‘Perhaps,’ he said. But all three of them knew it was unlikely. If someone had been concerned enough to block the exit permit, he would probably want to make sure that Dr Rosen went straight back into custody.
Anneliese pulled herself together. She stood and held out her hand. ‘Thank you for all you have done, Captain Foley.’
‘I’m just sorry it wasn’t enough.’
They were just about to leave when Conrad hesitated. ‘Captain Foley. You said “someone” doesn’t want Dr Rosen to leave the country. Do you know who that “someone” is?’
‘Yes, yes I do.’ Foley examined a small notebook. ‘It’s a Gestapo officer named Klaus Schalke. He’s quite the rising star, apparently, a favourite of Heydrich’s.’
‘Schalke?’ said Conrad.
‘Do you know him?’ Foley asked.
Conrad glanced at Anneliese, who was clearly surprised by his recognition of the name. ‘You could say that. We’re not exactly best of friends. He was the one who arrested me. He let me go after my cousin died in custody, and I would have thought he had forgotten me, but perhaps he bears a grudge.’
‘Who knows?’ said Foley. ‘Sometimes these people can be persuaded, but my contact was advised not to approach Schalke. He was told it might make things worse.’
‘Can we speak to him?’ Conrad said. ‘Perhaps I can find out what he has against me, if indeed there is anything.’
‘No!’ said Anneliese.
‘But I’m a British citizen—’
‘If you’ve had a brush with him in the past you should keep well clear of him,’ she said.
‘Fräulein Rosen is probably correct,’ said Foley. ‘And Schalke’s opposition might well have nothing to do with you. He’s a Nazi, isn’t he? Perhaps the idea of a Jew giving blood to an Aryan fills him with revulsion. These people have a very warped view of the world.’
Conrad shared Anneliese’s gloom as they left the building. ‘If this Gestapo officer blocked the exit permit because of me, I’m very sorry,’ he said.
‘Captain Foley’s right; it probably had nothing to do with you,’ Anneliese replied. But she avoided his eye as she said it. She was understandably upset, and angry, but Conrad didn’t know whether her anger stretched to him.
‘What now?’ he said.
‘My father’s due to be released at three o’clock this afternoon. I was planning to meet him and give him his visa. Now I suppose I will go to see him be freed and then arrested again.’
‘Can I come with you?’ Conrad asked. ‘I’ve heard so much about him, I’d like to see him. Of course if you’d rather not, I would quite understand.’
‘No, please come. I’d like that. And after all you have done for him it would be good for you to see him, however briefly.’
They went straight to the Anhalter Station. Dr Rosen was in prison in the city of Dessau, about eighty kilometres to the south-west of Berlin. At twenty minutes to three, Conrad and Anneliese arrived in a taxi at the gates of a grim stone building. Anneliese threw herself into the arms of a middle-aged woman with wispy grey-blonde hair, who was standing watching the gates expectantly. It was even hotter in Dessau than it had been in Berlin, and the woman’s hair was damp with sweat.
‘Mama, this is Conrad de Lancey, an English friend of mine who helped me get the visa.’
The woman held out her hand to Conrad. She had kind blue eyes. ‘May I see it?’ she said, her voice eager.
‘Yes you may, but, Mama, it’s useless! We couldn’t get an exit permit. The Gestapo wouldn’t issue one.’
The woman staggered as if she had received a physical blow. ‘Does that mean... Oh, Liebchen, look. The van.’
Sure enough, parked twenty yards along the road in the shade of a chestnut tree was a green van of the kind that Conrad had already been inside.
‘They’re here! The Gestapo are here!’ Anneliese’s voice was anguished.
They waited outside the gates for the next twenty minutes, the sun beating down on them, neither mother nor daughter willing to move into the shade. The street was like an airless oven, heat bouncing off the stone walls of the prison. There was no sign of movement in the van, and in the shade it was impossible to see whether it was occupied. But they knew it was.
At a couple of minutes past the hour, the heavy prison gate opened, and a small olive-skinned man in a baggy suit emerged.
‘Papa!’ Anneliese ran to him, followed by her mother. Dr Rosen held them both tight. Conrad stood back, but the doctor noticed him over the shoulder of his daughter and smiled. It was an extraordinary smile of strength and kindness. Conrad would never forget it. ‘Oh, Papa, we couldn’t get the papers! We tried, we tried so hard, but we couldn’t get the papers!’
Two ordinary-looking men wearing pristine raincoats even in the mid-afternoon heat emerged from the van and approached the trio. Conrad was beginning to recognize the uniform of the plain-clothes Gestapo. The doctor stood up straight to meet them. Anneliese detached herself from him.
One of them presented the doctor with a sheet of typed paper. ‘Dr Rosen. This is a protective custody order. Please come with us.’
‘One moment, please.’ The policemen stood respectfully aside as the doctor took the hands of his wife and daughter. ‘Look after each other, won’t you?’
‘I will,’ said Frau Rosen.
He turned to his daughter who was blinking back tears. ‘Anneliese? Will you look after your mother?’
She bit her lip and nodded.
‘I won’t be long: they’ll let me out soon.’ Then he kissed them both.
The women watched bravely as one of the Gestapo eased him away, slipped handcuffs over his wrists and led him off to the van.
Then Anneliese cracked. ‘No!’ she screamed, and she sank to her knees. Her mother crouched down and held her. In that position they watched Dr Rosen being bundled into the back of the vehicle. A few seconds later it drove off, and was gone.
After a miserable afternoon with Frau Rosen, Anneliese and Conrad returned to the station and a train back to Berlin. Conrad took Anneliese back to her place, which turned out to be a room in a tenement building in the Scheunenviertel, the poor Jewish quarter. This was a part of Berlin that Conrad had never visited: bustling, narrow cobbled streets; small shops stuffed full of cheap goods; children everywhere running, playing and gawking; murky corner bars; high, crowded tenements, plaster peeling off the walls. And everywhere there was graffiti: cartoons of Jews beheaded or hanged, obscene inscriptions, or the simple word Jude in large clear letters. Several shop windows were boarded up, where the glass had been recently broken.
Many of the inhabitants, with their untrimmed earlocks and beards, wore traditional Jewish orthodox dress, and all around Conrad heard the unfamiliar sound of Yiddish. The people were from Eastern Europe, refugees from the pogroms of Russia and Poland, with little in common with the indigenous German-speaking Jews; even their religious observance was different. Anneliese said that when she had been forbidden to continue studying to become a doctor on account of her ancestry, she had decided to live amongst the community of which the state had decreed she was now a member, to surround herself with other people whose basic rights were inexorably being stripped away from them. Besides, the rent was low.
Anneliese’s room was on the fourth floor. It was baking hot and she opened the windows on to the interior courtyard. At least the stove, a tall blue-and-white tiled contraption that dominated the room, was unlit. Everything was clean and tidy, with the exception of a single bookcase which was overwhelmed with volumes. On top of the wireless was a photograph of Anneliese with her mother and father and a tall thin young man: a brother. Everyone was smiling. Happier times.
‘Conrad?’ said Anneliese, in a small voice. ‘Can you stay? Please?’
So Conrad stayed. They ate a simple supper of bread and soup, talked, and then he held her long into the night until eventually she fell asleep and, a few minutes later, so did he.
14
Conrad flicked through his copy of The Times, amused to see that the censor had blacked out the report from Berlin. After a good morning’s work at his flat, he had dropped in to the Café Josty for a cup of coffee. He was beginning to rather like the place, and Anneliese was right: they did have a good selection of foreign newspapers. Outside, cars, bicycles, buses and trams swarmed around the green spindly traffic tower in the middle of the Potsdamer Platz. It didn’t look big or strong enough to tame the mass of clanking, roaring machinery.
He was pleased with his new flat. Warren Sumner had helped him find it. It was located in a quiet square near Nollendorfplatz and decorated in a very modern style. The owner, a Jewish architect who was abandoning Berlin for Paris, was happy to leave the art and furniture in Conrad’s care. Conrad agreed to pay the rent directly to him in Paris, which was a great relief to the man since the strict German exchange controls had prevented him from taking more than a tiny sum with him.
Conrad had spent the morning writing an article for Mercury on the difficulties German Jews faced trying to get visas to leave the country. He had toned down the outrage and anger that had suffused his first draft, and the resulting piece was more powerful for it. He felt he had made his point: the British government should let more Jews into Britain and Palestine.
Although he had mentioned the difficulties of doctors obtaining visas he had been careful not to refer to Dr Rosen directly. And he knew it would be foolish to sign the article under his real name: he needed a pseudonym. In Spain he had used ‘Matador’, but that was hardly appropriate in Berlin. After some reflection he had chosen ‘Linden’.
The Times editorial urged that the Sudeten Germans be allowed a plebiscite to decide their own future, even though it might mean their secession from Czechoslovakia to the Reich. The Sudetenland was a mountainous strip of Czechoslovakia predominantly inhabited by German speakers. The Sudeten German Party, a pseudo-Nazi organization led by an odious man of cunning charm called Henlein, was vigorously protesting at the way the cruel Czechs were tormenting innocent Germans, and demanding that Hitler do something about it. There had been a scare a few weeks before, in May, that the Wehrmacht had been on the brink of invading, but swift mobilization of the Czech forces and strong words from Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister, and Lord Halifax, his foreign secretary, had seemed to deter Hitler. Now The Times was suggesting that Halifax permit the Sudetenland go to Germany without a fight.
Edward Wood, the third Viscount Halifax, was an old friend of Conrad’s father from Eton. Conrad had first met him several years before when he had joined his father for a shoot on a Yorkshire grouse moor where Halifax was a fellow guest. Halifax was an imposing figure, six feet eight inches tall with a long, somewhat forbidding face. Despite the handicap of only having one functioning arm, for he had been born without a left hand, he was an excellent shot. But so too was Conrad, and Halifax had taken quite a shine to the Oxford undergraduate.
Lord Oakford admired Halifax, and was convinced that, despite his occasional tough words, his friend would never make the same mistake as his predecessor of 1914, Lord Grey, and allow Britain to be sucked into a continental war.
But Conrad was no longer convinced by his father’s determination to secure peace at all costs. It was true that Czechoslovakia was a long way from England; that it would be difficult to persuade Englishmen to die for a distant country that was not even twenty years old. Yet Conrad had seen at first hand what Nazism could do. David Griffiths and Harry Reilly had died opposing fascism, and in Conrad’s view their actions were noble, not pointless.
Conrad walked back to his flat deep in thought. As he rounded a corner he became aware of a commotion along the narrow street in front of him. A group of boys in light brown Hitler Youth uniforms were bunched around the front of a shop. It was a small hardware store. Conrad had been in there only the previous afternoon to buy a screwdriver and a hammer to make some basic repairs to the flat. He had been served by an old man with fluffy grey hair and a twinkling eye. A Jew: Conrad knew this because the word Jude had been scrawled across his shop window.
Conrad hurried to see what was happening. The windows of the shop were shattered and the boys, aged about ten to fourteen, were hurling spanners, wrenches, light bulbs and pots and pans grabbed from the shelves at two figures curled up on the pavement. One boy, the smallest, was attempting to whip the figures with a piece of electric flex. He was yelling regurgitated party slogans in a high-pitched voice as he lashed out: ‘To hell with the Jews!’ and somewhat oddly: ‘Room for the Sudeten Germans!’ A small crowd of half a dozen adults looked on.
‘Halt!’ Conrad shouted. The boys took no notice. Conrad forced his way through the small crowd, threw one of the boys to the ground and stood in front of the shopkeeper and his wife. They were both groaning. A good sign. At least they were alive and conscious.
‘I said, stop!’
The boys paused. The biggest, a strapping lad nearly six feet tall, was wielding a monkey wrench. ‘Are you a Jew?’ he snarled. ‘Show us your nose!’
Conrad cuffed him hard across the face with the back of his hand. The boy dropped his wrench and held his cheek. The others lowered their hardware uncertainly. ‘Piss off!’ Conrad shouted. ‘And don’t come back!’ He took a step towards a freckled boy wielding a frying pan. The boy broke and ran. The others hesitated and then followed him.
Conrad knelt beside the two old people, sprawled in a bed of broken glass. ‘Are you all right?’
The woman sat up against the wall of the shop and nodded. The old man groaned faintly. There was blood running down his temple and his eye was swollen.
‘Go!’ a voice whispered in his ear. Conrad turned to see a fat middle-aged lady with the no-nonsense attitude of a schoolmistress. ‘Go, now, before the SA come. I’ll look after these two.’
Conrad hesitated.
‘Go!’
Conrad went, trotting down the street towards his flat.
Conrad stayed at home that night, cooking himself an omelette for supper. He didn’t want to venture outside again that day. It was going to be difficult staying in Berlin, learning to walk on the other side of the street as schoolchildren beat up pensioners.
The phone rang as he was polishing off the last of the omelette. It was Captain Foley.
‘I’ve got some good news for you, de Lancey,’ he said.
‘The exit permit?’
‘I received a phone call this afternoon. We’ll have it early next week.’
‘Hurrah!’ said Conrad. ‘That was quick.’ It was only three days since he and Anneliese had watched the green Gestapo van taking Dr Rosen into protective custody.
‘Ours is not to reason why,’ said Foley. ‘Why don’t you and Fräulein Rosen come to my office on Tuesday? We should have everything in order by then, and we can all go to fetch her father. He’s in Sachsenhausen; it’s a concentration camp just north of Berlin. Tell Fräulein Rosen to buy a train ticket for London for that night; we will have to get him out of the country right away.’
‘Thank you, Captain Foley. Thank you very much.’
As soon as he had hung up with Foley, Conrad telephoned Anneliese. Her landlady, a busybody named Frau Goldstein, who had questioned him at length during his previous visit to Anneliese’s room, answered the communal telephone and went to look for her. She returned a moment later to say that Anneliese was working at the hospital and therefore probably wouldn’t be home until ten o’clock.
Conrad wanted to see her in person with the good news. He had tried to telephone twice in the last couple of days, failing to get her each time. He was finding it ever more difficult to keep her out of his mind. He enjoyed her company and her conversation; she made him laugh and there was no doubt she was physically attractive, and that attraction was working on him. But she was also a mystery: Conrad wanted to know more about what was behind those ironic green eyes. She had had a very tough few years and he admired her ability to cope with it on her own, but the vulnerability he
could sense made him want to hold her, protect her, as he had on that night after they had returned from the prison in Dessau. He could imagine himself falling for her, falling heavily for her. Another reason to stay in Berlin.
But of course he was still married to Veronica, and that still meant something to him, if not to his wife.
At five to ten he took the U-Bahn to the Scheunenviertel and hurried to her tenement building. The streets were quiet that night – no sign of Nazi marauders, and precious little sign of the inhabitants themselves. He checked his watch: twenty past ten. Anneliese would be home but not in bed yet.
Frau Goldstein answered the door. She didn’t want to let him in, but Conrad insisted, saying that he had some important news for Fräulein Rosen. The landlady argued for a moment and then shrugged her shoulders and let him pass, muttering to herself.
Conrad rushed up the stairs. There was a light under the door. She was in. He knocked.
No answer.
He waited and knocked again.
‘Who is it?’ It was her voice.
‘It’s Conrad. I’ve got some news.’
‘Oh, Conrad, I’m very tired. Can you come back tomorrow?’
‘I’ll be quick. And you’ll want to hear it, I promise.’
‘Please come back tomorrow.’ Then he heard a heavy tread on the floorboard inside the room. ‘No!’ Her voice rose in panic. ‘Stop! Don’t!’
The door was flung open, and there, smiling, with his collar unhooked and his shirt undone, loomed the large frame of Kriminalrat Klaus Schalke.
15
Conrad’s first instinct was to slam his fist into the big grinning face. Then he heard a sob from inside the room and he felt a surge of revulsion. He knew why Anneliese was upset: she had been caught, caught in the most outrageous betrayal. At that instant he wasn’t sure exactly how far that betrayal went, all he knew was that he wanted to get away from there as quickly as possible.
Schalke’s grin broadened as he took in Conrad’s confusion. ‘Don’t worry, mein Liebling,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘I think he’s just leaving.’
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