“Wake up.”
Sarah’s hair had fixed itself down over her eyes with sweat. Her face was stuck to the leather of the sofa and made a noise like an opening honey jar as she jerked up her head. She breathed heavily, like she had been running, and pushed herself into a sitting position with stiff arms.
“Demons again?”
“Dogs,” she croaked.
The room was dim but lit from the walls somehow. He was a dark shape sitting in the armchair opposite her. The table in between had something on it.
The lamp was unfairly bright when it came on, the bulb too vivid to stare into. She shielded her eyes and pulled the robe around her shoulders with her spare hand. A cloud of irritating smoke billowed from behind the shade and passed over her. She coughed.
“So, what did you find?”
Her mind was muddled from sleep and she couldn’t think. Her head hurt. She had locked the door and replaced the key. She’d left the bread outside the office. She had spun the chair to face the door again. What had she forgotten?
“What. Did. You. Find?”
She gave her head the tiniest shake and pulled her hair back from her face. She looked right past the burning light and glared defiantly at the darkness.
“You dress the same every day, in freshly laundered duplicates. You’re rich. You’re rarely here and eat out. You’re used to getting your own way. Someone cleans so you keep your life in perfect order and pretend to want nothing, lest something give you away.” There was a pause.
“Go on.” Another cloud of smoke drifted past the lamp.
“You haven’t read the Das Schwarze Korps, Die Wehrmacht or Der Stürmer, even though you keep them on your coffee table and up-to-date when you’re here. Like that painting, it’s a bluff. You’re no Nazi. You have…British friends…” She was guessing now but ploughed on. “They’re not happy about my presence.”
“And…?” More smoke.
Sarah swallowed. She needed some water. “And…what?” she asked, attempting to sound jolly and unconcerned.
“What else did you learn?”
She was about to lie, but thought better of it. “How did you know?”
A hand emerged from the gloom into the light. Between a well-kept finger and thumb was something very long, gossamer-like and golden in the electric light.
“Just the one, but enough.”
Oh, dumme Schlampe, Sarah thought, to a chorus of agreement in her head.
“Well…” she began with renewed brightness. “You go to serious effort to deny access to your office, where you have various banned and politically dubious books. You study airships, science journals, military history and technology. You read at least five languages at a high level. You have a Jewish friend called Meitner, who you smuggled over the border to the Netherlands. She wants you to do her another favour. Is she pretty?”
“Is she what?” He couldn’t keep the surprise out of his voice.
“Is she pretty? Beautiful? Why would you take the risk of helping her if you aren’t…what are the words? An underground railroad?” she finished in English.
He almost laughed. “Professor Meitner is a formidable woman. Go on.”
“She thinks you can make her problem go away. She thinks it’s everyone’s problem and that this is…‘your area of interest’.”
“Indeed? What else?” His voice was again flat and noncommittal.
“No, that’s it.” She stopped, waited two beats of her heart and then added, “Except for the secret compartment behind the dangerous bookshelf, where you have two guns, dark clothes, knives, tools, papers for five different people all with your face, stacks of high-value Reichsmarks, French francs, US dollars and a stack of Krugur…Kruga…gold coins. You’ve a radio with an aerial you run up to the skylight, which is also your escape route.”
“That all?” He couldn’t keep the amusement out of his voice.
“Some things, I don’t know what they are. But you’re a spy.”
“That so?”
“If those things weren’t locked up I wouldn’t have been sure, but they were hidden, so they’re secret. That makes you a spy.”
There was a long pause. Then the lamp was redirected to light the table, leaving Sarah blinking dancing stars away.
“Very good. A professional would have struggled to do better. And you didn’t try to lie. Never lie when you can tell the truth. Lies have to be worked out in advance or they will tie you up and eat you.” He reached down and stubbed out his cigarette. On the table was a small suitcase and some papers, which he scooped up and tossed gently to Sarah. “New identity card and passport, money to get to the border. Then find a synagogue and start crying. Get as far as you can from Germany.”
Sarah opened the card. There she was, standing against the hall wall, with the name Ursula Bettina Haller. Most miraculously of all, the papers were unstamped. There was no red J, no police station attendance stamps. Ursula was German and she wasn’t Jewish.
“Why are you doing this?” Sarah felt something – an itch in the corner of her eyes, and it left her breathless. It took her a few seconds to recognize the emotion, so long had it been since she’d been grateful. It made her feel vulnerable and she was immediately suspicious of it.
“You saved my life, in all probability. I once lived among people who like to think they take all that very seriously. Consider the debt repaid.”
She closed the papers. A deal. That made sense to her, but there were too many loose ends here.
“What had gone wrong in Friedrichshafen?”
“I outstayed my welcome at the Zeppelin factory. I neglected to bring a passport, which was foolish, making my emergency exit impossible. Always have another way out.”
“They were looking for you.” With an inward thunk, something obvious dropped into place in Sarah’s head, something she realized she already knew.
“Yes.”
She couldn’t read his face. At all. It was like a clay mask. “Roadblocks? That kind of thing?” A yawning abyss opened deep inside Sarah.
“Yes.”
“Like the one my mother drove into?” She paused to form the words. “My mother was shot because of you.”
He looked down and didn’t say anything. Preparing another mask.
Her mother’s failure had not been self-inflicted.
Oh, Mutti, I’m sorry.
The guilt opened a wound in Sarah’s defences and a single tear ran down her cheek. She swatted it away angrily like it was a fly. She had gone months without crying and now it was happening all the time. She had to re-establish some control.
“I get it now. This is Wergeld. Blood money. You aren’t giving me this because I saved you. You’re giving this to me because you murdered my mother.”
He had still not raised his head. “If you like.”
“What is your name? Your real name, and don’t lie to me. ‘Lies will tie you up and eat you’,” she repeated without humour.
He met her gaze. “I am Helmut Haller.”
“Your real name,” she screamed in an explosion of suppressed fury. Her voice echoed through the carpetless apartment.
In a voice she had not heard before, more human, more vulnerable and in an English accent, he finally answered. “Captain Jeremy Floyd.”
“Captain Jeremy Floyd, we are not even. I don’t think we will ever be even.” She delivered the last sentence with exquisite calm. She channelled the rage, mopping up the excess and ladling it into her box for later. She had a measure of control. She could think. “This” – she threw the papers and money onto the suitcase – “is not enough.”
He was just another thing to happen to her, to happen to her mother. She wanted to hurt him, as she had wanted to hurt everyone, but she had accepted a long time ago that she couldn’t. It would be like trying to hurt the rain to stop the storm, Sarah thought.
“What do you want?”
“I don’t know.”
But she began to realize that she did know. It didn’t make sense, but at the same time it did.
“Very well.” His voice was Haller’s again. “When do you want to leave? The suitcase has clothes for a week or more. I’ve destroyed your old ones.”
Disappointment. It should have surprised her, but it didn’t. She knew what she wanted, what the Wergeld needed to be. Somewhere in the distance a piano began to play. But we’re not done, thought Sarah. She cocked her head to one side and stared at him so he had to go on.
“Of course, you can stay and work for me.”
Unexpectedly, Sarah’s stomach danced, a happy little ripple of tingles like the night before a birthday. She felt she was betraying her mother, yet there it was. Excitement. The chance to do things. A place to be.
She squashed the feeling.
“For you? As a…spy?”
“If that’s what you want to call it.” He shrugged.
“Against Germany, against my homeland? Become a traitor?” She allowed her voice to take a hard edge.
He made a dismissive noise. “Sarah of Elsengrund, this is not your country any more. Not while the Nazis are in power.” He pointed at her. “You are a Jew. You have no rights here and there is no place for you.”
“But I’m not a Jew,” she huffed in exasperation. “Not really. I’ve never been to synagogue, I don’t know the prayers, I don’t eat the food, I don’t observe the Sabbath. I’m as Jewish as pork sausage.” Sarah was bored of this endless self-justification. It was futile.
“That doesn’t matter to them – it’s all about blood. Look, you’ve seen what they’ve done with the communists and their religious opponents.” He was more animated, more emotional than she had ever seen him. “How long before you all end up in Sachsenhausen as slave workers?”
“All of us?” She laughed. “Where would they put all of us?”
“A few short years ago, the Nazi Party was some angry men in one beer hall. Germany had no army, wasn’t allowed an army. Don’t underestimate them. That’s been everyone’s mistake.”
Sarah shook her head. “France hasn’t, has it? They’ve got that Maginot Line, I saw in the cinema, there’s big guns and walls and everything… They’re ready.”
“Well, let’s see how that works out, shall we?” he sneered. “The fact is, you have no value here. Ursula Haller does. What was it you said, from The Arthashastra? ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend’?”
“Who is my enemy?” Sarah sat forward.
“The Nazis are your enemy, Germany is just…caught in the crossfire.”
“And who is their enemy?”
“I am…or my country is. Or it will be when those tanks roll into Poland in a few weeks’ time.”
“No.” She sat back. “Poland will have to take care of itself.”
He bought her a balloon. She was about to protest and then suddenly grinned as a child would. Stay in character. You can be at the back, stuck in the chorus, but there will be one person staring right at you if you drop your mask. It’s inevitable. It was big and red, constantly tugging to be free, so Sarah had to wrap the string twice round her hand. It danced on the warm breeze but couldn’t get away. “Thank you, Onkel.” She meant it as a joke, but the illusion felt natural and right.
They drifted along the cinder path and through the old trees by the wall of the zoo. The deckchairs were full of dozing adults. Around them children ran with a boundless energy in the heat, the distant monkey noises mixing with the yelps of joy and mock terror. Couples passed them, arm in arm. The happy hum of thousands of Berliners basking in the midday sun lapped over Sarah and her concerns.
She shook her head. She had become very conscious of the sedative effect the festive atmosphere was having. Could she be Ursula Haller, for real? Could she just walk around the Tiergarten?
“What if someone recognizes me?” she mused, although it was difficult to believe that such a bad thing could happen on a beautiful day like this.
“Dressed like that?” Sarah was wearing the Jungmädel uniform of white shirt, black neckerchief and long navy skirt. “People only see what they expect to see. You look like a blonde, blue-eyed little Aryan monster, so that’s what you are.”
“So…who am I now?” In or out, she could no longer be Sarah. It felt like closing a door.
“Ursula Haller, my niece. Your mother has developed a…mental feebleness. We are ashamed. We will not talk about it.”
“Where is my…Ursula’s father supposed to be, then?”
“He was killed in Spain. We have just returned from there.”
“Why don’t I have his name?”
“I changed it to mine when I became your guardian. I didn’t like the awkward questions about it.”
Sarah loved secrets, or rather the structure of them. She tugged at the Captain’s fiction but no loose end appeared. There was no way in.
“What was he doing in Spain?”
“Bombing communists. If anyone tells you that the Luftwaffe had no casualties, then look them in the eye and say, ‘If the Führer says that, then I must be mistaken’ and change the subject.” His tone changed. “Do I need to repeat any of this?”
“No, not at all.” Sarah realized she was the secret. She felt…thought about. Considered. Part of something. It was intoxicating. They walked a little further. “So, Uncle, what do you do?”
“You do not really know. My factories make wireless sets, but they also do vital but mostly secret work for the Reich. I travel often. I have important friends and have become rich in the Führer’s economic miracle.”
Sarah stopped and she watched him walk on. “Mmm…and what, Captain Floyd, do you do?” she said, eyebrows raised.
He took her arm firmly and guided her away from the deckchairs, towards a tree with huge roots that sprawled across the turf. He sat in a nook in the bark like it was an armchair and pointed to a smaller limb next to it. Sarah sat, letting the balloon flutter from side to side with the flexing of her fingers.
“Look.” He gestured.
“At what?”
“Just look.”
The gardens spread out in front of them, curving down until they reached the wall of the zoo. Some boys were pushing around a leather football, arguing about who would be Hanne Sobek. Further down, a man and woman inched towards each other on a blanket while pretending to reach for the picnic. Below them, the outdoor restaurant served tea and gossip among the trees and the modern street lamps, bathed in a yellow-green dappled light. An accordion started up to muted applause and a few enthusiastic souls got up and headed hand in hand for an unseen dance floor.
“Berlin at play,” said Sarah. “So?”
“What’s wrong with this picture?”
Sarah looked again and, with the suddenness of seeing a duck where there had been a rabbit, knew the answer.
Every adult man seemed to be in uniform. Brown, grey and jet-black, like dark shadows on the surface of the day.
“The army.”
“Not just the army,” he said.
“The army. The police. The SS…the fire brigade, the doctors, the train drivers. The zookeepers.” She laughed without humour. She pulled her legs up and wrapped her arms around them. She laid her head on her knees and watched the world sideways. “I see.”
He turned to her and put his elbow on his knee. His accent became unmistakably British.
“I didn’t fight Germany in the Great War, I fought the Turk. I’ve lived in this country off and on for ten years. I have nothing against your Fatherland. But him…” He pointed at a distant SS officer in his black uniform. “Him – him – him—” His finger snapped from side to side. The world grew darker with each movement and his voice took on a hard edge. “They’re like mould. They’ve grown and now they’re everywhere.” Sarah followed his finger as it moved. They were everywhere. “And like mould they’re all the way through, not just on top. They’re eating everything from the inside out. If you love your country, you’ll serve it best by helping me.”
She looked at the man who had got her mother killed and then raised her own finger. “If I’m to consider this, you must always tell me the truth.” She waggled the finger to emphasize the point. “Starting now. That doesn’t just mean not lying, I mean you have to tell me everything. Don’t leave anything out.”
“Okay.” He sat back.
There was something she had to know.
“You went to Friedrichshafen to look at Zeppelins. So when you found me in the toilet at the docks, why were you there?”
“To kill you. You were a witness, a loose end.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“I…reconsidered.”
“Maybe we’re more even than I thought.” She sighed. In a way he had killed Sarah, or rather she had by jumping off the ferry. That was the moment of decision and it was long gone.
The boys’ ball bounced up and slapped into Sarah’s knees. She yelped and nearly lost her balance, having to fling her arms out to stay on the tree root. Then she smiled as she watched it roll away.
“Entschuldigung!” shouted one of the boys.
Only then did she notice the balloon had come loose and was escaping the leaves above, making for open sky. Sarah let it take her fight away with it. She found herself happy and free. She wasn’t hunted, hungry or hated, and now she had a house the size of a country to root around in.
She put being a traitor in her box, along with her mother’s death, for a chance to stand on that podium with Jesse Owens, telling the rulers of her country that they were wrong. The box was overflowing, but it closed.
“So, how do we start?” she said.