At the embassy party Ambassador Dodd had drily proposed a toast to the engaged couple; the Russians reciprocated with gusto, and she’d slipped out of the room just as glasses were clinking and the orchestra started playing. With luck, she’d be back before anyone noticed she was missing.
Outside was a parked convoy of Russian-built embassy cars and limousines, their drivers standing about smoking, and a single waiting taxi. She was heading straight for it when Martha’s voice stopped her cold.
‘Where on earth are you going?’
Damn it.
The shorter woman was standing under the lighted front porch, a full flute of champagne in her hand. Her sparkling earrings and long, pale blue gown brought out her prettiness, Eleanor thought, like a prom queen.
‘Just going to get cigarettes,’ Eleanor said, wincing at how unconvincing that sounded.
‘What?’
She turned and continued towards the taxi.
‘Wait, you can’t simply vanish off into Berlin-’
O nce inside the Liebermanns’ grounds, she saw at once from the long grass, the cracked, dry fountain, and the leaves and branches ungathered from winter how the family’s circumstances had changed.
There were no lights in the Gothic turrets of the house, and the curtains had not been drawn. Boats moored at the jetty rattled softly. She skirted around some mossy paving to the building’s other side and saw a solitary light coming from the lower ground floor. Carefully descending the stone steps and peering through the window she saw Ilse Liebermann sitting at a long kitchen table with family photographs spread out before her. She was fingering the pearls of a necklace around her neck, her face partly obscured by the cloud of silver hair.
Eleanor wondered whether she should ring the front doorbell, but she didn’t want to frighten the woman. In the end she elected simply to tap on the kitchen window, calling gently, ‘Frau Liebermann, it’s Eleanor Emerson.’
Ilse looked up with a start, and Eleanor pushed her face to the glass so that the old woman could see who it was. She got up stiffly and opened the kitchen’s garden door.
‘Fraulein Eleanor?’ she said, still startled.
Eleanor put her arms around the old woman and embraced her. ‘I’ve come to see that you’re ready for your journey tomorrow. Have you heard from Hannah?’
The woman’s forehead creased into puzzled lines. ‘Yes, my dear. I mean no. Thank you.’ She had a question forming, but said, ‘Come upstairs and see Jakob. You’re very welcome here.’
She switched on a light and led Eleanor up the stairs to the grand sitting room, where Hannah had given the interview last summer.
‘Jaku, we have a visitor,’ Ilse called.
Eleanor thought this must be a different room. Its walls were bare, and a vase of dried flowers stood where the dream blue horses had galloped over the mantelpiece. Then she noticed, with a feeling of depression, the geometric outlines of soot on the wallpaper where the collection had hung. Jakob Liebermann was sitting on the divan surrounded by piles of documents, which he was scrutinising, pencil in hand, through wire eyeglasses. The yellow light from a table lamp illuminated one side of his face, where the port-wine stain marked his hollow cheek.
The old man put his papers down and struggled to his feet. ‘I am exceedingly surprised and delighted to see you, Fraulein Eleanor,’ he said in his deep, resonating voice, and took both her hands in his. ‘Though it is not at all safe for you to be here. What brings you back?’
He went to pour them all a cognac from the walnut drinks cabinet. They were both looking gaunt and pale, Eleanor thought.
‘I wanted to see that you’re ready for your long journey to the border,’ Eleanor said.
Jakob put down the bottle and gave her a quizzical look. ‘How is it you know about that?’ he asked.
‘Richard arranged it all. He negotiated with Heydrich.’
Jakob and Ilse met each other’s eyes.
‘Why would Herr Denham do something like that?’ said Ilse. There was a hard undertone to her voice.
‘He’s getting you out,’ said Eleanor. ‘He’s made a deal…’ She looked right at Jakob. ‘We got the dossier.’
The confusion on his face seemed to still. After a long pause, he said, ‘Go on.’
‘You’re being taken over the border to the Netherlands, then to England. Hannah, too. Isn’t there an official car coming to collect you early tomorrow morning?’
‘The Netherlands?’ Jakob stared at her, incredulous. ‘An SS car is indeed coming for us, but on Saturday, the day after tomorrow, at seven a.m. It is taking us to Basel on the Swiss border.’
D enham watched from the window of his room as the storm gathered pace. Ragged black clouds tore across the darkening sky. The gale blew unhindered over the bare land, picking up clods of earth and bark and gravel.
Suddenly a series of cracks like a twenty-one-gun salute, and he saw the farthest poplar tree topple, splintering with a slow, woody groan as it came down on the electricity cables. Sparks fell to the ground, and the lights in the hotel went out.
‘B asel?’ Eleanor told herself to breathe to allay panic. She sat down slowly on the sofa.
‘We know nothing about a deal,’ said Jakob, shaking his head and handing her a cognac. ‘My Swiss lawyer informed the SS that he would only transfer my accounts to them if Ilse and I attend in person to sign the documents in his office in Basel. He wants to make sure we are not being forced against our will. Of course, there will be SS men accompanying us all the way… to make sure there’s no slip of the pen. Then they are bringing us back home.’
‘But Richard is waiting for you at the border in Holland tomorrow afternoon,’ Eleanor said, struggling not to shout, the questions beginning to cluster in her head. ‘And Heydrich-he agreed you could keep your fortune…’
‘I think you know the types we’re dealing with,’ Jakob said, sounding infinitely tired. ‘Clearly, you have been deceived. As to the money, I have no choice, and have accepted as much. The authorities demand extortionate sums each month in fees for Hannah’s confinement at a sanatorium in Frankfurt. I am turning over some accounts to them in compensation for the cost of her treatment,’ he said with a feeble attempt at irony. He knocked back his cognac and sighed, staring into the lamp. ‘So… the dossier found you in the end…’
‘But there is one good thing,’ Ilse said. ‘We will be allowed to visit her on the way there. We are breaking the journey at Frankfurt. We have not seen her since last summer.’
Eleanor swirled the cognac around in her glass. She got up and paced the room, looking into the ghostly spaces where the pictures had been. She picked up china ornaments and put them down again carefully. When she turned back to Jakob and Ilse, they were watching her with an odd expression, she thought, almost with a kind of humour and admiration. Perhaps she’d done something to remind them of their daughter.
‘All right,’ she said firmly. ‘We’re going to try something. To put a stop to this. You say you’re being driven to Frankfurt on Saturday, the day after tomorrow. How many hours is that from here?’
A n hour later she was riding through the warm Berlin night, her taxi speeding through the deserted streets of the Grunewald, along the Konigsallee to the floodlit Hotel Kempinski on the Ku’damm, still swarming with traffic, diners at cafe tables, departing movie-theatre crowds, and smart girls linking arms with men in epaulettes. She flashed a smile at the hotel commissionaire and was directed by the receptionist to a room on the fourth floor. A puzzled Dr Eckener opened the door in a long silk bathrobe and slippers. The butt of a cigar was wedged into the side of his mouth.
‘Dr Eckener,’ Eleanor said, with the adrenaline singing in her chest. ‘May I talk to you?’
Chapter Forty-eight
The morning light exposed the devastation wrought by the storm. The Venhoven road was strewn with branches and litter, and what little hedge and vegetation there was on the farmland along the frontier had been flattened. The proprietor apologised. There would be nothing hot for breakfast, as power was still cut. The telephone lines were down, too.
Denham checked that the Morris Oxford had come through the night unscathed, cleaned the windscreen, filled the tank with a petrol can from the filling station, then took the blankets from the boot to make the backseat
