Flight From Berlin: A Novel Read online

  ‘Roland . . . ?’

  Denham shrugged. ‘My guess is that the Gestapo took her brother into “protective custody,” worked him over, and kept some of his fingers as souvenirs. After that Hannah was on the next ship home to Germany.’

  ‘And they made old Jakob’s exit visa conditional on his daughter’s good behaviour . . . ?’

  ‘Most likely. And if they ever do let him out, like you say, they’ll denude him first of every penny he’s ever earned. Jews lucky enough to leave can take only a few marks in their pocket. It’s the law.’

  After a minute of silence Eleanor said, ‘Jesus Christ.’ She was staring at the trees and chimneys passing but didn’t seem to be seeing anything. ‘They torture people,’ she mumbled. ‘They rob them. . .’ She looked at Richard. ‘But it’s too late to make any difference. The Games are taking place.’

  ‘There’s more than a week still to go. Plenty of time to get the story out there and ruin the show for them.’

  ‘Isn’t she taking a big risk seeing you?’

  The train began to slow, emitting a great hiss of steam.

  ‘We’re all taking a big risk.’

  Winklerstrasse was in the heart of what seemed like a social housing development for the overprivileged. Huge, polished cobblestones, mature horse chestnuts lining the avenues, and set back from the road, the great houses in their grounds, shuttered against the heat of the day and secluded by pines and magnolia in bloom. A green light filtered through the leaves. The place was in a deep hush, exuding an air of privacy and wealth; the only sounds were of birds calling among gardens.

  As they walked Denham kept glancing back to see if they’d picked up a shadow. But he knew it was impossible to be sure. Heydrich, the head of the SD, the Nazi intelligence agency, had turned the whole country into an espionage state. Who was watching? Who was following? That gardener? The elderly couple walking a dog? The woman sitting in the parked car? Millions of willing informers.

  They reached the high gates of number 80, fashioned in a design of wrought iron leaves, flowers, and ribbons. On either side two tall stone gateposts held iron carriage lamps in yellow glass.

  ‘Think we should ring the bell?’ Eleanor said.

  Peering through the bars, they saw a gravel driveway that curved out of sight behind rhododendron bushes, over which a fairy-tale turret could be glimpsed.

  ‘The gate’s open,’ said Denham. It yielded with a deep, ferrous groan, and they entered the grounds. Behind the foliage stood a tall house of glazed yellow bricks, with a pointed roof, arched Gothic windows, and two towers, one cylindrical, the other crenellated like a medieval keep. Beyond the building were mown lawns and a pier giving onto a boating lake.

  Eleanor made a low whistle. ‘A castle for a princess.’

  On a curve in the driveway was parked a gleaming black Opel, its engine humming. The driver stood on the other side of it, smoking and watching them approach. It was several seconds before they noticed, through the glass of the car windows, the blood-red armband on his uniform.

  ‘Now what?’ Eleanor muttered as they crunched towards the porch. ‘He’s seen us. We can’t just turn around.’

  The front door of the house opened. Raised voices came from inside the hall, and two men emerged onto the steps, one of them saying, ‘You’ll hear from us,’ to whoever was seeing them out.

  The first man wore a fedora, a tailored suit, and cotton gloves. He had a white moustache twirled into pins, and a pince-nez, through which he cast them a curious look as he approached the car. Under his arm, Denham noticed, was a copy of Die Kunst im Dritten Reich, the Nazi art periodical. His companion, who’d made the abrupt farewell at the door, swaggered out in polished boots, a brown uniform with a gold-trimmed swastika armband and a collection of decorations glinting on his breast—a golden pheasant in full plumage. He was tall, with a florid face, fat lips, and a head of thick grey hair that clashed oddly with the brown garb.

  Denham felt the pheasant’s gaze fall upon him, before moving to Eleanor, whom he looked up and down. Eyes the colour of dishwater.

  ‘You have business here?’ he asked.

  ‘We’re calling from the Lutheran Church,’ Denham said, in his best Berliner accent.

  ‘Niemöller’s lot?’

  ‘Not us.’

  The dishwater eyes sharpened for a moment, as if committing their faces to memory. ‘You’re wasting your time,’ he said, getting into the car. ‘They’re Jews.’

  ‘Ah. Thank you.’

  The Opel’s engine moved into gear, and the car sped off over the gravel and out of sight around the curve in the drive.

  ‘We’re not from the church,’ Denham said to the maid standing by the open door at the top of the steps. ‘We’re friends of Roland and Hannah Liebermann’s.’

  ‘Who is it now, Lore?’ came a deep voice from inside the hall. Denham gave the maid their names, and they were asked to wait. She returned a moment later and showed them into a large, brightly upholstered sitting room with a ceiling higher than a double-decker bus, where tasselled velvet curtains were half drawn against the bleaching power of sunlight. Denham could see why. Almost every inch of wall was hung with canvases—some small, others the size of billiard tables. Colourful, dynamic, modern works; some were even familiar to him, or rather the artist’s style was familiar. His eyes were drawn to a large, dreamlike piece from the Blue Rider School, above the oversized stone fireplace.

  ‘Beautiful . . . ,’ Eleanor said.

  Dozens of horses galloped towards the viewer, one over the other, moving in a great purple-blue wave.

  ‘Franz Marc, the artist,’ said a deep voice, ‘was a friend of mine.’

  They had not noticed the man standing at a walnut drinks cabinet next to the mantelpiece, pouring himself a glass of cognac, which he knocked back in one gulp. He was about sixty-five, bald, with a trimmed grey beard, a long nose, and pale, weary eyes. A port-wine mark covered part of his left cheek like a thumbprint. His dark suit and waistcoat cut a sombre presence amid such colour.

  ‘My children told me to expect you,’ he said in English, beckoning for them to sit. There was a strong Yiddish clip to his voice and he spoke ponderously, as though there was nothing left to hurry for. ‘They said you are journalists taking a great risk to see Hannah, and for that you are welcome. In times like these courageous people are few. I am Jakob Liebermann.’

  He wound a bell handle next to the fireplace, and they heard a distant chime. On the coffee table before them was a year-old copy of Life magazine, with Hannah on the cover, holding her foil. The photograph was a soft monochrome in which a makeup artist had given her the femme fatale treatment, with lips and hair dark and ravishing.

  ‘Please understand I do not normally drink at this hour, but after the meeting that just took place here, I have given myself permission.’

  ‘Unwelcome visitors?’ Denham ventured.

  ‘They had no appointment, and I was compelled to receive them, so, yes, you may say that.’

  ‘Who were they?’ asked Eleanor.

  ‘Men from the Reich Chamber of the Visual Arts,’ said Herr Liebermann, ‘come to assess the value of my collection.’ He gazed gloomily at a wall behind their heads.

  Lore entered, pulling a trolley clinking with china cups and a teapot. ‘Please see where Hannah and Roland are,’ Herr Liebermann said to her, ‘and ask Frau Liebermann to join us, if she’s feeling well enough.’

  ‘Those men want your art?’ Denham said, surprised. The Nazis had strong views on ‘degenerate art’—or rather, anything that challenged their parochial, reactionary tastes.

  ‘Not for its own sake,’ said the resonating, slow voice. Herr Liebermann rubbed the bridge of his nose and his eyes, exhausted from whatever exchange had taken place. ‘Otto Dix, Paul Klee, Max Ernst . . .’ He gestured vaguely to the walls. ‘Their work is now Verfallskunst—the art of decay. Art to be liquidated.’ He raised his eyebrows in an expression of beleaguered aloofness. ‘That wo
rd—so much in vogue today. Those two men will sell this collection at auction in Lucerne and New York . . . to raise foreign currency for the Reich.’

  Denham noticed an embossed business card on the coffee table for a GALLERIE HABERSTOCK, GERMAN DEALERSHIP. He’d seen that a lot recently—adding ‘German’ before ‘lawyer’ or ‘doctor’ to signify that the card bearer was of good Aryan coin.

  ‘That man,’ said Herr Liebermann, nodding to the card, ‘specialises in these disposals. He’s an art dealer, a businessman like me. Him I could talk to. But the oaf in the uniform told me my collection amounts to “Jewish artistic violence against the German spirit.” ’ He sat down on a divan, shaking his head, seeming to shrink into the folds of his suit.

  ‘You’re giving them the collection in return for an exit visa?’ Denham asked.

  ‘Partly. They want a great deal more from me than the art.’

  ‘But it’s your collection,’ Eleanor said suddenly. ‘Why should . . .’ Herr Liebermann silenced her with a raised hand and a melancholy smile.

  ‘Please,’ he said. ‘Acceptance is the quicker route to wholeness, though I confess that today even I feel unequal to the complexities of our times.’

  ‘If there’s something we can do—’ Denham said.

  ‘Thank you, Herr Denham, but I take comfort from the fact that I am a difficult man to rob. By law my banking interests in Berlin will soon be Aryanised, but elsewhere—in Basel, in London, in Amsterdam—my wealth is held by trustees from whom deeds of transfer are required, and for those they need my cooperation. So we’re talking about a deal . . .’

  ‘And you think they’ll keep their side of the bargain?’ asked Eleanor.

  ‘That,’ said Herr Liebermann, ‘is a question I cannot answer or know the answer to.’

  Denham gazed at the walls again and his eyes fell upon one small picture that seemed not to fit at all. It had a grotesquely ornate, gilded frame and appeared to be a watercolour of some Baroque church.

  ‘The painting you’re looking at,’ Herr Liebermann said, noticing Denham’s interest, ‘is my little joke. It is by our Chancellor Hitler.’

  Denham looked at him in astonishment.

  Hitler the failed artist, twice rejected by the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. The entire Nazi movement was founded on disappointment. Goebbels the thwarted journalist. Heydrich the cashiered sailor. The salvation these misfits sought in racial revolution.

  Footsteps echoed from the hall, the door opened, and Hannah entered, followed by Roland.

  ‘Ah, here we are,’ Herr Liebermann said.

  Hannah greeted them dressed in knee breeches and a cotton jerkin, her hair tied up as if she’d come straight from training. Eleanor was introduced, and Denham thought he discerned a cool reserve as they shook hands, the two Olympians gauging each other, eyes locked. The fencer did not possess Eleanor’s voluptuous beauty. She was trim, sharp, and pretty, but her real attraction lay in her formidable self-assurance and her poise—with a habit of turning her head so that it was in alignment with her shoulders, like an ancient Egyptian profile.

  ‘I’m sorry you got into trouble on my account,’ she began. ‘That man Greiser warned me never to speak to you again, but I told him he’s used all his arrows. Short of killing Roland, there really isn’t anything else he can try. His quiver is empty.’ Her voice was bright and crisp, as though she were addressing a town hall meeting.

  Roland said nothing. He was in an open-necked shirt and a pair of Oxford bags—the relaxed garb of any upper-class young man at home, yet he was still the hunted creature they’d seen by lamplight. His leg slouched over the arm of a chair, and one arm lay around his sister’s shoulders, his fingers stroking her hair. The mutilated right hand he had concealed in a kid leather glove, which rested on his knee. Something inside him had broken. Denham could see it in his eyes. Behind the fearful face was an intelligent boy, who, in any normal time and place, would be off travelling or thinking of a career. When Denham was Roland’s age his own hopes for the future had been smashed by events no less extreme.

  No one spoke for a moment until Herr Liebermann said, ‘Hannah, my love, what was it you were hoping Herr Denham and Fräulein Eleanor could do for us by coming here?’

  ‘I was awake last night thinking about your offer, Mr Denham,’ she said, her brown eyes wide and clear, ‘and I would like to give you the interview you requested. Here. Today. Roland, too. For you to publish in England, the United States, and, really, wherever else you can.’

  Denham hadn’t expected such eagerness and wondered now about the wisdom of it. ‘I’m not so sure . . . ,’ he said.

  ‘But we are sure. We signed away the art, but straightaway they wanted more. They won’t let us go until they’ve taken the clothes off our backs, and even then . . .’ She spread her arms in a gesture of despair.

  ‘I’m sorry to say I think you’re right about that,’ Denham said.

  ‘Then your article must say clearly what they did to Roland. Everything, now, while the Games are still on. The whole world must read about it. Then they wouldn’t dare touch him again.’

  Denham scratched his chin. ‘It might not be expedient for them to arrest him again if they know the foreign press is watching, but don’t think you can shame them or appeal to their nicer qualities.’ And before he could stop himself he said, ‘Shit doesn’t have nicer qualities.’ He put down his teacup and apologised. The faces before him were serious, but then a smile began to play beneath Herr Liebermann’s beard, and the old man began to laugh.

  ‘Shit doesn’t have nicer qualities,’ Herr Liebermann repeated, and with the release of one who’d been under months of unsmiling strain. Eleanor and Roland began laughing, too; only Hannah’s face remained prim and slighted.

  ‘Have I missed a good joke?’ came a woman’s voice from the doorway. They turned to see a heavy lady with unruly silver hair, a long pearl necklace, and an old-fashioned cameo brooch. Frau Liebermann shook hands with them, offering the tips of her fingers, so that Denham half wondered whether she expected her rings to be kissed. She spoke in a singsong voice as though she were in a dream. He guessed she’d taken a sedative.

  The whole family now sat looking at him and Eleanor, expectant, and not unhappy. Denham removed his notepad and Leica from his case.

  ‘Where shall we start?’

  Hannah’s story was as grim as he’d expected. On the voyage from California she’d been kept under constant supervision, and her telegrams were censored. They’d forbidden her to win the fencing final, because a Jew could not be seen to take the gold, but she could win the silver. She was isolated from the rest of the team and given the world’s worst coach. And on the podium, she was to give the Hitler salute, which they’d even made her practise in front of them.

  Roland, as Denham had guessed, was the bait they’d used to bring her back. He’d been kept for four days in the Gestapo’s basement cells. The young man’s eyes told him everything, and Denham knew better than to ask.

  When she had finished, Denham took several photographs of them together in the sitting room with the blue horses behind them, and many of Hannah by herself posing with her foil. Afterwards Frau Liebermann insisted that he and Eleanor stay for lunch around a table laid in the grounds at the back of the house. Small white yachts in sail circled on the lake, brilliant against the afternoon sun.

  Roland stood to pour wine for them all. Thistledown floated through the warm air and some landed in his black hair. As he poured Eleanor’s glass, his eyes met hers.

  Ah well, Denham thought, and looked away. He’s much nearer her age than I am.

  Herr Liebermann said a brief prayer in Hebrew when the meal of baked carp and potatoes in cream was placed in front of them; then he raised his glass. ‘To America,’ he said, smiling at Eleanor.

  ‘To America,’ they all said, and clinked glasses.

  They left the Liebermann house unseen by a disused door in the wall of the grounds and walked in silence for a while dow
n the leafy avenue, which seemed even stiller in the heat of the late afternoon.

  ‘It’s happening, isn’t it?’ Eleanor said after a while, her head lowered.

  ‘What is?’ But Denham thought he knew what she meant.

  ‘Everything.’ She reached out and held his hand. ‘Us. You and I. Our fight against these bastards.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Denham. ‘It’s happening.’

  At Berlin Zoo Station they made plans to meet that night.

  ‘Look after these,’ Denham said, handing her his shorthand notes and the Leica. ‘They’ll be safer at the ambassador’s house.’

  Back home, he put his head around Frau Stumpf’s door. His landlady was sitting alone at her kitchen table in her long shawl, listening to radio music and staring at the wall, which was how he often found her. She seemed to jump when he entered, and then, unusual for her, avoided his eyes.

  ‘Good afternoon, Herr Denham. Yes, you have another telegram.’

  He tore it open, and felt the niggle of worry finally hatch and spread through his gut.

  NO NEWS STOP POLICE TO ISSUE MISSING PERSONS NOTICE STOP COME SOONEST STOP

  Leaping up the stairs to his apartment, he tried to work out how fast he could get to London. First he would call Anna, then Tempelhof Airport in the hope that there was a seat on the evening flight.

  From a crackling radio behind Reinacher’s door the voice of Goebbels resounded in the stairwell. ‘ . . . This day, I believe it is no exaggeration to say . . . that a hundred million people in Germany and beyond her frontiers . . . have been tuned to the broadcast of the eleventh Olympiad from Berlin . . .’

  He put his key in the door to his apartment and pushed, not even noticing that the new lock wasn’t locked. His senses warned him but his brain was too slow on the uptake. He stepped into his sitting room and two men stood up.

  ‘Richard Denham,’ the nearer one said. He opened his jacket to reveal the warrant-disc hanging from an inside pocket. ‘You’re to come with us.’

  Chapter Seventeen