two Olympians gauging each other, eyes locked. The fencer did not possess Eleanor’s voluptuous beauty. She was trim, sharp, and pretty, but her real attraction lay in her formidable self-assurance and her poise-with a habit of turning her head so that it was in alignment with her shoulders, like an ancient Egyptian profile.
‘I’m sorry you got into trouble on my account,’ she began. ‘That man Greiser warned me never to speak to you again, but I told him he’s used all his arrows. Short of killing Roland, there really isn’t anything else he can try. His quiver is empty.’ Her voice was bright and crisp, as though she were addressing a town hall meeting.
Roland said nothing. He was in an open-necked shirt and a pair of Oxford bags-the relaxed garb of any upper-class young man at home, yet he was still the hunted creature they’d seen by lamplight. His leg slouched over the arm of a chair, and one arm lay around his sister’s shoulders, his fingers stroking her hair. The mutilated right hand he had concealed in a kid leather glove, which rested on his knee. Something inside him had broken. Denham could see it in his eyes. Behind the fearful face was an intelligent boy, who, in any normal time and place, would be off travelling or thinking of a career. When Denham was Roland’s age his own hopes for the future had been smashed by events no less extreme.
No one spoke for a moment until Herr Liebermann said, ‘Hannah, my love, what was it you were hoping Herr Denham and Fraulein Eleanor could do for us by coming here?’
‘I was awake last night thinking about your offer, Mr Denham,’ she said, her brown eyes wide and clear, ‘and I would like to give you the interview you requested. Here. Today. Roland, too. For you to publish in England, the United States, and, really, wherever else you can.’
Denham hadn’t expected such eagerness and wondered now about the wisdom of it. ‘I’m not so sure…,’ he said.
‘But we are sure. We signed away the art, but straightaway they wanted more. They won’t let us go until they’ve taken the clothes off our backs, and even then…’ She spread her arms in a gesture of despair.
‘I’m sorry to say I think you’re right about that,’ Denham said.
‘Then your article must say clearly what they did to Roland. Everything, now, while the Games are still on. The whole world must read about it. Then they wouldn’t dare touch him again.’
Denham scratched his chin. ‘It might not be expedient for them to arrest him again if they know the foreign press is watching, but don’t think you can shame them or appeal to their nicer qualities.’ And before he could stop himself he said, ‘Shit doesn’t have nicer qualities.’ He put down his teacup and apologised. The faces before him were serious, but then a smile began to play beneath Herr Liebermann’s beard, and the old man began to laugh.
‘Shit doesn’t have nicer qualities,’ Herr Liebermann repeated, and with the release of one who’d been under months of unsmiling strain. Eleanor and Roland began laughing, too; only Hannah’s face remained prim and slighted.
‘Have I missed a good joke?’ came a woman’s voice from the doorway. They turned to see a heavy lady with unruly silver hair, a long pearl necklace, and an old-fashioned cameo brooch. Frau Liebermann shook hands with them, offering the tips of her fingers, so that Denham half wondered whether she expected her rings to be kissed. She spoke in a singsong voice as though she were in a dream. He guessed she’d taken a sedative.
The whole family now sat looking at him and Eleanor, expectant, and not unhappy. Denham removed his notepad and Leica from his case.
‘Where shall we start?’
Hannah’s story was as grim as he’d expected. On the voyage from California she’d been kept under constant supervision, and her telegrams were censored. They’d forbidden her to win the fencing final, because a Jew could not be seen to take the gold, but she could win the silver. She was isolated from the rest of the team and given the world’s worst coach. And on the podium, she was to give the Hitler salute, which they’d even made her practise in front of them.
Roland, as Denham had guessed, was the bait they’d used to bring her back. He’d been kept for four days in the Gestapo’s basement cells. The young man’s eyes told him everything, and Denham knew better than to ask.
When she had finished, Denham took several photographs of them together in the sitting room with the blue horses behind them, and many of Hannah by herself posing with her foil. Afterwards Frau Liebermann insisted that he and Eleanor stay for lunch around a table laid in the grounds at the back of the house. Small white yachts in sail circled on the lake, brilliant against the afternoon sun.
Roland stood to pour wine for them all. Thistledown floated through the warm air and some landed in his black hair. As he poured Eleanor’s glass, his eyes met hers.
Ah well, Denham thought, and looked away. He’s much nearer her age than I am.
Herr Liebermann said a brief prayer in Hebrew when the meal of baked carp and potatoes in cream was placed in front of them; then he raised his glass. ‘To America,’ he said, smiling at Eleanor.
‘To America,’ they all said, and clinked glasses.
T hey left the Liebermann house unseen by a disused door in the wall of the grounds and walked in silence for a while down the leafy avenue, which seemed even stiller in the heat of the late afternoon.
‘It’s happening, isn’t it?’ Eleanor said after a while, her head lowered.
‘What is?’ But Denham thought he knew what she meant.
‘Everything.’ She reached out and held his hand. ‘Us. You and I. Our fight against these bastards.’
‘Yes,’ said Denham. ‘It’s happening.’
A t Berlin Zoo Station they made plans to meet that night.
‘Look after these,’ Denham said, handing her his shorthand notes and the Leica. ‘They’ll be safer at the ambassador’s house.’
Back home, he put his head around Frau Stumpf’s door. His landlady was sitting alone at her kitchen table in her long shawl, listening to radio music and staring at the wall, which was how he often found her. She seemed to jump when he entered, and then, unusual for her, avoided his eyes.
‘Good afternoon, Herr Denham. Yes, you have another telegram.’
He tore it open, and felt the niggle of worry finally hatch and spread through his gut.
NO NEWS STOP POLICE TO ISSUE MISSING PERSONS NOTICE STOP COME SOONEST STOP
Leaping up the stairs to his apartment, he tried to work out how fast he could get to London. First he would call Anna, then Tempelhof Airport in the hope that there was a seat on the evening flight.
From a crackling radio behind Reinacher’s door the voice of Goebbels resounded in the stairwell. ‘… This day, I believe it is no exaggeration to say… that a hundred million people in Germany and beyond her frontiers… have been tuned to the broadcast of the eleventh Olympiad from Berlin…’
He put his key in the door to his apartment and pushed, not even noticing that the new lock wasn’t locked. His senses warned him but his brain was too slow on the uptake. He stepped into his sitting room and two men stood up.
‘Richard Denham,’ the nearer one said. He opened his jacket to reveal the warrant-disc hanging from an inside pocket. ‘You’re to come with us.’
Chapter Seventeen
Gestapo. Both men wore grey suits and black, snap-brimmed trilbies.
‘May I make a telephone call?’ Denham said. He felt a strange calm come over him, as if he’d expected them. Somehow, in his heart, he’d known it would come to this.
‘You’ll be back in the morning,’ the man said, stubbing his cigarette out on the rug. ‘You can telephone then.’
That, Denham knew, was a gross lie, but he wasn’t going to argue.
They escorted him downstairs, one in front and one behind.
A storm of applause was breaking across the speech on Reinacher’s radio as the speaker’s voice moved into high gear. ‘As for those seduced by the international Jewish press into doubting the Fuhrer’s desire for peace… I say this:… let them come to Berlin!
… Let them come to Berlin!..’
