The Pursuit of Pearls Page 12

  As she exited the pretty red-brick station at Griebnitzsee, Clara noticed that two policemen had been freshly stationed there, stamping their feet, studying the commuters as they straggled out of the station tunnel. The man who killed Lottie Franke was still at large. What if he returned?

  —

  HER UNEASINESS LASTED ALL evening. Clara made a simple meal of sausage and bread and tried to relax by reading. She picked up Jane Eyre and put it down again. It might have been her favorite novel, but recently she had found herself craving detective stories—a world where problems arose, then were solved and the world put right. She searched for her old copy of The Thirty-Nine Steps and took it to bed.

  It was impossible to sleep. At one point she jolted up, her heart racing, all her nerves alert at some strange noise, a distant creak in the house. She sat, her mouth dry, and gazed round, disoriented by the unfamiliar room, lit by a wash of bright moonlight creeping through the curtains.

  She was convinced that someone had entered downstairs, only to conclude that it was the wind in the distance banging the gate. Yet she always made sure to latch the gate. A few moments later, she heard it again. A faint creak. And from outside a sound like the crunch of the gravel on the drive. Her heartbeat quickened, but when she drew the curtains there was nothing there but the rain-pitted Griebnitzsee and beyond it the black emptiness of the forest.

  She lay down, regretting again that she had sought refuge so far from the city, wishing herself back in Winterfeldtstrasse in the busy heart of Berlin, with the comforting presence of millions of fellow citizens slumbering nearby. She missed everything about her old apartment. Her beloved blue and white china, her comfortable red velvet armchair with its stack of novels alongside, and her chic little mirrored bathroom. The tree-lined, cobbled streets with the old-fashioned green water pump, operated by its dolphin handle. She even missed her unlovely view of cluttered rooftops patrolled by pigeons, the pipes extending down the backs of houses and the washing cobwebbing the narrow alleys below.

  Eventually, her thoughts turned to the other issue—the issue that was crowding out every other concern in her mind. Major Grand’s request. How was she going to discover von Ribbentrop’s plans? The idea of a casual, gossipy chat, the kind she could have with Frau Goering, was an impossibility with the foreign minister’s wife. Yet how else would Clara discover if the Nazi regime was genuinely contemplating an alliance with their old enemy?

  It was an hour before she fell asleep, and when she finally did, Leni Riefenstahl’s parting remark echoed in her mind.

  The September issue! That’s ambitious. Who knows what will be happening when September comes?

  CHAPTER

  12

  If the marriage of Joseph and Magda Goebbels really was one long screaming match, then their children had inherited their tendencies, judging by their shrieks as they tore around the garden of the propaganda minister’s residence. The window of Mary Harker’s room in the back wing of the Adlon hotel had a clear view of the Goebbelses’ garden, which was located on a street that had been, to the propaganda minister’s great irritation, freshly renamed Hermann-Goering-Strasse. As Clara waited for her friend to finish typing a dispatch, she gazed in fascination at the little blond Goebbels children, who had arrived in yearly installments as regular as the products of any Volkswagen production line. The eldest, Helga, in a white smocked dress, was chasing Helmut, the only boy, rumored to be slow and a great disappointment to his father, while Hilde, a ringleted five-year-old, was pushing two-year-old Holde around the paths on a wheeled wooden horse. All the while the latest addition, Hedda, slumbered in her baby carriage in the shade of a lime tree. Of their mother there was no sign. Perhaps it was true what everyone said about Magda Goebbels, that she was too busy engaging in an affair in bitter retribution for the public way her husband had humiliated her.

  “See what you think of this.”

  Behind Clara, Mary Harker sat back from her Remington, removed a sheet of paper, and read aloud:

  “ ‘A few years ago Adolf Hitler declared war. It was war on ‘degenerate’ art—which to him meant any work in a modernist style, or colors ‘not found in Nature,’ and, most of all, any work by Jewish artists. Georg Grosz, with his emaciated prostitutes and bloated plutocrats, was declared cultural Bolshevik number one. To comply with the Führer’s wishes, Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels instigated the seizure of thousands of artworks from the Reich’s museums by modernists like Picasso, Dalí, Léger, Miró, and Van Gogh. German Jewish artists have fled: Max Beckmann to Amsterdam, Max Ernst to America, and Paul Klee to Switzerland. Others live in internal exile, forbidden to paint, or even buy paintbrushes. Some of them carry on secretly with the most ingenious of means. One of them has switched to watercolors so his neighbors will not notice the smell of oil paint. But now the war against degenerate art has been taken to new levels.’ ”

  “So what’s happened?” Clara asked.

  “As a matter of fact”—Mary leaned forward—“it’s something rather shocking. Even by the standards of the Nazis, and they do know how to shock. My editor, Frank Nussbaum, wants it on the front page. Last month a fresh stash of confiscated artwork from Austria arrived in Berlin. There’s supposed to be a system. They store the art in a warehouse in Kopernikusstrasse, and a dealer named Hildebrand Gurlitt has been appointed to separate the so-called Degenerate pieces from the rest. Then they sell them, supposedly so that they can make money out of what they call garbage. But Goebbels has done something drastic. He held a symbolic bonfire.”

  “You’re not going to tell me he burned all those artworks?” Clara was appalled.

  “A thousand paintings and sculptures, nearly four thousand drawings and watercolors. All burned to ashes in the courtyard of the Berlin Fire Department.”

  “Just like he burned the books on Opernplatz in 1933. I can hardly believe it.”

  “They’re saying Goebbels did it deliberately to spite Goering because Goering was desperate to have some of those paintings for himself. I suppose it makes sense. They’re at each other’s throats all the time.”

  Clara sat in contemplation, trying to puzzle something out. Slowly she said, “I heard something else about Goering. I don’t know if it’s significant, but he’s very upset about a jewel.”

  “A jewel?” Mary frowned.

  “You saw me talking to his wife at the Foreign Ministry, remember? Frau Goering told me he had been cheated out of this jewel and that it was obsessing him.”

  “Who cares? It wouldn’t be his jewelry anyway, would it? It probably belongs to some poor Jew. Everything they touch is stolen.”

  “So how did you find out about the bonfire?”

  “Hugh Lindsey discovered it. He had a contact down at the warehouse who told him everything that had happened, and Hugh told me.”

  “Nice of him to share a scoop like that.”

  “Well, Hugh is nice. As I’m sure you’ve noticed.”

  “I have. He seems charming.”

  “So…what are you saying?” Mary snatched off her glasses and narrowed her eyes.

  Clara laughed. “I’m saying he’s charming! I think he’s very good-looking, but I’m not interested.”

  “Good, because I rather like him myself. There’s something about him that reminds me of Rupert.”

  Clara could see that. The humor, the laconic English drawl, the underlying implication that there was nothing in life that could not be solved by a dry sherry and a quiet chat between gentlemen. A way of talking that made the other person feel like the wittiest, most amusing person in the room.

  “He’s such a contrast to his friend,” said Clara. “Cavendish is so patronizing. He’s the worst kind of Englishman. I wonder how Hugh can bear him.”

  Mary’s face lit up. “The one thing I’ve discovered about Hugh in the short time I’ve known him is that he’s utterly loyal to his friends. Even the objectionable ones.”

  Clara smiled. She dearly hoped a romance might flouri
sh for her friend. Mary was popular with the male reporters, but too often her dry humor, rapier wit, and raging interest in politics ensured that she was treated as a colleague first and a woman second. Perhaps this time she could do a little matchmaking to help it along.

  As these thoughts went through Clara’s head, Mary was studying her with a forensic attention. “How about you, Clara? I have the feeling there’s someone in the picture. I hope it’s not that Nazi we met the other night at the Press Club.”

  “What do you take me for?”

  Clara had never told Mary that Leo had returned to Berlin the year before, or that their love affair had resumed. So, however much she longed to, she now could not share the anxiety that was tearing her apart.

  “Well, if there’s no one keeping you here, you need to think about the future.”

  Mary was giving Clara one of her direct looks, the kind that brooked no evasion. That quality must be what made her such a fine journalist, Clara decided. Her friend never shied away from asking the important question, and she never let tact, delicacy, or embarrassment hinder her pursuit of the truth.

  “Your two countries are on the brink of war. You don’t have journalistic protection, like me.”

  “I have my identity documents. I’m a member of the Reich Chamber of Culture.”

  “They’re pieces of paper, Clara! The Nazis never let pieces of paper stand in their way. If they decide that your loyalties are divided, it will get very difficult for you. Let alone if…”

  Mary fell silent and raised her eyes to the light fixture. Both women knew that rooms in the Adlon allocated to foreign journalists came accessorized not just with tea-making equipment, telephones, and soda siphons but with high-quality listening devices, monitored and changed as regularly as the bed linen.

  “Don’t say anything you wouldn’t like to see on the front page of Der Angriff,” cautioned Clara.

  Der Angriff was Goebbels’s own paper, full of the worst kinds of accusations and propaganda.

  But Mary didn’t need to say any more. Her face said everything. Despite a passionate concern for her friend, she knew Clara’s existence in Berlin was not as straightforward as it seemed.

  “As it happens, I am thinking about the future. I’m off to Paris in a couple of days.”

  “Paris!” Mary’s eyes lit up. “How did you swing that? What wouldn’t I do to be in La Coupole right now, drinking with Hemingway, or living at the Hôtel Scribe and having cocktails at the Crillon. And the food! Foie gras sautéed with grapes. Blanquette de veau. What are you going for?”

  “A magazine shoot.”

  Despite her friend’s delight, Clara wondered what Mary must truly think. What would anyone think of a woman who tripped off to model the latest fashions when the only outfit on everyone’s mind was an army uniform and the color of the season was field gray?

  Mary sighed. “Just thinking about Paris makes me want a vodka Martini. Let’s get to the bar.”

  —

  FROM THE TINKLE OF a piano to the soft patter of the famous elephant fountain and the murmur of moneyed voices, everything about the Adlon said that, despite all circumstances, it was still the social epicenter of Berlin. It was far too grand to display signs reading NO JEWS OR DOGS, which graced less smart establishments, although a discreet placard next to the lifts announced that they were barred for non-Aryan use. Yet while superficially the Adlon was the same, there were indications that all was not well. The hotel was crowded, but that was because people thought there was no point holding on to their money. The same three-piece orchestra played in the lobby, the same women in satin evening gowns congregated for parties, and the famous grill room and bar were still the central meeting points for foreign journalists mingling with diplomats, military attachés, and businessmen in fur-collared coats. But now their conversations were more guarded. Everyone wanted to know what was going on, but no one wanted to be the person imparting privileged information. Gossip was less likely to concern marital indiscretions than military maneuvers. Scraps of information would be pounced on and passed around. The Adlon was one of the few places in Berlin where foreign newspapers were available, and hotel staff could be seen in the corridors leafing quickly through the papers before delivering them to guests.

  Hugh Lindsey was standing amid a cluster of reporters at the bar, reading aloud from the classified advertisement section of that day’s B.Z. am Mittag.

  “Listen to this! ‘Two vital, lusty, race-conscious Brünnhildes, with family trees certified back to 1700 desiring to serve their Fatherland in the form most ennobling to women, would like to meet two similarly inclined Siegfrieds. Marriage not of essential importance. Soldiers on leave also acceptable.’ Who said romance was dead?”

  “ ‘Desiring to serve the Fatherland’? Does that mean what I think it means?” asked Mary.

  “It certainly does. Fidelity and chastity are out of fashion, didn’t you know? And not just for race-conscious Brünnhildes. The whole of the top echelon of the Party are at it. Heydrich is a regular womanizer. Rumor has it he’s established his own brothel up in the west end called Salon Kitty’s. He’s wired the place throughout so he can spy on his own men. And we all know about Goebbels, not to mention the gossip about his wife.”

  Mary took the newspaper from Hugh and turned it over. It was folded into a rectangle, and the other side bore a large photograph of Lottie Franke. She gave Clara a sympathetic glance. “Still no news on your Faith and Beauty girl?”

  Clara looked, but a quick scan confirmed that nothing had changed in the investigation. The press was merely seizing the opportunity to run another picture of a photogenic young woman. Death had given Lottie the celebrity that life had never offered.

  “The way they’re reporting it, it’s a national tragedy,” complained Charles Cavendish loftily. Clara felt a stab of dislike. Cavendish reminded her of the snobbish young men of Angela’s set, who would only talk to women as a last resort, and then only to those whose fathers or brothers they knew.

  “Presumably it feels like that to people who knew her.” Mary glared.

  “Ah yes,” said Cavendish, with a light apologetic shrug. “Sorry, Clara. How’s work?”

  “Busy, thank you. I’ve been cast in Leni Riefenstahl’s latest film.”

  He raised a laconic eyebrow. “That’s quite an honor, isn’t it? The Führer’s favorite film director. Goebbels says Riefenstahl is the only woman in Germany who truly understands what the Party is about.”

  “I’m a woman, and I have a pretty good idea of what they’re about,” interjected Mary.

  “So what’s this film going to be?” asked Bill Shirer. “Thousands of storm troopers goose-stepping up Unter den Linden?”

  “Not exactly. It’s about the Ahnenerbe.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Some cultural project of Heinrich Himmler’s,” said Hugh.

  “Himmler has a cultural project?” Mary laughed. “Hope I never have to see it. I think I’ve had all the Nazi Party culture I can manage for one day. I was telling Clara about the bonfire at the art warehouse.”

  Shirer’s kindly face wrinkled in disdain. “Obscene, isn’t it? I must mention it in my next bulletin.”

  Already Shirer had attracted some attention for his broadcasts for CBS. He stared gloomily into the depths of his brandy. “Not that anyone back home will be interested. I’ve almost given up trying to persuade Americans of Herr Hitler’s true intentions.”

  “Think there’s anything in this talk of the Nazis building bridges with the Russians?” asked Cavendish.

  Shirer waved a dismissive hand. “How could there be? Hitler’s entire goal is the occupation and annexation of a great part of Russia. How do you play ball with a man who covets your house and intends to settle in it if he can, even if he has to hit you over the head with his bat?”

  “What makes you so sure?” Clara wanted to know.

  “Ever read Mein Kampf, Clara? Of course you have. Hitler spells it out ver
y obligingly there. If Uncle Joe Stalin hasn’t read it yet, someone should put it on his reading list.”

  Their talk drifted on to other subjects—their forthcoming trip to the cabaret, the rumors about the feuding Goebbelses, the frustration that visiting Americans still enthused about the clean streets and the absence of crime. But as they talked, Clara’s eye was caught by a stately figure progressing along the far side of the gleaming marble lobby, beyond the palm court and its celebrated elephant fountain, towards the revolving doors.

  Tall and dignified, she seemed to glide rather than walk, and lurching in her wake were two burly men in ill-fitting dark suits, like a pair of tugs accompanying a ship in full rig. As she passed, a momentary hush descended on the matrons taking cake and tea and the Party members quaffing cognac at the bar. The Adlon may be the epicenter of glamour in the Third Reich, but it was not every day one had a close-up sight of the biggest star of German cinema, the beloved grande dame Olga Chekhova.

  Everything about Chekhova emphasized her star status, from the ropes of fat, lustrous pearls to the beautifully cut dress and mink stole, strong Slavonic face and high cheekbones. Her immaculate complexion glowed as though lit by an internal lightbulb. She had a star’s innate charisma, an invisible force field of energy that rippled through the space around her, causing heads to swivel magnetically and voices to hush. Impulsively Clara called out.

  “Olga!”

  Hearing her name, the actress looked over, and a flash of recognition passed between them, yet almost immediately she turned again without replying and moved on.

  Olga Chekhova had cut her dead.

  Clara was baffled as much as hurt. She had worked with Olga on several films and had been invited to numerous dinners at her smart Kaiserdamm apartment, hung with icons and Fabergé enamel frames and always thronged with White Russian émigrés in astrakhan coats. The evenings were long and sentimental, filled with anecdotes about Olga’s Moscow childhood and fueled by red caviar and blinis, borscht, poppy seed strudel, and delicious Russian vodka. Despite her fame, Olga had always taken an eager interest in Clara’s career. She had treated her more like a daughter than like a rival actress. So why, when it was patently obvious that she had seen Clara just yards away, should she choose to ignore her?