Woman in the Shadows (36 page)

A
s soon as the door had slammed behind her, Clara ran to the window. She watched Unity dash towards a large Mercedes that stood in the street with its engine running. She saw the peaked cap of the driver turn and Unity jump into the backseat. As the car pulled away, Clara knew she had no time to lose. Unity would tell Hitler exactly what she had seen. She would inform him furiously that Clara Vine, the actress who had been so kindly invited to accompany them to the Wintergarten that evening, had a photograph in her apartment of him kissing another man. A photograph that, although it lay in shards, pieced together the dark puzzle of the Führer and presented him as he was. Like a crossword assembled, complete and comprehensible. A picture that could drag Adolf Hitler out of the shadowy glamour of celebrity and expose him to the common light of day. Truth lay around her in a litter of broken glass.

Clara looked at the wreckage. She had no doubt that these pictures could destroy Hitler. They could slice through the Führer's reputation throughout Germany and stop in their tracks his plans for domination of Europe. Homosexuality was the vice, after all, for which Röhm and his SA associates had been executed. If Hitler, the object of adoration for millions of women, should be found to have indulged, should be seen as a sexual deviant…well, the Nazis had a word for behavior like that:
Degenerate.

There was no chance that Unity would stay silent. She had the deadly combination of slavish devotion to the Führer and the political instincts of a teenager. There was no doubt she would boast about how she had personally destroyed the negatives. As if that was the end of it. As if the Führer would be overcome with gratitude and perhaps give her a medal as a reward.

If Unity was making her way to the Chancellery now, Clara might have an hour before police arrived at her door. Or less. Wildly, she considered her options. She longed to run straight out of the apartment and head for Duisburger Strasse, but her desire to seek refuge with Ralph was swiftly quelled; she couldn't risk drawing the police to him. There was only one person in Germany who could save her now, and she needed to find him before she herself was found.

Fighting the urge to flee immediately, she forced herself to think. She went over to the cupboard and selected a navy satin dress that perfectly emphasized her curves. She chose navy elbow gloves, a pearl necklace, diamond earrings, and dark glasses. She needed to use all the persuasive skills she possessed. She paused for a second to survey herself in the mirror. Then she twisted her hair up into a chignon and drew on the long coat with the frosted fox fur collar. Picking up a cut-glass atomizer, she sprayed a cloud of Evening in Paris about her, and finally, with her gloves on, she carefully collected the shards of glass from the floor and dropped them into a beaded black and white clutch bag. Looking around, she saw something else. Erich's knife. Sheathed, still with the red ribbon tied in a bow. She slipped that into the bag, too, then left the apartment.

She made herself walk calmly down the stairs and nod to Rudi, who was immersed in
Der SA-Mann
. Looking up, he seemed about to comment on the young foreigner who had just slammed out the door and insert some reprimand for Clara about visitors needing to have respect for other tenants, but she left before the words were out of his mouth.

She walked the length of Winterfeldtstrasse, crossed Potsdamer Strasse, and headed north. It was busy now. People were hurrying out to their evening's entertainment, to the cinema or a show. She tried to stick to the side streets, keeping her head down, her pace firm and steady. After fifteen minutes' brisk walk she was halfway down Wilhelmstrasse, past the Air Ministry, at the wrought-iron gates of the Chancellery. Across the road and slightly set back from it stood the Propaganda Ministry. Even at this time of the evening, most of the windows were lit. The ministry was never really shut. The message of the new Germany was too important to keep to office hours.

Clara pushed open the door and crossed the wide marble hall to where a uniformed guard sat at a desk, looking her up and down. He was a heavyset bruiser with a dusting of bristles on his scalp and eyes that had been squashed too closely together in his face.

“I need to see the minister. Please tell him Fräulein Clara Vine needs to see him urgently.”

The man regarded her insolently and made no attempt to lift the telephone.

“Can I ask what this is about?” He had a wet smirk of a mouth.

“It's personal. He'll understand.”

With another sardonic look, the man rose and crossed to the opposite side of the hall, where another guard sat. The two men conferred, smiling and darting glances in her direction. She forced herself to concentrate on the guard's cigarette, dwindling in the ashtray on his desk. Fear lay like a crushing weight on her chest. It was a terrible risk she was taking now, the biggest risk she had taken since she set foot in Germany, but she had no choice. There was no possibility that Unity would keep quiet about Clara possessing the pictures.

The guard returned across the wide marble hall with all the urgency of a man out for an evening stroll.

“So sorry, Fräulein. I regret the minister has left for the evening.”

He smirked a little more, betraying his conviction that here was another desperate actress whose business with the Herr Doktor was strictly unofficial. “Perhaps you could try another night?”

Clara ignored the implication. “Can I ask where he might be?”

The guard found this hilarious. He choked his laughter down. “The minister does not permit us to give out details of his whereabouts to anyone who happens to turn up. Not even beautiful ladies. Is there any message?”

“No. No message.”

As swiftly as she could, with the eyes of the two men on her, Clara left the building. Where was Goebbels? He could be anywhere in Berlin. He could even be at home at Schwanenwerder, but Emmy Goering had said he never went home until late. What had she said?
He's become so secretive about his movements he even keeps his officials at the ministry in the dark.
Goebbels had to be somewhere in the city, but where? Berlin's ceaseless, churning nightlife, with its hundreds of bars and theaters, which usually excited Clara, now existed to taunt her. Her chances of unearthing the Propaganda Minister in the plush depths of some Westend nightclub were next to none.

She exited the courtyard and turned right into the Wilhelmstrasse, heading towards Unter den Linden. She walked rapidly, trying to melt into the shadows of the hefty Baroque buildings. It was then that she saw it. A flicker of movement that took on the shape of a man. He was walking about fifty yards behind her on the other side of the road, yet she knew at once that he was watching her. It was the way his attention shifted, without any outward signs, just some microscopic angling of his body towards her, that said he had her in his sights. And there was something about him, something about his carriage or the tilt of the shoulders, that she recognized. She had glimpsed him for only a fraction of a second, and had not caught full sight of his face, but it was enough to tell her she had seen the man before. On the night she had led Ralph Sommers on a trail through Berlin. The man with the pale fedora in Voss Strasse. He was the man who had been at the art gallery in Munich, too. The man who had been following her ever since she first took possession of Anna Hansen's case. And now he had found her. He looked absolutely calm, intent and unhurried. Just a normal businessman, anxious to get home to his Frau and a couple of delightful children.

The wind whipped her hair into her eyes, and when she looked again he was gone.

At once, everything Clara knew about being shadowed kicked in. There was no need to ascertain that the man was genuinely a tail, so she did not slow her pace or vary her direction. All she needed to do was shake him off. It sounded simple, put like that, but this man was a professional, she could tell, and he had been watching her for weeks. Like a lover, he would know the shape and gait of her. He could read in the mere movement of her body the workings of her mind.

She walked purposefully on to the top of Wilhelmstrasse and paused fractionally to decide her direction. To one side the doors of the Hotel Adlon spilled a golden corridor of light across the pavement, its uniformed doormen shuffling and blowing clouds in the icy air. To the other side, beneath the enormous eagle-topped pillars that marched off into the distance, the evening bustle of Unter den Linden was under way. Turning right would be the obvious choice. The theaters and restaurants that clustered around Friedrichstrasse would be the best place to disappear. Yet wasn't it also what he would expect of her? She dipped into the S-Bahn station, rose to the other side, and as she reached street level swerved left and strode towards Pariser Platz, in the direction of the Brandenburg Gate.

Above her, Victoria, the goddess of triumph, championed her four horses in the ominous direction of Hitler's chosen
Lebensraum
in the east. Beside Clara the windows of the French embassy sent bright oblongs of light into the square. She kept to the shadows, calculating fiercely which route to take, longing for crowds and traffic to obscure the path between them. She could sense the man behind her, his step quickening, trying to make up the ground she had gained. She felt danger, thrumming in her skull, rising and jangling.

No sooner had she emerged on the other side of the gate than she had another choice to make. To her right lay the Platz der Republik and the Reichstag, heading northwards to Lehrter Bahnhof. To her left was a short walk to the bustle of Potsdamer Platz, where she could disappear down the U-Bahn. But if she went into the U-Bahn, she risked being trapped. Impulsively, she took the choice right ahead of her. She headed into the darkness of the Tiergarten.

It was nearly pitch-dark now. A hard moon slipped fleetingly in and out of filigree clouds. The park was empty. No one wanted to be out on a night like this, still and bitterly cold with the taste of snow in the air.

Her heart thudding, she headed resolutely off the paths, past heavy statues of long-forgotten German statesmen and bronze heroes struggling with wild boar and bears, threading her way deeper between the trees. She zigzagged from tree to tree, halting in a pool of deeper shadow. Breathless, she fantasized about sinking down to the earth, huddling in the darkness and waiting for her pursuer to abandon his search. She dared to hope she had shaken him off. There was no crunch of footsteps on the fallen leaves, no human sound apart from the distant thrum of traffic. It was as though he had vaporized.

As she stood there, motionless, she imagined for a moment that she had gone back to childhood and was in the nursery, tucked up in the eaves of the big old house. Night after night, as she curled in her warm bed trying to sleep, she would see shadows in the corner of the room rise up and form themselves into menacing shapes. Her fears would grasp her by the shoulders and shake her as she lay. Often, she would creep from her bed, hoping to escape them. Eventually her father would appear, sternly dismissive and almost as frightening as the shadows themselves. The experience was just night terrors, he would explain when he found her sobbing figure on the stairs. It was merely her own imaginings stepping outside of her mind and taking a shape of their own.

“Your fears are nonsensical, Clara. You have always had an overactive imagination.”

But this was no night terror. The man following her tonight had a most deadly agenda.

Clara wouldn't have seen him if he hadn't made a mistake. He was about a hundred yards away from her, still on the path, and he passed a lamp. For a split second his shadow twisted up under the light, revealing the brim of his hat, even though his face remained obscured. A moment later, darkness swallowed him as he veered off the path in the direction of the trees. He was coming towards her. She remembered what Unity Mitford said to her about hunting.
I learned an awful lot about being the prey. You've got to avoid sudden movement. That always draws the eye.

If she was being hunted, Clara needed to remain where she was. She was sure she heard his step, but when she glanced behind her, he was nowhere to be seen. She forced herself to be calm. She would stand completely motionless in the deep shadow. She bitterly regretted choosing the coat with the white fox collar. The fur gleamed in the moonlight and made her far easier to spot.

Even while she tried her hardest not to move, Clara was cursing herself for taking the route into the Tiergarten. It had been a foolish impulse. The place was deceptively large. If you strayed off the paths, getting lost was a real possibility. The Tiergarten was no tame English park. There was something wild and impenetrable about it. It seemed incredible that in the heart of the city—and such an orderly, monumental city as Berlin—this wildness should be enclosed. Perhaps, Clara thought, it stood for something in the city's soul.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a crunch of twigs a few yards away, and instantly she knew that he was perilously close. She needed to make a decision. Abandoning her stillness, she lurched forward and ran. She ran, though her heels hobbled her and the darkness was so solid it stunted her movement, as though she were running through sand. She ran until her lungs were screaming for air and fear dragged her backwards like a relentless tide, almost pulling her down into the sweet surrender of oblivion. As she ran, she strained for the pitch of his footsteps behind her confirming that he was gaining ground.

Fear rose in her throat like acid, but in the midst of her fear she unexpectedly found anger, hard and implacable as a stone. This was the man who had threatened Erich. Who had murdered Anna Hansen. If she slowed, if she surrendered to a man like this, who thought he could dominate and destroy women, she would give up her life. She would give up her life, so hard achieved, to someone who wanted to save his own. The thought of Unity, who would even now be passionately regaling the Führer with the story of the photographs Clara possessed, spurred her on.