‘Only Kurt, Jakob, and me. No one else.’
‘Go on.’
‘You could imagine-how I felt. Not knowing how much the SD had discovered through interrogation. The timing was the worst thing. Because in a matter of days I was due to meet the British reporter beneath the bell tower at the Olympic stadium. That was on the day you and I flew to Berlin on the Hindenburg. My task was to tell him where he would collect the key and to give him instructions for accessing the London bank.
‘But by then I feared a trap. What if it wasn’t a British reporter meeting me… but an agent of the SD.
‘I didn’t know what to do. Then I saw you in the bar of the Kurgarten. A British reporter by himself? I couldn’t believe it. I hoped, oh I hoped that you were the one I was meant to be meeting in the stadium-because I had this sense that I could trust you. And after we spoke for so long on the airship that sense was even stronger. Of course, you weren’t him; you didn’t know the password, but I had to do something. So I acted on instinct…’
‘You gave me the Hannah story, knowing it would lead me to Jakob
…’
‘Yes.’ Friedl seemed to shrink into his clothes. ‘And if Jakob trusted you, too…’
‘He would give me the key.’ Denham smiled thoughtfully at the fire.
‘If your damned group had given the key to the British embassy instead,’ Eleanor muttered, ‘you might have saved us all a lot of trouble.’
‘Kurt must have had his reasons,’ Friedl said, looking at the floor. After a long pause he said, ‘Richard, I am so sorry. For putting you in danger. Their investigation of Kurt led them to me. The moment I got back to Berlin I think they had shadows all over me, waiting to see where I led them. It was only a matter of time before they found out I had indeed met a British reporter-and it was you. I should have warned you at the Nollendorfplatz…’
Denham heard the soft, whirring chime of the grandfather clock in the drawing room. It now had for him the association of history turning, reconfiguring.
‘Well. It’s over now,’ Denham said. ‘Tonight I’ll finish that translation. And tomorrow we’ll hand the dossier to the SIS.’
‘Yes, thank God it’s over,’ Friedl said and knocked back his whisky. ‘Now please forgive me, but I’m exhausted.’ He got up, said good night, and went upstairs.
A log cracked and shifted in the grate. Eleanor was staring into the fire, the light dancing across her face.
‘Eleanor?’
Still looking into the flames, she said, ‘I’m thinking about Jakob-and Hannah and Ilse. What are we doing… just handing this thing to the Brits when we could use it to save our friends’ lives?’
The cat purred on the sofa.
She pulled her gaze away from the fire and faced Denham. ‘Who knows what the Brits will do with it? It could rot in another old safe for years while they decide-or worse, end up in the hands of one of those pro-German suckers. I say we go to the German embassy and make an offer they won’t refuse. The dossier in exchange for Jakob, Ilse, and Hannah.’
‘Eleanor,’ Denham said, ‘this is about more than three people.’
‘Do you really believe we can do this, Richard, that we can play power politics to control a head of state? Look, we’ve got our hands on something that could actually save the lives of three people we know. Are we going to throw that away on the off-chance of something greater?’
She plucked a cigarette from the packet on the coffee table and broke the match as she struck it.
‘Jakob Liebermann gave us that key, and it’s his family that’s suffering now.’
After the second attempt she lit her cigarette and blew a jet of smoke at the ceiling. The firelight made a golden crown of her hair, in which Denham’s gaze was lost.
‘Think it over,’ she said, getting up. ‘But if we can’t use this to rescue our friends, there must be something wrong with us.’
Chapter Forty
13 NOVEMBER ’18
What rest I have is disturbed by a nightmare as lurid as any of Singer’s. I am awake before dawn, and it is icy cold in my room; I warm my hands under the electric lamp and try to recall the dream.
I am surrounded by men’s faces in a muddy trench, wanting to assure them that their emotions are no cause for shame; that they can shed tears and still be men-the things I tell hardened troops on the wards, to their surprise. Then I realise they are all dead, and in different stages of decomposition. The trench walls are made of corpses, heaps of them. I look over the top and see a soldier coming. I can’t make him out at first because he is veiled in a green mist-mustard gas. He scrambles down over the bodies towards me, pointing his rifle with bayonet fixed. He speaks to me. His words are ‘Voca me cum benedictus.’ I pick up a bayonet from the hands of a corpse, lunge forwards, and plunge it into the soldier’s eye with all my strength. With that, I wake.
To analyse it: the first part is simple. Its source is the conflict in my own role: between my duty to heal the men and send them back to the Front, in most cases to their deaths. For that, duty does not absolve me.
The figure emerging from the mustard gas is more complex, but it was that which brought the feelings of dread and fear, not the corpses. Of course it was Patient H. Those Latin words, from the requiem mass for the dead- ‘ Call me among the blessed.’
The animus driving H’s cure was his belief that he was chosen in some way, that Providence was calling him to a purpose. And I was the medium of his awakening. But it is more than that.
‘Call me among the blessed…’
Whom have I called?
It occurs to me that of all my cases, Patient H is my only complete success. And I gave him more than sight. For surely, a man who believes that through his own will he has cured himself of blindness will believe he can achieve anything on the face of this earth.
And in the dream I had to kill him. Because he is one who should not have survived.
Chapter Forty-one
David Wyn Evans watched the track as the next race was prepared, his brow set against some doubtful thought. The conversation was not going the way Denham had planned.
An electric buzz as the hare flashed by, and seven muzzled greyhounds shot after it to roars of encouragement from the crowd.
‘Slippy Boy’s in the lead,’ Tom shouted, turning to look up at them.
Evans leaned in to Denham’s ear. ‘If I’m understanding you right, you’re attaching conditions to handing it over-’
‘Of course I’m not.’ Denham gave an abashed smile. ‘King and country come first. But you can surely give me a guarantee-that you’ll use it to procure the release of the Liebermanns? Once you’ve got it you can start demanding whatever you want from Berlin-’
‘Dad, which dog did you bet on?’
‘Slippy Boy.’
He rested his hands on Tom’s shoulders. Evans was silent again, tall and sombre in black like a lay preacher, oblivious to the cheering tiers of flat-capped men around him.
Eventually he said, ‘It may not be that simple, Mr Denham.’
He continued to watch the track, but his eyes were distant, reflecting some complex tableau of thoughts, and Denham understood. The SIS had politics of its own, and those prepared to play so ruthless and un-British a game as blackmail were probably few. He would have to trust that Evans, Rex, and whoever else was on their side would not be stopped.
