themselves on leave. You are a disgrace to the Fuhrer.’
The three soldiers had had enough. Nobody in Berlin evoked the name of the all-powerful Gestapo without good cause. It was a name that was normally spoken of in hushed tones, not barked out with authority in crowded restaurants. The sergeant jumped up, mumbling an apology and claiming he’d been acting in fun. Muttering their names incomprehensibly, the three soldiers took themselves off as quickly as they could scurry.
‘Wow, Dagmar,’ Paulus said when they were gone. ‘That was pretty crazy.’
‘It got rid of them, didn’t it?’
‘It drew attention to you,’ Silke said. ‘You just can’t afford to do that.’
‘And what if I
‘
‘We’d be sitting here now trying to discuss our plans with three bloody Nazi soldiers groping at us, wouldn’t we?’
‘
‘I wouldn’t
For a moment there was an angry silence. Then Paulus smiled.
‘Nothing changes, eh?’ He laughed. ‘You two have been at each other’s throats since 1926.’
The young women simply glared at each other.
‘Now come on!’ Paulus went on. ‘We’re going to have to learn to get along better than this if we’re all going to live together.’
‘Live together?’ Dagmar gasped. ‘All three of us?’
‘Yes, that’s my plan.’
‘But… I thought… I thought
‘I am going to look after you. But I can’t do it on my own. Silke has agreed to be a part of it.’
‘A part of what?’
‘You need to disappear, Dagmar. And to do it soon. There are thousands of Jews left in Berlin, and let me tell you when the whip comes down they’re all going to be looking for a place to hide.’
‘You think so?’ Dagmar replied bitterly. ‘I think they’ll put their hands up and do what they’re told like the bloody cowards they’ve all turned out to be. That’s what we’ve all done so far, isn’t it? Except my father.’
‘And us, Dagmar, and us,’ Paulus said gently. ‘The point is we mustn’t wait. We need to act now. Disappear now. Dagmar Fischer must die and you must become someone else. You need a new identity.’
‘Who else? What identity?’
‘Why, a respectable member of the Stengel household, of course. I’m a Waffen SS corporal, courtesy of my fine Aryan lobes, and I need a household befitting of my position. I need a wife…’
For the first time that morning Dagmar’s face lit up.
‘A wife! My God, what a funny way to propose!’
‘Dagmar,’ Paulus began.
‘And what a wonderful idea. Of course, the wife of an SS man, what better cover could there possibly be? Well, it’s not a very romantic setting to be saying it in, I’d always imagined Paris and the Eiffel Tower, but I accept.’
Silke stared at the table, drawing rings with her finger in the beer froth to cover her evident embarrassment.
Paulus took Dagmar’s hand.
‘Dagmar,’ Paulus said, ‘you know how much I would love it if that could be. You know how I feel about you.’
Now Silke turned away completely, staring at the barmaids rushing about in their Bavarian costumes with their trays full of brimming steins of beer.
‘But you said,’ Dagmar began.
‘It’s illegal for a German to marry a Jew, you know that.’
‘But you said I was to have a new identity.’
‘Yes, we hope, but not one that could possibly stand the scrutiny it would be under in a marriage contract. You know very well that any German, particularly an SS man’s fiancee, must provide proof of racial lineage back to the eighteenth century before they can marry. Every church and civil record is checked.’
‘Then what are you talking about?’
‘Dagmar, a married German soldier is entitled to a home, and his wife is legally entitled to employ a maid.’
‘A maid?’
‘Yes. Tens of thousands of Czech and Polish girls are being stolen for domestic service in Berlin.’
Dagmar’s mouth dropped open.
‘I’m… to become a Polish maidservant?’
‘To the world, yes!’ Paulus said with a smile. ‘It’s a brilliant plan, though I say it myself. One set of forged papers plus a peasant’s haircut and we’re done. Nothing else, no records, no family, no past. No conversation even, since you don’t speak German. You were snatched from your village three hundred miles away and forced into domestic service in Germany. These girls are getting off the train with nothing but a movement order. I’ve seen them; their lives begin at the station. Dagmar Fischer’s life, on the other hand, is over. She left a suicide note like so many Jews are doing and threw herself in the river Spree, no body was ever found. Little Miss Czech or Pole, however, is working legally in Berlin for Corporal and Frau Stengel.’
‘Frau Stengel,’ Dagmar asked, ‘and who’s Frau…’
The penny dropped. She looked across the table at Silke.
‘Who would have thought it?’ Silke said. ‘I’m marrying Paulus.’
‘You—’ Dagmar gasped — ‘marrying Paulus.’
‘Yes,’ Silke said with a smile. ‘Funny the way life goes, isn’t it? When I was a little girl I can remember dreaming of marrying Otto Stengel and now I am. Of course, it’s not the one I imagined, but we all have to make readjustments, don’t we?’ Silke raised her glass. ‘Shall we do it properly and put an announcement in the
Final Briefing
‘YOU WERE RIGHT,’ the man who looked like Peter Lorre said, ‘Silke Stengel nee Krause is an officer at the Ministry of State Security. Right at the heart of it, in fact. In Berlin-Lichtenburg on the Ruschestrasse.’
‘Stasi headquarters.’
‘Yes. Stasi headquarters. She has a service record dating back to shortly after the war. You say she used to be a friend?’
‘Yes. A good friend.’
Stone closed his eyes.
Seeing once again the golden freckled shoulders. The thin strip of sunlight from the window moving across them over and over again as the train thundered towards Rotterdam.
Other memories flashed across his mind.
Silke at three or four years old in a flurry of tumbling wooden bricks, sitting first on Paulus’s fort and then on his.
At the Saturday music lessons, singing and banging a tambourine.
Running, jumping. Dancing. Fighting.
Helping carry a body in a rolled-up rug into a lift.
