strong features, the perfect Aryan type. He held out his hand.
“Sir?” The younger policeman gestured.
“Keys,” Beimler said a little impatiently. “You have her manacled. I want the key.”
“Sir, she could be violent. She already shot Herr Scharnhorst, and from a considerable distance. She’s probably trained in unarmed combat, too.”
“I don’t see any bruises on your face, while there’s a pretty large one on hers. Looks as if you won that fight,” Beimler responded with a twisted smile, more irritation than humor.
“I’ve more sense than to let her trick me,” the man replied tartly.
“So have I,” Beimler snapped back. “Keys!”
He handed them over.
“Thank you. You may go. I’ll send for you if I need you.”
“We can wait outside, sir.”
“No, you cannot. You will go back and continue with your duties.”
Reluctantly, they both saluted, perhaps not quite as smartly as they could have, and went out, closing the door behind them with a sharp snap.
Beimler released Elena from the manacles. “Sit down,” he invited, relaxing and resuming his own seat. “Do you prefer to speak in English or German? I’m afraid my English is not very fluent.”
“German is fine, thank you.” She sat down, but well toward the front of the chair, uncomfortably. She did not know if his outward good manners made him better, or worse.
He sat quite still, apparently studying her. She did not stare back at him; it would be bold, and challenging. Instead she looked around the room. It was sunny. Outside, beyond the window, the sky was blue. The office was very tidy. No papers lying around, but lots of books on the pale wooden shelves. Presumably they were all books the Führer approved of. There would be nothing dangerous to the mind, no new or uncensored ideas.
She saw on the shelf nearest to his desk, where he could see it every time he looked up, a photograph of a pretty blond woman, holding a little girl of perhaps two, who was smiling at whoever had been holding the camera, showing white baby teeth.
Elena found herself looking away. She could not think of this man having a wife and a child who looked at him with such trust.
She waited to be interrogated, perhaps hit again. She glanced at the smiling child. Elena was not so close to her father. She had never felt she knew him well. Margot was his favorite, just as Elena was Lucas’s. It might be too late now to mend that. It was a shame, a part of her life that would always be missing.
She thought of all the things she had shared with Lucas: the laughter, the exploration of ideas, the freedom of being safe and certain of love.
Would Lucas even know what had happened to her? If he did, at least she would not have to say she had betrayed anyone—not even herself.
She looked at Beimler again.
“Why did you come back to Germany, Miss Standish? Why now?” he asked.
What was he looking for? A reason for her to have killed Scharnhorst? “I had the opportunity,” she replied. “I was photographing people at an economic conference in Italy. I decided not to go straight home.”
“Ah yes, the photographs.” He gave a bleak smile.
She thought she could see actual humor in it, not something Hitler’s followers were known for. If you could laugh, you had a sense of proportion, and of absurdity.
“You’ve seen them?” she asked. She dared not hope. And yet she did! She felt a lurch of pain inside her as she thought again of what she could lose. And there was a burning anger as well, rage for everyone who had been terrified and humiliated.
“Yes. You took them?” the man continued.
“Yes.” She stared straight back at him.
“They are excellent. You are professional, yes? It shows in the composition. How many did you take of Scharnhorst’s death?”
“Only one of the exact moment. A few around it. If you have seen the photograph I took you must know that I cannot possibly have shot Herr Scharnhorst.”
“Did you know it was going to happen?” He was looking at her very closely. Would he see a lie? This was his job, interrogation.
Should she tell him the truth? That she had warned Cordell, and he had done nothing? Better not to bring MI6 into it at all. It was too hard to explain. And if he questioned Cordell, even graciously, as a foreign diplomat, he would say that he was embarrassed for His Majesty’s Government, and yes, she could be guilty.
“No.”
“And yet you very carefully photographed him, just at the right instant. Are you always so…fortunate?” His expression was unreadable.
“I took several. I always do. I was lucky enough to have caught the exact moment in one of them. All the rest did not.”
He smiled. It was a warm, easy gesture. Was he actually quite a decent man, in other circumstances? Did most of these men have a side to them that was as human as anyone else?
And did not even the nicest people have a dark, hidden side that their friends had no idea existed? She forced the idea away. She was overthinking it.
“It takes a lot of work, and luck, to get just the right one, doesn’t it?” he said casually.
Had he taken that picture of his wife and child? Without deliberately doing so, she glanced at it, then away again. Was it there precisely to lull whomever he was questioning into thinking of him as a human being, a man gentle with those he loved? What a hideous use of that most beautiful thing.
He saw her eyes hover on his family’s portrait. “It’s not hard to photograph babies like that.”
“Your wife and daughter?”
“Yes. What do you know of Scharnhorst, Miss Standish? Why did you go to the rally? Is he someone you admire?” There was a shadow in his face as he said that. Was it clever acting, or did the dip in his voice, the instant of harshness, give him away?
How much should she lie? How ugly would it be if she said she admired Scharnhorst, or agreed with anything he said? Could she make herself do that? “I heard him,” she said simply. “He wants to exterminate the Jews, the Gypsies, the trade unionists, and all homosexuals. He said it would cleanse Germany and be the beginning of a new age, a kingdom that would last forever.” She had intended to keep her voice neutral, but her loathing, and perhaps her fear, too, came through all too clearly in her words. The edge of sarcasm was razor sharp.
“It shocked you?” he asked, his own voice carefully neutral.
What should she say? Did her life depend on it? Or was she going to be blamed for killing Scharnhorst regardless of what she said? Would they be any gentler with her? That was an idiotic thought to play with. Mike would be ashamed of her. She thought of him because thinking of Lucas was too much. She would end up weeping in front of the commandant.
“Yes, it shocked me,” she admitted, meeting his clear eyes. They were not blue, as she had thought, but gray. “He spoke of them as if they were an infestation in the house, termites, or dry rot in the walls.”
“I think that was how he saw them,” Beimler replied. A flush of color spread up his cheeks. “Where did the rifle come from, Miss Standish?”
“I’ve no idea. It was there in the room when I got back.”
“How long after Scharnhorst was shot? Be careful what you say. The rifle still smelled of gunpowder.”
“I don’t know. The crowds were pretty hysterical. It wasn’t easy to get through them. And…and I waited long enough to get a pretty good picture of them…carrying him away.”
Was that ghoulish? Would he think of that as a terrible intrusion into death?
He appeared not to have heard her. “Ten minutes? More? Say…fifteen?”
“Yes, I think so. Time is different when something shocking happens.”
“The hotel receptionist doesn’t recall anyone else going up to your floor,” he observed.
“Well, he wouldn’t, would he?”
“Not if he has any sense, no,” he agreed. He looked at her, and for an instant she saw the bitter humor in him, and the pity; and something deeper, a grief for things that were lost. Did he know what was happening to his country, and hate it? And yet what could he do?
There were a hundred answers to that, all of them terrible. Was it absurd to sit in this office while he interrogated her about them? The murder of Scharnhorst, whom both of them despised, and both knew she had not killed.
Beimler asked her more questions about how she had come to Berlin, and she thought of Walter Mann and his help. She told Beimler she had traveled alone. He asked why she had chosen that hotel. Then, of course, why she had run away and where she had gone. Who had sheltered her, fed her, kept her safe.
Elena lied where necessary about that, too, and felt that he probably knew it, even expected it. But as long as she did not say anything that would lead to Jacob or Eli and Zillah, it did not matter.
Oddly enough, he did not suggest that she had prostituted herself to get either money or protection. He assumed she had sought the help of friends from her earlier stay during her father’s appointment at the embassy, and he did not press her for their names. Did he assume she would not tell him? She hoped so. On the other hand, maybe he already knew them?
In between the questions, they spoke of how order had returned to the country. There was work again, and hope. Certainly, there was more food, even if still not enough. And the despair was gone.
She agreed with him and saw a misery in his eyes that he did not give words to.
Every so often he glanced at the photograph. She did not ask their names; she did not want to know. In a way, they stood for all the innocents who had no idea what lay ahead, what future guilt or grief.
When he looked across the polished wood desk at her, was that what he was thinking also? Of course, neither of them would ever say.
They mentioned music, briefly. He said his wife played the piano. He wished he could.
“It would be a wonderful thing to re-create such beauty,” he said with a wry, almost dreaming smile. “To reach back into the past and build such glory, dreams in the air, almost as if the soul of the composer still lived. It is a…place to go to…to be…”
She knew exactly what he meant. There was no need to say so. Why use words when silence was more fitting.
Before they could speak further, the other police came for her, the manacles were replaced, and she was returned to her cell. She heard the iron lock shoot home into its place like the weight of a dead thing.