David John - Flight from Berlin

He looked again at the languid mug shot-the slightly hooded eyes, the duelling scar down one cheek-and his lips turned up in a half smile. It wasn’t an item he had any use for, and he wasn’t sure why he’d even brought it. But somehow, having it with him signified, preserved, his upper hand.

From outside came the low growl of a motorbike, and moments later the girl was handing him a parcel from London. With perfect timing, the bogus dossier had arrived.

‘Just imagine,’ Martha said with a smirk, ‘having to explain the affairs of my poor heart to Washington, who naturally suspect Bolshevik infiltration.’ She linked her arm in Eleanor’s. ‘No, Daddy wasn’t best pleased. Mother’s putting her brave face on it, though.’

She was wearing a smart dun-coloured hat with a long feather poking from the top, which, when she turned her head, occasionally caught Eleanor right under the nose. They were watching Martha’s fiance proffering a peanut to a Barbary sheep.

‘Isn’t he divine?’ She had barely contained the squeal in her voice since meeting Eleanor at the airport.

‘He’s certainly outgoing,’ Eleanor said with a sporting nod of her head.

The sheep turned its nose away and scampered up the crag to join the rest of its ginger flock.

‘I hear all what you say,’ the man said, turning to them and popping the peanut into his mouth. He was tall, brown-haired, and boyish, with Tartar eyes, broad cheeks faintly pitted, and a gap-tooth smile that had a certain charm. He wore a suit of some indeterminate fabric.

‘I’m also Boris’s English teacher,’ Martha said, pinching him.

‘Yes, and when are you going to Moscow for learning Russian? Then I am teaching you lesson.’ He gave a loud laugh and put an arm around both of them. Eleanor caught a sweet hint of alcohol on his breath.

‘Have you set a date?’ she asked.

Martha’s smile wavered. ‘Actually, Boris still needs Stalin’s permission to marry… We’re waiting. Oh, here’s the lions’ house. I wonder what time they’re fed.’

Boris whispered something in her ear, and she slapped him playfully across the chin. Eleanor looked at them with a pang of concern. Somehow, she saw some of her own past mistakes foreshadowed in Martha’s little adventure. I hope you know what you’re doing, she thought.

It was the first of May, and the day was warm and muggy. The cottonwoods and acacias of the zoo, filled with the screams of tropical birds, made her feel they were strolling through some lush estate in New Orleans. The place was quiet, near closing time. Nannies pushing prams; a few soldiers on leave taking photographs; couples walking dogs.

‘If you think we’re being shadowed, we are,’ Martha said with an amused savoir faire. ‘But at least we can talk freely here. Daddy has all his important conversations at the zoo. You’ll have to be careful what you say at the party later.’

Ambassador Dodd had told Eleanor, in a loud stage whisper during her last visit, that the house and embassy were wired by the SD-along with every other ambassador’s residence-with listening devices in the telephones and light switches.

‘I’ll confine my remarks to the weather and the price of gas,’ she said.

D enham dozed on an overspringy bed. He had finally slipped into sleep, when he was jolted awake by the rattling of the windowpane and the wind whistling around the eaves of the exposed building. It was 1:00 p.m. on his wristwatch. Midday in London.

He lay on his back for a while with his hands behind his head, thinking of Eleanor, and Evans.

It’s done.

He got up. From the window he saw the gravel forecourt still deserted apart from the Morris Oxford. An enormous goods truck rumbled up the road towards the frontier of the Reich. He saw the girl carrying in a potted tree from the steps and the gale catching her skirts and apron, ballooning them up like a jellyfish around her thighs. The poplar trees groaned and thrashed in the wind, sending leaves and twigs flying against the window.

Eager to know Eleanor’s impressions of her fiance now that they were alone, and to hear all about Eleanor’s own marriage plans, Martha insisted they dine in style at the Cafe Kempinski on the Ku’damm. ‘Darling, the street’s Europe’s largest coffee shop,’ she said. ‘It’s where one goes to be seen.’ There was an infectious gaiety about her. Martha was in love, and it was making her generous.

By 6:00 p.m. the place was crowded with chattering ladies showing their purchases from the KaDeWe department store and office workers in suits. There were a couple of blue Luftwaffe uniforms, and a party of three SS bandsmen drinking tall, frothing beers.

A waiter showed them to a table, and Martha had begun translating the plats du jour for Eleanor when their attention was caught by a stentorian voice addressing the maitre d’. To the poor headwaiter’s mortification, a tall, portly man in a suit from the 1920s was jabbing his thumb towards the party of SS bandsmen, the wattles under his white goatee shaking. He had drawn the eyes of everyone in the cafe and didn’t seem to care.

Martha leaned towards Eleanor. ‘He said, “Seat me as far as possible from those gangsters.” ’

In a flurry of semaphore among the waiters the man was ushered with swift discretion to the table next to theirs, where he struggled to fit his heft into the cramped wicker chair. The buttons on his ash-smudged waistcoat snagged against the table’s edge, and his long legs and orange brogues had to stick out into the aisle, where they formed a formidable obstacle. When he was finally installed he snipped the end off an enormous Cohiba cigar and signalled the waiter for a light.

‘Sofort, Herr Doktor Eckener.’

Eleanor looked at the man, whose large head was in profile next to her. ‘You’re Hugo Eckener,’ she said.

He turned to her with a weary look. ‘Madam,’ he said in English. One eye was flinty and piercing; the other seemed to wander lazily. He gave her a grumpy smile. ‘Forgive me for not recalling your face. Have I had the pleasure?’

‘No, sir,’ she said, offering him a light, ‘it’s just that I’ve heard so much about you from someone you know well-Richard Denham.’

Eckener’s gruffness seemed to dissipate with the puffs of cigar smoke, and he raised his eyebrows in apology. ‘You’re a friend of his?’

‘I’m engaged to him.’

‘Engaged! My dear lady.’ The old man’s jumble of courtesies and congratulations were more than the confined space allowed, and he almost knocked the table over. Eleanor introduced Martha, and a bottle of Henkell was ordered.

‘Richard did say that you speak your mind,’ Eleanor said.

‘ Ach, these criminals would have locked me up long ago if they’d had the guts,’ he said. ‘I apologise. My meeting at the Air Ministry this afternoon put me in an ill temper. Goring rebuked me for never giving the Deutsche Gruss. I said to him, “When I wake up each day I don’t say ‘Heil Hitler’ to my wife. I say ‘Good morning.’ ” ’

Several diners turned again to stare at him.

A cork twisted and popped; glasses were filled, and Eckener proposed a toast to the happiness of Eleanor’s marriage, and Martha’s. ‘It would give me the greatest pleasure to entertain you in comfort and style on board a Zeppelin,’ he added, explaining that he was staying one night in Berlin at the Hotel Kempinski, before heading to the new international airship terminal at Frankfurt for the first transatlantic flight of the season to New York.

‘By airship to New York,’ Martha said in a sigh.

D enham ordered a white beer to wash down the bread, smoked ham, and a great wedge of Leerdammer. Friedl asked for a Coca-Cola. News from the radio in the hotel cafe could only just be heard over the howls of the gale that battered the building, making the windows tremble and the ceiling groan, as if the room were gasping for air. Rain began to lash the glass roof like falling gravel, and the elderly proprietor who served them kept glancing up, fearing leaks. ‘Severe weather warning on the radio,’ he said, wiping his hands on his apron. ‘Storm blowing in from the Atlantic.’