Woman in the Shadows

by Jane Thynne

  Why was she here? Did Goebbels know? Had it been his idea to arrest her? She thought of him, limping down the corridor in his patent leather shoes, which everyone swore concealed a cloven hoof, like that of the devil. Goebbels had asked her to report back on the Mitford sisters, but surely he didn’t intend to elicit her discoveries in this setting?

  Then she thought of Gisela Wessel, arrested at the studio and brought here for interrogation. Clara knew, though she tried not to think about, the lengths to which they would go to get the answers they wanted. She thought of the actress’s face plunged repeatedly into freezing water, lungs tearing for breath, gloved fingers gripping her hair. What other methods would they resort to? There must be special horrors reserved for female prisoners. Those sadists were as attentive as lovers to the sensations their hands could provoke. Like seducers they took pains to get a woman to surrender.

  Even though she had no clue why she’d been arrested, it was still essential for Clara to figure out what the Gestapo believed. If there was a suspicion that she was passing information to the British, then there was no hope for her. How long would it be before anyone realized she was missing? Would Mary start to ask questions, even though Clara had assured her there was nothing to worry about? Would Albert report her absence from the studio? And Ralph? Clara remembered what Ralph had said about disowning her if she was apprehended. For his sake, she hoped that was true.

  There was the sound of boots coming down the corridor. They were coming for her.

  Fear ran through her like a steel blade. Terror settled in the marrow of her bones. She had never pretended to anyone that she was courageous. Not even to herself. She was not abnormally brave. She was terrified at the prospect of pain and was calculating wildly who, if anyone, could save her from it. She would not even have hesitated to ask her father to intercede, though how she would get a message to him wasn’t clear. She wondered if, perhaps, the mention of the Mitford sisters might work the same charm on the Gestapo that it had on Adolf Hitler, but the idea would have been laughable, if she was capable of laughing.

  Her flesh felt defenselessly soft, like a child’s. Bruises were appearing on her upper arms, like photographic negatives against the white of her skin, recording the brutality of the previous night. Her ear was ringing and painful from where the back of a hand had lashed her. She knew there would be several interviews, going over and over the same ground. So far, she had survived only the first.

  Hauptsturmführer Oskar Wengen’s face was cadaverous. It reminded her of an ancient preserved mummy, found in some distant Teutonic swamp. The skin clung to the skull beneath, perfectly delineating the bones, folding down the throat in ropy sinews. Only the eyes were alive. They were watchful, like a snake’s, with the same fathomless depth.

  The room smelled of human fear. When Clara was brought in, Wengen had gestured at a wooden chair opposite his desk, and with a jolt she saw a manila file bearing her name and the stenciled numbers 6732. What could it possibly contain?

  She decided to take the initiative. “On what charge have I been arrested?”

  Wengen smiled grimly, his thin lips pressed as though they had been stitched together. “You have not been arrested, Fräulein Vine. You have been invited here for questioning.”

  “There’s no point questioning me. I don’t know anything.”

  “I hope you’re not suggesting that we would have brought you in here for no reason. That might be an arrestable offense in itself. Do you know why you are being questioned?”

  “Of course I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?”

  “I’m waiting for you to consider why you might have been brought here.”

  “I told you. I haven’t the faintest idea.”

  “It might be good for you if you began to have some ideas.”

  The Hauptsturmführer didn’t ask her about the burglary. Perhaps they didn’t know about it. She hoped against hope that they had not tailed her all the way from Moabit, because if they had it would mean they would discover Bruno, and perhaps through him a whole circle of brave people manning the printing press. Yet Wengen seemed more interested in her work at Babelsberg.

  “We are checking some disturbing information from one of your friends.”

  In her pocket Clara’s fingers encountered the handkerchief that Ralph had given her. The thought of it brought a fresh surge of alarm. God forbid that they should find it, or ask questions about the person with the initials R.S.

  “None of my friends would supply you with disturbing information about me, because it would be false.”

  “That’s for us to decide. Whom do you associate with at the studio?”

  “Let me think. I see Herr Doktor Goebbels frequently.” The quip earned her a savage look.

  “Names, please.”

  “I see hundreds of people. It might be easier just to check the cast list of my films, Herr Hauptsturmführer.”

  “I assume you don’t spend your time drinking with a cast of hundreds.”

  “I rarely spend time drinking at all.”

  She racked her brain to think who might have denounced her. Gisela Wessel had probably been in this very same interrogation cell. Might she have mentioned Clara? It seemed unlikely; they barely knew each other. It couldn’t be Mary, could it? The Gestapo regularly visited foreign correspondents to question them about their informants. Might someone have seen the two of them together in the Press Club and jumped to conclusions? To stop the shudder of her nerves, Clara braced her shoulders in a semblance of calm resolve.

  “You must have friends there, surely?”

  There was only Albert. And she couldn’t mention Albert. Albert’s preference for young men would be enough to have him fired and in a concentration camp before his feet touched the ground.

  “I try to be friendly to everyone,” she replied neutrally.

  “Everyone?” The calmer she appeared, the more furious Wengen grew. “It’s difficult, surely, to be friends with everyone, Fräulein?”

  “You forget I’m an actress, Hauptsturmführer.”

  He cast her a frosty glance, but there was something else troubling her. A thought that had flickered in and out of the depths of her mind, like a hideous fish in deep water. Anyone might have informed on her, so why did she have the feeling that it was someone close to her, someone who might know where she was and when? At that moment when Hauptsturmführer Oskar Wengen asked her about her friends, the answer came. His kind, crinkled eyes. His careful avoidance of direct questions, which she had taken for tact. His dangerous secret that made him intensely vulnerable to any kind of blackmail. Albert. He could not be trusted. Albert must have informed on her.

  It should have hurt to think that she had been betrayed by someone so close, someone who had laughed with her and cared for her and followed every step of her career since she first arrived in Berlin. The skinny young man who had grown stylish and self-assured, except for the dark secret that made him vulnerable. Was that why he was so loath to ask her too many questions? Because he didn’t want to implicate her any more than necessary? Yet he had insisted she keep the red Opel, which meant that her movements were easy to track. Being denounced by Albert should have hurt far more, but at that moment all she felt was a rush of relief. She had not betrayed Ralph. Indeed, they had not even asked about him.

  Wengen’s voice took on a conciliatory tone. “We cannot always be aware of the secrets of our associates, Fräulein Vine. Sometimes we mingle with undesirable people without knowing it.”

  She felt his gaze raking her face, looking for the spark of desperation that said she was ready to break and hand over some information. That suggested she might betray others in the hope of going free herself.

  “The activities of those people stain our good name. They land us in all kinds of trouble.”

  “What kind of trouble am I in then, Herr Hauptsturmführer?”

  The conciliatory tone evaporated as suddenly as it had appeared.

  “A lot of trou
ble if you don’t start answering my questions. I want the names of everyone you associate with, Fräulein Vine. You must have some special friends in that crew of Jews and Communists up at Babelsberg. A pretty woman like you.”

  She forced herself to stare unflinchingly into the black pits of his eyes.

  “The German woman finds her truest friends within the Party. Isn’t that what Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, the head of the Frauenschaft, says?”

  Wengen laughed, a jagged sound that cut through the air like a saw. And that was the first time he hit her.

  —

  THAT WAS YESTERDAY. Now, at dawn, the clanking boots were coming back for her. Clara tried to summon again the energy for the great effort of dissembling, but she began to tremble, involuntarily, and felt her bowels clench within her. This was her second interview, when they would go over the ground they had already covered. Whom did she associate with? To whom might she be passing information? Which of her friends were secret Communists or Jews? And with each question there would be fresh blows, until she gave them some different answers. How long would she be able to hold out? Hours, or even days? There was no lawyer to help her. No one even knew where she was. She had left Ralph’s apartment despite her promise to him, and angry though he would be, he would assume she was staying safe somewhere, far away from her own home. No one in Berlin was worrying about Clara, or checking a watch for when she returned, or calling the police to report her missing. She squeezed her eyes shut and wished it was over already, that time had leapt forward and she was already in a truck on her way to a camp. That way she might still have her secrets safe with her.

  A key scraped in the lock, and the door swung open. The guard handed her the case and her bag.

  “You are free to go, Fräulein.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Astonishment froze her. For a moment, confusion and disbelief paralyzed her, pinning her to the wooden seat.

  “Unless you choose to avail yourself of our hospitality a little longer.”

  Clara stumbled out into the cool Berlin air and looked dazedly around her. Everywhere she saw people walking to their jobs, to the station on Stresemannstrasse, to meet friends, to catch trains, as though they were on a different planet, as if the grotesquerie of the building behind her simply didn’t exist. She shuddered, then headed away as fast as she could, dizzy with a mixture of excitement and fear. Like the sensation she’d had when Strauss’s plane had pulled out of its dive. Relief at disaster averted. Euphoria at still being alive.

  But the euphoria lasted only a moment before it was replaced by bewilderment. If Albert had informed on her, then he would have entrusted his suspicions to the head of the studios. The man responsible for all cultural activity in the Third Reich. Joseph Goebbels. Goebbels must be the reason she had been tailed and arrested. Goebbels had decided that if Albert was right, and Clara was hiding something, the political police would find it out. But if Goebbels was the reason she was arrested, what, or who, was the reason she had been released?

  CHAPTER

  38

  At the corner of Friedrichstrasse and Unter den Linden, which had once been the top gathering spot for the city’s prostitutes, a model torpedo rocket with glinting silver fins had been erected. It was positioned as though poised to smash into the very pavement beneath it, and alongside was displayed a colorful map of Europe showing all the countries that bordered Germany with cartoon bomber squadrons pointing ominously at the Fatherland. Above the map was the slogan AIR DEFENSE FOR EVERY GERMAN. Two sentries in steel helmets shuffled their massive boots alongside, holding collection tins. Mary noticed that most people ignored the map and quickened their steps as they passed. No one wanted to take geography lessons from the National Socialists.

  Mary had been looking forward to seeing Charles Lindbergh again. As far as she knew, she was the only journalist to be invited to the reception, which had to mean Lindbergh himself had requested her name be included. The very idea of it sent a ripple of pleasure through her. Lindbergh had asked for her! Not only would anything the great aviator said be a scoop, but even better, she would get an opportunity to thank him personally for arranging her return to Berlin. Camera at the ready, she had arrived at the Adlon with high hopes.

  The Adlon was, as ever, a warm oasis of luxury, where brilliant chandeliers glinted above a glossy marble floor. It seemed to exist in another universe from the real Berlin, with tantalizing smells wafting from the grill room and bowls of freshly cut hothouse roses on every table. Mary spotted Lindbergh immediately, towering above a sea of Nazi officialdom. Flashbulbs exploded around him as he pumped hands with men in uniform. At the age of thirty-five, with rumpled fair hair and a keen blue gaze, Lindbergh cut a striking figure. Already that day he had toured Tempelhof and piloted a bomber, visited a couple of airfields, and lunched at the Berlin Air Club. Now he was surrounded by an impermeable wall of Lufthansa executives and military attachés, all anxious to hear his views on the buildup of the German air force.

  Mary, it went without saying, could not tell one end of a plane from the other, and after half an hour she realized if she had to listen to one more Nazi bragging about the performance characteristics of the Bf 109 or the superiority of the Ju 88, she was going to scream. It took a while to elbow her way through the uniformed throng, but eventually she managed to battle through to Lindbergh’s side, just as he was off to be presented with a ceremonial sword as an honored guest of Germany.

  He seemed delighted to see her and shook her hand vigorously. “Miss Harker! I’ve gotta run, but I’m glad to find you here.”

  “Well, it’s because of you, Colonel, that I’m here. I wanted to thank you for your help with my visa.”

  “Quite all right. I’m pleased you made it. I think it’s important we get as many good American journalists here as possible. We need to tell the world about the true strength of Germany.”

  “So from what you’ve seen today, what do you think?”

  “It’s very impressive,” he replied warmly. “In fact, from what I’ve seen of the air forces, I’d say Germany now has the means of destroying London, Paris, and Prague if she wishes to do so. And you can quote me on that.”

  Mary was startled. It may have been that Lindbergh was speaking for the benefit of his Nazi hosts, who were beaming and nodding all around him, yet he gave no impression of dissembling. He was all smiles. Lindbergh seemed entirely sanguine about the idea that the Nazi regime had amassed enough airpower to achieve supremacy in Europe. How could he talk of London, Paris, and Prague being destroyed? Hitler had just announced that he would not allow the Sudeten Germans to become “defenseless and deserted” like the Arabs in Palestine. Could Lindbergh, that all-American hero, not understand what the Germans had in store for Czechoslovakia? Or did he simply not care?

  “Colonel, surely you don’t think—”

  “What I think, Miss Harker,” interrupted Lindbergh with the zeal of the convert, “is that we Americans have a valuable role to play in spreading the word about the new Germany. That’s why I was so certain that it was right for you to come back.”

  “You thought that I…?”

  The lanky American bent towards her, radiating sincerity. “I thought that you would be able to give a fair and accurate picture of the kind of society that Herr Hitler is building. And I told them so.”

  Well, that much was true. Mary was increasingly determined to give a fair and accurate picture of the society around her. But not in the way that Lindbergh seemed to expect. He was the second high-profile American visitor to Berlin, after Wallis Simpson, and the two of them seemed to have something in common. A willful refusal to see what was right in front of their eyes. How was it they could see the window displays and the construction works but not the posters on the walls, or the opponents in camps, or the desperate refugees flooding the borders?

  Mary left the hotel in a daze. She had a vision of German planes in mass formation, the drone of bombers and the whine of fighters, black
ening the sky. Antiaircraft guns on the roof of the Adlon and armies mobilizing for the front. Lindbergh had confirmed what she already feared: that Hitler had the ability to do as he pleased, and no one, especially America, was going to stand in his way.

  She nearly gasped when she felt a touch on her arm.

  “Excuse me. Mary Harker? I wonder if I might have a word?”

  The stranger was a well-dressed Englishman, with tawny hair and a suave, cultivated accent. She had caught sight of him across the room, downing vodka martinis like they were going out of fashion.

  “I hope you don’t mind my mentioning, but I read your reports from Guernica. I found them tremendously moving. Would you mind if I asked you a little about them?”

  He seemed entirely in earnest. Mary looked at him curiously.

  “Not at all. Do you have a special interest in Spain?”

  “You could say that. It’s about a friend of mine.”

  “Someone I know?”

  “I’m not sure. But I wonder if we could talk somewhere, out of the cold?”

  One of the sentries approached, rattling his collecting box meaningfully in their direction, and the Englishman turned fractionally away.

  “And I rather think, now that Colonel Lindbergh has assured us of the formidable strength of the Luftwaffe, that one is perfectly justified in devoting one’s funds to buying dinner instead, don’t you?”

  CHAPTER

  39

  Horcher’s restaurant on Lutherstrasse was the chosen place in Berlin for the Luftwaffe top brass. The owner, Otto Horcher, had known Goering in the war and always made a huge fuss over his honored guest, cooking him his favorite game and providing other special customers with their own sets of monogrammed wineglasses. With the same punctilious attention to detail, Herr Horcher had ensured that carefully concealed microphones were built into the fabric of each table, with the help of which the waiters were able to compile their reports to the authorities. The interior was lined with dark oak paneling and plush leather banquettes, where officers lolled, bowls of scarlet tulips at each table. That lunchtime there was a sprinkling of Wehrmacht in field gray, and the rest were mainly Luftwaffe. As Clara arrived, Arno Strauss approached. He kissed hands, his manner, as ever, deadpan.