David John - Flight from Berlin

From a crackling radio behind Reinacher’s door the voice of Goebbels resounded in the stairwell. ‘… This day, I believe it is no exaggeration to say… that a hundred million people in Germany and beyond her frontiers… have been tuned to the broadcast of the eleventh Olympiad from Berlin…’

He put his key in the door to his apartment and pushed, not even noticing that the new lock wasn’t locked. His senses warned him but his brain was too slow on the uptake. He stepped into his sitting room and two men stood up.

‘Richard Denham,’ the nearer one said. He opened his jacket to reveal the warrant-disc hanging from an inside pocket. ‘You’re to come with us.’

Gestapo. Both men wore grey suits and black, snap-brimmed trilbies.

‘May I make a telephone call?’ Denham said. He felt a strange calm come over him, as if he’d expected them. Somehow, in his heart, he’d known it would come to this.

‘You’ll be back in the morning,’ the man said, stubbing his cigarette out on the rug. ‘You can telephone then.’

That, Denham knew, was a gross lie, but he wasn’t going to argue.

They escorted him downstairs, one in front and one behind.

A storm of applause was breaking across the speech on Reinacher’s radio as the speaker’s voice moved into high gear. ‘As for those seduced by the international Jewish press into doubting the Fuhrer’s desire for peace… I say this:… let them come to Berlin!

… Let them come to Berlin!..’

Frau Stumpf’s door was shut.

Outside, a grey Horch waited. The back door was held open; Denham got in and sat next to one of the Gestapo men while the other drove. How brisk and businesslike they were. No handcuffs, none needed. Such fear did these men inspire that citizens meekly did as they were told.

The smell of the car’s seat leather mingled with a faint odour of vomit.

‘I thought you boys only came at night,’ Denham said.

Neither answered.

The roads around Belle-Alliance-Platz were clogged with traffic as the evening rush approached, and the Horch was caught in a crawl behind a line of cars and yellow double-deckers. Neither Gestapo man seemed the least frustrated at their lack of progress. He wondered how long they’d been in his apartment. Both wound down their windows to smoke, but neither offered him a cigarette.

They turned onto the Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, plunged in shadow as the sun moved into the west. Goring’s new Air Ministry passed by on the right, wall after wall of granite, the city’s latest pharaonic monstrosity. The car slowed to a halt, and the gates of the darkened Gestapo building swung inward without a sound.

T he mild-spoken Gallico had to raise his voice to be heard over the laughter, piano music, and clinking glasses in the Adlon’s upstairs bar. Reporters from every newspaper, radio station, and wire service in the world seemed to be drinking there this afternoon. He hadn’t touched his beer.

‘Let me get this straight,’ he said, leaning towards her. ‘You go hiding in a rosebush and overhear a private conversation between-’

‘I wasn’t hiding.’ Eleanor was looking over the rail next to their table. She could see right down into the lobby, where a couple of army officers were lounging on wicker chairs near the pagoda fountain, their laughter becoming more boisterous with each toast of schnapps. ‘I went to apologise to Brundage, followed him in there, but lost him in the dark; next thing I knew there were these men’s voices…’

She quickly told him the rest.

Gallico gave a slow whistle.

‘Bad, huh?’ she said.

‘Throwing the Jews off the relay team in case they win and embarrass Hitler? Well, it doesn’t cast old Avery in the best light

…’ He looked down into the lobby with a face that suggested several thoughts playing across his mind at the same time. A hearty laugh came from one of the officers at the fountain.

‘You’re not thinking I made this up to get back at that jerk?’ Eleanor asked.

‘No… I’m thinking of the politics. The UP boys have generally supported US participation in these Olympics. Now that our athletes are here in Berlin and winning medals, it could look, well, unpatriotic if we break this story now. And, sweetheart, I’m just wondering what they’ll say back home. The sour grapes between you and Brundage means you won’t be seen as the most impartial witness…’

‘Then you break the story.’

‘But I’ll need more proof.’

‘Confront him with it, Paul, and see how he reacts.’

The noise of teleprinter machines filled the corridor from behind closed doors. Beneath the wire-meshed electric lights rows of hunched figures waited on benches and lowered their eyes as the sergeant passed. Pushed along without shoelaces or belt, Denham walked in a rapid shuffle. They’d taken his tie, too. I go to my doom looking a man who sleeps in his clothes. The sergeant stopped outside a door marked HAECKEL, knocked twice, opened it for Denham, and closed it behind him.

Inspector Haeckel was a heavy man, with a grey moustache, a boxer’s jaw, and thinning hair. He had on the full black uniform: Sam Browne belt, shoulder strap, boots, gun holster, and an array of police decorations.

A minute passed as he scribbled away at his desk, dotting i ’s, crossing t ’s, not acknowledging his prisoner. Denham looked around, seeing a chair, which he was not being offered, and dark stains on the floor that made his stomach clench. On a cabinet to the right stood a row of trophies awarded for dog handling, except for one, which displayed two spent bullets suspended like grubs in a block of glass. On its base were engraved the names ROHM and HEINES.

After a while the inspector selected a rubber stamp from a small rack, thumped a document, closed the file, and took another from his tray. Denham’s passport was inside, on top of what looked like a hand-filled surveillance sheet.

‘Richard Arthur Denham,’ he said, examining the passport, then glancing up for the first time. ‘As you are certainly aware, there is a press injunction on speaking to Hannah Liebermann. So would you mind telling me what you were doing at her home today?’ He had the gravel voice of a man accustomed to shouting.

Sound honest, Denham thought. No clever remarks. ‘I’m a reporter, Inspector, and she’s one of the best-known athletes at the Games. I wanted a few quotes for some copy, that’s all. Frankly, what reporter wouldn’t?’

Haeckel seemed uninterested and leaned back in his chair.

‘I’m not wasting time with you because you’re not my case, or not yet anyway. You see, the oddest thing just happened, Herr Denham, and maybe you could explain it to me.’

He stood up, not as tall as Denham expected, with a solid, rounded gut, and walked to the back of his chair to stretch his legs. Boots, belt, and strap creaked and groaned.

‘The minute my boys turned up at your apartment I get an urgent call from the SD, who send over this file on you.’

The SD?

‘That’s right. I’m to hold you until a certain SD officer gets here to interrogate you.’ He leaned over the chair and picked up a sheet from the file. ‘One, espionage of new German Zeppelin technology on board the Luftschiff Hindenburg…’

‘What?’

‘… two, using an identity not your own to infiltrate Reichsminister Goebbels’s reception on the Pfaueninsel; three, attending an illegal music event convened by antisocials known to the police’-the inspector closed the file-‘and this in the course of a few days’ surveillance…’

‘The espionage charge is nonsense.’

‘Is it?’ He picked up the paper again. ‘It says here that you breached a military regulation by taking a camera on board and gave your guide the slip in a restricted area. So what were you up to?’