The City of Fading Light

by Jon Cleary

  She turned her hand over under his, gave him something of the old Lady Margaret Arrowsmith smile, the one the German magazines had once featured so prominently when she had been such good propaganda for the Nazi cause. “Darling, I could have fallen in love with you.”

  Paddy and Ida, listen to this . . . “We would have had to have met a long time ago, Meg. Before you came to Germany. I’ve got to go. Thanks for breakfast. Go home, like I said, and I’ll do my best to see you this evening.”

  “Auf wiedersehen, darling.”

  “Hooroo,” he said in Australian, because in his ears it sounded better than German.

  He went over to the Foreign Press Office. No, no foreign correspondents were being allowed to go to the front; not yet, but possibly tomorrow or Sunday. “We’ll let you know, Herr Carmody.”

  “But the war—I mean hostilities—could be over by then.”

  The press liaison officer smiled. “Who told you that?” He was the sort of man Carmody had found in so many press liaison offices, the ex-newspaperman who had grown too lazy to go chasing stories, who preferred to hand them out. “Do you have information that we don’t, Herr Carmody?”

  “I got it from your Foreign Ministry,” said Carmody, stirring the pot, dropping in an indigestible.

  The press liaison officer looked sour, as Carmody had expected him to. “They know nothing.”

  “That’s what I thought. They didn’t know if Warsaw has been bombed or not,” It was a shot in the dark, a small bomb of his own.

  The officer hesitated, then nodded. “Yes, it has been bombed, and several other cities. But the High Command hasn’t yet released the information. For the moment it’s classified. You can’t send it.”

  Carmody thought of Oliver Burberry in Warsaw, opening his umbrella against the hail of bombs. “I think the rest of the world already knows by now. You can’t classify what the Poles are sending out.”

  He went back to his office. The streets were busy now, the city’s routine apparently undisturbed: products had to be made, goods had to be sold, money had to be banked. As he crossed the Potsdamerplatz he remembered today was Friday. He stopped by the flower-women and bought a bunch of carnations. Then:

  “And some roses. A dozen red and a dozen of those cream ones.”

  The flower-seller, fat and jolly with cheeks as pink as her carnations, smiled at him. “Three ladies? You are a lucky man.”

  There was a fourth to whom he should take flowers this evening. “Not all the time. What do you think about the war?”

  “It will be good for business,” she said, no longer smiling, abruptly cautious. “If they still let the flowers grow.”

  “If,” he said, remembering how the flowers had died in Spain.

  When he got up to the office Olga was there, had been for the past hour. “As soon as I heard the news, I came in. Oh, thank you.” She took the carnations, looked at the roses. “I’ll put those in water for Fräulein O’Dea and Frau Hoolahan. You’re learning, Herr Carmody.”

  “To be a European?”

  “Yes,” she said, who had never been so frank before. “But it may be too late.”

  He stood at the window and looked down into the square. The day was still overcast, reflecting the mood of the people in the streets. The weather, they say, is fickle, but it sometimes has an unerring instinct for the right temper. Men were painting white lines along the kerbs; people stopped to look curiously at them, as if they did not understand the reason for the white lines. Blackout, you fools, Carmody told them silently. He looked for signs of sandbags, but so far there was none. Had the Civil Defence authorities been caught napping by the outbreak of war or did they think that the Poles wouldn’t dare bomb Berlin?

  Kreisler was late. The clock across the square showed 8.30 before he knocked on the door and Olga showed him into the office. “My apologies, Herr Carmody. A little difficulty—I’m out of practice. I worked till three o’clock this morning, then overslept.”

  “You’re heard the news about Poland?”

  “Perhaps I should have stayed asleep, forever. But it had to come, once the madman had put Stalin on our side . . . There.” He held out the passport and the exit permit. “A little difficult, as I said, but now they are perfect. No one will know the difference.”

  Carmody looked at the passport, squinted closely at it; it was impossible to see where Mady’s photograph had been substituted for that of Sybille Dix. He went to the safe, took out the remaining five hundred dollars, passed them to Kreisler.

  “I would suggest that the new owner of the passport practise Frau Dix’s signature, in case she is asked to sign something. Fortunately, Frau Dix was an elderly lady and elderly people often have handwriting that looks as if it came out of a mould. Rather scratchy. She signs it: S. Dix. Very easy.” He scrawled the signature on a pad on Carmody’s desk, the artist showing off his skill. “She should have no difficulty. Good luck, Herr Carmody.”

  “You, too. What sort of tunes are you going to play now?”

  “Not a polonaise.” He grinned.

  “Give my regards to your monkey.”

  Kreisler gave a wider grin, raised his hat and left. A survivor, thought Carmody: a month, a year, a decade from now, he would be playing his tunes, still there on the street-corners of God knew what sort of world.

  Carmody put the passport and exit permit in his pocket, picked up his hat and went out to the outer office. “I’m going to the American embassy, then I’m putting Cathleen and her mother on the eleven o’clock train for Copenhagen.”

  “Say goodbye to them for me.” Olga gave him back the roses and the carnations. “Tell them they are from me.”

  He hesitated, then kissed her on the cheek. “Thanks, Olga.”

  He went out, laden with flowers, afraid to look at her face. When he reached the American embassy, Cathleen and Mady were already there, standing apart from the long queue that stretched down the block and round the corner. “The queue is so long!” said Cathleen. They’ll hate us for jumping in ahead of them.”

  “You’re Americans. Be grateful for that, never mind feeling ashamed of it.” He looked at Mady, who looked so much smarter, even healthier, this morning. “What happened to you?”

  “We just had time to do some shopping before we came here,” said Cathleen. “She couldn’t travel in what she was wearing yesterday.”

  “Women!” he said.

  They went into the embassy, had a little difficulty with the clerk on the desk in the crowded lobby, then were shown into an office where a second secretary looked up in surprise, as if he had been expecting someone else. He glanced at Carmody, who still had his armful of flowers.

  “I’m just their escort,” said Carmody, who knew the second secretary slightly. “I’m putting them on the eleven o’clock train for Copenhagen.”

  “Really?” He was a young man from Harvard, with an East Coast disdain for anyone from the West Coast; worse still, Miss O’Dea was from Hollywood. Carmody had never learned his opinion of Australia, though the Harvard man gave the impression that he didn’t believe such a place could exist. “I take it you have all the necessary papers, Miss O’Dea?”

  “All but the visa for my mother.”

  “Your mother?” He was looking at the German passport. “It says here that her name is Dix, that she is German.”

  Cathleen glanced at Carmody, but he said nothing: this was her battle. “Mr. Everett, I know you people here at the embassy don’t think much of me.” She paused, but if she was expecting a polite contradiction she didn’t get it. Everett looked at her without expression. “You think because I came here to play in a German film, I’m a Nazi sympathizer. Or just a money-chaser, ready to take any part so long as it pays well. Isn’t that what you think?”

  “One or the other,” said Everett, fingers steepled together. Christ Almighty, thought Carmody, how can the bastard be so smug?

  “Well, you’re wrong, Mr. Everett.” Cathleen was somehow keeping control of he
rself; she wanted to burst out at this cool, smug young man, but she knew that would get her nowhere. It struck her that she was going to have to woo him, but in a different way, as she had wooed Goebbels. “I came here to try and find my mother—”

  “That wasn’t what you told us when you first came to us. You never mentioned your mother.”

  She hesitated a moment. “I didn’t trust you, Mr. Everett. Not you, but the embassy. I didn’t know who you had working for you, if the file on my mother might get into the wrong hands.”

  “You should trust us more, Miss O’Dea. You have been working too long in Hollywood, too many spy films.”

  “I’ve never been in a spy film,” she said tartly. “Anyhow, I finally—with the help of some Germans—I found my mother. She was in Ravensbrueck.”

  “How did you get her out of there?” His expression changed; he showed some surprise.

  “That would be telling,” she said, then added sweetly, “not that I don’t trust you, Mr. Everett.”

  Not much, his expression said. “Go on, Miss O’Dea.”

  Carmody and Mady had sat silent throughout all this, he with the flowers laid in his lap, looking like a lost lover, she sitting bolt upright on her chair, looking like a mother disapproving of her daughter trying to woo the superior young man on the other side of the desk. Without consultation they had decided that Cathleen should plead the case: it needed an actress.

  But she was not acting. She could feel her voice rising in her, wanting to break out; but this cool young man in front of her was not going to be swayed by emotion. He would only accuse her of trying to “Hollywood” him. Nor would he respond to the sensual instep or the promise in the artificially husky voice. “Mr. Everett, my mother came here to try and rescue her mother. She failed—my grandmother died in Ravensbrueck.” She looked at Mady, who bit her lip and nodded. “The chances are my mother would have died there, too, eventually . . . She has lived in America for 26 years, Mr. Everett. The only thing about her that isn’t American is her passport—but she has promised me she will take out citizenship as soon as we are home. Home, Mr. Everett—that’s where we want to go. That passport she has is a forged one, we’ll admit that, but it’s all we could get—they took away her own passport—”

  “The exit permit—that’s forged, too?”

  “Yes.”

  Everett looked at Carmody. “Did you know about this?”

  “I got them for her,” said Carmody.

  “For a story?”

  Carmody wanted to hit him. “No, for humanitarian reasons.”

  Everett gazed at him, getting the message; then he looked back at Cathleen. “I’m sorry, Miss O’Dea—”

  Her voice broke out of her then: “Sorry? God, what does she have to do to be an American? She—”

  He held up his hand. “Please, Miss O’Dea. I was about to say I am sorry for having misjudged your reasons for coming here. We will give your mother her visa. How soon do you want it?”

  “Now,” said Carmody, looking at his watch. They are booked out on the eleven o’clock train for Copenhagen.”

  Everett smiled for the first time, looking human and humanitarian. “You were sure of us, weren’t you?”

  “Of course,” said Carmody.

  But Everett wasn’t flattered. “So are all those Jews in the queue outside. Unfortunately, we are going to have to let some of them down. Good luck, Miss O’Dea, Mrs.—” he looked at the German passport “—Dix.”

  “Hoolahan,” said Mady, smiling, looking as if she might kiss him.

  “A good American name,” said Everett, though it sounded like an effort for him to say so.

  Ten minutes later they were out of the embassy and hailing a taxi to take them to the Stettiner station. As they drove away Carmody, without looking back, was aware of the waiting, hopeful, patient people in the queue looking after them. There was no need to look back: he could feel the envy, even the hatred, of those fortunate enough to be escaping.

  “For a moment there I was going to hit him.” Cathleen sat slumped in the corner of the back seat. She was utterly drained, as if she had just played a long emotional scene; which she had. “God, why do they always have to be so officious? Is that the word I want?”

  “It’ll do,” said Carmody. “But he has a job to do—maybe it’s his only way of coping.”

  Cathleen looked at her mother. “Never has an unkind word to say about anyone. Except women.”

  Mady smiled at him and he grinned back. He handed her the cream roses, gave the red roses to Cathleen and split the carnations between them. “Those are from Olga.”

  “Poor Olga,” said Cathleen and he nodded.

  The station was packed, as if at peak holiday time. But there were no holiday-makers this morning; everyone was too sober-faced to be mistaken for one of those. A troop train was drawn up at one platform; young men, some with faces drawn with apprehension, others with a sort of stupid cheerfulness, stared out the windows. The other platforms were crowded with a mixture of civilians and men in uniform. The men in uniform, most of them SS, looked more cheerful than the young soldiers on the troop train; but then they were heading west, not wards the fighting. The Copenhagen train looked already full, but the platform beside it was still crowded.

  Carmody pushed a way through the crowd, the women following him. He was glad he had not allowed Cathleen to go back to her flat to collect anything; she had suggested it in the taxi, but he had vetoed it in case Lutze or Decker was there watching it. Without luggage she and Mady would have less difficulty in squeezing into their compartment.

  “Here it is!” he cried above the noise and halted outside the door of one of the first class carriages.

  “Are you going, too?” said a voice behind him in English.

  He turned round, suddenly scared, though he didn’t know why; but it was only Fred Doe, cornet-case in one hand, suitcase in the other. “Fred! Thank Christ—are you going to Copenhagen?”

  “Copenhagen, New York—all the way, pal.” He put down his suitcase and tipped his hat to Cathleen and Mady. “Glad to see you made it.”

  “I’m glad to see you made it,” said Carmody.

  “Are you leaving us, Herr Carmody?” said a voice in German.

  Carmody turned round, everything abruptly draining out of him, leaving him weak and sick. “Hello, Lutze. No, I’m not leaving. I’m just saying goodbye to Fräulein O’Dea and her friend Frau Dix.”

  Lutze raised his hat to the two women. “Good morning, ladies. May I see your papers?”

  “They’re all in order,” said Cathleen, making no effort to open her handbag and produce them.

  “I’m sure they are,” said Lutze, hand outstretched.

  Cathleen and Mady handed over their papers. Lutze looked at them, nodded, pursed his lips. Then he turned, looked into the crowd and jerked his head. Decker pushed his way through the crowd; with him were two city policemen, Schupos. For one wild moment Carmody thought of knocking down Lutze and pushing Cathleen and Mady on to the train; but they could go nowhere if the train did not move. And here in Berlin they were still 250 miles from the frontier.

  “What’s the trouble, Heir Inspector?”

  “You will have to come with us, we have some questions. The station-master has given us a room.”

  Carmody looked up at the station clock: ten minutes till train time. “Will it take long? They’ll miss the train—”

  “There will be other trains, Herr Carmody. Please?”

  Carmody took the flowers from Cathleen and Mady, gave them to Doe. “Fred, seats 1 and 2 compartment Three. Keep the seats for them with these.”

  “Sure, pal. Good luck.”

  The crowd fell back as the small group moved down the platform. Give me the clapper-bell again, thought Carmody. Unclean, unclean! . . . The policemen pushed open the door to a small office and Lutze and Decker stood back to allow the women and Carmody to enter. When they were inside, Decker closed the door and stood with his back to
it, while the two policemen took up their stance outside.

  “What’s this all about, Herr Inspector?” Carmody could see that Cathleen was on the verge of explosion; Mady, more accustomed to the Gestapo and their methods, was quiet, almost resigned. He decided he would do his best to keep both women quiet. “The papers are in order—”

  “It isn’t the papers, Herr Carmody. It’s what you and Fräulein O’Dea have been trying to do. Frau Dix is no concern of ours, except that she is a friend of Fräulein O’Dea—”

  “What are Fräulein O’Dea and I supposed to have been doing?” He had to hold down his voice.

  “Herr Carmody, why do you think we have been following you and the Fräulein for the past two weeks? There is a plot against the Fuehrer—”

  Carmody couldn’t help his laugh, though it was harsh and humourless. “Lutze, this is bizarre—” He used Meg’s word; it was almost the same in German as in English. “What gives you the idea we’d be involved in anything so—” His mind went dead for the moment: he couldn’t think of a word other than to repeat: “bizarre.”

  Lutze drew him aside into one comer of the room, lowered his voice. “Herr Carmody, we are working under direct orders from Reichsfuehrer Himmler. I am not convinced you are involved, but you know too many of the suspects—Fräulein O’Dea, Lady Arrowsmith—”

  Carmody shook his head in dismay. “Herr Inspector, why them?”

  Lutze lowered his voice even further; the Gestapo officer and the foreign correspondent stood with their heads close together, like conspirators. “Herr Carmody, you know what goes on amongst the higher-ups in the Party. The rivalries, the jealousies . . . Reichsminister Goebbels is a suspect—the two women I’ve just named—they have been seeing him—”

  Carmody looked up at the clock in the office: four minutes to train time. “Not Lady Arrowsmith—she hasn’t been a friend of his for months. Neither is Fräulein O’Dea. Lutze, it’s all a terrible mistake—let her and Fran Dix go—”

  Lutze shook his head. “I can’t. What if the plot goes ahead, if they do what they plan?”