Solitaire

by Jane Thynne

  She got down from the table and followed the children into the hall for recreation. Just because lessons were over, didn’t mean you could relax. In the evenings everyone was supposed to do something useful and for the girls that meant knitting.

  Knitting is an Act of Patriotism! That was what the posters said and every female over the age of five in the Reich was supposed to engage in it. At the NSV home the production of socks was enforced with military rigour. The Brown Sisters checked the finished product ruthlessly, picking out clots of knotted yarn and ensuring that the toes had been grafted properly. Katerina remembered her grandmother knitting, her fingers a blur, the needles almost working themselves. It helped her think, Oma used to say, as though by descending into a trance of recollection the most elusive of memories could be trapped in her delicate nets of wool. Unlike the vivid colours in Oma’s basket, the yarn here was a uniform rough beige, and although there was a swastika knitting pattern available for those who took a real pride in their work, Katerina merely produced the basics. How was a swastika sock going to make a soldier fight any harder?

  That evening, however, knitting suited her. It meant she could concentrate on her plans without anyone interrupting, or asking what she was thinking. It had taken a while to work out what to do, but the visit to Sonja’s apartment had provided her with an unexpected new direction. A fresh plan that might – just might – yield more clues to her elder sister’s disappearance.

  She would go one night this week. She had already studied the S-Bahn timetable and had the money in her pocket for a seven-station round-trip ticket. If she was too late back she had instructed Heidi to tell Fräulein Koppel that she was visiting her sister’s friend Bettina. It was an infraction of the rules, but it would buy her time, and a family visit was far less verboten than calling on a complete stranger. She had memorized the route, too. Either because of his work at the Post Office, or maybe because he thought it would strengthen her leg, Papi had enjoyed trekking around the city with her on Saturday mornings. He took a lunch-tin and a map, and they made regular hikes, exploring the way the city connected up from Pankow to Neukölln, Charlottenburg to Prenzlauer Berg. Once she had learnt the routes, Papi kept the map folded up in his pocket, and insisted that she tell him the way from memory instead. She had adored playing that game. It made her feel like the boy in the story Emil and the Detectives, navigating the unfamiliar streets of Berlin, an adventure round every corner.

  Now she reached into her pocket and glanced again at the piece of paper she had found in Sonja’s wallet, squinting at the wavelike swells of soft black ink in the signature.

  Clara Vine.

  She pictured the actress she had seen at the charity reception. The pale-green suit that emphasized her slim outline, and the smudge of shadow under her eyes. She looked like the kind of woman who might wear perfume, the scent of grass and figs and white flowers enfolding her like a second skin. She had seen Clara Vine on screen once, in The Pilot’s Wife, where she played a plucky resourceful woman determined to rescue her husband from behind enemy lines. Katerina knew it was only a film and people were entirely different in real life, yet when she caught a glimpse of the actress that afternoon at the Hotel Eden she had detected a kindness in her eyes. She had no idea what would happen when they met, but Clara Vine’s face filled her with confidence and besides, she thought as she stuffed the piece of paper back in her pocket, it was not as if she had any other plan.

  Chapter Twelve

  The sultry heat had returned to Berlin. The air in the trams was unwashed and the rank smell of stale sweat hung in the S-Bahn. The sun hung in a sky of burnished steel and the asphalt sank like pudding beneath the heels. Past images of summer, of ice-cream carts in the Tiergarten, of women in bright print dresses and men in short sleeves that showed off a tan, were like a mockery when so many were sweltering away in uniform and milk was rationed. This summer was the warmest anyone could remember, but most people were too hot even to think about it.

  Yet out west, beyond the sticky centre of the city, in the upmarket district of Berlin-Schlachtensee, a refreshing waft of pine straight from the heart of the Grunewald pierced the air. The Schlachtensee was the southernmost of Berlin’s lakes, famed for the silkiness of its water and its green depths tangled with weed. The grand mansions in the surrounding roads were screened by high fences and shaded by graceful lines of trees, their gardens furnished with wooden swing seats and tasteful statuary. The spacious whitewashed villa in Augustastrasse with its sloping red roof and privet-trimmed gravel path was no exception. It was a picture of bourgeois serenity – or it would have been, had it not been the home of SS-Gruppenführer and chief of security police Reinhard Heydrich and his wife Lina.

  The tumult of events that had engulfed Clara in recent weeks meant that Goebbels’ mention of the bridge circle to which his wife Magda belonged had barely registered in her mind. Returning to Winterfeldtstrasse and finding a letter with the official purple stamp of the Ministry of Propaganda in her pigeonhole was a shock, and opening the envelope to discover an invitation to a game of bridge the following day a heart-sinking surprise. But when she checked the address on the invitation, she was filled with genuine alarm.

  It had been seven years since Clara first entered the close circle of the Nazi wives, during which time she had been privy to all kinds of feuds and conspiracies deep within the Nazi regime. Magda Goebbels had confided her marital miseries and Eva Braun had laid bare the pitiful state of her life as Hitler’s secret girlfriend. Yet it was quite another thing to visit the home of Reinhard Heydrich, whose merciless devotion to duty was unparalleled in the Nazi regime and whose narrow face, sharp as an executioner’s axe, seemed to embody all the sadism he perpetrated in prisons across Germany and the new eastern reaches of the Reich. The prospect of an afternoon with his wife, equally as fanatical a Nazi as her husband, was no less intimidating.

  Outside the house a knot of drivers were chatting and lounging against the gleam of their official cars and as Clara passed they concealed their cigarettes behind their hands and straightened to attention, though not too stiffly, unsure of her precise rank. The door was opened on her first knock by a nervy young woman in a maid’s outfit, who from her hesitant, heavily accented German was plainly a Zivilarbeiter, and the drawing room into which she showed Clara, panelled in light oak, richly carpeted, with cabinets of Meissen china, and stately mahogany furniture, bore all the appurtenances of long established wealth. Beneath the window there was a sofa in watered silk. Above the fireplace a painting of the Dresden, the World War battleship, and ranged along the piano a series of photographs of two boys wearing HJ outfits, playing the violin, visiting the zoo, both with the trademark close-set eyes and watchful expressions of their father. Beside them stood a silver-framed portrait of a figure clothed top to toe in full fencing kit that was, despite the headgear, unmistakably Reinhard Heydrich.

  He looked a lot better in a mask.

  ‘That’s my husband as German fencing champion.’

  Lina Heydrich had entered the room unobtrusively and was standing arms folded, raking the length of Clara with stony, basilisk eyes. Her dress was orange velvet with puffed sleeves and a frilly clutch of material at the bust. She had a thin, unpainted stripe of a smile, a pleat of wrinkles on the neck and her hair was restrained in twin muffs. The necklace she wore contained about as many diamonds as Clara had transported across Paris less than a week before.

  ‘He won a gold medal.’

  She extended a hand.

  ‘I don’t think we’ve met, Fräulein . . . Vine?’

  The hesitation was a feint. Lina Heydrich knew perfectly well who she was. Indeed, Clara could see that this afternoon would be as carefully calibrated and as potentially deadly as any fencing joust. A shiver of nerves reminded her that she needed to be on her guard.

  ‘This is Frau Doktor Goebbels’ card circle, I hasten to add. I merely offered to host it. We take turns. The game’s already started, I’m afraid.’r />
  Lina Heydrich opened the double doors at the far end of the drawing room and led the way into an adjoining room, backing onto the garden and striped with sun like the bars of a gilded cage. Clara had prepared herself for anything, but even so she was startled to see, around a wide table covered in green baize, what amounted to a full hand, if not a royal flush, of Nazi wives.

  Nearest was Inge Ley, wife of the alcoholic head of the German Labour Front, a woman as unhappy as she was beautiful. Her former life as a ballet dancer told in her bearing; she was straight-backed and graceful with a small nose, perfectly proportioned cheekbones and flaxen hair trained in waves, with two blonde commas tucked obediently to each side of her forehead. Beside her was Margarete Speer, the wife of Hitler’s architect, dispensing coffee and cream into delicate Meissen cups decorated with sprays of indigo flowers, and next to them, heads bent over the pile of cards, the wives of two of the most senior ministers in the Nazi regime: Annelies von Ribbentrop, wife of the Foreign Minister, and Magda Goebbels herself.

  Clara had known the Propaganda Minister’s wife since her arrival in Germany seven years ago, when Magda co-opted her into modelling for the Reich Fashion Bureau, of which she was president. Then, Frau Doktor Goebbels was a chill, elegant woman, whose nerves were shot to pieces by the womanizing of her philandering husband. Now, several babies later, and having had her demand for a divorce refused by the Führer himself, she was in a far worse state. Tendons stood out on her neck like piano wires and she was dealing a round of cards as though someone’s life depended on it.

  She barely looked up as Clara approached.

  ‘You’ve arrived. Forgive us if we’ve already begun.’

  ‘It was kind of you to invite me,’ said Clara, sitting down.

  ‘I wasn’t aware that I did. My husband informed me that you would be coming. I assume he wants to hear the gossip from the gaming tables. Though how he finds the time to concern himself with women’s conversation when he’s busy organizing the biggest parade the world had ever seen, I’m not entirely sure.’

  Although this was delivered with an unmistakable tinge of sarcasm, the next day’s Parade for the French Victory was certainly likely to be the largest rally Goebbels had ever orchestrated. It was to be the greatest standing ovation of Hitler’s life. Like everyone else in her block, Clara had seen the poster pinned up by Rudi ordering citizens to ‘greet Hitler with unparalleled enthusiasm’. Factories and shops were to be closed at midday, swimming pools shut and buses out of the city cancelled to discourage any members of the population planning to avoid the joyous occasion. Flowers had been ordered from the Berlin Allotment Association to carpet a kilometre of street from the Anhalter Bahnhof to the Reich Chancellery, and girls from the BDM had been drilled in throwing them spontaneously at the passing cars.

  Magda collected up the cards and Clara sat beside her. She noticed a bottle of schnapps on a side table and guessed that Magda was adding occasional nips to her coffee. There was a moment’s silence, broken only by the shuffle of the deck like the clipped flutter of a bird’s wings.

  ‘You do know how to play?’

  ‘I’ve played a little, yes.’

  Clara racked her brain for the card games they had played in the long, stultifying holidays of her youth. She had never been one for cards. It was Angela who was the expert, regularly enjoying a rubber of bridge with her smart set in Kensington. All Clara liked was the intellectual challenge of counting up the card values.

  Magda pushed a pile of chips across the table.

  ‘We only bet for buttons.’

  ‘Though I’d guess Fräulein Vine is a person who likes to play for high stakes,’ murmured Lina Heydrich.

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘Just what I’d been led to understand.’

  ‘Oh, that couldn’t be more wrong! I’m not much of a player at all.’

  ‘Aren’t you?’ murmured Annelies von Ribbentrop, looking up from her hand. ‘Then you’re different from the other British. From what I remember, they’re obsessed with card games. When we were there you couldn’t move for fear of being roped into a round of canasta or something called gin rummy. I played a lot with that girl you used to know, who was so infatuated with the Führer.’

  ‘Unity Mitford?’

  Unity was the most eccentric English girl Clara had ever met, with her pet white rat, Ratular, that lived in her handbag, and a grass snake, Enid, which she took to dances to intimidate the young men. ‘If a party becomes dull,’ she once told Clara, ‘I allow my snake to escape.’ The only thing Unity loved more than her animals was Adolf Hitler and her infatuation was so great that when war between England and Germany was declared, she could no longer bear to live.

  ‘You heard she shot herself?’ said Magda impassively. ‘In the Englischer Garten in Munich. She used the pistol the Führer gave her, but it didn’t finish her off. They found her twitching like a mangy rabbit. The Führer was so kind – he had her transported to England at his own expense.’

  She paused for a deep sigh. ‘I wish the women who moon after my husband would shoot themselves.’

  Across the face of Frau von Ribbentrop a smile flickered, quick as the tongue of a snake.

  ‘Seems a shame, when this girl wanted to die for love.’

  Magda threw down a trick, her wedding ring flashing beneath a puffy knuckle.

  ‘I’ve known people like that. Unfortunately they never do. They just poison everyone else with it.’

  ‘Don’t you adore cards?’ said Inge Ley, with the valiant air of someone trying to change the subject. ‘I always feel especially naughty at the card tables. I’m sure the Führer disapproves.’

  ‘You’re quite wrong,’ said Lina Heydrich. ‘The Führer’s a keen supporter of gambling. He sees it as a good source of funds for the state. That’s why he lifted the ban on casinos. He says casinos are marvellous institutions.’

  ‘Well, I loathe casinos,’ said Magda, thumbing through her hand as though her own fortune might be revealed in it. ‘If you asked what my favourite game is, I’d say Solitaire.’

  She left a heartbeat’s pause for everyone in the room to make the connection. With a husband like Joseph Goebbels, a woman was going to be playing a lot of Solitaire.

  ‘I’m never so relaxed as playing Solitaire in my own home.’

  ‘Your home must look so lovely now. I heard you had some nice rugs and paintings brought from France.’

  This remark, like most of Frau von Ribbentrop’s utterances, was pointed. The removal of treasures from occupied France, while widespread, was officially disapproved of. Ignoring her, Magda took a swig of brandy-laced coffee and turned to Clara.

  ‘You’ve been in France, haven’t you? What were you up to?’

  ‘Entertaining the troops.’

  ‘How wonderful!’ Margarete Speer looked at her with undisguised envy. ‘My husband went with the Führer and he said the best moment was looking out on the city from Montmartre, right on the steps of the Sacré-Coeur. Did you go there? Did you see lovely things?’

  ‘I did.’ Clara flinched, thinking of how recently she too had stood on those steps. ‘I saw some amazing things in Paris.’

  ‘I was longing to join them but Albert said I couldn’t possibly.’

  A pregnant pause revealed what everyone was thinking. The Speer marriage was said to be as empty as any of the echoing marble edifices the architect designed.

  ‘Though I’m sure I’ll get to see it before long. After all, the Führer has no plans to destroy Paris. He says the lesson is that it’s a beautiful city, but that Berlin must become a hundred times more beautiful. There’s no need to desecrate it.’

  ‘Really?’ Lina Heydrich cocked an enquiring eyebrow. ‘When did he tell you that?’

  ‘We were at the Obersalzberg a few weeks ago.’ Frau Speer managed a modest shrug. The Bavarian mountain retreat where Hitler had his holiday home was the ultimate VIP destination and the Speers, like the Goering and Bormann
families, were privileged to have their own home on the mountain compound within walking distance of the Berghof.

  ‘It was glorious. Lunch at the Berghof and afternoon trips up to the Eagle’s Nest. And we took our branches down into the salt mines.’

  The salt mines that gave Obersalzberg its name formed a glistening labyrinth beneath the mountain surface. It was a tradition for local people to leave branches that they would retrieve at Christmas, covered in a deposit of scintillating crystals, as though they had been studded with diamonds.

  ‘Lucky you. It sounds lovely,’ said Frau Ley, enviously.

  ‘It was. Except the Führer was in a terrible mood. He had had to let one of his secretaries go. The SD turned up something in her papers – her origins couldn’t be established and they found Jewish blood in the maternal line. Hitler explained he had no alternative but to dismiss her, but he promised to have Bormann Aryanize her family. Then it turned out that Bormann did the exact opposite and the woman’s entire family lost their jobs.’

  ‘That’s Bormann for you,’ said Magda.

  ‘Baldur von Schirach spent ages trying to cheer the Führer up. They’re writing an opera together. It’s going to be a bit like Wagner, apparently.’

  A sound like a snort issued from the direction of Annelies von Ribbentrop.

  Boredly, Lina Heydrich looked round.

  ‘Are we to expect anyone else?’

  ‘Only one other,’ said Magda, dropping a cylinder of ash in a cut-glass ashtray. ‘Joseph asked me to befriend this woman. I have no idea why. Not the usual reasons, I feel certain of that.’

  As if in response, the door was flung open and a waft of perfume and high heels clipped into the room. Walter Schellenberg’s fiancée picked her way across the floor as though making her way through a minefield, which in some ways she was.