The black form of a second SD man filled the doorway to the apartment, barring the exit. Denham recognised the same hulking figure with the broken nose who’d demanded his documents on the train.
He turned and met Rausch’s face: the glazed-back brown hair, the high cheekbones, the cold, aphotic stare. A glint against the dark suit, and he noticed the gun, a Mauser automatic, pointing at him. He exhaled slowly, feeling that same strange calm he’d felt when the Gestapo came for him. Some survival instinct, perhaps. Remain still when circled by an aggressive beast, lest motion provokes it to slaughter. Terror, he knew, came later.
‘What have you done with Rex?’ he said.
‘He didn’t make it,’ Rausch said. A mock sadness. ‘I’m sorry to disappoint. It was I who wrote his name in the visitors’ register. Now who have we here?’ He looked past Denham. ‘Friedrich Christian? The warm boy?’ He gave a short, mirthless laugh. ‘An unexpected bonus, I must say.’
‘You should be more careful who you call a warm boy,’ Friedl said.
Rausch stepped into the light of the lamp, a look of profound disgust on his face. He beckoned to the SD man, who walked forwards, pistol drawn, and struck Friedl hard across the head with the butt, sending him crashing to the floor. Rausch watched him writhe for a moment.
‘Denham,’ he said, stubbing his cigarette on the rug next to Friedl’s face, ‘I am filled with admiration. I wanted you to know that before we shoot you. All that time you denied knowledge of the dossier
…’
He held out his hand for the satchel. Denham did nothing, and the Mauser’s aim moved up to his face. Then he reached over and took it gently from Denham’s hand.
‘You were willing to sacrifice yourself if the hour demanded. You resisted even when you had no hope; you overcame pain; you did not break. In another life, perhaps, you would have made an exemplary SS man.’
Denham gave a melancholy smile. ‘I really didn’t know anything, Rausch. And as for the SS, I drink and smoke too much.’
Rausch sat down in an armchair, the Mauser still trained on its target, the satchel held to his chest. ‘You really wanted to exchange this for a family of Jews? That’s the bit we didn’t buy. What was your scam, tell me. Was the old man offering a king’s ransom if you helped them escape?’
On the floor Friedl moaned.
‘No scam, Rausch,’ said Denham. ‘They’re just people I like. Fellow human beings.’
The eyes narrowed. ‘Fellow human beings…’ He gave a thoughtful grunt, lit another Murad with a steel lighter, and leaned back, observing Denham through a ring of yellow smoke. ‘Ye-es, I suppose the Jews are part of our species. But they are not part of our race… That’s the point. They are sublimely clever, Denham, to survive as they do by destroying cultures from within, like parasites, like bacilli…’ He glanced at Hannah’s sleeping form through the open bedroom door. ‘So few of them, and yet such influence-in the law, in medicine, in banking. We continually underestimate them… But here I am, talking away.’
The Mauser cocked with a fluid click.
‘D ’you think they’re all right?’ Eleanor said, not taking her eyes off the main doors.
She and Martha were still seated in the Hanomag in the forecourt of the clinic.
‘Stop biting your nails,’ Martha said. ‘That’s the fifth time you’ve asked in fifteen minutes…’
‘Oh Jesus.’
The dark interior of the Hanomag was suddenly lit by the headlights of a car coming up the drive.
Martha turned to look through the back window. ‘All right, get down in your seat…’
The two women slid down, almost crouching on the floor of the car, as the grey BMW rolled into the forecourt and parked in a space between two other cars.
Peeking over the door Eleanor made out the heads of Jakob and Ilse in the backseat and saw the driver’s door opening.
A wave of danger washed over her.
‘How are we going to handle this?’ Martha whispered.
T he SD man held his gun to Denham’s neck while Rausch carefully removed the List Dossier from the satchel. His hand trembled slightly, Denham noticed, as if it were a holy relic, or charged with some astral energy. Fuhrerkontakt.
Friedl moaned again on the floor. Denham turned to him, but the SD man pushed the gun hard into his neck.
‘Don’t you speak?’ Denham said to him, his face forced back towards Rausch.
Still Rausch stared at the old oilskin cover of the dossier, touching the charred corner, the frayed edges, not opening it. Yellowed corners of paper, the drawings, peeped from the side.
‘Go on, Rausch,’ Denham said. ‘Aren’t you going to take a look?’
He could see the man was struggling with himself, duty fighting temptation.
Heydrich warned you not to look.
Finally Rausch said, ‘It is not my place to know.’
‘What, that your god, your great Hitler, is nothing but a-’
Rausch dropped the dossier, moved quickly, and punched Denham in the stomach, doubling him over.
The SD man pulled Denham up by his hair to give Rausch another hit, but the Hauptsturmfuhrer was talking now, bare-teethed, his face crimson. ‘Tonight’s report was going to state that British spy Richard Denham was shot while resisting arrest. But you have just inspired me to make you an extraordinary offer, to accept or decline as you wish.’
He jerked the barrel of the Mauser towards the open bedroom door. ‘Go in.’ Denham stepped forwards, hands half raised, still gasping for air from the punch. ‘Go.’
In the dim room Hannah slept, breathing in a deep rhythm, long hair covering half her face. A princess in a fairy tale, slumbering under an evil spell.
Rausch said to the SD man, ‘Guard the other one.’ Then he followed Denham in, still aiming the Mauser, and turned on the bedside light. ‘An experiment,’ he said, sitting on the edge of the bed. His face was contorted with hate. ‘We’re going to test your love for your fellow human beings.’ He pointed the gun at Hannah’s temple with a straight right arm. ‘My offer is to spare you, and kill her…’
‘No-’ Denham’s head reeled.
‘Your life… for a Jew’s. ’
‘Wait-’
‘I’m going to count to three. One…’
‘Rausch, you’ll be well rewarded if you-’
‘Two…’
‘You’ve got the dossier, damn it, what more do you want-’
‘Three!’
Rausch looked at where the gun touched Hannah’s temple.
‘All right, take me, not her.’
His trigger finger squeezed, and the sheets surged violently.
Staring at Denham, Rausch’s eyes were bulbous with disbelief.
A syringe was plunged deep into his neck.
He dropped the Mauser on the bed, struggled with Hannah’s fist, and pulled the needle out. The vial was empty. He’d received the full dose.
Noises bubbled from his throat as he tried to stand, alerting the SD man, who clomped in, pistol drawn.
A discharge flash-lit the small room. Denham’s ears were deafened.
The SD man’s head thumped softly as it hit the door. His body crumpled, leaving a red trail down the white gloss, the hole in his forehead small and dark, like a cleft cherry, his final expression surprise.
In Denham’s hand the Mauser felt leaden and filthy. A sharp smell of cordite filled his nostrils.
Rausch had fallen back onto the bed, still gurgling and clutching his throat.
‘You were right about one thing,’ Hannah shrieked, kneeling on the bed, a knee on either side of Rausch’s chest. ‘You-continually-under-esti-mate-us.’ Each word was punctuated with a stab of the needle-in his arm, in his shoulder.
Denham grabbed her wrist and prised the syringe from her hand, feeling all the strength in her body ebb away.
‘Enough,’ he said.
She threw her arms around him and sobbed. ‘Horrible, horrible,’ she said.
‘M artha, look.’
The pig of a man in a seersucker jacket they’d seen earlier, the one who had changed the tyre, got out of the BMW and walked towards the building’s main doors, where he was greeted by a fat woman in a nurse’s uniform.
‘Jesus, her butt’s as big as a barn.’
It was almost dark, but they could hear her explaining something urgent, gesticulating, pointing inside, and saw the alarm on the man’s face. He returned to the car, spoke for a moment to the SS driver, then ran into the clinic.
R ausch’s eyelids drooped as the drug took effect.
‘What was in that?’ Denham said.
‘Phenobarbital, I think, and a cocktail of other stuff,’ Hannah said, pulling herself together. ‘While the good Dr Pfanmuller was distracted talking to these men I took an empty syringe from the trash, put it on the tray, and started acting drowsy. He assumed he’d already given me the sedative.’
Friedl came to the door clutching his head. ‘What happened in here?’
‘Take his gun,’ Denham said to him, pointing at the dead SD man. ‘Hannah, get dressed. We’re leaving in under one minute.’
He put Rausch’s feet up on the bed and covered him with the sheets.
‘Denham…,’ he said, a weak smile on his lips. Then his lids closed, and he began to snore.
‘Your parents will be arriving at any moment,’ Denham said.
‘My parents? But-’
‘I’ll explain on the way. Hurry.’
In the next room Denham put the List Dossier back into the satchel, noticing that it still contained the bogus dossier they were going to exchange at the border.
He also noticed something fallen behind the armchair. A man’s raincoat. Rausch’s coat. Quickly he went through the pockets. A half packet of Murads, a page torn from a notebook with the clinic’s scribbled address, car keys, and, in the side pocket, a book. A small, rust red book Denham had seen before. Die Gedichte von Stefan George. The Poems of Stefan George.
He opened the cover and found something that nearly made him cry out.
‘I’m ready,’ Hannah said. She had on a white blouse with a navy wool jacket.
He struggled to put the book in his jacket pocket, so violently was his hand shaking.
‘Richard, what is it?’ Friedl said.
They left the apartment, pausing only while Friedl told the guard at the reception that Hannah Liebermann was being taken for interrogation, and that the two SD still in her room were not on any account to be disturbed while they carried out a search.
‘I thought I heard a shot,’ the guard said.
‘No, you didn’t.’
Outside on the winding stone path, they began to run.
‘Oh,’ Hannah said, a longed-for relief on her face. She looked up at the sky, then closed her eyes, and Friedl took her hand. Together they left the path and started across the lawn in order to circle the main clinic building without going inside it. The grass was wet on their shoes.
A man was coming towards them. Probably one of the patients, from his clothes. He had on a seersucker jacket and hiking trousers. He was waving at them. From a hundred yards away they saw in the light of the lamps the suspicion on his face.
‘Stay calm,’ Friedl said, grabbing Hannah’s arm, as if she was being restrained.
The man was fifty feet away and shouting now. ‘Hey. What’s going on? Where are you taking her?’
‘For interrogation,’ Denham said, stopping in front of him. ‘Frankfurt Gestapo. Who are you?’
‘I was not informed. Show me your warrant disc.’ His skin looked peeled and raw, as if he’d shaved too closely.
‘I have the signed order here,’ Denham said. He reached into his inside pocket, clutched the barrel of the Mauser, and in a single movement threw out his arm and smashed the corner of the butt down onto the man’s mouth, harder than he’d ever hit anything or anyone, bludgeoning his lips and nose. The man’s head jerked backwards, and Denham struck him again.
‘Richard, stop,’ Friedl said.
The man was down, on his back, his face black with blood. For two seconds they stood aghast; then Friedl knelt and felt for the gun inside the seersucker jacket. A Walther, heavy and new. He switched the safety catch off and tossed it to Hannah, and she took it without question.
They continued across the lawn, now close to the wall of the main building, and passed a patients’ car park. It was occupied by a Duesenberg limousine, an English Bentley, and a Mercedes-Benz Denham recognised. The black Mercedes that had come to the border at Venhoven-Rausch’s car.
‘We’re taking the Mercedes.’
Denham had the keys in the door when they heard the shout-‘ Halt! ’
Running towards them over the lawn was the guard from the Haus Edelweiss.
‘W e’ve got to do something-to get him away from the car,’ Eleanor said, watching the grey BMW parked outside the clinic’s main doors. The young SS driver was still leaning against the car, talking to the fat nurse. ‘He’s the only one guarding Jakob and Ilse.’ She was feeling desperate now.
She glanced at her watch. It was 7:43 p.m. If her plan was to succeed they had to meet Eckener at 8:00 p.m. at the absolute latest.
‘This is a bad idea,’ Martha said as they closed the car doors and approached the BMW, their steps crunching on the gravel.
From the nurse came a hostile look as they approached. But the SS driver, a smooth-skinned, roundish lad, had his hands in his pockets and was giving them an enthusiastic grin, which Martha was returning.
And then there was a sudden whining noise, as around the corner of the building a black Mercedes-Benz approached them in low gear, careened into the forecourt, and braked parallel with the BMW, shooting a barrage of gravel at its bodywork. The SS man and nurse spun around.
Denham jumped out of the driver’s side, shouted something in German, and pointed at Jakob and Ilse, whose startled faces peered from the window of the BMW.
Caught off guard, the SS man asked Denham to repeat himself and glanced anxiously towards the clinic, evidently wondering where his chief had got to. But now the nurse was pointing at Denham as if he were a rapist, talking loudly and quickly. Eleanor caught Dr Pfanmuller’s name.
At the same moment a man in a guard’s uniform, flushed and shining with sweat and shouting, emerged from the direction the Mercedes had come from.
Eleanor and Martha were too surprised to take another step.
The nurse screamed.
The SS man fumbled in his gun holster, but then he froze. Everyone became still, too amazed to move.
Standing on the running board of the Mercedes were Friedl and Hannah aiming handguns at the SS man and the nurse. Slowly, Denham, too, drew a gun.
Friedl jumped onto the gravel, walked around to the BMW, removed its keys, and dropped them down a drain in the middle of the forecourt. Denham then opened the door of the BMW and asked Jakob and Ilse to get out. Meekly they did as they were told, looking in astonishment upon their daughter, whose hair blew gently in the mild night breeze. She did not look at them. Her face was focused on aiming the gun, her eyes lit with certainty. Friedl helped them into the back of the Mercedes.
Denham waved Eleanor and Martha back to the Hanomag.
Seconds later they were speeding after the Mercedes as it accelerated down the long driveway, through the clinic gates, and into the street. The man at the guardhouse, head switching left and right as both cars shot through, picked up his telephone.
In a side street near the Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof they grabbed what possessions they had, abandoned the cars, and caught separate cabs to their destination-Rhine-Main World Airport-just as every street in the city seemed to start wailing with police sirens.