Berlin: A Novel

'You're German?'

'You can hear I am.'

'Visiting the Louvre?'

'You can see I am.' A German officer was the last thing she needed just now.

He was not to be shaken off so easily. 'Major Achim Wachter, if I may introduce myself. Perhaps we could see each other again?' He was about forty and had some grey in his hair. He was sizing her up.

Now he's wondering out how easy it would be to get me into bed, she thought. 'Thank you for carrying my case.' She left him standing there and turned to the museum attendant in the entrance. 'Je cherche Monsieur Aristide Brunel.'

'Vous etes la dame allemande?'

Any objection?'

'Allons.' The man went ahead of her. A small side door. A narrow passage. A spiral staircase. A long corridor. Tall double doors. An imposing desk. A white-haired man in a dark, double-breasted suit. 'La dame allemande, Monsieur le directeur.'

'Our visitor from Munich.' The white-haired man spoke German. 'From the Alte Pinakothek, am I right? The restorer? Bonjour, madame.'

'I don't have anything to do with restaurants. I'm to ask if you've been able to tell the difference between the two Canalettos yet.'

Brunel's face brightened. 'How is my friend Georg Raab?' he asked, delighted.

In a terrible way. And as long as he's in a terrible way he's all right because he's still alive. But don't ask me for how much longer.'

'Is it that bad?'

'Worse.'

'What about you, madame?'

'I managed to get away. With his help. He says you'll find a safe place for me to stay.'

Brunel made a call, speaking quietly and fast. Marlene couldn't make out a word. He hung up. You were never here, and we'll never see each other again. In the unlikely event of a chance meeting we don't know each other.'

'I understand. So now?'

'Go downstairs, and the rest will follow.' He kissed her hand. 'Bonne chance, ma chere.' He escorted her to the top of the spiral staircase.

The group of German officers had disappeared. The bicycle taxi was waiting at the foot of the broad flight of steps. Marlene stopped short. It wasn't the same cabby, but a dark man with a moustache, who silently indicated that she should get in.

Jerkily, they set off. They rode fast through the city: Marlene had no idea for how long or where to. The cyclist had to tread hard on the pedals as they went uphill. 'Montmartre,' he told her, out of breath. Next moment they were coasting downhill again towards an entrance. BERTRAND'S VELOTAXIS, she read over the gate as it clanged shut behind them. There was darkness all around.

So now what, she thought, more baffled than alarmed.

' Votre nom?' said a voice in the darkness.

'Helene Neumann.'

'Votre vrai nom.'

'Look, I don't understand. My French is strictly limited, if you know what I mean.'

'We want your real name,' the voice demanded.

'Let's have a bit of light in here first so that I can see you.'

A quiet murmuring, then a pause, and the creak of shutters. Light dazzled her, and traced the outlines of three people. She raised a hand to shield her eyes. She recognized the man with the moustache. A young woman stood beside him, wearing a brightly coloured summer dress and fashionable wedge heels. Her long black hair was caught up and turned under in a roll. She was sizing Marlene up.

'We want to know who you are, what your real name is and where you come from.' The speaker was a tall, dark man of around thirty with a craggy chin. His German was fluent. Marlene, whose own native Berlin accent was returning to her, thought she heard the trace of a dialect that she didn't recognize.

'Why do you want to know all this?'

'farce que vows etes allemande et les allemande sont nos ennemis,' said the young woman sharply.

'Very well, if you must know, my name's Marlene Neubert. I've come from Blumenau camp near Berlin. A friend of your friend Monsieur Brunel helped me get out with forged papers. The papers say my name is Helene Neumann and I'm in Paris to find a suitable building for the Nazi Women's Association. Here's my passport, and a letter from Party leadership — that's a fake too.' She handed the papers to the speaker. 'So now maybe you'd be kind enough to introduce yourselves.'

'My name is Armand, this is Yvonne, and this is Bertrand.'

'Nos noms de guerre,' the woman added.

And you'll be Madeleine from now on,' Armand told her. 'We're all on first-name terms here. What happens if the Germans check up on you?'

'Nothing at first. But if I'm identified back in Berlin I'm done for. They'll kill me or send me to Theresienstadt, which comes to the same thing. Any more questions?'

'Yes. Are you prepared to help us fight the Germans?'

'The Germans, no. The SS, the Gestapo and the Nazis, yes.'

'C'est la meme chose,' said Yvonne, her voice filled with scorn.

'You mean I'm the same as that bunch of murderers? No, mademoiselle, you'll have to put that differently.'

'Drop it, Yvonne,' Armand told her. 'Notre nouvelle alliee prend le meme risque que nous. As she can prove in her first operation,' he added thoughtfully. 'Show Madeleine her quarters.'

There was a glasshouse in the overgrown yard, used until recently as an artist's studio, its windows half-covered with linen sheets to give the occupants a little privacy. The artist had gone to Provence. His abstract works were everywhere, and there was a smell of oil paint and turpentine. An unfinished female nude stood on the easel, with breasts at odd angles and an eye instead of a navel. 'What a sight,' Marlene said.

Armand sleeps in the next room. You'll leave him alone, d'accord?'

'Don't you worry. I've had enough of the lords of creation to last me quite some time.' Marlene inspected the little spirit stove in the kitchen corner and made herself a coffee, ignoring Yvonne, who went off in a huff.

Armand was out almost all the time, returning only to sleep. The other members of the group, about a dozen in all, lived scattered around Paris. Bertrand's Velotaxis gave them freedom of movement and a perfect cover for their Resistance operations. There was a battery-powered transmitter in one of the vehicles, which moved constantly, thereby avoiding German tracking devices. They had it tuned to London, from where orders for the Resistance workers came. Marlene learned all this over the next few days. There was much hectic coming and going, indicating that an operation was about to take place. What role was she to play?

Meanwhile, she was bored. She didn't dare venture out into the streets: she wouldn't have known where to go. The group had no time for her, although Yvonne kept a suspicious eye on her, particularly when Armand came back in the evening.

Men were just about the last thing Marlene had on her mind. Bastards, the whole lot of them, was her summary of her many years of experience. Well, almost all of them. Old Herr Eulenfels had been all right. Frank Saunders too, in his way. She thought of Franz Giese, and suddenly had an odd feeling in the pit of her stomach. Longing? She didn't know. But she did know one thing, she'd been off her head back then. If you'd said yes you'd be Frau Giese today, and you'd have been spared all that shit, she told herself. Then she realized that she alone would have been spared. Nothing would have been different for Jana, for the little professor, for all the wretches in Blumenau.

On the third day after her arrival a large red Panhard limousine with Paris number-plates drove into the yard. A German officer got out. Marlene was horrified. When she recognized Armand she breathed a sigh of relief. He was in the uniform of a Wehrmacht colonel, and he had brought a German Red Cross nurse's uniform for Marlene.

Marlene wrinkled her nose. 'Stinks to high heaven.'

Armand laughed. Our Maghrebi tailor finds inspiration in garlic when he's copying German uniforms.'

Their orders had come from London. The Germans had shot down an RAF plane on a reconnaissance flight. The pilot and his observer had parachuted to safety and were taken prisoner.