T he net curtain billowed in a white arc. Outside, the heavy haze was giving way before a wind that whipped the dark surface of the river, sending a draught of cool air into the room. The sun dimmed, filtered through an ominous sky of sulphur and charcoal. Rex got up and closed the window.
‘All those beers and you never once mentioned it,’ Denham said. ‘Although I admit I had an inkling.’
Rex gave an embarrassed smile. ‘Well, I’m relieved. Couldn’t say anything until I knew you were on board. That said, we would never have made an approach if we’d known they were already shadowing you
…’
The first drops came down, followed quickly by a deluge, which pimpled the river in a great hiss, dissolving the Palace of Westminster in a wash of grey. For a few moments they stared out the window.
Denham said, ‘All this’-his hand gestured to his broken body-‘over some missing dossier?’
Rex grimaced.
‘Hitler must be stopped, old boy-and soon. Diplomacy will achieve nothing. And the few of us who realise that have been looking for other means…’ Rex pinched the inner corners of his eyes. ‘He’s a madman, nothing but, yet the diplomats come away saying his demands deserve consideration. The PM is wavering, and you know how many here are sympathetic. The Mayfair set-all bloody admirers-with voices in the cabinet. The Cliveden lot, who’ve been whispering against Phipps.’ He let out a long sigh. ‘This Anglo-German treaty Hitler is after-it must not happen. If it does, we’ll have paid with our souls for a shaky peace, weakened our allies, and made him unassailable into the bargain…’ He folded his thin arms and stared into the rain.
Denham couldn’t help but smile. ‘I’m not surprised the Times won’t print half your pieces.’
‘Think she’ll let me smoke?’ Rex said, pointing towards the door with his thumb.
‘I doubt it, but don’t mind me.’
Rex took out his tobacco pouch and poked a clump of brown shred into his pipe. ‘The Rhineland, six months ago. Our best chance to unite and stop him- missed. He took a gamble, but his instinct was dead right…’ He shook his head. ‘The man has an unholy sense for others’ weaknesses, their cowardice. He won’t stop now. Unless we make a bold move of our own, and I mean a bloody bold move, we’re looking at a German hegemony in Europe within a few short years…’
‘That bad?’
Rex slouched back in his chair, surrounded by curls of wood-smelling smoke. Water poured down the windows, filling the room with a veiled light.
Denham’s eyes began to droop.
‘Rex, that dossier…’
‘Yes, old boy…’
‘Why me…?’
The sound of Tom laughing approached from outside in the corridor. Rex stood up.
‘Almost forgot,’ he said, speaking around the stem of his pipe. ‘Hannah Liebermann is being kept at a sanatorium in Frankfurt called Klinik Pfanmuller. She’s allowed no visitors, so we may make of that what we will. Her parents are at home under house arrest. I’m sorry, that’s all we could discover… That was a splendid piece you wrote, by the way. Powerful stuff. But I fear not powerful enough to dent the steely heart of that regime…’
‘Then I’ll try harder… I’m not giving up.’
‘Yes, well, get some rest, old chap. I’ll see you when I’m next in town.’
T hree weeks later, on a bright day in the third week of September, Denham was discharged. Tom led him by the elbow up the steps of the house on Chamberlain Street, assuring him that he’d helped ‘old people’ with the Cub Scouts. Denham’s movements were slow and paid for with spasms of pain. He’d lost weight.
Eleanor had transformed the house. Swept it out and expelled the ghosts. The curtains in the windows were new, and there were flowers on the hall table.
‘Welcome home, Mr Denham,’ she said, taking off his hat and kissing him in the hall. He felt a soft twining around his leg and saw the amber eyes of a purring tabby looking up, a stray Eleanor had taken in.
He walked through the sunlit sitting room and into the drawing room, followed by Tom and the cat, taking in the changes, the smell of fresh paint and furniture wax. Years of living in dingy Berlin tenements had not prepared him for this. A lump rose in his throat.
He stopped in front of a dark mirror in the drawing room, his arm around Tom’s small shoulders, and looked at his reflection. His Berlin wounds were healing, with only the ghost of a scar likely on his brow and beneath his eye, but with a livid, uglier scar cutting down his right cheek from the corner of his eye to the side of his mouth.
Later that day, when he was propped up with pillows on the divan in the sitting room, Eleanor showed him his Hannah interview in print. It had been published over three weeks previously. The News Chronicle had the British exclusive.
It looked good. And the picture he’d taken of them-Jakob, Ilse, Roland, and Hannah-exceeded all his expectations. He was no great photographer, but the play of light from the windows that morning in Grunewald had conspired to make a haunting picture of depth and shadow.
He riffled quickly through the newspapers Eleanor had kept for every day he’d been away. The interview had revived Hannah’s story in the public eye, giving it new impetus for a day or two. But then worrying reports of the war in Spain began filling the headlines, infecting the national mood, dominating the letter pages, as was the news that Mrs Ernest Simpson had filed a suit for divorce. Clearly the King now wanted to marry the woman and make her Queen.
Within a week the world had moved on. Hannah’s story was dead, and as far as he could see there had not been a single reaction from the German government. Just as Rex had said.
He flung the papers to the floor.