by David John
‘It’s rude to stare,’ Denham said in German.
‘Why are you speaking English?’
‘We’re American gangsters planning a bank robbery in Berlin.’
The boy looked from him to Friedl. ‘He doesn’t look like a gangster,’ he said, then ran off to report this observation to his father.
‘You wait,’ Denham said. ‘He’ll be telling them he’s discovered a spy ring on board.’
Friedl didn’t seem to be listening. For a few moments his eyes were naked, and Denham saw the truth of his existence: a secret life, of courage poisoned by fear. Fear of whisperers and informers. Of midnight knocks on the door.
‘You must miss the old republic,’ Denham said, still trying to atone for his gaffe. ‘I mean, no one in Berlin cared who was a warm boy then, did they? What happened to the old El Dorado on Motzstrasse?’
‘Closed down,’ Friedl said, his face sullen. After a long silence, he spoke in a distracted voice, as though his mind was riffling through banks of old memories. ‘Berlin was the centre of the world, you know. Jazz to rival Harlem’s, great movies, new things happening in art every week. Nightlife, atmosphere, freedom. I had work at the UFA studios; friends I’d meet in the cafés on the Ku’damm. It was a great life. Look at the city now . . . The only atmosphere left is fear. Everyone’s afraid. Even those golden pheasants over there will worry over what their children say about them on Jungvolk evenings . . . There is a shadow over everything.’
He looked at Denham, his face suddenly animated. Speaking in German, he said, ‘Didn’t we meet at a poetry reading in Mainz last year?’
Denham waited for him to elaborate, but he said nothing more. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said, pulling a dubious face. ‘Not sure I’ve ever been to Mainz.’ He knocked back his champagne.
Friedl continued to watch him for a moment, but a light seemed to go out in his face, and his eyes drifted to the windows.
They waited until the Party men and their families had heaped their plates; then he and Denham helped themselves to smoked ham, black bread, pâté, and pickles, and Friedl asked him what was new in Harlem and who was recording on which label, revealing an obsessive’s knowledge of jazz that petered out after about 1934. He listened keenly as Denham told him of Count Basie’s new tenor sax, and Benny Goodman’s move to Chicago.
‘Believe it or not,’ Friedl said, ‘something like the old life may return to Berlin for the duration of the Games. All part of this relaxed image they want to present while the city is full of foreigners. The police will tolerate jazz, and the Jews will get a break.’
A waiter refilled their glasses. They toasted each other, and Denham regarded his new friend with a mixture of respect and concern.
Friedl explained that nothing was being left to chance with the movie, Olympia, and with a blank-cheque budget from the Propaganda Ministry, they had more than forty cameras ready for every contingency. Any shots that could be filmed beforehand had been. ‘I’ve been on set at the stadium for a month,’ he said. ‘She films everything.’
‘She . . . ?’ Denham wasn’t sure why he felt surprised. ‘You work for Leni Riefenstahl?’
‘Yes.’ Friedl gave him a quizzical look, as if unaware of the opprobrium and awe that attached to the woman’s name in equal measure. Denham had seen Triumph of the Will and remembered being dazed with disgust and admiration. It was an astonishing work, casting Hitler as a nation’s Messiah, glowing with a monochrome aura. The bastard had literally given her a cast of thousands.
‘Well then,’ Denham said, buttering a slice of bread, ‘what stories going round would you care to share with a discreet reporter?’
Friedl munched slowly on an apple. ‘None that wouldn’t get me into trouble . . .’
‘So you do have a story.’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘Come on. If it’s the one about the German lady high jumper who might be a man, I’ve heard it.’
‘No . . .’ Friedl shifted in his seat. ‘It’s about the Jewish athletes, the ones who trained for the German team . . .’ He turned again, to make sure they weren’t being overheard. The Party men and their wives were taking second helpings, but the boy was nowhere to be seen. ‘Sorry, but if I tell you, they’ll trace it back to me . . .’
This was a familiar situation for Denham, and he seldom felt proud of himself when he had to use the old hacks’ tricks.
‘Look, if it’s a story that damages the Nazis, the world needs to hear it. Don’t you agree?’
‘Yes, but—’
‘These people aren’t your friends, Friedl. If you keep quiet you’re sort of helping them . . . aren’t you?’
Friedl fell silent. Denham waited.
‘Do I have your word you’ll protect my name?’
‘Naturally,’ Denham said.
‘The Jewish athletes in the Olympic Games . . . ,’ he began, and started again. ‘The Reich Sports Office had to allow some Jews to try for the German team; otherwise the IOC would have removed the Games from Germany . . . or countries would have boycotted.’
Denham searched his memory. There had been an outcry about this in the international press last year, before the Winter Olympics in Bavaria. The Americans sent a delegation to make sure the German-Jewish athletes were being given a fair chance.
Friedl leaned in closer. ‘It was a deception. The Nazis set up some fake training session for the benefit of the IOC, the press, and the Americans, with Jewish athletes present. But in fact the Jews got no facilities—nothing. They had to train in farmers’ fields. After all, they’re banned from every sports club in Germany . . .’
A buzzing noise, and an old Fokker biplane appeared alongside the airship’s promenade. The pilot, in cap and goggles, waved, and most of the diners interrupted their eating to watch at the windows. The boy was still not there.
‘It gets worse,’ Friedl said. ‘Last week, when all the countries’ teams were safely on board ships heading for Germany, the Reich Sports Leader simply told the Jews that they hadn’t been selected for the German team after all. I guess he calculated that it was too late for anyone to complain or take official action.’
‘ “Germans Drop Jews from Team”?’ Denham said. ‘Nothing new there.’
It was a depressing and familiar story, although this deception sounded more brazen than most.
‘They had to make a single exception, however. Hannah Liebermann. You’ve heard of her?’
‘The fencer? Are you joking?’ Denham reflected for a moment. It hadn’t occurred to him before that she was Jewish. ‘She’s one of the most famous athletes in the world.’
‘Exactly. She’s so famous they couldn’t not include her. But how is this for irony?’ His voice dropped to a whisper. ‘She refused. The one Jew they gave the honour of competing for the Reich told them where to put their invitation . . .’
‘Good for her. So she’s not on the team either.’
For a minute Denham had thought this was leading up to a scoop. He called the waiter over and asked for a whisky.
‘She is on the team,’ Friedl said, his expression dark. ‘They’re forcing her.’
‘What?’
‘They’re forcing her to compete on the German team by threatening her family if she doesn’t.’
‘Christ.’ Denham put his glass down. ‘Wasn’t she living abroad?’
Friedl was distracted again. The cameraman, Jaworsky, was calling him from the far end of the promenade.
‘She’s been in California since ’33. When she refused their invitation the Gestapo started arresting her family. She boarded the next ship back to Germany.’
‘How do you know all this?’
Friedl shrugged. ‘Call it pillow talk between me and someone who knows.’
‘I’ve got to interview her,’ Denham said.
‘Excuse me.’
Friedl got up. ‘I have to work.’
Denham had a story. A vital, personal story of courage and deception, a political story that even his agent, Harry, would like. It moved him. It went straight to the heart of all that was wrong with these Games. An innocent woman made to act in the charades of a boundlessly criminal regime in its bid to appear decent before a watching world. They were holding her up as proof of their fairness when they had nothing but hatred for her. To cap it all, she was a sporting superstar—with cover-girl looks.
He drained his glass and got up, noticing as he did so the white cloth on a nearby table twitch, and the scabbard of a Jungvolk dagger poking from underneath. Glancing over his shoulder to make sure no one was watching, he delivered a brisk kick to the bulge where the boy’s backside was. He was out of the dining room before anyone could locate the source of the howling.
As usual when he was preoccupied Denham wanted to pace. He returned to the deserted lounge on the starboard side and ambled along the promenade window, drumming his fingers on the sill. Beneath him beech forests and fields heavy with crops rolled by, but in his mind’s eye he saw Hannah Liebermann, lithe and silken-haired, pointing her foil, arm straight. She was one of the greatest athletes Germany had ever produced, whose fighting style had an extraordinary grace.
He’d have to reach her in private somehow. An approach through the official channels would almost certainly be refused. In fact, Willi Greiser would surely expel him for this one. No doubt about that . . . Was it worth it?
He was sitting at the baby grand piano, looking up at the portrait of the tramp turned dictator, trying to remember the notes for that Bessie Smith number ‘Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out,’ when he saw the red jug ears and ginger hair of that steward approaching from the far end of the lounge. The one who’d asked for his camera earlier. The Party pin in his lapel glinted like an evil eye.
‘Herr Denham? I’m at your disposal.’ He spoke with a marked Swabian accent. ‘Captain Lehmann suggested you may like a tour of the ship.’
‘You read my mind,’ Denham said. ‘Could we start with the smoking room?’ He was dying for a cigarette.
They descended to B deck. The steward, who introduced himself as Jörg, led him to a small bar, which connected via an airlock to an intimate smoking room, pressurised, he explained, so that no hydrogen could seep in. It had small café tables and a comfortable leather bench running around its walls.
He lit Denham’s HB. On the far side of the room was a wide window set into the floor. Wisps of white cloud passed beneath the glass, filling the room with a pale light reflected from forests and valleys below. Surely this must be the acme of all smoking experiences, he thought.
‘Do you have mail to post?’ the steward asked.
‘Mail?’
‘We drop a postbag when we reach Berlin. Letters are franked in the mailing room.’
‘With Hindenburg stamps?’
‘Of course.’
‘You may just have saved a father’s reputation with an eight-year-old.’
Jörg grinned and fetched a blank postcard from behind the bar. Denham scribbled:
Dearest Tom
Here are the stamps I promised. Your old dad’s writing this from the smoking room of the ‘Hindenburg.’ To answer your question, my cigarette was lit with a car lighter attached to the wall. How about that? Be nice to Mummy.
Love, Dad
He handed the postcard to the steward, stubbed out his HB, and the tour continued. The young man gave him a pair of canvas shoe coverings in case his heel should make a spark on the metal grill floor, and they entered the keel corridor—no more than a narrow catwalk—which led deep into the stern of the ship. Denham took notes in shorthand of the statistics Jörg gave him as they passed storerooms with space for two and a quarter tonnes of fresh meat, poultry, and fish and 250 vintage wines; and the freight room, which was large enough to hold an aeroplane and the huge duralumin tanks filled with diesel fuel.
As they neared the end of the corridor the steward did an extraordinary thing. Beneath them stretched the silver fabric of the airship’s outer cover. To demonstrate its strength he leapt twelve feet off the catwalk and bounced up and down like a boy on a trampoline. For an instant Denham glimpsed the unremarkable lad beneath the Nazi persona he’d acquired like a greasy sheen on his skin.
Onwards they went until they reached a vertical shaft, which they climbed for what seemed like half a mile until it joined the main axial corridor, the bone that ran through the centre of the vast ship from fins to nose.
‘Amazing,’ Denham said, laughing.
It was like a film stage built from an Erector set. A gargantuan spider’s web of bracing wires and girders radiated out from the central axis, and looking along the corridor’s length was like seeing infinity reflected between two mirrors. The air was much colder.
Together they walked along the corridor between towering gas cells, which hummed quietly with the vibration of the engines.
‘There are sixteen of them,’ Jörg explained, ‘maintained around the clock by duty riggers.’
Denham touched one of them with the palm of his hand. That such a delicate membrane separated safety from catastrophe was unimaginable. What risks man takes in order to fly.
Soon the corridor intersected with another airshaft.
‘Wait here,’ said Jörg. ‘I must pass an instruction to the duty rigger.’ With that he disappeared down the shaft.
Seems a good moment to give him the slip, Denham thought. He continued alone along the axial corridor, eventually reaching a bay in the very tip of the ship’s nose, where huge coils of mooring rope were stacked on the floor.
Outside the bay window, fields of cumulus billowed, brilliant and numinous in the afternoon sun. The ship had gained considerable height while he was inside its hull and was now beginning its descent through the clouds. A minute later his vision filled with grey, and the rain of a summer squall flicked at the window, fanning across the glass in the headwind.
Suddenly, there was Berlin, vast and sullen.
The metropolis spread out in every direction. He hadn’t even realised they were near. The sun broke through for an instant, casting a shaft of gold over the eastern outskirts. He saw the River Spree snaking around the landmarks, opalescent in the metallic light. He saw coal barges, trams, and traffic moving.
The Hindenburg maintained its downward tilt and was soon gliding over the rain-washed streets and rooftops, casting its shadow. As it slowed, the propeller engines changed gear into a deep, pulsing drone.
He could see the entire Olympic route: all the way from the Brandenburg Gate, through the Tiergarten, where the road was hedged with flag-waving crowds, along the Kaiserdamm and the Heerstrasse between double rows of sycamores, until in the distance to the west he saw it: the granite colonnade with banners flying, the thousand-year stadium of the new order.
Within minutes he could make out the brazier on the Marathon Gate and the top-hatted heads of officials. The athletes, in their blazers and white shoes, stood in long rows, preparing to parade onto the track behind their flags.
Now the airship was passing slowly over the stadium’s stone rim, and Denham’s line of vision dropped into a vast crater seething with life, deeper than the surrounding ground. Half the bowl was plunged into shadow by the ship, and a hundred thousand people raised their heads towards him.
‘My God,’ he whispered.
The ship hovered for a moment, the engines humming so that the propellers seemed to caress the air.
A fanfare sounded faintly, distorted through loudspeakers, and then the movement of a wind over a field of barley passed through the hundred thousand, which rose as one, right arms raised, and he realised that the man himself was making his entrance, the tiny, striding figure in brown.
High in his vantage point, Denham heard the crowd’s roars
, like waves crashing on a shingle shore.
Chapter Seven
The roar of propeller engines set Eleanor’s teeth on edge.
‘Ain’t that something?’ shouted Paul Gallico, his mouth full of bratwurst. The crowd applauded in a frenzy. He was sitting next to her in the Associated Press box, rather too close for comfort. They were really crammed in on these benches.
She didn’t even look up as the Zeppelin droned overhead. She felt slightly sick to her stomach, imagining she still sensed the tilt and sway of the Manhattan beneath her. Of more interest to her was a shouting match going on nearby between some guards and a tough-looking young woman in flared slacks who seemed to be in charge of a camera crew positioned near the rostrum. According to the AP reporters in front of her, the guards had been ordered by Dr Goebbels to remove the cameras. The woman insisted she had permission to film.
‘See, these guys put on a great show of order,’ Gallico said, ‘but their whole setup is chaotic. The country is a jungle of personal empires.’
Eleanor said nothing.
‘Aw, cheer up, sweetheart. It’s not like you’ve never won an Olympic gold before.’
‘Buddy, I’m okay,’ she said, sharper than she’d meant. She squeezed his hand. ‘You boys have been swell.’
He offered her the bratwurst, and she took a bite.
‘Hey . . . ,’ she said, chewing. ‘I always knew I’d go from bad to wurst.’
That gave Gallico helpless giggles at the moment of Hitler’s entrance.
They’d guessed the great man was near. Loudspeakers around the stadium had kept up a hyperactive commentary on the progress of his motorcade across the city, and the crowd simmered with excitement. Contingents from five continents were singing football-terrace songs and a dozen national anthems that boomed around the bowl in a cacophony of competitive cheer. Soldiers in uniform; members of hundreds of sporting and youth organisations in their white shirts; diplomats, the press, socialites, and families of Berliners with children waited in high spirits, enjoying the Olympic truce that lay over the city.