The German Heiress

by Anika Scott

  “This led me to Hamelin, where I had the pleasure of meeting your very cooperative landlady, and now we’re here.” Fenshaw tapped the letter against his knee. “Things will go easier on you if you stop this performance. I’m not mistaken about you. This is not a mix-up. You are not the dead secretary Margarete Müller. You’re the very alive, no longer missing, war criminal Clara Falkenberg.”

  A weight descended on her head, and a darkness, and she bent over slightly, trying to breathe. It was as if the anemia had returned. “It’s not true. It’s nonsense. Surely you’re not being serious.”

  “Hear that, Reynolds? Good, clean upper class.”

  She couldn’t remember speaking English, and why would that part of her creep out now? Margarete Müller had spoken passable English, but Clara couldn’t risk it with Fenshaw. She was too fluent. German. She had to speak German. “The Falkenberg was blond, sir. Everybody knows that.”

  “Not a natural blond, I’m afraid.” He tucked the letter away and pulled two photographs out of a file. Clara at ten, black-haired and frowning at the camera. Clara at twenty, in the blond wave she’d thought made her look more like her father and brothers. It was a trick of fate that she was the black sheep, so to speak, born with her mother’s dark hair.

  “I suppose,” Fenshaw said, “your natural coloring wasn’t fashionable after 1933.”

  “There’s a resemblance, sir. People always pointed it out. But I’m not her.”

  “Yet you want me to believe you’re her.”

  He held up the picture Clara had hoped he didn’t have. In the war, the real Margarete Müller had been a drab and virginal girl, competent at her job, awed by Clara and their resemblance. They had chatted sometimes when Clara had business at Krupp’s. It paid to have a friendly face embedded with the competition. When Clara heard Fräulein Müller had died, she had thought: How sad. And then: What if I get her papers?

  Fenshaw tapped his fingers on the files, far too pleased with himself. He was too intelligent to fool with arguments, and besides, the facts were on his side, stacked up on his table. He was an officer, so she might appeal to his vanity, his pride, or his status. She had done this a little already, and it only seemed to amuse him. She didn’t get a sense he wanted her sexually. Even when he’d touched her, she hadn’t felt that kind of desire in him. It was something else, something more intense and threatening than the common attraction between a German woman and an Allied soldier.

  She was left with his nationality. She had spent many summers in England enduring her mother’s family, enough time to know how the English liked to see themselves. Decent. Tolerant. Fair. She decided to appeal to Fenshaw’s decency. She opened her eyes wider so that the light from the army vehicles could sparkle in them. He would see inside her to a beating heart and a clean soul. He would see she had nothing to hide. She was an innocent young woman shivering in the cold. He had made a mistake and it would be less than gentlemanlike, it would be downright cruel, to detain her one more moment.

  Slowly, he smiled at her, an indulgent smile as if he knew all her faults but didn’t hold them against her. And then he lifted his hand.

  Reynolds shouted, and there was a series of bellows in return, one soldier to another all the way across the grassy field to the train. Someone blew a whistle. The train answered, and soon it began to roll, its horn sounding like a final good-bye.

  “YOU KNOW, I hated school too,” Fenshaw said, lighting a cigarette. “We were at the mercy of the system. The bastards.”

  The train’s whistle echoed across the fields. She couldn’t believe it was gone. She feared she’d never find her way home again, not as a free woman. “We’re always at the mercy of the system we live in,” she said.

  “Some people thrive in their environment more than others.”

  “I didn’t thrive.”

  “But you did. For a brief period in the war, you were the most powerful woman your family ever produced. You managed an industrial empire.”

  She shook her head.

  “No? How would you describe the work you did? Please don’t say secretarial. We’ve been through that.”

  She tried out the alternatives in her head. Personnel. Logistics. Production. All pieces of the job she’d done at a desk of nearly black wood, the telephone and marble inkstand before her, the window reaching from her elbow to the ceiling. And all of that on the eighth floor of headquarters. Before the bombardments, she had loved the view of the factories below, a small city of fire and smoke that belonged to her family.

  “I don’t know what you want to hear, sir.”

  “We can start with the system of forced labor you established at the Falkenberg Iron Works.”

  “I didn’t—” She bit her tongue.

  “Didn’t . . . import men and women from across Europe to work for you? Didn’t keep them in labor camps under guard or behind barbed wire?” Fenshaw rested his elbow on his files. “You didn’t starve them?”

  No. She wanted to say she had never done these things. At least, not willingly. Not . . . with the intent to do harm. And he didn’t tell the whole story. How the government controlled the labor system in the war. Most of the foreign workers had been forced to come to her, yes, but she had tried to avoid it, to fill her vacancies any other way she could. She could inform him about the recruitment drives in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, the wages she had promised and paid, the workers free to rent flats like a German anywhere in the city. Men did come voluntarily. That had existed too, she wanted to tell Fenshaw. Though as the war went on, if a highly skilled man asked to leave . . .

  She folded her hands in her lap, ashamed of the trick played on some of the workers, their voluntary contracts changed to forced ones by the government. All she had been able to do was quietly warn them it was about to happen. She had planned to seek out each man herself, as head of the Labor Office, to give him any outstanding wages and the advice to not come to work the next day. But when she told Elisa, by now one of her assistants, the plan, Elisa had said it was nonsense. Fräulein Falkenberg couldn’t do such a thing in person. “Leave it to me,” she’d said, a twinkle of mischief in her eyes. Clara had reminded her friend that this wasn’t a game. By helping workers escape, they were undermining the war effort.

  She was trembling more violently now. “Sir, why are you doing this?” She showed Fenshaw her hands, how stiff the fingers were. “Why are we sitting out here in the cold?”

  “You’re uncomfortable?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “Answer my questions and I’ll take you somewhere warm.”

  He’d said it in a friendly fashion, but his words sent a shiver of warning through her. This roadside interrogation—it was part of his calculations, a way to wear her down.

  “I’ve been cooperating as best I can, sir.”

  “Tell me.” He was fingering his files again as if looking for some fact he had lost. “Those poor sods you shipped in from Poland and the Soviet Union—did you see them as humans at all?”

  Of course. She was so outraged, she nearly got up from her stool, ready to walk away from him. But when she moved, Fenshaw did too, close enough to catch her by the arm. Behind her, she sensed the soldiers closing in.

  “You have nothing to say?” Fenshaw asked. “About the transports, the hunger, the deaths?”

  It was true, there had been—she touched a throbbing ache that had developed in her eye—casualties. Illness, injury, starvation. She had desperately appealed to the authorities for more rations. She had sent Max and Elisa to find any sources of food they could—nearly impossible with supplies vanishing all over the city as the war went on. Now and then, they risked buying from shady men who hoarded food or sold it on the wartime black market. But it wasn’t enough. Clara couldn’t supplement the rations of thousands of people out of her own pocket, even if there had been food to buy. And so people had sickened under the double weight of hunger and hard work. Some had died in her care. Did he think she had forgotten that
?

  “I don’t know what you want me to say, sir.”

  Fenshaw rested his fist on the table and, for a moment, she thought he would lose his composure. “At the end of the war, why did you run?”

  She curled her fingers in her gloves. She couldn’t feel them any longer. She thought of the Ukrainian girl in the kerchief breaking into a smile, her third upper tooth on the left missing, giving her whole round face a kind of dogged, childlike hope. Clara closed her eyes. Oh, Galina.

  “Are you so afraid of prison?” Fenshaw asked.

  She nearly snapped at him: You don’t know me. All your files, and you still don’t know me.

  “You were always a private person,” he said. “Are you afraid of the attention? The press hounding you. The trial. Is that what you’re scared of? The exposure?”

  In the distance, the lights of a farmhouse or a village sparkled. Without the train, she felt the emptiness of the countryside and how completely she was trapped. Fenshaw was watching her through his cigarette smoke. Her whole life she had been watched one way or another, but never in such a sharp, probing way. The hairs on the back of her neck stood taut, as if he was pulling them slowly one at a time.

  “Or are you doing this,” he said, “because of your father?”

  Moisture was collecting at her nostrils. She wanted to wipe it away, but she didn’t dare move.

  “The case against him is coming together, you know. He’ll be charged with crimes against humanity, among other things. You read the papers, I’m sure.”

  She put her handkerchief to her nose after all, a gesture she knew made her look upset, but she couldn’t stand the thought of him seeing her nose running.

  “He thinks you’re dead,” Fenshaw said.

  She began to shake her head; then she caught herself, because she had known this. It was the logical conclusion after she disappeared in the war. Logical, but not true. Deep down, she had held the girlish belief that Papa would know she was alive. He would just know.

  “I tried to tell him you’re only missing, but he wouldn’t have it,” Fenshaw said. “He’s a bit of a fatalist. Understandably. From his perspective, the war took everything. His home and work, his status, his freedom. All four of his children. He’s given himself up to self-pity and grief.”

  She pressed her hands between her knees to stop them shaking. She had so many questions. Do the Americans know he’s ill? What exactly has he said? Is he eating enough? And she couldn’t ask any of it. She couldn’t snatch up the files and see for herself.

  “He doesn’t look well,” he said gently. “The Americans feed him, but I’m told he’s getting thinner all the time. He’s being treated for a heart condition.”

  So they did know. She wanted to demand Fenshaw tell her why her father was still being tried if the Allies knew they were killing him in their camp and would finish the job in prison.

  “Fräulein”—Fenshaw leaned closer to her—“if we could tell him his last child is alive, his condition would improve. We could arrange for you to meet.”

  She could almost see it. A room in Papa’s internment camp, an American guard at the door. Papa waiting for her, his elbow on a scuffed table and a half-smoked cigarette, a gift of mercy from the guard, pinched in his fingers. The shock of him in person, looking a decade older than he had two years ago. His wince as he got up from his chair to greet her, a thick sheen in his eyes. Not knowing if they should hug each other with an American in the room. She would try hard to keep herself together because if she cried, it would embarrass her father, and then maybe he wouldn’t be able to keep himself together either.

  “You are your father’s child,” Fenshaw said. “Everyone I’ve spoken to has said that. You don’t want to turn your back on him now when he needs you most? Not after all you did for him?”

  Her eyes felt stung and swollen, and she turned away to compose herself. It would be a short visit, she assumed. The Americans wouldn’t allow a long reunion. And then, once she was gone, he’d be alone again and burdened by a new set of worries. His daughter was alive, yes, but caught. A prisoner like him.

  There was another way. Elisa could tell Papa. He would get the news that Clara was alive in a letter, maybe, or indirectly via one of his lawyers. His condition would improve when he heard that his daughter, his last living child, was not only alive—but free.

  “Captain, as I’ve said, I’m afraid you have the wrong woman. I can understand the mix-up, sir. It happened once or twice in Essen. I’m flattered you mistake me for her. She was very impressive. But surely you can see the difference.”

  He took off his cap and ran a hand through his hair. He looked about forty and had the studied blandness she had seen in many men on her summers in England. She imagined him at a party, wearing tweeds, the type of man who would have dared speak to her only after several drinks, and even then only if they happened to be alone. A man who could not bear public embarrassment or rejection. His uniform gave him the confidence to talk to her as he was doing now. That and the defeat. It was easy to be on the winning side.

  “What do you think is going to happen now?” he asked.

  “I was hoping you’d drive me to the station in the next town, sir.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Because it’s the right thing to do, sir. I haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “You’re committed, then.” He flicked away his cigarette. “Right. This way, please.”

  He took her arm as if escorting her at a dance and led her past the army vehicles to a covered truck. Soldiers pulled aside the canvas to reveal a steel locker lashed upright on the bed. The locker was the kind soldiers used to store their gear. It had other less innocent uses, she had heard, but she had never condoned that sort of punishment of foreign workers; nor had her father, no matter what the newspapers said.

  Reynolds undid the padlock and trained his flashlight on the scratched interior of the locker.

  “We found this at Krupp’s,” Fenshaw said. “I hear Falkenberg had one just like it.”

  She bristled at the lie. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir.”

  “You might remember that two men can squeeze into that locker. If they’re forced. The lads tried it out. A tight fit. Had some neck pain afterward. Trouble breathing.”

  Her lungs fluttered for air.

  “Miss Falkenberg, you’re caught. It’s over. If you can’t admit it now, maybe you will after a spell in there.”

  “You can’t do this. You wouldn’t.”

  “You’re giving me no choice. Admit who you are and we can get on with things. I’ll take you with me in the car.”

  “Where would you take me?”

  “For questioning. You’ll be comfortable. Warm. Well fed. Don’t be frightened.”

  “You’re threatening me with that locker and you don’t think I should be frightened?”

  “I’ve been more than fair with you.” He softened his voice. “All this fuss isn’t necessary. You know we’ll get at the truth one way or another. Someone in Essen will identify you if you don’t admit it yourself. Be sensible.”

  That’s exactly what she was. If she gave in, she knew what would happen, what would really happen. Fenshaw would hand her over to other soldiers. They would drag her to the interrogation prison no one spoke of but everyone knew existed. It was in Bad Nenndorf, not far from Hamelin. She had heard what happened to prisoners there.

  Ignoring the outstretched hands of Fenshaw’s man, she climbed onto the back of the truck herself.

  Rock

  The boy sat up in his field bed. He wasn’t sure if it was night or day, but anyway, it didn’t much matter. He slept when he felt like sleeping. He got up when he felt like getting up. He pulled on his boots, loving the moment when his foot slid into the leather. His foot stuck a bit and he had to tug. His feet had grown and he would have to find new boots, but he’d put off searching in the supplies. He loved the ones he had. Then came his tunic, his arms sliding into
the sleeves, the firm fit, as if the tunic held him together. He licked his thumb and polished each button until they shone.

  He stood up slowly and, once he was upright, he tilted his head. The black rock ceiling hung lower than it should for his height—or rather for the height he seemed to be acquiring faster than he thought possible. In one of the other tunnels, where he had always walked easily, he’d smashed his head against one of the beams that shored up the ceiling. That was why he’d gone to bed. Now he remembered.

  He touched his skull—still tender—and then went to the crate he used as a table. Here was his favorite part of the uniform. He lifted the steel helmet, the cool metal soothing in his hands. He lowered it onto his head and immediately felt safe. When he patrolled the tunnel wearing this, he wouldn’t have to worry about the low clearance.

  Since it was chilly, he put on his coat, and since he was about to go on patrol, he buckled on his belt. His coat was getting a little musty, so he dabbed it with a few drops of the cologne he kept in his locker. He checked his sidearm and said, “Hold the fort, Gertrud.” His canary fluttered in the nest he’d made for her out of twigs and leaves and paper. Then he stepped out into the main tunnel where the draft flowed through the ventilation shafts. Water dripped in hidden passageways beneath his feet. He didn’t need a light to move through the tunnels anymore. He had learned to listen to the rock throbbing all around him. And so, as he always did when he began his patrol, he moved in the dark to the beginning of this place, where the rock opened to the outside world.

  4

  The ginger soldier Reynolds was shouting over the truck’s motor. “How’re you getting on? Still breathing in there?”

  Clara opened her eyes to the thick, complete dark of the steel locker, and quickly shut them again. She didn’t waste her breath answering him. She could breathe in a smokestack. She could breathe in a forge. She grew up in the haze of smog that seeped into the walls of Falkenhorst when she was a girl. Years ago, when the iron works were at full production and the wind blew just right, soot fell in the garden like flakes of black snow.