hand on Herr Fischer’s shoulder.
They looked on as Frau Fischer tried to grab on to her husband and pull him towards the carriage door.
They saw Herr Fischer pointing at the train, gesticulating furiously for his wife to board it. Ordering Dagmar who was leaning out of the window to stay where she was.
They watched as Frau Fischer shook her head and beckoned Dagmar to get off.
They saw Dagmar emerge from the first-class carriage once more and step back down on to the platform, her face white with shock and fear, her brief American dream turned back into a German nightmare.
The Gestapo frogmarched Herr Fischer back down the platform and out through the barrier. As he passed them Herr Fischer saw the boys and Otto thought he briefly tried to mask the terror on his face for their benefit.
Then he was gone.
Along the platform his wife and daughter stood there still as if frozen in shock and grief.
A whistle blew. The train compressed its steam.
Paulus cried out from behind the barrier.
‘Dagmar! Frau Fischer! Get on the train! Go!’
Heads turned. Some openly hostile. Others just surprised.
Otto was surprised too. In the selfishness of youth, a part of him had rejoiced to see the beloved girl remain. But even at thirteen, Paulus understood much more.
‘Otto, you know what happens. They
Otto wasn’t stupid, he knew his brother was right.
‘Get on the train, Dags!’ he shouted suddenly. ‘Take it to the top of the Empire State building!’
A whack around the head interrupted him. The ticket collector had had enough.
‘Shut your face, kid. You don’t go shouting about and making a scene at
‘Fuck you!’ Otto said before shouting once again, ‘Dagmar! Get on the train!’
But the train was moving now and the two figures were still, standing motionless in the smoke and steam as their carriage pulled away from them. And then the next and then the next until they were alone on the empty platform.
Together they turned and walked slowly back to the barrier. There were sneers from onlookers as mother and daughter emerged back on to the station. The ticket man’s face wore a look of stern and pompous authority as if by dint of the fact that he wore a uniform he had somehow been a part of the police action.
‘Get along there, you two,’ he ordered pointlessly. ‘Your train’s gone, you’ve missed it. Move along.’
But for a moment at least Frau Fischer did not move along, she paused just outside the barrier seemingly at a loss, her eyes staring but seeing nothing. Dagmar looked up at her mother and gave way to tears.
Paulus took charge.
‘We should go to the taxi rank,’ he said, taking her arm. ‘You should go home, Frau Fischer.’
His voice helped her pull herself together. ‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘Thank you, Paulus. You’re right. We should go home.’
Paulus led Frau Fischer towards the front of the station, leaving Otto to walk with Dagmar.
‘You look great, Dags,’ he said after a few steps. ‘I’ve never seen you in stockings before.’
Dagmar smiled momentarily through her tears.
‘You have to protect me now, Otto,’ she said, her voice shaking. ‘You know that, don’t you? You and Paulus. You have to protect me.’
‘Well,
Isaac Fischer was tried the following month on charges of libelling the German State and its servants. There was only one witness for the defence, an American photographer who, it was gleefully reported in Goebbels’ press, had no actual photographs with which to back up his scurrilous claims. The man did, however, have a Jewish grandmother, a point which was raised in court as if it were evidence for the prosecution.
Two other potential defence witnesses did attempt to put themselves forward. The Stengel twins visited Frau Fischer in her big house in
‘You’re such good boys,’ she said, sitting in her still splendid sitting room, the trappings of her previous life not yet having been stolen from her, ‘but I doubt that the word of two Jewish boys would make a lot of difference, and standing up like that would certainly get you and your parents into a lot of trouble.’
The prosecution was much better represented. Twenty members of the SA testified that Fischer had merely been cautioned having refused to clear up an unauthorized and offensive banner which the authorities had caused to be removed from Fischer’s store front. A Gestapo officer and member of the Ministry of Enlightenment and Propaganda who had arrived later on the scene also testified that there had been no assault and the accusations were thus exposed as disgusting Jew lies which a Jewish-dominated American press had peddled as fact. As a result of the trial, the American ambassador was called to the Wilhelmstrasse to receive an official complaint from the Foreign Minister.
Herr Fischer himself received ten years’ hard labour, to be served at the new SA concentration camp at Dachau. He was, however, dead in three months. According to the official story he was shot while trying to escape, but Frau Fischer was not allowed to see the body.
Further Briefings
ONCE MORE STONE was sitting at the table with the teacups and the 1930s telephone, staring at the short plump man sitting opposite him, while the thin, quiet one in the corner looked on. True to form the short one had already started on the biscuits.
‘We are here to brief you in elementary spy craft,’ Peter Lorre said. ‘Principally codes and communications protocol. They’re going to be watching you, of course. They watch everybody from the West, but as a member of the Foreign Office you’ll be of special interest to them. The moment you attempt to establish contact with Dagmar Stengel they’re going to know about it.’
‘They know already,’ Stone replied, quietly but emphatically. ‘I’m being set up. Dagmar’s dead. It wasn’t her that sent me the letter.’
‘Well,’ Bogart conceded, ‘of course that
‘It’s more than possible. It’s probable. A damn sight more probable than Dagmar being an East German agent. You know as well as I do that the Stasi are even more anti-Semitic than the KGB. They don’t take Jews. Particularly Jews with no training or aptitude who have spent their whole adult life either hiding in a Berlin apartment or incarcerated in a gulag.’
‘So,’ Bogart replied, ‘you think that somebody in the Stasi has communicated with you in the name of your dead sister-in-law.’
‘Yes. I think that’s exactly what has happened.’
‘Well, it’s an interesting theory,’ Bogart conceded.
Stone looked hard at his two interrogators.
‘Yes, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘And the thing is, I find it difficult to credit that it never occurred to you.’
Bogart smiled, a kind of cheerful shrug. ‘Well, we might have considered it,’ he said pleasantly.
‘
‘It’s a possibility.’
‘It’s a bloody certainty!’
‘For what purpose?’ Peter Lorre enquired. ‘Since you seem to know more about them than we do.’
‘Same purpose as yours obviously. Dirty spying. You said you were sending me to Berlin to persuade a Stasi
