Agent in Berlin, page 5
Her husband loosened his belt and dropped his holster on the highly polished walnut table next to him.
‘We shall open a bottle of wine, my dearest, and I will tell you everything. Ask Ilse to bring one of the bottles of the French wine that arrived last week.’
Five minutes later he’d poured two large glasses of wine, ignoring his wife’s plea for a smaller amount.
‘I have some wonderful news to share but I’ll start with my trip today.
Sophia nodded, doing her best to look at her husband and smile and avoided glancing out of the window. Karl-Heinrich didn’t like it when she failed to pay him her full attention when he was talking to her.
‘I was very privileged today to be part of a group visiting the Deutsches Stadion, my dearest.’
He paused and looked at her, waiting for a reaction and she smiled and raised her eyebrows in admiration.
‘It is now known as the Olympiastadion and the main events of the Olympics will be held there. Everything is ready. It is more than impressive, it is wonderful – a tribute to German efficiency and planning. No other country in the world could have achieved this. Would you like some more wine, my dearest? You’d better, we soon have a toast to make.’
She allowed him to top up her glass and shifted in her chair so it would be harder for her to look outside.
‘You have heard of Werner March?’
‘I think he’s the—’
‘The architect of the stadium? Correct! Werner and his brother Walter themselves were there to show us around. Do you know how many people will be in the stadium, my dearest?’
Sophia shook her head. She’d read in the paper that it would be 100,000 but knew her husband would want to surprise her.
‘One hundred thousand – can you believe that?’
She said she couldn’t. How impressive.
‘And let me tell you, my dearest, who else was on this visit.’ He coughed and sat up straight and adopted a more solemn tone.
‘Theodor Lewald and Carl Diem from the German Olympic committee and Hans von Tschammer und Osten – you’ve heard of him?’
‘Isn’t he—?’
‘The Reichssportführer! The head of the German Sports Office – a most impressive man. There were also many other officials and SS officers and I haven’t told you the most important person there. You are listening, my dearest?’
Sophia turned round, realising she’d been gazing out of the window.
‘Wilhelm Frick himself – the interior minister! And not only was he there but he took me aside and spoke with me – what do you think of that?’
Sophia said she was very impressed and leaned over to touch her husband’s knee.
‘Herr Frick wants me to join a special unit which will be responsible for overseeing foreign visitors to the Olympic Games. Apparently there will be a security side to this role – which is obviously why he chose me – but there’ll also be what he described as a diplomatic and propaganda aspect to the job. We are to help ensure that Germany is seen in the best possible light by the many important foreign visitors to Berlin during the Games. All the nonsense that people accuse us of… well this will be an opportunity to show people the overwhelmingly positive work of the Führer. I am to report directly to von Tschammer and to Frick.’
‘I am very pleased for you, Karl-Heinrich – you work so hard.’
‘And you will have a role too, my dearest. We will attend many social events when the Games begin and indeed before that. We will entertain visitors and charm them and you will be perfect for this position. And now to my special news!’
Karl-Heinrich von Naundorf stood up and after a moment’s hesitation his wife did likewise.
‘I am to be promoted, my dearest: I am now an Obersturmbannführer!’
‘That sounds… wonderful, Karl-Heinrich.’
‘It means I am the equivalent of a lieutenant colonel. I have been in the SS for just three years and already an Obersturmbannführer!’
Sophia forced a smile. The forlorn hopes that she’d allowed herself to indulge in about Karl-Heinrich leaving the SS and going back to law faded in an instant.
‘And you, my dearest, will be an Obersturmbannführer’s wife!’
* * *
The apartment was situated at the western end of Tauentzienstrasse, close to where it joined Kurfürstendamm.
When his very good friend Barnaby Allen had made him such an unexpected and generous offer to represent Holborn College in Germany for fifteen pounds a week plus rent and other expenses, Werner Lustenberger had determined that he’d live as close to Kurfürstendamm as possible. It had always been his favourite part of Berlin, with its lively atmosphere, good places to eat, decent apartments and close enough to the centre of the city.
And there was another reason. Along with Schöneberg it had also been one of those areas where as a homosexual he could feel comfortable in the city. Despite Berlin’s liberal reputation – even avant garde – there were parts of the city which felt anything but liberal, usually those areas where either the Nazi Party or the Communists had held sway.
He’d previously enjoyed the bars and clubs and cafes with a predominantly if not exclusively homosexual clientele, places such as the Zauberflote, Karls-Lounge, the Cosy-Corner or the Eldorado Cafe. But by 1933 they’d all closed their doors, forced to do so long before the Nazis made homosexuality a criminal offence in 1935. It had been the same all over Germany. It had been one of the reasons Werner Lustenberger had left the country.
He’d last been in Berlin in early 1935 and knew there were still a few bars and cafes in the Kurfürstendamm area in particular where men could meet, usually in cellars or basements reached through closed doors and down dark corridors, or in upstairs rooms, which the barman would allow you to go up to if you knew the right form of words and if he was sure no one he didn’t trust was watching.
The apartment Werner found was ideal: on the fourth floor of an elegant block on the north side of the street. Because his apartment was at the rear of the building it was quieter and he had distant views of the Zoological Gardens at the south-western end of the Tiergarten. There were just two apartments on his floor and his entrance was separated from the other one by the lift shaft. It felt very private. The apartment itself was small but decorated in Bauhaus style and with a modern kitchen and bathroom, a brightly lit lounge and a bedroom with a built-in wardrobe, which felt like the height of indulgence.
He’d arrived in the city at the beginning of May, shocked at first as to how much it had changed. It was still Berlin, of course, but there was now a hardness to the city. In one of the bars he’d found on Uhland Strasse he’d heard someone describe the city as being like a military camp. It took him a few weeks to orientate himself, to work out which areas felt safer than others, the places to go where he could trust people, the phrases to avoid and the times when it was best to say nothing and move on.
Barnaby had been vague about the work he’d be doing in Germany. ‘Best to get over there as soon as you can, Werner, and get settled in… find somewhere nice to live… get a feel for the place.’
‘And then?’
‘And then I’ll be over in late July: I managed to get some tickets for the Olympics. You can look out for the best restaurants to take me to when I’m over. I can tell you all about the job then.’
That was at his last meeting with Barnaby in London before he’d left. Unusually they’d met not at Barnaby’s club or at a restaurant but instead in a sparsely furnished office close to Holborn station, which Barnaby said he was using while his main office was being refurbished. And as the meeting ended – in fact he was halfway out the door – Barnaby had called him back.
‘There are a few matters you can get on with in the meantime, Werner.’ He waved him back into the room. ‘There are some people the college needs to make contact with and you know what the post’s like these days!’
Werner said actually his understanding was that the post was more efficient these days, along with most other things in Germany, apparently.
‘Nevertheless, we have a few contacts out there we’d like to get in touch with and what with you being over there we thought we could kill two birds with one stone, so to speak, and get you to deliver them by hand. Here we are.’
Barnaby Allen opened a desk drawer and brought a bundle of envelopes and arranged them carefully on the desk top. Three or four of them were quite bulky, the others less so. Barnaby showed each one to Werner. They were all wrapped in sheets of paper attached to the envelope with a paper clip. He was to follow the instructions on the piece of paper about how to deliver each item and was to dispose of the sheets of paper.
Werner looked puzzled as he picked up the bundle. Four of them were to be delivered within Berlin: one to a house in Prenzlauer Berg, another to what seemed to be a shop in Kreuzberg, two more to apartments in Mitte. Then there was a package to be taken to an office in Hamburg, another to a residential address in Würzburg, one to what looked like a factory in Leipzig and the last one to what looked like another office address in Magdeburg.
‘I really need to take these in person, Barnaby? I think the post is not at all bad in Germany these days. I could pay for a special postage rate, which I believe is even more efficient.’
‘No need, Werner… not while we have you there. It is a bit sensitive because these are clients of the college – some of whom we owe money to, others with whom we dispute what we owe. All in all it would be easier if you delivered them in person.’
Werner nodded and picked up the envelopes, placing them in his briefcase and the two men shook hands warmly.
And by June he was nicely settled in the apartment on Tauentzienstrasse. He’d delivered all the envelopes in Berlin along with the ones in Würzburg and Leipzig. He was planning to take the one to Magdeburg soon, and as for Hamburg, that would wait until he visited his favourite city in July for the Deutsches Derby. Killing two birds with one stone as Barnaby would call it.
It had been a bit odd, he had to say, but there’d been no problems. Maybe that was just the way English colleges worked.
He’d found a very discreet bar called the Saxon on Regensburger Strasse, not too far from where he lived where after a few visits he’d been allowed into a dimly lit bar behind the main one and then in exchange for what amounted to one week’s salary from Holborn College he became a member of the Saxon Club, which allowed him to pass through the otherwise locked door leading to the club’s premises on the top floor.
Life in Berlin, Werner decided, was not bad at all.
Chapter 6
Berlin
April 1936
It often struck Sophia how easily events that so shaped one’s life could fade from the memory.
Her mother’s death was a good example. She was five years old and while she remembered some aspects of it quite clearly – an aunt dressed in black telling her to stop crying and pull herself together, the muffled silence in the house as the adults left for the funeral, her mother’s hairbrush on the mantelpiece with strands of her hair catching the light – she had no memory of how she felt on being told of her mother’s death or what she did while her father was at the funeral. A friend told her this could be due to trauma, which was one of these matters people talked about these days, but it was odd how she so clearly recalled some aspects yet not others.
And there were other events too: her first day at school, which she was forever being told saw her being dragged in kicking and screaming, yet which she had no memory of; her first kiss, which a friend remembered her telling her all about but Sophia couldn’t even picture the boy, let alone recall his name; the day she was knocked over by the butcher’s cart and broke her wrist…
Sophia couldn’t recall when she first met her neighbour, Esther. That in itself wouldn’t have seemed like an event that shaped one’s life but the longer Sophia knew her, the more she realised how significant that meeting had been. They’d moved into the apartment on Potsdamer Strasse in 1934 and it was a few months before she met Esther properly.
She was aware Esther’s father was a doctor at the Charité hospital only because one night their neighbour Frau Schmidt slipped at the top of the stairs and someone suggested calling up Dr Goldmann and Karl-Heinrich said under no circumstances should Frau Schmidt be allowed to be treated by that Jew and Sophia was shocked but put it down to the drink, which in those days was her default excuse for her husband’s behaviour. After all, when he was sober, Karl-Heinrich was very charming and proper to her.
According to Esther they’d bumped into each other as they entered the apartment building one afternoon: Esther had introduced herself and Sophia – in Esther’s words – looked as if she was sleep-walking. But they apparently had a conversation and Sophia had invited Esther up to her apartment for coffee the next day because she recalled answering the door to her and having to pretend that of course she remembered their arrangement and yes, please do come in… through here.
Once Esther’s father was sacked from his job at the Charité in 1935 Esther became a regular visitor to Sophia’s apartment, desperate to get a break from the tensions of her own small apartment, where the family was now cooped up. Her father would sit in his study, convinced it was just a matter of time before he got his job back, while her mother spent most days weeping in the kitchen and her younger brother started arguments by insisting they leave Germany.
Esther would always come up when Karl-Heinrich was at work and usually when the maid was out shopping. They both knew that was safer.
For Esther, Sophia and her apartment provided a kind of refuge, somewhere she could talk about something other than her troubles and what her family was going to do. Often, they would say little, both relishing the silence.
For Sophia, Esther’s visits helped her retain her sanity. Esther was a few years older than her – perhaps thirty – and for a while had studied psychoanalysis in Vienna. She would listen quietly as Sophia opened up: about her doubts over Karl-Heinrich; how she felt she’d been forced into marrying him; how she struggled with his views and… and all the while Esther would listen and let Sophia speak and when she’d finished offer some quiet advice.
She was always reassuring: Sophia must not blame herself for anything, her husband was a cruel man and she was a victim and victims all too often saw themselves as deserving of their fate. Nor did she blame Sophia for not walking out on Karl-Heinrich: that was easier said than done and may well be the beginning of her troubles rather than the end of them.
After the dreadful evening at the restaurant on the Wannsee in May 1935 she’d told Esther that she had to leave, she couldn’t stay with Karl-Heinrich any longer.
‘He threatened me, Esther: he said he’d hit me! I have to leave but…’
Esther held her hand until Sophia stopped crying. ‘Where would you go, Sophia?’
She shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea.’
‘You don’t speak another language?’
She shook her head. ‘And I couldn’t possibly stay in the Reich… he’d find me. I have no money, other than the weekly allowance he gives me, but it’s not much: he insists on knowing what I spend it on. Even if I saved some of that for a few months it would be so little…’
‘Just wait, Sophia.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Bide your time, Sophia – understand that the initiative is in your hands, if you see what I mean. One day the opportunity will arise for you to do something – maybe to escape, or to get your revenge. Do you understand?’
Sophia said she did though she wasn’t convinced. She couldn’t see any way out, she felt trapped and couldn’t imagine what opportunity could possibly arise to get her out of this situation.
Then came the election at the end of March 1936, which Jews weren’t allowed to vote in because they were no longer proper Germans. The Nazis got 99 per cent of the rigged vote and naturally won every seat in the Reichstag. Although they weren’t exactly lacking in confidence, this election result gave the Nazis an even bigger swagger and led to an increase in violence against the Jews.
In the middle of April – a fortnight after the election – Sophia realised she hadn’t seen or heard from Esther for a while. She always waited for her to make contact; it seemed safer that way. Eventually she knocked on the door of their apartment and the door opened, but it was on a chain and Sophia couldn’t see who had opened it. Eventually Esther asked what she wanted and Sophia said she’d come to see how she was and Esther asked her to go away and then hesitated and asked if it was safe for her to come up to Sophia’s apartment – could she promise her Karl-Heinrich wasn’t around?
She came up an hour later. Sophia thought Esther had aged in the couple of weeks since she’d last seen her. She seemed pale and drawn and her eyes were red.
‘Has something happened Esther? You don’t look well.’
Esther gave a brief, sarcastic laugh. ‘You could say something has happened, Sophia. We were attacked.’
‘Who was?’
‘My father and brother. Two days after the election, the last day of March. There were Nazi mobs on Potsdamer Strasse and we didn’t leave our apartment for two days, we were terrified. Eventually my mother told my father to go down to our storage cupboard in the basement and bring up some tins of food. When he didn’t return after twenty minutes my brother went down to see what had happened. When he didn’t return I went down. I saw they’d both been beaten up. My father had a bruised face and broken ribs. My brother had a broken nose and nasty cut on his forehead, which my father had to stitch up.’
