incendiary raids during July 1943. They only got together again recently. She’s working as a showgirl at a club in the Reeperbahn called the Taj Mahal. Calls herself Katie Holdt. I’ve had an agent working there for the past week. She’s been trying to get friendly with the girl, hoping she might lead us to Muller.”
Chavasse raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Is your agent a German girl?”
HARDT shook his head. “Israeli – born of German parents. Her name is Anna Hartmann.” He pulled a large silver ring from the middle finger of his left hand. “Show her this and tell her who you are. She knows all about you. Ask her to take you back to her flat after the last show. I’ll meet you there as soon as I can.”
Chavasse slipped the ring onto a finger. “That seems to settle everything. What time do we get to Hamburg?”
Hardt glanced at his watch. “About two hours. Why?”
Chavasse grinned. “Because I’ve been missing a hell of a lot of sleep lately, and if it’s all right with you, I’m going to make use of your top bunk.”
Hardt smiled and he got to his feet and pushed the mounting ladder into position. “You know, I like your attitude. We’re going to get on famously.”
“I think we can say that’s mutual,” Chavasse said.
He hung his jacket behind the door and then climbed the ladder and lay full length on the top bunk, allowing every muscle to relax in turn. It was an old trick and one that could only be used when he felt easy in his mind about things.
Because of that special extra sense that was a product of his training and experience, he knew that for the moment at any rate, the affair was moving very nicely. Very nicely indeed. He turned his face into the pillow and went to sleep at once.
CHAPTER 4
Chavasse looked at his reflection in the mirror. He was wearing a white Continental raincoat and green hat, both of which belonged to Hardt. He pulled the brim of the hat down over his eyes. “How do I look?”
Hardt slapped him on the shoulder. “Fine, just fine. There should be a lot of people leaving the train. If you do as I suggest, you’ll be outside the station in two minutes. You can get a taxi.”
Chavasse shook his head. “Don’t worry about me. It’s a long time since I’ve been to Hamburg, but I can still find my way to the Reeperbahn.”
“I’ll see you later then.” Hardt opened the door and looked out and then he stood to one side. “All clear.”
Chavasse squeezed past him and hurried along the deserted corridor. The train was coming slowly into the Hauptbahnhof and already the platform seemed to be moving past him. He passed through one coach after another, pushing past people who were beginning to emerge from their compartments, until he reached the far end of the train. As it stopped, he opened a door and stepped onto the platform.
He was first through the ticket barrier, and a moment later he was walking out of the main entrance. It was two-thirty, and at that time in the morning the S-Bahn wasn’t running. It was raining slightly, a warm drizzle redolent of autumn, and obeying a sudden impulse, he decided to walk. He turned up his coat collar and walked along Monckebergstrasse toward St. Pauli, the notorious nightclub district of Hamburg.
The streets were quiet and deserted, and as he walked past the magnificent buildings, he remembered what Hamburg had been at the end of the war. Not a city, but a shambles. It seemed incredible that this was a place in which nearly seventy thousand people had been killed in ten days during the great incendiary raids of the summer of 1943. Germany had certainly risen again like a phoenix from her ashes.
The Reeperbahn was as he remembered it, noisy and colorful and incredibly alive, even at that time in the morning. As he walked amongst the jostling, cheerful people, he compared it with London at almost three in the morning. What was it they called the heart of St. Pauli –
He walked on past the garish, neon-lit fronts of the nightclubs, ignoring the touts who clutched at his sleeve, and passed the Davidstrasse, where young girls could be found in the windows, displaying their charms to the prospective customers. After asking the way, he found the Taj Mahal in an alley off Talstrasse.
The entrance had been designed to represent an Indian temple and the doorman wore ornate robes and a turban. Chavasse passed in between potted palms, and a young woman in a transparent sari relieved him of his hat and coat.
The interior of the club was on the same lines – fake pillars along each side of the long room and more potted palms. The waiter who led him to a table was magnificently attired in gold brocade and a red turban, although the effect was spoiled by his rimless glasses and Westphalian accent. Chavasse ordered a brandy and looked about him.
The place was only half-full and everyone seemed a little jaded, as if the party had been going on for too long. On a small stage, a dozen girls posed in a tableau that was meant to represent bath time in the harem. In their midst, a voluptuous redhead was attempting the Dance of the Seven Veils with a complete lack of artistry. The last veil was removed, there was a little tired clapping from the audience, and the lights went out. When they came on again, the girls had disappeared.
The waiter returned with the brandy, and Chavasse said, “You have a Fraulein Hartmann working here. How can I get in touch with her?”
The waiter smiled, exposing gold-capped teeth. “Nothing could be easier,
Chavasse gave him a large tip and ordered a half bottle of champagne and two glasses. During his conversation with the waiter, a small band had been arranging itself on the stage, and now they started to play. At that moment, a door by the entrance to the kitchens opened and the showgirls started to come through as if on cue.
Most of them were young and reasonably attractive and wore dresses that tended to reveal their charms. They were all stamped in the same mold, with heavily made-up faces and fixed, mechanical smiles for the customers.
He was conscious of a vague, irrational disappointment at the thought that one of them must be the girl he was seeking, and then, as he was about to turn away, the door swung open again.
He did not need the waiter’s slight nod from the other side of the room to know that this was Anna Hartmann. Like the other girls, she wore high-heeled shoes, dark stockings, and a sheath dress of black silk that was barely knee-length and clung to her hips like a second skin.
But there the resemblance ended. There was about her a tremendous quality of repose, of tranquillity almost. She stood just inside the door and gazed calmly about the room, and it was as if she had no part in it, as if the ugliness of life could not touch her.
He was filled with a sudden excitement that he found impossible to analyze. It was not that she was beautiful. Her skin was olive-hued and the blue-black hair was shoulder-length. Her rounded face and full curving mouth gave her a faintly sensual appearance, and yet her good bone structure and firm chin indicated a strength of character that placed her immediately in a world apart from the other girls.
She moved forward, and heads turned as men looked at her admiringly. She skillfully evaded the clutching hand of a drunk, and then she was passing Chavasse’s table. He stood up and touched her arm quickly. “Fraulein Hartmann?” he said. “I wonder if you’d care to have a drink with me?”
She turned and looked into his face, and then she noticed the champagne and two glasses ready and waiting. “You seem to have gone to considerable trouble, Herr…?”
“Chavasse,” he said. “Paul Chavasse.”
Something seemed to move in the brown eyes, but her face betrayed no emotion. To anyone watching, she was just another of the girls accepting a drink from a customer. “That’s very kind of you, Herr Chavasse. Champagne is always most acceptable.”
As he sat down, he pulled off the ring Hardt had given him and pushed it across to her. “I hope you find this also acceptable, Fraulein Hartmann.” Then he took the bottle of champagne from the ice bucket and opened it.
