Georgie looked on, a little confused. She was full to the brim with strudel and coffee and couldn’t stomach another morsel. And yet the air between the two men, the tone, suggested it wasn’t the menu under discussion.
‘Not just for the minute,’ she said weakly. She looked directly at him, but he didn’t flinch. ‘Perhaps later.’
‘Very good, Fraulein,’ he said in a virtual monotone and glided away.
Georgie leaned into Rod with a spy-like whisper. ‘What just happened there?’
‘You’ve made your first underground contact,’ he said with satisfaction. ‘Look around you. There are scores of Nazi, SS and Wehrmacht officers through here every day. It’s among their favourite female hunting grounds.’
Georgie scanned the Kranzler’s customers – clutches of grey and green uniforms were entertaining women at the tables, both inside and out, laughing, smoking and flirting.
‘Free with their Reichsmarks and conversation to impress the ladies,’ Rod went on. ‘And Karl has excellent hearing. If I were you, I’d become a regular here, once or twice a week, sit in the same place if you can, alone. If he likes the look of you Karl offers a little extra cream with your coffee.’ His eyes sparkled at the game.
‘Rod, how can I thank you?’
‘You don’t have to,’ he said jovially. ‘It amuses me to stick two fingers up to Hitler and his bully boys at every opportunity. Just use your contacts wisely.’
They ambled back along the Unter den Linden, the sun slicing between the sheer walls of the Baroque buildings. Georgie’s stomach was heavy with pastry and, despite the strong coffee, she felt weary. Still, she needed to justify her existence to her employers, to at least feed some copy back to her London editor. She followed as Rod ducked down a side street, guiding towards their offices, just a few streets apart.
They were a barely a few yards along when Georgie sensed a scuffle in a nearby alleyway, assuming at first it was a pair of scrapping cats. There was a yowl again – undoubtedly not feline. She slowed her step, peering into a narrow, gloomy gap between tall buildings. The moving forms were too big to be animals, and she could hear muffled voices, words barked with particular venom: ‘Kike! Dirty Jew!’
A dull shout followed, an unmistakable sound of someone – a person – in pain. At the hands of another. ‘No, no, I beg you,’ someone pleaded. ‘I’m sorry, I won’t …’ The voice trailed off to a thud, a shrill cry of pain. Power and pain inflicted.
‘Rod?’ she said. He stopped and turned, his jovial face immediately sad and dejected. He’d heard it too.
‘Leave it, Georgie,’ he said. ‘You can’t stop it.’
‘But, but … someone needs help,’ she urged.
‘There are thousands in this city who need help,’ he came back gravely. ‘You have to pick the battles you might win, and know when to walk on.’
She stood, utterly helpless, the sounds of violence ongoing. Painful to her ears. More so to its unfortunate recipient.
‘Georgie, please,’ Rod said. ‘Intervene and it’s your ticket back home, instantly. I promise you’ll do more good by staying.’
Her feet were lead, body pushing through a sludge of shame. But she did it. Georgie walked away, until the sounds receded to nothing, to be replaced by an uncomfortable clamouring in her ears.
No wonder they called it the snake pit.
In the Chronicle’s small office on nearby Taubenstrasse – empty as expected – she found a note from Paul Adamson: Gone to Munich for three days. Please attend to the diary. There was no indication whether it was for work or a last-gasp holiday before his impending fatherhood, and Georgie didn’t really care. She was quickly becoming resigned rather than angry about being left in the lurch. Suddenly Rod and the Adlon crowd seemed even more like family. She had to look on it positively: a chance to show her enterprise, and the London office she could do the job as well as anyone. But what did she have so far?
Georgie fed a sheet of paper into the typewriter, a shiny new Deutscher Mechaniker model, the Gothic type ‘DM’ embossed high on the roller, as if to purposely remind her she was within and overlooked by the Reich at all times. She glanced up at the window and caught the eye of a woman on the second floor of the building opposite, whose gaze cut away briskly. Her dark cap of hair seemed familiar. Had Georgie seen her at the Bristol, or Kranzler’s? No, stop being silly, she told herself. It was just a woman doing a job. Yet she couldn’t shake the sense of being watched; the implied threat of the airport guard and those two Stormtroopers with their menace.
She shook her head to rid herself of the feeling – come on, George, focus – pushing her fingers pointedly into the keypads.
Postcard from Berlin, Georgie typed at last. She had nothing of substance to report on – no news, but just before leaving England, she’d persuaded the Chronicle’s features editor to consider a piece from time to time. The paper often ran pull-out pieces – musings and opinion – from their correspondents. Weren’t her first impressions the best opportunity to offer a bird’s eye view? This was not the Berlin of 1936, all sparkly and on its best behaviour for foreign dignitaries and tourists, with the Nazi Party sporting the reasonable face of politics to pull Germany out of its lengthy economic slump. Now, even three days in, the air seemed grubbier, despite Berlin’s display of opulence. Already, it felt tainted.
Georgie had never been short of words – sometimes in her actions she was reticent, but always free on the keyboard; the blank page did not faze her. Finally, her fingers set to work.
Postcard from Berlin
Dear News Chronicle readers,
Recently, I became a foreigner in a strange and possibly alien land, a shiny city of old that is now entirely cloaked in the deep crimson standards of Herr Hitler’s Nazi Party – only a sea of military green and grey uniforms dilutes the blood-red palette of the Führer’s future vision. In towns across England we are familiar with newspaper criers touting the news from their stands, but here Berliners stop randomly at lampposts, eyes on the metal speakers hoisted high, ears tuned to their tinny barking of rhetoric, inescapable to everyone’s consciousness. By comparison, Berlin’s citizens appear to gloss over the prejudice of park benches clearly marked ‘No Jews’, unashamedly stepping past – and stamping on – one person’s right to sit alongside another. The Third Reich, it seems, is everywhere. And no one is allowed to forget it.
Auf Wiedersehen
Georgie sat back and read the words. She looked up casually, and a shiver from nowhere zig-zagged up her spine and pricked painfully at the base of her neck – the woman’s gaze again from across the street. She wished the blinds were drawn, to blot out the eyes focused on her, and with an added paranoia, her page too. In a swift move, Georgie pulled out the sheet from the roller, scrunched it up and tossed it in the bin. Then, she plucked it back out, rifling through the desk drawers for some matches and setting light to the paper in an ashtray. As it crimped and burned to nothing, she positioned her back to the window, hiding the orange flame amid the darkened office that might act as a flare to unwelcome interest.
She sighed heavily. This was deep distrust, three days in.