The noise of teleprinter machines filled the corridor from behind closed doors. Beneath the wire-meshed electric lights rows of hunched figures waited on benches and lowered their eyes as the sergeant passed. Pushed along without shoelaces or belt, Denham walked in a rapid shuffle. They’d taken his tie, too. I go to my doom looking a man who sleeps in his clothes. The sergeant stopped outside a door marked HAECKEL, knocked twice, opened it for Denham, and closed it behind him.
Inspector Haeckel was a heavy man, with a grey moustache, a boxer’s jaw, and thinning hair. He had on the full black uniform: Sam Browne belt, shoulder strap, boots, gun holster, and an array of police decorations.
A minute passed as he scribbled away at his desk, dotting i ’s, crossing t ’s, not acknowledging his prisoner. Denham looked around, seeing a chair, which he was not being offered, and dark stains on the floor that made his stomach clench. On a cabinet to the right stood a row of trophies awarded for dog handling, except for one, which displayed two spent bullets suspended like grubs in a block of glass. On its base were engraved the names ROHM and HEINES.
After a while the inspector selected a rubber stamp from a small rack, thumped a document, closed the file, and took another from his tray. Denham’s passport was inside, on top of what looked like a hand-filled surveillance sheet.
‘Richard Arthur Denham,’ he said, examining the passport, then glancing up for the first time. ‘As you are certainly aware, there is a press injunction on speaking to Hannah Liebermann. So would you mind telling me what you were doing at her home today?’ He had the gravel voice of a man accustomed to shouting.
Sound honest, Denham thought. No clever remarks. ‘I’m a reporter, Inspector, and she’s one of the best-known athletes at the Games. I wanted a few quotes for some copy, that’s all. Frankly, what reporter wouldn’t?’
Haeckel seemed uninterested and leaned back in his chair.
‘I’m not wasting time with you because you’re not my case, or not yet anyway. You see, the oddest thing just happened, Herr Denham, and maybe you could explain it to me.’
He stood up, not as tall as Denham expected, with a solid, rounded gut, and walked to the back of his chair to stretch his legs. Boots, belt, and strap creaked and groaned.
‘The minute my boys turned up at your apartment I get an urgent call from the SD, who send over this file on you.’
The SD?
‘That’s right. I’m to hold you until a certain SD officer gets here to interrogate you.’ He leaned over the chair and picked up a sheet from the file. ‘One, espionage of new German Zeppelin technology on board the Luftschiff Hindenburg…’
‘What?’
‘… two, using an identity not your own to infiltrate Reichsminister Goebbels’s reception on the Pfaueninsel; three, attending an illegal music event convened by antisocials known to the police’-the inspector closed the file-‘and this in the course of a few days’ surveillance…’
‘The espionage charge is nonsense.’
‘Is it?’ He picked up the paper again. ‘It says here that you breached a military regulation by taking a camera on board and gave your guide the slip in a restricted area. So what were you up to?’
He waved his hand, not interested in an answer, and sat down again to a fugue of leathery creaks and squeaks.
‘I’m a British subject, Inspector, and can’t be held-’
‘Your passport won’t save you from an espionage charge.’ He gave a quiet, hissing laugh. ‘Annoying as this is, the SD have done me a favour here. With an espionage charge we keep you as long as we like. But the SD want you unspoilt ’-his eyebrows rose at this veiled slur on his professionalism-‘and that order comes from the top. So I’m curious, Herr Denham. What is this really about? Mm?’
Denham had absolutely no idea. The SD, the Sicherheitsdienst, was the state’s intelligence service, a cadre within the SS. That’s about all he knew. It was known to be a cut above the sadists in the Gestapo, attracting educated recruits.
‘You seem to know more than I do, Inspector.’
Haeckel picked up a rubber stamp and began twirling it between his fingers, still observing Denham, eyes narrowed like gun slits.
‘The SD don’t bother with lists of stocking-fillers like these. That is the type of donkey-work they leave to me. As for the espionage, an explosive bag of gas like the Hindenburg has the technological value of my mother-in-law’s arse. So they’re keeping me in the dark about something. What makes you special, eh?’
Denham gave a shrug, and Haeckel suddenly hurled the stamp towards his head. He flinched, and it struck the door with a clack.
‘A British agent, are we?’ he barked. ‘Or spying for the NKVD?’
Denham’s brain was spinning, and his face must have shown it. ‘I’m just a reporter.’
‘All right, all right,’ Haeckel said, stroking his moustache and seeming to have remembered in time his orders not to harm the prisoner. His face was crimson. ‘It will all come out in the end… makes no difference to me.’ He picked up the telephone and summoned the sergeant. Then he said, ‘When the SD are done with you, sir, you and I will go over every single thing said between you and that Liebermann woman. For as long as it takes…’
E leanor rang the bell next to the ornate door of Kopischstrasse 5 and put her face to the glass. A small woman with trailing wisps of hair and a long shawl clutched to her chest shuffled out from a ground-floor apartment and opened it for her.
‘Uh, Richard Denham? Is he here?’ she said, hoping to aid communication with smiles and hand gestures.
At the mention of Denham’s name, fear animated the old woman’s face. She shook her head, dissembling away in German to Eleanor’s bewilderment, and retreated quickly back to her apartment. Her door closed, but Eleanor sensed the rheumy blue eyes watching through the pattern in the frosted glass.
The name on the first-floor apartment was Reinacher, from whose door came the sound of a radio playing military band music; she continued to the second floor with a mounting sense that something was wrong. She found Denham’s door and knocked. It swung inwards with a quiet moan on its hinges.
The place had been worked over so thoroughly it looked like a grenade had exploded, and two cigarette butts had been stubbed into the rug, leaving burn marks. She tiptoed into the mess of smashed record discs, overturned drawers, and opened books. On the floor a yellow telegram slip caught her eye. So his son had not been found. What was going on? She stood still for a moment, mystified, and a flat voice startled her.
‘Kann ich Ihnen helfen?’
A tall, fat-headed man was standing in the doorway, holding a collection tin with a swastika on it.
He gestured to the mess in the room, speaking in a droning voice. Only the word Gestapo was clear to her among the alien words and made itself understood.
H is rumbling stomach told him roughly what the hour was, but he knew he’d soon lose track of time. An electric light hummed behind a wire grill. He didn’t imagine they ever turned it off. In the next-door cell a man moaned.
Every thought that came to him swirled around and slipped away. The fears of never seeing Tom again mixed with his dread of what the SD had in store. He drew his feet up and buried his nose between his knees, struggling to imagine why he could possibly be here.
The espionage charge was a trumped-up ploy to stop the embassy from getting him released in a hurry. He was fairly sure of that. The other charges were trivial except for one-speaking to Hannah-which the inspector seemed to think was a Gestapo matter. But who knows what turf wars were fought in the dark labyrinths of the Nazi state. Maybe the matter was too serious for Haeckel.
But why had they been watching him before he’d even made contact with Hannah? They knew about his trip on the Hindenburg; they knew he was at the reception on the Pfaueninsel, and of his night at the Nollendorfplatz Theatre.
What did they want?
Hours passed, and he fell into a nervous stupor, too edgy to sleep, too drained to move. When footsteps echoed in the corridor outside, he jumped. An eye appeared in the peephole, a bolt was drawn back, and the door opened. A man in a dark suit stepped into the cell.
‘Herr Denham?’ he said with an interested smile. ‘I am Hauptsturmfuhrer Udo Rausch. I’ve been looking forward to meeting you.’