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It didn’t work out like that. What in life ever did?
She blinked to clear her sight and focused on the next file, hardly noticing the peal of nearby church bells, silenced by long years of war, ringing out the old year, ringing in the new.
She detached the photograph of Kurt as an SS officer and read through his war career.
1939-45 – Sturmbannführer Kurt Wolfgang von Stavenow
What rank was Sturmbannführer? She had no idea.
1939-40 – Friedrich Wilhelm University, Berlin. Psychiatry/Neurology
1939-41 – SS Special Purpose Corps. Aktion T4
1941-43 – Medical Officer with Special Responsibilities
1943-45 – Assistant Director to the Medical Superintendent. Charité Hospital, Berlin.
April 1945 – Last seen Berlin, present whereabouts unknown.
Underneath lay closely typed papers, some stamped with the Reichsadler, spread eagle and swastika, the lower half of some of the pages discoloured, rucked and crisp, as though the paper had been in contact with water then dried, rendering the typing even harder to read. Supporting evidence. She read what she could, the typing blurring still further as she scanned the pages, flipping back and forth.
She rubbed her arms at the bone-deep chill spreading through her. It either made no sense, or it made the most dreadful sense of all …
She didn’t know how long Leo had been standing in the doorway watching her expression changing from puzzled to incredulous, finally settling into frozen horror.
‘Make sense now?’ He poured two whiskies. ‘Here, drink this. You look as though you need it.’
‘You never suspected?’ Her voice sounded thick, distant. ‘That he was a Nazi?’
‘Did you?’
Edith shook her head slowly.
‘He played us for fools, old girl. Pulling the wool. Acting like butter wouldn’t melt. I suppose we should have known. His interest in the occult and Aleister Crowley – well known bad hat. When I look back on that summer – King Arthur, the Templars, Druids – it all fits. Remember the arguments?’ Edith nodded, she and Leo insisting that it was myth and legend, Kurt replying that, on the contrary, it was history, a shared history. The history of the Aryan peoples. ‘He was deadly serious. We couldn’t see it the time, why would we? We didn’t realize the reasons for his interest. He was a member of the Thule Society. Did you know that?’
‘I’ve never even heard of it.’
‘Exactly. He kept it secret. The Study Group for Germanic Antiquity. All those ridiculous theories.’ He paused. ‘Remember those trips he made us go on, haring all over the country …’
Edith closed her eyes. Yes, she remembered, standing at the very top of Glastonbury Tor as Kurt wove a net of romance and mystery around the death of Arthur. With the sweep of his arm and the passion of his words, the world transformed. The land before them became a vast mere spreading from horizon to horizon, still as a mirror. The only sound, the slow, soft, muffled plash of the oars on the dark funeral barge bearing the mortally wounded king. Two heavily veiled queens sitting at prow and stern, motionless as tableaus, while another stepped with bare white feet onto the stony shore to welcome the King to the Lake Isle of Avalon … They’d stood together, hands linked, as the sun fell towards the west. Shafts of light shone through the lens of the clouds and she’d experienced a moment of transcending wonder, caught in the pure magic of the place, the time, and him.
‘… turns out it’s just an excuse to spout theories of Aryan supremacy,’ Leo was saying, ‘and indulge in anti-Semitism of the most unpleasant and virulent kind. Joined the Nazi Party in ’31. Plenty there of similar mind, including Heinrich Himmler. Every one of them firm believers in the Master Race, and all that. Tommyrot, of course, but dangerous tommyrot. Tommyrot that would cause the deaths of millions of people …’
‘But he was training to become a doctor.’ Edith shook her head quickly, denying the thought even as it was forming. Another came instead. Her mother burning herself on a tin from the oven, hiding the injury, making light of it.
‘It’s nothing, really,’ she’d said.
‘Let me see.’ Kurt insisting, high, broad brow creasing with concern as he took her mother’s hand with his slender fingers to see the burn. Edith remembered being proud of his patient skill, his confident, gentle touch as he applied salve and carefully bandaged the hand.
‘You’ll make a wonderful doctor, Kurt,’ her mother had said, as she turned her wrist this way and that to admire his neat work.
‘His chosen vocation had very little to do with the Hippocratic Oath.’ Leo was pointing at the notes in front of her. ‘The clue is in his specialism.’
Edith glanced down, frowning. ‘Psychiatry? I don’t follow …’
‘Why would you? No right-minded person would make sense of it. Kurt was involved in something called Aktion T4, before the war and during.’
‘I saw that in the notes.’ Her frown deepened. ‘What does it stand for?’
‘It’s an address in Berlin: Tiergartenstraße 4, sounds innocent, neutral. Headquarters of the Gemeinnützige Stiftung für Heil und Anstaltspflege.’
‘The Charitable Foundation for Medicinal and Institutional Care?’
‘They were good at that kind of thing, the Nazis, inventing euphemisms to hide their filthy business. They called it the Euthanasia Programme. The taking of life on an industrial scale based on ideas about who should live and who shouldn’t. They had a term for it: Lebensunwertes Leben: Life unworthy of Life. It’s all there in black and white. It all makes sense now. It all fits.’
Life unworthy of life. Edith rubbed at her temples, trying to massage the words away, her eyes closed against the dreadful realization that the words meant exactly what they said.
‘I’ll admit, it beggars belief. It began in the Mental Institutions with the mentally deficient, adults and children with disabilities. Enforced sterilization. All to do with the purity of the race. Doctors have walked some very dark corridors, in the name of research, in pursuit of knowledge, trying to prove some misguided ideology. Our friend Kurt among them.’
‘Medicine and Anthropology, melded together.’ Edith looked up at Leo. ‘He told us the first time I met him.’ A memory, his long fingers folded together. I want to bring the two together. How could she have missed the darkness within him? He’d told her himself.
‘Mixed up with Eugenics. And those other cock-eyed theories.’
‘I suppose that’s all we thought they were …’
‘Indeed. We didn’t think that they were about to put theory into practice. And we were in good company. Nobody did. Although it’s all there, in Mein Kampf. Sterilization and the rest of it. And then even that wasn’t good enough, they might not be able to breed, but they were still a burden on their families and the state. So they decided to kill them.’
‘Who? Who decided this?’
‘Well, Hitler gave the order, but it couldn’t have been carried out without the co-operation of the doctors and nurses in the institutions.’
‘They killed their own patients? How?’
‘Starvation. And if that didn’t work, lethal injection. And gas.’
‘How … how many?’
‘Tens of thousands in Germany, hundreds of thousands probably, we don’t know, and goodness knows how many in the wider Reich.’
Edith stared at him, incredulous. ‘I didn’t know about any of this.’
‘Few did. They kept it all well hidden, even from their own people. It gets worse.’
Edith looked down, slowly moving her head. How much worse could it get?
‘Easy to see how it spread to other “undesireables”,’ Leo went on. ‘Untermenschen: Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, Slavs. They moved the whole thing to the east, lock stock and barrel, used the techniques, the equipment, the personnel, to set up Extermination Camps for the Jews.’
Edith leaned forward, forehead in her hands, fingers tugging at the roots of her hair, knowing, dreading, what he was going to say next.
‘And Kurt was involved.’ He tapped the file. ‘We’ve got chapter and verse.’
She knew what Leo was talking about. She’d seen the newsreels. Had been moved to tears by Richard Dimbleby reporting from Bergen-Belsen. Shock, anger and indignation shaking his voice as he described the horrors that he had witnessed.
It wasn’t cold in the room, but Edith could not control her shivering. The evidence was in front of her. There could be no possible doubt. And yet. And yet. To have been responsible, directly, or indirectly, for the deaths of millions, how could she believe that of anyone, let alone the man she had loved? She swallowed hard to keep down the whisky burning up into her throat.
‘Where do I come into this?’ she asked when she could trust her voice.
‘Keep your eyes and ears open when you get to Germany. Put out feelers, see what people know. Softly, softly. You know? Shouldn’t be too difficult. Most of them would sell their own mother for a tin of bully beef.’
‘And if I do find anything?’
‘Adams is your contact. Captain Adams. He’ll be in touch. Oh, and keep a look-out for Elisabeth.’
‘Elisabeth?’ Edith had not been expecting that.
‘His wife. You remember her?’
‘Of course I remember. I just wasn’t expecting her name to come up.’
‘She had a cousin, or something, lived near Lübeck. She could well be in the area, since they’ve all been booted out of East Prussia. That’s if …’
‘She survived?’
‘Well, yes. Obviously. The Fraus are turning out to be quite an asset. Find the Frau, find the Mann.’
‘Do you think she was involved?’
‘Not directly. Lots of the wives preferred to turn a blind eye. She struck me as very much the Juncker. Thought Hitler hopelessly vulgar and nothing existed outside of Prussia. All she cared about was her estate and her horses. She probably stayed up there looking after them until the Red Army arrived at her gates. Can’t know for sure, of course.’ Leo shrugged. ‘When you find her, it’ll be up to you to judge.’ He refilled their glasses. ‘Happy New Year, by the way. And happy birthday.’
5
Cromwell Square, Paddington; Service Women’s Club, Lower Sloane St
1st January 1946
Corned Beef Hash meets Bubble and Squeak
Traditionally made from Sunday lunch leftovers: cabbage, potatoes and cold cuts from the roast, it can be a satisfying supper for any day of the week with the addition of cubed corned beef. Combine together with a liberal sprinkling of salt and pepper, form into a large cake, fry both sides until browned and beginning to squeak.
Stella Snelling, Ideas for Leftovers
When Edith returned the next morning, Dori was sitting at the kitchen table in silk pyjamas and dressing gown absent-mindedly drinking a glass of flat champagne. Even dishabille, her makeup and hair were immaculate. Edith felt tired, drained. She’d spent the rest of the night next to a snoring Leo unable to sleep for the weight of the knowledge laid upon her.
‘How was dinner with Leo? Go anywhere nice?’
‘The Savoy Grill.’
‘Oh, very grand. You couldn’t rustle something up, could you, darling? We’re starving.’ Dori waved her coupe. ‘Happy New Year!’
‘We?’ Edith questioned.
‘Adeline’s here. It’s a wonder you didn’t see her. She’s out in the square taking photographs again.’
Edith went to the pantry and found leftover potatoes, a tired-looking cabbage and the inevitable corned beef. She cut the cabbage fine, put it in a frying pan and added the flesh from the baked potatoes and cubed corned beef.
‘Happy birthday.’
Edith looked up in surprise and smiled to see Adeline coming in from the basement area wearing a uniform jacket, olive slacks, and tennis shoes. She put her camera down on the table.
‘I’m amazed you remembered.’
Adeline put an arm round her shoulders and kissed her on the cheek. ‘You know me, I don’t forget much. I got some nice shots. Before and after, you know? Nice to see the trees growing back. I like the fog. Goes well with the folks back home. Foggy London Town. Good thing I had my pack with me. Too cold to go tripping about out there in party clothes.’
‘Is he still asleep?’ Dori pointed at the uniform jacket.
Adeline shrugged. ‘Far as I know.’
‘You must have worn him out, darling.’ She turned back to Edith. ‘You missed a marvellous party. Didn’t she, Adie?’
While Edith found plates and knives and forks, Dori poured two more glasses, emptying the champagne bottle.
‘A toast. To Edith and the New Year!’
They all raised their glasses and Edith dished out the food.
Adeline took a forkful. ‘Umm, not bad. Kinda like hash with beets. Goes well with champagne.’
‘Doesn’t it?’ Dori stirred hers with less enthusiasm. She put down her fork and folded her arms. ‘Now, Edith, time to tell all. Beginning with, who is the handsome Sturmbannführer? And ending with what does Leo want?’
Edith put down her knife and fork. ‘How do you know?’
‘I was in Vera’s office yesterday,’ Dori lit a cigarette. ‘Imagine my surprise when I see a file with your name on it. Imagine my further surprise when I find that it is paperclipped to another file and inside that is the photograph of a high-ranking Nazi officer. Who is he? I wondered. Does Edith know him? What a very dark horse she is.’
‘What were you doing there?’
‘I asked first.’
Edith glanced towards Adeline.
‘Don’t worry,’ Dori said impatiently. ‘She won’t tell anyone. Not above a bit of spying herself, isn’t that so, darling?’
Edith had never thought of Adeline as a spy but it was perfectly possible. She could be extraordinarily secretive about herself although she was very good at getting information out of other people. She knew the power of silence and how to flatter by close attention. She was adept at sniffing out a story and single-minded in her pursuit of it. It’s what made her good at her job.
‘So get on with it!’ Dori sat back. ‘We’re both agog.’
Edith sighed. Dori’s flippancy was grating on her and she didn’t want to talk about Kurt and what she’d learnt. She was struggling to make sense of the contradictions it contained, between the man she’d known and what he had apparently become.
‘I don’t know if I should.’ She shook her head. ‘I’ve signed the Official Secrets Act …’
‘Who hasn’t! It’s a bit late to worry about that now. Who is he? Come on, Spill the beans!’
Edith’s sigh deepened. She’d have to give them something. They’d badger until she did. ‘He’s someone I knew before the war.’
‘A friend of Leo’s?’
‘Well, yes. Originally.’
‘And then a friend of yours?’
‘We were lovers for a while.’
‘Leo didn’t mind?’
‘No, not really. He encouraged it, if anything.’
‘Did he? And what does Cousin Leo want now?’
‘Distant cousin,’ Edith corrected. ‘He wants me to look out for him – Kurt von Stavenow, that’s his name – when I’m in Germany.’
‘And any others of his ilk that you might happen upon, I suppose?’
‘Something like that. He calls them “bad hats”. He wants me to find out what I can.’
‘Hmm,’ Dori frowned, suddenly serious. ‘I know he’s your cousin, and everything, but be careful what he gets you into. Leo is a slippery one. You’re an innocent.’ She shook her head. ‘He should never have involved you.’
‘Hold on Dori,’ Adeline spoke. ‘Innocent-looking folk make the best spies, isn’t that one of Dori’s Rules of Espionage? Butter wouldn’t melt types. Who would suspect?’
‘They also get played, turned, sold down the river,’ Dori snapped back.
‘This von Stavenow,’ Adeline turned to Edith. ‘What did he do?’
‘He was a doctor. Involved in something called the Euthanasia Proj—’
Adeline put up a hand for silence. They all looked to the stairs, the subtle rustle of bare feet on wood. Someone there. No telling for how long and sound carried.
‘Well, look who it isn’t!’ Adeline raised her camera.
‘Hey!’
The tall young man put up his hand to hide his face but he was too late. Just like Leo, he didn’t like having his photograph taken but he was captured, caught in that moment, unshaven, in crumpled khakis, reddish-blond hair like stubbled wheat.
‘I wish you wouldn’t do that, Adie.’ He took a swipe for the camera.
‘Oh, no you don’t!’ Adeline whisked it out of his grasp. ‘It’s going in my archive.’
‘I was looking for my jacket. Then I smelt chow. Any for me?’
He took the chair next to Adeline. She put a protective hand over the Leica.
Edith went to the stove and brought a plate back for him. Tom McHale. She’d met him once or twice before. He was one of those young men, vaguely attached to the American military, who came and went in the war. One didn’t know what they did. One didn’t ask.
‘Got any ketchup?’ He pushed the food round with his fork. ‘Needs ketchup. Or hot sauce. Got any of that?’
‘This is Britain, Tom.’ Adeline shook her head. ‘Of course they haven’t.’
Edith went to the pantry and took out tomato sauce and Tabasco.
‘Well, look at that!’ Tom grinned at Adie through his food.
‘Edith’s going to Germany,’ Adeline said.
‘No kidding!’ Tom looked up from dousing his plate with sauce.
‘Absolutely not,’ Edith stared back. There was something unnerving about him. His pale-blue gaze, made enigmatic by his fair brows and lashes, suggested a blankness that was not just in the eyes. ‘I’ve got a job with the Control Commission. Education Branch.’
‘I might see you there,’ he said between mouthfuls.
‘Might you?’
‘Yeah, heading out there later today.’
‘Me, too,’ Adeline said. ‘On assignment for the Tribune, covering the Nuremburg trials. Among other things.’
‘Things like what?’ Tom McHale asked.
‘Know ’em, when I see ’em.’
‘A snapper-up of unconsidered trifles?’ Edith offered.
‘That’s me.’ Adeline smiled. ‘Kind of like a magpie.’
‘Attracted to bright things and carrion in equal measure?’ McHale laughed.
‘Something like that.’ Her smile widened. ‘Corpses and paperclips.’
A look passed between them. His mouth tightened and he stared hard before pale lashes shuttered down on those ice-blue eyes.
‘Uh, huh.’ He pushed his plate away. ‘Well, seems like the place to be.’ He got up from the table. ‘I need my jacket. You’d better get a move on, Adie, if you want a lift with me.’
‘Do you think he heard?’ Dori asked after he’d gone upstairs.
Adeline shrugged. ‘No knowing. He’s sneaky.’
‘He’s OSS, isn’t he? Still operative?’
‘Yeah. Although it’s not OSS anymore. They’re calling themselves something else now.’
‘Names don’t matter,’ Dori frowned. ‘It’s what they do. He’s heading for Germany. Any idea what he might be up to?’
Adeline signalled for silence. Footsteps retreating, a door closing.
‘He’ll be hunting Nazis but not to bring them to justice. They’re looking for particular individuals who might be useful.’ She spread her hands. ‘To us. The Allies. If Tom’s involved that means to the US and not useful to the Russians and Uncle Joe.’
‘Who are they looking for?’
‘Scientists, mainly. Experts in all kinds of stuff. They’ve already rounded up all those rocket scientists responsible for the V1s and V2s, or as many as they can find. They’re justifying it by saying that they were only involved in designing the things. But these are not innocent guys.’ Adeline’s hazel eyes became hard as agates. ‘They designed rockets that killed thousands indiscriminately, right here in London. Rockets developed and made underground by slave labourers and concentration camp inmates who died in the dark in their tens of thousands? I was at Nordhausen. You should have seen the state of the workers there, half-naked, skeletons, barely alive. Almost impossible to tell the dead from the dying, bodies everywhere, corpses stacked up like so much cordwood. No one is innocent here.’
‘What do they do with these scientists, once they’ve found them?’ Edith asked.
‘They take them to some special interrogation centre, bleach away any taint of Nazism. Once they’ve promised to be good boys and girls, they’re given a new identity and shipped off to the US. They’re looking for others, too. Real thugs who worked for the Abwehr, German Military Intelligence, or the SD – SS Intelligence. The Germans had good penetration of the Soviet Union during the war. We want those networks. The Russians are the enemy now. It’s all about getting one over on them. The whole thing’s called Operation Paperclip on account of the paperclips they use to fix the new IDs to the files, or that’s what I heard, anyway. They’ve bagged most of the big boys. Now they’re going after the smaller fry. Your guys will be doing it, too. It’s a race for who gets there first. It’s not about punishment, or even revenge. They are taking their reparations in people. A kind of human looting.’
‘Adie!’ Tom’s voice came from above. ‘My jacket!’
‘I gotta go,’ stood up. ‘You keep safe now, honey.’ She bent swiftly to plant a kiss on Edith’s cheek.
‘Leo didn’t mention anything about this Paperclip business,’ Edith said after she’d gone.
‘He wouldn’t, would he?’
‘Did you know about it?’
‘It’s some time since I knew about anything, darling.’ Dori frowned. ‘But they will be busying themselves with a similar kind of thing, you can be sure of that.’ She rose from the table. ‘Time to find out. Meet you in the hall in twenty minutes.’
They got off the underground at Sloane Square. Edith thought that they were going shopping but instead of crossing to Peter Jones, Dori turned into Lower Sloane Street. They walked past a terrace of handsome red-brick buildings and stopped in front of a wide porch ornately decorated in terracotta. Two shields on each supporting column announced that they had arrived at the Service Women’s Club.
‘Mrs Stansfield and guest,’ the concierge said. ‘You’re expected. Madam is in the Library.’
They were shown through to a comfortable room, discreetly lit with pearly lights in wall sconces and table lamps. Magazines and newspapers lay on a pale-oak table. The newspapers looked as though they’d been ironed. A large fire burned in the wide grate. The effect was warm, cosy after the rawness of the January day.
The woman in the armchair by the fire rose to greet them. She was dressed in a closely fitting black costume, pale-green silk shirt caught at the throat with the same pearl brooch.
‘Vera!’ Dori embraced her, kissing each white cheek.
‘Dori,’ Vera Atkins returned a merest peck to either side, ‘and Miss Graham. How good to see you again. Do sit.’ She indicated the sofa next to her chair. ‘Drinks?’ She rang a small bell. ‘Gin and tonics,’ she said to the girl who answered the call. No choice was offered. ‘This is a very good place to meet.’ She looked up at the portrait of a handsome woman in WAAF uniform smiling down from above the wide mantelpiece. ‘The drink is cheap. There are no men about and it is very discreet. I won’t beat about the bush,’ she said when the drinks were delivered. ‘I have a proposition to make.’
She turned towards them. As her black gaze fell on both of them, even Dori’s confidence seemed to falter. She was the most elegant and terrifying woman Edith had ever met.
‘I did rather put you through it, Miss Graham. Gave you a bit of a grilling but I had to be sure you were the right sort.’
‘For whom? For Leo?’
‘No. Not for them.’ She gave a thin smile. ‘For me. I no longer have anything to do with his department. Interviewing you was my last service.’ She adjusted the hem of her skirt. ‘I have recently been in Germany and will shortly be returning. I’m due to go out there in a few days, just as you are, Miss Graham. I have been tasked with finding out what happened to the girls who worked for Special Operations Executive, F Section,’ her eyes flickered towards Dori, ‘our branch of the Service.’