comfortable for the arrivals. After that he returned to the hotel cafe to wait until the appointed hour. Five p.m. allowed plenty of time for the SD to bring Hannah from Frankfurt and the Liebermanns from Berlin. He wanted to know how far the storm had reached and whether it would stop them getting there, but there was no radio and no news.
‘T he operator says the lines are down,’ Martha said, turning to Eleanor in the hall at Tiergartenstrasse. She still had the telephone to her ear.
Eleanor felt her panic rising. How the hell was she going to warn him? Her first thought had been that the SD wouldn’t turn up for their meeting with Richard. A half second later she’d realised with a sickening jolt that they certainly would. They thought he had the damned dossier.
‘Look at you, you’re a nervous wreck,’ Martha said, sounding irritable. Again she pressed a cold flannel to her forehead. Martha had a hangover, and Eleanor’s crisis was probably the last thing she needed. ‘I don’t know what is going on but I wish you’d tell me. If you and Richard are in some sort of trouble-’
‘There must be a radio mast at Venhoven,’ Eleanor said, her breath fading from her voice.
She sat down on the hall chair and felt herself crumple. When she looked up, Martha was handing her the cold flannel. She took it and dabbed her eyes and swollen face, breathed in, and slowly composed herself.
‘How about a walk in the zoo,’ she said. ‘You’re right. I’ve got some explaining to do.’
B y lunchtime the rain had started again, coming down in even strokes. Denham paid the hotel bill, retrieved his belongings from the safe, and paced the deserted cafe, watching the road to the frontier while Friedl sat at a table reading Hemingway’s latest, To Have and Have Not.
‘What’s it like?’ Denham asked.
Friedl glanced up. ‘A lot better than No Parts for Stella. ’
Every two minutes Denham rose from his chair in agitation.
Finally, with less than an hour left before the appointed time, he could bear it no longer.
‘Let’s wait outside,’ Denham said. ‘Sitting in here is trying my nerves.’
They stood on the wet gravel forecourt next to the car, all packed and ready to go. Denham had a mounting sense of dread and returned to the hotel to use the lavatory.
At a few minutes before five they spotted a large black Mercedes-Benz, sleek with rain, approaching the frontier from the German side.
They watched as the striped barrier was raised and the Mercedes proceeded, pausing at the Dutch customs house. With a flutter of nerves Richard opened the car and took out the old satchel in which he’d placed the bogus dossier. They could see the tiny figure of a customs official speaking into the passenger window, taking the passports to check-another minute-then waving the car on. Now it sped on down the road towards them, a flash of sun catching the chrome of its fender.
Behind them was the sound of someone panting.
They turned to see a lad getting off a bicycle. He had been cycling into the wind. He took his cap off, wiped his brow with his sleeve, smiled, and said something to them in Dutch, then walked up to the hotel, taking an envelope from his shoulder bag.
The Mercedes was about two hundred yards away. They could hear the growl of its engine descending through the gears.
‘Hallo.’
The proprietor was waving from the steps of the hotel and pointing at them, and the lad was ambling back in their direction, pushing his bicycle and holding out the telegram envelope. Denham took it from him and tore it open. The printed words struck a series of hard chimes in his head.
ITS A TRAP CONTACT DODDS URGENT
‘Get in the car,’ he shouted. ‘Now.’
Friedl didn’t ask questions. They jumped in.
Too late.
The black Mercedes was turning into the gravel forecourt. By instinct both of them slunk low into their seats, hiding behind the rain-beaded windscreen. The Mercedes’ long running board, polished bodywork, hubcaps, and taillights passed slowly in front of them like a hearse, purring towards the hotel building. It came to a halt, and all four doors opened at once. Four men in black leather coats jumped out and ran to the door of the hotel. The one in the lead, leaping up the steps, held a Luger in his hand.
Denham turned the key in the ignition. The starter motor whined and died.
‘Go, go, go,’ Friedl shouted, hitting the dashboard with the palm of his hand.
Another attempt, and a metallic strangle.
Denham tried again. The engine fired twice and spluttered into life. He revved, then released the hand brake, and the car shot forwards. Swinging the steering wheel they slewed out of the forecourt, throwing up a hail of gravel, and started turning right, towards Venhoven.
Suddenly a thundering blast of horns and a heavy goods truck was heading right at them. The car was too far into the road to brake and stop. In a reflex action Denham pulled the steering wheel left, swerving the car round with a screech of the tyres.
‘Not to the border,’ Friedl shouted, his hands clutched to the sides of his head.
‘That truck’s right behind us,’ Denham said. ‘By the time I turn around the Germans will be out of the hotel and looking to see where our car went.’
‘Oh, shit.’
The frontier was looming before them, flags flying.
‘I’m wanted by the SD in Germany,’ Friedl said, his voice tight with terror.
In the rearview mirror Denham saw one of the leather coats come out from the hotel, then another. Both were looking in the opposite direction, along the road into Venhoven, but then the truck obscured the view. With a little luck, thought Denham, they had not seen which way the car had gone.
The Dutch border guard waved them through with only a glance at their passports. As he slowed for the German Kontrolle Denham struggled for breath. ‘Think of it this way,’ he said, as much to calm himself as Friedl, ‘we’ve gone in the one direction they won’t expect us to go.’
There seemed to be a Friday evening laxness at the barrier. One of the inspectors made a remark that drew laughter from the other. Denham handed over their passports with a smile.
‘What’s the purpose of your visit?’ said the man through the passenger window, still grinning from some joke.
‘Visiting friends for the evening in MUnchen-Gladbach,’ Denham said as casually as he could. The inspector disappeared into the Kontrolle with the passports.
‘It’s a rural crossing,’ Denham said in a low voice. ‘They won’t be on the lookout for you going in.’
‘And coming out?’
A minute later the man emerged with their passports stamped and handed them back through the window. ‘ Wilkommen im Deutschen Reich-’
The striped barrier was raised, and they drove on beneath a sign painted with an enormous black eagle, its claws splayed.
Chapter Forty-nine
In less fraught circumstances Eleanor might have found comedy in the mounting amazement on Martha’s face. As soon as they had reached the zoo she told her everything-or almost everything. The dangerous truth of the List Dossier, hidden in her case in the bedroom at Tiergartenstrasse, she had kept to herself, telling Martha only that the exchange involved the return of some munitions plans. When she explained the SD trap in which Richard was sitting, Martha’s mouth fell open, timed perfectly with a squawk from a nearby cockatoo. But after a few stunned seconds, she showed a resolve that Eleanor would forever after admire, and saved her questions until they’d run to the embassy and warned Richard by radio telegram.
What Eleanor told her afterwards in the embassy garden, where they’d gone for a calming cigarette, astonished her even more, if that were possible.
