small part of her ordeal. But this time they kept her under for much longer than a minute and when, with my lungs bursting, I realized I could hold my own breath for no longer I let it out with a yell, even as Arianne’s struggles appeared to have ended for good. Her hands and feet stopped moving. The water calmed. All was still. Including my heart.
‘Pull her up, you bastards.’
‘Is she dead?’ asked Heydrich.
‘No,’ said Soppa. ‘Not by a long chalk. Not to worry, sir. We’ve brought people round who were under the water for much longer than that.’
He and the other man lifted Arianne out of the bath and proceeded to use a combination of smelling salts, slaps, brandy and massage to try to put some life back into her.
‘Leave her alone,’ I pleaded. ‘For God’s sake. She hasn’t done anything.’
‘You think so?’ said Heydrich. ‘I’m afraid that you’re wrong about that, Gunther. At least, that was the impression I gained from Colonel Bohme, on the telephone, just before lunchtime.’
He turned and faced the stenographer.
‘Read the Captain what she’s already told us, please.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Just the salient points if you will.’
‘Yes sir.’
The stenographer picked up her transcript and read entirely without emotion, like someone announcing the arrival or departure of a train.
Question: What is your name and address?
Answer: My name is Arianne Tauber and I live in a room at Flat 6, 3 Uhland Strasse, Berlin, which is owned by Frau Marguerite Lippert. I have lived there for ten months. I work at the Jockey Bar on Luther Strasse, where I am employed to be the cloakroom attendant.
Question: You are a Berliner?
Answer: No, originally I am from Dresden. My mother still lives there. She lives in Johann Georgen Allee.
Question: So why are you here in Prague?
Answer: I am on holiday. I came here with a friend. I was staying at the Imperial Hotel.
Question: What is the name of that friend?
Answer. Kripo Commissar Bernhard Gunther. From the Police Praesidium at Berlin Alexanderplatz. I am his mistress. He will vouch for me. He works for General Heydrich. Clearly there has been some mistake here. I spent the weekend with him and I was going home to Berlin when I was arrested.
Question: Do you know why you were arrested at the Masaryk Station this morning?
Answer: No. Clearly there’s been some sort of mistake here. I’ve never been in any trouble before. I am a good German. A law-abiding citizen. Commissar Gunther will vouch for me. So will my employers.
Question: But aren’t you also working for UVOD?
Answer: I don’t know what you mean by that. What is UVOD? I do not understand.
Question: UVOD is the Home Resistance Network here in Prague. We know you are working for UVOD. Why?
Prisoner refused to answer the question.
Prisoner refused to answer the question.
Prisoner refused to answer the question.
Answer: Yes, I am working for UVOD. Following the deaths of my husband and my father in February and May 1940, for which I held Adolf Hitler ultimately responsible, I decided to work for a foreign government against the National Socialist government of Germany. Since I am from Dresden and my mother is Czech, it seemed logical that this foreign government should be Czech.
Question: How did you go about establishing contact with UVOD?
Prisoner refused to answer the question.
Heydrich interrupted the stenographer. ‘Perhaps I did not make myself entirely clear, my dear young woman,’ he said patiently. ‘I asked you to read out only the salient points. What I meant was that it will save a great deal of time if you omit all mention of when the prisoner refused to answer a question.’
The stenographer coloured a little. ‘I’m sorry, sir.’
‘Now continue.’
‘Yes sir.’
Question: How did you go about establishing contact with UVOD?
Answer: I made contact with an old friend from university called Friedrich Rose in Dresden, a Sudeten German communist, who put me in contact with a Czech terrorist organization that is part of the Central Leadership of Home Resistance — UVOD. I am part Czech myself and I speak a little Czech and I was pleased when, having investigated my background, they accepted me into their organization. They said a native German could be very useful to their cause. Which is all that I wanted. After my husband died on a U-boat all I wanted was for the war to be over. For Germany to be defeated.
Question: What did they ask you to do?
Answer: They asked me to leave Dresden and to undertake a special mission on their behalf. In Berlin.
Question: What was this mission?
Prisoner refused to — .
‘Sorry, sir…’
After a short pause, while she tracked down the transcript with a well-manicured fingernail, the stenographer started reading again.
Answer: At the request of UVOD I joined the Berlin Transport Company in the autumn of 1940 and worked for the BVG director, Herr Julius Vahlen, as his personal secretary and sometime mistress. It was my job to monitor Wehrmacht troop movements through Berlin’s Anhalter Station and to report on these movements to my Czech contact in Berlin. This I did for several months.
Question: Who was your contact?
Answer: My contact was a former Czech German Army officer I knew only as Detmar. I didn’t know his surname. I would give him a list of the troop movements on a weekly basis. The troop movements were passed on to London, I think. Detmar would give me some more instructions and some money. I was always short of money. Living in Berlin is so much more expensive than Dresden.
Question: What else did Detmar tell you to do?
Answer: At first I had to do very little. Just give him the troop movement reports. But then in December 1940 Detmar asked me to help the Three Kings organization in Berlin to plant a bomb in the station. This was much more important work and much more dangerous, too. First of all I had to obtain a plan of the station building; and then, when the bomb was ready, I had to prime it and put it in a place where it had been decided it would cause the most damage.
Question: Who taught you how to prime a bomb?
Answer: I am a qualified chemist. I studied Chemistry at university. I know all about handling difficult materials. It’s not difficult to prime a bomb. I’m better at that than I was as a stenographer.
Question: What was the purpose of that bomb?
Answer: The purpose of the bomb at Anhalter Station was to cause panic, to demoralize the population of Berlin; and to disrupt troop movements in and out of the city.
Question: Wasn’t the real reason for planting that bomb altogether different? Wasn’t the real reason that you had inside information about the train belonging to the Reichsfuhrer-SS, Heinrich Himmler, that was due to be leaving the station? And that the bomb was meant to kill him?
Answer: Yes. I admit that this bomb was really designed to assassinate the Reichsfuhrer-SS, Heinrich Himmler. I planted the bomb in the left luggage office in February 1941. This is right by the platform where Himmler’s train was to leave from; and, even more importantly, the office is also beside the place on the platform where Himmler’s personal carriage was usually located. The assassination was unsuccessful because the bomb was not powerful enough. It was meant to bring down a joist on top of the train and it didn’t.
Question: Then what happened? After the failed assassination?
Answer: With the war in Europe more or less won, it was decided by my controller that troop movements in
