Faith and Beauty (35 page)

Clara looked down the battlements to the field below, where the hawk was swooping again, its pewter plumage gilded in the sun. It rose high, then dropped like an arrow onto its prey.

‘But . . . you said it would
annoy
him if I had the part?’

‘I certainly hope so.’

‘Why? What was he saying, when you overheard him?’

‘Just enquiring about the rumours.’

‘What rumours?’

A moment of pity softened Leni’s sardonic features. As if explaining to a child, she said, ‘That you were in some way non-Aryan.’

Clara was frozen with shock. It explained everything. Magda’s remark.
Someone has been saying some very unkind things about you.

‘I wouldn’t worry too much. There’s nothing new about it. They’re always discovering that someone might have Jewish roots. Goebbels set up that rumour about me, only he reckoned without my blessed Führer. He made his photographer, Hoffmann, take a photoshoot of Goebbels and me walking together in my garden to scotch the rumours.’ Leni’s face brightened at the memory. ‘Anyway, the fact is I can’t stand Himmler or his wretched Ahnenerbe, so choosing you was ideal. It’s mischievous of me really, but I thought what a laugh it would be to cast Clara Vine as the symbol of Germany. Himmler couldn’t object because the Führer has given me absolutely free rein, and besides . . .’

‘Besides what?’

‘They have nothing on you, do they? They must have gone over your background with a fine toothcomb. If there was a drop of Jewish blood in you it would have leaked out by now.’

Tension was holding Clara’s limbs together like steel cords, tighter than the most expert masseur could relax.

‘When you overheard him discussing me, who was he talking to?’

‘It was at Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse. I try to keep away from that place, but I was called in a while ago so that Himmler could discuss this film with me. We were in Heydrich’s office and Himmler and Heydrich were talking together and there was someone else there – that Obersturmbannführer, Conrad Adler.’

‘Adler?’

‘D’you know him? Frightfully good-looking, but a bit of a mystery. I can’t get on with him, to tell the truth, though they say he’s a loyal member of the Party and he’s worked for the Foreign Ministry for years.’

‘He’s at the Propaganda Ministry now.’

‘With Goebbels? No. Adler’s been seconded to Heydrich. That’s why he was there. He’s working on some special project. I’ve got no idea what it is, but it’s terrifically hush-hush. I shouldn’t even have mentioned it.’

Two hours later they had loaded up the trucks and Leni’s Mercedes was making its way down the cobbled road out of Wewelsburg. The effort of trying to appear normal as she processed Leni’s revelation was almost beyond Clara. Conrad Adler, the man who had approached her, who had asked such tender questions about her childhood, had taken her riding and propositioned her, was an acolyte of the head of the SD security service. Reinhard Heydrich, with his long equine face and hair shaved a savage three inches above his ears, was a sadist, pure and simple. Clara racked her brain to recall what Adler had specifically told her about his secondment and realized that, in fact, she had simply assumed he was working for Goebbels.
I’m on loan. Like a painting in a museum.
But if Adler was working for Heydrich, what was his interest in her?

The drive back would be long, but Leni was in high good humour. She leant her arm out of the window, trailing a thin scarf of cigarette smoke in her wake.

‘I’ve just had a message from the Führer. He’s told me that Albert Speer is to set aside thirty thousand square yards in the new capital for the Riefenstahl Studios. All funded by the state! He’s going to announce it next week. In fact . . .’

She glanced across, beaming.

‘He’s invited me to a film evening at the Chancellery. I have to go, so you might as well come with me. I’ll put your name on the guest list. It’s next week. Brace yourself though. Goebbels may well be there, along with that ghastly wife of his. But the event will be useful. While we’re there I can think about how to shoot the Führer.’

Clara gave a start and Leni looked at her curiously.

‘On film, of course.’

Chapter Twenty-eight

Berlin was alive with rumours. The British Prime Minister had resigned. The Poles were about to attack. An illegal radio network called the Freedom Station had emerged, moving its transmitter around Berlin to avoid detection. An atmosphere of nervous anticipation stalked the city like a living thing. The proximity of war made every goodbye more intimate, every kiss more intense, every friendship more important. At tram stops, in the bread queues and amid the momentary knots of customers that coalesced round coffee stalls, conversation flowed between strangers. Rumours rose and faded like echoes of sound through static. Yet while the talk was of foreboding, there was also excitement in the air. It eddied down the quiet residential streets of Schöneberg, rippled through the smart boulevards of Wilmersdorf and Charlottenburg, swirled round the dank tenements of Moabit and Wedding and Prenzlauer Berg. People felt part of something, even if it was not something they desired.

At times over the preceding days Clara had felt as though Thursday would never come, but at last it dawned, heavy, the sky stippled with cloud. She had invented an appointment at the Charité hospital to escape her filming commitments for a few hours and even thrown in the name of her former neighbour, Doktor Engel, for good measure. By ten to one she was standing on Budapester Strasse outside the outlandish, spectacular Elephant Gate of Berlin Zoo. The gate, with its green turrets, red and gold arch and kneeling sandstone elephants, could not be more of a contrast to the sombre street architecture around it. It stood freakishly proud, a splash of oriental colour that jarred against the orderly greys and browns. It suggested that merely by entering, citizens could escape the gloom of Berlin for a more joyful, exotic world.

Clara felt it too; the zoo was special to her. It was the place that Leo had first taken her to teach her the art of espionage; when she was a nervous ingénue and he a brusque passport control officer. And anxious, as he later confided, to be inducting a naïve young actress into a peril she could barely comprehend. Since then she had visited numerous times with Erich, who would always head for the Grosses Raubtierhaus, eager to see the elegantly pacing lions and tigers, to marvel at the sleek jaguars and panthers. That was until he announced that he couldn’t bear to see such magnificent animals caged and would never go again.

She bought a ticket and made her way along the meticulously planted beds of begonias and roses towards the animal enclosures. The zoo was a haven of peace in the city’s heart and now, in early summer, it was at its most beautiful. The traffic fumes were replaced by a sweet mingled aroma of straw and dung. Two boys in lederhosen flashed past on scooters, threatening to scrape the shins of anyone foolish enough to get too close. A dog in a little overcoat waddled along importantly. A pair of excitable matrons were being hoisted onto an elephant idly flicking his trunk as he waited to give his hourly ride. Clara threaded through the crowds, wondering what would happen to these animals if bombing came. Were shelters being built for them too?

He will find you.

Clara hadn’t questioned Steffi’s suggestion at the time, but now it seemed absurdly ambitious. Even on a weekday lunchtime, the zoo was busy, and the visitor numbers were further swelled by the arrival of a gargantuan sea lion called Roland, whose appearance on the Ufa Tonwoche newsreel had granted him celebrity status. How could she begin to find a complete stranger here, especially if he was purposefully anonymous? Could she be sure he would recognize her?

Her first thought was to head for one of the more distant animal houses. Surely the elephant house on the furthest edges, or the elegant ostrich enclosure, styled like an Egyptian temple, would be better suited to an assignation. And yet, if he had been seeking privacy, why had the man she was to meet chosen such a public place? Was it, perhaps, precisely because of the crowds? After a moment’s deliberation she gravitated towards the milling throng that had gathered to watch the sea lion being fed.

It was a spectacle of high entertainment. Every time the keeper, armed with a bucket of sprats, dangled a tiny, silvery flicker above the water, the sleek grey mass would rise abruptly, water sheeting from his sides, to a volley of delighted shrieks. The sea lion would then heave his three-ton bulk onto a rock and open his mouth. Predictably he had already been nicknamed Goering.

As Clara focused on the feeding ritual, wondering what to do, a flicker of movement wrenched her eyes upward. A man leaning with his elbows on the far side of the rail, dressed in wide-legged trousers and a nondescript checked jacket, had glanced in her direction and adjusted his hat. He had a sharp-edged face, but the trilby’s deep brim shaded his eyes as he stared, apparently absorbed, into the enclosure below.

At the back of her mind a memory stirred. There was something about that half-shaded profile she had seen before, but where? The image remained frustratingly unknown, floating free, without context, evoking only an uncomfortable frisson of unease.

Then she looked again and recognition electrified her.

When she was a child she had adored puzzle books. Each Christmas her parents would give her a story album that was interspersed with games, crosswords and picture puzzles. As she grew, she progressed to entire books of them and one of her favourites was called Spot The Difference. It featured two scenes with minute changes that forced the eye to focus on fine detail. A Sunny Day, On The Beach, At The Fair. Two versions of Trafalgar Square but in one a man was carrying an umbrella and in the other he was empty handed. Two identical jungles with a missing monkey in the second. You knew if you looked closely, really closely, you would uncover aspects that had not at first revealed themselves. Comparing the man at the railing over and over with the image in her mind, she realized, with a jolt of horror, what was bothering her. That lean face, the eyes which deliberately avoided hers. It was the man she had found standing in the lobby of her apartment block in Winterfeldtstrasse. The man who, she was convinced, was not sheltering from the rain.

Hovering at the back of the crowd, she fought the urge to walk away as fast as possible. Was this the man she was supposed to meet? If so, either the Gestapo had somehow discovered their plans, and replaced Steffi’s accomplice with their own person, or the figure before her was genuine, and her assumption about him was wrong.

Even as she hesitated the man threw his cigarette stub down on the ground and peeled languidly away, as if motivated by nothing more than a casual desire for lunch. As he moved slowly towards the gate, Clara made up her mind to follow him.

Immediately outside, he made for a dark green bicycle leant against the railings, mounted it, and proceeded slowly eastwards, along Budapester Strasse and across the Landwehrkanal, turning right towards Lützowplatz. Almost immediately he turned right again into Keithstrasse. Although the bicycle was proceeding slowly, Clara was forced to walk as fast as she could to keep up and by the time he stopped outside a tall, brick-faced residential block, she was gasping for breath.

She lingered in a porch on the opposite side of the road, assessing the situation. The building was the type of multi-use block that could be found all over Berlin. An office on the ground floor, apartments above. A floating population that afforded a certain amount of privacy from prying eyes, and where unfamiliar visitors would raise no eyebrows. The man dismounted and disappeared inside.

Clara glanced around her. The street was empty and there were no parked cars close by. A burst of laughter spattered out of an upper window, and a radio buzzed further off. Eventually, she knocked twice, preparing to ask for Herr Vogel if any other face answered the door. But it was the same man.

‘You took your time. I was beginning to give up on you.’

He was young, now she saw him close up, and spoke with a rough accent, but his demeanour was shrewd and intelligent.

‘It’s hard following a cyclist.’

‘It’s safer than buses or trams. No one looking you up and down. You’d better come in.’

He led her down a dim, tiled corridor through a door to a back room containing only a couple of cheap wooden chairs and a table.

Clara looked around her.

‘You know what I’m here for?’ she asked.

‘A Kennkarte and an Ariernachweis.’

‘My documents fell into the Seine in Paris.’

He gave a dry laugh. ‘Use that as an excuse and it might get you points for originality.’

‘It’s true, as it happens.’

‘It’s of no concern to me, Fräulein, where you lost them. I’m here to replace them. I’ve got the cards ready. All I need are photographs of you.’

She fished in her bag for the contact sheet shots that had been taken for the publicity for
Love Strictly Forbidden
. He surveyed them critically.

‘Ideally we’d want one with no smile.’

‘It’s the best I can do.’

‘They’re not too bad.’

She recalled Leni’s words.
Your face has a useful quality. It’s a blank canvas. It’s like I can project anything I want
.

The young man switched on the desk lamp and bent over a piece of card. An Ariernachweis, on which Clara’s details had already been filled in. He took the photograph and placed it in the corner of the card then fixed it to the pass with brass eyelets.

‘It took ages to get these looking right. Eventually I found a cobbler who supplied me with the tool he uses to fix eyelets for bootlaces. It was perfect.’

He reached for a fine brush and a jar of purple dye and began painting on a separate piece of card.

‘There are twelve long and twenty-four short feathers on the German imperial eagle, did you know? The hardest thing is to get the correct colour and shape.’

He continued working intently, his movements as tender and delicate as if he were creating a Renaissance Madonna and Child, rather than an eagle and swastika. His face was closed, intent, inscrutable in the dim light. When he had copied the eagle he took a piece of newspaper, dampened it with spittle and pressed it down on the newly painted symbol, creating a mirror image on the newspaper. He then took the paper and pressed it onto the photograph of Clara.