Only then did Charlie Maguire let him go.
CLUSTERS of pain, bursting like fireworks: his head, the backs of his legs, his ribs, his throat. “Where did you learn to fight?”
He was in the tiny kitchen, bent over the sink. She was mopping blood from the cut on the back of his head.
Try growing up as the only girl in a family with three brothers. You learn to fight. Hold still.”
“I pity the brothers. Ah.” March’s head hurt the most. The bloody water dripping into the greasy plates a few centimetres from his face made him feel sick. “In Hollywood, I think, it is traditional for the man to rescue the girl.”
“Hollywood is full of shit.” She applied a fresh cloth. “This is quite deep. Are you sure you don’t want to go to the hospital?”
“No time.”
“Will that man come back?”
“No. At least, not for a while. Supposedly, this is still a clandestine operation. Thank you.”
He held the cloth to the back of his head and straightened. As he did so, he discovered a new pain, at the base of his spine.
“ "A clandestine operation"?” she repeated. “You don’t think he could have been an ordinary thief?”
“No. He was a professional. An authentic, Gestapo-trained professional.”
“And I beat him!” The adrenalin had given lustre to her skin; her eyes sparkled. Her only injury was a bruise on her shoulder. She was more attractive than he remembered. Delicate cheek bones, a strong nose, full lips, large brown eyes. She had brown hair, cut to the nape of her neck, which she wore swept back behind her ears.
“If his orders had been to kill you, he would have done so.”
“Really? Then why didn’t he?” Suddenly she sounded angry.
“You’re an American. A protected species, especially at the moment.” He inspected the cloth. The flow of blood had stopped. “Don’t underrate the enemy, Fraulein.”
“Don’t underrate me. If I hadn’t come home, he’d have killed you.”
He decided to say nothing. She clearly kept her temper on a hair-trigger.
The apartment had been thoroughly ransacked. Her clothes hung out of their drawers, papers had been spilled across the desk and on to the floor, suitcases had been upended. Not, he thought, that it could have been very neat before: the dirty dishes in the sink, the profusion of bottles (most of them empty) in the bathroom, the yellowing copies of the New York Times and Time, their pages sliced to ribbons by the German censors, stacked haphazardly around the walls. Searching it must have been a nightmare. Weak light filtered in through dirty net curtains. Every few minutes the walls shook as the trains passed.
This is yours, I take it?” She pulled out the Luger from beneath a chair and held it up between finger and thumb.
“Yes. Thank you.” He took it. She had a gift for making him feel stupid. “Is anything missing?”
“I doubt it.” She glanced around. “I’m not sure I’d know if there was.”
The item I gave you last night…?”
“Oh that? It was here on the mantelpiece.” She ran her hand along it, frowning. “It was here…”
He closed his eyes. When he opened them, she was grinning.
“Don’t worry, Sturmbannfuhrer. It’s stayed close to my heart. Like a love-letter.”
She turned her back on him, unbuttoning her shirt. When she turned round, she had the envelope in her hand. He took it over to the window. It was warm to his touch.
It was long and slim, made of thick paper — a rich creamy-blue with brown specks of age, like liver spots. It was luxurious, hand-made, redolent of another age. There was no name or address.
Inside the envelope was a small brass key and a letter, on matching blue paper, as thick as cardboard. Printed in the top right-hand corner, in flowery copperplate, was: Zaugg Cie, Bankiers, Bahnhof Strasse 44, Zurich. A single sentence, typed beneath, identified the bearer as a joint holder of account number 2402. The letter was dated 8 July 1942. It was signed Hermann Zaugg, Director.
March read it through again. He was not surprised Stuckart had kept it locked in his safe: it was illegal for a German citizen to possess a foreign bank account without the permission of the Reichsbank. The penalty for non-compliance was death.
He said: “I was worried about you. I tried to call you a couple of hours ago, but there was no answer.”
“I was out, doing research.”
“Research?”
She grinned again.
AT March’s suggestion, they went for a walk in the Tiergarten, the traditional rendezvous for Berliners with secrets to discuss. Even the Gestapo had yet to devise a means of bugging a park. Daffodils poked through the rough grass at the foot of the trees. Children fed the ducks on the Neuer See.
Getting out of Stuckart’s apartment block had been easy, she said. The air shaft had emerged into the alley almost at ground level. There were no SS men. They were all round the front. So she had simply walked down the side of the building, to the street at the rear, and caught a taxi home. She had stayed up half the night waiting for him to call, rereading the letter until she knew it off by heart. When, by nine o’clock, she had still heard nothing, she decided not to wait.
She wanted to know what had happened to him and
Jaeger. He told her only that they had been taken to Gestapo headquarters and released that morning.
“Are you in trouble?”
“Yes. Now tell me what you discovered.”
She had gone first to the public library in Nollendorf Platz — she had nothing better to do now her press accreditation had been withdrawn. In the library was a directory of European banks. Zaugg Cie still existed. The bank’s premises remained in Bahnhof Strasse. From the library she had gone to the US Embassy to see Henry Nightingale.
“Nightingale?”
“You met him last night.”
March remembered: the young man in the sports jacket and the button-down shirt, with his hand on her arm. “You didn’t tell him anything?”
“Of course not. Anyway, he’s discreet. We can trust him.”
“I prefer to make my own judgements about whom I can trust.” He felt disappointed in her. “Is he your lover?”
She stopped in her tracks. “What kind of a question is that?”
“I have more at stake in this than you have, Fraulein. Much more. I have a right to know.”
“You have no right to know at all.” She was furious.
“All right.” He held up his hands. The woman was impossible,’Your business.”
They resumed walking.
Nightingale, she explained, was an expert in Swiss commercial matters, having dealt with the affairs of several German refugees in the United States trying to extract their money from banks in Zurich and Geneva.
It was almost impossible.
In 1934, a Gestapo agent named Georg Hannes Thomae had been sent to Switzerland by Reinhard Heydrich to find out the names of as many German account-holders as possible. Thomae set up house in Zurich, began affairs with several lonely female cashiers, befriended minor bank officials. When the Gestapo had suspicions that a certain individual had an illegal account, Thomae would visit the bank posing as an intermediary and try to deposit money. The moment any cash was accepted, Heydrich knew an account existed. Its holder was arrested, tortured into revealing the details, and soon the bank would receive a detailed cable requesting, in proper form, the repatriation of all assets.
The Gestapo’s war against the Swiss banks became increasingly sophisticated and extensive. Telephone calls, cables and letters between Germany and Switzerland were intercepted as a matter of routine. Clients were executed or sent to concentration camps. In Switzerland, there was an outcry. Finally, the Swiss National Assembly rushed through a new Banking Code making it illegal for banks to disclose any details of their clients” holdings, on pain of imprisonment. Georg Thomae was exposed and expelled.