Widowland
Page 32
A roar of adrenaline filled her head, through which a line beat like a drum.
Beware, for I am fearless and therefore powerful.
The Leader was making to move away, pivoting towards the next section of the library, poised for a briefing on the history of the architecture and the millions of volumes that stretched out in the stacks above him.
Rose stepped forward, her feet unsteady beneath her, like a child who had just learned to walk. Fizzing with a rush of excitement and a cold sweat of fear, her entire body was shaking. Yet even as she moved towards him, the fear resolved into a great wash of exaggerated calm and a sense of release.
He must have heard her because he turned, and his eyes, twin pits of darkness, were all she could see. Their unnatural intensity rooted her to the spot.
The Leader was profoundly familiar with the mingled terror and delight that affected anyone who approached him. It had always been this way. Women would run up to him on the road, trying to get in his car. Dodging bodyguards, they would cast themselves in his path, begging for his attention. Sometimes, in their anguish, they would bare their breasts with cries of adulation and love. It seemed to be his destiny that beautiful girls should throw themselves before him with no thought for their own safety.
Benignly, he waved his aides away and nodded.
Rose picked up the book from its stand and, smiling, handed it to him.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Although the setting is fictional, many figures in this novel existed, and the story is based on the genuine SS collection task force established by Alfred Rosenberg to loot Europe’s libraries for books between 1939 and 1945. Tens of millions of books were plundered from libraries in every country of Europe and brought back to several archives, including Rosenberg’s Amt Schrifttumspflege in Berlin. Rosenberg’s approach to controlling literature went far beyond book burnings, and the team he established aimed to adjust certain aspects of history to reflect National Socialist beliefs about the past.
He was executed in Nuremberg in 1945.
SS-Brigadeführer Walter Schellenberg was tried at Nuremberg and detained for two years in prison before being released on grounds of ill health. He had had an affair with Coco Chanel and she paid his medical bills when he died in Switzerland in 1952.
Rudolf Hess flew to Scotland in his Messerschmitt in May 1941, probably to open peace talks with members of the British aristocracy. He crash-landed and was taken prisoner before being returned to Germany at the end of the war, where he died in Spandau Prison in 1987.
The five Goebbels girls and their brother died after being given cyanide by their mother, Magda Goebbels, in Hitler’s bunker on 1st May 1945. Magda and Joseph Goebbels subsequently committed suicide.
Leni Riefenstahl was the pre-eminent film director of the Third Reich and produced many epic propaganda films for them. After the war she was classified as a ‘fellow traveller’ and denied knowing about the Holocaust. She continued making films and died in Munich, Bavaria, at the age of 101.
The Duke and Duchess of Windsor passed the war in the Bahamas, where the ex-King served as Governor, and they subsequently lived in France. The Duke did hold a private meeting with Hitler at the Berghof in 1937, but although the substance of their conversation has been much debated among historians, it was not documented. No record has survived.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Would that all writers had the support of agents and publishers like mine. My thanks go to Millie Hoskins, Olivia Maidment and Amy Mitchell, as well as others at United Agents, for generously reading and rereading drafts of this novel.
I could not have wished for more engaged and visionary publishers than Quercus and I’m especially grateful to Jane Wood, my fantastic editor, and Jon Butler for his knowledge and enthusiasm. Thanks also to Florence Hare, and to Lorraine Green for her meticulous copyediting. When I saw the fabulous jacket design, my heart skipped a beat. Thanks so much to Nathan Burton and Andrew Smith.
Lastly, Caradoc King, legendary agent and long-time friend, has been an unwavering source of interest and help in all the time that I’ve known him. He has happily engaged in endless discussions on fiction and character and plot, and the very least he deserves is that this novel is dedicated to him.
Table of Contents
Praise for Widowland
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraphs
Contents
PART ONE
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
PART TWO
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
PART THREE
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Author’s Note
Acknowledgements