by Anika Scott
He pushed the picture away. “I don’t know her, sir.”
“A dozen witnesses claim you were with a woman fitting this description at the South Sea Club the night the storm hit.” Fenshaw set an identity card on the table, the photograph smaller and smudged but definitely Clara as she was now. Darker, edgier, more guarded. “She calls herself Margarete Müller.”
The whole club had seen her, she’d made sure of that with her antics with Günther and her barefoot dancing. There was no sense in denying it.
“I didn’t know that was the same woman, sir. She looks different.”
“Did she tell you who she was?”
“Margarete Müller, just like you said. A secretary or something.”
“What else did she tell you?”
“Sob story. Typical stuff. Homeless. Man dead. That kind of thing.”
“You took pity on her, wined and dined her, took her to a private room in a black-market club. Was she prostituting herself?”
“No, are you crazy? Her?”
“What’s so special about her if she was only a widowed secretary?”
“I don’t know. Must be some reason you’re looking for her.”
“We found some ashes in the private room, some scraps of paper that didn’t burn very well. They’re from one of my favorite articles about her.” Fenshaw pulled the familiar magazine out of his satchel, and Jakob tried to look interested, as though he was seeing it for the first time, even as his throat was tightening with dread.
“It was clear to me she didn’t say one damn word attributed to her in this article,” Fenshaw said as he turned the pages. “For the führer and Reich. Victory for the people. Words put in her mouth. I wonder if she knew, if she wanted to be used. Did she happen to say anything to you about that?”
He tossed the magazine onto the table between them, but Jakob didn’t touch it. He looked at what she called the old her, the Iron Fräulein, the cover picture of Clara looking competent, in control, which of course was a lie that late in the war. An intact silhouette of the Falkenberg Iron Works spread behind her as if the place wasn’t bombed to bits. Willy’s delusion that all was going exactly as planned? It had started a long time ago and God knew he wasn’t the only one who’d had it.
“I’ve never seen this magazine in my life, sir.”
“Herr Relling, could we please stop wasting time? You know who she is. And I believe you know where she is now.”
Jakob dug the heels of his mismatched shoes into the warped parquet. An odd thing, feeling the floor even with the wooden foot, the ghost leg.
“I know this is hard for you,” Fenshaw said. Jakob had to hold back from saying something he’d regret in the face of that fatherly, understanding tone Fenshaw was trying to sell him. Well, Jakob wasn’t buying. Fenshaw didn’t understand a thing.
“You’re a young man,” Fenshaw said. “You’re intrigued. An heiress has walked into your life. She’s in need, and you have the chance to help her. If I were you, I’d find that almost irresistible too.” He was touching the portrait of Clara, stroking it with his thumb. “But she’s wanted by the military government. It’s your duty to help Allied authorities. Where can I find her?”
Jakob didn’t like how Fenshaw handled the photograph, his delicate touch, Clara’s face hidden in his palm. Fenshaw must have noticed what he was doing. He colored, and quickly tucked it into his satchel. “You want payment, I suppose. Food. Cigarettes.”
“No, sir.”
“What do you want then? Profit? There’s no profit in this if you don’t cooperate.”
“I don’t know how I can help you, sir. I’ve said all I know.”
“Right.” Fenshaw tapped his cigarette on the tabletop, a thoughtful look on his face. “Let’s go back to the night of the raid at the South Sea Club. Why did you and your Fräulein Müller run if you had nothing to hide?”
“I don’t know about you, sir, but if I’m in a black-market club and the police arrive, I run.”
“Guilty conscience?”
“Common sense.”
Fenshaw smiled thinly. “Tell me again how you met her. At the club? Somewhere else?”
Jakob had to think fast, stitch together an easy story in his mind. “At the club.”
Fenshaw motioned for him to go on.
“She showed up in the lounge and sat on the arm of my chair. I was as surprised as the next fellow. I mean, I’m not a bad catch, but things like that don’t happen to me too often.”
“It’s a nice fantasy. A lovely woman strolls into the room and lands in your lap.”
“She didn’t sit in my—”
“The problem is, I have a witness who insists you convinced him to go to the club that night to speak to the fräulein about an incident in the war. To sum up, you enlisted an ex-policeman to talk about Fräulein Falkenberg’s oldest friend to a woman who happens to look very much like her. In the room where that happened, we found evidence of a wartime article that also happens to be about Clara Falkenberg. The coincidences are rather adding up, Herr Relling, don’t you think?”
The nerves in Jakob’s bad leg were sparking like electric wires, and he rubbed it to stave off the pain. “What would you do, sir? I mean, if we switched places and you were in my position. Would you give her up?”
“I can have food delivered. Coal. It’s a bad winter.”
“Would you give up a woman like her for a sack of coal?”
“Herr Relling, I understand your hesitation—”
“No, you don’t. You have no idea, sir, so stop trying to be my friend or my father or to buy me off. I got nothing more to say.”
Fenshaw leaned back in his chair, arms folded. “I see she’s been very nice to you. Charming? Just the right amount of naughty to keep you interested? Or maybe she’s been playing up her downfall. The heroine in her own tragedy. Don’t let yourself be fooled, Herr Relling. I’ve been studying her for years. She’s excellent at manipulating how others see her. I’ll wager you think you’ve been dealing with an heiress down on her luck. Faded glory and all that. Repentant, even. She might seem within your reach. She might have even let you touch her. But it’s to her advantage, not yours. You’ll get nothing by protecting her.”
“You didn’t answer my question, sir. Would you turn her in?”
“Of course.”
Jakob hated the bland ease of Fenshaw’s lie. Because it was a lie. He saw it on Fenshaw’s face, that he’d answered out of irritation, to keep things moving.
“I’m not so quick to stab a woman in the back, sir.”
“She didn’t milk cows in the war, Relling. She ran the Falkenberg Iron Works.”
“A figurehead. A stand-in for her father. You got him already. What do you need her for?”
“She managed her family’s factories at the expense of human beings who worked themselves to exhaustion and death to meet her quotas.”
“She did what she could for those people.”
“Is that what she said?”
Jakob didn’t want Fenshaw to know everything Clara had told him. He wasn’t about to share that intimacy just because he was in trouble. He tried a different argument. “She didn’t have any real power. She’s a woman. Nazis didn’t listen to women.”
“Normally, you’d be right, but most women aren’t named Falkenberg. The SS loved her. Himmler thought she was some kind of princess of iron and fire. All her brothers were SS. And she had a long love affair with an SS officer who moved heaven and earth in her interests.”
Jakob slapped his lighter onto the table. “She wasn’t like them. She’s got to be the only person in this whole country who voluntarily thinks about what she did in the war. You got any idea how disgusted she is? She’s sorry.”
“You think it’s enough to be sorry? She’s not a child. Being sorry doesn’t wipe the slate clean. There are still consequences to what she did.”
“Why are you after her like this, sir? All that stuff about the war, come on. Is it really that straightforward? She th
inks you’re playing some game of your own.”
Fenshaw looked interested. “What exactly did she say?”
“Not much more than that. And I think she wanted you to raid the South Sea. She wouldn’t admit it, but it was pretty clear to me.”
“Why would she want that?”
“She thinks you know her. Well, she said you think you know her.”
Fenshaw shaved a match on the box with a sharp flick of his wrist and watched the flame. He was looking thoughtful and a little pleased with himself, a good moment for Jakob to press his advantage.
“Look, sir, come on. You know she’s not a war criminal, right?”
“Her father will go on trial for war crimes. Some people think she deserves to be there next to him.”
“Is that what you think?”
The match was burning in Fenshaw’s fingers. He winced and shook it out.
“You’re a British officer. Your people are running things around here. If you wanted, you could decide her future yourself. You know more about her than anybody. I can tell. If you have doubts, why not let her go?”
“I don’t have—” Fenshaw stopped himself. “For the last time, Herr Relling, where is she?”
Jakob knew things were about to get a lot worse for him. But what could he do? What kind of man would he be if he turned her in? What would she think of him then?
“As I said before, sir, I don’t know.”
Fenshaw went still, and his face unnerved Jakob, the struggle in the muscles to stay composed. In Russia, Jakob had seen officers look like that before giving orders they wished they didn’t have to give.
“How far along is your sister?” Fenshaw asked.
Jakob’s heart contracted, as if Fenshaw had turned some screw inside it. “About seven months.”
“Where’s the father?”
“Went back to his rat hole in England, I guess.”
“Do you have any aunts, uncles, cousins? Anyone who could help her out when you’re in jail?”
There was a creaking sound from the hallway. Jakob pictured Gabi listening at the keyhole, Dorrit behind, her ear pressed against the glass she held to the door. Ever since they were little girls, they had eavesdropped on him like that. They were trying to be quiet, but he heard them clearly now, the gasping breaths Dorrit couldn’t hide, the hush of Gabi’s knees on the floor as she adjusted how she knelt. For their sake, he answered Fenshaw calmly.
“You can’t arrest me, sir. I haven’t done anything.”
Fenshaw folded his hands in front of his lips, his eyes closed for a second, two, three. “You’re a black marketeer. The Allied government is committed to fighting the black market. It’s my duty to take you off the streets, and I will. If I have to.”
Behind the door, a new sound. Dorrit was sniffling quietly. If Jakob was arrested, she would think it was her fault, that he’d worked on the black market to get the baby what it needed. He wanted to tell her it wasn’t her fault. Whatever happened was his choice. She should know he would never do anything that would hurt her or the baby. When she first admitted she was pregnant, she had stared at him with big eyes full of dread as she braced herself for his fury. But he hadn’t been furious. He had known she was pregnant weeks before she said anything. He knew what it meant when a girl knelt at the pail every day. He’d worked through his anger long before she knew it was there, and when she finally told him the truth, he hugged her and said if it was a boy, she should name him after one of their brothers taken in the war.
The family portrait was hanging crookedly, and Jakob tapped it straight on the wall. His sisters, the baby, they mattered more than a promise and even a woman like Clara. He had to believe she would understand what he was about to do.
21
Clara began to think her mother would never come home. She huddled on a patch of snow by an ornate iron fence, her scarf wrapped around nose and mouth, only her eyes exposed, watching the street and Anne’s house. She had been waiting for . . . she wasn’t sure how long. On the trek up the slick slopes from Willy’s mine, her toes had lost their feeling first, then her fingertips. She peeled off her glove, and the skin on her fingers was an odd white. She pressed her neck and couldn’t feel the warmth. She registered this with a strange detachment.
The few people who walked by in the street paid her no attention, even the men in uniform who rushed into their houses or cars. She knew she looked like one of the women who had run out of whatever reserves of energy had once kept them going, thin creatures waiting for the line to move or the train to arrive at the station. She didn’t know if it was shock at what Willy had told her, or what he had done to her. She thought of him jabbing his pistol into her back, at that iron rod she’d never had in her spine. There was a knot of pain where she’d recoiled from him. Willy. Who had informed on his mother. For sleeping with his father.
Her father.
Their father.
A shadow crossed into her line of sight, and Clara, hunched at the fence, tried to shake herself awake. She saw leather boots spotted with damp, a coat hemmed with silver fox fur.
“Darling?” Anne was holding the fur at her neck, looking down at her in horror. Clara couldn’t help smiling. She must look worse than she suspected.
“Mother.”
“God in heaven, what are you doing sitting out here? You’ll catch your death.” Anne hauled Clara to her feet and helped her limp across the street and into the house. The stairs were difficult, Clara couldn’t quite get her knees to bend how they should, and she misjudged the height of every step. Anne held on to her the entire way, coaxing her forward to get her blood moving. The wall of heat inside the flat made Clara gasp, and she had trouble breathing as Anne stripped her of her coat and wet shoes. Her mother vanished for a while, leaving Clara on the divan acclimatizing herself to the bright light, the thick air, the clutter of things from Falkenhorst. Her life had become a museum already, her past a collection of artifacts preserved or ignored. She was feeling drowsy, but roused herself enough to look at her father’s bird sketch, back in its place on the wall. She pressed her lips tightly to keep back the sadness welling up inside her.
Anne returned with hot tea and a bucket of snow. To Clara’s surprise, her mother knelt at her feet, rolled down Clara’s woolen stocking, and began rubbing the snow on her leg, a common if questionable method of thawing frostbitten skin. Clara was so shocked at her mother’s gentle care, she let her do it.
“Where have you been, darling? Why are you so filthy?”
Clara noticed the coal dust that had left black streaks on her coat. “I’ve been to see Willy.”
No change in her mother’s face, only a cold neutrality. “He’s alive, then.”
“It would’ve suited you if he wasn’t.”
“What kind of thing is that to say? I hardly know the boy.” Anne started rubbing snow on Clara’s other leg and added in a light tone, “Where’s he been keeping himself, then?”
Clara didn’t want to tell her. She needed to protect Willy from the woman Clara was sure had already got her manicured claws into his life. “He’s not too far away. But Elisa isn’t with him.”
“Oh? Abandoned him, did she?”
Clara pushed her back onto the carpet. Her hands burned, her feet, her whole body, life rushing back into them at last. “Tell me, Mother. Who is Willy’s father?”
Anne went rigid, the creases deepening in her face. When she began to move, it was slowly, grasping the arm of the divan and pulling herself with a gasp onto one foot, then the other. She found her cigarettes and a lighter, and sat in the armchair next to the pencil sketch. “You do realize talking about this is a great humiliation. I have no intention of sparing your delicate feelings.” She smoked with a grim and absent look on her face. “I’m curious. Who did you think the father was?”
Clara felt a tremor under her feet, a memory of the bombardments, the ground trembling slightly. “I never knew. Elisa refused to speak about it. When I found that piece of her dr
ess, I thought Friedrich. But I was wrong, wasn’t I?”
“Our dear, handsome, sparkling Friedrich. My darling boy.” Anne was silent a moment. “Yes, you were wrong about him. We count backward from Willy’s birth and we come to late December 1930. Friedrich wasn’t home for Christmas that year. He spent it in Berlin with your great-uncle Alfred studying the airplanes of the Lufthansa. He didn’t come home until late January. By then, that girl—”
“You mean Elisa.”
“She was already pregnant even if she wouldn’t know it for some weeks yet.”
Clara tried to remember that time sixteen years ago, but the years of childhood Christmases blended together—the tree in Falkenhorst’s foyer, the candles in the windows, her brothers singing carols. Her father presiding over the festivities, smoking his cigar, a red carnation in his lapel, contentment glowing on his face. But that year, that special year, he had left the warmth and comfort of his family to see one of his office girls in secret.
“Where did they meet? At the Works, I assume?”
“So you have figured it out.”
There it was. The truth admitted in so few words. The last bit of hope that her father might have been innocent—of this, at least—crumbled. She wanted to strike out at them all—her father, Elisa, her mother—for the secrets they’d kept from her. “They met at the end of the war, you know,” Clara said. “Rekindled their old romance, I suppose. For one night, anyway. Maybe there were others before that when he was in town. I don’t know.” It wounded her to say it as much as it wounded Anne to hear it. Her mother’s face seemed to wither.
“Now you’re just being hurtful, darling.”
“We’re telling the truth now, Mother. Let’s look at Papa as he really was. How did you find out about the original affair?”
“Theodor told me. He had the decency not to lie. You see, a wife knows when her husband is straying. I knew, but I did not expect it to be a freckle-faced teenager in a repulsive office romance. To add insult to injury, the blasted girl had to get pregnant. Theodor is not the type of man to have his mistakes running around in short trousers. He came to an arrangement with her. If she played along, so to speak, she got her house, a suitable husband to shield her reputation, a job for as long as she wanted it.”