David John - Flight from Berlin

Denham and Friedl met each other’s look in the backseat.

‘What’s the plan?’ Denham said.

Eleanor outlined what she had in mind, right up to the part where Dr Eckener came into it.

‘Eckener?’ Denham’s face dropped into his hands as he struggled to digest what she’d told him. ‘Darling, forgive me, but that’s not a plan,’ he said. ‘It’s a Keystone Kops movie. Even if we can get the Liebermanns away from the SS, how are seven people going to fit in this Hanomag?’

Eleanor flared. ‘For one thing I hadn’t figured on you two turning up in Germany, and if you think you can come up with something better, you just go right ahead.’

Denham sighed and apologised. ‘Well, at least we don’t have to worry about fooling anyone with a bogus dossier now.’

Something in the way Eleanor’s eyes closed and her mouth went rigid told him there was more.

She recounted what had happened outside the bank in London.

Martha was still outside, receiving the flower seller’s directions to the sanatorium. The Hanomag’s doors were closed, but over the noise of the traffic and the voices of Saturday evening revellers on the sidewalks, she heard Denham’s voice.

‘You brought it back to Germany?’

‘Oh my God,’ Friedl said.

By the time Martha got back into the car the shouting had transformed to silence.

‘All right…,’ Denham said. ‘It wasn’t your fault. We need to think.’

‘I was about to tell you,’ Eleanor said with acid coolness, ‘that I telephoned Rex. He couldn’t get a flight here in time for six p.m., so he’s meeting us at the sanatorium at seven. That’s in less than half an hour. We give him the dossier. It’s fine, Richard. It’ll be in safe hands in half an hour. He can take it straight to the British embassy… Then we find Hannah.’

The Klinik Pfanmuller was located just off Frankfurt’s millionaires’ row, a lush, tree-lined street in Westend, near the botanical gardens. Dusk was gathering as the Hanomag stopped before the gated driveway. They had driven along the approach slowly enough to see that neither Rex nor any car was waiting in the street outside.

A light came on in the guardhouse and a man emerged-round eyeglasses, veteran’s medal-and peered at the car. Friedl stepped out. The brown uniform had its transforming effect-a very slight change in the set of the man’s mouth, from officious to obsequious.

‘Tell me, has an English reporter visited?’ Friedl said.

A moment of alarm behind the eyeglasses. ‘I don’t know if he was a reporter, Herr Sturmfuhrer.’

‘You keep a register?’

‘Of course.’

The man led Friedl into the guardhouse and turned the register round for him to see. The last name on the list was Rex Palmer-Ward’s. He had arrived less than ten minutes ago.

‘I told him he had to go in or leave,’ the man said. ‘No one’s allowed to wait out here. Gauleiter Weinrich lives on this street.’

‘Thank you,’ Friedl said. ‘We just want to check on him.’

He got back in the car, and Martha drove through the gates, past the puzzled guard.

The main building, a neoclassical villa with a modern annex and outbuildings, could be seen at the end of a long driveway. Pine-shaded grounds and a high surrounding wall afforded the requisite seclusion. It was also, Denham thought, the perfect place to confine an inconvenient Jewish celebrity: the world could see, if need be, that she was being treated well, but they had total control over her.

Rex was not outside the main doors when they parked in the forecourt.

‘He must have gone in,’ Friedl said.

‘Take the dossier with you,’ Eleanor said, a resolute look on her face. ‘Give it to him quickly before that SS car arrives here with Jakob and Ilse.’ She got out, opened the boot, and took it out of her case, placing it in Richard’s open satchel.

Denham and Friedl entered the building with the satchel, leaving Eleanor and Martha with the Hanomag.

Inside was a panelled hall with a reception desk. Flower arrangements beneath spotlit portraits of bespectacled medics. The receptionist was talking to a hefty blonde in a blue and white nurse’s uniform, who turned to look at them without smiling. Denham glanced around. Where the hell was Rex?

‘What can we do for you, gentlemen?’

Denham hesitated. How to play this. Charm? Or the cold tap… He took out a cigarette.

‘There is strictly no smoking here,’ she said.

The cold tap. ‘I am Standartenfuhrer Willi Greiser,’ he said. ‘We’re here to question the Jew Liebermann.’

The woman did a double blink. ‘I’m afraid that isn’t possible. She’s a quarantined patient.’

‘Why, does she have TB?’

‘You’ll have to apply to Dr Pfanmuller if you want to see her, but apart from that she’s expecting visitors from Berlin at any minute.’

‘Look,’ Denham said, ‘we can stand here arguing, and you’ll be out of a job tomorrow, or you can stop wasting SS time and take us straight to her. The only thing stopping me shoving you out of the way is your size. I don’t want to put my back out.’

The woman blushed scarlet, her lips forming a perfect O. She said, ‘If you’ll follow me.’

They walked behind her out of the hall and into a bright, modern annex, almost Bauhaus in style, with curved, factorylike windows. Shiny floors had a pleasant smell of ether. On the right they passed a gymnasium with a class in progress. A woman instructor in a leotard was saying, ‘ Hup,’ trying to get her millionaire ladies to do squat jumps. They left the annex through swing doors and entered the grounds along a winding stone path lit with waist-high lamps.

The lamplight dotted among the pines made the place resemble a lavish stage set. Eventually they came to a sign that read HAUS EDELWEISS, and some hundred yards behind it saw another handsome modern building, white and cuboid, also with a reception area but this one with a uniformed guard.

The nurse showed a pass. ‘Werner, I’m taking these gentlemen to see the Liebermann patient.’

The guard unlocked a door that opened into a corridor lined with framed paintings. The nurse led the way. Turning a corner at the end she almost collided with a tall man in a white coat.

‘I’m so sorry, Dr Pfanmuller,’ she said.

A dark man with a square jaw and pomaded hair, he reminded Denham of Luis Trenker, the rugged star of Alpine films. He looked embarrassed.

‘I’m glad we’ve run into you,’ she went on. ‘These men are here to question the Liebermann patient, and I’ve told them they must apply to you-’

‘It’s all right,’ he said with a nod. ‘They can go in.’

‘Oh, but you said-’

‘I’ve sedated her,’ he said to them, holding up a medic’s bag. ‘So you’ll have to be quick. Let’s leave the gentlemen to it, shall we Frau Klott?’ He turned her around by her elbow and guided her at a trot back down the corridor, her face looking up at his for an explanation. Friedl met Denham’s eye. What was going on? They continued along the corridor and heard dance music from a radio, one of the big Berlin dance orchestras. They could still turn back.

The apartment door was open. A narrow vestibule with a lavatory on the left, and, straight ahead, the sitting room. Friedl followed Denham through. Low lighting from a table lamp. Two armchairs strewn with magazines and books, a rug, a table and chairs, and the radio playing, its dial lit with an amber light. He turned it off.

‘Hello, Hannah?’ Denham called, knocking on the open door.

The window was open. Rustling foliage, and a breeze smelling of pine needles. Somewhere in the bushes beneath the sill, a thrush singing.