lady in a cloche hat. He picked up that morning’s Frankfurter Zeitung, discarded on the seat. An article on the forthcoming coronation in London filled a whole inside page with a photograph of Their Majesties and a family tree stressing their German ancestry; Goring had declared himself delighted with recent test-flight manoeuvres over Spain of the new Heinkel IIIs and Junkers 52s; the Fuhrer was to receive Mussolini on a state visit in September; the city of Coburg had proclaimed itself Judenrein.
The compartment door opened suddenly. Black uniform and cap.
‘Tickets, please.’
Relax, Denham told himself, and gave his ticket to the conductor. Relax.
He put the paper down and watched the suburbs of Cologne give way to the lush pastures and hills of the Rhineland. Soon his eyelids became heavy as he listened to the beat of wheels on track, and his chin fell onto his chest.
‘C an’t see ’em,’ said Eleanor. She was now at the wheel of the Hanomag, her eyes peering at the cars along the distant stretch of the autobahn. ‘They’re probably miles ahead by now.’ They had just passed Leipzig.
‘We’ve been driving for hours,’ Martha said. ‘I need the restroom.’ She’d taken off her dark glasses and seemed to be tiring.
‘I’ll stop there,’ Eleanor said, seeing a rest stop up ahead with a cafe and a gas station.
They stretched their legs while the attendant filled the tank, before getting in the line for the washroom just ahead of a coach full of Strength Through Joy vacationers. Then, while Martha went to buy some sweet rolls, Eleanor found a telephone booth in the gas station, got a stack of pfennigs ready, and placed a call to Berlin.
Richard had told her to make this call if she had a problem. Well, she had a problem all right. And this was the second time she’d tried the number.
‘Eleanor? My goodness.’
Rex was surprised to hear her voice-or as surprised as a reserved Brit could sound-but she interrupted before he asked too many questions. ‘I need to ask a favour of you…’
‘Is something wrong?’ A noise of typewriters in the background.
‘It really is a lot to ask…’
‘Try me.’
She hesitated, then said, ‘Could you come to Frankfurt by six p.m. this evening?’
T en minutes later they’d rejoined the autobahn and were nudging the limit of the Hanomag’s unimpressive top speed when Martha shouted: ‘There they are!’
About a hundred yards ahead the dark grey BMW with the SS number plates was pulled over to the side of the road. The red-faced, porcine man was in his shirtsleeves, crouching next to the back wheel with the jack, and trying to heave a blown rear tyre away from the axle, while the SS driver stood behind him, holding a spanner. She could see Jakob’s and Ilse’s heads in the car’s back window as she passed.
‘Well done, Jakob,’ Eleanor said, watching in her rearview mirror. ‘Now, how did you manage that?’
T he keening note of the steam whistle woke him as the train passed into a tunnel. He rubbed his eyes, confused for a minute. The old woman was still there, reading. And a man with a young boy holding a model glider now sat opposite, watching him. Maybe he’d slept through the stop at Bonn. The satchel and newspaper were still on his lap.
He got up to use the lavatory, and in the next-door compartment saw that Friedl was not in his seat. On the way back to his own compartment, he saw the carriage door at the end of the corridor open, and a black uniform with belt and holster stepped through, followed by another. Even from forty feet away he could see the diamond- shaped SD flash on their sleeves. The first man was large with a broken nose, and looked as though he could kill a man with his hands. He slid open the nearest compartment door and Denham heard him ask the occupants for their documents.
Beads of cold sweat broke out on Denham’s brow. He returned to his seat and picked up his paper. What to do? It was safer to jump off the train than show them his passport.
They had just entered the compartment next to his.
Stay calm. Completely calm.
A minute later his compartment door slid open, and the sound of the train picking up speed came in. The men stepped straight up to him, ignoring the old lady, the man, and the boy. ‘ Mein Herr? Ihren Ausweis bitte.’
Denham reached into the satchel at his feet, without looking up from an article about a school for brides newly opened in Dusseldorf, and handed over the Sippenbuch with a slightly careless flick. If you must.
I’m done for, he thought. I am completely done for. I don’t look like Willi Greiser. I don’t even have a scar-
But of course, he did have a scar curving down his right cheek, from his eye almost to the corner of his mouth.
The SD man examined the document and Denham felt his gaze like heat. Fleeting shadows passed over his newspaper as the train sped along a tree-lined embankment. He kept his eyes on the article. Seconds passed, and the print began to swirl before his eyes.
‘ Danke, Herr Standartenfuhrer,’ the man said at last, handing it back with a click of his heels.
‘Heil Hitler!’ Denham said, with a casual raised palm. He resumed reading with his heart hammering in his ears.
Chapter Fifty-one
Denham hopped off the train before it had come to a full halt at Frankfurt main station and walked quickly beneath the high, iron-latticed roof to the barrier. Where in God’s name was Friedl? After the appearance of those two SD he hadn’t seen him again.
He passed the train guards without arousing suspicion and spent a minute glancing around the busy concourse, looking at faces. He waited, watching the passengers emerging from the train he’d just arrived on. Still no sign of him. Denham’s mind began to reel through every dire possibility. The young man had no papers to bluff with, nothing.
Too dangerous to stand around. He would have to make a decision.
He was about to turn and leave the station when he saw a troop of five Brownshirts coming down the platform from the train, the last passengers. They were holding Friedl, had him by both arms, and were pushing him along. Hair a mess; buttons undone. He was dragging his feet, as if barely conscious. Denham could only watch, appalled. The bastards were laughing.
But something was not as it seemed. Now Friedl was laughing, too, talking in a boisterous voice. One of the men seemed to be using Friedl’s arm to steady himself. They shambled towards the barrier howling ‘Die Wacht am Rhein,’ an awful tune at the best of times. Friedl spotted Denham, flashed him a look of profound relief, then bid a lengthy and rowdy farewell to his new friends, embracing them.
‘What the hell happened?’ Denham said.
‘Don’t blame me,’ Friedl said, breathing beer into his face. ‘Someone passed along the train. Said the police were checking the men’s papers, so I moved…’ They emerged from the station arches and onto the cobbled open forecourt. ‘You,’ he said, pointing at Denham and swaying, ‘were asleep in a newspaper. Lucky for me those gorillas were in the restaurant car with no money for beers…’
Denham hailed a taxi. ‘You stink like the Schultheiss Brewery.’
Friedl gave a long, deep belch. ‘That’s method acting.’
Denham almost laughed. ‘Meet me in the lobby of the Frankfurter Hof in half an hour,’ he said. ‘I’m going to try getting a room. With luck we can have something to eat, take a bath, and get some sleep,’ he said, stepping into the cab. ‘Then we wait for Eleanor.’
T he Frankfurter Hof, an ornate relic from the Second Reich, was a palatial edifice on the Kaiserplatz. The impression it gave was of a dowager marchioness overdressed for a royal wedding. The desk manager apologised, and hoped Denham would understand, because unfortunately the hotel was fully booked for the annual Hessian Vintners’ Guild conference being held today, and with guests departing on tomorrow’s flight of the Hindenburg to New York. But Denham smiled, explained that he was Willi Greiser, the press chief, and that he felt sure there was
