‘I’ll confine my remarks to the weather and the price of gas,’ she said.
D enham dozed on an overspringy bed. He had finally slipped into sleep, when he was jolted awake by the rattling of the windowpane and the wind whistling around the eaves of the exposed building. It was 1:00 p.m. on his wristwatch. Midday in London.
He lay on his back for a while with his hands behind his head, thinking of Eleanor, and Evans.
It’s done.
He got up. From the window he saw the gravel forecourt still deserted apart from the Morris Oxford. An enormous goods truck rumbled up the road towards the frontier of the Reich. He saw the girl carrying in a potted tree from the steps and the gale catching her skirts and apron, ballooning them up like a jellyfish around her thighs. The poplar trees groaned and thrashed in the wind, sending leaves and twigs flying against the window.
Chapter Forty-six
Eager to know Eleanor’s impressions of her fiance now that they were alone, and to hear all about Eleanor’s own marriage plans, Martha insisted they dine in style at the Cafe Kempinski on the Ku’damm. ‘Darling, the street’s Europe’s largest coffee shop,’ she said. ‘It’s where one goes to be seen.’ There was an infectious gaiety about her. Martha was in love, and it was making her generous.
By 6:00 p.m. the place was crowded with chattering ladies showing their purchases from the KaDeWe department store and office workers in suits. There were a couple of blue Luftwaffe uniforms, and a party of three SS bandsmen drinking tall, frothing beers.
A waiter showed them to a table, and Martha had begun translating the plats du jour for Eleanor when their attention was caught by a stentorian voice addressing the maitre d’. To the poor headwaiter’s mortification, a tall, portly man in a suit from the 1920s was jabbing his thumb towards the party of SS bandsmen, the wattles under his white goatee shaking. He had drawn the eyes of everyone in the cafe and didn’t seem to care.
Martha leaned towards Eleanor. ‘He said, “Seat me as far as possible from those gangsters.” ’
In a flurry of semaphore among the waiters the man was ushered with swift discretion to the table next to theirs, where he struggled to fit his heft into the cramped wicker chair. The buttons on his ash-smudged waistcoat snagged against the table’s edge, and his long legs and orange brogues had to stick out into the aisle, where they formed a formidable obstacle. When he was finally installed he snipped the end off an enormous Cohiba cigar and signalled the waiter for a light.
‘Sofort, Herr Doktor Eckener.’
Eleanor looked at the man, whose large head was in profile next to her. ‘You’re Hugo Eckener,’ she said.
He turned to her with a weary look. ‘Madam,’ he said in English. One eye was flinty and piercing; the other seemed to wander lazily. He gave her a grumpy smile. ‘Forgive me for not recalling your face. Have I had the pleasure?’
‘No, sir,’ she said, offering him a light, ‘it’s just that I’ve heard so much about you from someone you know well-Richard Denham.’
Eckener’s gruffness seemed to dissipate with the puffs of cigar smoke, and he raised his eyebrows in apology. ‘You’re a friend of his?’
‘I’m engaged to him.’
‘Engaged! My dear lady.’ The old man’s jumble of courtesies and congratulations were more than the confined space allowed, and he almost knocked the table over. Eleanor introduced Martha, and a bottle of Henkell was ordered.
‘Richard did say that you speak your mind,’ Eleanor said.
‘ Ach, these criminals would have locked me up long ago if they’d had the guts,’ he said. ‘I apologise. My meeting at the Air Ministry this afternoon put me in an ill temper. Goring rebuked me for never giving the Deutsche Gruss. I said to him, “When I wake up each day I don’t say ‘Heil Hitler’ to my wife. I say ‘Good morning.’ ” ’
Several diners turned again to stare at him.
A cork twisted and popped; glasses were filled, and Eckener proposed a toast to the happiness of Eleanor’s marriage, and Martha’s. ‘It would give me the greatest pleasure to entertain you in comfort and style on board a Zeppelin,’ he added, explaining that he was staying one night in Berlin at the Hotel Kempinski, before heading to the new international airship terminal at Frankfurt for the first transatlantic flight of the season to New York.
‘By airship to New York,’ Martha said in a sigh.
D enham ordered a white beer to wash down the bread, smoked ham, and a great wedge of Leerdammer. Friedl asked for a Coca-Cola. News from the radio in the hotel cafe could only just be heard over the howls of the gale that battered the building, making the windows tremble and the ceiling groan, as if the room were gasping for air. Rain began to lash the glass roof like falling gravel, and the elderly proprietor who served them kept glancing up, fearing leaks. ‘Severe weather warning on the radio,’ he said, wiping his hands on his apron. ‘Storm blowing in from the Atlantic.’
Friedl had been subdued ever since they’d left London.
‘Do you think we’re doing the right thing?’ he said at last. ‘I can’t help thinking we’re missing a… historic opportunity.’
Denham raised his eyebrows. Since taking possession of the List Dossier, he thought he’d had a surfeit of historic opportunities.
‘I mean giving it to the British SIS is one thing,’ Friedl said, ‘but they’ll use it to bargain, won’t they. Calm down and stop your aggression, they’ll say, because we’ve got the proof in a dossier.’
‘You mean they won’t destroy him?’ Denham said, taking a swig of beer. ‘That’s Realpolitik. The way the world goes.’
Friedl only seemed more agitated. ‘You know I’m classed as a Volksschadlinge in Germany, a pest registered with the police? He has to be exposed.’
‘He will be. The world will learn the truth in the end, and history will judge. In the meantime, peace in Europe.’
Friedl sighed and looked out at an empty landscape blurred by moving curtains of rain. ‘I suppose I should be relieved, for my own sake. Men like me… I’m hardly helping our cause by naming this monstrous freak as one of my own. What an irony…’
Denham looked at him with sympathy. ‘You’re angry. But you escaped. Soon you’ll be in America and you’ll put it all behind you …’
A bell was ringing in another room.
‘Mr Denham?’ said the proprietor from the door. ‘There’s a telephone call for you.’
Denham followed the proprietor into the small hotel office and was handed the mouthpiece and receiver.
‘This is Rausch,’ said an iron voice.
‘Yes, Rausch.’
‘You have it?’
‘I have it,’ Denham said. ‘Will you be here tomorrow as arranged?’
‘I’ll be there.’
There was a click and then a dead line.
Denham leaned against the wall and closed his eyes. Everything is under control.
But the storm was starting to worry him.
Chapter Forty-seven
Eleanor waited until dark before pushing her way unseen into the Liebermanns’ garden in Grunewald. It was fortunate that she remembered this gate in the wall, flaking and ivy covered from disuse; the main entrance to the house was most probably under police watch, and she wasn’t going to take a risk finding out.
