Night Crossing

by Robert Ryan

  Uli didn’t see or hear any signal, but as one the interlopers produced bricks and bottles and hurled them at the stage. Glass smashed next to her, sending shards into the machine, which began to squeal. On the stage the music stuttered to a halt, to be replaced by groans and yells and atonal protest from the strings as precious instruments splintered under the onslaught.

  ‘Uli. Uli.’

  It was her father, reaching down for her. There was a thin smear of blood on his forehead. She looked around for the tapes of the first half.

  ‘Uli. We have to leave. They are coming.’

  She glanced back again. The pack of thugs was pushing through the audience, sweeping those brave enough to protest aside, some leaping from seat-back to seat-back to reach the stage. Many were brandishing thick sticks or metal bars.

  ‘Uli.’

  Her eyes burning with tears, she allowed herself to be hauled up on stage and to join the musicians, some still clutching their instruments, all making a run for it, hoping that nobody had thought to block the stage door. As she reached the wings, the first of the mob clambered down into the pit and began to strike at the AEG with an axe handle. Another wrenched at one of the spools until it came free, the ribbon of tape unravelling.

  Hands pushed at her and swept her into the gloom of backstage and into the smoky air of the side alley. From behind them they could hear the piano and the double bass being smashed.

  Uli tried to tend her father’s wound but he shrugged her off and pointed to the street. ‘We all ought to get clear,’ he said, ‘as soon as possible.’ He raised his cracked voice. ‘Thank you all. I’m … sorry. Please, get home—quickly.’

  Fritz put an arm round his daughter’s shoulder and they joined the crowd of dazed patrons spilling out of the theatre, their faces lit by the glow from a fire down the street.

  They headed north towards Stettiner, the nearest station, too numbed to speak, watching embers dance on the night breeze, feeling the heat as they got closer. Allowing them to play the Mendelssohn had been a trap, of course. Even if Fritz Walter had followed the RMK script, the thugs would still have stormed the stage. It was a warning to all other musicians. Uli wondered if any of Erich’s friends had been among the roughnecks.

  Ahead was a group of policemen encircling the newly arrived firecarts in front of the burning building, barring their way. They were being organised by a young man around her own age. She approached him. ‘Excuse me, officer. I’m sorry. I know you have work to do. My father and I need to get to the S-bahn. We must go home.’

  The newly promoted Wachtmeister Axel Schuller spun around. There was a scream of despair as flames spouted from the gilded dome behind him. Someone else cheered and there was a loud smattering of applause.

  ‘My God, is there anyone in there?’ she asked.

  Schuller remained expressionless. ‘Your best bet is to turn around and make for Friedrichstrasse station, miss.’

  The smoke was thickening now, choking her, and she could hear the detonations of breaking glass coming from the Höfe, the courtyards across the street that housed workshops and stores.

  ‘Can’t we come through here? It would be quicker.’

  Schuller’s face hardened. ‘Just go home,’ he said. ‘As fast as you can. Lock your doors. Don’t go out, no matter what you hear.’

  There was a hiss as arcs of water began to issue from the hoses, spouting towards the flames now engulfing the Invalidenstrasse synagogue. She noticed that the firemen’s aim seemed to be off. They were dousing the neighbouring roofs to protect them, while the synagogue itself continued to burn fiercely.

  Uli looked south and saw a second synagogue on fire, an orange inferno against the night sky. Then she heard breaking glass everywhere, an almost continuous crackle blanketing the city.

  ‘Why aren’t they dousing the synagogue?’ she asked, tugging the policeman’s sleeve.

  ‘Get out of here! Now!’ yelled Schuller.

  ‘Come,’ muttered her father, thrusting a folded handkerchief over his nose and handing her his spare one. ‘We have to leave.’

  Uli thought of the opening line to the verse that she had written out for the Inspector: Night rises tranquil on the land. A far from tranquil night was certainly crossing over Germany.

  Yes, she decided, as the once-magnificent central dome imploded, spitting out a cloud of fiery debris that spiralled up into the darkness. We have to leave.

  Eight

  Ummanstrasse 48

  Alte Westen

  Berlin

  November 21, 1938

  DEAR INSPECTOR ROSS,

  Not knowing your home address, I am sending this letter via Scotland Yard. I assume you read about the terrible events of November 9th in your newspapers. Kristallnacht they call it here, because of all the broken glass. In many ways the aftermath has been worse. The RMK has banned my father from performing, pending a tribunal. Needless to say, we are fairly certain of the outcome. The fact is, Inspector, I need to get father out of the country. He is not a well man. His health degenerated rapidly following the disruption of our performance that night. He doesn’t eat. I hear him pacing at night. He has lost weight.

  As you know, it is very difficult to get into another country without sponsorship. We are luckier than most—with no J on our passport, we can take out monies and goods, so would not be too much of a burden to the country that accepts as.

  I realise our meeting in the house was not a happy one, for which I will ask your forgiveness. If we’d had more time at the airport, I might have been able to express myself better. I look forward to the opportunity to explain myself.

  However, if you could see your way to helping as with the formalities, perhaps acting as one of our sponsors, I would be eternally grateful. I would happily send you details of the procedure. I hope this finds you well.

  Yours sincerely,

  Ulrike Walter

  Flat 2,

  Chaconne House,

  78 Westerfield St,

  London W1

  MUSeum 2037

  November 23, 1938

  Dear Miss Walter,

  I hope this letter reaches you and finds you in the best of health. I read about the events in Berlin on the night of your concert and have felt nothing but concern since. Given your father’s and your own position in the world of music over there, it occurred to me it would be much safer if you left Germany for a little while. Would you consider coming to England? I have heard there are a number of Continental musicians settled in London, with plenty of recitals and concerts as a result of this new talent.

  I also hope you do not think this forward or impertinent of me. My presumption with the gift was most regrettable. I think I now understand a little better why you reacted as you did (not that I deserved any better). I would welcome the opportunity to mend the bridges between us, to start again as friends. However, I can assure you that in this instance I am thinking of nothing more than your family’s safety and security. If there is anything I can do to facilitate your wishes in this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me at the above address.

  Yours sincerely,

  Cameron Ross

  Nine

  THORPENESS: AUGUST 1939

  Ross could see her at the far end of the beach, a flash of black hair, then she was gone, hidden by one of the great heaps of pebble and shale that the unseasonable storm had thrown up at the weekend. Today, however, the North Sea was uncommonly glasslike, its usual slate-grey hue softened by the blue of the cloudless sky, and the wind a mere whisper. It was a fine day for a walk along the section of shore between Aldeburgh and Thorpeness, away from the blankets and windbreaks of the holidaying families.

  There she was again, scrabbling up to the top of a ridge, her feet sliding as she skittered down the other side. For once they didn’t have this section of the beach to themselves. He was aware of small groups of busy men, some of whom paused and glanced over at him, then her, wondering if they were together.

 
; Ross knew what they were up to with their maps, chains, theodolites and transit-compasses. Already there were steel beams lying just offshore, their ugly sharpened snouts poking above the water at low tide. ‘No Swimming’ signs had sprouted along the foreshore. Some of the seafront houses had been requisitioned, emptied and awaited the arrival of … who? Troops, very likely. The wire and the mines couldn’t be far behind.

  His own house, purchased by the Z Organisation for his ‘mission’—as his father called it—was at the southern edge of Thorpeness. It was one of the basic black clapperboard bungalows built when the eccentric Ogilvy family ran out of money to create more Mock Tudor representations of what they thought of as Merrye Olde England.

  Its simplicity suited Ross just fine, and the neighbours, who were mostly holidaymakers at this time of year, pretty much left him alone. Ross had a routine: a meal once a week at the golf club, a pint in the pub, just to put his face about—and his story about recuperating from an illness picked up abroad—so the locals wouldn’t gossip too much about the young chap at number seven and his companion.

  Ross looked out to sea, at the fishing boats scurrying back with their catch, wondering if they knew that somewhere beneath them, as well as the Continental telephone cable, there very often lurked a German submarine. Ross knew because once a week his task was to set up the transmitter that Otto Vedder had given him and to send his reports out across the ocean. Except he wasn’t the usual kind of spy, because everything he sent had been written by Claude Dansey and his father. He supposed he was what they called a double agent.

  In return for this treacherous work, Vedder had given him the document that had resulted in Draper’s murder. Disappointingly, the piece of paper from the cigar tube had turned out to be an indecipherable scrawl of numbers, a formula of some sort, that he had passed across to his father. Apparently the boffins had had no luck deciphering it either. When they did, he hoped it would be worth all this.

  She reached him at last, panting hard, and he bent down to ruffle her silky coat. Bess responded with a wet lick to his face. He threw a stick for the retriever and watched her scamper after it.

  He wondered what had become of Uli. She had never replied to his letters, so he assumed she was still in Germany, with her father, trying to weather the storm. Did she ever think about him? He hoped that she was all right, and not fallen foul of the persecutions he had read about. Above all, he wanted her safe and well.

  Ross took the stick from the dog’s wet jaws and struck out once more for Aldeburgh, where he would buy some fish for his supper. And something for Bess.

  In the brittle cold of early morning, the fresh-faced crew of U-40 stood in three lines on the wharf next to the sleek shape of the newly painted boat. Their captain mounted a small podium in front of them, his back to their new home. Prinz had shaved and was in his best dress uniform. Erich felt his stomach heave at the sight of the boat.

  In training he had experienced six days at sea in U-6, one of the oldest submarines in the fleet. A hundred and forty queasy hours, the boat lurching on the surface of a confused, foam-flecked sea, the diesel exhausts spluttering constantly as the waves washed over them. He was pleased to see that on the newer model before him they had positioned the exhausts higher, to avoid the wash. Erich hoped that they’d made the berths bigger, too.

  He recalled the alarm bells, the first dive, the litany of instructions over the loudspeaker. Clear the bridge, open the air-release vents and flood. Then the ballast tanks started to fill, aft to stern, pointing the nose of the sub downwards. There was a change in sound through the pressure hull as clattering diesels gave way to the hum of electricity, the slap of waves on the deck gradually lessened until there was only the hissing of the tower cutting through the water. Then, a dry-throated silence as the cold steel of the sides appeared to shrink around them.

  Twenty-five boys trapped under the sea with the same number of experienced crew, the latter smirking as they saw the reality of U-boat life finally dawn on the young faces. To his shame, he felt the urge to run up the ladder and unscrew the hatch and get to the surface before they got any deeper, before they trimmed off at fifty metres. He could still feel the ache in his fingers from the clenched grip he had kept on an icy pipe, willing himself not to weaken.

  Erich shook the memory off. The panic had soon passed, and once he was at his allotted task, then time went quickly. Work, sleep, work, sleep, that was the routine that kept you sane. Being a technician, rather than one of the Lords—the sarcastic term for the regular crew—meant that he had a different cycle from the eight hours’ rota (work, sleep, light duties) that most of his companions had. He would do six hours on, six hours off, day in, day out. His fellow Maschinisten worked the same shift, but out of phase with him, which meant, like most on board apart from the senior officers, they shared a bunk.

  Now these boys would take this gleaming new specimen through the Kiel canal and into the Baltic for sea trials and then strict tactical exercises and an assessment before being allowed out into the major sea lanes. If you failed the tactical exercises, then you had to do it all over again.

  Günther Prinz began his speech, his voice sometimes whipped away by the gusting wind, but there was no disguising his pleasure. Erich could tell that Prinz wouldn’t tolerate failing the tacticals. Any delays would mean spending the coming winter locked in the frozen ports of the Baltic. Not a good start for U-40’s career.

  Erich tried to catch Prinz’s words. They seemed to consist of the usual platitudes of service, pride and comradeship. Erich recalled the parting sentiments of Scheer, the commander of the UAS (the School of Anti-Submarine Warfare) at Neustadt. ‘Have a long life’ had been his final admonishment, delivered in a regretful tone that suggested most of them would have anything but.

  Beyond Erich’s submarine he could see another, dieseling out of port, the tiny bobble hats of the crew just visible in the conning tower. This one had been in for repair, and the crew by now would have been shaken down, uniforms customised for warmth and comfort. Shadowing it was one of the supply ships that were intended to keep the U-boats on a fighting footing thousands of miles from base.

  Erich stared at the bulbous hull of a Type VII. Directly aft of the free flooding space in the bow was the torpedo room, then the chief petty officer’s quarters, followed by the junior officers’ area, with its permanent mess and work table. Next came the commanding officer’s room, the only area of privacy on the entire U-boat—being in charge got you a large curtain to separate you from the officers’ wardroom. Just across from the commander’s quarters was the sound room, where the Funker sent messages and scanned the undersea world with hydrophones. Aft of that was the control room, a mass of red and green valves for flooding or blowing tanks, and switches—many, Erich thought proudly, stamped AEG—with much of the floor space taken up by the twin shafts of the periscopes, the larger sky scope and the attack one. Clustered around the scopes would be the helmsman, two planesmen, navigator, captain and chief engineer.

  Next came the accommodation and galley for the Lords, then the engine room with its supercharged MAN diesels, followed by the aft torpedo room and the electrical engines, possibly AEG but sometimes Siemens or Brown-Boveri. This was where Erich would be when they were submerged, an Elektromaschinist, tending the double commutators. On the surface Erich would institute the first and most important task of any U-boat—making sure that the batteries were rapidly recharged by one of the diesels, decoupled from its screw.

  A cheer went up as Prinz finished his speech. There was to be a tour, followed by celebratory drinks on board for all. The crew broke ranks and began to stream onto the ship. Erich hung back for a second, not quite ready to give up daylight. He felt a slap on his back. It was Becker, the IWO, U-40’s first officer.

  ‘Look lively, Hinkel. You don’t grab a bunk, you’ll be sleeping in the bilges.’

  Ulrike Walter watched the tears well in her father’s eyes when he saw the upright piano in the c
orner of the apartment. The carpet stank of cats and the windows were grimy. The traffic in Archway Road produced a constant din of grinding gears and squealing brakes and what warmth there was came from a malodorous paraffin heater. The view from the rear rooms was obscured by clouds of steam from the laundry below, but Fritz Walter only had eyes for the piano.

  They had arrived at Southampton with all the right documents and letters of sponsorship—their guarantor, the struggling composer Charles Gorton, had found a much-needed £50 to pay for the privilege of vouching for them. Even so, Uli had been forced to sign an undertaking that she would only seek work as a domestic cleaner—a ‘char’ as they called it. Her father was forbidden from working at all until his residence status was confirmed. His savings had been small and, although the house in Berlin was up for sale, they could not depend on that. There were plenty of vacant houses in Berlin for the speculators to choose from.

  They had, until now, relied on the kindness of fellow refugees and musicians like Henry Wood and Max Rostal. Now, with two cleaning jobs in the big houses on Highgate Hill, she could afford the rent on this small flat and to repay Gorton for his generosity.

  Sometimes Uli felt like taking a bus to Scotland Yard, finding that Inspector Ross and slapping his face for not helping them. Other times, she thought long and hard about why he might not have replied to her three letters. She refused to believe that he could have ignored their plight so callously. That wasn’t what she had made of the man at all.

  Her father sat down on the stool and ran his fingers over the piano keys, frowning as one produced nothing but the dead thump of wood on wood. He looked up and smiled at her. ‘Well, I must know some tunes that don’t require a G.’ She bit her lip and smiled back. Everything was strange to him in this country, from the light switches, which you had to flick rather than turn, and the direction of the traffic when you crossed the road, to the layer of grime that coated everything.