David John - Flight from Berlin

Friedl had been subdued ever since they’d left London.

‘Do you think we’re doing the right thing?’ he said at last. ‘I can’t help thinking we’re missing a… historic opportunity.’

Denham raised his eyebrows. Since taking possession of the List Dossier, he thought he’d had a surfeit of historic opportunities.

‘I mean giving it to the British SIS is one thing,’ Friedl said, ‘but they’ll use it to bargain, won’t they. Calm down and stop your aggression, they’ll say, because we’ve got the proof in a dossier.’

‘You mean they won’t destroy him?’ Denham said, taking a swig of beer. ‘That’s Realpolitik. The way the world goes.’

Friedl only seemed more agitated. ‘You know I’m classed as a Volksschadlinge in Germany, a pest registered with the police? He has to be exposed.’

‘He will be. The world will learn the truth in the end, and history will judge. In the meantime, peace in Europe.’

Friedl sighed and looked out at an empty landscape blurred by moving curtains of rain. ‘I suppose I should be relieved, for my own sake. Men like me… I’m hardly helping our cause by naming this monstrous freak as one of my own. What an irony…’

Denham looked at him with sympathy. ‘You’re angry. But you escaped. Soon you’ll be in America and you’ll put it all behind you …’

A bell was ringing in another room.

‘Mr Denham?’ said the proprietor from the door. ‘There’s a telephone call for you.’

Denham followed the proprietor into the small hotel office and was handed the mouthpiece and receiver.

‘This is Rausch,’ said an iron voice.

‘Yes, Rausch.’

‘You have it?’

‘I have it,’ Denham said. ‘Will you be here tomorrow as arranged?’

‘I’ll be there.’

There was a click and then a dead line.

Denham leaned against the wall and closed his eyes. Everything is under control.

But the storm was starting to worry him.

Eleanor waited until dark before pushing her way unseen into the Liebermanns’ garden in Grunewald. It was fortunate that she remembered this gate in the wall, flaking and ivy covered from disuse; the main entrance to the house was most probably under police watch, and she wasn’t going to take a risk finding out.

At the embassy party Ambassador Dodd had drily proposed a toast to the engaged couple; the Russians reciprocated with gusto, and she’d slipped out of the room just as glasses were clinking and the orchestra started playing. With luck, she’d be back before anyone noticed she was missing.

Outside was a parked convoy of Russian-built embassy cars and limousines, their drivers standing about smoking, and a single waiting taxi. She was heading straight for it when Martha’s voice stopped her cold.

‘Where on earth are you going?’

Damn it.

The shorter woman was standing under the lighted front porch, a full flute of champagne in her hand. Her sparkling earrings and long, pale blue gown brought out her prettiness, Eleanor thought, like a prom queen.

‘Just going to get cigarettes,’ Eleanor said, wincing at how unconvincing that sounded.

‘What?’

She turned and continued towards the taxi.

‘Wait, you can’t simply vanish off into Berlin-’

O nce inside the Liebermanns’ grounds, she saw at once from the long grass, the cracked, dry fountain, and the leaves and branches ungathered from winter how the family’s circumstances had changed.

There were no lights in the Gothic turrets of the house, and the curtains had not been drawn. Boats moored at the jetty rattled softly. She skirted around some mossy paving to the building’s other side and saw a solitary light coming from the lower ground floor. Carefully descending the stone steps and peering through the window she saw Ilse Liebermann sitting at a long kitchen table with family photographs spread out before her. She was fingering the pearls of a necklace around her neck, her face partly obscured by the cloud of silver hair.

Eleanor wondered whether she should ring the front doorbell, but she didn’t want to frighten the woman. In the end she elected simply to tap on the kitchen window, calling gently, ‘Frau Liebermann, it’s Eleanor Emerson.’

Ilse looked up with a start, and Eleanor pushed her face to the glass so that the old woman could see who it was. She got up stiffly and opened the kitchen’s garden door.

‘Fraulein Eleanor?’ she said, still startled.

Eleanor put her arms around the old woman and embraced her. ‘I’ve come to see that you’re ready for your journey tomorrow. Have you heard from Hannah?’

The woman’s forehead creased into puzzled lines. ‘Yes, my dear. I mean no. Thank you.’ She had a question forming, but said, ‘Come upstairs and see Jakob. You’re very welcome here.’

She switched on a light and led Eleanor up the stairs to the grand sitting room, where Hannah had given the interview last summer.

‘Jaku, we have a visitor,’ Ilse called.

Eleanor thought this must be a different room. Its walls were bare, and a vase of dried flowers stood where the dream blue horses had galloped over the mantelpiece. Then she noticed, with a feeling of depression, the geometric outlines of soot on the wallpaper where the collection had hung. Jakob Liebermann was sitting on the divan surrounded by piles of documents, which he was scrutinising, pencil in hand, through wire eyeglasses. The yellow light from a table lamp illuminated one side of his face, where the port-wine stain marked his hollow cheek.

The old man put his papers down and struggled to his feet. ‘I am exceedingly surprised and delighted to see you, Fraulein Eleanor,’ he said in his deep, resonating voice, and took both her hands in his. ‘Though it is not at all safe for you to be here. What brings you back?’

He went to pour them all a cognac from the walnut drinks cabinet. They were both looking gaunt and pale, Eleanor thought.

‘I wanted to see that you’re ready for your long journey to the border,’ Eleanor said.

Jakob put down the bottle and gave her a quizzical look. ‘How is it you know about that?’ he asked.

‘Richard arranged it all. He negotiated with Heydrich.’

Jakob and Ilse met each other’s eyes.

‘Why would Herr Denham do something like that?’ said Ilse. There was a hard undertone to her voice.

‘He’s getting you out,’ said Eleanor. ‘He’s made a deal…’ She looked right at Jakob. ‘We got the dossier.’

The confusion on his face seemed to still. After a long pause, he said, ‘Go on.’

‘You’re being taken over the border to the Netherlands, then to England. Hannah, too. Isn’t there an official car coming to collect you early tomorrow morning?’

‘The Netherlands?’ Jakob stared at her, incredulous. ‘An SS car is indeed coming for us, but on Saturday, the day after tomorrow, at seven a.m. It is taking us to Basel on the Swiss border.’

D enham watched from the window of his room as the storm gathered pace. Ragged black clouds tore across the darkening sky. The gale blew unhindered over the bare land, picking up clods of earth and bark and gravel.

Suddenly a series of cracks like a twenty-one-gun salute, and he saw the farthest poplar tree topple, splintering with a slow, woody groan as it came down on the electricity cables. Sparks fell to the ground, and the lights in the hotel went out.

‘B asel?’ Eleanor told herself to breathe to allay panic. She sat down slowly on the sofa.

‘We know nothing about a deal,’ said Jakob, shaking his head and handing her a cognac. ‘My Swiss lawyer informed the SS that he would only transfer my accounts to them if Ilse and I attend in person to sign the documents in his office in Basel. He wants to make sure we are not being forced against our will. Of course, there will be SS men accompanying us all the way… to make sure there’s no slip of the pen. Then they are bringing us back home.’