In Krakow, Warsaw and all the major cities, the intelligentsia were being listed by the Gestapo and dossiers were being created on them. Henk Molenaar’s name was already included. German spies were preparing the groundwork for invasion. British and French spies were feeding the information back in the hope of keeping things in check.
Chainbridge picked up the phone and asked the operator to find the hotel in Berlin where Donald T Kincaid was staying. Then he contacted De Witte who was in Cambridge sourcing new intelligence operatives, instructing him to return to London immediately.
He returned to his chambers where Meenagh awaited him. His drive through the London rush hour was a hot, uncomfortable ride. The late summer heat was oppressive and the rank smell of the Thames permeated the air. In the gridlock he watched the people walking, wrapped up in their daily lives. Mothers, babies and toddlers mingled with a stream of business men in bowler hats. They flowed across the bridges of London from Threadneedle Street, a uniform sea of black and white, giving a sense of stability and security. The gloom had broken to reveal a beautiful late summer evening, he thought as he stepped through the front door of his chambers. For the first time in years, Meenagh saw her husband visibly depressed. As always, he lightened up as she stepped toward him, eyes lowered, arms open in welcome. He ran his fingers through her greying hair and kissed her. They retreated to his study and he put a shellac disc onto the turntable.
As Mozart’s Piano Sonata Number 11 hissed and crackled through the speakers, they held each other tightly, with the same intensity as the night they had met in Bombay ten years previously.
The restaurant off the Potsdam Plaza was exclusive to high ranking Nazi party members. Kincaid was mingling with Goebbels, his wife Magda, and their ‘dear friend’ Eva Braun. Hitler was unable to attend, excusing himself with a migraine. Bormann was at another table and, nearby, the erudite Speer was holding court, discussing architecture and other topics close to an aesthete's heart.
Eva Braun was light hearted tonight. She had laughed in a sisterly fashion, observing that there were now two Evas at the table, referring to Eva Molenaar as the second. Goebbels remarked at how beautiful they both looked as he assembled a champagne glass tower and filled it with expensive champagne, creating a waterfall effect from the top glass down. Kincaid, squeezing Eva closer to him, said she was going to be a great star of the silver screen. The table toasted her. All around, the revellers were almost frenzied in their enjoyment of the cabaret, the room a sea of black uniforms, leather webbing and scarlet armbands.
Eva left the dinner party, excusing herself after a waitress had whispered an urgent message into her ear. In the restrooms, an attendant handed a slip of paper punched in Braille point. The pit of her stomach gripped in fear — her grandfather’s name was on the list of targeted intellectuals. The attendant offered her a cigarette and set light to the message for her at the same time, flushing the ashes down the toilet. Eva thanked the girl and tipped her before leaving.
She came back to the table where Goebbels was laughing. ‘Did I miss something?’ she asked smiling,
Kincaid rubbed his hands together in a sudden burst of hilarity. The gesture made the rasping sound characteristic of calloused hands, the hands of a labourer.
‘We’re just talking here. Seems that the tanks are goin’ to roll any day soon. It’s as we say in my part of the world — ‘’It’s a slam dunk!’’ — the Polacks and Brits won’t know what hit them!’
The table reduced to laughter as Goebbels repeated, ‘Slam Dunk! Ja! — slam dunk!’
Eva laughed along with them, tears of anguish only just held back. The darkness that had haunted her peripheral vision for years seemed to close in further. She could hear Kincaid shouting over the din of the party as he rose with a champagne glass raised, ‘Heil Hitler!’
The club, taking his cue, all rose and chanted it. Eva Braun, Goebbels and his wife were crying tears of euphoria. The voices rose to the rhythmic chant and the band stamped and struck out a beat. Eva’s thoughts were of her grandfather and De Witte, and for a split second she thought she saw Jonas moving through the crowd. He drew nearer and Eva’s heart began to race, but the vision passed and the man she thought was Jonas turned out to be a waiter.
Leaving the party telling Kincaid she felt unwell, she returned to the hotel floor reserved for special guests of the Propaganda Ministry. Kincaid had been given access in Berlin to an immense penthouse suite fitted with several phone lines allowing him access to his various interests in America. It wasn't as homely as the mansion in Martha's Vineyard, but she judged that she had a better chance of uncovering some intelligence here as his guard was down amid his Nazi companions. It had taken nearly a year for him to accept her and their relationship as she gradually built up his trust.
Kincaid didn't returned that night and, with the apartment empty, it gave Eva a chance to slip into the study where Kincaid spent most of his time. It had two clocks on the wall, one set to German time, the other indicating the time on the West Coast of the USA, an eight hour difference, meaning Kincaid spent between 4pm and anywhere close to midnight here in this study most days. The room was lushly furbished with comfortable black leather settees, large enough for Kincaid to stretch out on, chairs and a sturdy plain writing desk. There was a large silver screen which could be pulled down from the ceiling and, opposite, an alcove containing a film projector. A stack of film reels were placed in a cabinet, the two stacks marked ‘WIP’ or ‘Fin’.
Pinned up on the walls of the room were various drafts of posters for movies and promotional literature. On the desk was a tidy pile of scripts at various draft stages, a pen and ink set in silver of an Eagle, and a half-empty bottle of Jameson whiskey. One drawer in his desk was locked, the key attached to the chain of his pocket watch. Eva removed two hairpins from her hair and forced the lock deftly.
She flipped through the various documents and envelopes — nothing. Then, as she was closing the drawer, it caught on something. Running her hand under it, she felt an envelope. She removed the drawer carefully and, stacking its contents on the desk, turned it over. The envelope was fixed to the base with glue. She opened it, running a finger nail beneath the flap. Instinctively she paused, frozen, listening for the tell-tale click of his key in the front door.
She held her breath and opened her mouth, fractionally improving her hearing. Silence.
In the envelope was a communique between Hitler, Himmler and Goering to Kincaid’s studios. It was an itemized bill for Kincaid’s services. Eva flattened it out and read it carefully. It totalled to nearly a million dollars. She ran into her private quarters, grabbed her box brownie and took photographs of the flattened sheet. She replaced everything as she found it, sliding the drawer back. She gave a cursory glance around, double-checking that nothing looked untoward.
She left through the bustling foyer and walked to the central train station. From Berlin Central she paid for her ticket in cash, giving a good, but not ostentatious, tip to ensure she had a private sleeping berth for the five hundred and thirty five miles to Krakow. Kincaid was by nature generous and she had a sizeable amount of dollars at her disposal without his asking questions as to how she spent it.
Over the past few months, he had schemed and promoted a heavy weight boxing match in Berlin with newsreel rights exclusively for the American market. German heavyweight champion Max Schmeling versus Joe Louis at the Berlin Olympic Stadium; billed ‘The Battle of the Bombers’. He’d negotiated a huge amount of advance money from the American networks for the rights and film reels to be produced by Goebbels’ Propaganda Ministry.
Ticket sales sold the Stadium out for an event which Kincaid knew full well would never transpire. After Jesse Owens had won a gold medal at the 1936 Olympic Games, Hitler was cagey about having coloureds beating white German athletes in sporting events. Under his pressure, the plug was pulled on the whole thing and everyone walked away with a sizeable profit, only the backers and fans getting stung.
Kincaid had pulled a similar stunt in the early 1930s in New Jersey and had to flee for his life, breaking speed limits through the turnpike running from the mob. After that, he always carried a gun, a Smith and Wesson, in a shoulder holster.
From this latest scam, Kincaid had handed Eva a bundle of US dollars to do with whatever she wanted which she had used to secure a berth on a ship departing Gdansk for Southampton for her grandfather and immediate family under the name of De Witte. Then she had obtained travel permits for them from the German underground which had formed once Hitler had taken power.
These perfectly forged papers had been paid for in cash by her and arranged for collection in one of the deposit boxes in the station. The key was slipped to her as she purchased her rail ticket by a female underground operative standing in the queue beside her.
