Midnight in Berlin (32 page)

He pulled her back, ripping the dress again. She tried to knee him in the groin and bite his arm. He slapped her hard twice with the open palm and back of his hand, bringing more blood from her nose and mouth. He stepped back.

“I said, take your clothes off.”

She stood up. There were tears in the dark eyes, and beneath streaks of blood her face was the colour of paper. She was shaking as she undressed. Bonner reminded himself that he had intended to keep calm and not lose his temper. Still, a little slapping would hardly harm the girl. She needed it. She was an arrogant bitch. There was something about her he couldn't fathom, a look of contempt in her eyes suggesting that she was his superior. He watched her undress until her clothes were on the floor, then pushed her back on the bed.

“I want to know what happened,” he said.

“Fucking bastard,” she said. “What have you done to my brother?”

“Your brother is a piece of shit. What happened with the Englishman?”

“He wouldn't take the pills.”

“Liar.”

“He watched his drink. He's a diplomat. They're trained.”

“You had him here in this room and you just talked about his wife? For Christ's sake, what have you got between your legs? You think it's private? It's not. It's mine, ours, it belongs to the party and you use it when we tell you to.”

“Is that what I am going to say to Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich? That my cunt is yours, too? I wonder what he'll think of that!”

She sat up on the bed, laid both hands on her pubic mound and smiled at him through the tears, the snot and the blood on her face. Bonner knew he had lost. He had been a fool. Sara Sternschein might bed and betray important foreigners in these rooms, but that was business. When it came to the party, or more specifically the Gestapo, she was Reinhard Heydrich's Jewish whore, and his alone.

There was a knock on the door. Bonner looked through the spyhole and opened it. Someone passed him a tray with a bottle of scotch, two glasses and a jug of water. He poured a large measure for both of them. For a moment, he thought she was going to throw it back in his face.

He got a white fluffy dressing gown from the back of the door and threw it at her. He took out a cigarette case and offered her one. It was forbidden to smoke in the rooms. She got up, put on the dressing gown and used it to wipe blood from her face. She drank the whisky and accepted the cigarette. They were both playing a game, he thought, but she was well ahead of him.

“It is Heydrich who wants the Englishman,” he said quietly. “That's why it's important.”

“I know my brother is dead. That's what's important.”

He wondered who had told her that. An informant in the police, a client here at the salon? Interesting, because it wasn't true.

“Your brother is alive,” he said. “He is back in Buchenwald. He tried to escape. He's a smart boy. He almost got over the wire, but they caught him. He's going to cooperate with us. You should be pleased.”

In fact, Joseph Sternschein had been badly beaten, put against a wall and shot – but they'd used blanks. It was an old trick. They wanted to break him, turn him and use him as a double.

“You're lying. I don't believe you.”

“I don't care what you believe.”

“I want to see a letter from him.”

“You think I'm a fucking postman? Here, look at this.”

He fumbled in his wallet and produced a small photo of good quality taken with a professional camera. There was Joseph, frail, thin, his ribs showing, a scar down one side of his face, cheeks hollowed out, looking like an old man. He was holding a copy of
Der Bild.
She could not see the date, but the front cover was dominated by a picture of Hitler at the Nuremberg rally. That had been only last week.

“When was this taken?” she whispered.

“You're not asking any more questions. Your brother is alive – for the time being. I want the truth about the Englishman.”

“And I want the truth about my brother.”

“I've told you. What more do you want?”

There was a silence.

“He wouldn't take the pills,” she said.

Bonner finished his drink. She sat there on the chair a few feet away, the dressing gown half open so he could see the
curve of her breasts and the creamy expanse of her thighs. Her brother was alive, but he wouldn't live long if he didn't cooperate. Neither would she, if Heydrich found out that she had somehow compromised the recording staff in the Salon. And he could guess how she had done that. He got up and left without a word.

At eight the next morning, Sara Sternschein joined the long queue outside the consular offices of the British embassy. The consulate, which occupied premises alongside the main building in Wilhelmstrasse, did not open for another hour. No provision had been made in the way of extra staff to cope with the number of people seeking visas or travel documents allowing entry to the United Kingdom. By nine, the queue stretched well down the street towards Unter den Linden. The German Foreign Ministry had objected to the unsightly scene, as had the Ministry of Propaganda across the road.

Jews were being forcibly encouraged to leave the country, but that did not mean that the authorities wanted foreign newspapers carrying photos and stories of them desperately queuing to acquire the necessary documents. The queue was therefore limited to fifty people. Those arriving after this number had been reached were given tickets and told to return that afternoon. The morning was warm but Sara wore a headscarf to cover the bruises on her face and to conceal her identity from those watching the embassy. They would be in the offices across the street recording all those in the queue. Later they would try to put names to faces.

She carried her British travel document in her bag. She needed more time now and planned to ask for an extension. Ahead of her, the queue was made up mostly of middle-aged women; all of them she judged to be Jewish. Their clothing
was worn and stitched with the yellow star on the front. They all clutched large leather handbags that looked as if they had been handed down for generations.

Further down the street, at the main entrance to the embassy, she watched the diplomats, secretaries and other more lowly office staff arriving for the day's work. She knew he would be among them.

It was around eleven o'clock when Sara finally entered the consulate and was ushered into a brightly lit office containing two desks. The walls were lined with grey metal filing cabinets. A large framed photograph of King George VI hung over the door at one end of the room. At the other end, by a small high window, a round-faced clock ticked loudly.

At each desk sat a grey-haired middle-aged woman. One appeared utterly immobile and sat staring at a document. The other had her pen poised over a scatter of documents in front of her. Every few moments the pen descended, moved rapidly to write something and then rose again. There were no other staff in the room. Sara watched for what seemed like several minutes and then coughed loudly.

“Please sit down,” said the woman with the pen, without looking up.

There were chairs in front of each desk. Sara sat in front of the woman who had spoken.

“Name and papers,” said the woman, again without raising her head.

“Sara Sternschein. I wish to extend my permit to enter the United Kingdom,” said Sara, and she pushed her document with the Foreign Office stamp and her German photo identity paper over the desk.

The woman studied her travel document briefly, then looked at her identity card. Her face reshaped itself with a frown that stretched from forehead to chin.

“Wait here,” she said. She rose and walked through the door.

Sara looked at her watch. It was eleven thirty. She hadn't got home from the Salon until one in the morning and had risen at six thirty to make sure of a good place in the queue. She was exhausted and hungry. Breakfast had been coffee and some toast and jam. It seemed a long time ago.

She watched the clock on the wall until the hands moved to fifteen minutes before noon. She got up, flexing her arms backwards in a stretch, when a voice said, “Sit down, please.”

The second woman had not raised her head and continued to stare intently at a document. The voice seemed to come from the far end of the room. Perhaps King George had commanded her to sit down, or maybe the clock had found a voice. Sara sat down.

Ten minutes later, the door opened and the woman with the pen beckoned Sara. She followed her through an ill-lit grey-painted corridor and then opened a door into the sudden luxury of a large hall overhung with two chandeliers, which illuminated a tiled mosaic floor. A broad, carpeted central staircase rose between portraits of whiskered dignitaries. There were people everywhere, well-dressed men in suits with briefcases, young women clutching files, older women with trays of tea, moving across the floor and vanishing behind various doors around the hall or going up and down the staircase.

Sara had read a translation of
Alice in Wonderland
as a little girl and now felt that she too had fallen down a rabbit hole into a world of mad hatters and March hares. She followed the consulate woman through a door that led into a room furnished with two comfortable armchairs and a sofa arranged around an unlit fireplace. Sara noticed that a pot of coffee and two cups had been placed on a table by the window.

“Miss Sternschein, sir,” said the woman, and left.

“Thank you. Please have a seat,” said a familiar voice.

Noel Macrae was standing by the fireplace, smiling at her.

She sat down, feeling faint and in need of a strong cup of coffee.

“What are you doing here?” she said.

“I rather thought I might ask you that question. I thought you had left.”

“He's still alive.”

“Who?”

“Joseph. They've still got him in Buchenwald.”

She was sitting with her head in her hands, her voice muffled.

“You'd better have some coffee. Here.”

He poured a cup, added two lumps of sugar and passed it to her.

“I came to extend my travel document. I can do that, can't I?”

She looked up at him, trying to reconcile the man in the dark suit, ironed shirt and tie and neatly combed hair with the man in the Tiergarten, the man she had made love to under the winter trees with their leafless branches, the man she had taken to her room at the Salon and watched as he shed his clothes and lay on the bed, the bed provided by the Geheime Staats Polizei for the purpose of blackmail, extortion and murder. But she had not played their game, she had made sure the tapes were turned off. They had made love slowly, awkwardly, then with a fury that flickered like a flame long after their sweating bodies had cooled.

“It could be difficult,” he said. “The pass was only for two weeks. You told me you were leaving.”

“And we said goodbye. I know. But I've told you, Joseph is alive. I can't leave now.”

“Who told you that?”

“It doesn't matter. It's true. He showed me a photograph.”

“He?”

“Bonner. In the Salon.”

“Bonner – he's Gestapo, isn't he?”

“Yes. Very senior. But that's not the point. Joseph's alive. I can't leave.”

“We were given good information that your brother had been shot.”

“It was a lie. I was shown a photograph.”

A sound louder than the distant hum of voices and feet clacking on the tiled floor beyond the door now filled the room. It was an urgent rattle.

Macrae moved from the mantelpiece and sat beside her. She was shaking, her coffee cup rattling against its saucer.

“You say Bonner showed you a photo?”

“Last night. He was asking about you, wanted to know why there had been no tapes.”

He gently slid back her headscarf.

“And he did this?”

“Yes.”

Macrae took the document and stood up.

“The photo could be a fake.”

“It wasn't. It was him. He looked like a skeleton, but he's alive.”

“It could just be a lie to keep you at the Salon.”

She stared at the floor, still talking in a whisper.

“We're twins. I know he's alive.”

“Because Bonner told you?”

“I think he's telling the truth.”

“For God's sake, Sara, he's Gestapo!”

“So am I, if it comes to that.”

“They forge documents, fix photographs. They're good at it.”

She got up and looked at him. “He's alive. I just know it.”

He took a step towards her, but she stepped back.

“I'll do what I can about this permit,” he said.

“How long will it take?”

Macrae looked at the document, then up at the clock. It was almost noon.

“It shouldn't take more than a day. But what's the hurry? You're not leaving now, are you?”

Sara shook her head.

“Meet me in the Tiergarten tomorrow, then – well after dark, say nine.”

“I'll be at the Salon.”

“With those marks on your face?”

She looked at the mirror and touched the vivid bruises on her cheek.

“All right, make it ten.”

It had been a good season for grouse shooting on the moors in the north of England and Scotland that year, and by mid-September there was promise of excellent sport in the coming weekends. So there was some grumbling among members of the British cabinet when they were summoned on Saturday following Neville Chamberlain's meeting with Hitler at the Berchtesgaden, to hear his report and decide on the next step. The newspapers had concluded that Chamberlain had been outmanoeuvred by the German leader and forced into more concessions over Czechoslovakia.

However, since the two had met in private with only an interpreter present, the reports were based on briefings by either side and thus contradictory. A private briefing paper
circulated by Lord Halifax suggested a very different and more positive outcome. Either way, most cabinet members felt the meeting could well have waited until Tuesday for the usual cabinet session.