Flight From Berlin: A Novel

by David John

  The room fell still.

  She had the sensation of a tide turning as every foot and chair scraped and shifted around and faced in her direction. Faces looked at her eagerly, notepads on knees and pencils at the ready. Then all the questions began at once.

  ‘Ma’am, who’s this guy? Colleague of yours?’

  ‘Did he get an interview with Liebermann?’

  ‘How long’s he been in the cells?’

  And Eleanor found herself giving her own press conference, with Gallico standing behind her, amused and shaking his head at the ceiling. The room filled with the dry rustle of 150 pencils taking shorthand.

  ‘Did you say the Gestapo have got Denham?’ said a lanky, grey-haired Englishman pushing his way through the pack, his pipe smouldering like a paddle steamer’s. ‘Well, who the bloody hell’s getting him out?’ he shouted.

  Early that evening Gallico rang the bell at the Dodds’ house on Tiergartenstrasse and invited Eleanor for a stroll. The humidity still hadn’t lifted. They bought ice creams from a stall near the Tiergarten and walked along the edge of the park, up the Hermann-Göring-Strasse towards the Brandenburg Gate. Cries of parakeets and howler monkeys reached them from the zoo.

  ‘So you gave Brundage a hard time?’ she asked.

  ‘Well, he denied everything of course and looked like he wanted the floor to swallow him up. First time we’ve ever seen him break a sweat . . .’

  Gallico’s voice trailed off.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Sweetheart, listen,’ he said, hesitating. ‘You may as well hear this from me first . . .’

  ‘What is it?’ She felt her stomach turn cold.

  ‘There’s a report on the wire of an interview your husband’s given to the New York Post. Said your behaviour on board the Manhattan embarrassed him. Made him think you weren’t the blushing flower he married . . . He doesn’t want you singing with the Herb Emerson Orchestra anymore. Says he needs time apart.’

  Eleanor exhaled loudly and realised she’d been holding her breath.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, almost wanting to cry with relief, but started giggling instead, to Gallico’s bemusement. ‘I thought you were going to tell me Richard had been . . .’ She put her arms around him and hugged him. ‘Thanks for letting me know.’

  ‘You’re not upset?’

  ‘Not at all. If anything, it just made my life a whole lot better.’

  When they reached Unter den Linden Eleanor suggested a coffee at the Adlon. The first person she saw in the lobby was that lanky Englishman, Rex Palmer-Ward, talking to a group of reporters near the fountain. He spotted her and approached trailing a veil of sweet-smelling smoke.

  ‘My dear,’ he said. ‘There’s been a development.’

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Searchlights lit Berlin’s new showcase airport, creating a theatrical effect from the blood-red flags, silver eagles, and rows of regimented windows: the hallmarks of the brutal new style.

  ‘I haven’t packed,’ Denham mumbled to the three SD men escorting him in the BMW.

  ‘You’re going straight on the flight.’

  One of the men showed Denham’s passport at the desk, then escorted him past the brass rail, out onto the runway, and towards the steps of the plane. Its silver fuselage glinted under the lights. The baggage hold was closing and the fuel truck reversing away. The propellers began to turn. In the door of the plane a young stewardess was beckoning for them to hurry.

  Denham reached the steps just as the engines began to roar, but before he could climb inside, the SD man grabbed his elbow. With his other hand holding on to his trilby he yelled, ‘Make any attempt to reenter the Reich and it’s straight back to the cells. Understand?’

  ‘I’m not coming back,’ Denham said, taking his passport from the man’s hand.

  He hobbled through the door of the plane and said hello to the stewardess, seeing the effect of his ravaged face in her eyes. Pretty eyes, too. Iceberg blue. Inside the cabin were about sixteen tall, upholstered seats, all occupied, except one. In their haste to flush him out of their Aryan paradise, Denham guessed they’d bumped someone off the flight. At least he had a window seat. He eased himself in with care, trying not to faint from the hot pokers in his ribs.

  The plane began to move. It rumbled along the runway for a minute; then the engine noise swelled in pitch, there was a sudden acceleration, and they were away, up out of the Reich. Trying not to rest his stitched-up brow against the window he watched the spider’s web of illuminated streets radiating from Potsdamer Platz station, the long line of car taillights passing along the Tiergarten, the dark mass of the zoo and its lakes. Drifts of cloud slipped over the wing. A few minutes later they were over the western districts of Wilmersdorf, Charlottenburg, and Spandau, and Berlin was stretching away behind them.

  Iceberg Eyes asked if he’d like a drink. He winked at her and asked for a triple whisky, neat, and some aspirin.

  ‘I’ll have the same,’ said an American voice. ‘Without the aspirin.’

  Eleanor stood in the aisle, smiling at the man seated next to him, asking if he wouldn’t mind swapping seats. Denham had never seen her look so lovely. She was in a navy suit with a marocain blouse and had her hair held up by a black felt band with a ribbon.

  He blinked, fearing another hallucination like the ones that had haunted his cell. Maybe in truth he was still there, doped on morphine and comatose, incapable of breaking through the surface to reality, and not wanting to.

  ‘You sure took your time,’ she said, sitting down next to him.

  He touched her forehead with his finger.

  ‘It’s me, Richard. I’m real. This is real.’ She kissed him gently on his swollen lips.

  ‘How did you . . . ?’

  But it didn’t matter for now. He put his arms around her, and pressed his face to hers, ignoring the agony in his hand, cheek, and ribs. He began to cry.

  ‘I don’t look too grand, do I?’

  She took his bandaged hand and kissed it. ‘I think you’re the grandest person on earth.’

  They downed their drinks, and Eleanor said, ‘Sleep for a while. Then we’ll talk.’

  Denham drifted off to the hum of the propellers and the stewardess announcing, ‘Our flight time over the Reich is one and a half hours; we land at Croydon Airfield, London, in four hours . . .’

  He awoke with the word ‘home’ on his lips and realised that Tom had been swimming through his dream. The cabin lights were off, and he looked out of the window at great ranges of clouds, towering white in the moonlight and plunging into silvery canyons and crevasses. Where are you hiding, son?

  ‘The stars look like ice crystals, don’t they?’ Eleanor said softly. She was curled sideways into her seat, watching him, a blanket wrapped around her.

  ‘Did you get me released?’ he asked.

  ‘Uh-huh.’ She nodded with a sleepy smile.

  ‘Did they really kill Roland?’

  Her face fell. ‘You know about that?’

  ‘I heard the broadcast.’

  She sat up and began to tell him what had happened. The murder of Roland at Haeckel’s hands. Hannah’s victory and the broadcast.

  She explained how Sir Eric Phipps approached no less a person than Heydrich himself, sitting behind Hitler at the Olympic stadium, and demanded Denham’s release, or to see him the same day.

  ‘Some people in high places like you, buddy. This SS big shot Heydrich told him there was an espionage charge against you, but it sounded so vague that Sir Eric asked if it wasn’t really a crock o’ shit—but in diplomatic language, of course. Meanwhile your old friend Rex Palmer-Ward and others in the press corps put pressure on that prize asshole Greiser to confirm what I’d told them about you being held in the Gestapo cells for talking to Liebermann . . . The Germans panicked, afraid of another scandal hot on the heels of Liebermann while the Games were still on. But it seems they were also worried about upsetting you Brits. Eric Phipps is the brother-in-l
aw of Sir Fancy-Tart . . .’

  ‘Sir Robert Vansittart?’

  ‘Yeah, tall fellow, talks with a potato in his throat. Apparently he has a hell of a sway over your foreign policy. So the krauts made a snap decision to deport you, and I got on the same flight.’

  ‘I’m nothing but trouble.’

  ‘Hey . . . ,’ she whispered, smoothing his hair.

  ‘And Tom . . .’

  ‘We’ll find him.’

  They sat, holding each other’s hands for a while in silence, before Denham said, ‘Did anyone mention a dossier?’

  Eleanor shook her head. ‘A dossier?’

  He peered out into the darkness, but could see nothing but the reflection of his own face in the glass.

  Part II

  Chapter Twenty-five

  It was after midnight when their taxi arrived at Primrose Hill. That had been a problem: where to go. He hadn’t lived in London for nearly six years, and he doubted that Anna would open her house to a neglectful former husband and his much-younger American companion.

  ‘How are your breaking-and-entering skills?’ he’d asked.

  ‘I can smash a window with a brick.’

  A light rain fell as he looked up at the three-storey terrace house on Chamberlain Street, reminding him that he had no coat or, indeed, any luggage. With luck there would be some clothes in the house, albeit superannuated by moths and fashion.

  ‘Who lives here?’ Eleanor said, looking up at the peeling gloss and the pale-brick walls overgrown with Virginia creeper and wisteria. The windows were dark and sightless, with heavy wooden shutters behind the glass.

  ‘It’s been closed up since my father died. Couldn’t bring myself to sell it.’

  The front door was too sturdy an obstacle to break without waking the street, so Denham carefully descended the narrow steps that led to the basement door. At the foot of the steps he trod on a piece of buttered bread lying on the gravel. It was dusted with splinters of glass that glittered in the light from the streetlamp, and he saw that it had been employed, recently it seemed, to break the glass of the basement door noiselessly.

  ‘We’ve been burgled,’ he called up. Gingerly he put his hand through the broken glass and opened the door, his shoe crunching on the shards that lay on the floor inside. ‘Have you got a match?’

  Together they crept into the basement. Years ago his father had used it as a workshop. Now it resembled some long-ransacked tomb. The detritus of small motors covered the table, ghostly in the match light, and the air smelled musty with damp and diesel oil. Technical drawings furred in dust were scattered over the floor.

  ‘Holy crap,’ Eleanor cried, startled when Denham kicked a fuse box in the dark, sending it thumping across the floor.

  In the hall Denham lit another match and entered the kitchen. Silhouettes played behind the old iron stove and the rows of enamelled plates. It was like having the pages of a half-remembered childhood book opened for him again.

  ‘I think our burglar stayed for dinner,’ Eleanor whispered, pointing to a plate with crumbs and smeared butter. On the table were two curling crusts of brown bread, some sour-looking green apples, and an empty tin of corned beef. On a chair was a purple kite Denham recognised, and a comic book opened to a strip featuring Corky the Cat.

  ‘I think I know who came calling,’ he said. He lit another match, walked across the hall, and, putting two fingers in his mouth, made a loud whistle up the stairs.

  Silence for a few seconds, then a thudding commotion from somewhere at the top of the house, as if someone were erecting a barricade of chairs and mattresses.

  A boy’s voice, terrified. ‘Who’s there?’

  ‘Come and say hello to your dad.’

  Another moment’s silence, then the sudden sound of running feet, and Tom came bounding down the two flights into his father’s arms. He was clasped so tightly against Denham’s wounds that the pain shot orange stars through his eyes. He didn’t care.

  ‘Oh, Tom.’

  The match went out, and in the darkness Denham smelled earth and bark and liquorice in his son’s hair, and when his small voice spoke it was with a soft whistle. He had lost his two front teeth, like the apparition in the cell. Maybe it was Tom’s spirit that had come to him after all.

  ‘Are you going to stay this time?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Denham, struggling under the emotion in his voice. ‘Daddy’s not leaving again.’

  Tom’s voice fell to a whisper. ‘Who’s in there?’

  It was easier to see in the kitchen, where the city glow of the clouds shone through a window over the sink. Beyond it was a garden, dark and overgrown. Eleanor stood tall and graceful in the spectral light. A figure from a dream.

  ‘Her name’s Eleanor,’ Denham whispered. ‘She’s from New York.’ He led Tom by the hand into the kitchen. ‘She’s a special friend of mine.’

  ‘Thomas Denham, how d’you do?’ said Tom, stiffly offering his hand.

  ‘Great to meet you, kid.’ Eleanor took his hand and pulled him into a hug. ‘Mind if we stay at your hideout?’

  Denham found a penny in a drawer in the hall and went out to call Anna from the telephone box on Regent’s Park Road. She wailed when he told her; her tragedy salved in an instant by the news. ‘He’s safe and well,’ Denham said. ‘I’ll bring him up first thing in the morning.’

  When he returned, Eleanor was chatting with Tom, who was helping her make corned beef sandwiches in the light of a paraffin lamp. The bread was stale, but with a few slices of sharp green apple as relish, and Tom’s obvious joy, the meal felt like a treat. Denham tried abridging their adventures for an eight-year-old’s consumption as he explained about his injuries to a concerned son, telling him the police challenged him to a boxing match, but one question led to another in the boy’s eager mind, as he listed all of the ploys Charlie Chan would have used, until it was very late and his father was exhausted.

  ‘We’ll tell you the rest over breakfast,’ Denham said. ‘But now to bed. Your dad has to sleep.’

  ‘Will Eleanor be here for breakfast, too?’ Tom whispered.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good.’

  The mattress in the master bedroom might have been a century old and not aired in just as long. Denham sat on the edge, his hands resting on the springs, and watched Eleanor undress in front of him without a word, standing amid the shadows and the cobwebs.

  She took out a hairpin, gave her head a small shake, and her hair fell around her neck. She reached beneath her hem, undid her garters with a secret movement of her fingers, and slowly slid her stockings down over her smooth, long legs. He hesitated, shyness yielding to desire, then took her hand and held it to his face. They kissed, lips and tongues just caressing, breath quickening. She undid her blouse, holding his gaze as it shimmered from her shoulders to the floor. Pale breasts in a white-silk bra.

  Gently he touched them, running his thumb under the silk strap. Then she reached behind her back, and the bra, too, came away.

  Getting out of his own clothes was a challenge, and he winced as she helped him out of his shirt.

  They lay back on the bed. The house seemed to creak, as if turning over in its sleep. She had on only her white-silk panties. Her skin was translucent, as if she were absorbing the faint lamplight from the street. Their faces in shadow, he whispered in her ear. She gave a soft, complicit laugh, then slipped the panties off.

  None of the men noticed him crouching in the corner of the control car. They were flying blind: rain and hail dashed the windows from the darkness outside. Their faces were illuminated by the radium glow from the dials on the instruments. The propeller engines were making every surface tremble. One of the men turned and saw him. It was his father, who smiled in the apologetic way he had. A slide rule and pencils in his top pocket. Denham tried to call out but couldn’t be heard over the roar of wind and engines. His father winked at him sadly, opened his hand to reveal the pocket watch, and Denham understood that everything wa
s lost. Suddenly the engines started making a violent hammering sound, and he awoke to realise that the hammering was at the front door.

  He lay still, breathing fast. Tiny rays filtered through the tattered curtains. He heard the milk horse clopping down Regent’s Park Road. Eleanor was still in a deep sleep next to him, her arm linked in his. The hammering sounded again.

  He heard Tom running down the stairs to the hall, talking to himself.

  Denham shouted, ‘No,’ and started to get up but the pain in his ribs forced him back onto the mattress. Eleanor stirred.

  Moments later Tom called up the stairs from the hall.

  ‘Dad, a man wants you.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘He’s got a bowler hat.’

  Chapter Twenty-six

  David Wyn Evans was waiting in the Hole-in-the-Wall café near the bridge on Regent’s Park Road. He got up when Denham entered, took off his hat, and muttered something, which may have been an oath in Welsh, on seeing Denham’s face.

  ‘You’re getting that seen to, I hope?’

  ‘How did you find me?’

  ‘Ah.’ Evans smiled with regret, as if he were a magician being asked to reveal his tricks.

  They sat down just as the waitress placed a fried breakfast on the table. ‘Full English?’ Evans said to him. ‘They do kidneys here, and kedgeree.’

  ‘Just tea,’ Denham said to the girl, reaching into his jacket for cigarettes and finding with a shock the full packet of HBs Rausch had given him in the cell.

  He and Evans were the only patrons. The sign on the door had been changed to CLOSED without him noticing, and Bowler Hat Man stood guard outside next to a black government car.

  ‘I’m glad to see you at liberty,’ Evans said, giving his plate a liberal sprinkling of salt. ‘Sir Eric kicked up quite a fuss to get you out of there, I can tell you.’

  ‘They thought I had something that they want as much as you do.’