David John - Flight from Berlin

‘She and I have been in the same magazines plenty of times, but we’ve never met.’

They searched the faces of the competitors seated around the raised piste in the centre of the hall, but the famous Liebermann wasn’t among them. Then the loudspeakers announced, ‘Krisztina Nagy, Ungarn; Hannah Liebermann, Deutschland.’ The Hungarian girls screamed their applause, and the Germans in the hall turned their heads towards a slim woman of average height standing on the stairs to the side of the hall, away from the other competitors.

‘That’s her,’ said Eleanor.

She had dark, plaited hair worn with a white band around her head. A small, straight nose gave her profile a certain nobility, Denham thought, something statuesque. She wore a tight-fitting white jerkin with an eagle and swastika emblazoned on her chest. Unlike the other contestants, who sat about with tense faces, awaiting their bouts like sprung traps, Liebermann was calm, and Denham imagined he saw melancholy in her-in the measured way she pulled on her gloves and slowly picked up her foil. Her coach was a short, full-bellied man with a small moustache and a few strands of hair ribbed gamely across the top of his pate. He was fussing about her, giving her some last-minute instruction involving a stabbing arm and finger action, to which she was paying not the slightest attention.

‘I suppose your story has nothing to do with Liebermann having the type of beauty that launched a thousand ships?’ Eleanor said.

He shook his head and kept his eyes on the fencer. ‘I’ll tell you what the story’s about when you tell me what happened last night to make you think your dad was right about these Games.’

As Liebermann walked towards the piste in the centre of the hall her eyes seemed to be searching the crowd. Suddenly she found someone with whom she exchanged a charged look, a look that struck Denham as one of fierce love. He turned in the direction of her gaze and straightaway saw the dark young man in a brown gabardine coat. Although seated several rows back he was impossible to miss. His left eye was purple, puffed up, and surrounded with stitches, and his nose had been broken. Bandages covered one hand. The sight sent a cold shiver over Denham’s back; it was as though the young man had crawled from a tunnel that led straight back to the trenches, twenty years ago.

‘You’re pale,’ Eleanor said, when he turned back.

‘Just a hangover.’

Liebermann stepped up to the piste, shook hands with her Hungarian opponent, and pulled on her mask. Both raised their foils to their faces in the swashbuckler salute, then poised with tips held at forty-five degrees. The umpire shouted, ‘On guard!’ and the bout began.

The two women inched towards each other like ghost crabs on a strand. Liebermann probed her opponent’s defences with small strikes, testing her tactics. The Hungarian’s reflexes were sharp, and she had a long reach; she parried the strikes with confidence and Liebermann lost the round, to a disappointed bray from the crowd. The second bout began in a similar style with the Hungarian seeming to grow in confidence as she pursued her strategy with wider, more dramatic strikes. Denham wondered if Liebermann’s misfortunes had knocked the fight out of her.

‘Hannah,’ Eleanor shouted, ‘sock it to her.’

‘This is not a heavyweight prizefight.’

It wasn’t until the third minute of the second round that Liebermann suddenly changed tack, as though she’d just cracked her opponent’s code, and lunged with surprising aggression. The crowd sat up; the Hungarian lost her balance, and Liebermann pressed home the attack with brilliant, precise movements. She won the bout.

The crowd shouted encouragement. If they knew Liebermann was Jewish, they didn’t seem to care.

In the final bout she smacked the Hungarian’s foil aside and lunged again and again with a shocking ferocity. Cowed, her opponent crumbled under the onslaught and stumbled back over the warning line. Liebermann was through to the finals, and the hall gave its noisy assent.

‘Holy crap,’ said Eleanor, clapping. ‘Did you see that?’

They watched her shake her opponent’s hand and take off her mask and the band around her head, letting her dark plaits fall to her shoulders. With only the briefest nod to the crowd she stood down from the piste and left the hall through an exit in the base of the amphitheatre.

‘I’m going to speak to her,’ said Denham.

‘I’m coming with you.’

‘You stay exactly where you are.’

He ran down the wooden steps and out through the exit Liebermann had taken. This led into a semicircular lobby, at the end of which he saw her climbing a staircase and disappearing through a door at the top. He dashed after her, taking the steps two at a time, and entered a wooden corridor. At the far end, Liebermann stood talking to the coach. She was holding open a door, as though she was about to disappear into a changing room.

‘Fraulein Liebermann!’ he called.

They turned to look at him.

‘Congratulations,’ Denham said in German.

She inclined her head without smiling, and he sensed that her trust wouldn’t be easy to win. She really was quite beautiful.

The coach looked at him through narrowed eyes.

‘My name’s Denham. I’m an English news reporter and feature writer. Would you do me the honour of a brief interview?’

Her brown eyes seemed to widen at the mention of ‘English.’ She was about to speak when her coach cut in.

‘Fraulein Liebermann is tired after her match. And any foreign press wanting an interview must apply for permission through the official channels.’

‘Now is as good a time as any, Rudi,’ she said. ‘Which newspaper do you represent Herr… Denham?’

‘I’m published in the London Times, the Daily Express, but mainly in weekend newspapers and magazines in the United States. Is there somewhere we can talk?’ he asked, ignoring the coach.

‘I said you need permission,’ the coach persisted.

Liebermann opened the door of the room she’d been about to enter.

‘We can talk in here. As you can see, I’ve been given a changing room all to myself. I’m either privileged or insulted. I really can’t decide.’

‘Not without permission.’

Denham put his foot in the door.

Liebermann said softly, ‘I’m sure permission can be obtained straightaway from the Ministry official in the hall, Rudi. Why not go and ask him?’ Her voice was cultured with a faint haughtiness.

From the hall the applause echoed like the roar of a phantom army.

The coach hesitated, then glowered at Denham. Turning to Hannah he said, ‘I will return directly. You will answer no questions until I’m present.’

He waddled off down the corridor, his rubber soles squeaking on the wooden floor. A stroke of luck, Denham thought. The man is an idiot.

The changing room smelled of sweat and sports unguents. Somewhere behind a tiled wall a shower dripped.

‘We don’t have long,’ she said, sitting down and placing her foil into a long black case. ‘And we can speak in English if you prefer.’

He’d thought hard about how he’d tackle the interview if he ever got it, but now he was lost for words. Whatever he’d intended to ask, he found himself saying in English, ‘Who was that young man you greeted in the audience?’

She looked up, suspicious and fearful.

‘I saw you make eye contact with him.’

There was a long pause before she said, ‘My brother.’

‘What happened to him?’

‘It’s a family matter,’ she said in a small voice. ‘Look, don’t you want to ask me if I’m pleased to be back in Germany, or whatever you reporters normally ask?’

‘I think I know how you feel about being back in Germany. I saw your brother’s face, too.’