David John - Flight from Berlin

They went to bed that night without talking. The next morning, when he saw that no words he could ever say would make her change her mind, he insisted she take Rex’s telephone number in Berlin in case something went wrong. ‘But remember he’s a reporter, so his phone may be tapped.’

A fter a breakfast with Tom over which they assured him they’d be back in a few days from a driving trip, Eleanor said her goodbyes to Denham and Friedl and watched the Morris Oxford depart Chamberlain Street. Then she gave the keys of the house to Nat and left to enact the next part of the plan-the delivery of the genuine List Dossier from the vault of the Zavi-Landau Bank to the hands of David Wyn Evans. After that, she would hurry by taxi to Croydon Airfield for her flight to Berlin.

Denham had telephoned Evans two days before leaving to arrange the details of the handover. At 9:00 a.m. Evans would be waiting in his car outside the bank on Idol Lane while Eleanor retrieved the dossier from the vault. She would hand it to him inside the car.

Denham had described Evans to her, even imitating his Valleys accent. She was warned to expect Bowler Hat Man at the wheel. Partly as a joke for the diffident Welshman, whom he’d grown to like, he’d suggested a double password, more as a dig at Evans’s profession than anything cloak-and-dagger. ‘No password, no dossier,’ Denham said. They agreed on: ‘Will I see you at Biarritz this season?’ to which the response had to be, ‘No, I vacation in Rhyl,’ a North Wales seaside town for which the words drab and tawdry fell someway short.

A sombre rush-hour crowd on the Tube. She stood swaying among men in black bowlers, drawing their glances when they thought she wasn’t looking. A valise over her shoulder contained an embassy diplomatic pouch where she’d concealed five hundred reichsmarks for any unseen eventuality; between her feet a small, lightish case contained her clothes, and a single gown. It had been a headache to pack so little, but she would be back in three days, all going well. And in time for the coronation on the thirteenth. Her eyes moved between the headlines in the newspapers open around her. BASQUE TOWN NOW HEAP OF RUINS. Four hours of bombing. GERMAN PLANES ATTACK IN RELAYS. Escaping villagers machine-gunned from the air. Dear God. Why?

A mood of resignation pervaded London. Not surprising when the papers were filled daily with aggression and atrocity.

A smaller piece in the same papers baffled her but was, in its way, as depressing as the bombs. She had to squint as the carriage shook. LORD LONDONDERRY IN FRIENDSHIP TALKS

WITH HITLER. On another: LORD LONDONDERRY LEADS ANGLO-GERMAN UNITY TALKS.

The silver key in her purse. Had she and Richard the means to change all this?

She arrived several minutes early at the bank and was obliged to wait ten long minutes to be shown down to the vault. She was back outside on the lane, with the dossier inside her valise, within sixteen minutes.

No sign of a car.

She glanced at her watch. Her flight was at 11:00 a.m. Not much time. It was cold here in the shade. Maybe the lane was too narrow for the car to wait. Yes, that must be it. Following the kerb to the end she turned the corner and gave a small shriek.

A broad man in a bowler hat was walking quickly towards her. He stopped when he saw her, said, ‘This way, please,’ and beckoned with a pair of leather driving gloves.

On a wider street at a right angle to the lane, parked alongside a wall in the sun, was a gleaming automobile with whitewall tyres. A Humber, Richard had said. Bowler Hat Man opened the back door, and she stooped to climb in, lifting her case in front of her.

‘Mrs Eleanor Emerson?’

Inside, a man was offering his hand. Pinkish face, waxed moustache, and a tepid smile that said fair play. A folded Times on his lap. Tailored chalk-stripe suit, brown suede shoes, and carnation boutonniere. Definitely. Not. Evans.

‘Where is he?’ she said.

A small, surprised laugh. ‘My name’s Channing. Evans asked me to meet you.’

‘Why?’

The man raised his eyebrows.

‘If you must know,’ he said, moving the newspaper to the seat beside him and brushing a pastry crumb from a fold in his trousers, ‘he now works in another department.’

‘Evans was moved?’

The man continued to smile with patience. ‘Yes. Now then, I believe you have with you something that-’

Eleanor glared at him. ‘Will I see you at Biarritz this season?’

A momentary flicker in the eyes, enough to tell her of his bewilderment. ‘I hardly think-’ He stopped.

‘You know, uh, Mr Chilling, I think I’ve left my purse in the bank…’ She reached for the door handle and pulled down.

‘Just one minute-’

‘Won’t be long.’

She got out quickly, case first, and pulled the valise after her just as he made an ungentlemanly lunge for it.

Bowler Hat Man turned in the driver’s seat behind the glass partition, but the car was parked against the wall. He lurched across the front seat to the passenger door.

Eleanor ran for it-back down the narrow lane she’d come from, where the car couldn’t follow. Behind her a car door slammed and footsteps came after her-in a real sprint. The valise and case didn’t seem so light anymore. Only a few yards ahead: the corner of the lane. She reached it, hearing the driver’s breath behind her, turned the corner, and saw the busy street at the end. She saw a red double-decker and a policeman go past on a bicycle. She didn’t stop running until she reached the kerb.

A pillar with a golden flame was straight ahead of her. Streetcars whirred past. One stopped to let people off, the clippie calling ‘Monument,’ and she hopped on, sweating and cursing. Looking back to the entrance of Idol Lane, she saw Bowler Hat Man standing still, looking at the tram, trying to find her in the window.

Moments later she got off near London Bridge and hailed a cab.

‘Croydon Airfield’ she said, collapsing low onto the backseat. ‘And quickly, please.’

For a long while she had her face buried in her hands. That wasn’t my fault. After a time she found herself staring at the cookie-cutter houses passing on the Brighton Road, gardens neat and colourful, and she marvelled at the twists her life had taken.

An hour and a half later she climbed the steps into the Imperial Airways de Havilland Express to Berlin. She opened the valise on the empty seat beside her as the propellers began to turn, took out the diplomatic bag with the cash, and crammed into it the genuine, complete, bona fide List Dossier.

T he Hotel Mertens was a three-storey white box with a glassed-over patio restaurant to one side. In its front two poplar trees had curved with a prevailing wind to point west, like index fingers. Like a warning to turn back, Denham thought. A gravel forecourt opened directly onto the main road into Venhoven. The only other building nearby was a large filling station where a line of heavy goods trucks waited to refuel as they entered or left Germany. From there the road led straight up to the frontier, where they could see the wooden Dutch customs house with its smoking chimney, and behind that the German border crossing with a black-, red-, and white-striped barrier and damp flags fluttering.

A yawning girl showed them upstairs to their rooms, which were spartan and worn, with a smell of rain and manure blowing in through open windows. Denham told Friedl he was going to get a few hours’ sleep. Then he turned back to the girl, who was about to descend the stairs.

‘Does the hotel have a safe?’

She showed him an ancient strongbox in the cupboard of a small, shabby office next to the restaurant. Quickly he checked the satchel’s contents before depositing it:?50 in sterling in a large wad, and nearly 400 Dutch guilders for any expenses; his passport, vehicle documents, return ferry tickets, and finally Willi Greiser’s Sippenbuch, his honorary SS identification. Along with the engraved pocket watch Eleanor had found this item in one of Denham’s jackets on the floor of his ransacked apartment.