Read Flight from Berlin Online
Authors: David John
‘I’ll stop there,’ Eleanor said, seeing a rest stop up ahead with a café and a gas station.
They stretched their legs while the attendant filled the tank, before getting in the line for the washroom just ahead of a coach full of Strength Through Joy vacationers. Then, while Martha went to buy some sweet rolls, Eleanor found a telephone booth in the gas station, got a stack of pfennigs ready, and placed a call to Berlin.
Richard had told her to make this call if she had a problem. Well, she had a problem all right. And this was the second time she’d tried the number.
‘Eleanor? My goodness.’
Rex was surprised to hear her voice—or as surprised as a reserved Brit could sound—but she interrupted before he asked too many questions. ‘I need to ask a favour of you . . .’
‘Is something wrong?’ A noise of typewriters in the background.
‘It really is a lot to ask . . .’
‘Try me.’
She hesitated, then said, ‘Could you come to Frankfurt by six p.m. this evening?’
T
en minutes later they’d rejoined the autobahn and were nudging the limit of the Hanomag’s unimpressive top speed when Martha shouted: ‘There they are!’
About a hundred yards ahead the dark grey BMW with the SS number plates was pulled over to the side of the road. The red-faced, porcine man was in his shirtsleeves, crouching next to the back wheel with the jack, and trying to heave a blown rear tyre away from the axle, while the SS driver stood behind him, holding a spanner. She could see Jakob’s and Ilse’s heads in the car’s back window as she passed.
‘Well done, Jakob,’ Eleanor said, watching in her rearview mirror. ‘Now, how did you manage that?’
T
he keening note of the steam whistle woke him as the train passed into a tunnel. He rubbed his eyes, confused for a minute. The old woman was still there, reading. And a man with a young boy holding a model glider now sat opposite, watching him. Maybe he’d slept through the stop at Bonn. The satchel and newspaper were still on his lap.
He got up to use the lavatory, and in the next-door compartment saw that Friedl was not in his seat. On the way back to his own compartment, he saw the carriage door at the end of the corridor open, and a black uniform with belt and holster stepped through, followed by another. Even from forty feet away he could see the diamond-shaped SD flash on their sleeves. The first man was large with a broken nose, and looked as though he could kill a man with his hands. He slid open the nearest compartment door and Denham heard him ask the occupants for their documents.
Beads of cold sweat broke out on Denham’s brow. He returned to his seat and picked up his paper.
What to do?
It was safer to jump off the train than show them his passport.
They had just entered the compartment next to his.
Stay calm. Completely calm
.
A minute later his compartment door slid open, and the sound of the train picking up speed came in. The men stepped straight up to him, ignoring the old lady, the man, and the boy. ‘
Mein Herr? Ihren Ausweis bitte
.’
Denham reached into the satchel at his feet, without looking up from an article about a school for brides newly opened in Düsseldorf, and handed over the
Sippenbuch
with a slightly careless flick.
If you must.
I’m done for,
he thought. I am completely done for. I don’t look like Willi Greiser. I don’t even have a scar—
But of course, he did have a scar curving down his right cheek, from his eye almost to the corner of his mouth.
The SD man examined the document and Denham felt his gaze like heat. Fleeting shadows passed over his newspaper as the train sped along a tree-lined embankment. He kept his eyes on the article. Seconds passed, and the print began to swirl before his eyes.
‘
Danke, Herr Standartenführer
,’ the man said at last, handing it back with a click of his heels.
‘Heil Hitler!’ Denham said, with a casual raised palm. He resumed reading with his heart hammering in his ears.
D
enham hopped off the train before it had come to a full halt at Frankfurt main station and walked quickly beneath the high, iron-latticed roof to the barrier. Where in God’s name was Friedl? After the appearance of those two SD he hadn’t seen him again.
He passed the train guards without arousing suspicion and spent a minute glancing around the busy concourse, looking at faces. He waited, watching the passengers emerging from the train he’d just arrived on. Still no sign of him. Denham’s mind began to reel through every dire possibility. The young man had no papers to bluff with, nothing.
Too dangerous to stand around. He would have to make a decision.
He was about to turn and leave the station when he saw a troop of five Brownshirts coming down the platform from the train, the last passengers. They were holding Friedl, had him by both arms, and were pushing him along. Hair a mess; buttons undone. He was dragging his feet, as if barely conscious. Denham could only watch, appalled. The bastards were laughing.
But something was not as it seemed. Now Friedl was laughing, too, talking in a boisterous voice. One of the men seemed to be using Friedl’s arm to steady himself. They shambled towards the barrier howling ‘Die Wacht am Rhein,’ an awful tune at the best of times
.
Friedl spotted Denham, flashed him a look of profound relief, then bid a lengthy and rowdy farewell to his new friends, embracing them.
‘What the hell happened?’ Denham said.
‘Don’t blame me,’ Friedl said, breathing beer into his face. ‘Someone passed along the train. Said the police were checking the men’s papers, so I moved . . .’ They emerged from the station arches and onto the cobbled open forecourt. ‘You,’ he said, pointing at Denham and swaying, ‘were asleep in a newspaper. Lucky for me those gorillas were in the restaurant car with no money for beers . . .’
Denham hailed a taxi. ‘You stink like the Schultheiss Brewery.’
Friedl gave a long, deep belch. ‘That’s method acting.’
Denham almost laughed. ‘Meet me in the lobby of the Frankfurter Hof in half an hour,’ he said. ‘I’m going to try getting a room. With luck we can have something to eat, take a bath, and get some sleep,’ he said, stepping into the cab. ‘Then we wait for Eleanor.’
T
he Frankfurter Hof, an ornate relic from the Second Reich, was a palatial edifice on the Kaiserplatz. The impression it gave was of a dowager marchioness overdressed for a royal wedding. The desk manager apologised, and hoped Denham would understand, because unfortunately the hotel was fully booked for the annual Hessian Vintners’ Guild conference being held today, and with guests departing on tomorrow’s flight of the
Hindenburg
to New York. But Denham smiled, explained that he was Willi Greiser, the press chief, and that he felt sure there was something the manager could do. A blink of the man’s eyes, and his voice changed to a smoother gear. As luck would have it,
mein Herr
, there had been a single cancellation. Denham paid in advance and was shown to a pilastered room with gilded claw-and-ball chairs, a divan, and heavy, gold-brocaded curtains. The bed could have been designed for a courtesan of Napoleon III, and it was exceedingly comfortable.
Denham found Friedl sprawled over a brocatelle sofa in the lobby with his boots up, and ushered him up the stairs to the room, hoping nobody had noticed the state he was in. In any smart hotel in the world, he thought, they’d have asked him to leave, but the brown uniform was licence for the vilest behaviour; and no one would dare say a thing.
Denham ordered lunch from room service and had a bath in the enormous copper tub, and soon they were both in a deep sleep, with Friedl on the divan.
They were awoken some hours later by the telephone ringing on the marble dressing table.
‘Herr Willi Greiser?’ said a voice of smooth obsequy.
Who?
Sleep had disoriented him.
‘This is the manager. Forgive me, but word has got out that you’re a guest of ours, and the editor of the
Frankfurter Zeitung
is in the lobby, wishing to pay his respects to the press chief.’
‘Sorry, I’m busy,’ Denham mumbled, reconnecting his brain. He was about to hang up, but then said, ‘but you can tell him from me that today’s piece on the English coronation had two factual inaccuracies, and it wasn’t clear what Fat Hermann’s Heinkels were doing over northern Spain.’
‘Very well, sir.’
‘It’s nearly six p.m.,’ Friedl said.
They dressed in a hurry and descended the stairs to the grand lobby, crowded and noisy with knots of high-spirited guests in dinner jackets—the Hessian Vintners come for their annual gala dinner. From his vantage point on the stairs, Denham scanned the room, looking for the women.
‘There,’
Friedl said, not daring to point. ‘At the door.’
The short figure of Martha Dodd had just entered through the main doors in a raincoat and a pair of dark glasses. Eleanor followed her in and began casting her eyes around.
Denham led Friedl through the crowd of dinner jackets towards the doors and was halfway across when he felt a tap on his elbow. He turned to see the hotel manager smiling greasily and bowing with eyes closed. Behind him stood a small sandy-haired fellow in a herringbone tweed suit. Pouched cheeks and a pair of round, tortoiseshell eyeglasses made him look like a book-loving beaver.
‘Herr Greiser, my apologies,’ said the manager. ‘Perhaps now that you’re free you might spare a moment for Herr Joost, the editor of our local
Frankfurter—
’
‘I fear not,’ Denham said, pulling Friedl after him. ‘I’m on my way out.’
‘That’s not Willi Greiser,’ the editor exclaimed, in a voice firmer than Denham would have given him credit for.
‘Let’s go,’ he said to Martha and Eleanor without stopping to greet them.
‘Car’s outside,’ Eleanor said, catching the look on his face.
‘Ah, just one moment, sir . . . ,’ came the hotel manager’s voice.
Two seconds later the four of them were through the doors, down the steps, and running along the Kaiserplatz towards the Hanomag. Martha started the engine, and they screeched into the Saturday night traffic on Kaiserstrasse.
‘Couldn’t pay your bar check?’ Eleanor said, squeezing Denham’s hand from the front seat. He leaned over and kissed her. ‘Thank God you’re here.’ She started laughing with nerves and relief. ‘I was worried sick, thinking of you at the border.’
‘The telegram warned us in time,’ said Denham.
‘About two seconds in time,’ Friedl added.
‘Don’t mind me,’ Martha said in a petulant singsong. ‘I’m just a chauffeur without a clue where I’m going. And I don’t think we’ve had the pleasure, young man,’ she added in German.
Denham introduced Friedl, who said, ‘Good evening,’ in English. He was holding his head now, the drink catching up with him.
Eleanor read out the address of the Klinik Pfanmüller again and while Martha stopped at a flower stall to ask directions, explained to Denham how they’d followed an SS car carrying Jakob and Ilse from Berlin, and how it was en route to Basel with a stop-off at Frankfurt, where she was hoping to intercept it. A puncture on the autobahn had, Eleanor hoped, put the car half an hour or so behind the Hanomag.
Denham and Friedl met each other’s look in the backseat.
‘What’s the plan?’ Denham said.
Eleanor outlined what she had in mind, right up to the part where Dr Eckener came into it.
‘Eckener?’ Denham’s face dropped into his hands as he struggled to digest what she’d told him. ‘Darling, forgive me, but that’s not a plan,’ he said. ‘It’s a Keystone Kops movie. Even if we can get the Liebermanns away from the SS, how are seven people going to fit in this Hanomag?’
Eleanor flared. ‘For
one thing
I hadn’t figured on you two turning up in Germany, and if you think you can come up with something better, you just go right ahead.’
Denham sighed and apologised. ‘Well, at least we don’t have to worry about fooling anyone with a bogus dossier now.’
Something in the way Eleanor’s eyes closed and her mouth went rigid told him there was more.
She recounted what had happened outside the bank in London.
Martha was still outside, receiving the flower seller’s directions to the sanatorium. The Hanomag’s doors were closed, but over the noise of the traffic and the voices of Saturday evening revellers on the sidewalks, she heard Denham’s voice.
‘You brought it
back to Germany
?’
‘Oh my God,’ Friedl said.
By the time Martha got back into the car the shouting had transformed to silence.
‘All right . . . ,’ Denham said. ‘It wasn’t your fault. We need to think.’
‘I was about to tell you,’ Eleanor said with acid coolness, ‘that I telephoned Rex. He couldn’t get a flight here in time for six p.m., so he’s meeting us at the sanatorium at seven. That’s in less than half an hour. We give him the dossier. It’s fine, Richard. It’ll be in safe hands in half an hour. He can take it straight to the British embassy . . . Then we find Hannah.’
T
he Klinik Pfanmüller was located just off Frankfurt’s millionaires’ row, a lush, tree-lined street in Westend, near the botanical gardens. Dusk was gathering as the Hanomag stopped before the gated driveway. They had driven along the approach slowly enough to see that neither Rex nor any car was waiting in the street outside.
A light came on in the guardhouse and a man emerged—round eyeglasses, veteran’s medal—and peered at the car. Friedl stepped out. The brown uniform had its transforming effect—a very slight change in the set of the man’s mouth, from officious to obsequious.
‘Tell me, has an English reporter visited?’ Friedl said.
A moment of alarm behind the eyeglasses. ‘I don’t know if he was a reporter, Herr Sturmführer.’
‘You keep a register?’