David John - Flight from Berlin

Denham felt himself back at school. ‘Mr Liebermann is under house arrest in Berlin,’ he said. ‘I… believe he’s given us custody of his assets at this bank.’

‘I see. And naturally you’ve brought a notarised power of attorney voluntarily signed by him…?’

Denham blushed.

‘… Or a deed of transfer putting his accounts into another name?’

‘Nothing like that.’

The old man eyed him coldly and stepped slightly to one side, as if to show them out.

‘Then perhaps you have no business here after all.’

‘Sir, he gave us a key,’ Eleanor said. ‘On the last occasion we saw him. It was all very desperate. We’ve been trying to get his family out of Germany.’

‘We have nothing in writing,’ Denham added.

Mr Landau’s eyes narrowed very slightly. ‘A key?’ Again he studied Denham’s face, but the scars couldn’t have given much assurance.

Eleanor opened her purse and handed it to him, together with the envelope with the number. The old man wiped his pince-nez with his handkerchief and sat down.

He examined the number and seemed to hesitate, weighing the key in his other hand, as though some fear was being confirmed.

‘So I take it you’re here to open the box,’ he said.

Denham and Eleanor looked at each other. Denham said, ‘Yes. But, forgive me, I don’t understand-’

‘Mr Liebermann’s private box at this bank is held under terms that are very specific. Right of access is reserved not solely to him, but also to the key holder.’ Mr Landau glanced at them with a curious expression, caught between suspicion and trust. ‘And as it would seem that the circumstances he had in mind when he made this arrangement have come to pass, that privilege of access… falls to you.’ Mr Landau had a question forming, but something held him back. They sat in silence for a moment; then he leaned forwards and rang the small brass bell. The bearded young man who had admitted them appeared in the door.

‘Mr Rosen here will take you down to the vault,’ Mr Landau said, getting up.

‘Shouldn’t we give you our names?’ Denham said.

The old man shook his head. ‘The key holder’s other privilege is anonymity. Good afternoon.’

Without offering his hand he moved to leave, but then stopped and turned slowly. In a softer voice he said, ‘If you do hear from Mr Liebermann again, please wish him well from me…’

Mr Rosen led them through another door. ‘Mind the steps on your way down,’ he said as they descended a spiral iron staircase. At its base, set into a brick cellar wall, was a massive door of polished steel, which he unlocked with two keys and pulled, using all his weight. Lights flicked on inside, and the gleaming vault appeared before them. They stepped over the wide rim of the door. Two walls were made up almost entirely of large steel safe boxes, about a hundred of them, each with a square lock of the same silver nickel as their key. Some type of ventilation machine resonated through the floor out of sight.

The man wheeled a low trolley from a corner and followed the box numbers along the opposite wall. ‘Here we are,’ he said, crouching to one knee. ‘Box one-four-five-one.’ He slid it out, deeper than Denham expected, from the bottom tier-‘Not too heavy this one; some of them weigh a ton, literally’-heaved it onto the trolley and pushed it through to a small, brick side room with a low vaulted ceiling. It was furnished with a table, a desk lamp, and two chairs.

‘Ring this bell when you’re finished,’ he said, pointing to a button on the wall.

After he’d gone, Eleanor put the key into the lock and turned it, glancing up nervously at Denham. ‘Well. Here goes.’

Air colder than the surrounding room seemed to breathe from the box.

She reached inside and removed a large, dark blue oilskin folder, grimacing as she touched it. It was filthy, stained with grime, and charred black in one corner, as if someone had once tried to destroy it in haste. She placed the folder on the table, beneath the yellow light of the lamp, and opened it.

A young man stared up at them, cold, clear-eyed, and fair, wearing a military tunic undone at the collar. It was a charcoal line drawing, made with some care, with the details shaded and filled and the rest a loose impression. He looked about twenty, with unkempt hair, a wispy moustache, and an impudent smile at the edges of his lips. Freckles dotted the bridge of his nose and under his eyes. In the eyes, the artist had captured sadness and vulnerability.

When Eleanor turned it over to reveal the next picture beneath, Denham gasped. The drawing was made on the back of some official headed letter paper, yellowed and spotted with age. Along the top, in a heavy Gothic font, were the words List Regiment Hauptquartier.

Eleanor turned the sheets of paper, the same headed letter paper. All were drawings of young men, German soldiers of the Great War from the look of their tunics and caps, perhaps sketched in barracks or the wooden billets behind the line, or in the trenches themselves.

In some drawings the lads looked at the artist with a guileless expression, young faces worn down by premature wisdom, ravaged by the horrors they’d witnessed; others looked away and into the light, smiling with a slight frown, suggesting mild embarrassment. There must have been more than a hundred drawings in all, some made on small scraps of notepaper, but most on the letter paper of the List Regiment. Towards the end of the collection the tone of the pictures changed, becoming more naturalistic in style. In one, a lad lay convalescing from an injury; bandaged heavily around his upper chest and shoulder, he looked impassively at the viewer, a cigarette held in the tips of his fingers. The drawing dwelt on the smooth torso, the heavy arms, and the large, powerful hands. There were several more in this vein. None, as far as Denham could tell, were of officers. In one startling drawing, a crop-haired young man with a smooth face stared fiercely at the viewer, holding wide open the left side of his tunic to reveal a shrapnel wound healed above his nipple; on the right side his iron cross was pinned below the breast pocket. Like a Teutonic Saint Sebastian, Denham thought. Heroic, but also something else, somehow

… A small white terrier dog featured in some drawings, sitting at the subject’s feet or being held by him.

Only the final drawing confirmed what the others seemed to be hinting at. It was another young soldier, but this one had on his army boots and felt cap, with a full cartridge belt slung over his shoulder, and nothing else, save for a bottle of beer swinging in his right hand.

‘My God, he’s-’ Eleanor said.

The descending seismographic scribble in the bottom left-hand corner of each sheet would have been indecipherable to a police graphologist, but Denham recognised it. He’d seen it before. On the watercolour hanging in Herr Liebermann’s parlour.

‘These drawings,’ he said, ‘are the work of Adolf Hitler.’

Eleanor dropped the final, nude drawing from her hand.

‘They must have been made during the war.’

She looked up, not focusing on anything, before turning to him. ‘You’re kidding me.’

The ventilation machine thrumming through the floor sent a shudder up Denham’s spine. He remained silent.

‘Hitler drew naked men?’ Eleanor said in an astonished whisper. There was the tremor of a laugh in her voice.

‘He does brawn better than buildings.’

‘What are they doing in Jakob’s safe?’

The final, nude drawing was the most skilled in terms of its draughtsmanship. Denham picked it up and underneath found some large, sealed buff envelopes, cleaner than the shabby letter paper. There were four of them. He opened the first while Eleanor leafed back through the drawings.