She hesitated for some moments before taking a key from her apron pocket. I made my way across the room to the glass panelled door. After locking it, I pulled down the blind. I looked back to where she was sitting. Satisfied that no one could see us from either of the bay windows or the narrow windows at the side of the door, I returned to my seat and gave her back the key.
She clasped her hands around it as if it would reinforce what she wanted to say. ‘You are my first customer in months.’ She must have noticed the look of surprise on my face. ‘I expect you wonder why I keep the café open.’
‘It is up to you, madam, it is your business.’
‘No. It is not. This café belongs to an old friend of my husband who has disappeared. His wife asked me to run it for him until he returns.’ She shook her head. ‘I fear he will never do that.
‘My husband and I had a restaurant on Potsdamer Platz. It was very popular.’ The lines on her forehead smoothed and her face softened. ‘My husband was a magnificent chef. The cuisine was International. Our clients enjoyed French dishes, Italian, some Jewish dishes - in the way the food was prepared - and of course traditional German fare.’
Her face lit up remembering that time. ‘People came from all over Berlin and from much further away to eat there.’ Tears filled the woman’s eyes again, and she looked away. ‘Enjoy your coffee, sir,’ she said, pushing herself up from the table.
I put my hand out and touched her arm to stop her from leaving. She froze. The look of terror on her face made me withdraw my hand at once. ‘I’m sorry I startled you. Please do not be frightened. I was going to ask why you and your husband left the restaurant on Potsdamer Platz.’
She gave me a nod and sat down again. ‘Brownshirts began to frequent the restaurant. One or two in the beginning, but then more. They were loud, rude to other customers, and disrespectful about my religion, about Jews. The more brownshirts that came, the more our regular customers stayed away. In the end it was just them. Thugs in brown shirts paving the way for their Nazi masters.’
‘And your husband?’
‘Beaten and left for dead one night in the alley behind the restaurant. A Jewish couple found him, or he would have died in the alley. They took him to hospital, but he died waiting for a doctor to see him. So, when I was told to leave or go the way of my husband, I left. I was allowed to take my clothes and some photographs of my family, but not my jewellery, silver, or the paintings my husband had collected over the years. They did not allow me to take anything of value. Friends I knew from the Synagogue, which had been burned down the year before, helped me to move my few belongings into the small apartment above the café. It is furnished. Not in the way my own home was, but–’ She looked up, and then broke down and sobbed.
I left the table and went to the counter, to give her some time to cry. I took a cup and more milk and returned to her. I poured her a cup of coffee and topped up my own.
‘You must think me ungrateful,’ she said. ‘At least for the time being I have a roof over my head. What will happen after the Olympic Games?’ She clicked her tongue. ‘Who knows. Thank God for the foreign visitors. It is only because of them that my windows and doors are not daubed with hate slogans. Until recently, shops owned by Jewish people, “untermenschen” subhuman beings, as the Chancellor calls us, were made to paint yellow stars on their doors. And shops owned by what he calls his Aryan people - blonde blue-eyed Germans - had signs in their windows saying, Achtung Juden - No Jews here.’
At six o’clock I said goodbye. I hadn’t asked her her name. I hadn’t told her mine. I said I would be at the Olympic Stadium the next day, but would see her for lunch the day after.
She said she would make me a Viennese dish, Fiaker goulash with Sacher sausages. ‘It was a speciality of my late husband, and very popular at the restaurant on Potsdamer.’
I told her I looked forward to sampling the special dish, shook her hand and said goodbye.
She let me out of the café and closed the door. I looked over my shoulder and waved. She smiled and waved back. In the four hours I was in the café that was the only time I had seen her smile.
Walking back to my hotel, I ventured down some narrow alleys and passageways and saw for myself the hatred that was painted on the doors and windows of the Jewish residents who lived there.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
I can’t remember a time in my life that I had been more pleased than I was when I was called back to England, the weekend after the Games ended. Walter and Frieda wanted me to stay on, go to the country with them, but I’d had enough, seen enough. There had been too many changes since I was last there. It wasn’t the Berlin I’d grown up in, not that I expected it to be. The German capital now boasted the most modern airport, railway station and trains, the widest highways and the most efficient automobiles. Berlin, with its new buildings built with Nazi money, wanted to show the world that it was not only the most magnificent city in Germany, but it was the most magnificent capital in Europe. However, to attain such status, the new regime had breathed hatred and fear into many of its citizens. Places change, evolve, grow, but generally people stay the same. The Berliners of my youth, neighbours, shopkeepers, my parents’ colleagues and friends were open and friendly. Not anymore.
I called to say goodbye to the Jewish woman at the café. It was in darkness. I put my hand up to shade my eyes and leaned my forehead on the glass of the bay window. The tables had been stripped of their embroidered tablecloths, and chairs had been turned upside down and stacked on top of them. The stove was still there but the coffee maker had gone, the shelves were empty and there were no cakes on the counter. Achtung Juden! was written on the mirror that ran the length of the wall and a yellow star had been painted on the door.
I was sickened by what I had seen. I told Walter about the woman and the Nazi slogans. I criticised Hitler and his Nazi party, but Walter praised him and extolled the party’s virtues.
My cases were packed and I was ready to leave when Highsmith turned up with my plane ticket home. Someone was taking my place as an observer, he told me. Someone not from the paper, but from British Intelligence.
I was happy to give up my dream of being a foreign correspondent when the war began. In my naivety I thought by fighting the Germans I might make amends for my folly in Berlin. I had my papers to join up, but it was not to be. Because I was fluent in German I was sent to the south coast and ended up plotting the routes of the Luftwaffe and translating what the pilots reported back to Germany. I enjoyed the job and although I wasn’t on the front line, I felt I was doing something worthwhile.
After a couple of years I was told that, because I had an analytical mind and a talent for solving puzzles and crosswords, I was being sent up to Beaumanor in Leicestershire. It was while I was there - and by a total fluke - that I met Frieda Voight again. The landlady of the digs where I was staying made her lodgers sandwiches for lunch. It was part of the rent agreement, as was a cooked meal in the evening. The day I saw Frieda was the only day the landlady hadn’t made me lunch.
It was in the summer of 1943. I was in the cafeteria having something to eat and Frieda walked in. I couldn’t believe my eyes. She was laughing and chatting with one of my female colleagues. I left my seat and, on the pretence of wanting a hot drink, headed towards the tea and coffee counter. Once I was in the queue I made for the exit, but I wasn’t quick enough, Frieda had seen me. She stopped dead in her tracks, as did I. A red rash of embarrassment crept up my neck, as the colour drained from Frieda’s face.
She flung her arms around me and whispered, ‘I work for the British government, do not say anything.’
I was so shocked I wasn’t able to say anything. Anyway, I did as she said. I kept shtum, while she told everyone that we’d met while I was at school with her brother, how Walter and I had become best pals, and how I had spent several weekends at their family home - all of which was true. She omitted to say it had happened in Berlin, thank God. Some of my colleagues knew I
had lived in Berlin as a child, but I didn’t want to blow her cover, so I changed the subject from our school days to our adult life and said we hadn’t seen each other for some years, which was also true.
I learned from one of my colleagues that Freda King, as she was then called, worked for an engineering company making components that she delivered to Beaumanor regularly. That was my cue to ask for a transfer. I was at Bletchley Park for the last couple of years of the war and, apart from a short spell at Scotland Yard, I became a pen-pusher with the Home Office.
I didn’t see Frieda again until a few months after I started working for the HO. I had almost forgotten about her. I say almost. No one could completely forget about Frieda Voight. I hadn’t been there long when I bumped into her and Walter. It was no coincidence that they were walking down King Charles Street at five-thirty, when most of the HO staff were leaving for the day.
Walter, doing the old pals act, armed me into the nearest pub. And Frieda, playing the role of old flame, pretended she still cared for me. I no longer cared for her. I didn’t even like her. They were friendly to begin with, then Walter told me he wanted me to use my position in the Home Office to destroy their university and war-work records. Frieda gave me the names that she and Walter had used and the company names and addresses where they had worked.
I told her I wouldn’t be able to get hold of her national insurance and tax information, and she laughed at me. She opened her briefcase and when I saw the contents I almost died.
The case was full of photographs and newspaper cuttings of me in Berlin. The first photograph was taken by the chancer, as Walter had called him, at Stiefel und Kabarett. It was of me and Tilly the cabaret dancer. It shows Tilly as a boy exposing himself to me - which he didn’t do - and me laughing as if I’m enjoying it. I shook my head in disgust and glared at Walter with contempt. He told me I was naïve if I thought he had given me the real film that night.
There’s one where I’m sprawled across a bed naked with a man sleeping next to me. That also didn’t happen. None of the sordid nonsense happened, even though the photographs say it did. There’s another with my head tilted back, laughing. It was taken at the cabaret club. I was laughing; we all were. But instead of the picture showing all of us having fun, I am on my own surrounded by naked women drunk and high on drugs. Again, that never happened. I stopped looking when I saw a head and shoulders shot of me marching with a crowd of Hitler Youth thugs.
I attended some rallies, yes, but I was working undercover for military intelligence in the guise of reporting on the march for The Times. It was my job to record the events. But, as you will see, there are several rallies where a photograph of my face has been placed on someone else’s body, or where I am wearing a black armband with a swastika on it. Walter said if I destroyed their war records, they would give me the photographs and wouldn’t bother me again. So, I put in a request to Director Robinson to follow up a lead I’d been given about a couple of suspected German agents and he gave me permission to see their records.
Within a month, except for a Top Secret file that MI5 had on the Voights, which they knew I didn’t have clearance to see let alone destroy, Freda and Walter King didn’t exist.
PS I wrote the account of my time in Berlin, and my association with Walter and Frieda Voight, some years ago as an insurance policy. At the time Walter was threatening to blackmail my father about an indiscretion that happened while he was a diplomat in Berlin. I never found out what the indiscretion was, but it must have been bad because my father retired from the corps and left Berlin very suddenly. When Father died the indiscretion died with him, and so did Walter’s threat of blackmail. I thought I was free of them because discrediting Father no longer mattered. How wrong I was.
After Walter died, Frieda left me alone. But soon after you saw her in Oxford Street she began blackmailing me again. She said she would tell you about my past if I didn’t do as she said. I told her to do her worst because I no longer cared. But when she started threatening my mother and sister, I had no choice but to do as she said.
At first I was no more than a courier delivering letters of introduction and forged documents. (Sorry about your diving licence.) Then she told me to destroy her cold case files. I had no intention of doing that, but I had every intention of finding the files that would send Frieda Voight to hell. I am in no doubt that she and Walter will seek me out when I get there.
I am no longer doing Frieda’s bidding, Ena, but I’m staying close to her because I am certain she is not working alone. I’m absolutely positive that someone at Leconfield House is pulling her strings. Someone above suspicion who I believe killed McKenzie Robinson. I expect whoever it is will kill me when I’m no more use to them. Ah! I can hear your key in the lock. To be continued, Sid.
PPS
Reading through what I’ve already written, I think I’ve covered everything except to tell you how sorry I am. I’m sorry about many things, but none more than letting you down, Ena. One lie led to another lie, and then another - and so it went on until there was no going back. When I was asked to go to Germany and report on the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, I was over the moon. To be an overseas correspondent for The Times was my dream. Moreover, to work for my country - for military intelligence - I was honoured, proud that such trust had been put in me. Then Walter Voight happened. Bumping into him at the airport was not a coincidence. That he knew the time I was arriving in Berlin when I myself had only known a few days, had to have come from the people who had sent me. I was set up and I fell for it.
It is too late now for regrets, though I have many: The betrayal of my country is the greatest of them. I don’t have an actual account of the work I did for the intelligence service, as my superior - my handler - Rupert Highsmith took it from me at the end of each day, but I kept a record of sorts in a Journal. You may already have read it. If you have, remember that I was young and stupid, swept off my feet by love and false ideals.
Do with this letter, the newspaper cuttings and my journal, what you think best. But, before you expose me as a traitor, which is no less than I deserve, would you go to my house and tell my mother and sister. It would break Mother’s heart if she read it in the newspaper.
I need you to know something, Ena. If I could go back to my thirteen-year-old self for one moment, it would be the moment that I replied to Walter Voight when he asked me to spend the weekend with him and his family. At that moment I would say, no!
ENGLAND 1958
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
The late morning sky had grown dark; rain clouds blocked out the pale winter sun. Ena had switched on the overhead light, but it still hadn’t been bright enough to read small type-print on thin paper. Apart from which there was a lot of it. Ena rubbed her eyes and blinked rapidly to renew the tear film.
Returning the papers to the briefcase and locking it, Ena tightened the screw cap on the small bottle of whisky, which was still three-quarters full, and dropped it into her handbag. She was going to pay for the whole bottle so why leave it.
Where to go from here, she wondered. She could take the case back to Waterloo Station, leave it with the old man in the left luggage department until she needed it again. But then he might become suspicious. He had taken ten shillings from Sid and seen him write one and six on the claims ticket. He had probably seen the rest of the message about solving the case. If he had, he may give the suitcase up if anyone offered him money for it. Ena checked herself. The old man was probably as honest as she was. Even so, bags and cases could be lost or misplaced in station left luggage departments. She decided not to risk it.
Was there anywhere to hide the case at home? She wasn’t ready to involve Henry and MI5 in her findings, so she would have to hide it well. But if she took the case home, would she get it from the car to the flat without the green-car-man in the Austin seeing it? Ena doubted she would. And she couldn’t leave it in the boot overnight. Green-car-man might decide to search the car. No. It would be safer at the offi
ce than at home. But there wasn’t anywhere to hide it from Artie. He was bound to want to know what it was. And, while she was certain he wasn’t working for anyone but the HO, she didn’t want to share what Sid had specifically written to her with him, not yet at least. She needed to do a lot more digging before she shared Sid’s outpourings with Artie or anyone for that matter. For a start she needed to find out who was pulling Frieda Voight’s strings. Sid was convinced someone at MI5 was controlling Frieda. If Sid was right, Ena owed it to him to find out who the person was and expose them.
Pushing her feet into her shoes, Ena put on her scarf, coat and gloves. Straightening the bedspread where her coat had lain, she picked up her handbag and Sid’s case, went downstairs to the outdoor drinks entrance, where she knew she wouldn’t be seen by customers in the bar, and paid for the refreshments and the use of the room.
With Sid’s briefcase back in the boot of her car, Ena set off for the only place she could be sure the case would be safe.
‘Hello, Mrs Green. This is a nice surprise.’ Detective Inspector Powell looked down at Sid’s briefcase. ‘Here on business, are you?’
‘In a way, yes,’ she said, lifting the case onto a chair. ‘I was wondering if you would look after this for me?’
‘Take a seat.’
Ena returned the case to the floor and sat down. ‘It’s a bit of an imposition, but it won’t be for long. A couple of days at the most.’
‘Why can’t you keep it at the office in Mercer Street?’
‘It isn’t secure. Nor is my flat. They were both broken into recently.’
‘Anything taken?’
‘No.’ Before the DI had time to ask more questions, Ena continued: ‘but I’m being followed and there’s round-the-clock surveillance on my flat.’
DI Powell sat bolt upright. ‘Are you sure?’
There Is No Going Home Page 17