by Jane Thynne
Now Clara was alone, in a mac and a printed silk scarf and a copy of Picture Post unread on her knee. Miss Penelope Dudley-Ward, the English heroine of the London-Paris-New York hit, French Without Tears, wears a rose, turquoise and gold brocaded lamé jacket and a full satin skirt in a deep rosy red.
The bus halted before a group of men hauling sheets of corrugated iron for bomb shelters. Clara wondered if Angela had a shelter of her own, and if she did, whether she would ever need to use it. It was hard to imagine the elegant Angela shivering in a damp construction of earth and sheet metal that flooded when it rained, or cramped in a basement, with a torch and a book. Angela liked a pink gin and a rubber of bridge in the evenings. Listening to Cole Porter at the Café de Paris or visiting the cellar of the Embassy Club in Bond Street, where until recently the Prince of Wales and Wallis Simpson had danced the quickstep on the tiny dance floor.
Clara had a sudden, fervent desire to get off the bus and visit her sister, but she knew the prospect was impossible. How would she explain this flying visit to London? What cover could she credibly construct that Angela would not instantly penetrate? Despite her long practice in controlling impulsive urges, it still took an almost physical strength for Clara to stay in her seat and not dash down the winding stairs and jump off the back platform of the bus.
After six years away, she scanned London’s familiar surroundings as though hunting for changes in the face of a long lost friend. There were the same advertisements for Wrigley’s Spearmint Gum, Ovaltine and Eno’s Fruit Salts, and Peter Jones had changed its Victorian redbrick frontage to a sleekly modernized tower of glass and steel. But now its windows were pasted with criss-crossed strips of brown paper to protect against potential bomb blast, the kerbstones had been painted white and sandbags, exuding a smell of damp jute, were shored against the side of every building. A giant recruitment advertisement for the RAF, Salute to Adventure!, towered beside Sloane Square tube and a group of young men, subjects of the first wave of conscription, sailed past in a National Service truck. Other details, too, Clara could not help noticing. Women wore little hats tipped slightly forward and to one side. Jackets were more boxy and defined, coats had puffed shoulders, shoes were tightly laced and the whole female silhouette had become harder and more definite, as though Fashion itself was braced for what was to come.
Disembarking at Westminster she made her way across Parliament Square, past Methodist Central Hall and along the Georgian terraces of Queen Anne’s Gate. Bright, luminous bursts of laburnum and wisteria blossom hung over sun-warmed walls. Through the pellucid blue sky the bells of Westminster Abbey marked four o’clock. The Abbey’s bone-white frontage of pleated stone was draped with a veil of soot and placards along the railings announced that it was now open day and night as part of a ‘Vigil for Peace’. Passing a film poster for The Spy In Black, Clara was startled to see it starred Conrad Veidt. Just a few months ago she had passed the venerable German actor in the corridors of the Ufa studios. Now he was established in a new life and a new career in England.
It could happen to her too.
As she walked, she felt her body tense and her shoulders knot in the familiar brace. It was impossible to shake the tension which clenched her stomach. She thought for a moment it might be the dizzy rush of nostalgia, set off by everything from the pillar boxes and the plane trees to the pennies with the King’s head on them. Even the newspaper seller outside St James’s Park underground station, advertising the first sight of the new pandas at London Zoo, prompted a yearning for the city she had not realized she missed so much. In reality, though, she knew it was only nervous anticipation of what this meeting would bring.
The St Ermin’s Hotel was a shabby, late-Victorian redbrick mansion block in Caxton Street, set back from the road and only a few hundred yards from 54, Broadway, where the headquarters of the Secret Intelligence Service was based. On a weekday afternoon it was the last place on earth one would associate with espionage. The lobby, all tartan-trimmed upholstery and dusty carpet, was hushed and gloomy. Watercolours of the Lake District hung alongside a painting of the King, and the smell of congealed vegetables and floor polish exuded a distilled essence of Englishness. A couple of ladies in hats and fur capes taking tea at a side table were the only sign of life.
Clara hesitated. It had not occurred to her until then how exactly she would make contact with the mysterious Captain Miles Fitzalan who had invited her to his fictitious ball. She approached a girl reading a copy of Woman’s Weekly behind the mahogany reception.
‘Is there a Captain Fitzalan staying here?’
The girl gave an insultingly perfunctory smile.
‘Can I ask who wants him?’
‘Miss Clara Vine.’
Putting down Woman’s Weekly the receptionist reached wearily for the telephone.
‘They’re fifth floor.’
‘Thank you.’
‘The lifts only go up to fourth, but if you press the button to the left, it’ll take you all the way up.’
Clara emerged from the lift to find a long, dingy office partitioned by panes of frosted glass and plywood, filled with men in pinstriped suits lounging and chatting at desks. A fug of cigarette smoke hung in the air, lit by broad shafts of sunlight penetrating the murky windows. Though she was dressed quietly enough, in a skirt of hounds-tooth check, a blouse with scalloped collar and a small pearl necklace, curious eyes swivelled immediately towards her. A louche man, with rumpled hair and tie at half mast, one ear pressed to the telephone, gave her a wink but Clara barely had time to look around her before an imposing figure with a scarlet carnation in his buttonhole approached.
‘Miss Vine. So pleased you could come. What do you think of our offices? None too decorative, but very handy for clubs and so on.’ Pumping her hand, he detected her incomprehension and added, ‘I’m sorry. You don’t know me from Adam. I’m Major Grand. Lawrence Grand.’
‘Clara Vine.’
‘Precisely. Please follow me.’
Anyone who did not know that Lawrence Grand had recently been seconded from the Army could have detected it instantly from the ramrod bearing, tanned complexion and the military exactitude of his pencil moustache. Clara recognized his type immediately. He wore his politeness like a uniform, buttoned up against the possibility of revealing the merest snippet of extraneous information.
Striding ahead, he led the way to a corner office with a view of budding plane trees and a line of pigeons shuffling along the soot-dappled rooftops of Westminster.
‘Do sit down. Smoke?’
‘Thank you.’ She took the proffered Senior Service, and he slid across his desk a cut-glass ashtray studded with ochre stains like pollen in a lily.
‘Who are all those people?’
‘Ah.’ Major Grand fired up her cigarette and assessed her, head on one side. ‘That, Miss Vine, is a question I can’t possibly answer. Not only would it endanger my people if I identified them to you, but it could put you at risk too. Let’s just say we have all sorts from all walks of life. Often the very last sort you would expect.’
‘Of course. I’m sorry.’
‘On the other hand, seeing as you’ve been so good as to come all the way here, you’re entitled to ask a few questions. You’ll probably want to know what we’re about.’
Clara guessed this was her cue.
‘Can I ask who you are, for a start?’
‘Certainly. The fact is, we’re a bit of a fledgling venture. We’re called Section D. Connected to the Secret Intelligence Service. Physically connected, in fact – there’s a tunnel that runs under this building all the way to Broadway, not that anyone I know has used it. We’ve been up and running for a few months – ever since SIS concluded in the wake of the Czech invasion that war is unavoidable – our intention being to establish agents in those countries which face being overrun by the Wehrmacht.’
For Clara it was still a shock to hear, uttered so casually, the idea that war was ‘unavoidable’. Every fib
re of her hoped that wasn’t true. She dreaded what would happen to her friends, to Leo, and most of all to Erich, if it happened.
‘We’ve already placed officers in Sweden, Norway, Holland and Spain, not to mention Austria of course, but infiltrating people into Germany, let alone being able to do anything useful once they’re there, is a very different challenge. Which is why, Miss Vine, your name has come up.’
‘You want me to apply?’
Grand bent his head to the complex task of extracting another Senior Service from his jacket pocket and fitting it into an ebony cigarette holder, then rose and strode over to the window.
‘People don’t apply for us, because we don’t officially exist. We approach those we think might be valuable. You’ve been in Berlin now, what, five years?’
‘Six.’
‘Quite so. They’ve just been celebrating the Führer’s birthday, I hear. What was that like?’
‘Not exactly understated.’
He laughed drily.
‘So I understand. As a matter of fact, Noel Mason-MacFarlane, our military attaché in Berlin, offered to shoot Herr Hitler during the parade. He has a sixth-floor flat on the Charlottenburger Chaussee with a clear line of sight to the saluting podium and he said it would be easier than bagging a stag at a hundred yards to pick the beggar off. This chap’s an excellent shot so we put the plan forward to the Prime Minister.’
He stared down at the street below as though Hitler was saluting right there on the pavement below him.
‘If you can believe, the PM overruled it as unsportsmanlike.’
Clara could barely contain her astonishment. So she had not been the only person to contemplate the idea. Hitler might have been assassinated, while the eyes of the world were on him. What would the Ufa newsreel have made of that?
‘Unsportsmanlike?’ she echoed incredulously.
Grand tucked his hands in his waistcoat pocket.
‘That was his precise word.’
‘I’m surprised.’
‘Good.’
He wheeled round, all jocularity replaced by an expression of intense seriousness.
‘Our feeling here is that even at this late hour Mr Chamberlain badly underestimates the danger of Herr Hitler. I hope if you were ever in the same room as him, you would have no qualms. If the opportunity arose, we would not want you, Miss Vine, to be hindered by fears of “unsportsmanlike” behaviour.’
Her heart bucked with fear, but she replied calmly.
‘I can’t imagine the opportunity would arise.’
‘Perhaps not.’
He sat and crossed one leg over the other, stroking his trousered calf and scrutinizing her, as if trying to decide something.
‘I’m aware that life in Berlin is not a bed of roses. But it’s going to get much worse now that war is on the horizon. We all have decisions to make, but yours is especially acute.’
Clara bent her head and smoothed the skirt on her knees, as though the mere action would help straighten out the questions in her mind. She had guessed that this summons would be a request from the British Intelligence Service – those shadowy men in Whitehall who had over the years been the ultimate recipients of all the gossip and information she relayed. She knew too that, just like Conrad Veidt and a host of other actors, if she chose to return to England she could make a fresh start in the British film industry. Yet mentally she had shied away from the question facing her. That same question which, beneath the penetrating gaze of Major Lawrence Grand, she knew she must now face.
‘We need to know, when hostilities arise, whether you intend to stay in Germany. It’s going to get a lot more dangerous.’
Something about Grand’s bland assurance suddenly rankled. Who was this man in his smart suit and comfortable office to talk of danger? What could he know of what she went through on a daily basis?
‘You forget I’ve already been arrested and interrogated by the Gestapo, Major Grand. I’ve had plenty of opportunity to understand how dangerous Berlin can be. I’m not even living in my own apartment because I think I’m being watched.’
An apologetic smile transformed his face and she could see a glimpse of the kindly man beneath the gruff exterior.
‘Forgive me. So I take it you have decided to stay?’
Clara quailed at the direct question. The twists and turns that had determined her life had always been impulsive ones. The decision to leave England for Berlin in 1933 had come after a chance meeting at a party. The agreement to spy for British Intelligence came about because of an episode of Nazi brutality she had witnessed in the street. None of the decisive events in her life had ever been premeditated. Ultimatums made her nervous. She remembered how she had shied away from Leo Quinn’s proposal of marriage because he insisted that she leave Germany. Perhaps avoiding decisions was her own personal form of cowardice.
‘Actually, I haven’t quite made up my mind.’
‘I see.’ Grand was plainly taken aback. ‘Your prerogative, of course. But there was a specific task I had in mind . . .’
‘Which is?’
Suddenly Major Grand sprang to his feet, eyes on the door. Clara registered the clatter of china and the next moment, with a perfunctory rap, a large woman in a floral apron backed in, pulling a tea trolley behind her containing a large steel urn and a stack of pale green civil service crockery, as well as a plate of Rich Tea biscuits.
‘Milk and two, Major Grand?’
‘You know me so well, Mrs Fairclough,’ said Grand, helping himself to a biscuit, snapping it mathematically in half and dabbing up the crumbs with a forefinger. ‘And for my guest?’
‘Just milk please.’
The sight of the malty, copper stream of British tea splashing into the cups prompted another jolt of nostalgia. Although Clara’s time in Germany had introduced her to the pleasure of coffee, no one else in Europe made tea the English way, well brewed, refreshing in all weathers and the answer to all crises.
After Mrs Fairclough had dispensed the tea, plunked in the sugar lumps and manoeuvred the trolley out of the door, Grand perched on the desk in front of Clara and fixed her more intently.
‘To answer your question, this is a task of the utmost delicacy. One that goes to the heart of the future peace of Europe. I don’t mind saying it will determine whether those gas masks we’ve all been given will ever get used. There are rumours going round Intelligence circles that a Nazi-Soviet pact is in the offing.’
Clara looked up from her tea with a frown. ‘A pact with the Bolsheviks? Surely not?’
‘A marriage of convenience is I think what they call it.’
‘But the Nazis and the Bolsheviks are ideological enemies. It could never happen.’
‘My feelings precisely,’ said Grand. ‘I would have thought hell would freeze over first. However. If the rumours are true, there would be very grave repercussions for the rest of us. From what we hear the idea of a pact is being propelled by von Ribbentrop. He has a pathological loathing for the British so he’s presumably working on the basis that “My enemy’s enemy is my friend”.’
‘Even so, it’s so unlikely.’
‘Personally I agree. It’s arrant nonsense. Besides, our own people are negotiating with Comrade Stalin right now. But we need more solid intelligence. Something concrete. We need an inside track to the Foreign Ministry and that’s where you come in.’
Into Clara’s mind came the impatient, chiselled face of Conrad Adler. I’m on loan from the Foreign Ministry. Like a painting in a museum.
‘Von Ribbentrop is a stupid man,’ said Grand. ‘Vain and foolish. His wife however is another matter. And I think you know her.’
Grand pulled a newspaper photograph out of a manila file on his desk and, craning across, Clara saw with astonishment that it was a yellowing page from the BZ am Mittag showing herself talking to Annelies von Ribbentrop at the launch of the Reich Fashion Bureau in 1933. The passage of six years had done nothing to soften the rigid composure of the Foreign Mini
ster’s wife, the iron set of her jaw, nor the dyspeptic smile that could so easily be mistaken for a grimace.
‘What do you make of her?’
Clara thought back to the first time she met Frau von Ribbentrop, just after the regime came to power. Then she was an arriviste, desperate to impress with dinner parties at her Dahlem home, and now she was half of one of the most powerful couples in Europe. Kings, presidents and prime ministers came to her parties. She was a far more ardent Nazi than her husband, yet their marriage could not be more different from the marital catfight the Goebbels waged. The Von Ribbentrops were said to share everything, especially political plans.
‘She’s a formidable woman.’
‘Indeed. A couple of chaps here met her when von Ribbentrop was ambassador to Great Britain, and they were frankly terrified. She was always cornering them to complain about the weather – as though they could do anything about it – and insanely jealous about her husband’s behaviour with the ladies. He was said to send a daily bunch of red carnations to Wallis Simpson and she couldn’t tolerate it. She was a bit of a laughing stock actually. She brought a marching squad of SS guards over who created the most frightful atmosphere and above all she had the most dreadful nouveau riche taste. Decked out the whole of Carlton House Terrace in marble cladding. It looks like a public lavatory. It’s going to take years to unpick.’
Clara finished her tea and returned the saucer to the table.
‘I take it it’s not her artistic tastes you’re concerned about here.’