Authors: Alex Gerlis
Henry understood. He would be very generous, he
assured the shopkeeper.
Five minutes later he left the shop, unable to look
at the people waiting until four before they could enter. The queue seemed to
have grown since he had gone in.
Within ten minutes he was knocking gently at the door
of the white house on the corner of
Arno-Holz Strasse. The interior of
the house was dark and he could not hear a sound. He waited a minute and then
knocked again. A lady being pulled along by two yapping dogs watched him
carefully as she passed by. Still no reply. He knocked once more. It was now
past midday and he was beginning to worry. He became aware of a slight movement
to his right, where the curtains were drawn on the window of the front room. A
few seconds later, he heard Rosa’s worried voice from behind the door.
‘Who is it please?’
‘It’s me, Henri!’ The door opened quickly and a hand
poked out, gesturing for him to enter.
Quickly
.
Since he’d begun to formulate this plan, he had
imagined that Rosa would be overwhelmed with gratitude to see him. She would be
relieved. Instead, she looked horrified.
‘It’s me Rosa: Henri.’
‘I know it’s you. You must keep your voice down. What
on earth are you doing here? What’s the matter? What’s happened to Alfred?’
Her dark brown eyes were just like Roza’s, but now
they were red around the lids, as though she had been crying.
‘Everything’s alright Rosa. I came to visit you and
Sophia. I’ve brought food.’
‘But what about Alfred? Please tell me.’
‘Alfred’s safe, Rosa,’ Henry moved closer as he
spoke, placing a hand on her shoulders. She backed away. ‘He’s in Zürich. I
managed to get him there safely. You don’t need to worry.’
‘You shouldn’t have come here. It’s so dangerous. Go
upstairs quickly. You can’t stay long. I have to give Frau Hermann her lunch. Go
upstairs and let me settle her. I’ll be a few minutes.’
In the small lounge upstairs there was no sign of
Sophia. When she finally came upstairs, Henry asked Rosa where she was.
‘In bed: she’s been there almost all the time since
Alfred left. She misses him so much that it’s making her ill. He was wonderful
to her, her only companion. I don’t think she’s uttered more than half a dozen
sentences since he left.’
‘Well perhaps these’ll cheer her up.’ Henry triumphantly
emptied the content of his bag on the rug and placed a packet of sweets and
some chocolate to one side, then handed Rosa a large cheese, a long sausage, a
bag of fruit and another of vegetables. Rosa looked embarrassed.
‘I don’t know what to say.’ Tears were streaming
down her face. She knelt down beside him and gently touched his wrist with her
fingers, holding them there for a few seconds before busying herself sorting
the food. ‘Of course, I’m very grateful, but you coming here is so dangerous.’
Henry raised his eyebrows.
‘I’m serious, Henri. Our only hope is to stay here
with no-one finding out. Franz does his best to ensure we get as few visitors
as possible, but neighbours spy on each other and watch out for comings and
goings.’
‘Come with me Rosa: you and Sophia, come with me.’
She looked at him as if she had misheard what he had
said.
‘Come where?’
‘Back to Switzerland.’
She burst out laughing. ‘Henri – do you think we
haven’t thought about how we can escape ever since we got here? It’s
impossible: we’ve no papers other than our own and they are useless because I’m
wanted by the Gestapo. I know you’re trying to be kind but…’ She held up her
hands in a gesture of helplessness.
‘But you can’t stay here, Rosa. What if something
happens to the old lady? And what about food? People say it’s becoming scarcer.
Then there’s the neighbours… someone could inform on you. I could help you. I
could get papers.’
Rosa was looking at him as if she had misheard him
again.
‘How can you do that?’
At that moment there was a weak shout from
downstairs.
‘I must go Henri: Frau Hermann wants her lunch.’
Henry grabbed her by the arm and moved towards her.
‘I’ll get papers Rosa, I’ll be back. Trust me.’
As she stood up, Henry did too, positioning himself
immediately in front of her.
‘Henri, please: I have to go to her. You must leave
now. In any case, sometimes an old friend comes to see her on Tuesdays. Please
let me get through.’
He hesitated for a moment, wondering whether it
would be wrong to embrace her. He had expected her to be more grateful. She
pushed past him and headed downstairs, beckoning for him to follow her, a
finger pressed to her lips for him to keep quiet.
***
He
eventually left Berlin on a train for Nuremberg just before three, only a few
minutes late, and the journey was much quicker than the one to Stuttgart a few
days earlier. He arrived in Nuremberg at seven o’clock and it felt like a
garrison town, troops everywhere. The concourse of the station was a seething
mass of grey uniform, with a sprinkling of black. He could see few other
civilians.
He joined a long queue of soldiers at the ticket
office and had enough time to observe that most of them belonged to the
Seventeenth Infantry Division: a gift for Edgar. When he reached the window he discovered
the first train to Stuttgart was at 8.20 the next morning. ‘All being well,’
added the ticket clerk as he carefully stamped then initialled Henry’s ticket.
Henry calculated he could be in Stuttgart sometime
late morning and Zürich by mid-afternoon.
All being well.
The clerk told him he would find the hotels if he
turned left out of the station and walked over to the next block. There he
found a selection of grey buildings, each reflecting the ubiquitous uniforms
milling around on the street. He went into the first three hotels, each more
miserable than the previous one and settled on the fourth only because it was
now pouring with rain and he was exhausted.
As the manager laboriously completed the paperwork
that would allow him the privilege of being a guest there for one night, Henry
had an opportunity to have a look into what the manager called the dining room.
If pushed, Henry would have described it as a workhouse, a memory from
Dickensian novels read out loud at the end of dark autumn afternoons at school
in England.
‘You’d better go and eat now, the dining room closes
in 20 minutes,’ the manager said in what Henry thought could be an Austrian
accent.
‘I’m alright, thank you,’ said Henry, the smell of
grease and tobacco settling already at the back of his throat. ‘I think I’ll eat
elsewhere.’
‘You’ll be lucky: there is no “elsewhere” these
days. Leave your case here and go in and eat.’
He reluctantly went in to the dining room, having
passed up the offer of leaving his case with the manager. There were two long
tables inside and each had six or seven men – only men – hunched around it, all
eyeing each other suspiciously and spooning black stew into their mouths in
apparent unison.
Henry found a small space at the end of one table
and the man next to him reluctantly moved along no more than an inch or two. No
sooner had he sat down than a filthy hand deposited a bowl in front of him. The
thumb and one finger were dipped in the stew. Henry moved his gaze up the hand
and the frayed sleeve just above it: both belonged to a hunched body and pale
face flecked with red sores, a woman in her fifties who looked as if she were
about to collapse.
A plate of black bread was pushed in front of him,
along with a glass of watery beer. No-one was speaking to anyone else around
the table and Henry was grateful for that.
His night was not any more comfortable: the room had
bare floorboards and just one small threadbare rug by the bed. There was a
basin with a stained sink by a window that had a crack in the glass and Henry
doubted the sheets had been changed since the last guest but one. As there was
no functioning lock on the door, he wedged the single chair in the room against
it and lay on the bed fully clothed, his briefcase containing the sealed
envelopes under a pillow that smelt of sweat. In the distance he could hear the
muffled sound of explosions: he could not tell whether it was bombs or
anti-aircraft fire, but when he went over to the window and peeled back the
blackout curtain he could see flashes far to the north.
He left the hotel at seven in the morning, the
manager and the woman from the dining room confused as to why he declined their
offer of breakfast (‘but you’ve paid for it sir!’).
For the next hour the station café provided a
welcome refuge from the all-pervading odour of the hotel. The Stuttgart train
left on time and the connection from there to Zürich was good and he arrived at
2.10. He was under pressure now. There was a train to Bern at 5.10, which was
the one he would need to catch if Edgar and Remington-Barber were not to be too
suspicious about his late arrival. It ought to give him enough time, but only
just.
He needed to get to Bank Leu as soon as possible,
but only after he had made the phone call. There was a bank of phone booths on
the main station concourse, but they felt too public so he left the station and
walked across to the Bahnhofquai, where he found a café with phone booth at the
rear, well away from the few customers. He rang the number Viktor had given
him.
‘Yes?’
‘
Peter is coming round for dinner.’
A pause and a muffled noise at the other end of the
line, which sounded as if the person had placed their hand over the receiver
and was talking to someone else in the room.
‘And will you be bringing wine with you?’
‘Yes.’
With that, the line went dead. He checked his watch:
it was 2.25: according to Viktor’s instructions he was to be at the station
exactly one hour after the phone call. That would leave him just over an hour
and a half to catch his train: he would need to hurry. He left the café by the
back door and took a taxi to
Bank Leu’s head office on
Paradeplatz.
Michael
Hedinger was apparently in a hurry. He came down to the reception and took
Henry up to his office on the top floor. He checked the three envelopes from
the Reichsbank for Bank Leu.
‘And the fourth envelope is for your friends?’
‘Yes.’
‘When do you see them?’
‘I’m going to Bern now. May I use your phone to tell
them what time I’m likely to be there?’
Hedinger gestured at the phone:
be my guest.
Edgar answered: ‘Welcome home. What kept you?’
‘I’m catching the train at ten past five: I ought to
be in Bern by eight at the latest. Where shall I meet you?’
‘Don’t worry old chap, we’ll meet you.’
That was that: it was now a quarter to three, he had
plenty of time. He could even afford to stroll back to the station along
Bahnhofstrasse, which would at least give him time to compose himself.
‘And all went well?’ asked Hedinger.
‘Yes… yes, thank you.’
‘And I presume you wish to ask me a question?’
Henry had no idea what the Swiss was on about.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Alfred! Don’t you want to know how he is?’
‘Of course, of course! How is Alfred?’
‘My wife and the children and the dog make such a
fuss of him: it’s as if he has been released from prison. He’s such a sweet boy
and very considerate. We’ll take good care of him. He’s obviously sad though. At
night we can hear him sobbing in his room. He must miss his mother.’
***
Arriving
too early for a rendezvous is as dangerous as being late for one.
He had arrived outside
the
Hauptbahnhof at a quarter past three, ten minutes early. Without thinking, he
had continued into the station, assuming he would find a bar then go out onto
the concourse ten minutes later. This is what he did, but no sooner had he
stepped out onto the concourse than he was aware of two men either side of him,
marching him out of a side exit. One of them was Viktor, his face impassive but
his voice not disguising his fury.
‘We said be at the station one hour after the phone
call, not 50 minutes. What do you think you are up to
synok
?’
Henry shook himself from Viktor and the other man,
who had now stepped back into the shadows.
‘Learn to do as you are told, Henry, you understand?
Now, follow me – stay behind me. I will go into a shop and through to the back.
You are to do likewise. Sergei will be behind you.’
The shop was a narrow tobacconist in a warren of
alleys behind the station. The counter top was already open when Henry arrived.
Viktor was in a room at the back, along with a shrivelled-looking man half the
size of the Russian. He was dressed in a faded pinstripe suit and peered up at
Henry through thick glasses that sat unsteadily on the bridge of his nose.