Woman in the Shadows (12 page)

His face glazed over again with the absent, thin-lipped expression that she had seen before. “It was too early for me to die. Especially with you on board.”

She laughed, as though he was joking, though he gave no appearance of it.

“You know,” he said, unexpectedly. “There's a poem I like. It's Irish. You might know it.”

“Try me.”

I know that I shall meet my fate

Somewhere among the clouds above;

Those that I fight I do not hate,

Those that I guard I do not love.

“That's Yeats. ‘An Irish Airman Foresees His Death.' ”

A spark of interest flared in his eyes. “You know it?”

“I love it.”

“Me too. That idea has roots in our German mythology too. The old Teutonic heroes would go on a journey from which they would never return. It was called the
Totenritt
. The death ride.”

“The death ride? Well, thank God we avoided one of those.”

He ignored her flippancy. “We studied Yeats at school. That same teacher, the one who taught us our mythology, he loved poetry. Most German schoolchildren concentrate on Schiller, Heine, Goethe, and so on. Or at least they used to. But our teacher focused on other poets too. Foreigners. Though he did point out that the Irish were Germany's allies, of course.”

As they neared the terminal, they talked a little about the forthcoming film. Strauss never bothered watching Ernst's movies. Those film people always got the technical details wrong, and besides, he preferred Ernst when he wasn't pretending to be some pompous Nazi hero humming “The Horst Wessel Song.” Ernst didn't need to pretend to be anything other than what he was. He already had a chestful of decorations, and you could make a whole airplane out of the medals he'd won in real life. As they talked, the vibration resounding in Clara's bones gradually left her and she felt entirely calm.

When they reached the entrance to the main hall, Strauss stopped and said, “I shall be meeting some compatriots of yours soon, as it happens. I've had an invitation to meet your former king. The Reichsmarschall's holding a reception for him at Carinhall.”

“That will be fascinating,” Clara said neutrally.

“Do you think so? For an actress, perhaps. As a pilot I can't think of anything worse. I'm not suited to standing around making polite conversations with duchesses.” He looked at her thoughtfully, then gave a stiff, ironic bow.

“Now, Fräulein, I must go and fill out my test report.”

She felt a surge of regret that he was leaving so soon, but shrugged off his jacket and held it out to him.

“I hope you got what you needed. For your film, that is.”

“More than enough.”

“Then I'm glad to have helped.”

Strauss tipped his cap and strode away into the airport building.

W
hen Mary Harker first arrived back in Berlin, she had looked forward to revisiting all her old haunts. The Verona Lounge on Kleiststrasse near Nollendorfplatz, which after hours turned from a chic evening club to an outrageously bohemian bar. La Garçonne on Kalckreuthstrasse, owned by Susi Wanowski, the former wife of a Berlin police chief who in a drastic life change had become the lover of the erotic dancer Anita Berber. Mali and Ingel's on Lutherstrasse, where if you ignored the sign reading
CLOSED FOR PRIVATE PARTY
, you would find all types of artists, intellectuals, singers, and actresses. Even in the first days of the Reich, there had been lingering traces of Weimar decadence. Every night you could pass a cellar door and look down to see a dancer adjusting her bustier or a man with a saxophone in a sweaty bar. Now all these places were gone. The sly, smoky rhythms of jazz that leaked out of nightclub cellars had been replaced with light operetta, marching music, and brass bands. Instructions had gone out from the Reich Chamber of Culture that saxophones should be replaced where possible with the viola, improvisation was banned, and any song's lyrics must be lighthearted rather than the “gloomy, Jewish” kind. In particular, the Reich liked drums, to keep German hearts banging in rhythm. Strident music in a major key.

The nightlife wasn't the only thing that had changed. All the journalists in the world had converged on Berlin. It was competitive as hell. The crisis in Europe attracted foreign correspondents like bees to a honeypot, except there was nothing sweet about the content of the twice-daily press briefings handed out at the Propaganda Ministry. The Nazis kept things as controlled as they could. Every morning and afternoon the journalists sat and imbibed whatever lies the government chose, delivered either by the press chief, Otto Dietrich, or by Goebbels himself. At the moment it all had to do with the perfidious Bolsheviks and the need for Germany to arm itself to protect the world from Communism.

The only good thing Goebbels had done was to build a fancy new press center on Leipziger Platz, to which many of the foreign correspondents had moved en masse from the Adlon bar. It had newspapers and plush leather armchairs and mahogany desks, as well as telegraph facilities, if anyone was insane enough to trust their copy to the in-house censors. It was, of course, staffed by Nazi informers, and there was a rumor that the seats were wired for sound, but the correspondents had evolved a complex method of semaphore if they had anything important to convey. That was where Mary sat in the dining room on the first floor, thinking about Clara Vine.

Clara had revealed, in their long talk the other night, that she missed the presence of a man in her life. There had been a couple of men, yet sometimes she feared she had lost the chance of a serious relationship altogether. As ever she was full of lively gossip, but now there was a somber tone beneath it, and a suspicion of private heartache. She was estranged from her family and had ended the relationship that seemed most likely to lead to marriage.

But then, Mary had written the book on heartache. The man she had wanted didn't want her. The only person who had ever proposed to her was a lawyer back in New Jersey named Derek Phillips, who had pressed his case in such desiccated tones he might as well have been cribbing from the marriage service itself. That dreary bit about marriage being ordained for the procreation of children and as a remedy against sin. As Mary didn't want any children and she didn't mind sin, she had no problem in turning Derek's proposal down.

The arrival of a waiter bearing two martinis and a bowl of olives returned Mary's thoughts to Clara. The truth was, whatever the state of her love life, Clara's life seemed enviable. She had that adorable apartment on Winterfeldtstrasse—thanks to Mary—a car, even if it was on loan from a friend at the studio, and a closet full of stylish clothes. Her career was blossoming. She looked, if anything, prettier than she had four years ago, her cheekbones more sharply defined and her beauty modulated by the grave shadows behind her eyes. Mary had always admired Clara's deep brown hair, with its hints of chestnut and honey. Mary's hair, by contrast, seemed defined by what it was not, neither brunette nor blond, but a washed-out shade that seemed to take on color only in the sun. She had nice eyes, but if she wanted a man to see them properly, she had to take off her glasses, which meant, conversely, that she could not see him. And whereas Mary had a constant battle with the bulge, the food shortages in Germany had left Clara lean and willowy, but not so slender that men did not stare at her. Just like they were doing now, as she made her way through the club to the table. Mary sprang up and kissed her.

“Thanks for putting me on to the Bride School. What a story! Let's hope no one at home gets any ideas.”

Clara gave a wry smile.

“Frank Nussbaum loves the whole concept. When I told him they have lessons on how to obey a husband, he was practically ready to move here.”

Clara guessed, though she had never asked, that Mary had given up the idea of marriage some years ago. Presumably she thought it was incompatible with her work. But then, she told herself, Mary probably assumed the same thing of her, and how accurate was that?

“How can those girls stand it?”

“You mean the prospect of marriage? Or the pig trotter stew they serve? Yuck! Even I couldn't face the lunch.”

“So did you find out what happened?” Clara leaned forward intently.

“A little. A girl named Ilse Henning filled me in. To start with they were blaming it on the gardener. According to Ilse, the guy was soft in the head. But when I called up the Criminal Police, they said he had been released without charge. Rock-solid alibi, apparently. So they're combing through all the violent criminals on their books…”

“Which is a pretty long list in Berlin right now…”

“Exactly. And they still haven't found their man.”

“And Anna Hansen?”

“Looks like you were right. She was a dancer. Originally from Munich. Engaged to an SS Obersturmführer, Johann Peters.”

“It must be the same Anna Hansen then. The girl Bruno knew came from Munich and had been a dancer. But she was the last person I'd have expected to find at a Bride School.”

Clara remembered the day she had come to Bruno's studio and found Anna Hansen, a girl with a ready smile and a calculating look. When Clara arrived, Anna had sat up, reached for a paint-spattered sheet like it was an evening dress, and pulled it lazily over her nude, tightly muscled body. Clara had been cool towards her, thinking Anna was a romantic replacement for Helga, assuming that Bruno had forgotten Helga already, despite everything he said about being heartbroken. As a result, the two women had exchanged barely a few words. And now Anna was dead.

“I suppose knowing that it's the same girl doesn't make much difference now.”

“Except…I almost forgot,” said Mary. “There's this. It was hers. I said you might be able to give it to her family.”

She hauled out the burgundy leather case and passed it over. Curious, Clara fingered the neat tooling and the brass lock. The case was heavier than it looked. “What is it?”

“It's a lap desk,” Mary explained. “A kind of portable stationery case. Anna used to keep it hidden in the dormitory for privacy. Ilse said she used it for writing letters to the beloved Johann. She seemed to think that the letters are still in there, and Anna's family might like to have them back.”

“But why on earth did you say I'd give it to her family? I don't know them. They live in Munich presumably.”

“
Obviously
I didn't mean it! But I had to say something. No one else knows it exists. Ilse's upset that Anna's death seems to have been swept under the carpet. She wants to believe that someone, somewhere, might care. I thought, If it makes her happy, why not?”

At that moment Mary was distracted by a greeting from the other end of the bar. “If that's not Mary Harker. Great to see you back! Planning on staying a little longer this time?” A gnarled American in a rumpled raincoat was waving a rolled-up newspaper in her direction, and Mary disappeared for a chat. When she returned, Clara was looking at the case, frowning.

“You know…I think I will take it.”

“To Munich? That's the other end of the country! Nearly four hundred miles away. Don't be crazy, Clara. It's not even as if you know where the family lives.”

“We could find out.”

“How? As you said, Hansen is a common name. There's probably a hundred of them in the telephone book.”

“Why don't we look inside?” Clara tapped the case.

“That's more like it.” Mary grinned. “You read my mind.”

“It may help us find an address. You said she kept all her letters. They may be private, but Anna isn't here to mind, is she? It doesn't count as snooping if someone's dead.”

“Girl after my own heart.”

“There's no key, I suppose?”

“Pass it here.” Mary had wrenched a bobby pin out of her hair and was applying it to the lock with intense concentration. Within a minute, the lock sprang open with a satisfying
click.

“Ha! Little trick I learned as a kid. And much easier than I thought.”

The doors of the case opened out to reveal a miniature desk lined in worn purple plush, with a leather insert on the base for writing. Piled inside was a thick bundle of envelopes and papers, and at the back were small cubicles for pencils and pens, and space for an ink bottle, which was missing. Above were two drawers with ribbon ties, one containing stamps, the other a stash of fresh envelopes. Mary took the bundle of papers, handed half of them to Clara, and began to thumb through the rest.

The cache of letters had been hastily ripped from their envelopes and carelessly refolded. Most bore the address of the Bride School.

“Love letters,” said Mary.

They were written in a regular, unsophisticated, schoolboyish hand, and from one of them dropped a small black-and-white photograph of a group of SS officers, arms linked, standing outside a tavern. None of the men could have been older than twenty-five. There was no indication which was Johann Peters, but Clara could imagine him bending over the letter, the tip of his tongue protruding with concentration, as he tried to communicate with his glamorous new fiancée.

“And she kept her old programs.”

Mary was flourishing a sheaf of theater programs, bundled together with a rubber band. The Friedrichstadt Palast, the Wintergarten, and the Metropol in Berlin.
Happy Journey,
Strauss's
Die Fledermaus
. A production of
The Merry Widow
at the Gärtnerplatz theater in Munich, for which Anna Hansen's name appeared in tiny print in the cast list of the chorus. Mary handed one over to Clara, who peered at it, unable to make out any individual figure from the group of scantily clad women posing in a forest of peacock feathers.

“This isn't much help.”

“But this one could be.”

There was another letter, with a stamp on it, which was sealed but had not been posted. It was addressed to

Katia Hansen

F
RAUENSTRASSE 17

München

“Perhaps that's her sister.”

“That's good. So I have an address.”

“Seriously, Clara, I can't imagine why you would bother taking these all the way to Munich. It's not as though anyone knows we have the case. And Anna Hansen wasn't your friend, was she? She was a friend of Bruno Weiss.”

Something within Clara, some deep reserve of caution that now governed everything she did, prevented her from telling Mary about the remark she had overheard at Udet's party, that Bruno Weiss had been seen in Munich at the exhibition of Degenerate Art, standing right in front of his own paintings and observing them with pride. She believed it, not only because the Luftwaffe officer had no reason to lie but also because it was exactly the sort of bold, foolish, unconventional thing that Bruno would do. She could just imagine the satisfied smile on his face, knowing that whatever the regime thought about his paintings, Art always spoke for itself. Yet the officer had reported him to the authorities. And Bruno was the only person in Germany to whom she had confided her own secret activities. Activities that the authorities may now suspect, too.

If there was a chance of finding out what had happened to Bruno, it was a chance worth taking. And she could deliver the case to Anna Hansen's family at the same time.

“I have no work for the next few weeks. I've never seen Munich. Why not? It'll be like a holiday.”

Mary was looking at Clara with a level gaze. She bent towards her and spoke quietly. “You've changed, Clara, since I was last here. You had me fooled then, and it was hard to tell what you were thinking. But it's worse now. Now, for the life of me, I can't figure out what's going on in your head.”