something the manager could do. A blink of the man’s eyes, and his voice changed to a smoother gear. As luck would have it, mein Herr, there had been a single cancellation. Denham paid in advance and was shown to a pilastered room with gilded claw-and-ball chairs, a divan, and heavy, gold-brocaded curtains. The bed could have been designed for a courtesan of Napoleon III, and it was exceedingly comfortable.
Denham found Friedl sprawled over a brocatelle sofa in the lobby with his boots up, and ushered him up the stairs to the room, hoping nobody had noticed the state he was in. In any smart hotel in the world, he thought, they’d have asked him to leave, but the brown uniform was licence for the vilest behaviour; and no one would dare say a thing.
Denham ordered lunch from room service and had a bath in the enormous copper tub, and soon they were both in a deep sleep, with Friedl on the divan.
They were awoken some hours later by the telephone ringing on the marble dressing table.
‘Herr Willi Greiser?’ said a voice of smooth obsequy.
Who? Sleep had disoriented him.
‘This is the manager. Forgive me, but word has got out that you’re a guest of ours, and the editor of the Frankfurter Zeitung is in the lobby, wishing to pay his respects to the press chief.’
‘Sorry, I’m busy,’ Denham mumbled, reconnecting his brain. He was about to hang up, but then said, ‘but you can tell him from me that today’s piece on the English coronation had two factual inaccuracies, and it wasn’t clear what Fat Hermann’s Heinkels were doing over northern Spain.’
‘Very well, sir.’
‘It’s nearly six p.m.,’ Friedl said.
They dressed in a hurry and descended the stairs to the grand lobby, crowded and noisy with knots of high- spirited guests in dinner jackets-the Hessian Vintners come for their annual gala dinner. From his vantage point on the stairs, Denham scanned the room, looking for the women.
‘There,’ Friedl said, not daring to point. ‘At the door.’
The short figure of Martha Dodd had just entered through the main doors in a raincoat and a pair of dark glasses. Eleanor followed her in and began casting her eyes around.
Denham led Friedl through the crowd of dinner jackets towards the doors and was halfway across when he felt a tap on his elbow. He turned to see the hotel manager smiling greasily and bowing with eyes closed. Behind him stood a small sandy-haired fellow in a herringbone tweed suit. Pouched cheeks and a pair of round, tortoiseshell eyeglasses made him look like a book-loving beaver.
‘Herr Greiser, my apologies,’ said the manager. ‘Perhaps now that you’re free you might spare a moment for Herr Joost, the editor of our local Frankfurter- ’
‘I fear not,’ Denham said, pulling Friedl after him. ‘I’m on my way out.’
‘That’s not Willi Greiser,’ the editor exclaimed, in a voice firmer than Denham would have given him credit for.
‘Let’s go,’ he said to Martha and Eleanor without stopping to greet them.
‘Car’s outside,’ Eleanor said, catching the look on his face.
‘Ah, just one moment, sir…,’ came the hotel manager’s voice.
Two seconds later the four of them were through the doors, down the steps, and running along the Kaiserplatz towards the Hanomag. Martha started the engine, and they screeched into the Saturday night traffic on Kaiserstrasse.
‘Couldn’t pay your bar check?’ Eleanor said, squeezing Denham’s hand from the front seat. He leaned over and kissed her. ‘Thank God you’re here.’ She started laughing with nerves and relief. ‘I was worried sick, thinking of you at the border.’
‘The telegram warned us in time,’ said Denham.
‘About two seconds in time,’ Friedl added.
‘Don’t mind me,’ Martha said in a petulant singsong. ‘I’m just a chauffeur without a clue where I’m going. And I don’t think we’ve had the pleasure, young man,’ she added in German.
Denham introduced Friedl, who said, ‘Good evening,’ in English. He was holding his head now, the drink catching up with him.
Eleanor read out the address of the Klinik Pfanmuller again and while Martha stopped at a flower stall to ask directions, explained to Denham how they’d followed an SS car carrying Jakob and Ilse from Berlin, and how it was en route to Basel with a stop-off at Frankfurt, where she was hoping to intercept it. A puncture on the autobahn had, Eleanor hoped, put the car half an hour or so behind the Hanomag.
Denham and Friedl met each other’s look in the backseat.
‘What’s the plan?’ Denham said.
Eleanor outlined what she had in mind, right up to the part where Dr Eckener came into it.
‘Eckener?’ Denham’s face dropped into his hands as he struggled to digest what she’d told him. ‘Darling, forgive me, but that’s not a plan,’ he said. ‘It’s a Keystone Kops movie. Even if we can get the Liebermanns away from the SS, how are seven people going to fit in this Hanomag?’
Eleanor flared. ‘For one thing I hadn’t figured on you two turning up in Germany, and if you think you can come up with something better, you just go right ahead.’
Denham sighed and apologised. ‘Well, at least we don’t have to worry about fooling anyone with a bogus dossier now.’
Something in the way Eleanor’s eyes closed and her mouth went rigid told him there was more.
She recounted what had happened outside the bank in London.
Martha was still outside, receiving the flower seller’s directions to the sanatorium. The Hanomag’s doors were closed, but over the noise of the traffic and the voices of Saturday evening revellers on the sidewalks, she heard Denham’s voice.
‘You brought it back to Germany?’
‘Oh my God,’ Friedl said.
By the time Martha got back into the car the shouting had transformed to silence.
‘All right…,’ Denham said. ‘It wasn’t your fault. We need to think.’
‘I was about to tell you,’ Eleanor said with acid coolness, ‘that I telephoned Rex. He couldn’t get a flight here in time for six p.m., so he’s meeting us at the sanatorium at seven. That’s in less than half an hour. We give him the dossier. It’s fine, Richard. It’ll be in safe hands in half an hour. He can take it straight to the British embassy… Then we find Hannah.’
Chapter Fifty-two
The Klinik Pfanmuller was located just off Frankfurt’s millionaires’ row, a lush, tree-lined street in Westend, near the botanical gardens. Dusk was gathering as the Hanomag stopped before the gated driveway. They had driven along the approach slowly enough to see that neither Rex nor any car was waiting in the street outside.
A light came on in the guardhouse and a man emerged-round eyeglasses, veteran’s medal-and peered at the car. Friedl stepped out. The brown uniform had its transforming effect-a very slight change in the set of the man’s mouth, from officious to obsequious.
‘Tell me, has an English reporter visited?’ Friedl said.
A moment of alarm behind the eyeglasses. ‘I don’t know if he was a reporter, Herr Sturmfuhrer.’
‘You keep a register?’
‘Of course.’
The man led Friedl into the guardhouse and turned the register round for him to see. The last name on the list was Rex Palmer-Ward’s. He had arrived less than ten minutes ago.
‘I told him he had to go in or leave,’ the man said. ‘No one’s allowed to wait out here. Gauleiter Weinrich lives on this street.’
‘Thank you,’ Friedl said. ‘We just want to check on him.’
He got back in the car, and Martha drove through the gates, past the puzzled guard.
The main building, a neoclassical villa with a modern annex and outbuildings, could be seen at the end of a
