David John - Flight from Berlin

He had a groomed, cultured appearance, tailored clothes, and a sombre tie. The German upper class, relaxed with rank. Brown hair combed back from his forehead, high cheekbones, full lips that suggested a taste for the finer things, features that might be found pleasing but for the eyes, which had an unnerving directness. Denham felt sure, too, that he hadn’t risen to the rank of Hauptsturmfuhrer in the SS on the back of good table manners and a white smile.

‘Your arrest caught us on the back foot. When the Gestapo went to collect you, they forced our hand. We’ve been letting you run around on a loose lead, Herr Denham, waiting to see where you’ll take us. But we’d have come for you shortly anyway. Your landlady reported the latest telegram from your ex-wife, and we wouldn’t want you leaving the country, especially not now, would we?’

Poor Frau Stumpf. How the old bird must have lost it when the men in leather turned up.

‘Please let’s understand each other right away, Herr Denham, there’s an espionage charge against you…’

‘Which you know is false.’

He shrugged. ‘Be that as it may. It’s a serious charge. At the very least it means prison; at worst, a stretch in a KZ, a concentration camp. If you come out alive your health will be ruined and you won’t work again. Do I need to elaborate?’

Denham looked at him sullenly, sensing a deal on offer.

‘However,’ Rausch went on, spreading his hands over the table, ‘I’m certain we can spare you that in return for your cooperation with the main matter. What do you say?’

Denham sighed. ‘Does she upset you so much? I won’t be the last reporter who tries interviewing Hannah Liebermann.’

‘Hannah Liebermann?’ Rausch seemed amused. ‘No fooling please, Herr Denham. Do you think we’re interested in some Jew girl telling tales?’

‘You tell me.’

‘We’re interested in you. Because you’re going to tell us where it is.’

‘Where what is?’

Rausch stared at him, waiting, the smile on his lips cooling.

‘You’ll have to help me here,’ Denham said. ‘Where what is?’ Fatigue, hunger, and hours of incarceration were beginning to take their effect.

The interrogator sat back in his chair with the look of a schoolmaster given a dim answer by his best pupil. ‘You know precisely what.’

‘I assure you I don’t-’

‘Herr Denham. I will not play games. I am speaking of the dossier.’

‘You’ve got the wrong man,’ Denham said, but before the words were out he’d remembered. What that man Evans had mentioned in the back of the Humber.

A dossier which we believed had been lost or destroyed…

He chose his next words with care. ‘There’s been a rumour going round that a foreign correspondent will be handed a secret dossier of some sort. We’ve all heard it. So what. It wasn’t me.’

‘But it was you, of course. It was always going to be you-the reporter they would contact.’

‘Now there’s a they. Who are they?’

Rausch leaned towards him. ‘I have a reputation for stamina, Herr Denham. I can go through the night without a break.’ The man made an up to you gesture with his hands. ‘They offered you the dossier. Irresistible to a reporter, I’m sure. But you’ve heard what’s in store if you don’t cooperate.’

‘You’re not listening. I don’t know-’

‘I’ll offer you this chance once only. Tell me where it is and you walk free the moment we have it.’

‘My freedom it is, then.’

‘Where’s the dossier?’

‘I have no idea.’

Rausch watched him for several seconds, then got up from the far side of the table, carrying his chair. There was an air of finality to the way he placed it in front of Denham and sat down, as if a line had been crossed. In Denham’s frayed mind, the temperature of the room seemed to drop.

‘Let’s start at the beginning.’ His face had acquired a cold fervour. ‘When did the group make contact with you?’

‘Group…? What-’

The slap was so hard and so fast that Denham felt the hot shame of being hit like a child. He touched his lip with his tongue, split by the SS signet ring on Rausch’s right hand. Cold sweat broke out under his shirt.

‘No one contacted me.’

‘No one.’

‘N-’

Another hard slap.

‘Come on,’ Rausch said, almost in a whisper. ‘“Didn’t we meet at a poetry reading in Mainz last year?” ’

Denham’s mouth opened dumbly, and he was slapped again. He put up his hands to shield his face, but Rausch knocked them aside and slapped him once more, with much more force.

‘For Christ’s sake,’ Denham shouted.

‘I’m sorry. Let’s make you feel more secure.’ He lifted a pair of handcuffs from his side pocket, walked behind Denham’s chair, and pulled his hands back, locking them tightly behind him. When he resumed his seat he pulled it closer. He searched Denham’s face, his eyes an aphotic blue, a lake in winter. ‘They gave you a double password to identify yourself. We found out, Denham. We know. “Didn’t we meet at a poetry reading in Mainz last year?” Your response was “We did. The poems were by Stefan George.” Then they gave you the dossier.’

Denham had the sensation of being trapped in an artifice that was fast assembling itself out of fragments of reality. A muscle began to spasm just below his eye. He had to grimace to make it stop.

Rausch nodded. ‘Are we getting somewhere now?’

He remembered Friedl asking the question. Odd because it was in German, when they’d been speaking English, and because of the intense look that had been in his eyes when he asked it. Denham’s brain was jangled. His single, urgent thought was to keep Friedl’s name out of this.

‘I’ve never heard it.’

Rausch slapped him with the full strength of his arm.

‘It’s the truth,’ Denham said through clenched teeth.

‘The truth?’ Rausch wagged his finger at this interesting point. ‘What is the truth…?’ He stood up to remove his jacket and hung it over the back of his chair, revealing a brutally fit figure. ‘The Nollendorfplatz Theatre, Denham. That’s where you gave yourself away.’ He began rolling up his shirtsleeves. ‘We’d been keeping an eye on you since you got back to Berlin, but when you walked into that dance hall yesterday-then we knew you were the one. Because among those swing-dancing nigger-lovers was a member of the group-also under surveillance by us. You spoke to him at the bar. Or are you denying that, too? So then we do a little digging around to see where you’ve been the last few weeks, and what do you know? Our suspect, Friedl Christian, was reported seen in your company on board the Hindenburg last Saturday. Bumping into him again was a bit more than a coincidence, wouldn’t you agree?’ He sat back down, his knees almost touching Denham’s.

‘No coincidence,’ Denham said, his spirits sinking. ‘We got talking about swing. He invited me to the Nollendorfplatz. I went along. That’s it.’

Slap.

‘Did you know that Friedl Christian is a warm boy registered with the police?’

‘His personal life is his own affair. We did not discuss it.’

Slap. ‘You discussed something.’

‘Music.’

Slap. ‘He was the contact the group told you to expect, was he not? You identified yourselves to each other with the password and he gave you the dossier, or he told you where to find it.’

‘He didn’t give me any-’

Slap. ‘Did he give it to you?’

‘No-’

‘Did he give you a location where you’d find it?’

‘No, I don’t know-’

Slap. ‘A name, a contact?’

‘He didn’t mention anyone. He didn’t mention any dossier-’

Slap. Slap. Slap.