David John - Flight from Berlin

‘What exactly is the plan when we reach the sanatorium?’ said Martha.

‘I’m still working on it,’ Eleanor said, feeling the knot tighten in her stomach.

The List Dossier was in her valise in the trunk of the car.

‘Whatever our plan, it’ll only succeed if that car hasn’t left by the time we get there,’ she said. And I hope to God Richard understood what I meant in that telephone call. She was afraid something terrible had happened to make him cross into Germany.

B eneath the high wrought iron arches of the Cologne Hauptbahnhof, a wagon-lit had just arrived from Paris. Yawning passengers were emerging amid jets of steam from cooling engines. Whistles echoed across the concourse as the early trains of the day chugged out to destinations all over the Reich, sending spark-filled spasms of smoke into the glass roof.

Denham had the creeping feeling that everything was being watched. Train guards, Reichsbahn inspectors, soldiers, Orpo men, and two conspicuous Gestapo in leather coats all seemed to be scanning faces. That Adler would have been reported stolen by now, and Rausch would guess who’d taken it.

‘The train on platform two is the seven oh five express to Frankfurt-am-Main, stopping at Bonn, Koblenz, and Mainz…’

He looked at his watch. It was 6:55 a.m.

Friedl mumbled, ‘We can’t cool our heels here waiting for someone to drop a wallet on the floor. How are we going to buy tickets?’

‘Wait a second,’ said Denham. He’d been watching a curious party of English Girl Guides in blue uniforms with knapsacks on their backs, embracing and taking leave of their hosts: German girls of the BDM — the girls’ wing of the Hitler Youth.

The English party seemed to be the charge of a middle-aged man with an RAF moustache. He wore a club blazer and a regimental tie with khaki, bell-tent shorts, and long socks.

‘Hello there,’ Denham said brightly, ‘on your way back to Blighty?’

‘Yes, as a matter of fact.’ The man gave him a toothy smile.

‘Look here, you couldn’t do an Englishman a favour, could you, and exchange some of this sterling for reichsmarks? No chance to get to the bank, you see, and my train leaves in a few minutes.’ The man hesitated. ‘Happy to make it worth your while,’ Denham said, beaming.

Seconds later he was pocketing a wad of crisp, unused reichsmarks.

He gave the money to Friedl to buy the tickets, and they walked separately through the barriers to the platform, without meeting the eyes of the guards.

‘We mustn’t sit together,’ said Denham as they climbed into the train. They chose seats in two adjoining compartments of the same carriage just as the whistle blew and the train shunted forwards with a metallic screech, couplings banging together, puffing its way out of the station, past the immense spires of the Dom on the right, over the bridge crossing the Rhine.

Frankfurt in three and a half hours.

Denham closed his eyes for a moment and breathed. The only other occupant of the compartment was an old lady in a cloche hat. He picked up that morning’s Frankfurter Zeitung, discarded on the seat. An article on the forthcoming coronation in London filled a whole inside page with a photograph of Their Majesties and a family tree stressing their German ancestry; Goring had declared himself delighted with recent test-flight manoeuvres over Spain of the new Heinkel IIIs and Junkers 52s; the Fuhrer was to receive Mussolini on a state visit in September; the city of Coburg had proclaimed itself Judenrein.

The compartment door opened suddenly. Black uniform and cap.

‘Tickets, please.’

Relax, Denham told himself, and gave his ticket to the conductor. Relax.

He put the paper down and watched the suburbs of Cologne give way to the lush pastures and hills of the Rhineland. Soon his eyelids became heavy as he listened to the beat of wheels on track, and his chin fell onto his chest.

‘C an’t see ’em,’ said Eleanor. She was now at the wheel of the Hanomag, her eyes peering at the cars along the distant stretch of the autobahn. ‘They’re probably miles ahead by now.’ They had just passed Leipzig.

‘We’ve been driving for hours,’ Martha said. ‘I need the restroom.’ She’d taken off her dark glasses and seemed to be tiring.

‘I’ll stop there,’ Eleanor said, seeing a rest stop up ahead with a cafe and a gas station.

They stretched their legs while the attendant filled the tank, before getting in the line for the washroom just ahead of a coach full of Strength Through Joy vacationers. Then, while Martha went to buy some sweet rolls, Eleanor found a telephone booth in the gas station, got a stack of pfennigs ready, and placed a call to Berlin.

Richard had told her to make this call if she had a problem. Well, she had a problem all right. And this was the second time she’d tried the number.

‘Eleanor? My goodness.’

Rex was surprised to hear her voice-or as surprised as a reserved Brit could sound-but she interrupted before he asked too many questions. ‘I need to ask a favour of you…’

‘Is something wrong?’ A noise of typewriters in the background.

‘It really is a lot to ask…’

‘Try me.’

She hesitated, then said, ‘Could you come to Frankfurt by six p.m. this evening?’

T en minutes later they’d rejoined the autobahn and were nudging the limit of the Hanomag’s unimpressive top speed when Martha shouted: ‘There they are!’

About a hundred yards ahead the dark grey BMW with the SS number plates was pulled over to the side of the road. The red-faced, porcine man was in his shirtsleeves, crouching next to the back wheel with the jack, and trying to heave a blown rear tyre away from the axle, while the SS driver stood behind him, holding a spanner. She could see Jakob’s and Ilse’s heads in the car’s back window as she passed.

‘Well done, Jakob,’ Eleanor said, watching in her rearview mirror. ‘Now, how did you manage that?’

T he keening note of the steam whistle woke him as the train passed into a tunnel. He rubbed his eyes, confused for a minute. The old woman was still there, reading. And a man with a young boy holding a model glider now sat opposite, watching him. Maybe he’d slept through the stop at Bonn. The satchel and newspaper were still on his lap.

He got up to use the lavatory, and in the next-door compartment saw that Friedl was not in his seat. On the way back to his own compartment, he saw the carriage door at the end of the corridor open, and a black uniform with belt and holster stepped through, followed by another. Even from forty feet away he could see the diamond-shaped SD flash on their sleeves. The first man was large with a broken nose, and looked as though he could kill a man with his hands. He slid open the nearest compartment door and Denham heard him ask the occupants for their documents.

Beads of cold sweat broke out on Denham’s brow. He returned to his seat and picked up his paper. What to do? It was safer to jump off the train than show them his passport.

They had just entered the compartment next to his.

Stay calm. Completely calm.

A minute later his compartment door slid open, and the sound of the train picking up speed came in. The men stepped straight up to him, ignoring the old lady, the man, and the boy. ‘ Mein Herr? Ihren Ausweis bitte.’

Denham reached into the satchel at his feet, without looking up from an article about a school for brides newly opened in Dusseldorf, and handed over the Sippenbuch with a slightly careless flick. If you must.

I’m done for, he thought. I am completely done for. I don’t look like Willi Greiser. I don’t even have a scar-

But of course, he did have a scar curving down his right cheek, from his eye almost to the corner of his mouth.