greying laundry, threw his hat onto the corner of the door, and noticed the thin layer of soot covering everything. A sour smell of hops wafted in.
He wound the handle of the Victrola and placed the needle on the record left there a week ago, the Hot Five playing ‘Alligator Crawl.’ Humming the riff and lilt of Armstrong’s trumpet, he lit an HB and sat for a few minutes, watching the smoke unfurl in the dusty light.
Hannah Liebermann.
He’d give Rex a call. The old hack usually had good sources and might even have a lead on how to contact her. There even was a chance he was still in the office.
He answered after one ring.
‘Rex, beer at the Adlon?’
‘Be there in half an hour, old boy.’
Denham put his hat back on, but before leaving the building climbed to the fifth floor and knocked gently on the door of the attic apartment.
‘Everything all right, Frau Weiss?’
After a while a chain rattled and the bolt turned. The door opened ajar and an old lady’s face peeped out like a bird’s. Her eyes moved fearfully in their sockets, but she smiled like a little girl when she saw him, then unhooked the chain and took his forearm in her avian claw.
‘Could be better; could be worse,’ she said with a shrug. ‘It’s these children. They don’t behave the way they used to. Would you get me some coffee and sugar this week?’ She fumbled for a note in her apron pocket, but he waved it away.
Frau Weiss, the building’s only Jewish tenant, had not left her apartment in two years. Not since her husband had gone out to buy a newspaper and never returned. A week after his disappearance his bloated remains were dredged from the Landwehr Canal showing fatal wounds to the head, but the police had declined to investigate.
B y the time Denham arrived at the Hotel Adlon it was a fine summer’s evening. Unter den Linden was closed to traffic for the opening of the Games, and crowds of strolling Berliners and tourists were out enjoying the heat. Loudspeakers along the avenue played Strauss waltzes in between official announcements, as though the city were one great carnival. He was ready for a cold beer.
Rex Palmer-Ward, chief correspondent for the Times, was waiting for him at their usual corner table in the upstairs bar, puffing on his calabash pipe, the long strands of his salt-and-pepper hair tumbled down over his forehead. He’d been a friend of Denham’s for years in ways for which Denham would always be grateful. Godfather to Tom and, during the hollow days of Denham’s divorce, comforter and fellow sorrow-drowner.
The place was packed with press, shouting and chatting in a dozen languages. Rex rose to greet him, extending a stick-thin arm. Denham had rarely seen him eat. He seemed to subsist on nicotine, alcohol, and salted nuts.
‘Hello, old boy. Did you catch the opening of the Games?’
‘I made a flying visit,’ Denham said and ordered a beer for himself and another for Rex. ‘Are your chaps over from London?’
‘Yes, the Times and Daily Mail boys were mightily impressed, of course.’ He began stoking his pipe with a cocktail stick. ‘Took them to the press briefing at the zoo ballroom this morning. The little Doctor was as quick as a whip as usual… made a ringing speech about how the Games had nothing to do with propaganda-Germany merely wanting to show its best side-this from the world’s master propagandist…’
Their beers arrived.
‘Look at this,’ Rex said, lifting the Berliner Morgenpost from his side pocket. ‘I had to read the Nazi press to find out the King is holidaying on a yacht in the Med with this American woman, Wallis. Our boys are pretending he’s at Balmoral.’
‘That’s game of them.’ They both laughed.
Denham said, ‘You wouldn’t happen to know of a Jewish sports organisation I could contact? Got a story about an athlete I’m following up.’
Rex frowned. ‘Not likely. Independent sports bodies are banned as far as I know. Can’t you simply doorstep this person?’
‘Maybe. If I can get close. But I suspect this one’s protected in case people like me come along asking questions. The athlete is Hannah Liebermann. She’s competing under duress.’
‘Good God.’ Rex looked up from his pipe. ‘Be careful. They’re twitchy. If they think you’re snooping behind their Olympic stage scenery they’ll throw you out. And then who will I drink with? So, where on earth did you hear that?’
‘A source I had to charm and coax,’ Denham said, seeing in his mind’s eye the intensity of Friedl’s face on the airship, the light of ploughed fields and sky reflected in it. That bizarre question. ‘Did we meet at a poetry reading in Mainz last year?’
Rex was watching him, curious.
‘You know, you’ve got one of those faces, old chap. People confide in you… They trust you. It’s why you get the good stories.’ He tapped out the carbonised debris and cleaned the bowl of the pipe with his finger.
They were silent for a moment; then Rex changed the subject.
‘Been invited to any of the parties?’
‘Not one.’
‘Here.’ He pulled an envelope from his jacket and slid it across the table. ‘Can’t make this one-if you want to go you’ll have to pretend you’re me.’
Denham removed the thick card invitation with embossed italic lettering. ‘Ah, the language of diplomacy.’ The inscription, in French, began:
On behalf of the Reich Government
Reichsminister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda
DR JOSEPH GOEBBELS
requests the honour of your company for dinner at an ‘Italian evening’
The party was to be held on the Pfaueninsel, a nature reserve island in the Wannsee, where many of Berlin’s rich and powerful had their homes.
‘I’ll dust off my dinner jacket,’ Denham said.
‘Won’t do. It’s white tie and tails.’
Over the noise of the bar a pianist began playing ‘Frauen Sind So Schon Wenn Sie Lieben,’ a tango Denham had been hearing a lot on the wireless. Women are so beautiful if they’re in love.
Rex said, ‘Phipps will be at that reception. Introduce yourself to him.’
‘Sir Eric Phipps? Are you serious…?’
Rex nodded. ‘He may look like a squirrel with stage fright, but our ambassador’s no fool-and he doesn’t have the time of day for the appeasers. Phipps is one of us. Tell him you drink with me.’
‘You’ve pulled him up a peg in my estimation,’ Denham said. ‘I didn’t know you knew him.’
Rex leaned towards Denham, his face grave and confiding. ‘By the way, old chap… with that trustworthy face of yours… if anyone were to pass you some intelligence-significant intelligence-I know you’d act in the nation’s best interests. Keep yourself above reproach and all that. Am I right?’
Denham put his beer down. ‘If it’s important I’d put King and country first, if that’s what you mean.’
His old friend’s expression was hard to read.
‘Rex, this is cryptic even for you. Was there some intelligence in particular?’
But Pat Murphy from the Daily Express had appeared at the table, rubbing his hands. ‘Evening, gents. There’s a rumour going around that one of the German lady high jumpers is, in fact, a man.’
‘Only one?’ Rex said, his face amused again.
Two Americans from the Reuters Bureau also pulled up chairs, and soon the table was in a haze of smoke from Rex’s reignited, smouldering pipe. Denham decided it was time to eat.
He was leaving the grand lobby when he found himself sharing the revolving front door with two women who were entering. One was short and chattering, the other a tall blonde with a stylish pillbox hat tilted low to one eye.
