A War of Flowers (2014) (43 page)

She crossed the cavernous hall with confidence, making for the corridor that led northwards, towards the ballroom. Suddenly, from up ahead came the sound of hurrying footsteps and she saw a
group of officers approaching, at their centre the figures of Goering and Ribbentrop.

Fighting an immediate urge to retreat, Clara attempted to slow her racing heart. What if she was recognized? It could not be more terrifying to enter Hades and meet the god of the underworld,
than to encounter Ribbentrop, the man who suspected her of spying, in the nerve centre of the Nazi regime. Yet the men were advancing, occupying the entire width of the corridor, their conversation
a harsh jangle which resounded off the marble walls. There was no chance that she could avoid them. Clara froze, hearing her own heartbeat, hard and heavy in her chest as a piece of iron.

Forcing herself to remain calm, she opened the door immediately beside her and stepped inside.

The room was dominated by an enormous table, set as if for a meeting, with paper pads, ink, blotters and ashtrays. Each chair was decorated with an eagle and swastika on its back and around the
walls a library of sorts was ranged. This must be the cabinet room. The place where Hitler’s cabinet met to debate, in the days when there was still any semblance of debate about the
Führer’s aggressive plans.

The air seemed to solidify, making it hard to breathe, and Clara reminded herself that she had every excuse to be in the Chancellery. Eva Braun would vouch for her presence. She was making a
friendly visit. It was all perfectly plausible. But for what possible reason would a casual friend feel the need to hide in the cabinet room?

The footsteps halted outside the half-opened door and from her vantage point Clara could see a slice of Goering, his vast bulk swathed in Luftwaffe grey, his huge feet in polished shoes, and
beside him Ribbentrop, with his back to her. The swell of voices grew louder. They were talking about war. What could they mean?

It dawned on her that they must be intending to enter that room. Every fibre in her body froze, except for the tiny muscle next to her left eye, which flickered its alarm. Against every possible
rule she had come out with no real cover story, other than the one she had spun for Eva about not wanting to bump into an old boyfriend, and how likely was anyone else to fall for that?

As she shrank behind the door, it was clear that Goering and Ribbentrop were having an argument. She strained to hear the substance of the conversation, but caught only occasional phrases:
‘Luftwaffe power is entirely inadequate to destroy London’
and then a little later,
‘There’s no money for war.
’

Suddenly, Goering’s voice rose to a bellow, and he shouted,

‘You’re a warmonger and a criminal fool, Ribbentrop. I know what war is, and I don’t want to go through it again! I tell you, if war breaks out, you can sit beside me in the
first bomber!’

His footsteps strode off down the corridor, forcing his followers to keep up. Ribbentrop, too, marched away. Clara realized that she had been holding her breath and let it out in a great
sigh.

Checking her watch again, she knew that she needed to reach the private entrance now, or the raiding party waiting for access would be halted in the garden. But as soon as she
entered the ballroom, she saw it would not be as easy as she had imagined.

The ballroom was a relatively recent addition – created to accommodate the increasing numbers of visitors invited for receptions. It was hung with grand chandeliers and the walls were
clean and white as an iced wedding cake. Great pillars of blood red marble flanked each side of the room and in between the pillars was a blank of ivory panelling, perfectly regular, stretching the
length of the room. The door was, Eva said, set two thirds of the way down on the left. Or was it three quarters? The panelling looked as smooth and untrammelled as a sheet of snow. Forcing herself
to concentrate, Clara made her eye sweep the length of the wall, searching for anything that might stand out. It took several scans before she saw it. A slightly thicker panel, with the shadow of a
dark slit at the top. She crossed the room quickly, pushed it, and a door opened.

The contrast between the ballroom she had just left and the corridor she found herself in could not be more stark. It was pitch dark and icy cold. The trademark cast-iron wall sconces that
Hitler favoured in his nostalgia for some mediaeval Germanic past were unlit, and there was no sign of any light switch in the wall. The brickwork was as damp as a dungeon and the sour smell of wet
concrete hung in the air. Fumbling along, she almost tripped when she reached the first in the flight of ten steps that led steeply down towards a heavy steel door. That had to be the air-raid
shelter. Turning blindly right, she fumbled for a second door, and grappled in the dark until she found a chill steel handle and with her fingers located the keyhole.

She turned the key and walked up another ten steps into the light.

Clara must have passed the Reich Chancellery in Wilhelmstrasse a hundred times, yet it was still a revelation to find several acres of garden behind its walls. The garden was designed on the
same monumental scale as the Chancellery itself, more of a park than a garden, with spacious lawns bisected by gravelled paths and rose beds running the length of the block from Wilhelmstrasse
right through to Hermann Goering Strasse. On the far side a barracks had been built to house Hitler’s personal guard and flanking the terrace were two giant bronze horses. Directly opposite
them, facing Hitler’s study, was an orangery – more of a small glass palace in reality – dedicated to the cultivation of the Führer’s vegetables. The only actual
gardening going on was being performed by a young man about a hundred metres away, hoeing a bed of roses around the base of an ornamental pool. Of the raiding party, there was no sign.

Slipping the key back in her pocket, Clara stepped into the garden, leaving the door ajar. She had not thought properly what she should do at this point. She had simply assumed that
Welzer’s party of soldiers would be ready and waiting for her. Instead, it now looked like she would need to find the exit Brandt had talked of, that led onto the Wilhelmstrasse.

She threaded along a gravel walk skirting the back of the old presidential palace, directly beneath what she knew was Hitler’s bedroom and private study. She compelled herself to walk
calmly, as though she had every reason to be strolling in Hitler’s private garden on a busy weekday morning. God forbid she should encounter the Führer himself, hands clasped behind his
back, in his habitual stroll. She scanned the surrounding area, nerves jangling, until she detected, at the far side of the garden, a sentry emerging from the guardhouse with a black dog tugging
against his tight leash, his long pink tongue lolling. He had not noticed her, and the pair seemed to be heading away from her, but how long would it be before that dog scented her presence, and
alerted its owner to a stranger?

Eventually, at the end of the palace wall she saw it, a narrow aperture that formed a claustrophobic alley, barely two feet wide, running along the side of the Agricultural Ministry building. It
extended more than a hundred feet between the two buildings, culminating in a wrought-iron gate. She passed along and pushed the gate open, to find herself back in the bustle of pedestrians and
traffic on the Wilhelmstrasse.

She hesitated as the sounds of an ordinary weekday morning rose up around her, and glanced swiftly down the street, scanning for any signal that could indicate the approach of troops. At that
moment a man exited the bronze double doors of the Chancellery to her right and marched purposefully towards her.

Ulrich Welzer’s chiselled face was an impenetrable mask. Fear was coming off him like an electric current as he came up close to Clara, avoiding her eyes.

‘Thank God,’ he muttered, under his breath.

She glanced behind him in bewilderment.

‘What’s going on?’

The words escaped his mouth like a gasp. ‘It’s all off.’

‘Has something happened?’

Suddenly his face shuttered, and a movement behind Clara drew her attention. She turned her head to see another uniform approaching and it took less than a second to recognize the razorblade
cheekbones and the aquiline profile. The mathematically slicked fair threads sitting above a face that was not so much horse-like as lupine. Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich.

Fear insinuated itself, trailing down her spine, turning her insides liquid, as Heydrich’s narrow eyes ranged over her.

‘Well? Don’t keep us all waiting, Colonel Welzer. Has something happened?’

Welzer seemed to jerk himself from paralysis to click his heels and give a knife-sharp salute.

‘Wonderful news, Herr Obergruppenführer! News has come from Britain that Chamberlain has agreed to fly to Germany. Herr Mussolini wants Hitler to postpone mobilization for twenty-four
hours and the Führer has agreed. The British ambassador Nevile Henderson has just arrived at the Reich Chancellery and the word is that the conference will be held tomorrow morning in Munich.
The Führer is heading down to meet Mussolini tonight.’

‘To Munich?’ Heydrich queried, his face alive with calculating tension, his eyes already scanning the Chancellery doors.

‘Herr Mussolini won’t come to Berlin. The Führer will leave from the Anhalter Bahnhof within hours.’

Heydrich swivelled and marched off towards the Chancellery without a word. Welzer turned stiffly to Clara.

‘And now I should let you leave, Fräulein.’ He held her gaze. ‘It’s indeed wonderful news, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ she repeated numbly. ‘Wonderful news.’

When Clara closed the door of her apartment behind her and looked at herself in the mirror a ghost stared back at her. Her lips were bloodless and as a delayed reaction to the
tension, a violent shaking ran through her body.

So Chamberlain was making an eleventh-hour trip to dissuade Hitler from military action. How could he be so blind as to believe that Hitler posed no further threat to Europe? If only there was
some kind of documentary proof of Hitler’s ambitions. Something that could prove beyond question what he was planning.

Inside her pocket the key to the Reich Chancellery private entrance weighed ominously. How long would it be before Eva Braun guilelessly mentioned that she had given away her key to the private
door? And even if she didn’t, what would happen when some part of the plot was rumbled and everyone who had been in the Reich Chancellery that day was arrested and interrogated? Clara thought
anxiously of Max and prayed that he was lying low somewhere, keeping all traces of his involvement well hidden.

She paced around the apartment with jittery limbs, unable to settle. She knew it was only a matter of time before the actions of that morning caught up with her. It could be days, but it might
only be hours. Her only hope was that in the rush to board the Führer’s special train to Munich, Eva would be too busy to worry about the key. Too busy joyfully packing up her clothes
and perfume samples, delighted to escape her Berlin prison. The thought of Eva’s perfume samples recalled something else – a remark which had been hammering at the doors of her mind
since she heard it. Eva Braun’s comment about her only acquaintance in Berlin.
The girl from Ludwig Scherk’s
.

Scherk’s was one of the biggest cosmetic companies in Berlin. Everything about it was successful, even its headquarters – a red-brick modernist building in Steglitz – had won a
clutch of architectural prizes. Advertisements for bestselling Scherk products like Arabian Nights perfume, a concoction of sandalwood and amber, or the Mystikum powder compact, could be found in
every glossy magazine. But its cosmetics weren’t limited to women. Scherk’s Tarr pomade was Goebbels’ favourite and according to Magda, in one of her periodic fits of jealousy, he
had selected an especially pretty salesgirl to bring his personalized supplies to the Propaganda Ministry. Could that be a coincidence, or might Goebbels have recommended his own salesgirl to Eva?
Clara was prepared to take a bet on it. What better way to spy on the Führer’s girlfriend than to have a young woman befriend her and report back, with all the snippets of gossip and the
confidences that involved?

This was Eva’s life. Spied on from every quarter. Unable to bear children for her Führer. Befriended on all sides by people who would happily betray her.

Clara went over to her desk and took up the bottle of
Black Roses
that Eva Braun had made for her, inhaling the deep, voluptuous scent. Perfume was Eva’s small act of mutiny against
a lover who hated cosmetics of any kind, but it was nothing to the real dissent that existed beneath the surface of this country. All over Germany people were carrying out their own individual acts
of resistance against the regime, from the Munich citizens who skirted round the alley to avoid having to salute the Feldherrnhalle, to Helga Schmidt who had loved repeating jokes about the
Führer until she was silenced, and even little Nina Schaeffer kicking down the cabinets of
Der Stürmer
. But what did any of those acts of defiance amount to, when even men like
Admiral Canaris, the head of the Abwehr, and Count von Helldorf, the chief of police, had failed to unseat Hitler? All resistance was destined to be crushed like flowers in the path of a Panzer
tank.

If Hitler was to be stopped, it would have to come from further afield. From England or France. From the men at their desks in Whitehall that Guy Hamilton had spoken of, with their calm
assumption that Clara would carry out whatever task they asked of her, no matter what risk to her personal safety.

‘
It’s what you do, isn’t it?
’

Instantly her thoughts turned to the meeting she had set up for the following day. If London Films had found her message in the
Chronicle
and read it correctly, the contact should be
waiting at the Siegessäule at 6.45 p.m. to hear the results of her encounter with Eva Braun. Yet what would Clara be able to tell them? Apart from the fact that Eva had tried to kill herself
and was unable to have children and was more interested in the affairs of film stars than in her lover’s aggressive intentions in Europe.