Black Roses

by Jane Thynne

  ‘Of course I did. I ran outside and found a policeman in the street and begged him to help. I explained about the canvases being attacked and he just laughed. He said, “Now the Jews will see that we mean what we say”.’

  Clara reached over to her.

  ‘Helga, you’re overreacting. It’s probably nothing. A family emergency, perhaps, or a customer of his who wanted to see him. He’ll be in touch, I’m sure of it. I don’t see why you’re imagining the worst.’

  Helga snatched off her sunglasses, revealing the full purplish yellow of Bauer’s handiwork, and wiped her eyes.

  ‘You don’t see why? Can’t you see anything, Clara? I love Bruno, that’s why! He loves me too, though he would never admit it. He doesn’t like talking about that kind of thing, but I can tell.’ She replaced her sunglasses and drew herself up. ‘Anyway, that’s why I need your help.’

  ‘My help? How can I help?’

  ‘The Frau Doktor. Just a word from her would help.’

  Clara’s heart sank, but she took Helga’s hand and smiled brightly.

  ‘Of course. I can try.’

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Leo laid down his Latin edition of Metamorphoses and rubbed his eyes. His attachment to the classics was a psychological prop, he knew. The ancient world had a huge pull for him, though whether he was nostalgic for the world of the Greeks and Romans, or for the sunny schoolroom where F. J. Earnshaw had first introduced his thirteen-year-old self to the works of Homer, Herodotus, Ovid and Pliny, he wasn’t sure. Either way, it had sparked something in him that refused to die down.

  One vacation he had taken a villa that looked out over the cobalt-blue Ionian sea. As he watched the purple mountains rise unchanging across the bay it was almost possible to believe that two millennia had simply not passed and the four rivers of antiquity, Styx, Acheron, Phlegethon and Cocytus, still moved beneath his feet. Standing in the little courtyard with its ancient cypress tree he had thought himself back to fifth-century BC Athens, the birthplace of democracy, when Solon and his followers first established the rules by which people could determine their own lives. Now, sitting in his apartment bent over his Ovid, he thought how perverse it was to immerse himself in the classical world at a time and in a place where democracy was being systematically dismantled.

  The walk-in had found his way to Xantener Strasse that afternoon. He was around forty, a weasely type with a face that had more lines than the Berlin U-Bahn. A sour smell of herrings and unwashed clothes rose off him, there was an angry boil on his neck and the edges of his collar were frayed. He introduced himself only as Heinz and before he uttered a word he had insisted on going round the apartment, poking underneath the radiator, around the ceiling lamp, in the open fireplace, looking for recording devices. Leo had watched him amazed. If he thought they were inefficient enough to allow their safe house to be bugged, why was he even thinking of entrusting them with his information and, in all reality, his life?

  Then again, Heinz was illegal, of course. Most of his friends were probably in prison. The Red Front Fighters League was the paramilitary wing of the Communist Party in Germany, the red equivalent of the SA. For years they could be found engaging in street fights in the outskirts of the city, or wielding table legs, truncheons and bottles in the beer halls, giving as good as they got and matching the storm troopers in savagery and violence. Then last year the League was outlawed, and its members had been hauled off to moulder in cells or face firing squads. Since when the existence of people like Heinz had become fraught, and any neurosis on their part could probably be justified.

  Leo drew the shutters, sat him down at the table, which was situated on the opposite side of the room from the window, and made coffee. Heinz was smoking heavily, glancing around him at the dull little room with its striped wallpaper and single sofa covered with faded chintz. He had a malnourished look and charmless air, which would suit him well, Leo thought, if he chose the Soviet Union for his adopted home. Were he to opt for England, however, he might need to learn a few courtesies if he didn’t want to frighten the horses.

  Heinz didn’t bother with preliminaries. As Leo had accurately guessed, he did indeed want money in return for a list of names who he said were active Communist agents in England. The names would be passed back to Maxwell Knight and checked out. Leo took the list and scrutinized it, then put it in his pocket.

  ‘So why are you doing this?’

  Heinz shrugged. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Why would you want to turn your back on the people you worked alongside?’

  Heinz regarded him, as though calculating whether he could be trusted, then realized that he had already made that choice.

  ‘I joined the Party ten years ago. I was a young teenager, and everywhere here things looked bad. What with one thing and another I decided to go and study in Moscow. When I was there I was recruited by the GRU. The idea was that I would come back to Berlin and set up an intelligence network, training members of the Comintern to prepare for world revolution. I would work under the cover of the Red Front.’

  He cast an anxious glance at the window.

  ‘It worked well. A few years ago I was to be sent to England to meet members of the Comintern leadership there and assess the readiness for increasing party activity. But the trip never happened. The reports were that the English didn’t seem ready for it.’ He waved a disparaging hand. ‘The British are a lethargic people. All that unemployment and hunger, but still they’re suspicious of a political solution.’

  ‘That doesn’t answer my question,’ said Leo. ‘If you feel the British are beneath contempt, why would you be wanting to help them?’

  ‘I’m not sure I do want to help them.’

  ‘Then injure the interests of the Comintern?’

  Heinz looked evasive. He stubbed out his cigarette in the saucer and wiped his nose on a sleeve. Leo wondered idly what would happen if he were ever to repeat either of those actions in one of the elegant houses deep in the English countryside that MI5 kept for debriefing agents.

  ‘A woman . . .’

  It was always a woman.

  ‘A woman I met. Katya Stein. She was my girlfriend for two years and an agent too. We were going to get married. She worked in a bar, one of those smart places up in the West End where rich businessmen go and she would talk to the men there, the foreigners, and report back on what they were doing, what deals they were making. The Party was very pleased with her, it was said. She was so quick, so clever. I was amazed, actually, that she ever looked at me. Anyway, one day last month she was supposed to come back to my place but she didn’t appear. I couldn’t find her anywhere. I searched everywhere she knew.’ He pinched his watering eyes between two fingers. ‘Then she turned up in a back street with a hole in her head. Murdered by the Reds.’

  ‘How do you know they killed her?’

  ‘I know the way they work. They had some suspicion she betrayed them. The fact was, you never met a better girl.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  Heinz shook his head. ‘Sure. So I had nothing to lose.’ He took another of Leo’s cigarettes. ‘That reminds me. There’s something else.’ His face twisted into a dentist’s nightmare of a smile. ‘A big fish.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  ‘Who is coming to swim into your net.’

  Metaphor had its place, Leo recognized, in this world of evasions and codes, but sometimes, frankly, one yearned for plain speaking.

  ‘What exactly are you getting at, Heinz?’

  It seemed there was another agent, a Ukrainian Jew, who was known to be active in seeking a link between the Nazis and the Soviets. An alliance there, however unlikely it seemed, would not bode well. London was alert for signs of increasing friendliness between Germany and Russia. Heinz said this man had just arrived in Berlin from Holland. And he was a danger.

  ‘How is that?’

  ‘He has a lot of contacts among the Comintern agents in Britain. And he is disgusted by what he regar
ds as the betrayal of Jewish interests in Palestine by the British. He believes they side with Arabs every time. The British don’t fear him because as far as they know, they have high-level contacts with him. He is here only briefly before going to attend a Zionist conference in Warsaw.’

  ‘Can you give me a name?

  Heinz passed a piece of paper. It was not a name Leo recognized.

  ‘Thank you, Heinz. Your help is appreciated.’

  ‘And you will help me, too?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘My life is very difficult already. I think they’re onto me. I’m staying in a different place every night.’

  ‘We’ll keep in touch.’

  Heinz rose and embraced him unexpectedly. Up close he smelt worse, clutching Leo as though starved of human contact. Leo fought the urge to back away and patted him on the back, like a parent comforting a child. There was an unexpected shade of vulnerability in his eyes.

  ‘If I come to England? Will I like it? Is it very different?’

  Leo frowned. How could he explain in any way that Heinz would understand? What kind of life could Heinz look forward to if he came? He would be debriefed first, of course, probably in some secluded rural manor house that smelt like a boy’s prep school, staffed by military types with tweed jackets and poker faces. Then he would be run as an agent domestically, living in some anonymous south London basement flat, holding regular meetings with his controller and continuing to inform on every new friend he made. That was a spy’s life in a foreign country. In a bigger way, Leo supposed, a spy’s entire existence was a foreign country, where they must think before speaking, and attempt to fit in, without ever going native themselves. Still, no need to depress the man.

  ‘England’s very different.’

  ‘How?’

  Leo racked his brains and attempted a cheery smile. ‘Well, I suppose one difference is, if someone knocks on your door at some unearthly hour in England, you can be pretty sure it’s only the milkman.’

  On his way home he dropped into Hoffmann’s, his barbers, as if the act of being washed and clipped and shaved would somehow purge him of the contact with Heinz. He had been using the same place since he arrived in Berlin and always found it relaxing to sit amid the glinting chrome, the clouds of steam and the scents of hair oil and eau de Cologne, listening to the polite conversation of Herr Hoffmann as he went about his shaving like an artist, a snowy napkin draped over one arm. Herr Hoffmann was a cultivated man, who was proud of the fact that his son played the clarinet in a chamber orchestra and had pressed Leo with tickets on a couple of occasions. But this time he was flanked by two National Socialists talking loudly across him about a meeting hall in Wedding that had burned to the ground the night before. It appeared the hall had been a meeting place for Communists.

  ‘They said Marxism is a fire, so it stands to reason when you stamp out a fire then sparks are bound to fly!’ laughed one.

  In the mirror Leo’s eyes snagged on Herr Hoffmann’s for a fraction of a second, before he looked away. They forewent their usual pleasantries.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Even though they were built for the ample German backside, the seats at the Staatsoper were still too narrow for Clara’s liking. They forced her to sit tight up against Klaus Müller, feeling the muscled warmth of his thigh through the dark serge of his trousers. She was wearing the scarlet dress again, and the silkiness of the pearlized satin caressed her bare skin. Before them, ranks of officials sat in a magnificent VIP box, which was hung with tassled crimson drapes and surmounted by a golden eagle. Everywhere was red, from the plush of the seats, to the damask walls of the boxes, to the shades of the gilt lights on the wall. It was like being in a lurid crimson cavern. Inside the dark, beating heart of the Nazi regime.

  Before her, rows of men stared with grim determination at the stage. The lyricism of the diva’s love song seemed to leave them unmoved. They looked more like people observing a public execution than an opera. It was a miracle Madame Butterfly managed to keep singing. Hitler, of course, was in the middle, flanked by Goering, and Rudolf Hess. Hess, with his undertaker’s face and clenched jaw, was separating Goering from Goebbels, evidently by design. She spotted Walter Bauer wedged a few rows back, rigid with boredom. The men were in full uniform, decked with ribbons and medals and swastika armbands, the women in their own uniform of evening gowns and competitive jewellery. Frau von Ribbentrop was in a green sheath wearing emeralds the size of walnuts, and to her left was Magda in a crimson gown, her hair like a pale flame lighting up her face, a tight necklace of rubies round her neck, making it appear from a distance as if someone had slit her throat. Even from where she was sitting, Clara could see Magda’s eyes were red and her mouth was tense with misery. Following her gaze she caught sight of the reason. The film maker Leni Riefenstahl sat in the opposite box, languidly beautiful in the soft light, her skin golden and her dress a silky, caramel drape. Clara studied her curiously. It was the first time she had seen her closely. She was exceptionally pretty, with a strong nose, a high clear brow and tumbling curly hair. No wonder Magda suffered.

  The opera was wonderful, even without the Staatsoper’s star conductor, Otto Klemperer, who had left Germany that week. Puccini’s music rose and soothed Clara so that for a while she almost forgot where she was until Müller’s hand descended and began massaging her thigh, gently stroking his fingers upwards. She repressed the urge to shift in her seat and tried to imagine herself relaxed, enjoying the evening. She was an ordinary girl, spending a night at the opera with a man to whom she owed a debt of gratitude. It was a part like any other, which required a little extemporizing perhaps, a touch of improvization, but nothing beyond her talents. It required her only to separate the sensation from the emotion, to shut out all thoughts of place and circumstance, and focus only on the rhythmic touch of his hand, the mingled masculine aroma of cologne and cigars. If she did that, it almost worked. She pictured herself as a young actress excited by the splendour of the opera house, dazzled to be at the heart of society and oblivious to its dark undercurrents. Indeed, when she felt the warm pressure of his thigh against hers and laid her hand lightly on his arm, a brief, treacherous flicker of arousal ran through her flesh, before the sly, lascivious glances directed at her by other Nazi officials shocked her back into cold reason. Through her mind ran Leo’s comment, “You’re not doing this for you, are you?” But what exactly was she doing? And how far could she remain in control?

  By the time Butterfly had killed herself and the opera ended, Müller’s normally suave manner had been replaced by a heightened excitement and she sensed an expectation in him that filled her with dread. There was to be a champagne reception in a private room, at which Hitler would be introduced to the performers, but before that they were obliged to wait for a number of standing ovations and Heil Hitlers, and then for an enormous bouquet of roses to be brought on stage and presented to the diva, tied with a scarlet sash which spelt out ‘Adolf Hitler’ in gold lettering. Then, in a new convention, everyone had to salute and sing Deutschland Über Alles followed by the Horst Wessel Song. After that the etiquette was to allow the Führer’s party to leave first, but the process was slow, given that Hitler was besieged by well-wishers, beaming and wanting to salute in his face so, seizing her hand, Müller ducked through a door marked ‘Private’, and into a concrete-walled corridor. A little way off two SA men were sneaking a cigarette. No one wanted to risk smoking in Hitler’s presence.

  Müller lit up himself with greedy desperation and passed one to her.

  ‘I can’t stand all these women wailing and killing themselves, but that’s opera for you. The Führer loves it, of course.’

  He looked down at her with his habitually sardonic edge. ‘Speaking of wailing women, how’s our First Lady?’

  ‘She’s fine. The Fashion Bureau is going well. We have a new headquarters now.’

  The new HQ had been organized by Goebbels. It was in the sumptuous Columbushaus in Pot
sdamer Platz, an ultramodern office building with a Woolworths at the bottom and a restaurant at the top. The building was considered an architectural triumph, but that was rarely mentioned now since its architect, Erich Mendelsohn, had bought a one-way ticket across the border.

  ‘Someone told me she was throwing another fit this morning.’

  ‘Really?’ Yet again Müller seemed to be looking to her for information. She was valuable to him too, she realized. A spy behind the scenes of his boss’s private life.

  ‘Yes. One of the men was saying she’d consulted a fortuneteller who has prophesied that she will meet a violent death between the ages of forty and forty-five.’

  ‘How terrible!’ Perhaps that had been the reason for the red eyes. ‘They’re so irresponsible, these people. They can’t imagine the hurt they cause.’

  Müller’s face was contemptuous. ‘Exactly. No wonder the Herr Doktor find this superstition stuff repulsive, if it makes women hysterical. He calls it witchcraft. He’s planning to ban all this astrology and fortune-telling; those charlatans who claim to see the future through the bumps on your head. What would they make of mine, eh?’

  He took her hand and ran it playfully over his hair. He had just had a cut, so it was shaved even shorter at the sides, but the top was lustrous and springy. Clara had learned to control her instinct against physical contact, but it was hard. She kept her touch light and clinical, like a nurse’s.

  ‘I can’t feel any bumps.’

  ‘Perhaps I have no future then. Is that what you think?’ She didn’t answer so he shrugged. ‘Anyhow, what do we need hypnotists for? You’ve seen the Doktor talk. He mesmerizes millions. He has them eating out of the palm of his hand. What hypnotist could beat that?’

  Clara frowned. ‘But doesn’t the Führer have an astrologer of his own? Herr Hanussen?’

  ‘Ah, Herr Hanussen, he’s different. He always gets it right.’

  ‘Why’s that?’