dossier, including his finished translation of Forster’s notes, he left in the vault ready to give to Evans. For the plan to work, the fake dossier, the one he would give Rausch, would contain… what?
Suddenly he felt the full danger of what they were doing. An insane risk that could end in their deaths. Even if it all went as planned, he couldn’t shake off a fear that these marvellous months with Eleanor-the happiest of his life-were about to end.
‘What’s up, buster? You’re as sad as a map.’
She was leaning over him, radiant, and she brushed his cheek with a kiss. Taking his hand she led him to the dance floor, where the orchestra was playing a gentle rumba. A dark-skinned woman balancing an arrangement of fruit on her head stepped up to the microphone, accompanied by three crooners in white tuxedos.
He took Eleanor’s fingers in his own and put his other arm low around her waist, breathing in her perfume. Gently he moved his hips with hers.
‘A penny for your filthy thoughts,’ she said.
‘My darling…’
‘What is it?’
‘I don’t know… I’ve a feeling things can’t carry on…’
She looked at him quickly with hurt and fear in her eyes.
‘… the way they were. Once we’ve gone through with this. Somehow, it will change us. I just want you to be ready for that.’
She lay her head on his shoulder as they moved to the rhythm.
‘Regret over doing nothing will change us far more,’ she said.
He smiled at her, though she couldn’t see his face. The melody enveloped them in its sweet cadence.
When she looked up at him again, a tear was making a track down her powdered cheek.
They stopped still in the centre of the floor, held each other close, and kissed long and deeply, oblivious to the couples shuffling in circles around them. They kissed as though they were about to part for a long time, or forever.
Chapter Forty-three
The young official at the embassy main desk sprang to his feet when he saw Denham, as though he’d been waiting for him all day, then looked confused when he saw Eleanor. He ushered both of them upstairs regardless.
The embassy’s new interior seemed designed to intimidate the visitor and flatter the vanity of the incumbent, von Ribbentrop, who had impressed Hitler with his smooth hauteur, and with his ability to speak French and English, skills he’d learned from his years as a travelling wine salesman. His pompous portrait hung in the entrance hall. The oversized staircase lined with bronze torches gave onto a pilastered landing, where a bust of the Fuhrer was garlanded with sprigs of oak and pine, like some psychotic god of Yule.
The official showed them into a large salon overlooking St James’s Park, where the chestnut trees were budding with bright green leaves, and asked them to wait. When he’d gone they were too nervous to sit and paced the edge of the carpet towards the far wall, on which was hung a KRAFT DURCH FREUDE picture calendar for 1937. A family of four waved ecstatically from their Volkswagen.
The door opened and a fat man in a dark suit entered. There was a Party pin in his buttonhole. He resembled a grossly grown-up doll. He gave them a supercilious stare. SD, Denham thought.
‘Mr Denham?’ he said in English. ‘I have orders to arrange a telephone call to Berlin for you at four p.m.’ He turned to Eleanor with a quizzical look.
‘She’s with me,’ Denham said.
The man gestured to a telephone on a gilded table under the window. ‘You can take the call there in a moment. I’ve been keeping the connection open.’ He left the room.
Seconds later the telephone rang. Eleanor squeezed Denham’s hand. He walked towards it. It rang again, and he picked it up.
‘Hello, Rausch, this is Richard Denham.’
A brief pause filled with static before a thin, high voice said, ‘This is Reinhard Heydrich.’
Denham’s mouth opened, but words had fled. ‘I see,’ was all he managed at last, clutching the receiver very tightly.
A quiet, high-pitched bray came down the line. ‘You’ve won some admirers here, you know. After three days working you over my boys were convinced you knew nothing of that dossier.’ The voice had the offhand easiness of power. ‘You even had Rausch fooled. Either you’ve got nerves of steel, or he’s going soft.’
Under his shirt Denham felt a bead of sweat roll from his armpit down to his belt. He thought of the long pale face in the photograph on the wall of that SD torture room. The tiny eyes deeply set, slanted, bright, and cruel.
Recovering himself he said, ‘Well, I didn’t want to make it easy for you. No fun in that, is there?’
The soft braying laugh again. ‘You’re making us a marvellous offer, Herr Denham. The dossier in exchange for three inconvenient Jews? How could we say no?’
Denham felt a dizzying surge of adrenaline. ‘There are two conditions.’
‘Go on.’
‘Rausch, and no one else, is to bring the Liebermanns in a single car to the town of Venhoven, on the Dutch border, at five p.m. next Friday. There’s a small hotel called Hotel Mertens, about five hundred yards from the German frontier. I’ll be there with the dossier. Second, Jakob Liebermann keeps his fortune. He’s not to be robbed by the Reich.’
A long pause.
‘Agreed,’ Heydrich said finally, ‘with the exception of the location. The handover is to take place at Tempelhof Airport in Berlin
…’
‘No.’
‘See it from our point of view,’ Heydrich said, sounding positively reasonable. ‘You are handing over property that belongs to the Reich. It is appropriate that you do so on German soil, where we can be certain of no outside interference.’
‘No.’
‘Really, Herr Denham, I’m a fencer myself, you know. I’m honour bound to act with chivalry.’
‘We stick to my terms or… I go straight to the British Foreign Office with what I have in my possession.’
Another silence on the line. Behind the static Denham sensed the Obergruppenfuhrer’s mood souring.
‘But who will believe any of it?’ he said.
The Fuhrer is not married.
Denham did not rise to it. ‘I’ll expect Rausch at Venhoven with the Liebermanns, alive and well, and no one else. At five p.m. on Friday.’
The pulse in his neck was pounding. Three, four, five seconds more of hissing silence on the line. He was about to hang up, when the thin voice spoke again.
‘I was really too hasty in signing the order for your release.’ And then: ‘Very well then, we go with your plan. But now I must warn you.’ His voice dropped. ‘Try to cheat us over this and we will hunt you down. Do you understand?’
Denham placed the phone down onto its cradle. He turned to face Eleanor and she ran towards him. His hands trembled, and his shirt was soaked through.
Part III
Chapter Forty-four
