Authors: Gordon Ferris
“Maybe. But I’m on your side. Whose side are you on?”
“Does anyone know you’re here? I mean, in the Soviet zone. Will anyone be looking out for you?”
“There’s a guy called Vic. An army corporal. He’s my guide-dog. He may be waiting up for me. But the main problem is Colonel Toby. I’m supposed to report in to him each
day. If they don’t hear from me by tomorrow morning they might get curious. I don’t know if I’m important enough for a search party, but there might be some heat.”
“Can you make it to the table?”
“Sink first.”
I got up, holding on to the bed, and waited till the room had steadied before lurching over to the basin to be sick again. That made the head worse for a while. I ran cold water and splashed it
over my head until the coolness numbed the aches. As I straightened up Eve threw a towel at me; I grabbed it, dabbed myself part dry and joined her at the table. She laid out mugs and plates and
knives, and brought a pan over with steam rising from it.
“Coffee?” she asked.
“Acorns?”
She smiled and shook her head. “Last drops of Camp. All the way from London.”
She poured the coffee and the three men joined us. I studied them. The giant looked to be older than the others; his black beard was flecked with grey. The other two were in their mid- twenties,
dark-eyed and dark-skinned. From somewhere in middle or southern Europe. They still hadn’t said a word.
Eve placed a paper bag in the middle of the table. She opened it and revealed a sweating half-sausage. She placed a heavy black loaf by its side and cut off chunks. The men attacked the meat and
the bread as though they expected it to be taken away from them at any minute. I cut off a slice and chewed some bread and waited. She looked paler and younger. The short hair did that. Made her
big features more pronounced. Made her boyish and vulnerable. I could see her mulling over what to say to me, what to do with me. She kept my gun at her side, handy for her right hand. And
I’d seen her use one. If she was who they said, then she’d be familiar with this weapon. Both made in Germany.
Finally, she had eaten enough and sat supping her coffee. “OK, Danny. Here’s my story. You can believe it or not. I can’t prove any of it.” So she began…
“They were right on one thing: my name is Ava Kaplan. I was born here and grew up here. My father was a doctor and a local official. My mother was a teacher. They could have lived in one
of the smart areas of Berlin. But they chose to live here, in Hallesches Tor, because they were needed. They were good Germans, Danny. Germans. But they were also Jewish.”
She let the word hang in the air and echo in my own memory. I wondered which camp they’d ended their days in, and whether they’d died together. Sometimes at the end, it’s the
only important thing.
Eve continued, “Father used to visit London before the war. He loved England and all it stood for. Especially the bookshops. He taught me to read English and to love its literature.”
She smiled at me. “He sent me to school in London for two years when I was sixteen to perfect my English. Despite the rise of the Nazis Father saw no reason to worry about his position; he
was an important member of the community. A valued doctor. My mother taught in a German school, not a Jewish one. Even the Brown Shirts would not be so stupid. After Kristallnacht he began to fear
for me and my mother. He sent me back to London in 1938 for my safety. My mother wouldn’t leave him. She couldn’t believe it would come to… this.”
“So you weren’t a spy,” I said with relief.
She gave me a wry smile. “Oh yes. Yes, I was. At the start. They tracked me down. I mean the SS. In London. Heinrich Mulder, one of their top agents. He told me that my parents’
lives were at stake unless I helped them with some
research
, he called it. He offered to protect them if I did this small thing.”
“Was it small?”
“To start with. I didn’t know what to do. I had been getting letters every week or two from my parents, but when war broke out they stopped. I don’t know if they were prevented
from writing to me or whether MI5 intercepted them.”
“Bastards.”
“Yes. Bastards. By then my English teacher had helped me to get a job as a journalist. Mulder was back in Berlin now. We communicated by transmitter and the occasional dead letter drop.
There were other agents in London. Mulder told me to use my job as a reporter to meet people and send back information. Mainly he wanted to know about morale. And defences in the city. Whether
London could hold out much longer. Where the factories were.”
“So you played along.” I guess there was a hint of reproof in my voice, though god knows I would have done the same thing for my folks.
She placed her mug carefully down on the table and looked me in the eye. “Danny, I played along for all of five minutes. I contacted the British Secret Service and told them what was
happening.” Her voice was low and steady. A vein jumped in her forehead.
“You what? Cassells said you worked for the Nazis. You mean…”
“I worked for both sides. That is, I worked for MI5 while pretending to work for Mulder. We were called the Double Cross team. A unit codenamed B1A within MI5. Most of the others were
spies sent over by the Nazis. MI5 caught them before they’d had their first sip of English beer. We had their codes. Have you heard of Enigma? Bletchley Park?”
I shook my head. She waved her hand as though it didn’t matter, or she couldn’t say any more. She went on. “We knew every time they sent an agent over and were waiting for
them. Lots were happy to turn and work for Britain.” She paused. “The alternative was a firing squad. I was unusual. I came in under my own steam. We made up stories to send back to
Germany. Disinformation. I was good at my job. The English gave me more money. The Germans promoted me to Major. Our biggest success was Normandy.”
I sat back in my chair. My head pounded as I struggled to make sense of it. Who they hell was I to believe? Her of course.
“Why would Cassells lie to me? Did he know all the details? Did he know you were working for us?”
She shrugged and took a cigarette from my packet. Her sidekicks helped themselves too.
“I don’t know. We were an autonomous unit. My English handler kept things pretty close. But I would have thought when I went missing…”
I tried a different tack. “Why did you come back to Berlin? Who were you in contact with up to a couple of weeks ago?”
She flicked her ash on the floor. “I came back for my parents. I had one or two letters from them through my German drops in London. That was part of the deal. My father didn’t say
much; he wasn’t allowed to. But it was clear they were under pressure all the time. Threatened with… well, it was pretty vague… loss of privileges, he said. But I knew he meant the camps. But the letters stopped completely in January ’44. Maybe Mulder found out I was playing both sides. I came to find them.”
“And…?”
She shook her head. “I knew it was a waste of time. When the war ended I wrote to them. Every week. Nothing. Then I got a response.” Her eyes flicked to the men beside her. “My
letters were being opened.”
“The Nazis?”
“No. Let me introduce my friends.” She pointed to the big bearded man. “This is Gideon. And these are Joseph and Ariel.”
Gideon held out his huge paw to me and smiled. “Shalom, Danny.” Joseph the kid and Ariel the bald followed suit. Ariel tugged at his wire glasses. He said, “Sorry about the
head, Danny,” in good English.
“It’s OK. You’re Jewish?” I said unnecessarily.
Gideon broke in. “Jewish Brigade. We got out of Berlin in ’39. Got to Lisbon and then London. Joined up in 1940. We fought with the British Army in Italy. We came back after the war
to see if we could find our friends and relatives who stayed behind. There was no one.”
Young Joseph cut in, suddenly animated, as though he’d been released from a spell.
“Every one, gone! Wiped out! These murderers, these sadists destroyed us!”
Ariel reached out and touched Joseph’s arm; he clearly kept the boy under his wing. He spoke tenderly to him. It sounded close to German. I recognised the throaty sounds of Yiddish from my
camp days. The words formed in my mind. Joseph sat back and took a deep breath.
“So we decided to do what we could,” went on Gideon. “Some Jews had survived. They’d lived secret lives here. Not all Germans were rotten. And others came back. This was
the only home they knew. They were born here. We are helping them find each other. We have contacts who have lists… of the camps. We also help people to get to Israel.”
“Past the British blockades,” Joseph added contemptuously.
Eve cut in. “A second cousin of mine survived and knew Gideon. They went looking for others of the family. They found Germans living in my parents’ flat. But one of the neighbours
had
kindly
intercepted my letters. All of them. Gideon wrote to me.”
“And your parents?” I asked quietly.
“They were taken away two years ago.”
“But I thought you were getting letters…?”
Eve suddenly looked weary. Her shoulders slumped. “They tricked me. Mulder tricked me. He forced my parents to write several letters at once and didn’t date them. It doesn’t
take much to add a date later.”
“I’m sorry. Have you been to their flat?” Then I realised.
She looked at me funnily. “You’re sitting in it. This floor and the one below. Though we’ve only taken this floor.”
“What happened to the Germans who…?”
Joseph grinned at me and drew his finger across his throat. I looked round at them. They stared back at me defiantly.
Eve glared at him. “We threw them out, Danny. A few bruises.”
“We should have…” Joseph again sliced his throat. “It’s what they did to us! I am sick of Jews being slaughtered! Now we fight back, Danny.”
“I understand all that you’re saying, Eve. And I believe everything you tell me. But why did you disappear? Britain must have been grateful to you. The risks you took. They would
have helped. Surely? Why all the pretence?” I ran my hand over my hair and winced. The bumps seemed bigger.
She got to her feet and began pacing. “It’s complicated. It was about six months ago I found out that my parents had vanished. I’ve been in radio touch with Gideon and my
cousin several times since. There’s no doubt I’ll never see my parents again. I had only one thought: I wanted Mulder’s head. The British wouldn’t let me have it.”
“You went to them?”
“It seemed the natural thing. I wanted to know if Mulder was still alive and how to find him. At first my case officer in London was helpful. But then he closed down on me when he realised
my intention. He indicated that Mulder might have survived, but wouldn’t tell me if he was in prison or on trial or taken by the Russians.”
“But
we
know!” cut in Ariel. His glasses flashed at me.
Eve stopped walking. “He’s here. Alive and prospering. He is one of the district controllers set up by the Russians. I demanded that London let me come here and settle things with
this swine. They told me to drop it. It had got political, they said. What the hell is political about murder?”
“Were they the watchers?”
She shrugged. “That was my guess.”
“So you faked your disappearance. Made it look like you’d been kidnapped or murdered, and came here? You’re here to get even?”
“An eye for an eye…” said Ariel rubbing the tape between his lenses.
“Hasn’t there been enough killing?” I asked.
She rounded on me, her eyes blazing. “Not nearly enough! Not nearly! Do you think this swine should get away with it? That he should get a nice job and everything is forgiven and
forgotten? Is that your morality, Danny?”
Ariel leaned across the table to me, his eyes gleaming through his specs. “Ava – Eve – said you were in Dachau. How can you
not
want to kill these scum?”
“Because that’s how scum think! That’s what scum do. When does it stop, Ariel? When the last man’s left standing?”
Eve sat down again. “Do you believe in evil, Danny?”
“As an entity? As some amorphous opposite force to good? No. Do I think some men are evil and are incapable of remorse or contrition? Yes. I’ve seen it. Experienced it.” I bent
my head and parted my hair. They could all see the livid scar that ran through my scalp.
“But you’d let them go on living? Hoping they’ll change, see the light?” she asked.
This was what I still wrestled with. I’d seen humanity at its worst and its best in the camp. Afterwards I’d watched in sickening incomprehension the Pathé News showing the
other camps being liberated. My gut reaction was to find every one of the guards and follow up every link in the chain of command and string them up, personally. But in more rational moments, I
found myself arguing that enough blood’s been spilt, and revenge leaves an emptiness in the heart. The rational moments were still pretty rare.
I raised my hand to ward off her attack. “No, I don’t think the SS will turn into choir boys. But would shooting
him
let
you
sleep easier? I’ve lost my god. My
country has gone to the dogs. And the woman I fell for turns out to be a double agent.” I tried a smile to soften the rhetoric. It came out a grimace. “The only thing I’m certain
about is that there are no certainties. Look where it got Hitler. Eve, I don’t know what’s right and wrong any more. Did I tell you Gambatti offered me a job? I actually gave it serious
thought. That’s how far I’ve slid.”
She examined my face for a long time, as though she’d never seen it before, or would never see it again. “You said you were on my side,” she said.
I nodded.
“
This
is my side.” She put her hands out and touched the nearest shoulders of Joseph and Ariel.
I walked over to the sink and rinsed the cloth. I pressed it on my head. It was beginning to feel easier. I still had questions. Why did Cassells lie to me about Eve? Who’d been following
her in London? If it was MI5, were they concerned for Eve or Mulder? Who killed the man I went to meet in the bar? But my poor bashed brain had taken all the news it could absorb for one night. I
returned to the table and sat down.