The Pursuit of Pearls (22 page)

“I'm sorry. It's the soonest our friend can manage. Go precisely at one o'clock and you will see a man there.”

“Where? The zoo's a big place. How will I recognize him?”

“He'll recognize you. When he sees you, he will leave immediately and you must follow him. He will lead you a few streets away. When he enters a building, wait, then knock on the door twice. If anyone but him answers, say you were looking for a Herr Vogel.”

“Herr Vogel? Is that his name?”

“That's no one. If our friend is alone, and certain that you were not followed, he will let you in.”

“Is it safe in daylight? Shouldn't we meet later?”

“Our man believes he is far less conspicuous in daytime. Innocent people don't go scurrying around at night. And, Clara…”

There was the clang of the bell, and from behind the velvet curtain came the sound of someone entering the shop followed by the unctuous, indistinct tone of Herr Fromm's voice and the curt male bark of a customer.

Both women stiffened.

“You should leave,” said Steffi. “But wait a moment, I have something for you.”

She crossed the room and reached into a wardrobe, bringing out a slate blue jacket on a hanger. It was three-quarter length, with gold buttons and a rich scarlet lining. Clara recognized it at once. It was the same jacket she had seen hanging in the window of the Paris store.

“A Schiaparelli jacket!”

“I saw it in
Vogue
and I had to try it.”

“But where did you get the materials?”

“That's the thing. You can't get the textiles, but I thought, that shade is awfully familiar, and I realized it was close to Luftwaffe blue. And there was a bolt here that we had to reject on the grounds that it was not precisely the right shade. It wouldn't pass inspection. The Luftwaffe is very strict like that.”

“You shouldn't have!”

“Perhaps. But if war comes, clothes are sure to be rationed, and you won't be able to get hold of a thing. Try it on.”

Clara pulled the jacket on, sank her hands into the deep pockets, and did a little twirl. Steffi stood back, arms crossed.

“Well, I'll say this for you. You certainly
look
like the real thing.”

S
chwanecke's wine bar on Rankestrasse was a popular hangout for actresses and theatrical types. In the old days photographers would gather outside, hoping to catch a shot of Marlene Dietrich as she emerged and the actress would favor them with one of her trademark hundred-watt smiles, but Marlene Dietrich was an ocean away now, beaming at Hollywood photographers, and the press had other things than actresses on their minds.

There was a sign on the counter.

DO NOT ASK FOR COFFEE. WE HATE TO DISAPPOINT.

Clara was nursing a cup of watery tea. She had, as always, paid up front so that she could leave quickly if necessary. From her position at the back of the café, she could see every customer by profile, as well as keep an eye on potential observation points across the street as she leafed through a copy of the
B.Z. am Mittag
.

Already the euphoria of the Führer's birthday had faded and the paper had returned to its customary fail-safe formula of propaganda, threats, and atrocities. In the top right-hand corner was a list of people who had refused to contribute to the Winter Relief fund. Naming and shaming was a way of life in Germany. Anything from homosexual love affairs to hoarding food, reading banned books, or the catchall crime of holding “attitudes negative to National Socialism.” Often the only way to escape denunciation was to denounce the accuser. Recently, however, police had begun to buckle under the weight of accusations coming in, with the result that a fresh incentive had been dreamed up. Now you could win a reward for denouncing anyone making false denunciations.

That day's center pages, however, did contain something fresh. A double-page spread devoted to the scale model of the Welthauptstadt, the new world capital that Albert Speer had created for the Führer's recent birthday. It was a marvel of its kind—far more impressive than the models Clara used to buy for Erich from Märklin's toy shop in Charlottenburg. Every house in Speer's city was rendered in bone-colored balsa wood, windows glinting, streets gleaming, the great dome of an enormous Volkshalle like an upturned ostrich egg and the replica cathedral cleansed of its grimy façade. It was a pearl-white paradise, delicate and shimmering as a heavenly city—except this was a city that existed only in Hitler's mind. Clara imagined his fingers dawdling along the façades, poking into doors and windows, marching down Unter den Linden, caressing the curve of the giant dome. Every detail was perfect and exact, except for the fact that there were no people. It was as if the world had been tipped and all the untidy, inconvenient inhabitants had slid off the edge.

Someone has been saying some very unkind things about you.

For days, Magda Goebbels's comment had been sounding at the back of Clara's mind. What had she meant? Was it just the usual whispers that swirled around actresses, who were always the targets of gossip and innuendo? Or was it another scrap of the feverish speculation that obtained in the upper circles of the Nazi Party? Was Clara genuinely being watched? With filming on
Love Strictly Forbidden
ended and work on
Germania
yet to begin, there was a hiatus. So that morning, she decided to find out.

All spies, Leo told her, must learn to read. Not newspapers but voices, body language, faces. She watched as a man entered the café and came to sit beside her and thought of the first rule on Leo's list.
Look out for the unobtrusive.
Beneath the fedora the man had a worn, creased face and a hangdog expression, and this anonymity, as well as the fact that he made no eye contact and gave no subtle acknowledgment of her, instantly aroused her suspicions. That was until his roll and hot tea arrived and he began to wolf it down with feverish haste. She realized instinctively that the man must be a non-Aryan, no longer allowed in cafés or restaurants, and that he was desperate for a pleasure that he might not experience again.

A speech came on the radio, and the owner reached over to turn it up. As the jackal's bark of Joseph Goebbels rang out, all conversation hushed immediately—it was the law—and most people even stopped chewing, as if eating and drinking were disrespectful when the propaganda minister was holding forth. They weren't far wrong. No element of normal life was too trifling to avoid Goebbels's scrutiny, and this issue had, in fact, been covered in a recent pamphlet, “Instructions to the Catering Trade on Restaurant Etiquette in the Case of Political Pronouncements.” Clara, like everyone else, lowered her cup and allowed her face to go blank. In more zealous districts, customers would stand and salute the radio, but in this upmarket area silence was thought to suffice. It was not an easy listen. Hitler's shriek was bad enough—it must hurt his throat as much as it hurt the listeners' ears, Clara thought—but there was nothing seductive about Joseph Goebbels. Yet his voice reminded her of something he had said.
You look totally unrecognizable with those spectacles.
By chance the spectacles she wore for her film part were still in her bag. Fishing them out, she waited for the speech to finish, then left the café.

SHE WALKED DOWN THE
great stuccoed apartment blocks of the Kurfürstendamm, now decorated with antiaircraft guns pointing into the porcelain-blue sky. Stopping at Harry Lehmann's perfume store, she spent a few minutes testing her favorite scents—tulip, violet, and rose. Sunlight created iridescent reflections on the flasks of perfume, which were ranked along a shelf with a mirror at their back. A leisurely show of sniffing, dabbing, and testing enabled her to keep an eye on the street outside, but no figure shuffled to a stop, or loitered against the green Litfass advertising column to light a cigarette.

After leaving the perfumery, she turned in to Fasanenstrasse and passed the remains of the synagogue, burned to the ground the previous November. When the fire was at its height, the synagogue cantor had appealed to the fire crews who drew up outside to save it, but the firemen explained they had come only to protect the neighboring buildings.

Clara's eyes scanned the road. It was the least likely people you watched for. The elderly gentleman in gray homburg, kid gloves, shiny boots and spats, an umbrella over his arm, proceeding at a leisurely pace along the other side of the road. The woman queuing outside the fishmonger's for a fresh consignment of herring. The newspaper seller, calling out a friendly greeting from his cast-iron kiosk.

There was one man she noticed, with a sallow, forgettable face, proceeding at a steady pace behind her. She stopped where a salesgirl was rattling a Winter Relief box and fumbled for her purse. As she hunted for coins, the girl winked and said, “For guns.” Cynicism was everywhere on the streets, like a black-market brandy that passed from one person to another and warmed the secret places of the soul. It was what made Goebbels's joke maker such an inspired idea. Clara deliberately dropped a few coins on the ground, but when she dipped to the pavement to collect them, the sallow man overtook her and vanished from sight.

All the same, she descended into the U-Bahn, past the sign that said Jews and dogs were barred from the escalator, and let the first train leave without her. When the next train arrived, she waited until every other passenger had boarded before slipping on just as the doors closed. Two stops later she got off and caught a train in the opposite direction, then left the U-Bahn and jumped on a big cream bus as it was moving off.

Eventually she came to the Marienkirche. The thirteenth-century church, with its red bricks and its green spire, could not seem more of a contrast to the granite monumentalism of Albert Speer. Although churchgoing was frowned on now, and most places of worship were deserted, a visit to the Marienkirche counted as a cultural outing because of its most famous artifact—the
Totentanz,
the dance of death.

The fresco had been lost for centuries until it was glimpsed under a layer of whitewash and painstakingly brought back into the light. How like life that was, Clara thought. Death hovered out of the corner of the eye until it came suddenly, drastically into view. The theme was a German tradition. Death danced, holding the hands of cardinals and popes, saints, kings, and fools. Looking at the saints, with their eroded features, softened by time and devotion, Clara wondered: Would Hitler's own features one day become dulled and worn away with familiarity, until, like that of a monstrous king, the sight of him no longer had the power to surprise?

Coming out into the bright sunshine, she ran straight into Hugh Lindsey.

“How lovely to see you,” he remarked, as though they had bumped into each other on Oxford Street, or at a cocktail party in Mayfair. “I was miles away.”

She almost laughed with relief. In his Burberry coat, tie slightly askew, and hat pushed back on his head, Hugh was like a great breath of Englishness. It was just the way she had felt on the bus in the King's Road, surrounded by the staid, understated citizens. Everything about him made her feel safe.

“Were you, Hugh? What were you thinking about?”

“You don't want to know.”

“I do.”

“All right. I was thinking about England's batting averages. At the last count…”

Clara held up a hand and laughed. “You're right. I don't want to know. I know absolutely nothing about cricket, and I'm not sure I'll ever learn.”

“As a matter of fact I was heading back to the Adlon. Care to walk with me?”

The two of them progressed companionably through Alexanderplatz, past the circular lawn in one corner of the square.

“You know, in 1918 there was shooting going on in this square. Fighting between the Reds and the Freikorps,” remarked Hugh. “But even though crossing this lawn was the shortest distance through the square, and the obvious way to escape the bullets, Berliners still refused to walk on the grass. Isn't that extraordinary? Lenin said he realized at that moment that the revolution was lost. He said you can't hold a revolution in a city where people obey the Keep Off the Grass signs.”

In the Schlossplatz, arcs of water spurting from the Neptune Fountain turned into rainbows in the air, and Hugh brought out a packet of cigarettes. He lit one, then almost immediately chucked it into the water.

“I can't smoke these things! I've run out of Benson and Hedges, but these are like a hand grenade going off in your chest.”

“Have one of mine.”

“A Gauloise? Lucky girl.”

“I got them the other day, in Paris.”

“Paris? What were you doing there?”

“A fashion shoot for
Vogue
magazine.”

“How refreshing to find a British girl who loves fashion. Most women I know don't give a hoot about it. Their favorite shade is porridge, and they like their tweeds hard as a board.”

It was a relief to be with Hugh. He had a way of speaking that was midway between joking and serious. Englishmen were often like that. It helped them cope with feelings—that was what Rupert Allingham used to tell her. Irony was the first lesson Englishmen learned at school. Even Hugh's manner, and his way of swiping away his forelock, reminded her of her brother, Kenneth, and his friends, who were just as obsessed with the fortunes of the English cricket team.

He inhaled the Gauloise greedily. “You need these things to take the edge off the appetite. Don't you find yourself getting frightfully hungry nowadays? I have a recurring dream that I'm at Rules, on one of the back banquettes, being served smoked salmon, potted shrimps, Dover sole, and jugged hare. Followed by crumpets and buttered anchovy toast.”

He hesitated. “I'm not making you feel sick, am I?”

Being with Hugh, talking about England, had brought on a compelling urge to confide.

“I think I'm being followed.”

“Is that all? I shouldn't worry. Mary says we're all being followed. I imagine my chap is having a jolly dull time of it.”

“Not like that. That's just the regulation minders from the Propaganda Ministry. I think this is something different.”

His smile dropped, and he regarded her more seriously. “Could it possibly be to do with that man we saw the other evening? Herr Adler?”

“I'm not sure…”

“I don't mind telling you, there's something about him I didn't like, Clara. I think you should keep away from him.”

“I will. I can't imagine I would see Adler again. But it's nothing to do with him.”

“Do you know what? I think I can guess what's really bothering you.” His eyes were kindly, with an Englishman's repressed emotion. “It's that business about the Faith and Beauty girl. You knew her, didn't you? And you said you were living close to where it happened.”

“Yes.”

“The whole affair must have been a tremendous shock.”

“It was, but…”

“They think the man's still around, don't they?”

“Apparently.”

“That decides it then. I'm giving you a lift home. My car's right outside the Adlon. It's a Mercedes Sport Roadster. Burgundy red and a real thoroughbred. Runs like a dream. I'm pathetically proud of it.”

“Thank you, I'd like that.”

ONCE THEY WERE IN
the car, and driving towards the west of the city, he lifted a silver Dunhill hip flask from the side pocket and tipped it towards her.

“Can I tempt you? I always keep a little something, and since I've managed to get hold of a half-decent bottle of Glenmorangie, it would be a shame not to share it.”

Clara sipped, grateful for the Scotch's slow, reviving fire.

As they entered the fringes of Griebnitzsee, they passed a couple of police cars. Since the murder, there'd been police cars all around the area. The newspapers claimed there was to be “no expense spared” to catch the killer. It was as if Lottie Franke had come to symbolize everything that was good and pure about German womanhood, and her hideous murder was an outrage that threatened to sully the whole of the Aryan race.