Read Flight from Berlin Online
Authors: David John
‘He’ll manage.’
Friedl was watching the suburban lights of Rotterdam passing in the darkness. Denham had spotted at least four cars with German number plates behind them for long stretches of the road but told himself there was nothing odd about that. They were heading east after all.
It was a leaden, dim morning with a sharp wind picking up when they pulled into the forecourt of the Hotel Mertens at 7:00 a.m. on the Thursday. They had more than a day and a half to spare before the handover. Plenty of time to notice if there were any suspicious comings or goings.
Friedl had been eager to accompany him, but on the strictest understanding that no part of the plan involved crossing into the Reich. He seemed determined to share the danger, Denham thought, perhaps to atone for his unwitting role in Denham’s arrest and torture. But for Denham’s part, he was thankful for an extra pair of eyes and ears.
He absolutely did not trust Heydrich. A hundred times in his head he went over that telephone conversation. The man had agreed to the deal too easily. And the more Denham thought about it, the harder he found it to believe that Heydrich would simply comply.
The most exposed and dangerous part of the plan lay in the journey itself. Heydrich’s men might easily have shadows on them as soon as they arrived in the Hook of Holland. If they could do that, then they could ambush the car anywhere along the way and simply take the dossier. True, all they’d get was a bogus dossier, containing a handful of genuine drawings from the bank vault wrapped around a sheaf of worthless papers. But Denham, too, would be cheated if he didn’t get the Liebermanns. So if SD agents did stop the car, the safest thing was to make sure they found no dossier at all, bogus or otherwise. Then there was still at least a chance of holding them to their word.
After a long discussion in Chamberlain Street, Eleanor had come up with a precautionary plan. She would send the bogus dossier by parcel courier from the US embassy in London to arrive at the hotel the same day as Richard.
Then she would take a flight to Berlin.
Richard, preoccupied with practicalities, was slow to absorb this last part.
‘What?’
‘As a precaution,’ Eleanor said, ‘to make sure the Germans are honouring the deal. I want to know for certain that they’ve told the Liebermanns of their impending release . . .’
Denham was incredulous. ‘How? Jakob and Ilse are under house arrest.’
‘I’ll get a message to them . . .’
Denham flatly refused to go along with it.
‘That’s absolutely insane. The Germans know you’re involved in this. The Gestapo probably have a file on you. You publicly humiliated Willi Greiser for Christ’s sake. You can’t just fly into Berlin pretending you’re on a weekend’s vacation.
They’ll be suspicious
, my love.’
‘And if I were there officially, invited by the embassy?’
Denham looked at her blankly.
She reached into her handbag and handed him a folded page of newspaper, which he opened out on the kitchen table, puzzled. It was torn from a week-old
New York Times.
‘FBI closes in on Alvin “Creepy” Karpis . . .’
‘Bottom left,’ she said.
Near the foot of the page was the heading
U.S. AMBASSADOR'S DAUGHTER TO WED SOVIET DIPLOMAT
with a head shot of a laughing Martha Dodd.
‘Good God,’ Richard said, holding the page closer.
Ambassador Dodd, it seemed, had surprised the State Department by announcing his daughter’s engagement to a Mr Boris Vinogradov, thirty-four, press attaché at the Russian embassy, Berlin . . .
‘The intelligence services will have her for breakfast,’ he said.
‘And look who’s got herself invited to the engagement party.’
Eleanor was holding up an embossed invitation with her name inscribed across the top in a girlish hand. ‘May first, US embassy, Berlin. The invitation arrived this morning. I’m staying with the Dodds.’
‘You’re not going.’
Denham spent the rest of the evening trying to talk her out of it, listing every risk she was running. But her mind was set firm.
They went to bed that night without talking. The next morning, when he saw that no words he could ever say would make her change her mind, he insisted she take Rex’s telephone number in Berlin in case something went wrong. ‘But remember he’s a reporter, so his phone may be tapped.’
A
fter a breakfast with Tom over which they assured him they’d be back in a few days from a driving trip, Eleanor said her goodbyes to Denham and Friedl and watched the Morris Oxford depart Chamberlain Street. Then she gave the keys of the house to Nat and left to enact the next part of the plan—the delivery of the genuine List Dossier from the vault of the Zavi-Landau Bank to the hands of David Wyn Evans. After that, she would hurry by taxi to Croydon Airfield for her flight to Berlin.
Denham had telephoned Evans two days before leaving to arrange the details of the handover. At 9:00 a.m. Evans would be waiting in his car outside the bank on Idol Lane while Eleanor retrieved the dossier from the vault. She would hand it to him inside the car.
Denham had described Evans to her, even imitating his Valleys accent. She was warned to expect Bowler Hat Man at the wheel. Partly as a joke for the diffident Welshman, whom he’d grown to like, he’d suggested a double password, more as a dig at Evans’s profession than anything cloak-and-dagger. ‘No password, no dossier,’ Denham said. They agreed on: ‘Will I see you at Biarritz this season?’ to which the response had to be, ‘No, I vacation in Rhyl,’ a North Wales seaside town for which the words
drab
and
tawdry
fell someway short.
A sombre rush-hour crowd on the Tube. She stood swaying among men in black bowlers, drawing their glances when they thought she wasn’t looking. A valise over her shoulder contained an embassy diplomatic pouch where she’d concealed five hundred reichsmarks for any unseen eventuality; between her feet a small, lightish case contained her clothes, and a single gown. It had been a headache to pack so little, but she would be back in three days, all going well. And in time for the coronation on the thirteenth. Her eyes moved between the headlines in the newspapers open around her.
BASQUE TOWN NOW HEAP OF RUINS.
Four hours of bombing
.
GERMAN PLANES ATTACK IN RELAYS
.
Escaping villagers machine-gunned from the air
. Dear God. Why?
A mood of resignation pervaded London. Not surprising when the papers were filled daily with aggression and atrocity.
A smaller piece in the same papers baffled her but was, in its way, as depressing as the bombs. She had to squint as the carriage shook.
LORD LONDONDERRY IN FRIENDSHIP TALKS WITH HITLER.
On another:
LORD LONDONDERRY LEADS ANGLO-GERMAN UNITY TALKS.
The silver key in her purse. Had she and Richard the means to change all this?
She arrived several minutes early at the bank and was obliged to wait ten long minutes to be shown down to the vault. She was back outside on the lane, with the dossier inside her valise, within sixteen minutes.
No sign of a car.
She glanced at her watch. Her flight was at 11:00 a.m. Not much time. It was cold here in the shade. Maybe the lane was too narrow for the car to wait. Yes, that must be it. Following the kerb to the end she turned the corner and gave a small shriek.
A broad man in a bowler hat was walking quickly towards her. He stopped when he saw her, said, ‘This way, please,’ and beckoned with a pair of leather driving gloves.
On a wider street at a right angle to the lane, parked alongside a wall in the sun, was a gleaming automobile with whitewall tyres. A Humber, Richard had said. Bowler Hat Man opened the back door, and she stooped to climb in, lifting her case in front of her.
‘Mrs Eleanor Emerson?’
Inside, a man was offering his hand. Pinkish face, waxed moustache, and a tepid smile that said
fair play.
A folded
Times
on his lap. Tailored chalk-stripe suit, brown suede shoes, and carnation boutonnière. Definitely. Not. Evans.
‘Where is he?’ she said.
A small, surprised laugh. ‘My name’s Channing. Evans asked me to meet you.’
‘Why?’
The man raised his eyebrows.
‘If you must know,’ he said, moving the newspaper to the seat beside him and brushing a pastry crumb from a fold in his trousers, ‘he now works in another department.’
‘Evans was moved?’
The man continued to smile with patience. ‘Yes. Now then, I believe you have with you something that—’
Eleanor glared at him. ‘Will I see you at Biarritz this season?’
A momentary flicker in the eyes, enough to tell her of his bewilderment. ‘I hardly think—’ He stopped.
‘You know, uh, Mr Chilling, I think I’ve left my purse in the bank . . .’ She reached for the door handle and pulled down.
‘Just one minute—’
‘Won’t be long.’
She got out quickly, case first, and pulled the valise after her just as he made an ungentlemanly lunge for it.
Bowler Hat Man turned in the driver’s seat behind the glass partition, but the car was parked against the wall. He lurched across the front seat to the passenger door.
Eleanor ran for it—back down the narrow lane she’d come from, where the car couldn’t follow. Behind her a car door slammed and footsteps came after her—in a real sprint. The valise and case didn’t seem so light anymore. Only a few yards ahead: the corner of the lane. She reached it, hearing the driver’s breath behind her, turned the corner, and saw the busy street at the end. She saw a red double-decker and a policeman go past on a bicycle. She didn’t stop running until she reached the kerb.
A pillar with a golden flame was straight ahead of her. Streetcars whirred past. One stopped to let people off, the clippie calling ‘Monument,’ and she hopped on, sweating and cursing. Looking back to the entrance of Idol Lane, she saw Bowler Hat Man standing still, looking at the tram, trying to find her in the window.
Moments later she got off near London Bridge and hailed a cab.
‘Croydon Airfield’ she said, collapsing low onto the backseat. ‘And quickly, please.’
For a long while she had her face buried in her hands.
That wasn’t my fault
. After a time she found herself staring at the cookie-cutter houses passing on the Brighton Road, gardens neat and colourful, and she marvelled at the twists her life had taken.
An hour and a half later she climbed the steps into the Imperial Airways de Havilland Express to Berlin. She opened the valise on the empty seat beside her as the propellers began to turn, took out the diplomatic bag with the cash, and crammed into it the genuine, complete, bona fide List Dossier.
T
he Hotel Mertens was a three-storey white box with a glassed-over patio restaurant to one side. In its front two poplar trees had curved with a prevailing wind to point west, like index fingers.
Like a warning to turn back,
Denham thought. A gravel forecourt opened directly onto the main road into Venhoven. The only other building nearby was a large filling station where a line of heavy goods trucks waited to refuel as they entered or left Germany. From there the road led straight up to the frontier, where they could see the wooden Dutch customs house with its smoking chimney, and behind that the German border crossing with a black-, red-, and white-striped barrier and damp flags fluttering.
A yawning girl showed them upstairs to their rooms, which were spartan and worn, with a smell of rain and manure blowing in through open windows. Denham told Friedl he was going to get a few hours’ sleep. Then he turned back to the girl, who was about to descend the stairs.
‘Does the hotel have a safe?’
She showed him an ancient strongbox in the cupboard of a small, shabby office next to the restaurant. Quickly he checked the satchel’s contents before depositing it: £50 in sterling in a large wad, and nearly 400 Dutch guilders for any expenses; his passport, vehicle documents, return ferry tickets, and finally Willi Greiser’s
Sippenbuch
, his honorary SS identification. Along with the engraved pocket watch Eleanor had found this item in one of Denham’s jackets on the floor of his ransacked apartment.
He looked again at the languid mug shot—the slightly hooded eyes, the duelling scar down one cheek—and his lips turned up in a half smile. It wasn’t an item he had any use for, and he wasn’t sure why he’d even brought it. But somehow, having it with him signified, preserved, his upper hand.
From outside came the low growl of a motorbike, and moments later the girl was handing him a parcel from London. With perfect timing, the bogus dossier had arrived.
‘J
ust imagine,’ Martha said with a smirk, ‘having to explain the affairs of my poor heart to Washington, who naturally suspect
Bolshevik
infiltration
.’ She linked her arm in Eleanor’s. ‘No, Daddy wasn’t best pleased. Mother’s putting her brave face on it, though.’
She was wearing a smart dun-coloured hat with a long feather poking from the top, which, when she turned her head, occasionally caught Eleanor right under the nose. They were watching Martha’s fiancé proffering a peanut to a Barbary sheep.
‘Isn’t he divine?’ She had barely contained the squeal in her voice since meeting Eleanor at the airport.
‘He’s certainly outgoing,’ Eleanor said with a sporting nod of her head.
The sheep turned its nose away and scampered up the crag to join the rest of its ginger flock.
‘I hear all what you say,’ the man said, turning to them and popping the peanut into his mouth. He was tall, brown-haired, and boyish, with Tartar eyes, broad cheeks faintly pitted, and a gap-tooth smile that had a certain charm. He wore a suit of some indeterminate fabric.
‘I’m also Boris’s English teacher,’ Martha said, pinching him.
‘Yes, and when are you going to Moscow for learning Russian? Then I am teaching you lesson.’ He gave a loud laugh and put an arm around both of them. Eleanor caught a sweet hint of alcohol on his breath.