Flight From Berlin: A Novel Read online

  ‘Best inform the Brits tomorrow,’ Dodd told her in his dry voice. He was brushing his tailcoat, as if it were an act of extreme penance, in preparation for another diplomatic function. ‘They’ll make enquiries, although if your friend’s lost in that system’—he glanced up at her, looking like a long-suffering horse—‘information could be hard to come by.’

  ‘Couldn’t you ask Sir Eric Phipps to do something?’

  ‘You could ask him yourself if you’re coming with us to the Chancellery reception tomorrow night, although, my dear, you’re perfectly excused from another night of all those nodding penguins talking bunk . . .’

  The next morning, hoping she might encounter Roland Liebermann and find out if there had been any repercussions since her visit with Denham yesterday, Eleanor headed to the Reich Sports Field, where Hannah was competing in the fencing finals.

  A radiant sky shone over the Dietrich Eckart stage, an open-air amphitheatre built into a wooded hill near the stadium. The occasional cloud sailed overhead like an airship, casting a lazy shadow onto the piste. Tall pines around the rim of the arena creaked in the tense hush. All eyes were focused on the stage where the bouts were in progress.

  The Hungarian champion was in mid-duel with an Austrian girl.

  Eleanor took a seat in the centre near the aisle steps and scanned the stage around the piste for Hannah, using a pair of opera glasses she’d borrowed from Mrs Dodd. She spotted the girl right away, seated apart from everyone else, accompanied by the same potbellied little coach, who was flapping about, giving her instructions. She seemed not to be listening. In fact she appeared deathly pale, gazing straight ahead, seeming not to see anything.

  Eleanor began searching the crowd for Roland but saw no sign of the dark, lovely boy with the mutilated face. She wondered where he could be and surprised herself by imagining that he was a beautiful kisser. It was only when she was peering along the almost empty row at the very back that she saw not Roland but Jakob Liebermann sitting alone, a Panama hat half shading his face, and for the second time since yesterday evening she had a strong presentiment that something was very wrong.

  She left her seat and ran up the steps to speak to him.

  When she reached him he stared at her with blank eyes. The world seemed dark before him.

  ‘Fräulein Eleanor,’ he said at length, in his plangent voice. She took his hand.

  ‘Is something the matter?’

  He looked frail, not the robust patriarch she’d met only yesterday.

  ‘Last night . . . ,’ he began, but was plunged into a struggle to compose himself. When, after a few moments, he recovered, his voice was very calm. ‘There was a hammering on our door. We thought they were going to break it down. It was that inspector, Haeckel, with two Gestapo men, shouting something about how many lessons did they have to give us before we behaved . . . We were all reading in the drawing room, behaving very nicely. Roland lost his temper, but I could see that he was also terrified. He began shouting at them to leave us alone. Ilse was begging him to stop, and became quite hysterical. They tried to put handcuffs on him; there was a scuffle and he got away. One of the men drew a pistol . . . in our drawing room. Hannah and Ilse screamed. They shot Roland twice as he ran down the front steps of the house.’

  ‘Oh dear God,’ Eleanor cried.

  ‘He was hit . . .’ Herr Liebermann motioned to the back of his shoulder and back left-side ribs. ‘He died in my arms a few minutes later.’

  Eleanor was too shocked to speak. They sat still, hearing the tick-tack-tick of the duel being waged on the piste down below. The old man seemed stoic, beyond grief, as if he were ready to leave this world, too.

  Applause rippled up from the amphitheatre to acknowledge the victory of the Austrian over the Hungarian.

  She managed to say, ‘And you can’t go to the regular police . . . ?’

  ‘There’s nothing to be done except to bury him.’

  ‘We can fight for him,’ she said, drawing some quick looks from the people in front.

  Herr Liebermann dropped his eyes to the large wrinkled hands splayed on his knees. He had told her yesterday something about acceptance being the route to wholeness, and she imagined he was seeking solace in this dictum even now.

  ‘Naked I came into the world,’ he murmured, ‘naked I shall leave it . . .’

  ‘No,’ she said, putting her arm around his shoulders.

  ‘ . . . the Lord gives and the Lord takes away . . .’

  ‘Not even Job would have stood for this.’

  ‘ . . . Blessed is the name of the Lord.’

  The piste was being prepared for the next bout, and Eleanor remembered that Hannah was sitting down there.

  ‘Hannah came here to compete today?’ she said, amazed. ‘After what’s happened?’

  ‘That’s why I’m here. I’m worried about her and want to watch over her. We thought she’d stay in her room, but she came down this morning very pale and said she was going to fight today. The chance of beating some Austrian Nazi seems to have sealed her decision. The Austrian girl who won the last bout, in fact.’

  Eleanor watched in disbelief as the judges returned to their seats and the loudspeakers announced, ‘Hannah Liebermann, Deutschland; Kerstin Brückner, Österreich.’

  ‘This is it. The final,’ Herr Liebermann said, still staring at his hands.

  A tremendous cheer went up as the two opponents stepped onto the piste.

  The wire mask was pulled down before Eleanor could see the expression on Hannah’s face, but she got a good look at the Austrian, a mouse-haired girl with a pointed nose. Pinched and mean, thought Eleanor. I hope you saw the fury in your opponent’s eyes. The two women acknowledged each other with their foils and the bout commenced.

  Hannah lunged into the attack, to a surprised ‘ooh’ from the audience, and from there on gave the Austrian no respite. She used none of the cautious probing and testing Eleanor had seen earlier that week, in which she had even permitted herself to lose the first round in order to learn her opponent’s strategy. Now, she attacked without remorse. Her footwork was light, like a ballerina’s, making the Austrian’s movements appear pigeonlike and dull. Hannah won the first bout.

  The Austrian staged a brief rally in the second bout, pushing Hannah back over the centre line, but again Hannah gave no quarter; she was fighting as though to kill. Towards the end of the three minutes her opponent’s chances were doomed.

  In the final bout, Hannah’s moves lost all their stylised elegance. They became impassioned with violence, a chaotic, overwhelming onslaught. The Austrian was helpless in a hail of steel, having scarcely landed a single hit, and the crowd erupted, rising to their feet to applaud for Hannah before the bout had even finished.

  She’d won the final.

  A first warning bell was ringing in Eleanor’s mind: Hannah had been forbidden to win the gold. Now a second warning rang. The Austrian, who had removed her mask to reveal her tight, stunned little face, had proffered her hand for Hannah to shake, but Hannah ignored it. She also ignored the applause, strode away from the piste, and pulled off the mask, giving her head a shake so that her chestnut hair fell in silky coils around her shoulders.

  As she left, a man in a cream suit sitting behind the judges’ table sprang up and followed her. Eleanor recognised him. It was Greiser.

  ‘What happens now?’ she asked Herr Liebermann.

  ‘There will be a podium ceremony in the stadium,’ he said. Their eyes met. She could tell the same thought had just occurred to him, too.

  Not a seat was to be had in the stadium. Every row was rammed with spectators, so Eleanor led Herr Liebermann up the stairs to the press box, where they arrived just as the women’s fencing podium ceremony was about to begin. The old man didn’t seem to want to hurry, as if nothing was in his power to shape or change anymore.

  She introduced him to Gallico.

  ‘Congratulations, sir,’ he said, giving the old gentleman’s hand a hearty shake.
‘You must feel very proud.’

  The poor man, thought Eleanor, watching him take Paul’s hand politely. That must be the worst possible thing he could hear today.

  ‘Damned movie crew,’ Gallico said to her. ‘I was standing by the track eating my hot dog when I get handed this.’ He showed her a pink slip. ‘It says, “Remove yourself from where you are—Riefenstahl.” Listen,’ he continued in a low voice, ‘your rosebush story. John Walsh and I are going to confront Brundage.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Press conference at the Kaiserhof Hotel tomorrow morning.’

  In the arena the three women fencers were being awarded their medals. In third place was the Hungarian, who beamed and waved after accepting her bronze. In second place the Austrian received the silver, smiling with her thin lips, if not with her eyes.

  ‘ . . . und auf dem ersten Platz: Hannah Liebermann, Deutschland!’

  The crowd applauded with a great cheer. Hannah bowed her head to receive the gold medal around her neck and a wreath of oak leaves that was placed upon her head. Still she did not smile. Watching through the opera glasses, Eleanor saw the wild look in her eyes.

  They took their places on the podium, with Hannah on the highest step.

  The first trudging note of ‘Deutschland über Alles’ sounded, a chord from an accordion, and the entire stadium heaved to its feet and sang, half a beat behind the band, right arms raised. The sound slurred through a great forest of Hitler salutes.

  Slowly a giant swastika rose above the scoreboard on the western rim of the stadium and fluttered in the breeze.

  And Hannah Liebermann’s right arm stayed firmly at her side.

  Even over the singing Eleanor sensed the crowd registering her defiance. The prickling hairs on her neck told her.

  ‘Are you seeing what I’m seeing?’ said Gallico at Eleanor’s side.

  ‘A courageous woman with nothing to lose,’ said Eleanor. ‘Shame A-dolf’s not with us today.’ She cast a look at Herr Liebermann and thought she saw a grim pride in his eyes.

  The anthem finished and the crowd sat.

  ‘I’m going down there before they do God-knows-what to her,’ said Eleanor. But just as she said this Hannah jumped from the podium before anyone could reach her and darted to an exit near the foot of the western gate.

  Eleanor stared after her for a second. And then she realised. ‘The radio car,’ she said, grabbing her handbag and running from the box.

  She sprinted into the gallery surrounding the upper tier, round the curve of the stadium towards the western gate, and flew down the steps. Just outside, near a solitary oak on the Olympic plaza, she spotted Hannah surrounded by a large crowd accompanying her in the direction of the Deutscher Rundfunk mobile radio car. Her crown of oak leaves and her all-white fencing garb added to the strangeness of the scene, making her seem like a sacrificial virgin, or a divine being walking among believers. How many in the crowd knew of her astonishing defiance a moment ago wasn’t clear, but they seemed excited by the famous face moving among them.

  Just then, running out of the western gate, face shining with sweat, came Greiser, frantic, looking left and right, but in his haste he did not at first notice Hannah surrounded by the crowd. It was a few seconds later, as she was climbing the short ladder into the radio car, that he spotted her and pelted towards her, shouting and waving his hand.

  He reached the edge of the throng and shouldered his way in, just as Hannah entered the car and the door closed behind her.

  ‘Öffnen Sie die Tür!’ he yelled over people’s heads. ‘Öffnen Sie die Tür!’

  Eleanor went after him, knowing she had to think of something drastic, and fast. She pushed into the crowd and managed to get almost right behind Greiser, so close she could see the golden hairs on the back of his neck, smell his cologne. Then she filled her lungs with air.

  And screamed.

  The most toe-curling scream she could muster.

  The crowd became still in an instant. All eyes turned towards her, Greiser’s included. She pointed, quivering and trembling, at the startled Greiser. ‘That man,’ she shrieked, ‘just stuck his hand up my . . .’ She mimed the action in a manner so graphic that it obviated any need for translation.

  A mixture of shock and disgust spread over the faces of the men and women surrounding her and Greiser, turning to hostility as they took a good look at him. And then he recognised her.

  ‘You,’ he said just as several men’s hands grabbed his jacket and someone yelled, ‘Polizei.’ She couldn’t understand what was shouted in the rumpus that followed but concentrated on projecting a look of outraged modesty and defiled maidenhood. She’d created complete pandemonium. Everyone was shouting, including Greiser, but just when it seemed as though his purple-faced protestations were being heard by the men holding his arms, the door of the radio car swung open and a technician appeared at the top of the steps, his eyes round with embarrassment and dread.

  They’ve cut the transmission, Eleanor thought. Wonder whether she got a full minute.

  As she later learned, Hannah got fourteen seconds of live airtime before the cable was pulled. But fourteen seconds is a long time on the radio.

  Greiser was screaming at the technician, jabbing a finger at him, and Eleanor guessed he was ordering Hannah’s confinement in the radio car until the police arrived.

  Herr Liebermann was sitting exactly where she had left him, his cheeks ashen. As she explained what had happened at the radio car he sat rigid, a rolling tear the only motion on his face.

  ‘She’s done an amazing thing, sir. She has your courage. They’ve arrested her now.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I imagine they have.’ He picked up his hat and rose.

  Out of the corner of her eye Eleanor saw a group of UP boys talking across each other. ‘Hold on a second. She said what?’ One of them was gesticulating with wild movements.

  ‘I’ll walk with you to your car.’

  ‘No need,’ Herr Liebermann said.

  Two of the UP reporters who understood German had heard Hannah’s live broadcast on the pressroom radio and were telling their colleagues and a dozen or so other correspondents. Within seconds the news was threatening to spill over the rail into the stadium crowd.

  Gallico appeared next to her, his straw boater askew, just as Eleanor was walking Herr Liebermann to the door. ‘Did you hear what’s happened?’ he said, a squeak of astonishment in his voice. ‘Jesus knows how many listeners just heard that. Ten million? Thirty million?’ With a loud whoop he seized Eleanor’s hands and danced her around in a little jig in full view of the stadium until he caught the stricken look on the old man’s face. ‘Gee, sir, I’m sorry.’

  Eleanor asked, ‘What did she say?’

  But before Gallico answered she was distracted by Herr Liebermann tapping her arm. ‘We may not meet again, Fräulein Eleanor . . .’

  The reporters in the box had become aware of the old man’s presence—‘Does he speak English?’—because one of them was now at his side, opening a notebook.

  ‘Mr Liebermann, sir? Norman Ebbutt of the London Times. Have you heard what’s just occurred? Your daughter used her live broadcast to . . .’

  The old man gaped at him without comprehension, then turned again to Eleanor, flustered now. ‘I was intending that you and Herr Denham—’

  Several reporters had now gathered around them and were speaking at once, eyes and mouths animated and manic.

  She was aware of Herr Liebermann’s face close to hers, and suddenly he put his arm around her and clutched her in a brief, awkward embrace, his beard grazing her neck. For a second she did not know whom she was fending off.

  She held out her hands in a ‘stop’ sign to make the reporters back away.

  ‘Please . . . ,’ Herr Liebermann said, ‘keep it safe.’

  ‘What?’

  The back of his Panama hat was retreating towards the door, and two reporters were following him. In three long strides she was among them an
d slammed the door shut after Jakob Liebermann had gone through. Leaning her back against it she barred the way to the reporters.

  ‘Ma’am—’

  ‘Leave him the hell alone.’

  Denham drifted into and out of consciousness, despite the noise. The radio playing down the corridor in the guards’ room was kept loud enough to ensure that no one got any rest.

  Something the patch-up doctor gave him had made him drowsy.

  ‘Hannah Liebermann . . . winner of the gold medal for Germany in today’s women’s fencing . . . just arrived in the radio car . . .’

  Someone was talking about Hannah Liebermann. Too loudly. He tried to chase the dream away, but then she herself was talking, also too loudly.

  ‘ . . . began when I was expelled from my home fencing club three years ago and fled to California . . .’

  He swam away from it, and broke through the surface for a moment.

  ‘—Fraülein Liebermann, your gold medal . . .’

  ‘ . . . as if forcing me to compete wasn’t enough, the Gestapo murdered my brother last night in our own home . . .’

  Denham sat bolt upright, as though a wire had just pulled him up by his spine.

  ‘ . . . so that the Führer could deceive the world by allowing a single Jew to compete . . .’

  In the background of the radio car a man’s voice was yelling something inaudible.

  ‘ . . . robbing my father as the price for letting my family escape torment . . .’

  More commotion, and then Hannah’s voice rose to a strained shout as though someone was pulling her away.

  ‘ . . . the Führer is evil. He will bring sorrow to every hearth in Germ—’

  The click was followed by a loud buzz as the transmission was cut. A few seconds later the station was back on air playing military band music.

  With those few words Denham forgot all about his pain and fear. He even forgot his thirst.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  The hall was warm from the heat of the day and noisy with chatter echoing off marble. Somewhere behind the din a choir of Jungvolk boys were singing German folk songs in their clean treble voices. Ambassador Dodd, Eleanor, and Martha and her mother were announced by a black-liveried major-domo holding a court sword.