“To start with. I didn’t know what to do. I had been getting letters every week or two from my parents, but when war broke out they stopped. I don’t know if they were prevented from writing to me or whether MI5 intercepted them.”
“Bastards.”
“Yes. Bastards. By then my English teacher had helped me to get a job as a journalist. Mulder was back in Berlin now. We communicated by transmitter and the occasional dead letter drop. There were other agents in London. Mulder told me to use my job as a reporter to meet people and send back information. Mainly he wanted to know about morale. And defences in the city. Whether London could hold out much longer. Where the factories were.”
“So you played along.” I guess there was a hint of reproof in my voice, though god knows I would have done the same thing for my folks.
She placed her mug carefully down on the table and looked me in the eye. “Danny, I played along for all of five minutes. I contacted the British Secret Service and told them what was happening.” Her voice was low and steady. A vein jumped in her forehead.
“You what? Cassells said you worked for the Nazis. You mean…”
“I worked for both sides. That is, I worked for MI5 while pretending to work for Mulder. We were called the Double Cross team. A unit codenamed B1A within MI5.
Most of the others were spies sent over by the Nazis. MI5 caught them before they’d had their first sip of English beer. We had their codes. Have you heard of Enigma? Bletchley Park?”
I shook my head. She waved her hand as though it didn’t matter, or she couldn’t say any more. She went on. “We knew every time they sent an agent over and were waiting for them. Lots were happy to turn and work for Britain.” She paused.
“The alternative was a firing squad. I was unusual. I came in under my own steam. We made up stories to send back to Germany. Disinformation. I was good at my job. The English gave me more money. The Germans promoted me to Major. Our biggest success was Normandy.”
I sat back in my chair. My head pounded as I struggled to make sense of it. Who they hell was I to believe? Her of course.
“Why would Cassells lie to me? Did he know all the details? Did he know you were working for us?”
She shrugged and took a cigarette from my packet. Her sidekicks helped themselves too.
“I don’t know. We were an autonomous unit. My English handler kept things pretty close. But I would have thought when I went missing…”
I tried a different tack. “Why did you come back to Berlin? Who were you in contact with up to a couple of weeks ago?”
She flicked her ash on the floor. “I came back for my parents. I had one or two letters from them through my German drops in London. That was part of the deal.
My father didn’t say much; he wasn’t allowed to. But it was clear they were under pressure all the time. Threatened with… well, it was pretty vague… loss of privileges, he said. But I knew he meant the camps. But the letters stopped completely in January ’44. Maybe Mulder found out I was playing both sides. I came to find them.”
“And…?”
She shook her head. “I knew it was a waste of time. When the war ended I wrote to them. Every week. Nothing. Then I got a response.” Her eyes flicked to the men beside her. “My letters were being opened.”
“The Nazis?”
“No. Let me introduce my friends.” She pointed to the big bearded man. “This is Gideon. And these are Joseph and Ariel.”
Gideon held out his huge paw to me and smiled. “Shalom, Danny.” Joseph the kid and Ariel the bald followed suit. Ariel tugged at his wire glasses. He said, “Sorry about the head, Danny,” in good English.
“It’s OK. You’re Jewish?” I said unnecessarily.
Gideon broke in. “Jewish Brigade. We got out of Berlin in ’39. Got to Lisbon and then London. Joined up in 1940. We fought with the British Army in Italy. We came back after the war to see if we could find our friends and relatives who stayed behind. There was no one.”
Young Joseph cut in, suddenly animated, as though he’d been released from a spell.
“Every one, gone! Wiped out! These murderers, these sadists destroyed us!”
Ariel reached out and touched Joseph’s arm; he clearly kept the boy under his wing. He spoke tenderly to him. It sounded close to German. I recognised the throaty sounds of Yiddish from my camp days. The words formed in my mind. Joseph sat back and took a deep breath.
“So we decided to do what we could,” went on Gideon. “Some Jews had survived.
They’d lived secret lives here. Not all Germans were rotten. And others came back. This was the only home they knew. They were born here. We are helping them find each other. We have contacts who have lists… of the camps. We also help people to get to Israel.”
“Past the British blockades,” Joseph added contemptuously.
Eve cut in. “A second cousin of mine survived and knew Gideon. They went looking for others of the family. They found Germans living in my parents’ flat. But one of the neighbours had kindly intercepted my letters. All of them. Gideon wrote to me.”
“And your parents?” I asked quietly.
“They were taken away two years ago.”
“But I thought you were getting letters…?”
Eve suddenly looked weary. Her shoulders slumped. “They tricked me. Mulder tricked me. He forced my parents to write several letters at once and didn’t date them. It doesn’t take much to add a date later.”
“I’m sorry. Have you been to their flat?” Then I realised.
She looked at me funnily. “You’re sitting in it. This floor and the one below.
Though we’ve only taken this floor.”
“What happened to the Germans who…?”
Joseph grinned at me and drew his finger across his throat. I looked round at them. They stared back at me defiantly.
Eve glared at him. “We threw them out, Danny. A few bruises.”
“We should have…” Joseph again sliced his throat. “It’s what they did to us! I am sick of Jews being slaughtered! Now we fight back, Danny.”
“I understand all that you’re saying, Eve. And I believe everything you tell me.
But why did you disappear? Britain must have been grateful to you. The risks you took. They would have helped. Surely? Why all the pretence?” I ran my hand over my hair and winced. The bumps seemed bigger.
She got to her feet and began pacing. “It’s complicated. It was about six months ago I found out that my parents had vanished. I’ve been in radio touch with Gideon and my cousin several times since. There’s no doubt I’ll never see my parents again. I had only one thought: I wanted Mulder’s head. The British wouldn’t let me have it.”
“You went to them?”
“It seemed the natural thing. I wanted to know if Mulder was still alive and how to find him. At first my case officer in London was helpful. But then he closed down on me when he realised my intention. He indicated that Mulder might have survived, but wouldn’t tell me if he was in prison or on trial or taken by the Russians.”
“But we know!” cut in Ariel. His glasses flashed at me.
Eve stopped walking. “He’s here. Alive and prospering. He is one of the district controllers set up by the Russians. I demanded that London let me come here and settle things with this swine. They told me to drop it. It had got political, they said. What the hell is political about murder?”
“Were they the watchers?”
She shrugged. “That was my guess.”
“So you faked your disappearance. Made it look like you’d been kidnapped or murdered, and came here? You’re here to get even?”
“An eye for an eye…” said Ariel rubbing the tape between his lenses.
“Hasn’t there been enough killing?” I asked.
