David John
Flight from Berlin
Chapter Twenty-three
The morning after the Chancellery reception Eleanor and Gallico found standing room only at the back of the tearoom in the old Hotel Kaiserhof on the Wilhelmplatz. The place was full of foreign correspondents and newswire photographers. It was a humid day, and the room already smelled of sweat, cigarette smoke, and whisky hangovers.
Willi Greiser entered to a barrage of shouted questions.
‘Sir, was Liebermann forced to compete?’
‘Can you confirm that her brother was shot while resisting arrest?’
‘Is she in custody? Sir?’
Eleanor noticed that he did not flinch but brazened the onslaught with an urbane smile, dismissing the matter of the Liebermann broadcast with a wave of his hand. Let’s not waste anyone’s time over such a thing. This guy’s good, she thought. Speaking smoothly in English with his German-American accent, he said, to popping flashbulbs, ‘After the great strain that training for these Games has taken on her mentally and physically, Fraulein Hannah Liebermann is now convalescing at a private sanatorium. She sincerely regrets any misleading impressions she may have given in her pressured state of mind, and has personally asked me to express her deep gratitude to the German Olympic Committee for once again allowing her the honour of defending her title for Germany.’
‘Boys, don’t fall for it…’ Eleanor mumbled.
Greiser then took questions only from the German reporters in the room, who, right on cue, got his propaganda machine rolling with something more palatable. The Volkischer Beobachter was eager to know whether Ilse Dorffeldt had recovered from her disappointment in dropping the baton in the women’s relay.
‘She was upset,’ said Greiser, ‘but the Fuhrer himself sent a car full of flowers to console her.’
He answered two more servile questions from the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung and the Berliner Tageblatt while his eyes scanned the room, noticing that the foreign press corps had ceased their shorthand and become restless, whereupon he suddenly thanked everyone and turned his back on the instant uproar of unanswered questions about Liebermann. As he was striding towards the exit, a female voice carried high over those of the males.
‘Has the Gestapo tortured English reporter Richard Denham for speaking to Liebermann?’
Greiser was halfway through the double doors, but Eleanor saw his back tense and his neck stiffen. He’d heard the question.
The room fell still.
She had the sensation of a tide turning as every foot and chair scraped and shifted around and faced in her direction. Faces looked at her eagerly, notepads on knees and pencils at the ready. Then all the questions began at once.
‘Ma’am, who’s this guy? Colleague of yours?’
‘Did he get an interview with Liebermann?’
‘How long’s he been in the cells?’
And Eleanor found herself giving her own press conference, with Gallico standing behind her, amused and shaking his head at the ceiling. The room filled with the dry rustle of 150 pencils taking shorthand.
‘Did you say the Gestapo have got Denham?’ said a lanky, grey-haired Englishman pushing his way through the pack, his pipe smouldering like a paddle steamer’s. ‘Well, who the bloody hell’s getting him out?’ he shouted.
E arly that evening Gallico rang the bell at the Dodds’ house on Tiergartenstrasse and invited Eleanor for a stroll. The humidity still hadn’t lifted. They bought ice creams from a stall near the Tiergarten and walked along the edge of the park, up the Hermann-Goring-Strasse towards the Brandenburg Gate. Cries of parakeets and howler monkeys reached them from the zoo.
‘So you gave Brundage a hard time?’ she asked.
‘Well, he denied everything of course and looked like he wanted the floor to swallow him up. First time we’ve ever seen him break a sweat…’
Gallico’s voice trailed off.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Sweetheart, listen,’ he said, hesitating. ‘You may as well hear this from me first…’
‘What is it?’ She felt her stomach turn cold.
‘There’s a report on the wire of an interview your husband’s given to the New York Post. Said your behaviour on board the Manhattan embarrassed him. Made him think you weren’t the blushing flower he married… He doesn’t want you singing with the Herb Emerson Orchestra anymore. Says he needs time apart.’
Eleanor exhaled loudly and realised she’d been holding her breath.
‘Oh,’ she said, almost wanting to cry with relief, but started giggling instead, to Gallico’s bemusement. ‘I thought you were going to tell me Richard had been…’ She put her arms around him and hugged him. ‘Thanks for letting me know.’
‘You’re not upset?’
‘Not at all. If anything, it just made my life a whole lot better.’
When they reached Unter den Linden Eleanor suggested a coffee at the Adlon. The first person she saw in the lobby was that lanky Englishman, Rex Palmer-Ward, talking to a group of reporters near the fountain. He spotted her and approached trailing a veil of sweet-smelling smoke.
‘My dear,’ he said. ‘There’s been a development.’
Chapter Twenty-four
Searchlights lit Berlin’s new showcase airport, creating a theatrical effect from the blood-red flags, silver eagles, and rows of regimented windows: the hallmarks of the brutal new style.
‘I haven’t packed,’ Denham mumbled to the three SD men escorting him in the BMW.
‘You’re going straight on the flight.’
One of the men showed Denham’s passport at the desk, then escorted him past the brass rail, out onto the runway, and towards the steps of the plane. Its silver fuselage glinted under the lights. The baggage hold was closing and the fuel truck reversing away. The propellers began to turn. In the door of the plane a young stewardess was beckoning for them to hurry.
Denham reached the steps just as the engines began to roar, but before he could climb inside, the SD man grabbed his elbow. With his other hand holding on to his trilby he yelled, ‘Make any attempt to reenter the Reich and it’s straight back to the cells. Understand?’
‘I’m not coming back,’ Denham said, taking his passport from the man’s hand.
He hobbled through the door of the plane and said hello to the stewardess, seeing the effect of his ravaged face in her eyes. Pretty eyes, too. Iceberg blue. Inside the cabin were about sixteen tall, upholstered seats, all occupied, except one. In their haste to flush him out of their Aryan paradise, Denham guessed they’d bumped someone off the flight. At least he had a window seat. He eased himself in with care, trying not to faint from the hot pokers in his ribs.
The plane began to move. It rumbled along the runway for a minute; then the engine noise swelled in pitch, there was a sudden acceleration, and they were away, up out of the Reich. Trying not to rest his stitched-up brow against the window he watched the spider’s web of illuminated streets radiating from Potsdamer Platz station, the long line of car taillights passing along the Tiergarten, the dark mass of the zoo and its lakes. Drifts of cloud slipped over the wing. A few minutes later they were over the western districts of Wilmersdorf, Charlottenburg, and Spandau, and Berlin was stretching away behind them.
