Midnight in Berlin (18 page)

“A very good question,” said Macrae, and he looked across the room, hoping to see someone he knew, so that he could end the conversation. He wished Halliday had not left so early.

And there she was at the bar, smoking a cigarette in a holder. Ruth the restaurant manager. Except she wasn't the restaurant manager. And her name probably wasn't Ruth. She was wearing a red dress rather than the dove-grey uniform of the Salon's waitresses.

“Well?” said Shirer.

Macrae turned back.

“It's impossible to say, but if you want my private and candid opinion, only if the government falls in a confidence vote in the House of Commons will there be a change in the current policy towards Germany. The prime minister has staked his career and his future reputation on the belief that Hitler will listen to reason, that a deal can be done, that in the final analysis the Führer will not provoke a wider war. Chamberlain has his party and the country behind him on this.”

“What I thought,” said Shirer. “OK, fair enough. All right, my turn.”

Macrae turned to scan the room again. Ruth, or whatever her name was, was talking to a man at the bar. She seemed bored and blew a smoke ring into the air. The man offered her a drink, snapping his fingers at the woman behind the bar. She shook her head.

“All the girls here are the same, are they?” asked Macrae.

“Yes,” said Shirer. “It's the oldest story in the world, isn't it? Love for sale. Now, are you listening?”

Macrae nodded and bent his head while the correspondent launched into a long explanation of how the army dealt with the former corporal who had become its commander-in-chief.

The Führer would issue an order, usually of an urgent and highly impractical nature, Shirer said. The generals would pass the order on to the planning staff and they would in turn send it to technical teams. Within days, a complex document would be laid before Hitler, who would characteristically launch into a tirade about the incompetence of the military. Then he would issue a revised directive, and so the process went on until the army got a plan that was feasible and very roughly to their liking.

Macrae was listening while keeping an eye on the bar. The man had left her and she was looking over the room. She was looking straight at him. She frowned, then smiled and slid off the stool. Macrae faced Shirer.

“Are you telling me that the generals are going to turn Hitler down?”

“They don't want a wider invasion, that's for sure.”

“Doesn't answer the question.”

“Put it this way. There's going to be a big kick-back in the army if the Führer decides to smash Czechoslovakia and take the whole kit and caboodle.” Shirer raised his hand, signalling for the bill. “Let's just keep in touch. If you hear anything from the London end I would be grateful, strictly between us, of course.”

A waitress brought the bill It wasn't Ruth, and Macrae couldn't see her anywhere. Shirer glanced at the bill, laid a large number of reichsmarks on the platter and struggled into his coat. He reached for the bill, leaving the money on the table.

“You coming?” he said.

“I think I'll stay for a nightcap,” said Macrae.

“Really?” said Shirer, surprised and smiling. “Well, well, well. And I thought butter wouldn't melt in your mouth. Take care.” And he was gone.

Macrae sat down and picked up the menu.

“Coffee?” she said, standing there, having materialised, so it seemed to Macrae, out of thin air.

“Thanks – and maybe a brandy.”

“And may I join you?”

“Are you allowed to?”

“That's the whole point of this place,” she said, and sat down. She looked over at the bar, nodding twice, and, by a process that Macrae could not understand, a tray with coffee and two glasses of brandy was swiftly delivered to the table.

“What a surprise,” he said, raising the glass, “to find that nice young woman I met at the Adlon, the woman called Ruth who said she was a restaurant manager, the woman who suddenly appeared by my side in the park, to find out she works here in …”

“Did you find out about Joseph?”

“Why would I bother? Everything you told me was a lie.”

“I told you I worked here. I told you my brother was in a camp. Those aren't lies. And my name here is Sara, by the way.”

“Ruth yesterday, Sara today – what will it be tomorrow?”

“Who are you to talk? You lied to me, didn't you? You think this is what I want to do? I do it because I am safe here. They can't touch me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I'm a Jewish whore in a Nazi bordello.”

She sighed and lit another cigarette. Macrae wanted another drink. He also wanted a cigarette. He had tried to give up two years earlier but occasionally yielded to temptation.

“I thought you might come in one day,” she said. “Most of the attachés do.”

“And they sleep with the girls, do they?”

She shrugged. “Not necessarily. But a lot of them do. This is where power comes to play. There's danger in the air here. Men like that; they like the taste of adrenalin, don't they?”

“I think I'd better leave,” he said, pushing back his chair.

“Please don't go.”

Once outside, he leant back against the wall of the club, breathing in cool night air. He badly needed that cigarette. She was beautiful, she was in trouble and she was Jewish. Everything about her told him she was telling the truth. And her brother Joseph Sternschein was in a camp – was that true too? It would not be easy to find out.

The Gestapo kept meticulous records of certain categories of those who fell into their clutches: communists, saboteurs, sexual deviants and political opponents were all documented by name and address and usually with a headshot photograph, but the sheer number of Jews being arrested at any one time and sent to camps meant that names were often superseded as a means of identification by a file number and the date and place of arrest.

He walked quickly away from the Salon, turned off the well-lit main avenue and took a footpath into the darkness of the Tiergarten. It was nearing midnight, but he did not feel tired. The brandy had invigorated him, although he knew there would be a price to pay in the morning. If Primrose was home she would be asleep. He needed a walk to clear his head and think. The headlights of cars driving around the Siegessäule roundabout threw a Catherine wheel of lights into the woods. He could just see the path and walked slowly.

Above the faint hum of traffic he heard the sound of hurrying footsteps. He stopped and listened. The clip-clop of steps was coming down the path he had just walked. He
reached for the door key in his pocket, a heavy old-fashioned object whose jagged teeth would make a useful weapon.

The footsteps were getting closer and louder, light, fast-moving steps that spoke of urgency, or perhaps hostility. He leant back against the trunk of a tree and peered down the path. A figure took shape in the darkness wearing a flowing cape with the hood pulled over the head. He took the key from his pocket. The Nazis had a tight grip on almost every aspect of life in Berlin but they had not eliminated street crime, especially in the darkness of the Tiergarten at night.

The figure stopped in front him, breathing heavily. Macrae raised the key to show the stranger he had a means of defence.

The figure pushed back the hood, showing a tumble of dark hair. “I am sorry. I didn't mean to alarm you,” she said.

He put the key back in his pocket.

“What are you doing here? Why are you following me?”

She fished a cigarette from her bag and offered one to him. He took it gratefully. She snapped open a lighter and in the light of the flame her face seemed different. The young actress in the Salon was now a woman who looked tired, anxious and older than her years.

“I wanted to talk to you.”

“Maybe I don't want to talk to you.”

“You don't trust me? You're right. These days no one trusts anyone. Especially in there.” She nodded in the direction of the Salon.

He drew on the cigarette, wondering how he had ever even thought of giving up. She stepped off the path and joined him under the tree.

“I've told you: I can help you,” she said.

“I doubt it,” he said, wondering why he didn't just say goodnight and walk away.

“I have information.”

“What sort of information?”

“You would be amazed what goes on in those rooms. They film and tape everything.”

“What's the point?”

“Blomberg and Fritsch, remember? That's the point.”

He inhaled deeply, almost his first cigarette in two years. He knew it would not be his last. Blomberg had fallen from grace through a stupid marriage. General Fritsch was different. He was a tough career officer, known to have stood up to Hitler, especially at one long meeting in the Reich Chancellery back in November 1937 when the Führer had revealed plans to take the Reich to war. Fritsch had argued back very convincingly and Hitler had grudgingly retreated.

But from then on Fritsch was a marked man. Now he was gone, supposedly through some sexual scandal arranged by Heydrich. Maybe Fritsch had been compromised in the Salon. Maybe Sara had been the bait. Maybe everything she had told him had been a lie.

“Why was your brother arrested?” he asked.

“Silly stuff, just leaflets.”

“For the Communist Party?”

“No, just leaflets denouncing the Nazis, calling for justice for those detained, asking Western powers to intervene.”

“How did they catch him?”

“Usual thing. An informer, someone he trusted. They tortured her, of course.”

“‘Her'?”

“It was his girlfriend.”

“Oh,” he said.

She had moved closer. The glowing ends of their cigarettes made twin tracks of light in the darkness. He could smell her perfume, a scent of citrus, something he had not noticed in the club.

“Do you think you can do it?” she said.

“Find out about your brother?”

“Yes.”

“I'm a diplomat. It would be beyond my duties and in breach of protocol – interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign state.”

She suddenly laughed. “You think I'm wearing a microphone, don't you? You think this is a trap.”

“I didn't say that.”

“Let me show you.”

He watched bemused as she let her cape fall to the ground. She unzipped her dress and stepped out of it, the action taking no more than a moment. She was wearing a black brassiere and panties.

“Get dressed,” he said. “This is not necessary.”

“It
is
necessary,” she hissed. “Because this is exactly what they would do. I have told you – they film and tape everything in that club. Why wouldn't they send me here to do the same to you? They don't like you, did you know that? They have you on a file.”

Macrae stiffened. She was probably right.

“How do you know that?” he said.

“I've told you, I hear a lot in that place. You need proof that I'm not working for them tonight?”

She unhooked her brassiere and let it drop to her feet. The occasional flash of headlights in the darkness revealed her breasts, full and pale like misty moons in the darkness. She was wearing only a suspender belt and black stockings.

“That's enough,” he said. “Get dressed.”

“Don't be stupid,” she said, and slipped out of her panties.

“This is where we hide the mikes – here,” she placed her hand on a triangular tangle of thick pubic hair. “They have not invented one yet that works inside – sorry, am I shocking you?”

She stood there in the darkness, naked but for her stockings, and pirouetted slowly, hands raised above her head. All the time distant headlights sliced through the darkness, throwing spears of light onto the contours of pale skin and strands of dark hair.

“You see. I'm clean,” she said.

“Put your clothes back on,” he said again.

“First tell me you believe me.”

“I don't believe you've been sent here to trap me, if that's what you're asking.”

She got dressed much more slowly than she had undressed. He felt his heart beating faster. His mouth was dry. He needed another drink. She pulled her dress over a full-figured body that had been naked before him only a minute ago, turning her back in false modesty.

This had been planned; it was deliberate; he was being set up. He looked into the shadowy outline of the surrounding trees, half expecting a lurking figure to explode from the darkness with a camera and flashbulb.

Once dressed, she turned, smoothed her dress and ran fingers through her hair.

“It's not much to ask, is it? Will you try?”

He sighed. He was tired, he was drunk and he would try to make sense of this midnight melodrama later, much later.

“All right,” he said.

“Thank you,” she said, and stepped forward to kiss him. He turned his head, feeling the feathery brush of her lips on his cheek. He turned his head towards her. Suddenly their lips met lightly, a soft touch in the darkness. She stepped back, fished in her bag, taking out a pack of cigarettes. She lit one and inhaled deeply. Then she put it between his lips, a gesture so unexpected that he opened his mouth and drew on the cigarette without thinking. She lit her own and rested
against the tree beside him. He felt her hand take his and squeeze it.

They stayed there for a moment, a minute, an hour, he couldn't tell; then he saw her cigarette end flying into the night.

“I must go,” she said, and turned and walked away into the darkness without another word.

He watched the cloaked figure vanish into the night. He looked at his watch. It was midnight. He levered himself away from the tree unsteadily and walked back to the house.

Primrose was asleep when he got back, curled up on her side of the bed, one hand still holding an open book. He took it from her and glanced at the title.
Goodbye to Berlin
by Christopher Isherwood. He laid it on the bedside table, went to the bathroom and washed his face. In the kitchen he filled a tumbler of water from the tap and drank thirstily. The kitchen was spotless and exactly as the maid had left it that morning. There were no dishes drying in the rack by the sink. No one had cooked in there that night. Primrose had been out to dinner again.