by Jane Thynne
How often, caught off guard in a shop window or in the mirror, had Clara seen her own features moulding and settling themselves into her mother’s familiar lines? Helene Vine had been an unhappy woman, she realized that now. Beyond the dazzling veil of her beauty was a kind of absence, as if part of her would always exist in the Germany of her birth rather than with the craggy, tweed-jacketed husband, ten years her elder, possessed of a puritanical rigour in his bearing and a chill in his pale eyes. Clara had a photograph of her standing on a windswept hill on one of their walking holidays, head averted and eyes looking into the distance, far across a continent perhaps, to where her life might have been. Now, watching these women, with their mixture of negligence and indulgence, Clara wondered if her mother had ever regarded her in that way. Or if her own eyes would ever follow a child with the same fond devotion. The image came to her of Katerina, the young girl from the orphanage, and her solemn assurance. I don’t need a mother. The child was wrong, of course. Everyone needed a mother. Quite apart from the fact that this sister of hers seemed to have disappeared without a backward glance.
We have a lot in common, you and I. We’re both alone.
Even if it was how she appeared to the world, Clara had never chosen to be alone. Although solitude might be her habitat now, and it may be the only way she could keep herself safe, it would never be her natural state. Yet it was vital not to dwell on her loss. Wasn’t that what they told you? Live in the moment. And there could scarcely be a more terrifying moment than the one she was facing now.
The first thing that was obvious, as she was shown into Walter Schellenberg’s office, was that he was in far greater need of Pervitin pills than she was. His muscular physique was evident, but he looked much older than he was, the skin on his wide cheekbones waxen, his eyes bruised from lack of sleep, the face full of haggard shadows. He was dressed as a civilian in a dark grey, double-breasted suit and Hermès tie, as though he knew his reputation was fearsome enough without the help of an SS tunic and cap. She thought of what Fleming had said about his background, how he tried to keep a distance from his more brutish colleagues, and involuntarily glanced at his well-manicured hands – hands that played the violin in Heydrich’s string quartet. Yet hands that also wore a signet ring with a large blue stone, the one that according to his fiancée Irene contained a capsule of deadly cyanide.
He was standing beside a pair of lofty windows giving a view of the harbour, flipping through a file, and as Clara entered he went to a safe positioned behind his desk and stowed the file away, spinning the dial to lock it before turning to greet her.
‘So this is the famous Clara Vine I’ve heard so much about.’
There was a flirtatious edge to his tone, calculated, Clara guessed, to soften her up and catch her off guard, but the face was full of intricate intelligence and the gaze was razor-sharp. These eyes had watched people in interrogation rooms, torture cells and execution grounds. They studied twitches, tells and body language, the way a scholar studies an ancient manuscript. She must not drop her guard for a second.
‘Please sit down. We have coffee, unless you’d like something stronger?’
He waved a bottle of Portuguese Macieira brandy at her and removed the stopper with a practised flick.
‘It’s early, I know, but, when in Rome . . .’
She sat, smoothing her skirt, readying herself. She had dressed plainly, with no jewellery, in a belted cotton dress of cornflower blue and low heels, attempting to project the image of a professional who had performed an intelligence mission and was there to report back.
‘I’ll just have coffee, please.’
‘Certainly. Black with one sugar?’
Schellenberg ran a hand across his thick brush of hair, already flattened with brilliantine into a crisp side parting, and poured a cup from a trolley waiting beside him, alongside a glass of brandy for himself. Then, shuffling through the files on his desk, he extracted one and withdrew it. It was a standard item of Nazi bureaucracy, a plain manila file with the RHSA logo at the top, stamped geheime Reichssache – top secret state document – the second highest classification. It was accompanied by the stamp of a purple eagle and swastika emblem, but the aspect of the file that triggered Clara’s alarm, and sent a violent tremble through her body, was the fact that along the bottom, in black Gothic script, were the words Clara Vine and the stencilled number 6732.
He leafed through, then picked out a paper, to which two photographs were attached at the side and the top left-hand corner, the same ones that appeared on her identity card, and skimmed them, showily flicking his gaze between the pictures and Clara herself.
‘If you ask me, you’re prettier in person than on screen. It’s usually the opposite with actresses. One falls in love with a silver image, only to find when one meets the lady in question that the truth is all too unvarnished.’ He gave a deprecating shrug. ‘Or perhaps I’m just too practised at seeing behind the mask. Something of an occupational hazard, I suppose.’
If this was a reference to his famed interrogation skills, then it was not lost on Clara. Schellenberg’s suave wit was barbed, like a feathered fishing lure with a hook inside.
‘I was thinking about your profession only this morning. Some VIP back home gave me a list of movies to pick up out here. Those that the good Doktor Goebbels sees fit to ban in the Reich can be taken in through the diplomatic pouch.’ He winked. ‘It’s highly irregular but that doesn’t stop them asking.’
The confidence was transparently intended to disarm her, so Clara smiled and took the initiative.
‘I hope the Minister told you my findings about Hans Reuber . . .?’
‘Yes, yes.’ To judge by his reaction, she might have been asking if Schellenberg had enjoyed good weather during his stay. ‘Thanks for your investigative work. It’s a relief to be able to set my mind at rest about the man, but to be honest with you, Fräulein Vine, the activities of Hans Reuber weren’t the sole reason for my asking you here today.’
He rubbed his chin lightly.
‘You come highly recommended. Doktor Goebbels assures me you are totally reliable and utterly discreet.’
‘I hope so.’
‘So do I . . . because it is impossible to ignore the fact that you are, by birth, half English.’
The smile dropped. His flirtation was over as suddenly as it had begun.
‘What does this file tell us?’ He resumed leafing through her papers. ‘You were born in 1907 in London, England. Your father is Ronald Vine, your late mother, Helene Vine, was born Helene Neumann in Hamburg. You have a sister, Angela, and a brother Kenneth. Your German’s flawless. I imagine you spoke it as a child, though there is a slight accent.’
This took her by surprise. No one had commented on her accent for years. Generally, the softer, rounder trace of vowels passed undetected as the English edge migrated deep into the ether of her speech. She was beginning to understand exactly how little escaped Schellenberg’s forensic attention.
‘My accent may be flawed, but my loyalties aren’t. Even as a child. My father was always a keen supporter of the National Socialist Party.’
That much was the truth.
‘You were how old when you came to Germany? Remind me.’
‘Twenty-six.’
‘It was,’ he made a show of consulting the file again, ‘April 1933. To be precise.’
‘I have lived in Berlin for seven years. I became a full citizen of the Reich and renounced my British passport.’
‘All the same. Despite the passport and the papers and all those bureaucratic . . . trifles . . . these must be difficult times.’
‘As they are for any citizen of the Fatherland.’
‘Your two countries are at war.’
‘As I said, Herr Schellenberg, I have only one country.’
‘Of course. That much we would never doubt.’
He flicked a paper and regarded her ruminatively.
‘You became friends with an actress, He
lga Schmidt, who later killed herself. You remain in contact with her son and his grandmother, is that right?’
‘It’s right.’
‘You have since become friendly with certain well-placed women – Frau Doktor Goebbels and Frau Goering among them. You have enjoyed a few – what shall we call them? – liaisons – with Party members, yet you have never been tempted to settle down. Would that be accurate?’
‘If you put it like that.’ Not with a Party member.
‘You have enjoyed a number of male friendships. Klaus Müller, Arno Strauss, Max Brandt, Conrad Adler.’
She was aware that her body was stiff from sitting still, yet to shift would be a comment in itself, semaphoring weakness or guilt. She steeled herself to remain immobile.
‘All these relationships have been short-lived. One, indeed, particularly so. I see Obersturmbannführer Adler was killed in an incident last year, in an unauthorized attempt to leave the Reich.’
Clara’s eyes were on him, yet at the same time they were looking through him, to the patch of unknown ground where Leo Quinn lay alongside Conrad Adler, their mingled rivulets of blood blackening the dust. Just hours before, she had refused Leo’s urging to take the place in Adler’s car, and promised to follow them. Leo assumed it was her who was in danger, but instead it was his own life he gave for that last contact with Clara. In the months that followed, that image she had concocted of the two sprawled bodies imposed itself on her. She had no real idea what had happened, yet in her worst moments she returned to it and embellished it with detail, curated it and burnished it, adding fresh brushstrokes of pain to the picture she kept so fiercely hidden.
Her eyes focused on Schellenberg again. How long did he intend to run through his history of her personal life, all correct and also the opposite of correct? How far did he intend to rehearse her story, and for what purpose? Was he waiting for a snag in the narrative, some non sequitur that would prise apart the contradictions he sensed within her, or had those same informers who noted her ‘liaisons’ with other men and confided them to the Gestapo also discovered the truth about her life?
‘I wonder . . .’
He stood rigidly, staring down at her. Despite the fatigue, there was a priest-like stillness in his demeanour, a kind of patience that suggested he was prepared to wait as long as it took for his opponent to condemn themself.
‘Do you enjoy espionage, Fräulein Vine?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Your recent task, I mean. Checking up on Hans Reuber.’
What game was he playing? She remembered Ian Fleming’s remark. The whole trick is to work your way into somebody’s head and then think fast to get yourself out of trouble. It’s not the hand you’re dealt, it’s how you play it. The only cards in Clara’s hand were her reputation as an actress who had managed to survive in Berlin without asking too many questions. That was the role she needed to play.
‘Not really.’ A disarming smile. ‘It’s hardly my forte. I’m afraid filming a spy movie at Babelsberg is about my limit.’
‘No matter.’
At last he sat down and leaned back in the leather desk chair, steepling his hands together as if in prayer. His tone shifted abruptly. Suddenly he was discursive, reasonable, confiding. A man with the leisure for a friendly conversation.
‘Myself, I have to confess, I do enjoy the challenge. Sniffing out spies is so different from all that Jew-hunting business.’ His handsome mouth twisted in distaste. ‘The Gestapo’s work is very crude, for the most part. Searching for hidden people, false doors and compartments at the back of cupboards and so on. Usually when they go in the Jews come pouring out straight away like termites. It’s no effort whatsoever to pick them up.’
He trickled some brandy into his glass. The Macieira was liquid amber, as though the Mediterranean sun itself had been distilled and bottled.
‘Finding spies and conducting interrogations are quite a different art. Or perhaps they’re not an art at all. Your work is Art. Mine is more like Science.’
‘How so?’
‘Because it requires a deep and scientific knowledge of the human condition. In fact, the heart of my work is psychology.’
Schellenberg stretched out his legs before him, sipping at his brandy. He had a somewhat portentous delivery, like someone who has been invited to lecture on his favourite topic – car engines, or Prussian history, or famous wines – and is determined to take his time.
‘I was talking about it at dinner the other day to SS-Reichsführer Himmler. You won’t know this, but Himmler recently took possession of a very beautiful holiday home in Schönau overlooking the Königssee. It’s on the Obersalzberg, very close to the Berghof. Convenient for when he’s working with the Führer, just a few minutes away in the car, but far enough that the family can enjoy all that alpine air and really feel they’re on vacation. Anyhow, this was all very well until Himmler discovered that the previous owner of the house was Doktor Sigmund Freud. You know, the Jewish psychiatrist. And once Herr Himmler had got over his outrage, I was able to point out that they did, in fact, have some qualities in common.’
Clara was impressed. Suggesting to Himmler that he had anything at all in common with the notorious Jew Sigmund Freud was daring, if not downright foolhardy.
‘Our line of work can’t be done without a sophisticated understanding of the human mind. Just like the unfortunate Doktor Freud advises, that mind, its attachments, likes and dislikes, phobias even, are formed early. But once formed, they are there for life, and that makes us all vulnerable. Dig deep enough, find the thing a man cares about most, and you will find his weakness. And once you have that, he will be ready to talk, whether he’s on the couch, as in Doktor Freud’s case, or sitting in front of me. A psychologist can tell you how men under pressure will behave. How to spot when they’re lying. How to spot if they are the type to betray – which as it turns out is almost every type.’
‘Every type?’
An urbane shrug. ‘You seem surprised, but betrayal is natural to human beings. A man will betray the most loving wife in the space of time it takes to order a beer. He will betray her day after day, for years at a time, as easily as he washes his hands, or changes his clothes. If he will betray his wife like that, how much more will he be ready to betray his country?’
He shook his head and Clara caught the slight, enticing fragrance of his hair oil.
‘You see, people will talk about how they cherish integrity, democracy, freedom, decency, et cetera.’ How terrible was that casual et cetera. How languid the dismissal of all the values she tried to defend and live by. ‘But none of that will keep a man from betraying another when it comes to it. Or a woman, either, for that matter.’
Clara imagined Schellenberg interrogating his prisoners, probing the tell-tale signs of weakness, wooing his victim with the subtle attention of a lover, the light veneer of charm silvering over the threat of pain or death.
‘Don’t think it gives me pleasure when they break. God, I’m not that kind of man. It’s the intellectual aspect I enjoy. Like bridge. Do you play bridge?’
‘Badly.’ She smiled, deprecatingly. ‘I can’t really cope with all that counting cards and keeping a record in your head. And having to bluff that you don’t have good cards, or convince the other players that you have a winning hand when it’s no more than a few clubs. It’s not that I don’t enjoy playing . . .’ Had his fiancée Irene mentioned their recent encounter at Magda Goebbels’ card party? ‘It’s just that I’m hopeless at it.’
‘You’re too hard on yourself. I find it difficult to believe you’re hopeless at anything.’
It was time to deflect attention from her own abilities.
‘If you don’t mind me asking, Herr Schellenberg, what brings you to Lisbon?’
Such a direct and guileless question was typical of an actress.
‘I don’t mind at all. Since you ask, I have a little business with your Duke of Windsor. He’s staying here, as it happens. I hav
e to say the British lost a great leader when they decided to get rid of him. And on such flimsy grounds. Objecting to the fact that his wife had been previously married.’
This remark exuded all the disdain of a man going through a bitter and truncated divorce, as indeed Schellenberg was.
‘The Duke’s a man dedicated to peace. Perhaps, who knows, there might come a day when he can help Britain in that great cause. In fact . . .’ He reached for a piece of paper on his desk. ‘On the subject of your Englishness, that reminds me. There was a speech the other day by Winston Churchill. Let me read you a bit.’
He began to read aloud in a drunken slur. That was how Churchill was always portrayed in sketches and on state radio, conforming to the popular view that the British Prime Minister was perpetually intoxicated. As Schellenberg recited the transcript, he waved a cigarette in hammy parody of Churchill’s own cigar.
‘Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.
‘And so on. You get the idea. He writes it all himself, apparently. There’s more.
‘Even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.
‘Tell me, does it stir your soul to hear such flowery stuff from one of your compatriots?’
A deep stillness took hold of Clara as the speech reverberated through her. Even when delivered in the mocking tones of Walter Schellenberg, Winston Churchill’s words reached to the marrow of her bones. She thought of her country, of Angela and Kenneth taking up arms as Nazi soldiers marched through the city streets and country lanes, and further on through the farmland and wheat fields soon to be raped by the Reich. The population fighting, or worse, as in Paris, standing in abject misery as invincible columns of Germans filed past. The roar of planes overhead and the taste of fire and metal in the air.