by C. J. Carey
She prayed that even if the Americans were apprehended, Oliver himself would be safe.
As her eyes searched the skyline and probed the leaded windows and Gothic arches, her arm was grasped roughly from behind. She saw the flash of a black uniform and heard a voice.
‘Come with me. Don’t talk.’
She was pulled into the pink-washed entrance of a pub. Rose glimpsed the name – The King’s Arms – and a flash of luminous dark wood and rough plaster. A dense cloud of beer and cigarettes engulfed her as she was hustled towards a door labelled Dons’ Bar: Women Not Permitted and pushed inside. Her captor shut it with a kick of his boot.
‘I suppose I should be surprised.’
Martin was transformed. The tenderness that had always softened his voice had gone and there was a hard light in his eyes. He looked paler too, as though his own human warmth had bled from him and calcified what remained.
‘I’m here to accompany the Commissioner to the ceremony. I won’t bother to ask why you’re here. I don’t care anyway.’
He cared a lot. That was plain.
‘You know they arrested me?’
His silence confirmed it.
Incredulously, she gasped as realization dawned.
‘It was you! You told them where I would be?’
Martin cast a longing eye across at the drinks. The festivities had prompted the landlord to stock extra supplies, and a stack of beer crates and cartons of Scotch were piled up behind the bar. Rose could see Martin fighting the need to drown his emotions, before losing the battle and leaning across to pluck out a bottle of whisky. Prising it open, he took a gulp.
‘What could you possibly think I’d done, Martin? This is madness, and you know it. You know me.’
‘I thought I did,’ he said tensely. ‘When the Commissioner called me in, he told me they had something on you.’
‘And you too. We were guilty of the same crime.’
‘Not adultery. It was far more than that. Eckberg said they had evidence you were a traitor. You’ve been a long-standing enemy of the Alliance. He gave me the choice to go to Paris, or stay and be humiliated with you. Imprisoned. Purged. Maybe worse, he said.’
‘So you took me to your club and let the police know where I would be. You set a trap?’
He jutted his jaw pugnaciously.
‘I have a family, Rose. Four children. Don’t you think I have some responsibility towards them? Not to mention my wife.’
‘Your wife? Since when have you shown such concern for Helga? You asked me to marry you!’
‘I knew you’d never agree.’
Rose remembered what Bruno Schumacher said. The thing about Martin is, he was always able to look after himself.
‘Really? How could you be so sure?’
‘You wouldn’t leave your family – your parents, your niece. You’re always talking about that child. I could tell you loved her. She sounds sweet.’
He paused, then quietly, almost casually, said, ‘Actually, it was the child who gave you away.’
‘Gave me away? What are you talking about?’
‘She’s proud of you, Rose. She said, nobody writes stories like her aunt. The stuff they read at school is dull, it’s all stormtroopers and Alliance Girls. Little Hannah wanted princesses and dragons. Magical talking animals. She told the teacher she should ask you for your stories about a place where there are no female castes or some such nonsense . . . Ilyria? Can that be right?’
Ilyria. It seemed like ancient history now. The fantasy world ruled by a benevolent queen, with talking leopards and fauns and fairy-tale cooking pots that produced any food you wanted. And Hannah, who still lived in a world of limitless potential, and had not yet learned confinement, watching with her solemn, dark eyes, sucking her thumb and nestling against Rose’s arm.
Nothing, in retrospect, had ever given her so much pleasure.
She shrugged.
‘They believed a child of six?’
‘Not without evidence, of course. What do you take them for? The teacher, naturally, informed the authorities of Hannah’s remarks and they were obliged to carry out a search of your flat. I’ve seen photographs of what they found in your file. Notebooks full of all kinds of forbidden material. Dreams, degenerate stories . . .’
Finally, she understood the rage pulsing through him.
‘Some nonsense about me.’
So that was it. The core of his pain and anger. For Martin, Rose’s diary had achieved what books never did, which was to enable him to see himself through another’s eyes. Once he had read her merciless words, his love had shrivelled and died.
‘So my crime is writing. Did that really make me an enemy of the state?’
‘It wasn’t only the degenerate muck or the lies about me. They found something else. Some kind of message. A line of words they know must be a code. They had no idea what it meant – only that it was significant. The ASO let you go, so they could see where you’d lead them.’
He hesitated.
‘I wasn’t going to show you this, but you might as well see it now.’
He pulled out a typed report. She noticed that his hands were trembling as he thrust it under her eyes.
‘It was issued last night. It will go to all police departments.’
Her eyes refused to focus. All she could see was the words at the end.
Interrogation. All available methods. Liquidation.
‘By rights, now I’ve found you, I should arrest you straight away.’
He took another gulp of Scotch and leaned heavily on the bar, sticky with spilled beer and wet ash. The alcohol brought back a touch of the old tenderness and he looked her up and down, noting the dress that brought out the blue of her eyes. He put his hands on her shoulders. They felt like dead weights.
‘It might not have to be that bad. They could allow me to help you, Rose. If you told them everything you know: what that code is all about, how you’ve associated with traitors, what their plans are. I think I could arrange for you to be transferred. There are plenty of places that require more female stock and you are a Geli, after all. The eastern lands. In time, Russia maybe.’
She didn’t reply. She could hardly bear to look at him. Everything that had passed between them, every embrace, every act of lovemaking had come to this. All their kisses had curdled into thin, cold air.
This man had taught her what love wasn’t. But would she ever have a chance to discover what it was?
The face of Oliver came into her mind, and at the same time the wail of a police siren prompted Martin to check his watch. From outside came the restive hum of the crowd. He moved towards her and tipped her chin.
‘You can’t possibly evade them, you know? You’ll be in custody within hours.’
‘Are you going to help them, Martin? Will you give me away?’
He made no answer, only turned and left the bar.
Outside, the cacophony had intensified. The drumming of a marching band undercut the cries of news vendors in flat caps, bellowing their headlines. ‘Leader’s Visit Latest! Special Edition!’ Someone in the crowd had got up a chant, ‘We Want Our Leader!’ and portions of the throng were raggedly following suit, while others remained grimly silent.
Gelis never had any problem with crowds. Obstructions melted and complaints died on the air when an elite woman approached. Anyone tempted to protest gave way instantly to a pretty female in a mackintosh and smart dress. Priority was always given to higher orders. Yet Rose decided to stick at the back of the throng, while she scanned the scene. A crush of people waving triangular Alliance flags strained at the barriers. Schoolboys in flannel shorts and schoolgirls in gaberdine tunics were at the front. Then came Klaras holding toddlers with chubby legs who clutched paper flags. The throng was seeded with watchers, easily identifiable by their trench coats and the binoculars they trained on sectors of the crowd. An area at the front had been cordoned off for the press, and journalists, with flashguns and cameras, notebooks out, w
ere already jostling. She imagined Sonia Delaney’s cameraman, levelling his Arriflex camera, squinting for the best possible angle. Hoping the target would be moving as slowly as possible.
One after the other, the bells of Oxford began to sound the hour with their habitual lack of synchronicity. As they did so, a ripple ran through the crowd, imperceptible at first, before rising to a low roar, and the distant thrum of motorcycles filled the air. Sightseers craned over the crash barriers and military music leaked from the loudspeakers as a line of limousines arrived and disgorged several uniformed figures.
Rose knew that anticipation and delay, even to the point of tedium, was essential to any celebrity visit. The honour guard was used to it, accustomed to standing for hours at rigid attention, poker straight, whether in blazing sunlight, their uniforms prickling with sweat, or freezing wind and rain. The troops didn’t flinch, but Rose could feel the crowd becoming restive, like children at a birthday party who have consumed too much sugar. It was nine o’clock now. When would he appear?
A further fifteen minutes passed. She craned her head to see a range of figures enter the Bodleian’s gates and proceed to Old Schools Quad, where a dozen dignitaries shuffled in their medals and ermine robes on a dais. A guard of honour lined up for the salute. She noticed a black and white cat staring dispassionately from a Hertford College windowsill.
Nine seventeen.
Then came the moment the crowd was waiting for. The Leader’s car, a powerful beast, crunched over the ancient cobbles. It was flanked by four motorcycle outriders, two in front and two behind, and through the windows Rose glimpsed the pallid blur of a face. As the Mercedes moved down Broad Street amid a wave of cheers and a forest of salutes, she caught sight of a film cameraman with an Arriflex camera following its progress.
A second later the clang of shrapnel on metal cut like a scalpel through the din and sent flights of pigeons wheeling into the air. In a blare of sound, tyres squealed and members of the Leader’s own bodyguard, the Leibstandarte, rushed into the road and, with a shout and a scuffle, knocked the cameraman to the ground. A second man, a stills photographer accompanying him, was seized, his camera smashed, and he was dragged, heels trailing, as guards scurried to collect the equipment he’d dropped. Dogs lunged against their leashes as police moved to surround the spot.
What did the pale-faced passenger in the limousine make of it? Perhaps he didn’t even notice. Once the driver had taken evasive action, he pressed on through the mass of people, without stopping or reversing, and continued to the Bodleian Library.
The chatter of the crowd was as sharp as gravel in Rose’s ears. The air was filled with the smell of rubber and metal. An obese Magda, with bad skin and hair teased into a lacquered helmet, pressed heavily against her, causing her to stumble on the kerb and clutch the woman’s sleeve. The Magda turned angrily, then, seeing she was a Geli, managed a saccharine smile and made way for her.
It must have been a minute later, immersed in the thickest part of the crowd, that Rose sensed, rather than saw him. Before she properly perceived it, she registered the sleeve of Oliver’s jacket next to her own and, looking down, recognized his black lace-up shoes. Seconds later his hand reached for hers and locked fingers and she heard his voice, barely audible in the din, his lips hardly moving.
‘Don’t look at me. Look straight ahead.’
She continued staring, unseeing, at the wall of flesh in front of her, and all the fluttering mayhem of armbands and hats and flags, and it was, in that instant, as though time itself had shifted and dissolved.
‘It’s over,’ he said.
‘It’s not over.’
‘We’ll try again. We’ll never stop trying. But I need to get away. I have somewhere safe. Promise me you’ll leave now.’
‘Don’t go.’
‘We’ll be together. We’ll get to America. If you go back to London, I’ll get a message to you.’
‘How?’
He turned very slightly then and, reaching into his pocket, offered her a National cigarette. He bowed his head in a swift nod, before looking away.
‘Don’t smoke it. The address is in the filter.’
His hand squeezed hers hard, then slipped from her own.
Rose glanced once, as he had forbidden. She saw his jaw clenched, and the knot of muscles in his neck, and she met his eyes, preserving the image of him for whatever might follow.
Then the crowd opened to swallow him and he was gone.
It was easy for Rose to push through the forest of flags to the crash barrier.
The Leader’s car had parked. His route would take him firstly through the Great Gate and the Old Schools Quad to the dais where the Mayor and the Vice-Chancellor were standing, accompanied by their wives and a mass of field-grey uniforms. Greetings must be made. Medals and insignia glittered. The honour guard was clicking heels and presenting arms, smacking their rifle butts in unison like a thunderclap.
Rose saw a face she knew.
Bruno Schumacher, the man she had thought of like a tortoise beneath its shell, was just then standing at the crowd barrier. He must, she thought, be experiencing one of the high points of his life. Today was his chance to shine before Arthur Nebe, the man he had called his hero, who would finally recognize the organizational talents of the overlooked SS-Sturmbannführer Schumacher and convey a few words of thanks. Who would recognize that even in this distant corner of the empire, a police officer who had been inspired by Nebe’s own leadership was right now replicating those diligent standards and ensuring that everything ran like clockwork.
And yet, Schumacher looked nauseous, as though he sensed that even now, at the eleventh hour, something might still go wrong. His brow was slick with sweat and his eyes prowled the crowd, looking out for any anomalous movement, any trace of dissent.
‘Herr Schumacher!’
He started and took a second to focus on the pretty Geli in the sumptuous dress, tiny pillbox hat and powder-blue calfskin gloves standing before him, her complexion peachy and her eyes imploring.
‘I’m Fräulein Ransom. Martin’s friend.’
His face lit up. He must assume that Martin was here too. Maybe his childhood friend would witness him soaking up the praise from Reichskriminalpolizei chief Nebe for an operation that had gone like clockwork. It would be a rare opportunity for Bruno Schumacher to feel accomplished in front of Martin Kreuz.
Rose gave him a confidential smile.
‘You have to help me, Herr Schumacher. I’m going to get in awful trouble. I’m supposed to be with the Culture Ministry group. But I got delayed. I need to be inside.’
A volley of shouts and cheers rang across the quad. The Leader had emerged from his limousine and was making his way to the dais. The crowd drew its collective breath.
He looked nothing like his posters.
Hunched in the familiar greatcoat, his gait was a slow shuffle. His body was pitched forward, his skimpy hair hidden beneath the cap, his skin the colour of cooked veal. Halfway across he stopped to survey the domes and towers and spires around him with a look that seemed to say, So this was what I fought for all those years ago. This is what has been waiting for me.
What thoughts swam through that dark mind? Was Oxford, like Paris, an anticlimax?
The crowd surged and, in response, a wall of British police in high helmets, black uniforms and silver buttons instinctively closed ranks. Schumacher didn’t hesitate.
Lifting the cordon swiftly and parting the policemen, he ordered, ‘Quick. Let the lady through.’
Once inside, she took a brief, distracted glance around her. Gleaming shafts of light lanced down from the windows of the Radcliffe Camera, touching the gilt-stamped spines, buffing the ancient oak, turning the motes of dust to drifting gold. Beneath the pale green hexagons of the dome, eight pillars were arranged with repeating symmetry in a circle, each one interspersed with studded circlets of stone and a clotted lattice of stucco leaves. In the middle of the ground floor, space had been clea
red for a welcoming party of senior dignitaries – if the prospect of SS-Brigadeführer Walter Schellenberg, Reichskriminalpolizei chief Arthur Nebe and Cultural Commissioner Hermann Eckberg counted as anyone’s idea of a welcome.
Rose scanned the line of men. There was Nebe, wiry, with close-cropped silver hair, and Schellenberg in uniform with the army insignia above the breast pocket and eyes the colour of November rain as he stared straight ahead. The familiar figure of Hermann Eckberg, vast and irascible, standing to one side of a wooden lectern and right behind him Martin, with an expression of glazed fatigue, studying the floor. When he saw Rose, he gave a visible start, and the colour drained from his face, but it was too late to react. The Leader was hobbling in, summoning a smile that contained neither humour nor benevolence.
The head librarian approached with an unctuous salute, which the Leader returned with a trademark flip of his own, and the pair progressed towards the lectern where Mary Shelley’s precious book lay open, tiny and fragile with its lethal trace of dust. Rose could not hear the conversation, but she guessed that the essence of the gift was being explained.
It’s the story of a German genius who created something fantastical.
The Leader was eight feet away. His face was pale and waxy, like a candle lit from within, and his hands seemed boneless, as if made entirely of cartilage. He was not wearing gloves.
Three feet away.
He looked down at the fragile volume, its edges coppery with age, the binding dented and cracked, the filmy pages faded and crumpled as moths’ wings. It was a dense tissue of words. Mary Shelley’s neat teenaged hand was tightly compressed, with numerous crossings out, and in places, where a thought had struck her, a line of dialogue marched vertically up the edge of the page, disdaining natural order. In 1816 Byron had called her book ‘a wonderful work for a girl’. But what would the Leader make of it, this dreadful warning of the perils of hubris?
Murmuring appreciatively, he reached out and Rose’s heart stilled.
Then, without touching the foxed pages, the Leader replaced his hand in the pocket of his greatcoat.