by David John
Jakob put down the bottle and gave her a quizzical look. ‘How is it you know about that?’ he asked.
‘Richard arranged it all. He negotiated with Heydrich.’
Jakob and Ilse met each other’s eyes.
‘Why would Herr Denham do something like that?’ said Ilse. There was a hard undertone to her voice.
‘He’s getting you out,’ said Eleanor. ‘He’s made a deal . . .’ She looked right at Jakob. ‘We got the dossier.’
The confusion on his face seemed to still. After a long pause, he said, ‘Go on.’
‘You’re being taken over the border to the Netherlands, then to England. Hannah, too. Isn’t there an official car coming to collect you early tomorrow morning?’
‘The Netherlands?’ Jakob stared at her, incredulous. ‘An SS car is indeed coming for us, but on Saturday, the day after tomorrow, at seven a.m. It is taking us to Basel on the Swiss border.’
Denham watched from the window of his room as the storm gathered pace. Ragged black clouds tore across the darkening sky. The gale blew unhindered over the bare land, picking up clods of earth and bark and gravel.
Suddenly a series of cracks like a twenty-one-gun salute, and he saw the farthest poplar tree topple, splintering with a slow, woody groan as it came down on the electricity cables. Sparks fell to the ground, and the lights in the hotel went out.
‘Basel?’ Eleanor told herself to breathe to allay panic. She sat down slowly on the sofa.
‘We know nothing about a deal,’ said Jakob, shaking his head and handing her a cognac. ‘My Swiss lawyer informed the SS that he would only transfer my accounts to them if Ilse and I attend in person to sign the documents in his office in Basel. He wants to make sure we are not being forced against our will. Of course, there will be SS men accompanying us all the way . . . to make sure there’s no slip of the pen. Then they are bringing us back home.’
‘But Richard is waiting for you at the border in Holland tomorrow afternoon,’ Eleanor said, struggling not to shout, the questions beginning to cluster in her head. ‘And Heydrich—he agreed you could keep your fortune . . .’
‘I think you know the types we’re dealing with,’ Jakob said, sounding infinitely tired. ‘Clearly, you have been deceived. As to the money, I have no choice, and have accepted as much. The authorities demand extortionate sums each month in fees for Hannah’s confinement at a sanatorium in Frankfurt. I am turning over some accounts to them in compensation for the cost of her treatment,’ he said with a feeble attempt at irony. He knocked back his cognac and sighed, staring into the lamp. ‘So . . . the dossier found you in the end . . .’
‘But there is one good thing,’ Ilse said. ‘We will be allowed to visit her on the way there. We are breaking the journey at Frankfurt. We have not seen her since last summer.’
Eleanor swirled the cognac around in her glass. She got up and paced the room, looking into the ghostly spaces where the pictures had been. She picked up china ornaments and put them down again carefully. When she turned back to Jakob and Ilse, they were watching her with an odd expression, she thought, almost with a kind of humour and admiration. Perhaps she’d done something to remind them of their daughter.
‘All right,’ she said firmly. ‘We’re going to try something. To put a stop to this. You say you’re being driven to Frankfurt on Saturday, the day after tomorrow. How many hours is that from here?’
An hour later she was riding through the warm Berlin night, her taxi speeding through the deserted streets of the Grunewald, along the Königsallee to the floodlit Hotel Kempinski on the Ku’damm, still swarming with traffic, diners at café tables, departing movie-theatre crowds, and smart girls linking arms with men in epaulettes. She flashed a smile at the hotel commissionaire and was directed by the receptionist to a room on the fourth floor. A puzzled Dr Eckener opened the door in a long silk bathrobe and slippers. The butt of a cigar was wedged into the side of his mouth.
‘Dr Eckener,’ Eleanor said, with the adrenaline singing in her chest. ‘May I talk to you?’
Chapter Forty-eight
The morning light exposed the devastation wrought by the storm. The Venhoven road was strewn with branches and litter, and what little hedge and vegetation there was on the farmland along the frontier had been flattened. The proprietor apologised. There would be nothing hot for breakfast, as power was still cut. The telephone lines were down, too.
Denham checked that the Morris Oxford had come through the night unscathed, cleaned the windscreen, filled the tank with a petrol can from the filling station, then took the blankets from the boot to make the backseat comfortable for the arrivals. After that he returned to the hotel café to wait until the appointed hour. Five p.m. allowed plenty of time for the SD to bring Hannah from Frankfurt and the Liebermanns from Berlin. He wanted to know how far the storm had reached and whether it would stop them getting there, but there was no radio and no news.
‘The operator says the lines are down,’ Martha said, turning to Eleanor in the hall at Tiergartenstrasse. She still had the telephone to her ear.
Eleanor felt her panic rising. How the hell was she going to warn him? Her first thought had been that the SD wouldn’t turn up for their meeting with Richard. A half second later she’d realised with a sickening jolt that they certainly would. They thought he had the damned dossier.
‘Look at you, you’re a nervous wreck,’ Martha said, sounding irritable. Again she pressed a cold flannel to her forehead. Martha had a hangover, and Eleanor’s crisis was probably the last thing she needed. ‘I don’t know what is going on but I wish you’d tell me. If you and Richard are in some sort of trouble—’
‘There must be a radio mast at Venhoven,’ Eleanor said, her breath fading from her voice.
She sat down on the hall chair and felt herself crumple. When she looked up, Martha was handing her the cold flannel. She took it and dabbed her eyes and swollen face, breathed in, and slowly composed herself.
‘How about a walk in the zoo,’ she said. ‘You’re right. I’ve got some explaining to do.’
By lunchtime the rain had started again, coming down in even strokes. Denham paid the hotel bill, retrieved his belongings from the safe, and paced the deserted café, watching the road to the frontier while Friedl sat at a table reading Hemingway’s latest, To Have and Have Not.
‘What’s it like?’ Denham asked.
Friedl glanced up. ‘A lot better than No Parts for Stella.’
Every two minutes Denham rose from his chair in agitation.
Finally, with less than an hour left before the appointed time, he could bear it no longer.
‘Let’s wait outside,’ Denham said. ‘Sitting in here is trying my nerves.’
They stood on the wet gravel forecourt next to the car, all packed and ready to go. Denham had a mounting sense of dread and returned to the hotel to use the lavatory.
At a few minutes before five they spotted a large black Mercedes-Benz, sleek with rain, approaching the frontier from the German side.
They watched as the striped barrier was raised and the Mercedes proceeded, pausing at the Dutch customs house. With a flutter of nerves Richard opened the car and took out the old satchel in which he’d placed the bogus dossier. They could see the tiny figure of a customs official speaking into the passenger window, taking the passports to check—another minute—then waving the car on. Now it sped on down the road towards them, a flash of sun catching the chrome of its fender.
Behind them was the sound of someone panting.
They turned to see a lad getting off a bicycle. He had been cycling into the wind. He took his cap off, wiped his brow with his sleeve, smiled, and said something to them in Dutch, then walked up to the hotel, taking an envelope from his shoulder bag.
The Mercedes was about two hundred yards away. They could hear the growl of its engine descending through the gears.
‘Hallo.’
The proprietor was waving from the steps of the hotel and pointing at th
em, and the lad was ambling back in their direction, pushing his bicycle and holding out the telegram envelope. Denham took it from him and tore it open. The printed words struck a series of hard chimes in his head.
ITS A TRAP CONTACT DODDS URGENT
‘Get in the car,’ he shouted. ‘Now.’
Friedl didn’t ask questions. They jumped in.
Too late.
The black Mercedes was turning into the gravel forecourt. By instinct both of them slunk low into their seats, hiding behind the rain-beaded windscreen. The Mercedes’ long running board, polished bodywork, hubcaps, and taillights passed slowly in front of them like a hearse, purring towards the hotel building. It came to a halt, and all four doors opened at once. Four men in black leather coats jumped out and ran to the door of the hotel. The one in the lead, leaping up the steps, held a Luger in his hand.
Denham turned the key in the ignition. The starter motor whined and died.
‘Go, go, go,’ Friedl shouted, hitting the dashboard with the palm of his hand.
Another attempt, and a metallic strangle.
Denham tried again. The engine fired twice and spluttered into life. He revved, then released the hand brake, and the car shot forwards. Swinging the steering wheel they slewed out of the forecourt, throwing up a hail of gravel, and started turning right, towards Venhoven.
Suddenly a thundering blast of horns and a heavy goods truck was heading right at them. The car was too far into the road to brake and stop. In a reflex action Denham pulled the steering wheel left, swerving the car round with a screech of the tyres.
‘Not to the border,’ Friedl shouted, his hands clutched to the sides of his head.
‘That truck’s right behind us,’ Denham said. ‘By the time I turn around the Germans will be out of the hotel and looking to see where our car went.’
‘Oh, shit.’
The frontier was looming before them, flags flying.
‘I’m wanted by the SD in Germany,’ Friedl said, his voice tight with terror.
In the rearview mirror Denham saw one of the leather coats come out from the hotel, then another. Both were looking in the opposite direction, along the road into Venhoven, but then the truck obscured the view. With a little luck, thought Denham, they had not seen which way the car had gone.
The Dutch border guard waved them through with only a glance at their passports. As he slowed for the German Kontrolle Denham struggled for breath. ‘Think of it this way,’ he said, as much to calm himself as Friedl, ‘we’ve gone in the one direction they won’t expect us to go.’
There seemed to be a Friday evening laxness at the barrier. One of the inspectors made a remark that drew laughter from the other. Denham handed over their passports with a smile.
‘What’s the purpose of your visit?’ said the man through the passenger window, still grinning from some joke.
‘Visiting friends for the evening in MÜnchen-Gladbach,’ Denham said as casually as he could. The inspector disappeared into the Kontrolle with the passports.
‘It’s a rural crossing,’ Denham said in a low voice. ‘They won’t be on the lookout for you going in.’
‘And coming out?’
A minute later the man emerged with their passports stamped and handed them back through the window. ‘Wilkommen im Deutschen Reich—’
The striped barrier was raised, and they drove on beneath a sign painted with an enormous black eagle, its claws splayed.
Chapter Forty-nine
In less fraught circumstances Eleanor might have found comedy in the mounting amazement on Martha’s face. As soon as they had reached the zoo she told her everything—or almost everything. The dangerous truth of the List Dossier, hidden in her case in the bedroom at Tiergartenstrasse, she had kept to herself, telling Martha only that the exchange involved the return of some munitions plans. When she explained the SD trap in which Richard was sitting, Martha’s mouth fell open, timed perfectly with a squawk from a nearby cockatoo. But after a few stunned seconds, she showed a resolve that Eleanor would forever after admire, and saved her questions until they’d run to the embassy and warned Richard by radio telegram.
What Eleanor told her afterwards in the embassy garden, where they’d gone for a calming cigarette, astonished her even more, if that were possible.
‘How do you plan to do that?’ she shrieked.
‘I’ll hire a car and drive?’ Eleanor said dubiously.
Martha lowered her voice. ‘Darling, this isn’t like last August, when there were thousands of foreigners here. You’re conspicuous.’
Eleanor was about to argue, but she knew Martha was right. And Richard had more than warned her.
They were both quiet for a minute, smoking with quick, deep drags.
‘We’ll go in Mother’s car,’ Martha said suddenly. ‘It’s less suspicious if I’m with you . . .’
‘Oh, no, Martha,’ Eleanor said, alarmed.
‘ . . . I’ll tell Dad we’re touring the new autobahn . . .’
Eleanor grabbed her friend’s elbow. ‘You are not getting involved in this.’
Within minutes of crossing into Germany Denham turned off the main route east and onto a sequence of minor roads, still strewn with branches and mud from the storm. They drove through villages with steep gabled houses, neat red-brick churches, and rolling farmland. The most glaring difference from the Netherlands, only a mile away, was the signs on the outskirts to each town and village, of warning. JEWS NOT WELCOME IN KALDENKIRCHEN; JEWS MUST NOT STOP IN HÖLST! Some villages proclaimed themselves JUDENREIN—pure of Jews.
If the SD had seen them head to the frontier, then their head start on that Mercedes-Benz was only a matter of minutes. The Kontrolle inspector would confirm that they’d passed into Germany. Denham told himself that this wasn’t necessarily a complete catastrophe. There were some factors in his favour: he spoke the language; he knew the country. And Eleanor was here. But the truth was he knew there were dire factors against them. Friedl kept a lookout on the road behind but saw no one on their tail.
They’d been double-crossed by Heydrich. Of course they had. How did he ever think they wouldn’t be? But he was consoled by one thought: it had gone wrong for Heydrich, too.
At the market town of Viersen, some fifteen miles from the border, Denham parked in a quiet street behind a church just off the town square, taking only the satchel with his documents and passport. May Day banners with emblems of spades and corn sheaves hung dripping from the lampposts.
He found a telephone booth in the local hotel—the Westfalen-Stübchen. ‘They’re still fixing the lines,’ the landlord said, drawing beer into a tall glass. ‘But you might be in luck.’
Denham called the Dodds’ number at Tiergartenstrasse. To his surprise, Eleanor answered, and almost immediately.
‘Oh Budd, darling, I’m so glad to hear from you. Sidney Dean is here, too. He’s listening on the extension. How are you, dear?’
‘Safe and well at the moment. Just came back east, but you know how it is. My old creditors are after me.’
‘You’re back east? Oh, uh, how are you fixed tomorrow, sweetheart? Martha and I are having a reunion with Lester and Eileen Linderhofer and their daughter in Hamburg. It would be a blast if you could make it. They’d love to see you.’
‘Hamburg.’
‘Yes, you remember. We discussed it that day we had the picnic during the Olympics. It’ll just be a quick visit; then I thought we’d all take off together, you know, somewhere with a change of air.’
‘I’ll be there.’
‘I’m so pleased. It’s been arranged. Hotel Hamburger Hof at six p.m. Bye, Budd.’
‘Bye, Eleanor. Bye, Sidney.’
Denham put the telephone down in a daze.
Friedl was waiting for him outside the telephone booth, chewing a bread roll with cheese. ‘The baker over the road gave me these for free,’ he said with his mouth full. ‘It’s the end of the day.’ He offered one to Denham from a paper bag.
They walked out of the hotel bar just as a local Brownshirt Sturmführer was entering, rubbing his hands, ready to begin the weekend’s drinking. He smiled at them both with a leery red face. ‘Heil Hitler!’
Quickly crossing the town square towards the church, Denham explained what Eleanor had told him.
‘Hamburg!’
‘Ye-es . . .’ Denham hesitated. And then it came to him. ‘It’s plain-code,’ he said, remembering that far-off picnic lunch they’d shared in the sunshine after watching Hannah fence.
‘Your frankfurter looks nicer than my hamburger . . .’
‘She means Frankfurt, that’s what she was trying to tell me. She couldn’t say it because the SD had wired the telephone. What’s the grand hotel in Frankfurt?’
‘Frankfurter Hof.’
‘We’re meeting her there at six p.m. tomorrow.’
‘That’s a long way,’ Friedl said, kicking a pebble.
‘We’re going to have to trust her. She was shocked to learn that we’re in Germany but I think she may have a way out . . . We could drive to Cologne tonight—that’s not so far—then take the train from there to Frankfurt tomorrow morning. But we’ll have to ditch the car as soon as it’s light. British number plates will be like fresh meat to a police dog.’
‘But why Frankfurt?’
‘It’s a big transport hub, I guess, and because Hannah and her parents are going to be there. Don’t ask me why or how.’
They turned the corner into the narrow street behind the church where they’d left the Morris Oxford, and stopped dead.
Two policemen in green Orpo uniforms were on either side of the car, one of them crouched with his hand to the side window to shield the light, looking inside. The Orpo wagon was parked behind it.
Denham grabbed Friedl’s arm and together they spun on their heels and walked briskly back the way they had come.
‘Did you take your passport out?’ Denham said.
Friedl nodded and patted his breast pocket.
‘They’ll have alerted the local stations. If they’ve got our car, then they’ll expect us to be on a train or a bus out of here . . .’