Woman in the Shadows (5 page)

“They're coming
here
? Why on earth?”

Though she asked, she knew the answer. The duke's mother was German, he spoke the language fluently, and his past comments suggested a robust admiration for the Nazi regime.

“The Foreign Office is absolutely hopping. The whole thing has been arranged behind their back by the Germans. It's a massive propaganda coup for the Reich. They're going to make enormous capital out of it, and it's going to be terrifically embarrassing for Britain. They arrive at Friedrichstrasse Station on the sixteenth. The ambassador has been ordered not to attend.”

“Ordered?”

“Prime minister's orders. They're not to be treated as having any official status. No official interviews, no special ceremonies. Not so much as a gin and tonic and a cocktail onion at the embassy. The government doesn't want anyone getting the idea that this is any kind of official visit, rather than an entirely private occasion. The result being that yours truly has been deputed to greet them.”

Though he affected a jaded weariness, Clara could see that Dyson rather liked the idea of meeting the former king.

“Not that we'll be rolling out the red carpet, exactly. I'm sure the Nazi top brass will be doing that for them. Apparently Robert Ley, head of the Labor Front, will be there. The Reich is paying for the entire thing. The fact is, the couple are going to be mobbed wherever they go.”

“And where will they go?”

“It's a nine-city tour. And the American press are reporting that the duke wants to discuss ‘Hitler's hopes for the future.' ”

“Let's hope the duke's a good listener.”

Dyson rolled his eyes. “Precisely. He doesn't know what he's in for. The plan is that the duke should inspect working conditions throughout the Reich. Factory visits and so on.”

“Wouldn't be my idea of a honeymoon,” said Clara, casually.

For some reason this remark caused Dyson to fix his gaze more intently upon her. She was a curiosity to him, she knew. Her presence seemed to make him uneasy, as though he was unsure whether to treat her as an employee or a social equal. She was different from the women he knew back home, neither one of those upper-middle-class girls waiting to get married nor a determinedly spinster secretary or a bluestocking. She was nothing like Lettice, Dyson's wife, a brisk redhead who spent her time organizing cultural outings with the other embassy wives, serving coffee and shortbread biscuits to visiting dignitaries, and who fully intended her husband to be an ambassador himself one day. Clara had love affairs, Dyson knew, yet she had shown no desire to marry. Her sharp brain, as evidenced by her facility with crosswords and her formidable memory, were traits that the Service treasured in their agents. Her looks, social confidence, and acting talent gave her entrée to circles that would otherwise be hard to penetrate. Yet it was her willingness to place herself in danger that he found hardest to fathom. Dyson simply couldn't figure her out, and they both knew it.

“Do you ever think about leaving, Clara? Going back to England?”

What could she say? Only last week she had received a letter from an old school friend, Ida MacCloud, expressing astonishment that Clara was willing to stay in Germany while the Nazi regime gathered pace. Wasn't she by staying there in some way tacitly supporting what the Nazis did? Ida asked. How could Clara justify that?

“Occasionally.”

“You must miss your family.”

Clara gave him a narrow look. Dyson knew, as did everyone in the Berlin station, that Clara's father, Sir Ronald Vine, was a key member of London's Anglo-German Fellowship and a strong Nazi sympathizer. His coterie was rich, influential, and determined that Britain should place itself in alliance with rather than opposition to Hitler's Germany. Sir Ronald himself had received funding from Hitler for his political lobbying. Clara's shock in discovering her father's activities and the fact that he was being shadowed by domestic security in England had been part of her motivation in approaching British intelligence four years earlier. It was important that the security service chiefs felt they understood Clara's motivation. They needed to be able to trust her. Yet she saw no reason to confide in Dyson the Jewish part of her background.

“As it happens I had a letter from my sister yesterday saying that she and my father are coming to visit. Though you probably knew that already.”

Dyson gave a little smile.

“So you did know.”

“I imagine the German authorities know too.”

“Why are they coming over, Archie?”

“I may be many things, but I'm not a clairvoyant, Clara. Ask them yourself. They're your family. That's not why I asked you about going home.”

“Why then?”

Dyson fiddled with his glass, as if weighing his words. The hesitation made Clara's heart pound. Something had happened. She forced herself to wait for him to explain.

“Actually, it's what I wanted to talk to you about. It might be nothing…”

Dyson's mouth twisted unhappily, reluctant to impart the news. It might be nothing, but Clara knew from the gravity of his expression that it almost certainly wasn't. She kept her face composed, despite the small detonations of panic inside her.

“We had a hint that you might have aroused suspicions. I just wanted to say…don't do anything out of the ordinary. Tread carefully.”

“I always do. Where did this hint come from?”

“A friend. He let us know that in the past couple of days your name had come up in conversation.”

“Whose conversation? Where?”

“At Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse.”

Though Dyson uttered it without flinching, this address more than any other had the power to strike terror into a citizen of Berlin. The blank Prussian façade of the former art museum at Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse 8 gave no clue to the horrors within. Since 1933 it had been the headquarters of the Geheime Staatspolizei, the Gestapo, who had the power, without the intervention of the courts, to arrest, interrogate, and send prisoners to SS concentration camps like Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, and Lichtenburg. Beyond its austere, vaulted entrance hall, hundreds of bureaucrats spent their days combing files and reports on citizens. Beneath them, in the basement, lay the interrogation rooms, a warren of white-tiled cells where information could be extracted in a more direct manner. Once you arrived in Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, no amount of acting talent could save you from what they had in store.

A wave of fright hit her, like a blast of frigid air. Deliberately she hesitated, taking out a cigarette, fixing it in a holder, and inhaling.

“Who exactly is this friend?” He had to be either a policeman or a Gestapo member if he had access to Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse.

“He works for them. He says an informer passed on your name.”

An informer. That could be anyone. All Gestapo agents had their own networks of informers, fanning out through every layer of society like a malign web enmeshing anyone who crossed their paths. The service depended on them heavily for denunciations of suspect or illegal activity. They were not always the obvious candidates. An informer could be a quiet neighbor, or a friendly butcher. Postmen, shop owners, even children. Anyone with a secret to keep. Anyone who might be susceptible to blackmail. In one way or another, the Gestapo viewed the whole population as an amateur police force to assist in enforcing control. The idea was that nothing should escape the Gestapo's net.

Dyson was uttering calming words, like a doctor who had just delivered terminal news.

“Look, we're not worried. Nobody has talked about an arrest order. You speak German like a native. In their eyes you're no different from an actress like Lilian Harvey—she was born in Muswell Hill, wasn't she? And, most important, they know your father…”

They knew her father. It seemed incredible that the same nepotistic class structure that had governed Britain for hundreds of years might also hold sway among the Gestapo agents of Nazi Germany.

“And you take routine precautions?” Dyson was saying. “You don't talk on the phone? You vary your routine, you write nothing down. Don't drink in doubtful company.”

“I take precautions, Archie.”

“Fine. It may be nothing. But I would say you're almost certainly being tailed. So I wanted to warn you to keep your guard up. And more important still, to lie low.”

Lie low?

“So should I attend the Goebbelses' party?”

“You'll have to go because you've been invited. Not to turn up might attract attention. But don't do anything more at the moment. Do nothing. Enjoy your filming.”

“There's a break in filming. I've finished my last film, and we don't start rehearsals for another few weeks.”

“Enjoy your break then. Remember what I said.”

While Dyson got up and went to the bar to pay the bill and engage in some finely judged conversation with Herr Koch, Clara drank the syrupy remnants of her
Weisse
and tried to collect her teeming thoughts. An informer had passed her name to the Gestapo. Who could it be? A lowly staffer at the studios, perhaps, or someone closer to home? How bizarre it was that just as she had received an invitation to the Propaganda Minister's home, another part of the regime was thinking of inviting her to Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse. Clara's previous sense of security, the confidence that had grown and developed over her time in Berlin, was shaken. She felt the clench in her stomach that always came with terror, like a tight belt squeezed around her middle. She scanned the bar quickly. Might the informer be watching her right now? But she saw only the regular customers, slumped at their
Staamtisches,
their regular tables, growling in Berlinerische, the thick local dialect, and Archie telling Felix Koch about the delights of Brighton Pier.

Lie low,
Archie had warned.
Do nothing
.

Dyson returned and picked his hat up from the table.

“On the subject of breaks, Felix is talking about taking a holiday in Brighton, going over to see his daughter. I told him it's restorative at this time of year. Sea air can be very bracing. My sailing hol was immensely good fun. If I were you, Clara, I'd give it some thought.”

P
hotography was the ultimate art of the Reich. Joseph Goebbels said if you told a lie big enough for long enough people would believe it, so he must have reckoned if you showed them enough pictures they would believe those even more. Because whatever the occasion, be it a quiet lunch on Hitler's terrace at the Berghof, a military march, a rally, or even a routine health and fitness session with a hundred fresh-faced BDM girls in the park, a camera would be right there, too. Several cameras usually, straining against the official cordons, unleashing a dazzling fusillade of flash. All kinds of cameras, from the cumbersome official equipment with tripods and lights to the Speed Graphics that the news photographers used, and the new roll-film cameras from Leica and Zeiss. These days in the Reich there was always a lens poised to capture a fleeting image. To smooth rough reality with a soft focus and a monochrome glow. To fix the whole of Germany, like a film actress, in a glamorous quicksilver glare.

That bright Thursday morning Goebbels was posing by the monumental gates of the Ufa film studios for a newspaper feature in honor of his approaching fortieth birthday. He had ordered the photographer to shoot from street level, ostensibly to include the whole of the overarching gates in his picture, but actually so that his five-foot-four frame with its withered foot should seem as imposing as possible.

“He's very particular about the way he's photographed, isn't he?”

“Wouldn't you be? If he had more sense he'd keep out of the shot altogether.”

Clara was gazing from the window of a production office in the Babelsberg studio lot, a sprawling assembly of halls and editing rooms and carpenters' warehouses and sets tucked in the thick pinewoods outside Potsdam, ten miles from Berlin. The office belonged to Albert Lindemann, an executive producer she had known since her first week in Germany. Back then Albert had been a harried junior producer, with sparse hair and even sparser promotion prospects. Now he was a sleek and powerful man, his wiry form encased in a silk shirt and purple bow tie and cream suede shoes stretched out before him on the desk. Since the Aryanization, when anyone of Jewish extraction was barred from working in the Ufa studios, Albert's career had flourished. He had been given increasingly important projects to produce. He had a flashy new car and an apartment in Schöneberg, which was dripping with chrome furniture, blond wood, big mirrors, and thick white carpets. Albert loved gossip, possessed an acid sense of humor and a highly developed appreciation of the absurd. He had no interest in women whatsoever, yet he was never seen out without a young actress on his arm. Much as she might want to, Clara refrained from asking questions about Albert's private life. It was safer that way. Except for casual badinage about Nazi officials, they avoided politics. When news came that an actor had disappeared from the studios, as often happened, or a director had been taken for interrogation, their eyes would meet, but they rarely discussed it. Just that week, an actress both had worked with, Gisela Wessel, had been arrested for “organized activities and Communist demoralization” and taken in for questioning. Albert had merely raised his eyebrows and murmured, “Gisela's gone.” He didn't need to say any more. He was the closest thing Clara had to a friend in Berlin, and they understood each other perfectly.

“Thanks for lending me the car.”

It was Albert who had taught her to drive the year before, sitting beside her nervously as she swerved her way around the streets of Berlin, cursing theatrically as she slammed on the brakes, relaxing only when they reached the empty vistas of autobahn stretching into the countryside. Now she passed him the keys, but he waved them away.

“Keep it for a while, darling. I'm not using it at the moment and your life is so much more glamorous than my own. I imagine a car comes in handy.”

Albert always tried to balance his voracious appetite for gossip with the discretion that politics demanded. On the subject of Clara's encounters with the Goebbelses, he accepted that the less he knew the better.

“I just hope your trip to Schwanenwerder was successful.”

“I don't know about successful. It was interesting.”

Albert stretched out and helped himself to the bottle of schnapps that rested in the bottom drawer of his desk. He knew Clara far too well to worry about drinking in front of her, though she noticed that the bottle had taken quite a hit since she last saw it. Everyone had their own ways of coping with the atmosphere at the studios. Albert took a deep swig and surveyed her, his eyes crinkled in concern.

“You seem a bit jumpy this morning, darling. And rather pale. Not in any kind of trouble, are you?”

“Trouble?” Clara gave a light laugh. “Quite the opposite. I'm getting plenty of work, aren't I?”

It was true. Clara had been in almost continuous demand since her arrival in Germany. The advent of the talkies meant actors were discovering that their voices mattered just as much as their looks. Some stars dropped out of fashion overnight, because their voices were too high, or their accents too comical. Others complained that they couldn't party at night anymore, because of all the lines they had to learn. Clara's first film,
Black Roses,
had been one of the innovative trilingual talkies shot in German, French, and English, but that experiment didn't last long. Foreigners lost their appetite for the films being shot in the new Germany. Especially now that war films, starring brave German soldiers ready to die for their country, dominated the screens.

Albert abandoned attempts to probe her mood. “Did you hear our Master's latest theory?” He waved the new issue of
Filmwoche,
compulsory reading in the industry, which contained a lavish profile of Goebbels. “He says in here that the ideal woman should be composed of the three Ms—the Mother, the Madonna, and the Mistress.”

“I thought he preferred to keep them separate.”

“So did I. But if what I'm hearing about Lida Baarová is true, he's thinking she might like to combine two roles.”

Lida Baarová was Goebbels's latest girlfriend. A sultry Czech actress with stunning Slavic cheekbones, Baarová had been propelled to stardom by her devoted admirer. Her new film,
Patriots,
about a courageous German soldier befriended by a French girl, was to be the subject of a lavish premiere later that month at the city's plushest cinema, the Ufa-Palast am Zoo.

“So it's serious this time?”

“He's really smitten. Obsessed. He vets all her leading men. I've heard he makes her leave her phone line open so that when he's at his desk he can pick up the earpiece just to hear her breathing.”

“Her breathing!”

“Romantic, isn't it? Or perhaps he wants to hear if she's packing her bags for Hollywood like everyone else. They say he's so desperate to keep her he's going to ask Magda for a divorce.”

“I thought Lida was already married.”

“What's marriage? A piece of paper. Goebbels is good at fixing paperwork.”

Clara moved away from the window. Even though he was a hundred meters distant at the studio gate, she had the sudden feeling that Goebbels might have eyes in the back of his head. As if he read her mind, Albert laughed.

“You don't need to worry, darling. You're obviously doing something right. Looking forward to your first title role?”

The part in the new film,
The Pilot's
Wife,
was technically Clara's first major role. She was playing Gretchen, the young wife of a Luftwaffe flying ace, known for his heroics in the sky until he was tragically shot down. The story was a simple one. Gretchen alone refused to believe her husband was dead, and daringly, she learned to fly so that she could seek him out and bring him home. Evading enemy guns, she landed in hostile territory and found her husband injured but alive. So far, so standard. Brave Luftwaffe, long-suffering heroine, happy ending. There were any number of films like that being made right now, but this one would be a surefire, cast-iron, guaranteed success. Because of Ernst Udet.

She smiled. “We all know who the real star is.”

She moved over to Albert's desk and flipped through a stack of postcards featuring Udet's beaming figure in a variety of poses. He was a born celebrity. During his time in Hollywood, he liked to perform his stunts in a full dress suit and top hat. One of his favorites was to fly at zero height scooping objects from the ground. The press had been ecstatic when he won a bet with Mary Pickford to pick her handkerchief off the grass with his wingtip as he flew past.

“The sad thing is, this is his last part,” remarked Albert. “They say the Führer's banning him from filming or performing any more stunts.”

“I thought his film work was supposed to be great propaganda for aviation?”

Udet's last film,
The Miracle of Flight,
the story of a boy who wanted to be a pilot, had been box-office gold.

“It is. But now he's too important to the Luftwaffe. They can't risk anything happening to him. He's so miserable about it, I heard he's talking about going to America.”

“Does he not like his job?”

“Hates it. He's a real duck out of water. Sits at his desk all day doodling and making paper airplanes.”

Goering was so determined that his old war colleague should be at the forefront of the Luftwaffe's rapid expansion that he had made Udet head of the entire Technical Division of the Luftwaffe, responsible for the development of all fighter and bomber planes and other specialized aircraft. Udet's trouble was, he hated paperwork and Party politics as much as he loved women, alcohol, and planes. Nor did the public seem to understand that he was now a dignified Party bureaucrat. They persisted in begging him for autographs whenever he walked down the street. The studio was making the most of Udet's celebrity status. That morning he was due to sign promotional postcards and posters for the forthcoming film.

The phone rang. Albert picked it up and semaphored to Clara.

“That's it. He's arrived. Want to come and meet your screen husband?”

They hurried through the offices and took a shortcut via the Great Hall, where all the filming took place. It was the size of an aircraft hangar and housed a dozen sets crammed in back to back, preparing a dozen different versions of reality to distract the German public from military maneuvers and butter shortages. Ropes and electrical cables snaked over the floor. Skirting the tattered backs of the sets, behind the wooden props, they passed a cluster of bishops chatting with men in powdered wigs and lace cravats. A director complained about the sound of drilling and bellowed
“Ruhe!”
for silence. They exited the other end of the hall and crossed the lot to a red-brick reception office. There a robust figure in his early forties stood, wearing a slate-gray Luftwaffe uniform that emphasized his dazzling blue eyes.

“Herr Generaloberst, may I introduce Clara Vine?”

Udet had a smile hovering around his lips as though engaged in some elaborate practical joke. He clicked his heels and kissed Clara's hand with old-fashioned courtesy.

“My sweetheart! On film at least. And, may I say, an excellent choice.”

“We're delighted you could make time for this, Herr Generaloberst,” said Albert obsequiously.

“I'm delighted too, let me tell you,” Udet said, winking at Clara. “I nearly didn't make it. I had an accident the other day. The plane was a complete shit crate. I escaped, but another inch and I'd have been singing soprano.”

Behind Udet, Clara saw a pair of secretaries stop and signal to each other, covering their mouths and giggling. Those girls saw famous actors every day of the week, so if they went weak at the knees over Udet, he had to be a megastar. Everything Clara had heard about Udet's charisma and the easygoing jollity that prompted people to besiege him in the street seemed true. She found herself warming to him instantly.

“Ever done any flying?” he asked her.

“I'm afraid not. But I saw your Olympics display last year.”

Like everything he had a hand in, Hermann Goering's Olympics gala for seven hundred guests at his Leipziger Platz home could not be called understated. A swimming pool had been built in the garden, complete with swans. There was a miniature French village, a carnival, shooting galleries, and a merry-go-round. An entire corps de ballet was brought in to dance on the moonlit grass, while above them Udet's plane had performed a dizzying series of gliding acrobatics, swooping and circling in the sky.

Udet beamed. “You enjoyed that, did you?”

“It was the most amazing stunt I've ever seen.” It was the truth. The sight of the plane curving down in the night sky, twisting through beams of light with balletic swoops, had transfixed her.

“I'll arrange a flight for you, if you like.”

“Oh, I don't know…”

“You'll love it! It'll help you get into character. Isn't that what you actresses say?”

“In that case, it's very kind of you.”

“Leave it with me. I'll see what I can do.”

Albert gestured to the pile of promotional material he was carrying. “We were wondering, Herr Generaloberst,” he said unctuously, “if you could spare the time, whether you could come to my office and sign some of these?”

“And,” Clara intervened, “may I ask you for an autograph for a young admirer? A friend of mine named Erich has seen you fly, and he wants to join the Luftwaffe when he's old enough.”

Udet peeled off a postcard from the top of Albert's stack. It was a shot of himself standing next to a Ju 87 Stuka dive-bomber, wearing his cap at a jaunty angle. With a flourish he scrawled on the back,
To Erich! Best wishes, Ernst Udet!

Then he took another postcard, wrote on it, and handed it to Clara with a mock bow. She read,
Fräulein Clara Vine is invited to a party at Pommersche Strasse 4, Berlin-Wilmersdorf. October 18, 8:00 p.m.