Mary took out her glasses from her handbag and the world swam back into focus. She could carry on breaking her heart over Rupert as long as she liked, but it would never do her any good. She might as well concentrate on breaking stories instead.
The sky could not be bluer. It was as though the weather itself had received orders from some newly formed Ministry of Meteorological Events. It was unnaturally sunny for April. A clever journalist with an eye on promotion had even come up with a name for it: Führerweather. The newspapers were full of congratulations for Hitler having reached the grand age of forty-four. Lapels everywhere were spattered with swastikas. The Brandenburger Tor was wrapped up like a Christmas present in scarlet ribbons, and school children from out of town who had been woken before dawn for the occasion, larked and yawned in the streets.
Clara had to turn out for the parade. It would have looked strange if she didn’t. The whole city was streaked with billowing red flags, and in the shops the Führer’s photograph was displayed, wreathed in ribbons or studded with crimson carnations. The
Graf Zeppelin
, a long, hydrogen-filled airship, sailed like a great silver salmon above the trees, the sun glinting off its sides. All this, she thought, the banners and the formations and the flags, were no more substantial than the struts and props you saw at the Ufa studios. They were merely flimsy, colourful surfaces, concealing hard, gritty rubble underneath.
As she made her way towards Mitte the noise was extraordinary. Church bells were ringing and horses clattering. A new linden tree had been planted to mark the occasion and stalls had been set up where people could donate towards Hitler’s birthday. And all this without the star himself. Hitler was in Bavaria, opening the first of the prestigious Napola academies, the schools Erich wanted to attend, if his intellect proved enough to make up for his asthmatic chest.
A stream of schoolchildren passed her, their faces alight with excitement as they were guided to a specially reserved place at the front of the crowd. Clara thought of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, all those laughing children dancing to the irresistible tune of the piper, and following him to their uncertain fate.
She took up a place behind a barrier on the Siegesallee where the crowd was five deep. Beside her, boys twined like ivy around a bronze Prussian on horseback, so only his helmeted head peered above the crowd, gazing out at the parade. Just about everyone was there; goose-stepping soldiers and the Hitler Youth with spades slung over their shoulders, and finally, way behind them, the motorcade of Nazi officials.
From the east it came, like a flutter of breeze in the trees. A low sound at first, but when the crowd saw the first cars in the distance, a roar went up like a great murmuring wind and the
Heil Hitler
s began. The faces of soldiers lining the street turned like the leaves of a book as the motorcade passed. A little boy in front of Clara, dressed in army uniform, put his fingers in his ears to stop the noise, but his father gently moved them away.
That morning, Frau Lehmann had insisted they listen to what Doktor Goebbels had to say about the Führer’s birthday.
‘Normally the great men that we admire from a distance lose their magic when one knows them well. With Hitler the opposite is true. The longer one knows him, the more one admires him, and the more one is ready to give oneself fully to his cause.’
Fräulein Viktor’s knitting had fallen to her lap as she listened with rapt attention. Clara had not dared to meet the eyes of Professor Hahn.
Once the parade had passed and the crowds began to disperse she went and sat in a café reading the
Morgenpost
. A telegram of congratulations for the Führer had been sent from Rome, assuring him of “unflinching co-operation” from the Vatican. More than four thousand cities had awarded Hitler honorary citizenship. Clara tried to concentrate on the news but her eyes kept sliding off the page. Helga’s death had left her not just scared, but stunned. And the only person who had spoken of it was Goebbels himself.
Goebbels. The meeting with him the previous evening had filled her with a fresh terror. What did he mean by his request to “keep an eye” on his wife? How could she possibly fulfil that? Could she really manage to act like a double agent in the Goebbels’ marriage, all the while reporting to Leo? Such a prospect would surely test her acting skills to the utmost. Besides, she didn’t need reminding, this was the man who had had her friend killed. And who would not hesitate to kill again. Until Helga’s death the idea that she might be risking her life had never seemed real to her. Now she wished she had accepted the pistol Leo had offered her.
She became aware of a man watching her. He sat two tables to her left, between her and the door, and was ostensibly reading a newspaper but in fact stealing frequent glances in her direction. He was in his fifties, a creased, anonymous-looking character with steel-grey hair cropped close to the skull, and a hat beside him on the seat. Worn shoes, but neatly pressed trousers. Shabby, yet clean. Either he was a slow reader or he was especially fascinated by the page of foreign news in front of him. He was no longer taking sips from his cup, plainly suggesting that he had finished his coffee long ago.
Clara was immediately alert. She wondered if there was a back way out of the place but apart from a single doorway to a half-glimpsed kitchen, it was clear that the café considered itself too small to provide toilet facilities for its customers. She had instinctively chosen the table furthest from the front window, right at the back of the café, but that meant if she wanted to leave she would have to walk right past him, giving him the advantage of observing the direction she took and following at his own pace. For twenty minutes she sat it out, till her own coffee was just a grainy, brown puddle at the bottom of the cup, willing him to leave, but noticing that his glances had become more frequent and less disguised. She was about to get up when he stood himself and approached her, proffering a packet of cigarettes.
‘I saw you were alone.’
His voice was hesitant and eager, his eyes had all the pathos of the lonely pick-up. Instantly she perceived that his interest in her was not as a shadow but as a solitary man, hoping to have found a fellow loner.
‘I wondered, would you care for another coffee, or a drink perhaps?’
‘Oh, I’m sorry. I have to leave.’
Folding some notes beneath the saucer, she stepped quickly out into the street, almost laughing with relief, and remembered Leo’s remark:
‘A girl like you must get used to being looked at.’
It was true. The sensation of men’s eyes on her, attracted by her face first, then running over her breasts or her legs, was perfectly normal to her. It was the same for most women. No matter how professional or polished the man, a woman could tell in a split second when he was assessing her looks. Yet how far off that kind of innocent observation seemed now.
She moved cafés and sat until five o’clock, overdosing on caffeine and toying with a
Mokke
cake she couldn’t eat, until she decided it was time.
Magda had been right. It was a good day to choose. It couldn’t be better. Though it was early evening, the streets were still thronged and busy, with crowds jostling the streets and strolling through the parks, enjoying their day out. The sun had gone and an edge of chill had entered the air, mingling with the scent of wurst and beer and a trail of cordite from the celebratory fireworks.
Clara stood opposite the Friedrichstrasse station, waited until the conductor of the 177 tram had rung the bell then jumped into the back carriage. A stop later she entered the U-Bahn, catching a train to Leipziger Strasse, from which she emerged straight into the front door of Wertheim’s. The department store, hung with plate glass and mirrors, was ideal for her purposes. Each time she passed a mirror she studied the reflection of the faces among the shoppers for any she recognized. It was nearly closing time but the shop was still packed with customers taking advantage of the day out to see the country’s biggest department store. She took the escalator up to the second floor, stepped off and came down the opposite side immediately, allowing her to glance at the people passing her on the way up. There was no sign of a shadow. There was a moment when she noticed that a trout-faced middle-aged woman who she had seen on the ground floor buying perfume appeared alongside her at the gloves on the first floor. She got into a dispute with the assistant, which was exactly what Clara would have done if she had been the shadow, drawing attention to herself and behaving atypically because she had been spotted. For safety’s sake, Clara slipped into a door marked ‘Staff Only’. Pausing to remove her cherry beret and bright cotton scarf, she walked along a corridor and down a flight of concrete steps, emerging in the china and glass department. Leaving the store she crossed Potsdamer Platz to Stresemannstrasse and entered the Haus Vaterland.
The Kempinski Haus Vaterland was five towering storeys of entertainment beneath a brilliantly lit dome, the idea behind it being spelt out in large neon letters on the frontage: “The World in One House”. Clara remembered Helga talking about it. It was a kind of world tour under one roof with twelve international restaurants catering for up to six thousand diners at any one time. Clara had thought it sounded pretty dreadful then, but it suited her purpose now. And it was gratifyingly busy. Passing the Spanish bodega, the Turkish bar and the Viennese café she made for the first-floor Rhine Terrace, a cavernous hall set with tables where murals depicted a Rhine landscape complete with castles and the Lorelei rock. From the sound alone, she knew she was in luck. The particular draw of the Rhine Terrace was that once an hour the lighting was dimmed and a thunderstorm was simulated. Lightning flashed, thunder rumbled and artificial rain spattered down on the landscape, misting the nearest diners to their evident delight. As Clara entered, the weather show had just begun. She stopped a moment and looked about her. All eyes were on the far end of the hall. No one was looking at her. Weaving her way through the tables, she slipped into the ladies’ lavatory, locked herself in a cubicle and removed the blonde wig from the studio which she had brought in her satchel. Fixing it, she smiled at herself in the mirror, seeing a lighter, gayer self emerge, then took out a navy soft-brimmed felt hat and a gabardine which she had carried rolled up, covered herself up and became immediately less conspicuous. When she came out she checked the faces of those around her, and saw nothing but entranced diners, watching the display and enjoying the sensation of having the whole world at their feet.
She turned right and walked down the street to the Anhalter Bahnhof, took the U-Bahn one stop, then got off quickly and changed carriages, choosing a seat next to a fat woman, leaning in to her slightly, inhaling the greasy air of cooking that arose from her. Clara felt intensely in control of herself, keeping her expression deadpan, every movement deliberately relaxed. She crossed her legs and an old man seated opposite caught her eye then looked away. Both of them noticed the small swastika flag lying crumpled on the floor of the carriage, but neither of them picked it up. She travelled a further two stops, watching the lights reflected in the window veer towards them and slide away, before alighting at Steglitz.
Steglitz-Rathaus station was almost deserted apart from a youngish man smoking in the yellow-tiled waiting room. It was as though everyone in the locality had gone into the centre to watch the festivities and decided to make an evening of it. Turning out of the station, she passed into a tree-lined street. With the thrum of traffic heading towards the city centre behind her, the quiet was deep and domestic. She heard a mother calling children in to bed, and from another house a sweet female voice issued from a wireless singing. She came to a road lined with shops. One was boarded up, the streetlamp glinting on a tidy rubble of broken glass, and next to it were the lighted, steamy windows of a restaurant, the Bar Axel. A celebration of some kind was underway. The light spilt around the animated figures like players on a set, yet it was she, in the dusk, who felt the intense concentration, the heightened alertness of an actor on a stage.
A Persian cat stalked by on a wall, its feathery tail aloft. The occasional car passed, but from what she could tell no vehicle followed her. She checked each parked car for occupants, but saw none. Look for any unusual activity, Leo had told her. She watched for anyone behaving aimlessly, or pretending interest in shop windows, who might look away if she caught their eye. But there was no one. She was just thinking that she was being absurdly cautious, and priding herself on the thoroughness of her route, when she caught the flicker of a figure a few yards behind.
Leo had told her what to do. ‘Stop a while. See if he stops too. Cross the road.’
So she stopped and made to look into a shop front, and when she glanced behind she saw nothing.
She was being hypersensitive, she told herself. She had followed every step of Leo’s lesson and had no reason at all to suppose that she was being tailed. She carried on as the shops gave way to apartment buildings and the pavement darkened in the intervals between the street lamps. Two blocks on a ticking sound approached from behind and she looked into the side of a gleaming car to see a boy wheeling a bicycle coming past her. Though her nerves were jangling she forced herself to keep in steady step and felt glad for the anonymous gaberdine and the soft-brimmed hat, which shaded half her face.
She carried on for half a block, but moments later she heard a faint, metallic clatter. She had trodden on a drain cover a few moments before and her heel had made that very sound. This time, in the reflection of a window she saw him, a man in a trench coat, pale hat, and newspaper rolled up in one pocket. A pale tie and dark suit trousers. There was no doubt about it. She was being followed. A kick of nerves assaulted her but she forced herself on. Though she managed to keep herself from trembling, fear ran through her like electricity snaking along a wire.