David John - Flight from Berlin

Noises bubbled from his throat as he tried to stand, alerting the SD man, who clomped in, pistol drawn.

A discharge flash-lit the small room. Denham’s ears were deafened.

The SD man’s head thumped softly as it hit the door. His body crumpled, leaving a red trail down the white gloss, the hole in his forehead small and dark, like a cleft cherry, his final expression surprise.

In Denham’s hand the Mauser felt leaden and filthy. A sharp smell of cordite filled his nostrils.

Rausch had fallen back onto the bed, still gurgling and clutching his throat.

‘You were right about one thing,’ Hannah shrieked, kneeling on the bed, a knee on either side of Rausch’s chest. ‘You-continually-under-esti-mate-us.’ Each word was punctuated with a stab of the needle-in his arm, in his shoulder.

Denham grabbed her wrist and prised the syringe from her hand, feeling all the strength in her body ebb away.

‘Enough,’ he said.

She threw her arms around him and sobbed. ‘Horrible, horrible,’ she said.

‘M artha, look.’

The pig of a man in a seersucker jacket they’d seen earlier, the one who had changed the tyre, got out of the BMW and walked towards the building’s main doors, where he was greeted by a fat woman in a nurse’s uniform.

‘Jesus, her butt’s as big as a barn.’

It was almost dark, but they could hear her explaining something urgent, gesticulating, pointing inside, and saw the alarm on the man’s face. He returned to the car, spoke for a moment to the SS driver, then ran into the clinic.

R ausch’s eyelids drooped as the drug took effect.

‘What was in that?’ Denham said.

‘Phenobarbital, I think, and a cocktail of other stuff,’ Hannah said, pulling herself together. ‘While the good Dr Pfanmuller was distracted talking to these men I took an empty syringe from the trash, put it on the tray, and started acting drowsy. He assumed he’d already given me the sedative.’

Friedl came to the door clutching his head. ‘What happened in here?’

‘Take his gun,’ Denham said to him, pointing at the dead SD man. ‘Hannah, get dressed. We’re leaving in under one minute.’

He put Rausch’s feet up on the bed and covered him with the sheets.

‘Denham…,’ he said, a weak smile on his lips. Then his lids closed, and he began to snore.

‘Your parents will be arriving at any moment,’ Denham said.

‘My parents? But-’

‘I’ll explain on the way. Hurry.’

In the next room Denham put the List Dossier back into the satchel, noticing that it still contained the bogus dossier they were going to exchange at the border.

He also noticed something fallen behind the armchair. A man’s raincoat. Rausch’s coat. Quickly he went through the pockets. A half packet of Murads, a page torn from a notebook with the clinic’s scribbled address, car keys, and, in the side pocket, a book. A small, rust red book Denham had seen before. Die Gedichte von Stefan George. The Poems of Stefan George.

He opened the cover and found something that nearly made him cry out.

‘I’m ready,’ Hannah said. She had on a white blouse with a navy wool jacket.

He struggled to put the book in his jacket pocket, so violently was his hand shaking.

‘Richard, what is it?’ Friedl said.

They left the apartment, pausing only while Friedl told the guard at the reception that Hannah Liebermann was being taken for interrogation, and that the two SD still in her room were not on any account to be disturbed while they carried out a search.

‘I thought I heard a shot,’ the guard said.

‘No, you didn’t.’

Outside on the winding stone path, they began to run.

‘Oh,’ Hannah said, a longed-for relief on her face. She looked up at the sky, then closed her eyes, and Friedl took her hand. Together they left the path and started across the lawn in order to circle the main clinic building without going inside it. The grass was wet on their shoes.

A man was coming towards them. Probably one of the patients, from his clothes. He had on a seersucker jacket and hiking trousers. He was waving at them. From a hundred yards away they saw in the light of the lamps the suspicion on his face.

‘Stay calm,’ Friedl said, grabbing Hannah’s arm, as if she was being restrained.

The man was fifty feet away and shouting now. ‘Hey. What’s going on? Where are you taking her?’

‘For interrogation,’ Denham said, stopping in front of him. ‘Frankfurt Gestapo. Who are you?’

‘I was not informed. Show me your warrant disc.’ His skin looked peeled and raw, as if he’d shaved too closely.

‘I have the signed order here,’ Denham said. He reached into his inside pocket, clutched the barrel of the Mauser, and in a single movement threw out his arm and smashed the corner of the butt down onto the man’s mouth, harder than he’d ever hit anything or anyone, bludgeoning his lips and nose. The man’s head jerked backwards, and Denham struck him again.

‘Richard, stop,’ Friedl said.

The man was down, on his back, his face black with blood. For two seconds they stood aghast; then Friedl knelt and felt for the gun inside the seersucker jacket. A Walther, heavy and new. He switched the safety catch off and tossed it to Hannah, and she took it without question.

They continued across the lawn, now close to the wall of the main building, and passed a patients’ car park. It was occupied by a Duesenberg limousine, an English Bentley, and a Mercedes-Benz Denham recognised. The black Mercedes that had come to the border at Venhoven-Rausch’s car.

‘We’re taking the Mercedes.’

Denham had the keys in the door when they heard the shout-‘ Halt! ’

Running towards them over the lawn was the guard from the Haus Edelweiss.

‘W e’ve got to do something-to get him away from the car,’ Eleanor said, watching the grey BMW parked outside the clinic’s main doors. The young SS driver was still leaning against the car, talking to the fat nurse. ‘He’s the only one guarding Jakob and Ilse.’ She was feeling desperate now.

She glanced at her watch. It was 7:43 p.m. If her plan was to succeed they had to meet Eckener at 8:00 p.m. at the absolute latest.

‘This is a bad idea,’ Martha said as they closed the car doors and approached the BMW, their steps crunching on the gravel.

From the nurse came a hostile look as they approached. But the SS driver, a smooth-skinned, roundish lad, had his hands in his pockets and was giving them an enthusiastic grin, which Martha was returning.

And then there was a sudden whining noise, as around the corner of the building a black Mercedes-Benz approached them in low gear, careened into the forecourt, and braked parallel with the BMW, shooting a barrage of gravel at its bodywork. The SS man and nurse spun around.

Denham jumped out of the driver’s side, shouted something in German, and pointed at Jakob and Ilse, whose startled faces peered from the window of the BMW.

Caught off guard, the SS man asked Denham to repeat himself and glanced anxiously towards the clinic, evidently wondering where his chief had got to. But now the nurse was pointing at Denham as if he were a rapist, talking loudly and quickly. Eleanor caught Dr Pfanmuller’s name.

At the same moment a man in a guard’s uniform, flushed and shining with sweat and shouting, emerged from the direction the Mercedes had come from.

Eleanor and Martha were too surprised to take another step.

The nurse screamed.

The SS man fumbled in his gun holster, but then he froze. Everyone became still, too amazed to move.

Standing on the running board of the Mercedes were Friedl and Hannah aiming handguns at the SS man and the nurse. Slowly, Denham, too, drew a gun.