Woman in the Shadows (39 page)

A
n intense cold had gripped the city, almost paralyzing it. Puddles were covered with a brittle skin and cracked like a million broken mirrors when you stepped on them. A weak sun hauled itself up in a bone-white sky. Winter was no longer hiding behind the veil of autumn but had finally shown its face. The previous night the sky had been clogged with snow like whirling ash, and by morning Berlin was black and bridal white, a city in chiaroscuro.

In Köllnischer Park in Kreuzberg the snow lay inches deep, blanketing the divisions and softening sharp edges. Little avalanches slid from nearby roofs with cracks like gunshots. Statues of dead statesmen stood awkwardly in the small square, veiled with dustcovers of snow. Snow lined the detail of tree branches and made the world simple again.

The three of them, Clara, Mary, and Erich, were among a gaggle of people who had gathered to witness the unveiling of Berlin's latest attraction. A bear pit containing four brown bears to commemorate the seven hundredth anniversary of the city's founding. The pit was far smaller than one might expect—just a patch of grass sunk deep into the ground on which a few rocks had been scattered in a passing reference to the animals' mountain habitat. The crowd was craning their heads over the railings, but the bears were disappointingly publicity shy. All four had taken shelter in the invisible depths of their den.

Mary had brought her camera and was angling for an artistic shot of the children's faces framed by the bars. She had wholeheartedly embraced her new existence as a photojournalist. The photographs she had taken of the Bride School had made a double-page spread in the
New York Evening Post,
alongside the scandalous story of the murders of Anna Hansen and Ilse Henning. Ilse had been shot in the head while running through woods to escape Anna's former boyfriend, Rudolf Fleischer. The death of a second Reich bride was too much even for the domestic papers to ignore, and the Bride School had been besieged. Fräulein Wolff had been put in charge of handling journalistic inquiries, a task she accomplished by locking the school gates, barring brides from leaving the premises, and slamming down the telephone whenever it rang. As for Fleischer, Goebbels had acted swiftly. He had been arrested at dawn the day after the gala performance of
Patriots
. His Walther 6.35-caliber pistol matched the bullets that had killed the two girls.

Clara shivered and rubbed her arms with her gloved hands. Of Fleischer's other secret—the photographs of the Führer—there was no word. Goebbels was the custodian of those splintered fragments now, and although they had not seen the light of day, the negatives remained a dark bond between Clara and him. Her decision to hand the pictures over might be enough to still his suspicions about her, but there was no telling how long that would last. The Minister of Enlightenment and Propaganda was good at keeping secrets, she knew, and he must assume the same of her. This particular dangerous secret would stay buried, deep, until it was needed. Her enemy was, for the moment, also her protector.

She looked down at the frozen puddles, peering through the panes of ice as if she might divine something stirring beneath them, and thought of Bruno Weiss. He had vanished from the Moabit apartment and disappeared into the great underground network that spread through Berlin, an underground that was not just symbolic but actual, made up of brewery cellars and U-Bahn tunnels, subterranean walkways and a maze of bunkers being built for war. How many people were there like Bruno, frozen beneath the surface of normal life until the time came for them to stir? How many others like herself?

As she stared into the puddles, Erich stamped on them, turning them into great shards of glassy ice, and grinned. The snow bounced light into his face.

“Here, Clara. You haven't looked at it properly yet.”

He held out the gift that Ernst Udet had sent him. It was a model airplane, complete with a tiny tin figure of Udet himself that could be removed from the cockpit. Erich had been slightly embarrassed at receiving a toy at his advanced age. Clara had given him plenty of lead soldiers over the years—smart little Wehrmacht figures in field gray with impressive rifles, and some indeterminate enemy troops that looked suspiciously French—but Erich had donated them all to the HJ's metal collection. Yet this was different. The Stuka was an artistic object, not a toy, he rationalized, and any embarrassment was overwhelmed by his pride at receiving a gift from General Udet himself, along with a personally signed letter wishing him well in his future as a pilot.

“Are you looking forward to seeing your sister, Clara?” he asked.

Mary and Clara exchanged a quick glance. “Of course,” Clara replied.

“Does she look like you?”

“Far more glamorous.”

“No one could be more glamorous than you,” he avowed, with a quick, loyal stroke of her lapel to show that everything was once again fine between them.

“You'd be surprised. Even though she's my sister, she's not a bit like me. She's nothing like me at all.”

Which was true, and yet they were well matched, she realized suddenly. Angela was clever and curious, and she knew Clara better than anyone on earth. Clara braced, as though tightening a buckle inside her, readying herself. She would show Angela the sights of Berlin with all the insouciance of an actress interested only in her own career. She would let slip the names of leading men whom she might, conceivably, have an eye on. If Clara could deceive her own sister, she could deceive anyone.

“Will I like her?”

“I hope so.”

Angela and Sir Ronald Vine were flying in that afternoon. Angela had sent her usual peremptory letter, requesting that Clara be at Tempelhof at two o'clock and accompany them to the hotel. Unfortunately, Angela wrote, it looked as though she would be missing the Mitfords. Diana Mosley had returned to England, and Unity was back in Munich. But the Goebbelses had kindly offered to throw a dinner for them at the Kaiserhof later in the week, and Clara would be pleased to hear they had tickets for that evening's production of
The Merry Widow
at the Wintergarten. Would she like to come, too? Angela had heard that it was the Führer's favorite operetta. Clara decided she might as well go and see it. When war came, there would be no more
Merry Widows
in Germany. No one would dare.

“Hey, look!” cried Erich.

One of the bears had emerged. Tentatively at first, the huge beast prowled the pit, peering up at the people gaping down at it, protected by a tangle of iron and barbed wire. The bear's breath hung in a cloud as it sniffed the air of its new captivity. The pit was ten feet deep at least, made of musty bricks the color of dried blood.

“Do you know, there hasn't been a bear pit in Berlin since the Middle Ages,” said Erich, solemnly.

The animal began to pace out the confines of its den, round and round, barging its dull, matted pelt against the walls, poking its long snout and tiny black eyes into the crevices, as if to find some escape from its predicament. Children leaned over the railings, thrilling to the spectacle of such strength and vitality contained, recoiling in delighted terror as the bear reared up on its great hind legs, pawing the walls with ugly, curving claws. They shrieked. Someone threw a pretzel. The bear dropped down again to resume its pacing, round and round the circle of the pit, issuing small grunts from the narrow, crimson cave of its mouth. A ripple of laughs ran through the crowd.

“Do you reckon it could escape?” wondered Erich.

“Of course not.”

But the more she watched, the more Clara wished it could. She had a vision of the bear leaping over the railings of its prison and disappearing into the city, running on its ugly, clawed paws through the streets of Berlin, past the granite, Wilhelmine façades bristling with scarlet banners, disrupting the soldiers' marches, scattering pedestrians, ripping down flags with its dirty, yellow teeth, and knocking over newspaper stands as it went. Up past Potsdamer Platz, the wind flattening its fur, skidding over tramlines, trampling the postcard racks with their pictures of the Führer, and sending the pretzel carts flying. Causing chaos along the Ku'damm and shocking the affluent shoppers in the Westend. Then slowing, its clumsy bulk lumbering out west through the leafy streets of Charlottenburg, before vanishing forever in the gray-green depths of the Grunewald.

Erich linked his arm through hers. As he grew older such physical gestures between them had become increasingly rare, and she felt a surge of love for him. She turned and smiled.

“Don't worry. We're completely safe.”

And anyone watching would swear that she believed it.

I
n 1937, two versions of the Heinkel He 111 were fitted with hidden cameras and flown from Germany to begin the secret aerial reconnaissance of Britain. They were soon joined by other aircraft, and the resulting photographs were used to identify airfields, dockyards, factories, military installations, and any other sites considered valid bombing targets in case of war. Together they made up the first ever aerial survey of Britain.

One of the most important figures in assessing the secret buildup of the Luftwaffe, and understanding the importance of aerial reconnaissance, was Group Captain Frederick Winterbotham, who joined the Secret Intelligence Service in 1929 and traveled widely in Germany between 1934 and 1938, when his cover was blown. His book
The Nazi Connection
details his meetings with Hitler, Goering, Rosenberg, Hess, General von Reichenau, and General Kesselring, all of whom believed he was sympathetic to their aims.

Ernst Udet continued in the Luftwaffe until after war broke out. He was blamed for the Luftwaffe's defeat in the Battle of Britain and further despaired of the direction of the war when Hitler attacked the Soviet Union. Increasingly unhappy, Udet committed suicide in November 1941, but the Party announced that he had died testing a new weapon.

In October 1937, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor toured Nazi Germany as personal guests of Hitler. There is a curious addendum to this episode. In 1945, the spy Anthony Blunt was sent on a secret mission on behalf of the royal family to Schloss Friedrichshof, the home of Edward VIII's cousin Philip of Hesse. Blunt's mission was to retrieve certain letters, and it has been speculated, though never proved, that these included letters between the Duke of Windsor and the Nazi hierarchy. Some have suggested that this intimate knowledge of royal secrets delayed Blunt's unveiling as a traitor.

Unity Mitford remained a devoted follower of Hitler. In 1939, following the declaration of war between Britain and Germany, she went into Munich's Englischer Garten, took out a pearl-handled pistol that had been a gift from Hitler, and shot herself. Her attempt at suicide failed, however, and she was transported back to England with Hitler's help, lingering on as an invalid until 1948.

Berlin's bear pit still exists, at the time of this writing, in Köllnischer Park.

T
he first glimmer of the character who was to be Clara Vine came as I was reading the diary of a young Englishwoman visiting Germany in the 1930s. Since then there have been many people to thank for her progress to a series of novels, and I am grateful to them all. To Philip Kerr, for his inexhaustible willingness to discuss this fascinating period, and my agent Caradoc King at United Agents, for his great support and incisive comments. My heartfelt thanks go to the team at Ballantine Books, and in particular Kate Miciak—I could not imagine a more enthusiastic and meticulous editor. Also to Zoe Maslow and Ruta Liormonas at Random House, Canada. And thanks, as always, to the fabulous Joanna Coles for being a brilliant, inspirational, and ever-interested friend. Writing about young women as I do constantly brings to mind my daughter, Naomi, who endures my long historical discussions with no sign of impatience. The very least she deserves is to have this book dedicated to her.

JANE THYNNE

A READER'S GUIDE

Isabel Wolff was born in Warwickshire and read English at Cambridge. She is a
Sunday Times
bestselling author of ten novels, published in twenty-nine languages. She lives in London with her family.

Isabel Wolff:
In
Woman in the Shadows
a young woman is murdered at a Bride School. How did you even come across such a place?

Jane Thynne:
Like all the best research it was pure serendipity. I was visiting Schwanenwerder, the picturesque island in Berlin's Havel River, beloved of many senior Nazis, because I wanted to take a look at the Goebbels family villa. As I walked around the island I came across a handsome white mansion that I was sure I had glimpsed somewhere in a book. Looking it up I discovered it was the first Reich Bride School, established by Heinrich Himmler in 1935 to train wives for the SS. Just the idea provoked a giddy novelistic rush. I knew at once it would make a perfect setting for a crime!

IW:
The Third Reich is often seen as a “male story.” We know about Hitler, Goering, Goebbels, and Hess, but we rarely hear about their wives and girlfriends. What made you want to write about them?

JT:
Women are often the untold half of history, so if you want to get a different perspective on a historical period, the answer is to write the stories of the women. As we've seen in recent novels about the wives of Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Frank Lloyd Wright, not to mention in the works of Philippa Gregory, the details of marital relationships help history come alive. In the case of the Nazis, looking at the wives and girlfriends of historic monsters helps us see them as human beings, and that is what we need if we are to understand the effect they had on people and their ability to seduce large numbers of the population.

IW:
Will Clara's adventures in Nazi Germany continue?

JT:
Yes! When Clara first steps off the train in Friedrichstrasse station, she is only twenty-six, escaping a bad love affair in England and trying to get closer to her late mother's homeland. In 1933, Hitler had only just come to power and the scale of his ambitions was unknown. I really wanted to see how Clara would change over time, as the backdrop in Nazi Germany darkens and the world moves towards war. Today we view the twelve-year-long Nazi period in retrospect, but those who endured it saw the full horror of the regime only gradually unfold. As Clara lives through it she has to deal with those events, yet those events also shape her.

IW:
Do you plot your novels closely, or do you just go where the story takes you?

JT:
Woman in the Shadows,
like all the Clara Vine novels, is a thriller, and thrillers need to be meticulously plotted. You have to make the plot and the subplot interact and get the tension right at critical moments. Yet the great thing about writing is that it works organically, so the themes mesh in your mind and a storyline will often present itself when you're not expecting it.

IW:
Who is the Woman in the Shadows?

JT:
Firstly, it's Anna Hansen, the girl who is killed in the shadowy Bride School garden at the beginning of the novel. Her secret concerns the dramatic light and shade around an important individual. In another way it's Clara Vine herself, who works in the shadows as a British spy. But further, it could apply to the whole female population of Germany, whose lives and rights were overshadowed by a cruel and misogynistic regime and whose stories I want to bring to light.

IW:
Why did you choose to write about a female spy?

JT:
I'm so over the idea of the spy as a solitary, embittered, alcoholic male! I wanted to explore the pressures on a young woman coping with all the ordinary things—relationships, career, and the desire for children—who finds herself in a quite extraordinary predicament. Clara's like most of us, but her loyalty to her country and her ability to act have placed her in a situation where her qualities of character are tested to the limit.