Woman in the Shadows (11 page)

“How do you know? Have you looked in there?”

“No! Well, yes. You see, I had noticed that Anna would go to the dormitory in the evening sometimes, when we were supposed to be singing, and one day I followed her there and saw her sitting on the bed, with the wardrobe pulled away from the wall and this little leather case on her knees. Well, it was not a case so much as a little portable desk, a lap desk I think you call it, with a handle at the top, and doors that open out, and little places to keep your pen and things. For writing letters when you travel, you know?”

“Sure. My grandmother had one of those.”

“Anyhow, when Anna saw me she got terribly cross. She said it was bad enough having no privacy, without having nosy brides following her every second of the day. She was so angry I thought she was going to slap me.”

“Did you read the letters?”

Ilse's cheeks blazed with color. “Of course not! What must you think of me? I would never have done that. But after she died I checked to see if the case was still there. I thought she probably kept her jewelry in it too, and you aren't allowed jewelry here. I knew I should have said something about it, but, you see, I felt that would be disloyal to her. When I asked Fräulein Wolff what they did with Anna's things, she said they had sent them on to Johann. Her clothes belong to the Bride School, so there wasn't much. Just a hairbrush and shoes and so on. I should have mentioned the case then, I suppose, but Fräulein Wolff would have been so angry. I do keep thinking about it. Someone's going to find it, sooner or later, and read all of Anna's private thoughts. I wish I could give it to Johann, or her family, but I don't have a clue where they are. All I know is that she had a sister who lives in Munich named Katia—”

“Perhaps I could help.”

“You? How?”

Mary improvised fast. “The woman who shares my apartment is a family friend. It was she who told me about Anna. That's how I heard about it.”

“And do you think she could return the letters to Anna's family?”

“I'm sure she could.”

Ilse flushed with joy. “Then you
must
take the case. At least that way it'll go to someone who cares. They've already reallocated her clothes to another bride. There's a new girl in her bed and Anna's only been dead a couple of days.”

“Could you get it for me?”

Ilse cast a panicky glance back at the house. “I'm late for Volksgemeinschaft—”

“What's that all about?”

“Oh, um, community issues, you know. We're doing race and the national economy today. But the teacher, Frau Schneider, is very easygoing.”

Mary, a skilled interrogator, remained silent.

“I'll say I need a clean apron from the dormitory. This one is covered with flour. And if anyone sees me with the case, I can always say it's yours. Wait for me in the hall.”

She was back in minutes, carrying a small case of burgundy leather by a brass handle. It was expensive leather, supple and soft, with a brass fastening. The last worldly goods of Anna Hansen. Mary was appalled at how anxious the Bride School had been to rid themselves of all traces of their former pupil. As Ilse turned to hurry away, Mary stopped her.

“Take this. It has my old address on it, but they know where to reach me. You must contact me if anything else occurs to you.”

Ilse scrutinized the card solemnly. The address was a street named Winterfeldtstrasse that she had never heard of. She tucked it in her belt. “Thank you, Fräulein, I will.”

The leather case was far heavier and more expensive-looking than she had expected. Mary wondered whether to open it herself, or wait till she saw Clara. As she was pondering this, Fräulein Wolff bore down on her with an expression of suspicion and dismay. Now that she had what she needed, Mary decided to broach the subject.

“I meant to ask you, Fräulein Wolff. I was so sorry to hear about the dreadful incident with one of your brides the other day.” As though she had been physically assaulted, Fräulein Wolff flinched.

“How did you hear about that?”

“A family friend told me.”

“It was a tragic accident, Fräulein. The girl's family has asked for absolute privacy in this affair. And before you ask, no one will be speaking about it, do you understand? No one at
all
.”

T
he terminal building of Tempelhof air base in the south of the city was a showpiece for the new Germany. Built by Ernst Sagebiel, the same man responsible for the monumental Air Ministry, its sprawling hangars fanned out in a gigantic arc, intended to resemble the spread wings of an eagle in flight. It was the largest freestanding building in the world. Beneath it, in five levels of underground tunnels, fighter bombers were being assembled, and above, the mile-long roof was arranged in tiers with room for eighty thousand spectators to observe aerobatic displays. The whole place felt less like an air terminal and more like a cathedral devoted to the twin gods of aviation and the Third Reich.

Clara had never been anywhere so big. Standing in the cavernous Hall of Glory, still uncompleted, she was utterly disoriented. The place was so vast, the distances between points of focus so great, that she felt disembodied, all her senses adrift. It was like being trapped inside a Cubist painting with perspective going in all directions and she felt an incipient dizziness from looking too hard.

Arno Strauss was striding towards her. The withered twist of his mutilated face startled her afresh. It was hard to tell if his tense expression was mere disfigurement or if he was regretting his offer of a flight. He had goggles pushed back on his head and a cigarette clamped between his fingers.

“Good morning, Fräulein Vine.” He frowned at the black polo-necked sweater and trousers she wore. “You're going to freeze like that. Take this.”

He shrugged off his leather jacket and draped it around her shoulders. It was sleek brown leather with epaulets and a simple winged eagle on the breast pocket. The weight of it was comforting, as was the warmth of his body contained in its rabbit fur lining.

“Still want to come? Not nervous, I hope?”

“Only a little.”

She had been sick with nerves from the moment she woke up. Indeed, she had barely slept. Silly really, she told herself as she brushed her teeth and made a black coffee. People fly in airplanes all the time. And this man was an expert. One of the top pilots in the entire Luftwaffe, Udet had said. Why should the prospect of flying be enough to terrify her? Nonetheless, she had been unable to eat any breakfast. That was probably a wise precaution.

“Just so you know,” he remarked brusquely as he led her out of the hall, “I'm bending the rules a little here.”

“Not too much, I hope.”

“Let's just say, for official purposes you don't exist.”

They walked out onto the tarmac. A sharp wind blasted against their faces, forcing them to raise their voices to a shout. The plane was standing ready, a sleek, angular, gray-blue machine, nose tilted upwards like some great rook poised to lurch forward and creak heavily into the air. As they ducked under the wing, Strauss reached up, and his forefinger brushed a swastika painted on the underside.

“I always touch one for luck.”

“Do you need luck?”

“We all need luck, Fräulein. Though I've probably had more than my share already. We may have to rely on yours.”

The cockpit was barely big enough for one person, but there were two seats, one behind the other. Strauss propelled her into the rear, threading the buckles of a parachute harness over her shoulders and handing her a sheepskin-lined cap and goggles. His face was rigid with concentration as he fitted first her parachute, then his own. He smelled of leather, grease, and petrol fumes. When he bent close to fasten her buckles, she caught a whiff of alcohol, which added to her jittery nerves.

“So have you flown this plane often?”

“First time, in fact. This one's a prototype. A Henschel Hs 126. It hasn't entered service yet. They've made ten for us to try out. The idea is it's able to go fairly slow.”

“Is slow a good thing?”

He gave a gruff laugh. “Good for our purposes. Though it won't seem slow to you, I promise.”

He settled in front of a curved dashboard, slammed down the glass hatch over their heads, and began to run his eyes across the instrument panel. Through her goggles, Clara stared uncomprehendingly at the blur of levers and dials. Strauss's perfect, undamaged side was towards her, and she was so close to him, she was practically breathing into his neck, her knees folded up into her chest.

“Who usually sits back here?”

“It's the camera bay.”

He flicked a switch, gunned up the engines, and the plane began to make a deafening high-pitched squeal that sent a shudder through the fuselage. Below them, Clara saw a man run out to remove the chocks beneath the wheels. The plane crept forwards, taxiing awkwardly down the runway, which stretched, seemingly endlessly, ahead of them, lit by a narrow avenue of lights. Then it gathered speed. She felt her intestines sink within her as the plane rose with a loud
thump
into the air.

As the force of acceleration pressed her body back into the bucket seat, Clara thought how uncomfortable it must be for a grown man to cram himself into this tiny steel space. The dashboard had come alive now, a bank of wavering needles and glowing lights, and she saw the set of Strauss's jaw, the flinty eyes narrowed as he pulled the stick towards him and they hurtled upwards into the dense air.

Below them the city was dwindling to a quilt of red roofs and chimneys. Just outside Tempelhof, she could see a patchwork of gardens, little grids of cabbage and leeks, like a bar chart in a child's schoolbook. Around the green spaces the crossword puzzle of streets and blocks extended, and on the outskirts of the city braids of smoke from factory towers twisted into the sky.

As she thought of herself and Strauss suspended so perilously high above them, Clara's heart caught in her throat. Why had she agreed to his invitation? she asked herself. Yet she knew the answer already. Some instinct within her, ingrained too deeply to eradicate, made her unable to refuse a challenge. Their father had instilled it in childhood, setting sister against brother, making every game of chess a competition, every outing an opportunity to test their resources. On holidays in the Scottish Highlands, where the children would follow his austere, forbidding figure as they labored with knapsacks through the drizzle, he would set each of them a task. They would be left then in a distant location equipped with only a ball of string, a compass, and a shilling. That was all they required, he would say, to hike their way home. Somehow, Clara had always managed it. From an early age she had learned never to show fear and never to reveal reluctance.

As the plane climbed higher, the map below them turned into a tapestry. Dark green forests, thick as fur, seemed wedged between the patchwork pieces of fields. A flash of river, like mercury. They flew through a fleece of clouds, moisture beading the outside of the glass, and out again into the empty sky. As Clara breathed in the air, sharp and cold as a knife, she felt a rush of exhilaration. Suddenly she understood the addiction of flight. How wonderful it must be to have this heart-stopping excitement in your life! To feel that in an instant you could soar above the city and leave your earthbound life behind you.

“That's the rate of climb indicator.” Strauss jabbed a finger at the instrument panel. “The boost pressure indicator, the speed indicator, the altimeter. The maximum speed of this plane is 356 kilometers an hour.”

None of the dials meant anything to her. Crouched behind Strauss, Clara felt like Sinbad on the back of the eagle, though her every sensation was governed by the penetrating cold. Her attempt at dressing warmly had been hopelessly inadequate. The cold burned her face. Even with Strauss's jacket she felt as if she might freeze to the steel seat. She wondered how he was managing without it, though she could see he was wearing fur-lined boots and a thick sweater swaddled over several layers.

They were much higher now, unimaginable thousands of feet. Below them, Brandenburg spread out to the faint line of the horizon, purple with the wrinkle of the hills.

“Hold on!” shouted Strauss.

From its great height, the plane flipped in a graceful somersault, tumbling through the cloud cover before swooping downwards. Banking and turning, it rolled over and over so Clara could no longer tell whether they were up or down. To her horror, it seemed that the propeller had cut out. Was the engine dead? As they hurtled relentlessly towards the earth, trees and grass and buildings came into view. Clara could scarcely breathe from terror. A searing pain drilled in her ears, and the air was knocked from her lungs as she gripped the sides of the seat, wanting to scream but unable to make a sound. The propeller was still not functioning. She squeezed her eyes shut. For an eternity they continued downwards. Then, at the last possible moment, when they had dipped so low they almost touched the grass with one wing, the plane swung violently to one side, Strauss opened the throttle, and the ground leapt away from them as they ascended steeply into the air.

“That's called a dead-stick landing,” he shouted, pulling the plane into a rapid climb. “Our friend Ernst has the patent on that.”

For a moment she did not grasp what he was saying. Then Clara understood that the terrifying plunge was intentional, that Strauss had performed a dangerous stunt without warning her. When she understood, fury and fear mingled in her as the plane thrust upwards, every inch shuddering as the propeller blades, working again, sliced through the cold, white air. She was going to be sick, she knew it.

Above the cloud bank the plane dropped speed a little, leveled out, and they drifted high through the sparkling morning. The ground beneath was obscured by vapor, so they were entirely alone, suspended between earth and heaven. Spokes of sunlight streamed through gaps in the clouds.

Strauss brought the plane around in a vast, lazy loop as though it was performing its own graceful ballet in the air. Then he seized the throttle and brought it down forcibly so that the sky reared up towards them and the plane was almost at ninety degrees. Clara wanted to beg him not to perform another stunt, but the breath was knocked out of her, as though she had been punched, and the rushing air pressed against her lips. She formed the word “Please!” but it did not emerge from her mouth. When she felt the plane level and then tilt nose-down, she knew it was already too late.

The scream of the engine was too high for her to speak, and she was again consumed by a panicky vertigo. The ground was rushing towards them crazily fast. Nine thousand feet, eight thousand, seven thousand. The airspeed indicators on the dashboard wheeled excitedly in their glass cases. Wind whipped through the fuselage, and red lights glowed on the dashboard. What was he thinking of, trying a stunt like this? Strauss's face revealed nothing, but his jaw was clenched as he grappled with the controls. The fuselage was juddering so violently Clara was certain the plane was about to come apart. They were hurtling towards the ground in a steel coffin, about to sink like a stone into the hard earth. Strauss seemed to be wrenching the throttle while they continued to accelerate steeply down. She felt the nausea rising in her and looked for something to vomit in. How awful to be plunging to your death and looking for a sick bag.

Just as they seemed certain to die, Strauss made a sharp movement with his foot, jerked the throttle lever towards him. The plane tilted ninety degrees, throwing them both bodily to the left as they soared once again. Through her jangled brain, Goebbels's comment came to her:

Perhaps you have a taste for danger, Fräulein.

Goebbels was wrong. She had no taste for danger. But danger had a way of seeking her out.

It took a few minutes for the plane to bank and turn again and make a slow descent towards the Tempelhof runway. Strauss taxied to a halt, and the engine grunted and stuttered before it died and the propeller blades flapped to a halt. Taking off his hat, he sat motionless for a moment, his lips compressed into a mirthless grin. Beads of sweat glistened on his brow. His eyes were dark and unfathomable, like pools of oil.

“Were you frightened?” he asked.

“No.”

“You're lying.”

“Okay, I was terrified.”

He laughed. A short, joyless bark. “So was I. I lost control there, you realize? I thought we were done for. The throttle locked at high altitude. I almost gave up. Luckily I managed to kick the stick with my foot in the nick of time.”

He helped her climb out of the plane, and they walked back across the tarmac. They had spent no more than fourteen minutes in the air, yet she felt like a lifetime had passed. Her legs were shaking as though she had just gotten off a ship, and her thoughts were a maelstrom of confusion. Had Strauss deliberately risked her life, as well as his own? Was he telling the truth when he said he lost control?

“How do you feel?”

Instinctively, as ever, she suppressed the anger and confusion churning inside her.

“I feel like a cocktail that's just been shaken,” she answered lightly.

He looked at her in astonishment, but even as she said it, her mood changed. It was true. She was euphoric that she had not died. She had cheated death and was about to continue an ordinary Berlin morning, going about her ordinary, earthbound life. Did every pilot have this intense, searing sensation of being alive every time he returned to land? If so, it was almost worth the fear you went through to achieve it.

“Well
I
need a smoke.” Strauss stopped, reached over to the pocket of the jacket she was wearing, freed a packet of cigarettes, and lit one for her and one for himself. His fingers, she noticed, were trembling.

“Sorry to frighten you, Fräulein.”

“I thought you said the conditions were perfect.”

“The conditions were fine. It was the throttle that misbehaved.”

“I hope you mention that throttle in your report.”

“I certainly will.”

“There is one thing I wanted to ask. You said you almost gave up. So why didn't you?”