The Pursuit of Pearls Page 6

  He worked with a photograph in front of him, softening the nose and making the eyes larger, adding a tint to the cheeks. Just doing a little cosmetic surgery. He brought one back for Hedwig’s mother, who hung it proudly opposite her bed. Hedwig thought seeing the Führer’s scowl like that last thing at night would give her nightmares, but her parents seemed to like it.

  She looked up to see Herr Fritzl approaching. He was bound to say something uncomplimentary about her efforts. Last time he’d claimed Hedwig’s approach smacked dangerously of Degenerate art, which was tantamount to accusing her of treason. Apparently in the Weimar period Berlin had been a hell pit of sexual depravity, and obscene nudes by Degenerate painters like Otto Dix had corrupted the morals of the entire nation.

  The thought of Otto Dix’s nudes only reminded Hedwig of Lottie, her graceful gymnast’s limbs askew in the clumsy crush of death. She pictured the diaphanous wings of flies glittering like cut coal in the air above her friend’s body. What had Lottie ever done to deserve that fate?

  Hedwig picked up her charcoal stick and turned back to the horror on her easel, but found she could no longer see it because of the tears slipping down her face.

  CHAPTER

  6

  On London’s King’s Road there was a queue to collect gas masks from Chelsea Town Hall. Whole families were waiting, the children jumping up and down, wriggling with excitement, the parents, anxiety etched on their faces, keeping up appearances because they were lining up alongside their cooks and housemaids. One little boy kept singing “There’s going to be a war!” until he was abruptly hushed by his father. Those who were leaving, already issued with masks, were rather more subdued. Now that they had had their first taste of the acrid rubber contraptions with their bleary glass panels at the front and straps fastened behind the head, perhaps the dangers of the future seemed suddenly more real.

  Watching from the top deck of the number 11 bus, however, Clara was transported to the past. She had a vision of herself on this same bus with her mother, sitting in exactly the same spot—front row of the top deck—Helene Vine upright and proper, handbag balanced on her knee, and Clara herself, a small simulacrum, pressed warmly against her mother’s side. Angela, meanwhile, sat aloof across the aisle. Clara had always been her mother’s daughter—the only one of them named for a distant German ancestor rather than a resolutely English relation—and the only child who resembled her, too. Angela, with her honey-blond hair and long, gangly legs, was already exhibiting the first coltish inklings of the glamorous model she would become.

  Now Clara was alone, in a mac and a printed silk scarf with a copy of Picture Post unread on her knee. “Miss Penelope Dudley-Ward, the English heroine of the London-Paris–New York hit French Without Tears, wears a rose, turquoise, and gold brocade lamé jacket and a full satin skirt in a deep rosy red.”

  The bus halted before men hauling sheets of corrugated iron for bomb shelters. Clara wondered if Angela had a shelter of her own, and if she did, whether she would ever need to use it. It was hard to imagine the elegant Angela shivering in a damp construction of earth and corrugated iron that flooded when it rained, or cramped in a basement, with a flashlight and a book. Angela liked a pink gin and a rubber of bridge in the evenings. Listening to Cole Porter at the Café de Paris or visiting the cellar of the Embassy Club in Bond Street, where until recently the Prince of Wales and Wallis Simpson had danced the quickstep on the tiny dance floor.

  Clara had an impulsive, fervent desire to get off the bus and visit her sister, but she knew that was impossible. How would she explain this sudden appearance in London? What cover could she credibly construct that Angela would not instantly penetrate? Despite her long practice in controlling impulsive urges, it still took an almost physical strength for Clara to stay in her seat and not dash down the winding stairs and jump off the back platform of the bus.

  After six years away, she scanned the familiar surroundings as though hunting for changes in the face of a long-lost friend. There were the same advertisements for Wrigley’s Spearmint gum, Ovaltine, and Eno fruit salts, and Peter Jones had changed its Victorian red-brick frontage to a sleekly modernized tower of glass and steel. But now its windows were pasted with crisscrossed strips of brown paper to protect against potential bomb blast, the curbstones had been painted white, and sandbags, exuding a smell of damp jute, were shored against the side of every building. A giant recruitment advertisement for the RAF, “Salute to adventure!” towered beside Sloane Square Tube, and a group of young men, subjects of the first wave of conscription, sailed past in a National Service truck. There were other changes, too, Clara could not help noticing. Women wore little hats tipped slightly forward and to one side. Jackets were more boxy and defined, coats had puffed shoulders, shoes were tightly laced, and the whole female silhouette had become harder and more definite, as though fashion itself was bracing for what was to come.

  Disembarking at Westminster, she made her way across Parliament Square, past Methodist Central Hall, and along the elegant Georgian terraces of Queen Anne’s Gate. Bright, luminous bursts of laburnum and wisteria blossom hung over sun-warmed walls. Through the pellucid blue sky, the bells of Westminster Abbey marked four o’clock. The abbey’s bone-white frontage of pleated stone was draped with a veil of soot, and placards along the railings announced that it was now open day and night as part of a “Vigil for Peace.” Passing a poster for The Spy in Black, Clara was startled to see the movie starred Conrad Veidt. Just a few months ago she had passed the venerable German actor in the corridors of the Ufa studios. Now he was established in a new life and a new career in England.

  It could happen to her, too.

  As she walked, she felt her body tense and her shoulders knot in the familiar brace. It was impossible to shake the tension that clenched her stomach. She thought for a moment it might be the dizzy rush of nostalgia, set off by everything from the pillar boxes and the plane trees to the copper pennies with the king’s head on them. Even the newspaper seller outside St. James’s Park underground station, advertising the first sight of the new pandas at London Zoo, prompted a yearning for the city she had not realized she missed so much. In reality, though, Clara knew it was only nervous anticipation of what this meeting might bring.

  —

  THE ST. ERMIN’S HOTEL was a shabby, late Victorian, red-brick mansion block in Caxton Street, set back from the road and only a few hundred yards from 54 Broadway, where the Secret Intelligence Service was based. On a quiet afternoon it was the last place on earth one would associate with espionage. The lobby, all tartan-trimmed upholstery and dusty carpet, was hushed and gloomy. Watercolors of the Lake District hung alongside a painting of the king, and the smell of congealed vegetables and floor polish exuded a distilled essence of Englishness. A couple of ladies in hats and fur capes taking tea at a side table were the only sign of life.

  Clara hesitated. It had not occurred to her until that moment how exactly she would make contact with the mysterious Captain Miles Fitzalan, who had invited her to his fictitious ball. She approached a girl reading a copy of Woman’s Weekly behind the mahogany reception desk.

  “Is there a Captain Fitzalan staying here?”

  The girl gave an insultingly perfunctory smile. “Can I ask who wants him?”

  “Miss Clara Vine.”

  Putting down her magazine, the receptionist reached wearily for the telephone. “They’re fifth floor.”

  “Thank you.”

  “The lifts only go up to fourth, but if you press the button to the left, it’ll take you all the way up.”

  Clara emerged from the lift to find a long, dingy office partitioned by panes of frosted glass and plywood, filled with men in pin-striped suits lounging at their desks. A fug of cigarette smoke hung in the air, lit by broad shafts of sunlight penetrating the murky windows. Though she was dressed quietly enough, in a skirt of houndstooth check, a blouse with scalloped collar, and a small pearl necklace, curious eyes swiveled immediately towa
rds her. One man, with rumpled hair and tie at half-mast, one ear pressed to the telephone, gave her a wink, but Clara barely had time to look around her before an imposing figure with a scarlet carnation in his buttonhole approached.

  “Miss Vine. So pleased you could come. What do you think of our offices? None too decorative, but very handy for clubs and so on.” Pumping her hand, he detected her incomprehension and added, “I’m sorry. You don’t know me from Adam. I’m Major Grand. Lawrence Grand.”

  “Clara Vine.”

  “Precisely. Please follow me.”

  Anyone who did not know that Lawrence Grand had recently been assigned from the army could have detected it instantly from his ramrod bearing, his tanned complexion, and the military exactitude of his pencil mustache. Clara recognized his type immediately. He wore his politeness like a uniform, buttoned up against the possibility of revealing the merest snippet of extraneous information.

  Striding ahead, he led the way to a corner office with a view of budding plane trees and a line of pigeons shuffling along the soot-dappled rooftops of Westminster.

  “Do sit down, Miss Vine. Smoke?”

  “Thank you.” She took the proffered Senior Service, and he slid across his desk a cut-glass ashtray, studded with ocher stains like pollen in a lily.

  “Who are all those people?”

  “Ah.” Major Grand fired up her cigarette and assessed her, head tilted. “That, Miss Vine, is a question I can’t possibly answer. Not only would it endanger my people if I identified them to you, but it could put you at risk, too. Let’s just say we have all sorts from all walks of life. Often the very last sort you would expect.”

  “Of course. I’m sorry.”

  “On the other hand, seeing as you’ve been so good as to come all the way here, you’re entitled to ask a few questions. You’ll probably want to know what we’re about.”

  Clara guessed this was her cue. “Can I ask who you are, for a start?”

  “Certainly. The fact is, we’re a bit of a fledgling venture. We’re called Section D. Connected to the Secret Intelligence Service. Physically connected, in fact—there’s a tunnel that runs under this building all the way to Broadway, not that anyone I know has used it. We’ve been up and running for a few months—ever since SIS concluded in the wake of the Czech invasion that war is unavoidable—our intention being to establish agents in those countries that face being overrun by the Wehrmacht.”

  For Clara it was still a shock to hear, utterly so casually, the idea that war was “unavoidable.” Every fiber of her hoped that wasn’t true. She dreaded what would happen to her friends, and most of all to Erich, if war came.

  “We’ve already placed officers in Sweden, Norway, Holland, and Spain, not to mention Austria of course, but infiltrating people into Germany, let alone being able to do anything useful once they’re there, is a very different challenge. Which is why, Miss Vine, your name has come up.”

  “You want me to apply?”

  Grand bent his head to the complex task of extracting another Senior Service from his jacket pocket and fitting it into an ebony cigarette holder, then rose and strode over to the window.

  “People don’t apply to us, because we don’t officially exist. We approach those we think might be valuable. You’ve been in Berlin now, what, five years?”

  “Six.”

  “Quite so. They’ve just been celebrating the Führer’s birthday, I hear. What was that like?”

  “Not exactly understated.”

  He laughed drily. “So I understand. As a matter of fact, Noel Mason-Macfarlane, our military attaché in Berlin, offered to shoot Herr Hitler during the parade. He has a sixth-floor flat on the Charlottenburger Chausee with a clear line of sight to the saluting podium, and he swore it would be easier than bagging a stag at a hundred yards to pick the beggar off. This chap’s an excellent shot, so we put the plan forward to the prime minister.”

  Grand stared down at the street below as though Hitler was saluting right there on the pavement.

  “If you can believe it, the PM overruled it as unsportsmanlike.”

  Clara could barely contain her astonishment. So she had not been the only person to contemplate the idea. Hitler might have been assassinated, while the eyes of the world were on him. What would the Ufa newsreel have made of that?

  “Unsportsmanlike?” she echoed incredulously.

  “That was his precise word.”

  “I’m surprised.”

  “Good.”

  He wheeled round, all jocularity replaced by an expression of intense seriousness.

  “Our feeling here is that even at this late hour Mr. Chamberlain badly underestimates the danger of Herr Hitler. I hope if you were ever in the same room as him you would have no qualms. If the opportunity arose, we would not want you, Miss Vine, to be hindered by fears of ‘unsportsmanlike’ behavior.”

  Her heart bucked with fear, but she replied calmly. “I can’t imagine the opportunity would arise, Major.”

  “Perhaps not.”

  He sat and crossed one leg over the other, stroking his trousered calf and scrutinizing her, as if trying to decide something.

  “I’m aware that life in Berlin is not a bed of roses. But it’s going to get much worse now that war is on the horizon. We all have decisions to make, but yours is especially acute.”

  Clara bent her head and smoothed the skirt on her knees, as though the mere action would help straighten out the questions in her mind. She had guessed that this summons would be a request from the British Intelligence Service—those shadowy men in Whitehall who had over the years been the ultimate recipients of all the gossip and information she relayed. She knew too that, just like Conrad Veidt and a host of other actors, if she chose to return to England she could make a fresh start in the British film industry. Yet mentally she had shied away from the question facing her. That same question which, beneath the penetrating gaze of Major Lawrence Grand, she must now face.

  “We need to know, when hostilities arise, whether you intend to stay in Germany. It’s going to get a lot more dangerous.”

  Something about Grand’s patrician assurance suddenly rankled. Who was this man, in his smart suit and comfortable office, to talk of danger? What could he know of what she went through on a daily basis?

  “You forget I’ve already been arrested and interrogated by the Gestapo, Major Grand. I’ve had plenty of opportunity to understand how dangerous Berlin can be. I’m not even living in my own apartment because I believe I’m being watched.”

  An apologetic smile transformed his face, and she could glimpse the kindly man beneath the gruff exterior. “Forgive me. So I take it you have decided to stay?”

  Suddenly Clara quailed at the direct question. The twists and turns that had determined her life had always been impulsive ones. The decision to leave England for Berlin in 1933 had come after a chance meeting at a party. The agreement to spy for British Intelligence came about because of an episode of Nazi brutality she had witnessed in the street. None of the decisive events in her life had ever been premeditated. Ultimatums made her nervous. She remembered how she had shied away from Leo Quinn’s proposal of marriage because he insisted that she leave Germany. Was avoiding decisions her own personal form of cowardice?

  “Actually, I haven’t quite made up my mind.”

  “I see.” Grand was plainly taken aback. “Your prerogative, of course. But there was a specific task I had in mind…”

  “Which is?”

  Suddenly the major sprang to his feet, eyes on the door. Clara registered the clatter of china, and the next moment, with a perfunctory rap, a large woman in a floral apron backed in, pulling a tea trolley containing a large steel urn and a stack of pale green civil service crockery, as well as a plate of rich tea biscuits.

  “Milk and two, Major Grand?”

  “You know me so well, Mrs. Fairclough,” said Grand, helping himself to a biscuit, snapping it mathematically in half, and dabbing up the crumbs w
ith a forefinger. “And for my guest?”

  “Just milk please.”

  The sight of the malty, copper stream of British tea splashing into the cups prompted in Clara another jolt of nostalgia. Although her time in Germany had introduced her to the pleasure of coffee, no one else in Europe made tea the English way, well brewed, refreshing in all weathers, and the answer to every crisis.

  After Mrs. Fairclough had dispensed the tea, plunked in the sugar lumps, and maneuvered the trolley out of the office, Grand perched on the desk in front of Clara and fixed his eyes on her.

  “To answer your question, this is a task of the utmost delicacy. One that goes to the heart of the future peace of Europe. I don’t mind saying it will determine whether all those gas masks we’ve been given will ever get used. There are rumors going round intelligence circles that a Nazi-Soviet pact is in the offing.”

  Clara looked up from her tea with a frown. “A pact with the Bolsheviks? Surely not?”

  “A marriage of convenience is I think what they call it.”

  “But the Nazis and the Bolsheviks are ideological enemies. It could never happen.”

  “My feelings precisely,” said Grand. “I would have thought hell would freeze over first. However. If the rumors are true, there would be very grave repercussions for the rest of us. From what we hear, the idea of a pact is being propelled by von Ribbentrop. He has a pathological loathing for the British, so he’s presumably working on the basis that my enemy’s enemy is my friend.”

  “Even so, it’s so unlikely.”

  “Personally I agree. It’s arrant nonsense. Besides, our own people are negotiating with Comrade Stalin right now. But we need more solid intelligence. Something concrete. We need an inside track to the Foreign Ministry, and that’s where you come in.”

  Into Clara’s mind came the impatient, chiseled face of Conrad Adler. I’m on loan. Like a painting in a museum.

  “Von Ribbentrop is a stupid man,” continued Grand. “Vain and foolish. His wife, however, is another matter. And I think you know her.”