The Pursuit of Pearls (28 page)

T
he Kaiserhof Hotel was a dingy building the color of bad teeth. It stood out in the Wilhelmstrasse because all the other buildings in the government area had undergone makeovers of impressive expense. The new Reich Chancellery, directly across the street, had been finally completed that January, a quarter of a mile of yellow stucco and gray stone stretching down Voss Strasse, its monumental proportions designed to quash any lingering concessions to the human scale. Goebbels's Propaganda Ministry, originally housed in an old Empire-style palace across the way, had been given a total revamp, with an extension that was architecturally severe and modern, in line with Goebbels's modernist taste. The Kaiserhof, however, Hitler's first home in Berlin, lingered on like a widow in dowdy lace, steadfastly resisting cosmetic enhancement.

Clara had arrived early and installed herself in the bar of the hotel. What the Kaiserhof's proprietors had saved on exterior renovation they put towards securing the best of the city's available food, making it one of the finest places to eat, but today Clara had no interest in food. She had brought her copy of
The Thirty-Nine Steps
to distract herself and sat with it open in front of her, the sour, gritty taste of fear washing round her mouth like grains of ersatz coffee. Occasionally she stole glances across the road to where security police known as Schupos, in their green uniforms and black leather hats, manned the Chancellery gates.

If the opportunity arose, we would not want you, Miss Vine, to be hindered by fears of “unsportsmanlike” behavior.

All day she had questioned herself. Would she ever have the courage to do it? Could she shoot Hitler? Sitting in the garden at Griebnitzsee that afternoon, with her eyes closed and the sun flaring scarlet against her eyelids, she felt so intensely alive. Her limbs tingled with vitality, every fiber of her body wanting to live, even if her lover was missing and her family estranged.

Never before had she come so close to Hitler, yet it would also be the closest she had come to death herself. Shooting Hitler would, almost certainly, mean death, but without him Germany would be free. There would be no fighting, and thousands of young men would no longer be required to go to war. Erich would be safe.

Yet all the time, seductive counterarguments whispered sweetly. What if war didn't have to happen? If there could be a way to negotiate? What right did she have to kill another human being? What if the derringer failed to fire? And even when the questions receded, the hideous images remained. What special tortures would be reserved for the assassin of the Führer?

When she looked back on her life, she could see that so much of what she had done had been impulsive, actions taken on the spur of the moment. Her decision to become an actress had been motivated by the disapproval of her parents. She'd moved to Berlin to escape an unwanted fiancé. She began spying at the request of Leo Quinn. She had put herself at the service of others—people whose motives she strongly believed in—but never at her own instigation. This time it was different. This audacious, deadly plan was hers alone. Its execution owed nothing to anyone except herself. It required her to summon every ounce of moral courage and to quash every doubt. She remembered what a Luftwaffe officer had once told her—that being a truly successful pilot meant losing the last shred of fear. Then she thought of all the people she had known in her six years in Berlin, the brave men and women who had tried to resist the Nazis. They had all made their own choices, but this decision, so hard, was hers alone.

Eventually, the murmuring arguments died down and Clara felt the fear inside her harden into resolve.

In the afternoon she had returned to Winterfeldtstrasse to go through the belongings in her old apartment. Rudi, the warden, who carried out his duties from a chair in the corner of the hall, seemed almost pleased to see her. Despite his advanced age and crooked spine, he sprang up to block her path. He had always been a staunch Nazi, and it surprised Clara that it had taken him so many years to cultivate the little postage stamp mustache that he now sported proudly in emulation of his hero.

“Heil Hitler, Fräulein Vine! Are you back for good?”

It was almost as though he'd been missing her, though the old fraud had never shown an iota of fond feeling in his life. More likely, he was calculating how the landlord might raise the rent if she chose to end her lease.

“Not sure yet, Rudi. How's everything?”

“Busy. We're converting the cellar into a shelter. We have directives from the Air Protection League.”

“Of course.”

She tried to scurry away up the stairs, but Rudi was well practiced in forestalling escapes. Edging forward, he barricaded her way as effectively as a squad of riot police. His breath smelled of the kind of alcohol not found in high-end Berlin clubs.

“A gentleman was calling for you yesterday.”

“What kind of gentleman?”

“Ah, that's not for me to say, Fräulein. I'm a simple man. I can't judge. Perhaps it was a fan.”

“I doubt it.”

It was almost certainly a collector. Barely an hour went by some days without a charity official knocking on the door and rattling a tin, demanding funds for the Hitler Youth or the BDM. For the orphans or the poor or the Luftwaffe or the rebuilding of Berlin.

Rudi gave a smile of greasy complicity. “I told him I had no idea where you were. That was right, wasn't it?”

“Yes. Thank you, Rudi.”

“I know you actresses need protection. That's what I'm here for.”

Sidestepping him, she fled up the stairs and shut the apartment door securely behind her. Then she made a rapid inventory. If she was arrested she needed to ensure that there was no trace of Erich. No books with his name in them, no photographs or school reports, none of the birthday cards he had given her. God forbid that his name should be linked with hers. She dreaded the thought of the Gestapo raiding the tenement in Neukölln, shaking the bewildered old Frau Schmidt out of her bed and hustling Erich to some frightening basement, where he would be questioned about the woman he had known since he was a child until his tired mind made a mistake and he somehow incriminated himself, too.

She wandered round the apartment, touching her possessions. She pulled the fur coat that her mother had left her out of the wardrobe and buried her face in it, inhaling the ghost of violets that she once wore. The fur was chill in her hands, but when she pulled the coat on, its warmth enveloped her. Finally, she picked up a book of Latin verse Leo had given her and kissed it, the way Italians might kiss a prayer book, the way she wanted to kiss him. She thought of that sensation she'd had in the Paris hotel room and tried to bring it back, but she felt nothing.

TOWARDS EVENING, THE ADRENALINE
began to exhaust her. She had dressed methodically, assessing every item with careful scrutiny. Around the top of her thigh she fastened the calfskin holder with the stocking gun inside. It fitted snugly against her leg, and she marched up and down the room to ensure it did not slip as she walked. When she donned the Madame Grès dress, it was exactly as she had guessed, the flowing Grecian folds giving no hint of the metallic bulge beneath. The dress also went perfectly with her new Schiaparelli jacket. She brushed her hair until it gleamed and fastened a diamanté clip in it, rejecting her Elizabeth Arden Velvet Red in favor of a lipstick that was almost nude. The Führer had been known to confront lipstick-wearing women and subject them to a rant on how cosmetics were made of human waste and poisoned the health of German womanhood.

Her leather jewelry box was battered now, its oval mirror spotted and cloudy, like a blurred portal into the past. She touched the silver locket her mother had given to her when she was sixteen, with pictures of them both inside, but after a moment's reflection, she picked a diamond brooch in the shape of a swastika. It came from Jaeger's jewelers off Unter den Linden and had been given to her six years previously by Joseph Goebbels himself. She remembered him pinning it to her dress at a fashion show in full view of the press—a deliberate act to mark her out and compromise her in everyone's eyes. Back then Goebbels had trusted her as his go-between—a secret weapon in the ongoing war with his wife—but now, who knew what he thought?

Her hand hovered over her perfume bottles until she chose one called Scent of Secrets. It was sweet and floral—jasmine, Turkish rose, and violet iris, with a darker heart of musk, woodsmoke, and leather. The scent reminded her of her childhood garden in England and her mother's favorite rose, the amnesia rose, with its unusual blooms, which looked almost gray at first, before shading into lilac. She inhaled the scent deeply, as if for strength. If the evening was to end as she feared, she wanted the memory of her mother to accompany her.

THE FÜHRER'S FILM EVENING
at the Reich Chancellery was the hottest ticket in town. It was the invitation everyone wanted and no one expected to enjoy. Each night when he was in Berlin, Hitler would invite a select group of high-ranking Nazis and actors for a private screening in the Chancellery Music Room. The advantage was that visitors got to see films denied to ordinary Germans. Goebbels's latest blacklist of sixty American actors did not extend to the Führer's private parties, and all the latest Hollywood releases—Tarzan movies
, Tip-Off Girls, The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, Captains Courageous
with Spencer Tracy—were firm favorites. Walt Disney was held in special esteem, thanks to his public reception of Leni Riefenstahl the previous year, when other Hollywood producers had pointedly turned her down. The disadvantages of the evening were self-evident. Everyone was on their best behavior, no one could smoke, and it was impossible to relax. Relaxation, like coffee, eggs, and chocolate, was now a luxury that not even VIPs could afford.

The reception hall of the Reich Chancellery was done out in contrasting colored marble like an ugly cathedral. The walls were black slabs splintered with quartz, interset with veined, bloody red Saalburger stone, and there was yet more marble underfoot. As she followed an SS orderly dressed in the short white jacket that all Hitler's domestic staff wore, Clara was overwhelmingly conscious of the gun against her thigh. She had guessed that no one on Hitler's guest list would be subjected to the indignity of a body search, yet she was intensely aware that she must not slip on the highly polished surface and send the gun skittering beneath her. The floor was as treacherous as a skating rink, deliberately waxed to a dazzling shine. It was a private joke for Hitler, who refused all requests to lay a carpet because diplomats needed practice moving on a slippery surface.

At the far end of the hall, a door was flanked by two of the Leibstandarte, Hitler's personal bodyguards. Selected for their above average height and unquestioned fidelity to the Führer, they formed an invincible barricade against his enemies, but at Clara's approach they moved simultaneously sideways, opening the doors as though to Aladdin's cave to reveal a dazzle of sound and light.

The party was already in full swing and studded with VIPs, most of them stars of stage and screen. Leni Riefenstahl and Heinz Rühmann were talking to Gustaf Gründgens, another favorite actor of the regime. The actress Jenny Jugo, in magnolia satin, was air-kissing Zarah Leander. The good-looking celebrities were a festive sprinkling to leaven the dark mass of politicians. Rudolf Hess and his wife. The Goebbelses and the Speers. Youth Leader Baldur von Schirach and Reich Labor Minister Robert Ley. Everyone was there. The entire upper echelon of the Third Reich was assembled to watch Mickey Mouse.

To Clara's relief, Hitler had not arrived. She was desperate not to meet him. She had heard of the effect he had;
Führer Kontakt
it was called, an intense magnetic hold that made the person with him believe, just for that moment, that he or she was the only one in the room. A hypnotic force that dazzled, empowered, and enslaved.

Instead, one of the first faces she saw was Conrad Adler. He was standing in the corner nearest the door, inclining his head close to Henriette von Schirach, the youth leader's pretty blond wife. Her face was turned adoringly up towards him, and she was smiling merrily. Although he barely turned his head, Clara knew Adler had seen her, and she registered a spark of alarm in his eyes. She sensed that he was about to break off and approach her until something deterred him, and, turning, she saw Joseph Goebbels looming behind.

“Fräulein Vine. What a surprise. And may I say what a charming choice of brooch. For a charming woman.”

He reached out to brush the spot where it was pinned, letting his fingers trail her breast, and then, for the first time in their acquaintance, he moved to kiss her. As his hand traveled round her waist and downwards, Clara's flesh turned to ice. If he strayed any further, he could not miss the stocking gun attached to her left thigh. Her entire body was rigid with alarm, yet even as she froze, she realized her reaction would arouse no suspicion at all. Goebbels must be well used to women flinching at his touch. Barely suppressed distaste was the natural response to the propaganda minister. How else should any woman react to a man who had persecuted so many and sent thousands to their deaths? Whose bigotry had goaded an entire nation into a spiral of coruscating hatred?

“I've not seen you here before. Remind me who invited you?”

“Leni Riefenstahl,” said Clara, stepping backwards and looking hastily around. “She thought I might enjoy it, so she put my name on the guest list.”

“She's like that. She likes to take liberties with other people's invitations. Still. It's always a pleasure. The last time I was here was with your English friend, Unity Mitford. We watched
Cavalcade
.”

“She mentioned that.” According to Unity, Hitler had declared Noël Coward's film about three generations of an upper-class British family his favorite movie.