Woman in the Shadows (25 page)

T
he plane shuddered like a living thing. The bolts strained in its aluminum sides. Peering out of the window, Clara saw the grass shiver and flatten as the wheels hit the ground with a bump and juddered over the muddy ruts. The vibration penetrated to her core, making her bones rattle and the teeth shake in her head. Finally, Strauss doused the engine and removed his goggles. With relief, she looked out at a field clotted with thistles and weeds, and the remains of a concrete hut.

“Is this it?”

“The place we like to eat is through that wood. This disused airfield is quite convenient for us. We pilots think of it as our little secret. Come on.”

They climbed out and headed across the airfield to a fringe of trees, through which led a chalk-stoned path. It was a glorious afternoon. The trees were at the height of their autumn colors, creating a vivid tapestry of russet, amber, yellow, and gold. Inside the wood the sun penetrated the birch leaves to make a mosaic of light and shade, and above them in the boughs the birds were calling to each other. Clara and Strauss walked side by side, the ground beneath them springy with pine needles, the air tinged with woodsmoke. Clara was just thinking how exquisitely lovely the place was when they passed a sign saying
JEWS ARE NOT WANTED IN THESE GERMAN WOODS
.

The path petered out into a track that led to the village and, just around the bend, a white-painted, timbered inn with green shutters, leaded glass, and heavy wooden doors, the kind of place you might find in the Tyrolean section of the Haus Vaterland. Inside, a row of steins stood above the fireplace, and a landlord in traditional red waistcoat and white apron was pouring beers with frothy heads. A couple of locals leaned against the bar, and a few elderly men holding cards gathered in a corner around a game of skat. Clara sat in an oak inglenook while Strauss went to the bar. He returned balancing three glasses.

“Is someone else joining us?”

“No. Two are for me.”

He downed the first quickly, and she noticed a slight tremble in his hand. He surveyed her wryly.

“So how did you like the flight?”

“It was a different plane this time, wasn't it?”

“A Heinkel He 111, if that means anything to you.”

She laughed. “Not a thing.”

“It's probably better that way. There's a security scare in the Air Ministry right now.”

“Has something happened?”

“Some top secret information leaking out where it shouldn't. They suspect a Luftwaffe staff officer. It's tiresome, but we're having to go through all sorts of new procedures and security checks. The Gestapo tried poking their nose in, but Goering told them the Luftwaffe can handle its own internal affairs. That showed them. I tell you, the affair between Germany and France has nothing on the rivalry between the Gestapo and Goering.”

Clara placed her cigarette in the ashtray and watched the slight string of smoke swaying in the breeze, its delicate skein tugged each way by divergent currents. This was what she was here for. She recalled what Strauss had said when he took her for the first time in the plane.
For official purposes you don't exist.
He couldn't know how accurate that was.

She was silent while the waiter brought their food; schnitzel for Strauss and for Clara trout that had been caught in the nearby lake, with creamed potatoes. After she had given the pink-fleshed fish and rich, buttery sauce her full attention, she said, “Don't tell me a thing about the plane then. I positively don't want to hear. But what on earth were you doing with that camera?”

“That's technical stuff. You don't want to know about that.”

“But I do. I'm fascinated. I'm a film actress, remember. I work with cameras myself.”

He cast her a quizzical glance.

“All right then. I was using the camera to map the terrain beneath us. It uses special thirty-five-millimeter film with a perforated edge, which allows motors to turn the film automatically behind the lens and get a precise exposure. It can also be used for night photography.”

“So you're taking pictures of the ground beneath you? Why would you do that?”

“To examine the lie of the land.”

“The lie of the land? What's that?”

“It's everything.” He leaned towards her eagerly. His enthusiasm for the subject had overtaken his normal reserve. “You see, it's not just a question of taking pictures of the terrain. It's a question of working out their meaning. You've got to know what you're looking for. What information a photograph may contain.”

She cocked her head and frowned, her heart hammering. “Information?”

“Exactly. There is so much more than meets the eye. You need to be a geologist, a mathematician, an archaeologist, and—I don't know—a botanist, to work out everything a picture means.”

She laughed. “A botanist? As in plants and flowers? Surely not. When did flowers ever reveal anything?”

“Oh, you underestimate flowers. They're not just pretty little innocents. The types of plants reveal crucial details about the terrain. Is it swampy or marshy? That would mean it would be too soft for landing. Is the ground hard, does the earth shift? Botany can tell you a lot. Have you ever read Goethe's
Metamorphosis of Plants
? It's a wonderful combination of botany and poetry. You'd like it.”

“So you're saying, a pilot has to read the land…”

“Exactly. And you would be surprised what you can make out once you get the photographs back. Sometimes you see the remains of an ancient settlement, a fort, or a castle, that literally doesn't exist anymore. All that's left is a gray smudge on the map. And you think: Long ago people lived there, and loved and fought, but now they're nothing. Just shadows on the ground.”

Clara thought of people, long dead, leaving their ghostly shadows for those who knew where to look. She repressed a shiver.

“Of course we're more interested in what's there now,” Strauss continued. “These photographs reveal all kinds of secrets. Some of the most important things are hidden in plain sight.”

“What kinds of secrets?”

He laughed warmly and leaned back, signaling to the waiter. “Now then, they wouldn't be secrets if I told you, would they?”

She waited until the waiter had deposited another couple of drinks on the table, then said, “Do you know, I don't think I've ever seen you smile before? Not properly.”

“Perhaps I don't have much to smile about.”

“When did you first think about flying?”

“Oh, that's dull.”

“I wouldn't ask if I wasn't interested.”

“You really want to know all this? My life story?”

“Of course.”

As she watched him, his face softened and the habitual sour demeanor relaxed into something gentler. “Well then. Where shall I start? Our parents were wealthy. My mother was descended from a banking family, the von Eckdorffs, who came from just outside Potsdam. My father was a professor of law, who wrote books about the German legal system. They were highly cultivated, sensitive people with great ambitions for their children. Not that we thought much about that. It was a good childhood. In the summer we went to our villa on the Wannsee. It was a lovely house, full of light, with a beautiful view of the lake. Deer would come into the gardens from the wood. We had endless picnics there, and barbecues, and we went boating. I loved that time. Whenever I smell grass crushed beneath my feet, it brings it right back to me. I remember lying on the sunlit lawn talking about our plans. Guests coming in and out of the house for our parents' parties. Playing with my brothers. I had a twin named Harro. We were identical, but Harro was the older. We were both crazy about flying. A neighbor of ours had a glider, and he taught us to fly.”

It was all too easy to picture the sunlit lawns, the expensive villa, the prewar elegance, but far harder to imagine the young Strauss, happy and unscarred.

“Anyhow, we turned out to be very good at it, my brother and I. We joined a flying club. We had great plans to become professional pilots and make a name for ourselves. We competed against each other all the time, though to tell the truth he was a little better at it than I was. Harro was fearless, you see. He was not reckless, but he was lacking in fear, whereas I still had a sliver of fear inside me.”

“You mean you were cautious.”

“No. It was not caution, it was fear. Genuine fear.”

“Perhaps you need fear to be good at your job. Fear makes you careful. It stops you making silly mistakes.”

That was certainly true for everything Clara did. The razor's edge of fear sharpened her. It kept her watchful, and wary.

Strauss considered her point for a moment.

“I think it's fear that separates the great pilots from the lesser ones. Ernst, for example, has no fear. Not one iota. Fear means you haven't accepted what might happen. You haven't looked it in the face and embraced it before you start. It's only when you acknowledge the worst that could happen and accept it that you can proceed without fear.”

“Do you still have that fear?”

“It's fading. But I would be a liar if I said it had left me completely.”

Pensively, he traced the silver scar that bisected his melted cheek. “Anyhow, one day it all went wrong. We went up together in a two-seater, Harro at the controls. The conditions were ideal. Nothing should have happened, but the plane came down and we were thrown. We were lucky, of course, to be alive. My face was badly crushed, just a mass of blood and flesh, but Harro had hardly a mark on him. At first I thought he was just knocked out, so I lay down beside him and told him I was going for help. I left him, then returned. It took hours to get him home. It turned out he had broken his back. He was paralyzed.”

Strauss's gaze passed hers, trained on the elaborately carved inglenook beside them, bulging with wooden fruit and leaves.

“He lived for months. You can't imagine how it felt to see my twin, this handsome, lively young man, reduced to nothing. Just a suffering body, marooned in a bed. He shriveled up in front of our eyes. It wasn't just his back broken, he had brain damage, apparently, at least that was what my mother said. She spent all day with him, but my father could hardly bear to look at him. I had to carry on, of course. They patched up my face and I went to school, though I skipped every other engagement outside the house because I only wanted to be at home with Harro. I felt extremely guilty, you see. Every time I came back there were just his eyes looking up at me, mute with pain. The doctor said he would never walk again. We would never achieve all those things we had dreamt of. Eventually, I decided I would stop flying completely. If Harro couldn't go, then I wouldn't either. I stayed in and read to him, and brought work home from school for him, though we were fooling ourselves to think he might have a decent life. Instead, he caught pneumonia and died. And the moment our father came and told me, do you know what I felt? I felt relieved. That was actually my first emotion. I was relieved because it meant I could go out flying again without feeling guilty. That only lasted for a second, of course. Then came the grief. It destroyed my mother. She never got over it. Occasionally I wonder how it has affected me, too. Sometimes, in my daily life, I have a feeling that I've lost something, and it's a moment before I realize what it is.”

He pursed his lips.

“We buried him in the churchyard next to the villa at Wannsee. People find it strange, but we put no headstone to mark his grave. My father said Harro was a free spirit and should have nothing above him but the patter of deer's hooves.”

He blinked and took another gulp of his drink. “There. Now you have my sad story. Make of it what you will.”

A familiar, sick feeling rose in Clara's throat. It was a conflict that tore at the heart of her, and threatened to overwhelm her with self-loathing. She knew she was a honey trap. A
femme galante,
as the French called them. A Mata Hari. However shadowy and double-dealing the life of a male spy, the female spy's life involved an extra layer of deception. Eking out confidences like this, faking closeness, pretending intimacy, coaxing a man to strip the layers off himself. Somehow it seemed even more deceptive than stripping off his clothes. Whenever this feeling threatened to engulf her, she reminded herself what was at stake. The information she could get from Arno Strauss was invaluable. Thousands of lives might depend on it. If deceiving him was the price, it was a price well worth paying.

“Some people might be surprised, Arno, that you never stopped flying.”

“Quite the reverse. You have two choices when it happens. Either your nerve gives out, or you get back in the cockpit. I enlisted.”

“And you went to Spain.”

His head rose sharply, detecting an undercurrent in her voice.

“Yes, I volunteered for Spain. And I'm glad of it. I was motivated by the chance to prevent the spread of Bolshevism. It's a rot that's spreading through Europe. A cancer. What's happening in Spain will soon be happening in Germany if we don't help stop it. Germany will never recognize a red Spain.”

“Who says Spain would go red?”

He snorted. “You haven't seen it. The country is packed with agents of Moscow. They're not just sending arms and aid. They're sending spies. The Soviets exert huge control over the Republicans. They have secret prisons around Madrid where they torture and kill Nationalists and Catholics. The spies aren't easy to spot. They're not always Russian, they're German and Spanish too. Nearly all Jews, of course. There's a Ukrainian Jew named General Kléber—at least that's his nom de guerre—who advises the International Brigades. In reality he's a senior member of the NKVD, direct from Moscow, real name Manfred Stern. Some of them are even English. You should take heed. It's the declared aim of Bolsheviks to overthrow the leadership of Great Britain too. If the English aren't careful, the hammer and sickle will soon be flying over Buckingham Palace.”