by Mick Hare
“I’m not brave enough for this,” she stuttered.
“What shall we do?” asked Adolf.
“It’s simple,” said Helga regaining her composure. “I will go back to the convent and warn Sister Fatima and the caretaker. On my way there I will call at the surgery and warn the doctor and his wife. You must go to the apothecary and warn him. Do not use the dead letter box again. When we have warned the others we must escape as best we can. Goodbye, Adolf and good luck.”
With that she hurried away.
Although Helga had formulated their action plan it had been dredged out of her rational mind which, even as she spoke was being swamped with fear. As she walked out of the park and towards the surgery she walked along war torn streets passing stoical inhabitants doing their best to live a semblance of normality during the brief daytime respite between air raids.
Women queued outside shops and walked away with meagre rations. Young and old walked about with a driven sense of purpose. People rarely looked at each other. Few stopped to chat. To Helga everyone was a potential Gestapo informer. She felt her guilt was a flag waving to the authorities. Her demeanour, her expression, her walk, all assailed her evidence of her guilt. Since her friend Sophie Scholl and her brother Hans had been brutally executed for their Weiss Rose activities she had been determined to resist the Nazis in whatever way she could. When she had gained the confidence of Sister Fatima and risked sharing her hatred of the Nazis with her it had been an easy matter for Sister Fatima to recruit her to their group. But she had always, since being a little child, been terrified of authority.
The particular brutality of the Nazis terrified her beyond reason. Even as she accepted recruitment to the group she had promised herself that at the slightest possibility of discovery and capture, she would flee. If flight would not be possible she would kill herself rather than be caught. Now her worst nightmare had come true. She continued on her way to the surgery even as her brain screamed at her to leave Munich; get the train to her aunt in Austria; then get to Switzerland.
Before she knew it her feet had carried her to the gate at the entrance to the small garden fronting the surgery. She had to let Robert and Lily know. There could be no danger here – could there?
She rang the doorbell and the receptionist opened the door and invited her in.
“Good morning,” she said. “Is the doctor available? It is most urgent that I see him.”
“Please wait here. I won’t be a moment.” The receptionist left the waiting area and disappeared through a door at the back.”
Helga’s anxiety would not allow her to sit still. She paced to and fro in the waiting area, fighting the desire to run out of the building and disappear forever.
The door at the back opened and the receptionist held it open for her saying, “Please come through.”
Helga pushed hurriedly past her intensely relieved at last that she would see Robert. The receptionist guided her to the doctor’s surgery and once again held the door open for her. Helga opened her mouth to speak as she was entering but it froze into an unattractive gape when she saw that it was Lily who was there to meet her, not Robert. Well, she thought, what difference does that make? She turned to watch the receptionist leave before speaking.
“Where is Robert?” for an instant she feared the worst. Maybe Robert was already in custody.
“He is out on a call. What did you want him for?”
“May I sit down?”
Of course you can,” Lily answered beckoning towards a chair beside the desk.
Helga sat. A moment later she was on her feet again and walking towards the window. She stood for a moment scanning the street from end to end.
“Helga?” asked Lily, concern rising in her tone, “What is it?”
Helga walked back to the chair and sat down. She opened her handbag to get a cigarette but found she had none. ‘Damned war,’ she thought. ‘You can’t even get cigarettes.’
Lily had come around the desk and was leaning against it right in front of Helga.
“Helga, will you please tell me why you are here?”
“Where is Robert?”
As she asked the question she knew she had asked it already.
“I’ve told you.”
“When will he be back?”
“I’m not sure but I’m not expecting him to be long. Will you please tell me why you are here?”
Lily’s tone now told Helga that her patience was running out.
“You know you’re not supposed to call here except in an emergency. If this is an emergency don’t you think you should tell me? And quickly!”
Helga realised she was in dread of hearing from her own lips the words she had to say.
“I met Adolf today. We are discovered.”
Lily shifted uncomfortably on her feet. She began to move around the desk but stopped herself and came back to face Helga.
“What do you mean, ‘discovered’?”
Helga blurted out the details of her encounter with Adolf and the conversation he had overheard at headquarters about Captain Vogts.
When she had finished Lily went to a drawer and lifted out a bottle of brandy and a glass. She poured a measure out and handed it to Helga.
“Drink this!” she ordered. “You are in a state of shock. Don’t let it turn into panic.”
Helga drank the brandy in one gulp and then had a mild coughing fit as it caught on the back of her unaccustomed throat.
“Right,” said Lily. “We have been trained to deal with this. Let’s face it. You don’t get involved in something like this without expecting the enemy to try and stop you. So we just have to think rationally and follow a logical path. We need to plan to keep ourselves and our mission safe.”
Helga reacted violently to this.
“Keep our mission safe? What the hell does that mean? Our mission is blown. We’re the ones who have to find safety. We must abort the mission and escape. If not we will be captured and tortured.”
She stopped and began to sob painfully.
“What you have told me does not necessarily mean that our mission is affected at all.”
“What?” screeched Helga. “Are you mad?”
“Keep your voice down, you fool,” hissed Lily. “The receptionist will hear you.”
Helga gulped down her sobs but her face was still filled with anger.
“What Adolf heard could be totally disconnected to our mission. For example,” she went on, “who is this Captain Vogts? I’ve never heard of him. What’s his connection to us? What’s his connection to the Pope? As far as we know there is no connection.”
Helga stared with disbelief into Lily’s eyes.
“Of course it’s connected to us. Why would Adolf say it is if it isn’t?”
“Because he thought it was. But maybe he jumped to the wrong conclusion. Listen, Adolf is no different to the rest of us. He may be under the Gestapo but despite the propaganda it doesn’t make him a superman. He’s just as anxious and paranoid about being found out as the rest of us. When he stumbled halfway into a conversation he assumed it was about us. But the Gestapo are always hunting dissidents. It’s their job. There must be a hundred such conversations going on at any one time; probably right at this minute. They can’t all be about us.”
Lily moved away from the desk and went to the window. There was a startled look in her eyes as she saw Robert turning at the end of the street on his way back. She turned quickly back to Helga.
“But having said all that, which I am sure is true, we must take all the necessary precautions to protect ourselves.”
She went back to the window. Halfway along the street she could see that Robert had stopped to pass the time of day with a neighbour. They were looking up at the sky. Probably weighing up the chances of another raid tonight.
“Listen, Helga,” she went on. “You’ve done really well. You’ve reacted properly and made the right decisions. I want you to carry on with your plan. You must get to the convent
and warn Sister Fatima.”
Lily came around the desk and took Helga by the elbow. Helga rose and allowed herself to be guided to the door.
“You must leave by the rear exit in case you are seen.”
Lily guided Helga through the hallway that led to the kitchen and out into the rear garden.
“Go quickly, Helga, tell Sister Fatima what you know and then wait until I contact you.”
Lily leaned towards her and kissed her on the cheek. Helga hesitated for a moment and then turned and ran down the garden path to the gate and was gone. Lily hurried inside and went straight back to the window at the front of the house. Robert was just ending his conversation with the neighbour and coming on towards the house. She picked up the telephone and dialled. The other end picked up immediately.
“This is Black Rose,” she said. “This is Code Red. I am about to intercept a dissident before she can communicate with anyone else. She has been informed that we are onto them. Helga Rathaus is a teacher at the convent school of the Sisters of Perpetual Succour, and will attempt to communicate with a fellow dissident there. The fellow dissident is a sister at the convent. Her name is Fatima. I will go now to the convent and ensure that Helga Rathaus does not communicate with Sister Fatima. Do you understand?”
A voice replied, “Yes.”
“Tell Captain Netzer to meet me there with support in case anything goes wrong.”
"Yes."
"You must also intercept a police officer named Adolf Stern. He is the dissident who has alerted her to our knowledge of them and must be apprehended.
“We are active,” the voice replied and the phone went dead.
Lily replaced the receiver and hurried to the entrance area where she could hear Robert coming in. “Hello Inge,” she heard him say. “Have there been any call…”
“Robert,” Lily interrupted sharply. “I need to speak to you. Will you come through please?”
Robert gave Inge an apologetic smile and followed Lily into the surgery. As he entered he put down his bag and removed his hat. He slotted the hat onto the rack in the corner and hung his overcoat below it.
“Who was on the phone?” he asked as he turned to face her.
“I beg your pardon?” asked Lily, colour coming to her cheeks.
“I heard the receiver bell as I came in.”
“Oh that! I don’t know. I picked up the receiver and the person rang off.”
“Oh. Well what did you want to see me about?”
Lily went to him, her demeanour softening. She reached her arms up and around his neck. Robert pulled her to him, his arms around her waist. They kissed.
“That’s better,” she said. She led him to the seat Helga had occupied and motioned for him to sit down. She sat on his knee. “This war gets in the way of too many of life’s pleasures,” she said and kissed him again.
“I don’t want to sound ungrateful,” Robert whispered, “But what was it you needed to tell me?”
“Helga has been here. She says she thinks she can find out when the Pope will arrive. She overheard a conversation between Mother Superior and Herr Todt. They didn’t reveal the date in the conversation but she is pretty sure that Todt wrote details into his school log book. I told her I would go up to the school as soon as you got back to help her locate the information.”
“This is excellent news. But why don’t I go?”
“No Robert. You don’t have a genuine reason to go. It could arouse their suspicion. I am a regular visitor. I can claim to be updating my files on the children. Helga and I can move around up there with much more freedom than you can.”
“You’re right. When will you go?”
“Right away.”
She kissed him again and he kissed her back with rising passion. She slid from his knee and whispered, “Later.” He looked at her as if for the first time. He tried to understand his feelings for her. He measured them by attempting to compare them to the feelings he had had for Martha. But his mind could not do the work. He knew he was no longer the kind of man who had feelings in that way. Where they had once been, there was now just a dark space. Physically he could imitate the effect of those feelings but he was not sure that that was the same as having those feelings. He thought of Grete and although he could no longer resurrect the feelings he had had for her, he knew they had existed. He thought of the anger that had consumed him when Raul had committed suicide – so much so that he had attempted his first clinical murder – the obnoxious though innocuous Frau Hahn. A seething hatred for the evils of Nazism had driven him then. Now, he had no rage left. He was about to commit the most outrageous assassination in the history of civilisation but he had no strong emotion about it. It was a task he had set himself. He knew it was right. It was a cold emotionless, rational decision.
He thought all this as he watched Lily leave the house. When she came home he would make love to her. Physically he would be demanding and demonstrative, but inside he would be empty.
Helga Rathaus walked as quickly as she could without actually running or drawing attention to herself from passers-by. The effort was exhausting her much more than she knew it should be. As she hurried past the rail terminus she experienced an almost irresistible urge to rush in and buy a ticket to anywhere. Almost, but not quite, irresistible. Lily’s reasoning had calmed her somewhat. But her thoughts of Sister Fatima were the strongest argument against succumbing to her urge to escape. She had to warn Sister Fatima. She would be unable to live happily anywhere if she thought Fatima was being subjected to Gestapo torture techniques. Her resolve was to speak to Fatima, ask her to inform the caretaker, and to subsequently disappear with great haste.
There was nobody at the main gate as she entered the grounds. She left the main drive and took a narrow path that led around to a side entrance used by the nuns when going in and out of the vegetable gardens. If she encountered the gardener here she would inform him. If not, she would find him after speaking to Sister Fatima.
As she approached the entrance she saw the gardener in the distance at the bottom of the vegetable garden. He had paused in his work to speak to two men who were standing at the edge of the plot he was working. They were men in working clothes and she made a mental note to come straight back to the garden when she had finished informing Sister Fatima.
The crunching of her shoes on the path ceased suddenly as she stepped into the gloom of the interior through the low, arched doorway. On tiptoes she ran silently along the corridors until she reached the door of Sister Fatima’s cell. She knocked and hissed, “Sister Fatima.” She heard a sound from within and footsteps padding across the cell floor. The door opened slowly and she hurried inside.
Thirty-one
When Mrs Kitson entered Andrew Trubshaw’s office she was half into her coat. It was a warm, unflattering, belted coat that matched the functionality of her flat, laced shoes. It was seven o’clock and today, so far, there had been no emergency to cause her to miss her normal going home time. She approached Andrew’s desk with a printed sheet in her hand.
“This has just come up from communications. They say it is urgent”
Mrs Kitson waited as he read it. She knew if she had any sense, she would exit as quickly as she could and get on her bus home. But she had a feeling that this message from communications was going to involve her in some extra hours work. She watched Andrew’s face as the contents of the message sank in.