Flight From Berlin: A Novel Page 16

Rausch leaned towards him. ‘I have a reputation for stamina, Herr Denham. I can go through the night without a break.’ The man made an up to you gesture with his hands. ‘They offered you the dossier. Irresistible to a reporter, I’m sure. But you’ve heard what’s in store if you don’t cooperate.’

  ‘You’re not listening. I don’t know—’

  ‘I’ll offer you this chance once only. Tell me where it is and you walk free the moment we have it.’

  ‘My freedom it is, then.’

  ‘Where’s the dossier?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  Rausch watched him for several seconds, then got up from the far side of the table, carrying his chair. There was an air of finality to the way he placed it in front of Denham and sat down, as if a line had been crossed. In Denham’s frayed mind, the temperature of the room seemed to drop.

  ‘Let’s start at the beginning.’ His face had acquired a cold fervour. ‘When did the group make contact with you?’

  ‘Group . . . ? What—’

  The slap was so hard and so fast that Denham felt the hot shame of being hit like a child. He touched his lip with his tongue, split by the SS signet ring on Rausch’s right hand. Cold sweat broke out under his shirt.

  ‘No one contacted me.’

  ‘No one.’

  ‘N—’

  Another hard slap.

  ‘Come on,’ Rausch said, almost in a whisper. ‘“Didn’t we meet at a poetry reading in Mainz last year?” ’

  Denham’s mouth opened dumbly, and he was slapped again. He put up his hands to shield his face, but Rausch knocked them aside and slapped him once more, with much more force.

  ‘For Christ’s sake,’ Denham shouted.

  ‘I’m sorry. Let’s make you feel more secure.’ He lifted a pair of handcuffs from his side pocket, walked behind Denham’s chair, and pulled his hands back, locking them tightly behind him. When he resumed his seat he pulled it closer. He searched Denham’s face, his eyes an aphotic blue, a lake in winter. ‘They gave you a double password to identify yourself. We found out, Denham. We know. “Didn’t we meet at a poetry reading in Mainz last year?” Your response was “We did. The poems were by Stefan George.” Then they gave you the dossier.’

  Denham had the sensation of being trapped in an artifice that was fast assembling itself out of fragments of reality. A muscle began to spasm just below his eye. He had to grimace to make it stop.

  Rausch nodded. ‘Are we getting somewhere now?’

  He remembered Friedl asking the question. Odd because it was in German, when they’d been speaking English, and because of the intense look that had been in his eyes when he asked it. Denham’s brain was jangled. His single, urgent thought was to keep Friedl’s name out of this.

  ‘I’ve never heard it.’

  Rausch slapped him with the full strength of his arm.

  ‘It’s the truth,’ Denham said through clenched teeth.

  ‘The truth?’ Rausch wagged his finger at this interesting point. ‘What is the truth . . . ?’ He stood up to remove his jacket and hung it over the back of his chair, revealing a brutally fit figure. ‘The Nollendorfplatz Theatre, Denham. That’s where you gave yourself away.’ He began rolling up his shirtsleeves. ‘We’d been keeping an eye on you since you got back to Berlin, but when you walked into that dance hall yesterday—then we knew you were the one. Because among those swing-dancing nigger-lovers was a member of the group—also under surveillance by us. You spoke to him at the bar. Or are you denying that, too? So then we do a little digging around to see where you’ve been the last few weeks, and what do you know? Our suspect, Friedl Christian, was reported seen in your company on board the Hindenburg last Saturday. Bumping into him again was a bit more than a coincidence, wouldn’t you agree?’ He sat back down, his knees almost touching Denham’s.

  ‘No coincidence,’ Denham said, his spirits sinking. ‘We got talking about swing. He invited me to the Nollendorfplatz. I went along. That’s it.’

  Slap.

  ‘Did you know that Friedl Christian is a warm boy registered with the police?’

  ‘His personal life is his own affair. We did not discuss it.’

  Slap. ‘You discussed something.’

  ‘Music.’

  Slap. ‘He was the contact the group told you to expect, was he not? You identified yourselves to each other with the password and he gave you the dossier, or he told you where to find it.’

  ‘He didn’t give me any—’

  Slap. ‘Did he give it to you?’

  ‘No—’

  ‘Did he give you a location where you’d find it?’

  ‘No, I don’t know—’

  Slap. ‘A name, a contact?’

  ‘He didn’t mention anyone. He didn’t mention any dossier—’

  Slap. Slap. Slap.

  Denham’s face was stinging red and raw; his lip and nose streaming blood. ‘Stop this, man,’ he shouted. ‘Isn’t it obvious it’s getting you nowhere?’

  Rausch did not stop, and sweat began to soak through his shirt in wide rings.

  ‘This morning you visited Hannah Liebermann’s home in the Grunewald. Why?’

  Denham’s head slumped onto his chest. ‘I wanted an interview. And that’s the truth.’

  Rausch lifted Denham’s chin and slapped him so hard that he almost slid off the chair. ‘Those Jews will be in a KZ within one hour of the Games’ closing ceremony. If it’s there, d’you think we won’t find it?’

  ‘Please listen to me. I don’t know—’

  ‘If you don’t open up to us, I’m sure your American lady friend will.’

  Denham stared at him. ‘She has nothing to do with anything. I warn you—her father is a powerful senator, and she’s the guest here of the ambassador . . .’

  ‘You’re warning me, are you, Denham?’ Rausch jumped out of his chair

  Slap. Slap.

  ‘You’re keeping me on my toes, are you?’

  Slap. Slap. Slap.

  He was panting now, face a livid pink, hair dishevelled.

  ‘Did you examine the dossier?’

  Denham said nothing. This was hopeless.

  ‘Or did the warm boy tell you the content?’

  ‘No,’ Denham yelled. ‘Nothing. Why don’t you ask him yourself?’

  ‘Oh, believe me—we will.’

  But Denham had clocked the half second’s hesitation. You haven’t found him.

  At that moment the telephone rang. Rausch stood up and answered it.

  ‘Rausch here . . . Right away, Herr Obergruppenführer.’

  He took his jacket off the back of the chair, put it on, and walked to the door. ‘And just as we were warming up. Don’t go anywhere.’ Denham heard the click of the lock slide into place behind him.

  Outside he could hear rain. He wanted to touch his face. It felt delicate in the extreme, an exposed membrane, as if the skin on his cheeks, chin, and forehead had chafed and broken. The handcuffs were cutting into his wrists. He needed the lavatory. But worst of all was his thirst. They’d given him no water.

  This was surreal. Dismal and surreal. It was the insane nihilism at the heart of National Socialism. He’d been on the verge of getting a story out there that would have ruined their Olympics, but they were devoting time and manpower to some wild goose chase after a lost file. For all he knew it contained Hitler’s mother’s recipes, or a collection of banned jokes. Eckener cracks one of his gags about the Führer, and a whole SD department is set up to trace its origin.

  We did. The poems were by Stefan George . . .

  Double passwords? What was Friedl mixed up in? It would explain his eagerness to introduce himself that evening in the bar at the Hotel Kurgarten—he’d thought Denham was someone else. Farcical, and yet they’d become friends. God alone knew what noodle-brained naivety it took to join a resistance group. But then, warm boys generally were probably no strangers to courage. For any chance of success a group had to remain small, with contacts few and ano
nymous. Friedl, he guessed, would know the name of only one other member, perhaps. Two at the most. Double-password precautions. But Friedl was lucky. He’d been tipped off and fled.

  Denham turned the sequence of events over in his mind. To think he’d once suspected Friedl of being a police snitch.

  He sighed and shut his eyes. Another thought crossed his mind. Who telephoned Rausch just now? There couldn’t be many Obergruppenführers. He looked up at the photograph on the wall.

  The hitting and slapping didn’t scare him. What scared him was how long he’d be able to hold out. Exhaustion would get to him soon, and pain and hunger.

  His head fell forwards. He tried to empty his mind for a while and not focus on the pain in his wrists.

  The door unlocked.

  Rausch strode in with a dour expression. He had changed into a black uniform with silver epaulettes. And he wasn’t alone. Four SS followed him, stony-faced, also in black, and Denham caught a glimpse of the rubber blackjack in the hand of one of them, with one end of it tucked up a sleeve. Each SS man took a chair, and they positioned themselves around him; two immediately behind where he couldn’t see them, and two slightly out of his line of vision on each side. One of them yawned, and there was beer on his breath.

  This is bad, Denham thought numbly. This is very bad.

  Rausch resumed his seat behind the table and looked at Denham. He seemed paler, his face set grimly to his task.

  ‘Are you going to put yourself through this?’ he said, tapping the tips of his fingers together. He inhaled and asked again, ‘Where is it?’

  ‘If I knew, believe me, I would tell you.’

  Rausch kept his gaze on Denham, then flicked a glance at the man to the left behind him. A chair scraped back. Leather creaked. Something swished. The blackjack struck him across his left ear.

  His vision went blank. He hunched over, wanting to jam his head between his knees. The detonation in his ear was paralysing his brain, short-circuiting it.

  I do not fear this, he thought, through the blinding white pain. An old soldier does not fear this.

  ‘Sit up,’ said Rausch. ‘Look at me. Where is it?’

  Denham shook his head.

  Another flick from Rausch’s eyes and this time all four men set upon him, bludgeoning him with blackjacks: on his head, neck, and shoulders. When the chair went over, and Denham with it, Rausch stepped in to remove the handcuffs, and the beating continued with relentless ferocity: on his shanks, back, hands, and face. A searing burn across his neck made him cry out, and he saw that one of them held a length of wire cable, which was soon lashing across his back.

  Rausch shouted, ‘Shall we keep going?’

  I do not fear this.

  But his mantra could not suppress the terror rising inside him.

  ‘Up,’ said Rausch. The four men uncoiled the ball of torment he’d become on the floor and pulled him back onto the chair. He felt a spreading gush of warm piss in his trousers. One of them grunted, ‘Ach.’

  The interrogator was standing, leaning against the wall beneath the photograph, giving Denham time to absorb and savour the pain. He was holding a small rust red book.

  ‘At Heidelberg I admired this poet. We all did. He was a cult figure, Stefan George, something of a mystic, a seer who felt the tides in the German soul. What appeal he’d have to your gang of criminals I had no idea, but listen to this.’

  In a piping voice he recited:

  ‘The Lord of the Flies is expanding his Reich;

  All treasures, all blessings are swelling his might

  Down, down with the handful who doubt him!’

  ‘ “The Anti-Christ,” from 1907. It has power, does it not? It has prophecy.’

  Still looking at the book he said, ‘It’s going to get much worse if you don’t tell me. Now, Herr Denham, cigarette?’

  Denham shook his head.

  Rausch lit one for himself with a steel lighter. ‘Once again,’ he said softly. ‘Where?’ He was studying his victim through the puff of yellow smoke, and Denham returned his gaze, thinking that he detected less certainty in his tormentor’s face, a little less resolution in the voice. ‘Where?’

  Denham gave his head a tiny movement. No.

  He was punched right off the chair.

  He tried crawling under the table but was dragged backwards by his ankle. The blows came down with monstrous savagery now, and they began to kick him as well: in his ribs, in his stomach, in his face. He howled for them to stop. Anything if they’d stop . . . Ribs cracked like ice under foot. Whip, blackjack. A forest of high boots. His kicked-in stomach winded him; he couldn’t breathe. One of them pulled his head back by his hair, the flash of a dagger, a slash across his cheekbone. Behind it all Rausch was shouting, reciting from the little book.

  ‘You’ll hang out your tongues but the trough has been drained

  You’ll panic like cattle whose farm is ablaze

  And dreadful the blast of the trumpet.’

  Whatever hope he’d had of getting out vanished. He was going to die in this room.

  And suddenly they stopped.

  The telephone was ringing.

  Rough hands heaved him off the floor and onto the chair. He spat out a great gob of blood and pressed his tongue against loose teeth. Blood poured into his right eye from where the wire cable had caught him on the eyebrow; it spattered to the floor from the gash in his cheek. Vision in the other eye was out of focus. He was soaked with piss, sweat, blood.

  ‘Rausch here . . . No, Herr Obergruppenführer. Not yet.’

  The interrogator replaced the receiver and looked at him. The last thing Denham remembered before the room went dark was the worry in the man’s eyes.

  When he came round, his body was a flowering garden of agony, from the crown of his head to the balls of his feet. Even the smallest breath came with a shot of hot pain.

  Denham could hear a radio in the guards’ room tuned at high volume to coverage of the Olympics. He had no idea how long he’d been out.

  ‘ . . . I have the honour now of speaking to twenty-five-year-old Berlin policeman Karl Wöllke’—a cheer from a couple of the guards—‘who earlier won a gold medal for Germany in the shot put . . .’

  He lay on his side on the fold-down cot and stared at the white brick wall. His brain felt as though it was listing to one side, like a boat taking on water, and there was only partial vision in one eye.

  ‘ . . . The Führer waved to me from his box and then I knew I could beat the Olympic record of sixteen point zero three metres. It was all down to the Führer . . .’

  He had some confused notion that he might have died if the telephone hadn’t rung, but the sequence of events was too difficult and tiring to recall. His entire attention was focused on the pain. If only they’d give him a glass of water. He’d do anything for that.

  ‘Saved by the bell, eh?’ said a familiar voice.

  He mustered his strength to turn over on the cot. Dr Eckener was standing in the door. He was swinging Arthur Denham’s pocket watch, like a hypnotist. ‘You’ve got the luck of the devil, Richard, my boy.’

  ‘Yes,’ Denham mumbled through swollen, bloodied lips. ‘I’m on a real winning streak today.’ He looked out of the corner of his puffy eye to get a better look at the old man, but Eckener had gone. And Tom had come, dressed in his school uniform and cap. His shorts were covered in grass stains and dirt.

  ‘Where’ve you been hiding?’ Denham said.

  ‘You know where,’ whispered his son, grinning. His two front teeth were missing and his face had caught the sun, with more freckles on his nose. ‘Look, I’ve made a drawing for you to give to those men. But you mustn’t hold it and smoke at the same time or it might burn.’

  ‘I’ll be careful,’ whispered Denham, his eyes filling with tears. ‘Wonderful to see you, son.’ He tried to get up on his feet, holding his hand out to Tom for support, but it wasn’t Tom who helped him. ‘Who are you? Where did my son go?’

  A
man with a stethoscope around his neck was standing in the cell. The coat might have been white once but was covered in stains.

  ‘Did they find their dossier?’ Denham said vaguely, feeling the room begin to turn.

  The man raised a finger to his lips. ‘No speaking allowed with prisoners,’ he said, and began opening a black medic’s bag.

  ‘No, oh no,’ Denham whispered, recoiling into the corner and beginning to weep. He had a sick dread that the man was reaching for a small saw to amputate his fingers, but instead he took out a bottle of iodine and some cotton swabs and began wiping the worst wounds above and below Denham’s eye, around his lip and on his gashed cheek. Then he tapped a nickel syringe, injected a local anaesthetic, which felt cold, like meltwater, and stitched the wounds. When he was finished he helped Denham take off his bloodied shirt and soiled trousers, and gently touched each rib to see which were broken. Chest and arms were black and blue, yellow and purple, silver and grey. He was nacre that had yielded no pearl.

  The pain in his left hand was acute, so the doctor rubbed it with a cool ointment and wrapped it up in a tight clean bandage.

  ‘Nothing to be done about the cracked ribs. Time will heal them,’ he said, his face without expression, and left the cell, taking the bloodied clothes with him.

  Denham lay down and pulled the blanket over him. His teeth no longer fitted together when he closed his jaw, and every limb throbbed. In places the pain was dull and constant; in others it was sharp and intolerable only when he moved, but everywhere there was pain.

  Chapter Twenty

  Within an hour of leaving Denham’s apartment Eleanor herself entered Gestapo headquarters on the Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse. The man at the reception desk looked up in surprise at the American woman in the broad-brimmed hat, sunglasses, and clothes from a fashion magazine. He scratched his jaw, dialled a number, spoke to someone, and told her she couldn’t see Denham under any circumstances.

  Smoking one cigarette after the other, she’d returned home to the Dodds’ residence to ask the ambassador’s advice, the price of which was Martha’s finding out about her involvement with Denham.