“This way,” the lead man said in stilted English.
She was led into a bright room. There were men in there, in suits, discussing something and having a smoke. They paused when Aubrey entered. There was an exchange between the suits and the black unforms. Aubrey was hustled down a corridor and locked in a room with a solid door; no bars, just a peephole. There was a metal cot affixed to the wall, but no blanket. She sat down on it; the mattress was soiled and thin, and the springs creaked under her weight. Then Aubrey heard the first of many moans, and what sounded like a terrified scream coming from somewhere else in the building.
She knew where she was: 1195 Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse. She was in the place she feared most, the basement cells of Gestapo headquarters.
19
Eventually they came for her. The door to her cell was thrown open with a clang and two SS men grabbed hold of her and dragged her out. She would have gone willingly, but they force-marched her down the deserted hallway, into a room with a long wooden table. She was thrust down into a chair in front of it and then left alone.
Keep it together, Aubrey, she told herself. You did nothing wrong, just tried to help a man. Then she remembered her purse. It contained the compact with the false bottom that Hewitt Purnsley had given her. So what? she thought. The contact between herself and Agent Starlight had been aborted; he’d never handed over the important information. Come to your senses, Aubrey. It’s a spy’s tool—they’ll see that. It might be all they need to declare you an enemy agent.
The door opened again. She did not turn to see who it was. This was all by design, of course: the terror of the unknown and the absolute authority of the state. When the man came around the side of the table, however, she gasped. She didn’t know why she did; she had half-expected to see him. Hauptsturmführer Schmidt. Agent Starlight himself.
He had a file folder with him and dropped it on the table. There were other men with him, but they kept out of her peripheral vision. She heard something clunk behind her and the door was slammed shut. The sound hurt her ears.
The captain sat on the corner of the desk, crossed his legs and laboriously extracted a silver cigarette case. He lit a cigarette and handed it across to her.
Aubrey didn’t smoke. She had started as most young people had, in school, and probably would have developed a habit, but she was soon bitten by an even bigger addiction: flying. The fuel and vapours and threat of explosion were very real around airplanes, so she had quickly dropped cigarettes. Most of the male pilots still smoked, and some of her fellow aviatrixes did as well, but she felt there was already enough risk built into her occupation. Why add to it?
But for this cigarette, even one offered by a Nazi, she was grateful. She accepted it and took a long drag. The brand was strong and foreign to her, but it helped calm her nerves just a tad. Not enough for her to cease being scared out of her wits, though.
“Miss Endeavours, you have been arrested and are being held for your safety by the Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers of the SS. Do you understand?”
“I’m an American citizen, a journalist. I just stopped to help someone who was injured, that’s all. I don’t think that gives the Gestapo the right to detain me.”
Schmidt pointed to the SD tag on his sleeve. “We are not Gestapo; our mandate is to surveil all German citizens and aliens within the Reich’s borders. The report here says you were causing unrest and acting illegally in the area of the entertainment district. That you led a charge of rabble-rousers against the authorities and threatened disorder within the Reich.”
“Nonsense. I was having coffee with a friend. There was a riot, and we got swept up in it.”
“This friend’s name?”
“Richard Fuchs, a journalist with one of your papers. I met him at the air show just about the same time I first met you.” Aubrey felt safe mentioning his name; they had done nothing wrong and Fuchs was a legitimate journalist. But then she remembered what Richard had said, that they had an arrest warrant out for him.
Aubrey carefully emphasized the word ‘first’ when she replied to Captain Schmidt. They’d had a second meeting, oh yes. She was convinced now that the man was indeed a spy for Hewitt Purnsley, that he wasn’t merely trying to expose Aubrey as an enemy agent. If that had been his intention, he would have had her arrested a lot sooner.
Perhaps, when he saw her name on the arrest sheet from the riot, he had seen a chance to help her. This tough-guy act was just that: an act. Maybe they were just going to have a chat and then she’d be released. Brother, she thought, if and when that happened, she knew where she was headed: to the train station straight away.
“What did you discuss, you and this journalist?”
“We were just gabbing. You know.”
“I don’t know that expression.”
“Shooting the shit, small talk.”
“Is he your lover?”
“Gosh, no. What a question.”
“When did you and this Fuchs decide to join in the unrest?”
“Look, we didn’t join in. We left the café, went for a stroll. These men came around the corner with bats and charged us. We tried to get away from them. People were being beaten. This one man was on the ground bleeding, and I stopped to help him. He’s a human being.”
The captain smirked. “He was a Jew. He was an enemy of the state.”
“Was?”
“He’s dead, and good riddance. Another animal we don’t have to pay to house for its own protection. We have reports here that you were
