He also noticed something fallen behind the armchair. A man’s raincoat. Rausch’s coat. Quickly he went through the pockets. A half packet of Murads, a page torn from a notebook with the clinic’s scribbled address, car keys, and, in the side pocket, a book. A small, rust red book Denham had seen before. Die Gedichte von Stefan George. The Poems of Stefan George.
He opened the cover and found something that nearly made him cry out.
‘I’m ready,’ Hannah said. She had on a white blouse with a navy wool jacket.
He struggled to put the book in his jacket pocket, so violently was his hand shaking.
‘Richard, what is it?’ Friedl said.
They left the apartment, pausing only while Friedl told the guard at the reception that Hannah Liebermann was being taken for interrogation, and that the two SD still in her room were not on any account to be disturbed while they carried out a search.
‘I thought I heard a shot,’ the guard said.
‘No, you didn’t.’
Outside on the winding stone path, they began to run.
‘Oh,’ Hannah said, a longed-for relief on her face. She looked up at the sky, then closed her eyes, and Friedl took her hand. Together they left the path and started across the lawn in order to circle the main clinic building without going inside it. The grass was wet on their shoes.
A man was coming towards them. Probably one of the patients, from his clothes. He had on a seersucker jacket and hiking trousers. He was waving at them. From a hundred yards away they saw in the light of the lamps the suspicion on his face.
‘Stay calm,’ Friedl said, grabbing Hannah’s arm, as if she was being restrained.
The man was fifty feet away and shouting now. ‘Hey. What’s going on? Where are you taking her?’
‘For interrogation,’ Denham said, stopping in front of him. ‘Frankfurt Gestapo. Who are you?’
‘I was not informed. Show me your warrant disc.’ His skin looked peeled and raw, as if he’d shaved too closely.
‘I have the signed order here,’ Denham said. He reached into his inside pocket, clutched the barrel of the Mauser, and in a single movement threw out his arm and smashed the corner of the butt down onto the man’s mouth, harder than he’d ever hit anything or anyone, bludgeoning his lips and nose. The man’s head jerked backwards, and Denham struck him again.
‘Richard, stop,’ Friedl said.
The man was down, on his back, his face black with blood. For two seconds they stood aghast; then Friedl knelt and felt for the gun inside the seersucker jacket. A Walther, heavy and new. He switched the safety catch off and tossed it to Hannah, and she took it without question.
They continued across the lawn, now close to the wall of the main building, and passed a patients’ car park. It was occupied by a Duesenberg limousine, an English Bentley, and a Mercedes-Benz Denham recognised. The black Mercedes that had come to the border at Venhoven-Rausch’s car.
‘We’re taking the Mercedes.’
Denham had the keys in the door when they heard the shout-‘ Halt! ’
Running towards them over the lawn was the guard from the Haus Edelweiss.
‘W e’ve got to do something-to get him away from the car,’ Eleanor said, watching the grey BMW parked outside the clinic’s main doors. The young SS driver was still leaning against the car, talking to the fat nurse. ‘He’s the only one guarding Jakob and Ilse.’ She was feeling desperate now.
She glanced at her watch. It was 7:43 p.m. If her plan was to succeed they had to meet Eckener at 8:00 p.m. at the absolute latest.
‘This is a bad idea,’ Martha said as they closed the car doors and approached the BMW, their steps crunching on the gravel.
From the nurse came a hostile look as they approached. But the SS driver, a smooth-skinned, roundish lad, had his hands in his pockets and was giving them an enthusiastic grin, which Martha was returning.
And then there was a sudden whining noise, as around the corner of the building a black Mercedes-Benz approached them in low gear, careened into the forecourt, and braked parallel with the BMW, shooting a barrage of gravel at its bodywork. The SS man and nurse spun around.
Denham jumped out of the driver’s side, shouted something in German, and pointed at Jakob and Ilse, whose startled faces peered from the window of the BMW.
Caught off guard, the SS man asked Denham to repeat himself and glanced anxiously towards the clinic, evidently wondering where his chief had got to. But now the nurse was pointing at Denham as if he were a rapist, talking loudly and quickly. Eleanor caught Dr Pfanmuller’s name.
At the same moment a man in a guard’s uniform, flushed and shining with sweat and shouting, emerged from the direction the Mercedes had come from.
Eleanor and Martha were too surprised to take another step.
The nurse screamed.
The SS man fumbled in his gun holster, but then he froze. Everyone became still, too amazed to move.
Standing on the running board of the Mercedes were Friedl and Hannah aiming handguns at the SS man and the nurse. Slowly, Denham, too, drew a gun.
Friedl jumped onto the gravel, walked around to the BMW, removed its keys, and dropped them down a drain in the middle of the forecourt. Denham then opened the door of the BMW and asked Jakob and Ilse to get out. Meekly they did as they were told, looking in astonishment upon their daughter, whose hair blew gently in the mild night breeze. She did not look at them. Her face was focused on aiming the gun, her eyes lit with certainty. Friedl helped them into the back of the Mercedes.
Denham waved Eleanor and Martha back to the Hanomag.
Seconds later they were speeding after the Mercedes as it accelerated down the long driveway, through the clinic gates, and into the street. The man at the guardhouse, head switching left and right as both cars shot through, picked up his telephone.
In a side street near the Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof they grabbed what possessions they had, abandoned the cars, and caught separate cabs to their destination-Rhine-Main World Airport-just as every street in the city seemed to start wailing with police sirens.
Chapter Fifty-four
In the echoing space lit by hundreds of electric lights, with nowhere to hide except for a few freight containers on wheeled carts, Eleanor felt exposed. The seven of them, Eleanor, Richard, Martha, Friedl, Jakob, Ilse, and Hannah, stood together like castaways. Between them they had only two suitcases.
On the night Eleanor had called on Hugo Eckener at the Hotel Kempinski in Berlin, he had given her an authorised vehicle pass for the customs yard. That part of the plan had worked. At the gates, guards and inspector admitted them with a nod and no questions asked.
But where was Eckener? It was 8:10 p.m. Had they missed him by minutes? A barrage of German imperatives crackled from the loudspeaker, and she guessed the Hindenburg was very close to its departure time.
Finally, when she’d convinced herself that the Gestapo were surrounding the building, the tall, plumpish figure of Eckener appeared in the far end of the cargo shed and shambled towards them. With him was a young man in a brown jumpsuit.
‘My dear lady, my dear Richard, friends, friends,’ he said. ‘No time for introductions except one: this is Ralf, who is one of us. He is a duty rigger on board this voyage. You may trust him…’
All eyes turned to the blond, impassive young man.
‘… You will get into these empty freight containers, which have already cleared customs.’ Eckener tapped the side of his nose. ‘They will not be opened once I attach the seals but will be loaded on board directly, under my personal supervision. In about two hours’ time, once the ship has cleared Reich airspace, Ralf will open the containers, and another friend, who will make himself known to you, will install you in your own cabins as my
