As he heard the bitter tone of his father muttering, Hans could
imagine Wolff looking directly at him with contempt through his
rimless spectacles.
‘I am not here to debate with you, Herr Taub. I have come here
because I wish to save your innocent son from ruin. I am here to
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give you some facts. What you do with them is for you to decide.
You can denounce me if you wish, and we will both end up before
the courts. That is a risk that I have calculated.’
Wolff cleared his throat noisily before continuing. ‘Of course you
can choose to be a hero. You can be a martyr to whatever cause it is that you support. What I find heartless is it you seem content to sacrifice your son. I suppose that is your prerogative and what I should expect from someone like you.’
Konrad Taub spoke again and while Hans could not hear his
words his tone was angry.
‘No, I cannot intervene with regard to Hans. Officially I do
not know. Once the arrests have been effected he will be taken
somewhere – I do not know where – and it will be impossible for me to do anything.’
Hans could hear Renate interrupt, her voice almost shrill, but still could not distinguish individual words.
Wolff continued, speaking through her. ‘You have an obvious
choice to make, it seems to me, and you do not have much time. I
also feel I may have made this visit in vain. I hope not.’
Heavy footsteps crossed the room and then came back. Hans
assumed they were those of his father. Someone dragged a chair
back noisily and sat heavily on it. He heard the soothing tones of his mother’s voice.
‘Ah yes,’ said Wolff, as if he had forgotten something important.
‘It would of course be difficult for you under normal circumstances to leave the country. But I have contacts and may be able to
obtain exit visas. It will be for you to acquire an entry visa wherever you go, if you see sense. I would be prepared to do you this one last service, but only for the sake of Hans. I will be at the school by
six thirty in the morning. You may wish to consider your next
steps overnight and if you want my assistance please see me there.
Bring your papers. After that I will be prepared to help you no
more.’
There followed a brief final exchange before Wolff said loudly
and in apparent anger, ‘I hope you will understand the potential
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difficulties I am prepared to risk. For the sake of your son.
Goodnight.’
Hans heard the door slam. He went quickly to his bed and picked
up his book. But his door did not open until several minutes later.
His father knocked before coming in. He said quietly, ‘Hans, your
mother and I have something to discuss with you.’
5
Two evenings later at Frankfurt station, Hans and his father were
awaiting the departure of the overnight train to Paris. Konrad Taub was dressed soberly. His firebrand beard had been shaved off and his hair trimmed. He murmured occasionally to his son in his best
approximation of a reassuring tone.
They had taken the train from Berlin the previous morning, leav-
ing Renate to neaten the remnants of their existence there. Konrad
and Renate Taub were dutiful and orderly, and viewed it as their
civic responsibility to manage their affairs sensibly.
On the evening of Wolff ’s visit and after they had decided they
must leave Germany the three of them had sat at the kitchen table
and compiled a list. Konrad would see Wolff first thing the next
morning to ask for the exit visas. He would go from there to the
British Embassy, where he knew someone who, he was sure, could
arrange for visas for France and England. Neither he nor Renate
expressed concerns that Wolff ’s offers might be a ruse to incriminate them. In a sense, Hans found their instinctive trust almost
touching. But inside him the seed of doubt about Weber’s good
faith in this transaction was growing.
the bank and withdraw as much cash as possible. The rest they
would arrange to be transferred to the account of Renate’s sister.
They would need to buy train tickets. They would pack carefully,
and there would be letters to write to family and friends. It was
obvious that not everything could be achieved in a single day, so
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they agreed that Renate should remain in Berlin for an extra day to work through the other items on the list, ranging from settling their account at the grocer’s to informing her friends at the welfare centre where she worked that she and her husband were taking a break in
Bavaria for a few days.
Hans had argued that she should drop everything and simply
leave with them if they took seriously what Herr Professor Wolff
had said. Knowing they did not fully appreciate their situation, he challenged their logic, but in vain. ‘It’s me they’re interested in, Hans,’ his father said. ‘Your mother’s not in danger. We can’t leave just like that. We need to get everything in order.’ Hans felt desperate and irritated at the same time but had known that to insist
further would be both pointless and potentially perilous to him.
The plan had been for Renate to join them on the train, but
clearly this would not happen. The large clock on the platform had
just ticked past eleven p.m. Steam rose in grimy clouds to the
cathedral- like arches and the glass roof of the grand terminal station as the engine gathered its strength. Hisses and the sound of the announcement of the train’s imminent departure broke the night
silence. There was no movement on the platform, monochrome in
the artificial light. It seemed that the passengers had boarded and everything was now reduced to waiting. Four minutes to go. They
climbed aboard and slammed the door behind them.
‘She’ll catch us up later,’ whispered Konrad. ‘We’ll see her in
Paris.’
There were several emptier compartments on the train but Kon-
rad insisted on taking the last two available seats in this one, to silent glares. Their travelling companions were, it seemed, businessmen
but not particularly successful ones, travelling second class with no sleeping arrangements. There was a solitary woman, blonde, pretty
and in her thirties, thought Hans, who pouted defiantly at the men, daring them to look at her or talk to her, and signalling consequences if they did.
The train moved with a jolt and edged slowly through the sub-
urbs to the invisible black countryside, where it thundered through the winter night. They were on their way to England, that faraway
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country, distant if not in geography then in philosophy. The sway-
ing motion, the regular beat of the engine and the clack of the rails were comforting and after the rush of excitement Hans felt utterly
exhausted and found sleep.
He awoke suddenly. The train was silent and still and the com-
partment dark. His father leaned on his shoulder, his head lolling.
Carefully, Hans nudged him so that his head roc
ked to the window
of the corridor with a small thud. Konrad did not wake. There was
the sound of heavy breathing in the compartment and the foul
smell of eight bodies emitting their unguarded odours, leavened by
the sweet lavender of the woman’s scent. No one else was awake, it
seemed.
His eyes were coming to terms with the light. He glanced out of
the window. He could see lamps but no station signs. Opposite his
father sat the woman, pressed into her corner seat, avoiding contact with the thin moustached stranger next to her. She too was asleep,
her mouth open, and her skirt had ridden up. Hans could see clearly the suspenders that held her sheer stockings up, and a morsel of
thrilling porcelain flesh. He stared, then something made him look
up. She was looking into his eyes and smiled maliciously. She opened her legs further and Hans could see more white leg and the light
sheen of her underwear, soft silk and peach- coloured in his mind, though he could not in fact make out the detail. The woman closed
her eyes with a smile and, it seemed to Hans, leaned back further,
turning her legs minutely towards him. Perhaps he imagined this;
but the sight of her skin and that fabric was real enough.
He tried to concentrate on the pleasurable sensation this gener-
ated in his groin. For a while his arousal sustained wakefulness, but eventually sleep flooded him once more as the train resumed its
journey.
Hans woke again later. Everyone else in the compartment
was already moving, dishevelled but preparing to leave the train.
Ties were straightened, hair was combed, hats were clamped on
heads and fingers screwed sleep out of eyes. The woman calmly
applied her lipstick, glancing at him without expression. The beam
of a spotlight pierced the darkness in the compartment.
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‘What time is it?’ asked Hans more loudly than he had intended.
‘Three forty,’ his father replied. ‘We’re at Aachen. We have to disembark for passport checks.’
The train conductor walked down the corridor, rapping each
compartment window as he passed.
‘Everyone out,’ he shouted. ‘Quickly.’
The occupants of the compartment stood awkwardly, apologiz-
ing, jockeying politely for space. Hans’s father reached for his
suitcase.
‘No need to take that,’ said one of the men. ‘This is just papers.
They’re not interested in contraband. Just people. You’ll be back
soon enough.’
Konrad nodded and left the case on the rack.
They filed out of the compartment and off the train, the blonde
woman going first, and joined the orderly queue that snaked into
the customs hall. It was bitterly cold as they exited the carriage
and not much warmer on the station concourse. As he crossed
the platform Hans looked down the length of the train. They
were detaching the German locomotive and on the neighbour-
ing platform its French replacement snorted steam as if waiting
impatiently.
Once they were inside he could smell her perfume drifting
sweetly towards him. He looked down her elegant back and saw the
straight black seams of her stockings, and thought again of that
shiny, softly creased fabric and what it concealed. She smoked a cigarette in an ivory holder and he inhaled its aroma greedily, wanting everything of her.
His father was nervous, feeling inside his pockets for his papers.
The woman turned and said, ‘It’s such an inconvenience, isn’t it,
getting off the train and back on again? They only introduced these measures recently.’ She flashed a patronizing smile and inhaled on
her cigarette.
‘Yes,’ replied Konrad, flustered. ‘You travel to Paris often?’
‘Oh yes. I’m a fashion designer. I work with several studios.
And you?’
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‘Journalist. Preparing an article on Monsieur Cocteau. My first
trip to Paris for several years.’
‘And is this your personal assistant?’
‘Ah no. This is my son, Hans. I thought it was time he saw
Paris.’
‘I see,’ she said, turning to him. ‘A young man of his age. So much to see in Paris.’
Hans looked directly at her and held her eyes for a moment. He
thought he noticed a conspiratorial grin on her face that he found
delicious but at that instant the queue began to move.
Hans looked sideways. She was smirking at him, not apparently
making fun of him but amused at his excitement. He longed to
reach out to touch her, to feel the flesh under her skirt, or on her arm, just to know that she existed and that he did too. But the queue was speeding up and she had to regain her place.
Four trestle tables were set up, two on each side of the passengers as they processed through the dimly lit hall. It was easy to work out the routine. At each table were two uniformed men in field- grey
uniforms with SS flashes on the lapels. One sat and asked questions, while the other stood and looked sceptically at the subject, as if
with the intention to intimidate. In the shadows at the side of the hall stood four further men, overseeing everything.
Each person was called forward and processed moderately
quickly. It seemed that people were selected almost at random for
deeper questioning. Even that appeared desultory. But for most
people the ordeal consisted solely of a close examination of their
papers and a cursory, uninterested few questions.
They were getting closer. Konrad watched intently as the guards
went about their business, as if he could divine some answer to the problem of negotiating the next few minutes safely. Hans whispered
to him to stop behaving so nervously.
The woman in front of them was called. As she stepped confi-
dently forward she half turned to Hans and his father and smiled
again. His father, distracted, did not see her.
Hans watched as she strode to the table. She was doing this with
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panache, he thought. She smiled brightly at the two men in turn
and placed her papers neatly and decisively before them. They reciprocated with thin bureaucratic smiles. She joked, but Hans could
not hear what was said. It was possible, he thought, that she was
alerting them to his father’s agitation.
The seated man laughed and glanced at his partner, who picked
up one of the documents on the table, while the other leafed
through her passport. Hans attempted to feign a casual lack of interest as he focused intently on what was happening.
Hans and his father were now at the head of the queue but were
not, for the moment, called forward. All activity at the other tables had ceased and the only person being processed was the blonde
woman, apparently oblivious to the stillness, speaking animatedly
with the officials and smiling broadly. Of course. She was a marker.
That was why she had spoken to them. She was there to pick
them out.
Alternatively, thought Hans, she would be back on the train shortly and would ask herself what had become of that good- looking but
highly
strung journalist and his handsome son. He wondered what
would happen to their luggage: whether some minor functionary
would be deputed to the train to find the bags of the traitors and
take them back for examination. He glanced around, expecting at
any moment the grip of a gloved hand on his arm.
He saw one of the officials make a discreet hand signal, unnoticed, it seemed, by the woman, and three of the men in the shadows
began to move. This, then, was it. Hans braced himself. But it was
not his arm that was grasped. The men moved towards their col-
leagues at the table. In a well- practised motion they took hold of the woman under her arms and ushered her swiftly and efficiently
towards a door at the back of the hall. She said nothing: it must have been the sheer shock, Hans thought. The commotion, such as it
was, was over in a matter of seconds. The man seated at the desk
made a neat pile of her papers, stood and walked through the door
with his colleague.
‘ Mein Herr! Bitte schön.’
Hans and his father heard the irritated tone of the man’s voice
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shouting at them and started in unison. They were being called for-
ward to one of the tables. The examination was brief and
peremptory. There was a railway timetable to be adhered to. There
was a delay to be made up. The officials were down a quarter of
their strength.
In less than two minutes they were walking back to the train in
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Chapter Fifteen
Signed, Sealed and Delivered
1
It was, he thinks as he tries with difficulty to guide the link through the first buttonhole of his right cuff, the first time he fully realized the potential of intrigue and surreptitious interventions. Until then he had not understood that convenient secret arrangements could
be arrived at between individuals just as between hostile states. He had come with this little enterprise to comprehend the power and
facility he held to nudge the planets into a constellation that coincided with his interests.
Weber had been relatively easy to play; Wolff, despite his intellect and academic achievement, was no more than a fool. There had