by Matt Killeen
However, it was what Sarah saw on the streets of Berlin that affected her the most.
The Jews had been on curfew and denied wireless sets, jobs, businesses, and citizenship. Now they were at risk of being rounded up for no reason, ordered to train stations with one suitcase each, and disappearing. They lived in fear, increasingly hungry and desperate.
Sarah the Jewess, posing as Ursula, the Nazi’s Aryan darling, watched all this from the wrong side of the glass. She wore the finest clothes at lavish dinners, when just a year before she had worn rags and eaten scraps from bins.
But what made her most uneasy wasn’t the guilt, so much as its absence.
Those dresses—the softness, the crinkling thickness and gentle perfume—had become routine. She had to admit to liking it all at first, and it was an important part of the job. Then she had come to expect the pampering. But this wasn’t what Sarah Goldstein was, whatever that really meant, this was Ursula Haller. Sarah increasingly struggled to reconcile the two.
Even the food—the greasy, tender, fluffy, flaky, sweet, sour, crunchy nourishment at all times of the day and night—had begun to pall, turn bland and insipid, no matter how much Sarah pushed into her mouth. She remembered the hunger and knew she should be feeling guilty about eating while others starved, about feeling nothing while others endured that aching, empty desperation.
Sarah had stolen and lied to survive before and had felt no guilt. But this was different.
She had once kept a box deep inside her in which she locked every horror and humiliation, every trauma and fear, so that her mind was clear enough to think without dread and anger. Since leaving the charnel house apartment behind, she didn’t seem to need that anymore. Increasingly Sarah felt . . . not nothing, but intense shades of gray rather than colors. She knew that this should frighten her, but the emotions appeared to just pass through her. She was like a wireless set with the volume too low, rather than switched off. She was aware of the vibrations, but could make out no detail.
Likewise, the violent visions she had been experiencing from time to time since her stay at the Schäfer estate had ceased to bother her. It was like the drone of beehives on a summer’s day that you stopped noticing after a while. Was this boredom at the uniformity of her new life, the normalization of constant fear, or had she suffered so much she had broken herself? She saw the same thing in the Captain, who only came alive when he was in danger.
Now Sarah could hear raised voices coming from the stairs to the kitchens. Frau Hofmann was vexed about something again. The housekeeper used her terseness to control the motley collection of part-time staff, porters, and other domestics wheeled in for the parties. But this time, her anger had a serrated edge to it that Sarah had not heard before. She descended to investigate.
“I don’t know what you’re thinking bringing that Schornsteinfeger here. This is a decent house, not a Hottentotten encampment,” the woman barked.
Frau Hofmann stood with rough hands on hips, dominating the kitchen, while in front of her stood Herr Gehlhaar, the little man from the domestic agency. A step behind him and to the left stood the so-called chimney sweep: a young black girl.
She was very young for a servant, no older than fifteen or sixteen, Sarah’s real age. She was slight in a way that Sarah recognized as underfed. She watched the floor intently, again a tactic that Sarah knew all too well from a childhood dodging vengeful Hitler Youth and inquisitive stormtroopers. She could have been looking at herself a year ago.
“Meine Frau.” Herr Gehlhaar sighed and ran the rim of his bowler hat through his fingers. “There are no restrictions on the employment of—”
“Yet.”
The young maid glanced up. Her eyes were full of fear, the look of someone trapped and on the verge of panic. Sarah remembered the Captain wore that same expression of a cornered animal on the docks a year ago, and she had been unable to stop herself from helping him then. There was something else there, too. Anger.
“Frau Hofmann, she can stay,” Sarah called out.
The woman spun around, glaring, but seeing Sarah, checked herself before replying. “Fräulein . . . this is nothing to concern yourself with, let me take care—”
“Oh, then I could fetch my uncle,” Sarah interrupted, eyebrows raised.
“I think, considering tonight’s guest list,” the woman pressed on, “having a young Neger about the place—”
“Well, she can stay down here. There’s plenty to do. And I’m sure she knows her place,” Sarah added, feeling an unpleasant tug inside as she said the words.
“But, Fräulein, this is a Rheinlandbastard. What if one of the soldiers from the last war sees her . . .”
“Girl?” The maid was already staring at Sarah. “You’ll stay out of the way . . . promise?”
She nodded vigorously. Sarah had imagined gratitude, but all she saw was the same fear, or fury, as before.
THREE
THE AVAILABILITY OF champagne in the summer of 1940 was a symbol of Germany’s victory and the subjugation of the hated French. Herr Haller’s parties, where the traditionally rich and powerful—the Upper Ten Thousand—rubbed shoulders with industrialists selling things and the military who bought them, made a statement of it. The Captain ensured that a guest could have bathed in the yellow bubbles and still drunk their fill afresh afterward, so most were inebriated shortly after arriving. Drunk tongues were, after all, loose ones. Sarah watched a neglected bottle on the carpet, pulsing its contents into the pile, and the smell made her feel both nauseous and vulnerable.
By nine p.m. the party had become an animal. It bucked, roared, went quiet, stretched, shook, and rested, before staggering to its feet once more.
The Captain leaned against the drawing room mantelpiece, simultaneously towering over the room and yet hidden from it, like a long forgotten park statue. His habitual mask of disinterested amusement sat crookedly on top of another expression as he noticed her, one that Sarah had come to understand in the last few months as a look of faint disapproval. Sarah obediently drifted over for her admonishment. He acknowledged her, and then they stood side by side.
“Frau Hofmann tells me we have a Neger in the kitchen,” he murmured.
“No doubt defiling the Strudel and mongrelizing the Schnitzel, like a bad little Untermensch.”
The Captain snorted before leaning toward her. “It’s compromising. Even dangerous.”
“Like acquiring a Jewish orphan, you mean? Come on, she’s a servant. And we’re not running an underground railroad,” she added in English. “Anyway, there’s no law against it.”
“Yet.”
“Well, Captain Jeremy Floyd, maybe we need to decide what kind of Nazis we’re going to be. There doesn’t seem to be much alternative anymore.”
“That’s pessimistic.”
“I mean, it’s all over already, isn’t it? Just that one little island. Against everywhere.”
He shook his head. “Britain is more than a little island. It’s an empire that covers the globe. Do you know how many soldiers the British could muster in India? Don’t underestimate them because they’re brown; that’s Hitler’s mistake. And the Royal Navy is better than anything that the Reich can dream of. The Wehrmacht thinks they can invade by floating over the Channel in barges, and the British are just going to watch.”
“Which is why you’re selling them barges?”
“Of course. They’re going to get slaughtered. And how do you think I’m paying for this house? No, it’s not over, Sarah of Elsengrund.”
He fell silent as a group of officers, reeking of beer, stumbled over to shake his hand. Sarah smiled beatifically and curtseyed. A swollen hand patted her head, and even before she could picture herself sinking her teeth into the thick fingers, it was gone.
The Captain waited a moment and continued. “If Britain can get what it needs past the U-boats, that is. Howev
er, we have a more pressing problem. What’s wrong with this party?”
“It’s really dull.”
“No,” he said flatly.
“It is, trust me.”
“Look around, tell me what’s wrong. From our perspective.”
“Oh, I like this game.” Sarah chuckled.
She scanned the room.
It was heaving with uniforms, of different ranks and colors. Flushed, sweaty faces, laughing too loud, drinking too quickly. There were plenty of civilians, too, businessmen and chancers, the well-connected and the want-to-be, side by side. Crowds of wives and mistresses, exchanging glances of jealousy and pity.
The drinking songs had not yet started, but the piano was already lost in the hubbub. The room stank of cologne and alcohol.
Uniforms.
“What do we have . . . not so many Luftwaffe. Busy over Britain?” Sarah asked. The Captain nodded. “All right, Kriegsmarine out in force . . . Oh, who is that coming in? Lots of gold braid on his shoulders?”
“Admiral Canaris. We’ll get to him in a moment.”
The admiral did not command a lot of attention on entering. He had the look of a small, kindly old man, which made Sarah instantly suspicious. His skin was a little yellow and unhealthy, with age pulling at his jowls. His eyebrows were untidy in a way that suggested someone meandering his way to retirement, but his pristine dress uniform did not. It was the darkest navy blue, so dark it was nearly black—
Sarah looked around the room again. “No black. There’s no Schutzstaffel, no SS. Presumably no Gestapo?”
“Exactly,” the Captain said, clapping. “Although you don’t see them in black anymore—they want to wear gray like real soldiers. We have here a very narrow subset of the Nazi machine. One of the reasons our parties have proven popular with the Wehrmacht is the absence of the monsters. They make people nervous. This is somewhere they can feel free to have a good grumble about everything. But this means that we have, inadvertently, chosen a side.”
“Monsters who don’t like monsters?”
“Different circles of hell,” the Captain muttered.
Sarah huffed and narrowed her eyes. “Have you actually read Dante’s Inferno? There’s a whole ring for the Jews because they lend money. The same circle as the murderers, the war-makers, thieves, and tyrants. It’s Quatsch.”
“I’m not sure that’s what Dante meant, or where God puts the Jews.”
“God doesn’t put the Jews anywhere, Captain Floyd. We have no hell.” Sarah relaxed a little. “Just shame, in the here and now. Do you know where Dante puts the traitors against the state?”
“In the ice.”
“In the ice,” she agreed. “Up to our necks, eating each other. Forever.”
“They’re the traitors,” the Captain said, waving at the soldiers that surrounded them. “Not you.”
“So you keep telling me.”
“Talking of traitors . . .” the Captain said, straightening up. “Here comes the messenger of one in particular.”
Admiral Canaris’s young naval adjutant was weaving through the crowd toward them. He was evidently sober, and his politeness was an impediment to his movement, surrounded as he was by swaying, braying drunks.
* * *
They found a set of armchairs by pulling rank on some junior Kriegsmarine officers.
“Admiral, may I present my niece, Ursula.”
Sarah curtseyed and conjured up her widest winning smile. The admiral looked at the Captain in momentary confusion, then nodded to Sarah. The Captain waved her onto the floor next to the admiral’s chair.
“A fine party, Haller,” the admiral declared. “Thank you for the invitation. Holstein, find me something that isn’t champagne.”
The adjutant seemed about to ask a follow-up question, then realised his absence would be sufficient.
“We’re honored by your presence, obviously,” the Captain said.
“That’s nice for you,” the admiral said, before stretching, a pretext to look around before speaking. “I received your gift earlier today. I must applaud the quality of your industrial espionage.” He leaned in slightly. “Haller, I know from our time in Spain that you can be counted on to get things done, outside of official channels of course.”
“Of course,” the Captain confirmed.
“You sent me a fragment of a ceramic bomb. These are used to drop disease agents on your enemy. They are the work of our anti-Bolshevik friends, the Japanese. In particular, one Shirō Ishii, an army surgeon in Manchuria. I’m guessing you got this somewhere closer to home?”
The Captain nodded. Sarah stared at the Captain, trying to understand the unfolding events. He gave the fragment she found to an admiral—
Shush. Listen and learn.
“The Reich has any number of research projects, some of which are independently funded,” the admiral continued more softly. “There is a preoccupation with Wunderwaffen—rockets, giant cannon, Superbombe—which our leaders encourage, none of it very well organized. It seems one of our chemists blew up his own house recently.” The admiral chuckled and shook his head like a tolerant uncle.
Sarah had to squint against the white light of her memory. The house vanishing in an instant, taking with it Schäfer’s body and his work.
She shifted her weight and settled back onto the floor. The admiral continued.
“One of my . . . colleagues in the SS, one Kurt Hasse, has been empire-building in this fertile, clandestine area. He and Ishii met in 1929, and I’m . . . interested to discover that Surgeon Colonel Ishii is in Berlin right now, at the same time as his bombs, and they’re meeting at the Japanese Embassy tomorrow night. I would very much like to play the mouse at that appointment, but all my usual friends there have been asked to make themselves scarce after ten p.m. Haller, you know people who aren’t above a little burglary, don’t you? Maybe have a listen to something in the ambassador’s office?”
“I’m surprised you don’t know someone yourself . . .”
“This isn’t something that I can involve myself in directly—the armed forces keeping tabs on the SS? That would not go down well. In this case, you are the person I know.”
“What might they be discussing, that you need to know so much?” the Captain asked.
“Hasse has been communicating with a group of German missionaries in Africa. They have been there for some years researching tropical diseases—”
Sarah was having to make herself concentrate as Canaris spoke. Like much that she overheard, it seemed dull and parochial, or too distant to be of interest. She knew this made her a bad spy.
“If they’ve stumbled on something especially nasty in the jungle,” he continued, “there are those who would like to use it. Being outside the Reich, their activities fall under my purview. I find myself responsible for them but cannot draw attention to them because, of course, our sagacious Führer does not believe in gas or germ warfare—”
“Why not?” piped up Sarah, her curiosity overcoming her caution.
Canaris paused, staring at her. He seemed to hover somewhere between ignoring and indulging her, before answering.
“Our war hero was gassed by the British in 1918. I think he found the experience less than pleasant.”
“No war is pleasant though, surely?”
Canaris laughed and slapped his thigh. “I think, in a rare moment of pragmatism, the Führer has grasped that the British have a large gas stockpile, and were we to use something similar, it would just stab a wasps’ nest. We supply our armies using horses, and horses cannot wear gas masks. However, he may be persuaded to use something untraceable or at least apparently natural in origin. In fact he might already have been so persuaded. And that is an unpleasant thought. . . . Jesus . . .” Canaris noticed something behind them and sat back in surprise. “Your clientele just expanded.”
> Sarah turned and started. Like finding three crows at the window watching you with unblinking black eyes, she saw three SS officers in meticulous dress uniforms by the door. Sarah had once been told what the collective term was for crows in English. A murder.
“May I introduce SS-Obersturmbannführer Kurt Hasse,” the admiral murmured with a sigh.
“A coincidence?” the Captain asked.
“No such thing,” growled the admiral.
“The monsters are here,” Sarah said, under her breath.
FOUR
THEY STOOD BEHIND the glass doors to the stairs and watched the crows move through the party. The soldiers drifted aside as they approached and closed ranks behind them. Sarah had once seen a cat pad across a town square of pigeons who acted the same way.
“So the SS came. That’s lovely,” Sarah said brightly.
“Not especially. That one, next to our new friend,” the Captain said, pointing to the older, better-fed of the three crows. “Sicherheitsdienst, SD, SS intelligence. We are now being watched.”
For a moment, a sliver of a second, and for the first time in months, Sarah felt fear. It was like someone had opened a door onto a winter’s evening, then abruptly shut it. It woke her from her stupor. She could feel things coming alive inside her mind, like warming valves in a wireless set.
“Who said, ‘There’s only one thing worse than being talked about, and that’s not being talked about’?” she mused.
“One day, Sarah of Elsengrund, you’ll quote a famous British homosexual in the wrong company.”
“Until then, life will continue to excite . . . So, who does Admiral Canaris work for?”
“He is chief of the Abwehr. Military intelligence.”
Sarah’s mouth dropped open. “Military intelligence?” she growled. “We work for German military intelligence?”