Flight From Berlin: A Novel

by David John

  ‘You live round here?’ the man said, pocketing the tip. ‘It stinks.’

  Denham got out and slammed the door.

  Welcome to Berlin!

  After a day riding the world’s finest passenger aircraft he couldn’t face the crowds on the Ringbahn and had treated himself to a cab home from the airfield. The drizzle of the afternoon had eased off, leaving the air heavy and the streets smelling malodorously sweet.

  Kopischstrasse, in the Kreuzberg district of the city, was a row of Wilhelmine buildings standing in the shadow of a Gothic brick water tower. The solemn balcony facades with wrought iron work were relics of grander times, but now each monumental house was carved into small, run-down apartments.

  In the sepulchral hallway of number five, radio music was coming from the ground-floor apartment of Frau Stumpf, his landlady. He put his head round her door, but saw she had company. At her kitchen table, back towards him, was the balding fat head of his downstairs neighbour, Reinacher. The man was a tireless bore. If he wasn’t collecting for one of the Party’s endless relief drives, he was knocking on doors, enlisting the tenants into some sort of activism. The red collection tin sat on the table. Frau Stumpf, hunched in her shawls, shot Denham a look that said, ‘I have to listen to this Quatsch,’ so he placed the bottle of schnapps he’d brought for her next to the door and closed it without Reinacher hearing.

  He was fond of Frau Stumpf, a delicate, absent-minded woman who treated the tenants with an old-fashioned courtesy. She’d lost her only son at the third battle of Ypres and had led a kind of half life since. He’d sometimes keep her company and eat her terrible stollen cakes.

  The two-room apartment he rented on the third floor smelled scorched and musty after his week away, and a jade plant had withered in its pot beside the tile stove. He opened a window onto the courtyard, with its lines of greying laundry, threw his hat onto the corner of the door, and noticed the thin layer of soot covering everything. A sour smell of hops wafted in.

  He wound the handle of the Victrola and placed the needle on the record left there a week ago, the Hot Five playing ‘Alligator Crawl.’ Humming the riff and lilt of Armstrong’s trumpet, he lit an HB and sat for a few minutes, watching the smoke unfurl in the dusty light.

  Hannah Liebermann.

  He’d give Rex a call. The old hack usually had good sources and might even have a lead on how to contact her. There even was a chance he was still in the office.

  He answered after one ring.

  ‘Rex, beer at the Adlon?’

  ‘Be there in half an hour, old boy.’

  Denham put his hat back on, but before leaving the building climbed to the fifth floor and knocked gently on the door of the attic apartment.

  ‘Everything all right, Frau Weiss?’

  After a while a chain rattled and the bolt turned. The door opened ajar and an old lady’s face peeped out like a bird’s. Her eyes moved fearfully in their sockets, but she smiled like a little girl when she saw him, then unhooked the chain and took his forearm in her avian claw.

  ‘Could be better; could be worse,’ she said with a shrug. ‘It’s these children. They don’t behave the way they used to. Would you get me some coffee and sugar this week?’ She fumbled for a note in her apron pocket, but he waved it away.

  Frau Weiss, the building’s only Jewish tenant, had not left her apartment in two years. Not since her husband had gone out to buy a newspaper and never returned. A week after his disappearance his bloated remains were dredged from the Landwehr Canal showing fatal wounds to the head, but the police had declined to investigate.

  By the time Denham arrived at the Hotel Adlon it was a fine summer’s evening. Unter den Linden was closed to traffic for the opening of the Games, and crowds of strolling Berliners and tourists were out enjoying the heat. Loudspeakers along the avenue played Strauss waltzes in between official announcements, as though the city were one great carnival. He was ready for a cold beer.

  Rex Palmer-Ward, chief correspondent for the Times, was waiting for him at their usual corner table in the upstairs bar, puffing on his calabash pipe, the long strands of his salt-and-pepper hair tumbled down over his forehead. He’d been a friend of Denham’s for years in ways for which Denham would always be grateful. Godfather to Tom and, during the hollow days of Denham’s divorce, comforter and fellow sorrow-drowner.

  The place was packed with press, shouting and chatting in a dozen languages. Rex rose to greet him, extending a stick-thin arm. Denham had rarely seen him eat. He seemed to subsist on nicotine, alcohol, and salted nuts.

  ‘Hello, old boy. Did you catch the opening of the Games?’

  ‘I made a flying visit,’ Denham said and ordered a beer for himself and another for Rex. ‘Are your chaps over from London?’

  ‘Yes, the Times and Daily Mail boys were mightily impressed, of course.’ He began stoking his pipe with a cocktail stick. ‘Took them to the press briefing at the zoo ballroom this morning. The little Doctor was as quick as a whip as usual . . . made a ringing speech about how the Games had nothing to do with propaganda—Germany merely wanting to show its best side—this from the world’s master propagandist . . .’

  Their beers arrived.

  ‘Look at this,’ Rex said, lifting the Berliner Morgenpost from his side pocket. ‘I had to read the Nazi press to find out the King is holidaying on a yacht in the Med with this American woman, Wallis. Our boys are pretending he’s at Balmoral.’

  ‘That’s game of them.’ They both laughed.

  Denham said, ‘You wouldn’t happen to know of a Jewish sports organisation I could contact? Got a story about an athlete I’m following up.’

  Rex frowned. ‘Not likely. Independent sports bodies are banned as far as I know. Can’t you simply doorstep this person?’

  ‘Maybe. If I can get close. But I suspect this one’s protected in case people like me come along asking questions. The athlete is Hannah Liebermann. She’s competing under duress.’

  ‘Good God.’ Rex looked up from his pipe. ‘Be careful. They’re twitchy. If they think you’re snooping behind their Olympic stage scenery they’ll throw you out. And then who will I drink with? So, where on earth did you hear that?’

  ‘A source I had to charm and coax,’ Denham said, seeing in his mind’s eye the intensity of Friedl’s face on the airship, the light of ploughed fields and sky reflected in it. That bizarre question. ‘Did we meet at a poetry reading in Mainz last year?’

  Rex was watching him, curious.

  ‘You know, you’ve got one of those faces, old chap. People confide in you . . . They trust you. It’s why you get the good stories.’ He tapped out the carbonised debris and cleaned the bowl of the pipe with his finger.

  They were silent for a moment; then Rex changed the subject.

  ‘Been invited to any of the parties?’

  ‘Not one.’

  ‘Here.’ He pulled an envelope from his jacket and slid it across the table. ‘Can’t make this one—if you want to go you’ll have to pretend you’re me.’

  Denham removed the thick card invitation with embossed italic lettering. ‘Ah, the language of diplomacy.’ The inscription, in French, began:

  On behalf of the Reich Government

  Reichsminister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda

  DR JOSEPH GOEBBELS

  requests the honour of your company for dinner at an ‘Italian evening’

  The party was to be held on the Pfaueninsel, a nature reserve island in the Wannsee, where many of Berlin’s rich and powerful had their homes.

  ‘I’ll dust off my dinner jacket,’ Denham said.

  ‘Won’t do. It’s white tie and tails.’

  Over the noise of the bar a pianist began playing ‘Frauen Sind So Schön Wenn Sie Lieben,’ a tango Denham had been hearing a lot on the wireless. Women are so beautiful if they’re in love.

  Rex said, ‘Phipps will be at that reception. Introduce yourself to him.’

  ‘Sir Eric Phipps? Are y
ou serious . . . ?’

  Rex nodded. ‘He may look like a squirrel with stage fright, but our ambassador’s no fool—and he doesn’t have the time of day for the appeasers. Phipps is one of us. Tell him you drink with me.’

  ‘You’ve pulled him up a peg in my estimation,’ Denham said. ‘I didn’t know you knew him.’

  Rex leaned towards Denham, his face grave and confiding. ‘By the way, old chap . . . with that trustworthy face of yours . . . if anyone were to pass you some intelligence—significant intelligence—I know you’d act in the nation’s best interests. Keep yourself above reproach and all that. Am I right?’

  Denham put his beer down. ‘If it’s important I’d put King and country first, if that’s what you mean.’

  His old friend’s expression was hard to read.

  ‘Rex, this is cryptic even for you. Was there some intelligence in particular?’

  But Pat Murphy from the Daily Express had appeared at the table, rubbing his hands. ‘Evening, gents. There’s a rumour going around that one of the German lady high jumpers is, in fact, a man.’

  ‘Only one?’ Rex said, his face amused again.

  Two Americans from the Reuters Bureau also pulled up chairs, and soon the table was in a haze of smoke from Rex’s reignited, smouldering pipe. Denham decided it was time to eat.

  He was leaving the grand lobby when he found himself sharing the revolving front door with two women who were entering. One was short and chattering, the other a tall blonde with a stylish pillbox hat tilted low to one eye. She had a long neck, a wide, full mouth, and a beauty spot just to the right of her nose. No makeup. For a long moment they exchanged glances through the glass.

  His favourite bistro on the Bergmannstrasse usually put him in a good mood. On quiet evenings, and if there were no uniforms in the place, the patron tuned the wireless to a Parisian jazz station that played live sessions of Django Reinhardt and Stéphane Grappelli. But tonight the place was crowded and noisy, along with every other restaurant on the street. He tried jotting some shorthand for his Hindenburg piece, but the evening’s conversation with Rex had riled him.

  It seemed to confirm something he’d long suspected about his old friend: he had links to the British Secret Intelligence Service, the SIS. Not so surprising, perhaps. Spies and journalists alike were in the information game, courting contacts, mining for secrets. In times like these the jobs were almost identical. And as the chief Times correspondent Rex had sources all over Germany.

  Phipps is one of us. Tell him you drink with me.

  First an entrée to the ambassador at a high-level reception—what had prompted that?—then a heavy hint that any intelligence passing Denham’s way should be handed in to the British authorities. In other words, his longest-standing journalist friend was asking him not to be a journalist. He chewed his bread slowly as he considered this.

  By the time he asked for the bill he’d decided that intelligence work, divining meaning from the tea leaves of figures, rumours, and whispers, or whatever it involved, was a game he’d leave to Rex.

  The streetlamps were lit when he returned to Kopischstrasse, whistling ‘Frauen Sind So Schön Wenn Sie Lieben,’ which echoed around the gloomy hall. Why was it only the annoying tunes stick in your head? All was dark behind the frosted glass of Frau Stumpf’s door.

  At the top of the stairs he switched on the landing light, only half registering the smell of an unfamiliar cigarette. He was putting his key in the lock when his door swung open from within. An enormous man in a hat and raincoat lunged from the darkness inside, shoved his fist into Denham’s chest, and sent him crashing against the landing wall. He had barely slid to the floor when a hard blow struck the right side of his head, knocking him flat. A mewling pain cried from his jaw and ear, and blood filled his mouth where he’d chomped down on his tongue.

  Chapter Nine

  Since the final month of the Great War, Denham and violence had shunned each other like repelling magnetic forces. Lately something had switched, and he seemed to be attracting it. He’d been attacked. And a week ago in Friedrichshafen, in the brush with those Brownshirts, he’d sensed how near violence was. As near as rain after catching its scent on the breeze. One ill-judged word, one ambiguous glance, would have released it.

  From somewhere in the dark along the landing came the scratching of a mouse. Easing himself up, he leaned against the wall, closed his eyes, and concentrated on breathing.

  The blood in his mouth tasted sour and ferrous. It was both unexpected and familiar, like the taste of strong liquor after years of temperance. The taste of violence.

  He’d had a sense of two, maybe three men rushing past him down the stairs. In the dim light of the landing he’d seen only the departing back of the shot-putter in the raincoat. The front door of the building had slammed with a ghostly echo.

  He nudged his door open with the tip of his foot. A soft light from the courtyard reflected on the ceiling of his sitting room, enough for him to see the devastation. His books were strewn across the rug, and opened, as if each had been individually searched; there was almost nothing left on the shelf. The armchair had been turned over and the threadbare cushions pulled from their covers.

  He stood up and heard the blood singing in his ear, but the pain in his back where he’d hit the wall was abating. He picked up his hat and entered the apartment, noticing his hands shaking. His few pictures—of Tom’s junior cricket team, and a sepia photograph of his parents on their wedding day—had been pulled from the walls and the backs torn off the frames. In his bedroom the mattress was turned over and all the drawers pulled out, emptied, and searched. Again he noticed the rich, hempy smell of that cigarette.

  When he saw his father’s gold cufflinks untouched in the saucer on the chest of drawers, he knew for certain his visitors were not burglars.

  Who were they?

  He lit an HB and watched the glowing tip.

  If they were police of some sort then he had plenty to choose from. Apart from the regular police—the Orpo, who patrolled the streets, and the Kripo, who caught felons—there were also the Gestapo, the secret police, sadists who sifted through denunciations, and the SD, the Sicherheitsdienst, who controlled state security and intelligence. This last one was the Gestapo’s shadowy twin, and he had little idea of what it did, apart from sending shudders up everyone’s spine. But the more he thought about it, the less he believed that any of them would do such a crude job and allow themselves to be surprised in the act. If Gestapo professionals were investigating him he would never know they’d been in his apartment.

  His head began to ache. Under the bed he found a quarter-full bottle of Johnnie Walker, uncorked it with his teeth, and took a generous swig. A rough anaesthetic, but it did the trick. Lying back on the bare mattress he focused on Tom, and on Anna, and on beautiful girls, and on the soaring sensation he’d experienced that afternoon from the prow of the airship, the sunlit white clouds like a child’s picture of heaven.

  He opened his eyes.

  ‘Seven Beautiful Girls from the USA’ . . . the feature article with photos in the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung. He’d read it over dinner at the Kurgarten. That’s where he’d seen that girl before. The lovely tall girl who’d walked into the Adlon as he was leaving.

  Chapter Ten

  Martha Dodd, the daughter of the ambassador, linked her arm in Eleanor’s and led her towards the reporters seated around an open-air table at the Tiergarten Café. Gallico walked behind them. ‘Don’t be shy,’ Martha whispered. ‘Thomas Wolfe’s a sweetheart.’ The low cloud of the day before had returned, but Eleanor wore her sunglasses nonetheless. Somewhere in the trees a loudspeaker was blaring out the Radetzky March.

  The four men stood as Eleanor’s party approached. What an odd pair we must look, she thought. Martha was so short her head barely reached Eleanor’s shoulder.

  ‘Lord, don’t say you’ve eaten breakfast already,’ Martha said in the high, silvery voice she reserved for male company.
‘We’re starving. Hello, Walter. Hello, Tom. Hello, Bill. May I introduce Eleanor Emerson, who is staying as our guest for the duration of the Games?’ Pat Murphy introduced himself.

  ‘Mrs Emerson,’ said Thomas Wolfe. ‘Your fame precedes you.’ He was a hulking great man; her hand seemed lost in his.

  Eleanor groaned. ‘You’re too kind, but please don’t offer me champagne. I don’t want to get thrown out of Berlin tomorrow.’

  The men laughed politely.

  Wolfe said, ‘You know, news of your being, uh, released from the US team has been all over the dailies back home, and not just the sports pages.’

  ‘Well, it’s not exactly what I wanted to be famous for.’

  Coffee, eggs, and strudels were ordered; then to Eleanor’s embarrassment Martha began recounting for the men’s amusement the incidents of the voyage, with her run-ins with Brundage and the moments of her shame and disgrace told in an uproarious parody, so that by the end of the story she’d been made to sound like some tipsy Mae West in a game of truth or dare with Ming the Merciless. The reporters barked with laughter, drawing the attention of people at the other tables. This set off an intense round of gossip and rumour swapping as the men dished up what they’d heard about the regime’s stage management of the Olympics. Eleanor glanced at Gallico for support, and met a look of ferocious sympathy. What a dear man you are, she thought, and thank God I didn’t tell Martha about Herb. I’ll never see the funny side of that story.

  Martha Dodd was twenty-eight years old, and petite, with a girlish round face and widely set eyes of a startling blue. She hosted literary parties, adored intrigue, and relished arguments—most unlike her father, the solemn Ambassador William E Dodd. Unfortunately for Eleanor, the girl’s sharp repartee could often sound like bitchiness; she seemed to think Eleanor’s ‘news column’ at the same time important and comical, which probably meant that she saw her guest as a bit of a joke. And why wouldn’t she, Eleanor thought. I was good at one thing and one thing only, and I blew it.