“Well, Ulbricht was the head of the German Communists in exile, and Pieck is a man they think a lot of in Moscow, so it’s only natural that they should be the men of the moment. But tell me, how do you manage to get by? Do you have enough to live on, what with Max as he is...”
“We do what we can. There are no family estates anymore, they are all rubble. As for our money and our stocks, they are worthless. We’ve sold some things, and if a tenant gives us anything, well, then it’s a feast day. Sometimes they pay us in kind: a loaf of bread, a few teabags, a chunk of meat of dubious origin... whatever they have.”
“Have you spoken with the British?”
“Only to put my papers in order, and I don’t think they showed themselves very keen to help me. They don’t understand why I want to stay here. But tell me about yourself, did you ever get married?”
“No, I haven’t had the time, a war is not the best moment to do so.”
Albert made it his job to look after Amelia, Max, and the little boy. He visited them regularly, sorted out the paperwork so that they didn’t bother the baron anymore, and tried to bring them food whenever he could.
It affected him to see Amelia so submissive with respect to Max. She seemed to revere him and she spoiled Friedrich as much as she could. But she had changed, she was not the lively young woman he had known, the beautiful idealist. This woman had very little to do with the one he had fallen in love with, but she was the same Amelia.
Albert spoke to his uncle and told him that Amelia was in Berlin. But Lord Paul explained that the woman was not willing to come back to work for them. Not only had she rejected the possibility, but the men who had contacted her wrote in their reports that she did not seem quite in control of herself.
“And what would you be like if you had been tortured for months?” Albert asked his uncle angrily. “You have no idea what they did to her in Ravensbrück.”
She never told him what they had done to her, but Albert had read reports from some other survivors of the camp, and he was tormented to think that what had happened to them could also have happened to her. They had all been mutilated, they had all been raped, and he imagined that Amelia had not been an exception to this sad rule; she, however, did not talk at all about what had happened, as if she had deserved her suffering, as if it were a part of the payment she had to give for what had happened to Max.
Her remorse for that operation in Athens was so great that Albert suggested that she go to see a priest.
“You need someone to pardon you; that’s the only way you will gain peace.”
“Max has pardoned me, he is an exceptional man.”
“His pardon is not enough, you need God to pardon you.”
He never thought that she would listen to his advice, and he didn’t insist, either. Meanwhile, the tension began to mount in Berlin between the victors of the war. The relationship of the Western powers with Russia became ever more tense. They had fought together, but now they were no longer side by side in the trenches.
American intelligence asked Albert to hunt down a Nazi scientist who had fled just before the end of the war. Lots of Hitler’s scientists had happily accepted posts with the Americans or the Russians as long as they were guaranteed immunity. But this was not the case with Fritz Winkler.
Albert had not told Amelia that he was working for American intelligence; he pretended that he was still just a journalist looking for stories, and so he decided to try his luck with Max, who might perhaps have heard of Fritz Winkler. Max’s family had been very well connected, after all, and had known everyone who was anyone in Germany. Maybe Max would be able to give him a lead.
“I have been commissioned to write a report on scientists who worked for Hitler. Some of them escaped and we don’t know where they are.”
“They say that some went your way and the others went to the Russians,” Amelia said.
“Yes, that’s true, but not all of them. Apparently Dr. Winkler managed to get out of Germany with the aid of his son, who was a colonel in the SS and organized his flight; what we don’t know is where he escaped to.”
“Winkler?” Max grew tense.
“Are you sure that they said ‘Winkler’?” Amelia asked.
“Yes, apparently he was a scientist who had been condemned by the Geneva Convention, but who still carried out a secret weapons project using poison gas. His son was a very well-connected SS colonel. We haven’t found him either. The pair of them have disappeared.”
Albert deduced from the oppressive silence in the room that both Amelia and Max must have known at least one of the Winklers, or maybe both of them. Max had turned his face away, but Amelia was pale and silent, as if she had suddenly died.
“What happened?” he said to the air, without addressing either of them directly.
Max broke the silence.
“Colonel Winkler sent Amelia to Ravensbrück. He hated her because he thought that she had killed an SS friend of his in Rome.”
Albert didn’t know what to say, but he praised himself for his intuition.
“Where could he be now?” he asked, ignoring the tension in the room.
“Who knows! Lots of Nazis, lots of members of the regime, managed to escape, they even had escape routes planned in case Germany lost the war,” Max replied.
“Did you know Fritz Winkler, Max? They say that he was very well connected and was invited to the houses of many of the great German families; some of them even financed his experiments before the war.”
“No, I didn’t know him. I was unlucky enough to know his son, Colonel Winkler, in Rome. I told you, he wanted to have Amelia hanged. I’m sorry, I can’t help you, I wouldn’t know how to.”
Albert was about to ask him if he would help if he ever found out where Fritz Winkler was, but he did not. Max was tormented by his transformation into an invalid, but in spite of what he had suffered, he was still unshakably loyal to his compatriots, in spite of the barbarous acts some of them had committed.
He thought about how contradictory a character Max was, about his efforts to make Great Britain put a halt to Hitler before the war started, about the repugnance and disdain he felt for the Nazis, but even with that in place he had fought alongside them because they represented Germany at that time and he would never have betrayed his country, as if Nazism itself were not the worst possible betrayal. But Albert said nothing: He didn’t want to argue with Max, and even less with Amelia. He saw them as lost souls, with no future and no hope, tied to one another as if it were a punishment. It was only Friedrich, little Friedrich who could laugh in that silent and sad house. Albert took note of the fact that if Max and Amelia both knew Colonel Winkler it might be useful; he didn’t yet know how, but he would think of something.
He left the house and decided to take a walk before returning to the American sector of divided Berlin.
Later, Albert arranged a meeting with Charles Turner, a member of the British intelligence services who was, like him, stationed in the former German capital. They had met each other during the hardest days of the war, and they had got on so well together that they had ended up carrying out certain joint operations.
“I need you to let me have a look at Amelia Garayoa’s file.”
“And who is Amelia Garayoa?”
“Come on, Charles, I’m sure you know who Amelia Garayoa is!”
“I don’t, but it sounds like you do,” Charles Turner replied ironically.
“She’s worked for you, she was recruited by my own uncle, Lord James, so let’s not waste our time with this dialectical cut-and-thrust.”
“And might you mind telling me why you want to see Amelia Garayoa’s file? First of all, I don’t have direct access to the agents’ files, which are all of course under lock and key in London. Second, Garayoa doesn’t work for us anymore. One of our men found her in Berlin a little while after the war ended, and in her opinion she was not quite right in the head, which is not that surprising, given that she’d been a prisoner i
n Ravensbrück. No woman who went through that place is going to be quite the same again.”
“Goodness, I see that your brain’s starting to work, and that you do know something about Amelia Garayoa.”
“I can’t give you her file, but I might perhaps be able to help you if you tell me what you want to know about her that you don’t know at the moment.”
“I need to know what happened in Rome; apparently they accused her of having murdered an SS officer, but there was no way to prove the case against her. I want to know if she did it or not.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
Charles Turner called him the next day to invite him out for a drink.
“Your friend took care of Colonel Ulrich Jürgens of the SS; apparently, she did so with the help of partisans from the Italian Communist Party. Jürgens had ordered a friend of Garayoa’s, the diva Carla Alessandrini, to be hanged. Alessandrini had worked with the partisans and a German priest in the Vatican Foreign Office, who helped them to get Jewish families out of Rome. As far as I have been able to establish, your friend was a very effective agent. A shame that she’s not all there now. As you know, she’s living with a former German officer, the man who was her alibi during the war.”
“Mentally she’s perfectly fine, she just doesn’t want to have anything more to do with wars or violence. It’s not that strange, she’s suffered a lot.”
Turner nodded, apparently indifferent, but really he was keen to discover why his American colleague was so interested in what had happened in Rome so many years ago.
“Charles, you know that you and I, and the Russians as well, are interested in the German scientists who worked on secret weapons projects. Some of them have escaped, among them Dr. Fritz Winkler, a fanatical Nazi whose son, a colonel in the SS, was the main accuser of Amelia in Rome. This Jürgens whom Amelia shot was a friend of Winkler’s, and he swore vengeance on her; years later he managed to get her sent to Ravensbrück.”
“And you’re looking for Fritz Winkler.”
“Yes, but it’s as if the ground had swallowed him up, him and his son the colonel. They’re not on any official lists of SS officers who have been arrested, or on any list of the dead. He and his father have disappeared, just like so many other high-ranking Nazis. I thought that I would ask Baron von Schumann if he knew them, and he and Amelia went pale.”
“If they knew where he was they would tell you, or at least Amelia Garayoa would, she has no reason to feel anything other than hate for him if he was the cause of her internment in Ravensbrück.”
“Yes, Amelia would tell me, but she doesn’t know. I’ve bought some information, but you must know that nowadays they try to sell us anything, and try to trick us most of the time, but my informant tells me that the Winklers left on the very day that Hitler killed himself. My informant tells me that they escaped to Egypt, where some of Winkler’s friends are also hiding.”
“So you’re going off to Cairo.”
“I need to know more about the Winklers first; I haven’t found any photographs of them, except one of Fritz Winkler saluting the Führer. As for his son, the colonel, he tried to destroy his records in the SS archive.”
“Lots of people ran away just before the end of the war: to Syria, Egypt, Iraq, South America... Your man could be anywhere.”
They spoke for a while, and when they were taking their leave of each other Turner seemed to be wondering if he should give Albert James a piece of advice.
“I think there is a way to catch Winkler.”
“Yes? Do tell,” Albert said ironically.
“Put out some bait for him, a piece of bait he won’t be able to resist.”
“Bait?” Albert was starting to see what Turner might be suggesting, and he didn’t want to hear it.
“If Colonel Winkler has escaped with his father, as seems to be the case, and if he hates Amelia Garayoa as much as you say he does, which also seems to be the case, then he will only show himself if he has the chance to put an end to her. There are lots of Germans living in Cairo, some of them under their own names, some of them with false names. Nobody would be surprised for Baron von Schumann to go and live the expatriate life there. Once Winkler found out that Garayoa was there he would be sure to try to kill her; he wouldn’t improvise, he would put a plan together, and to do that he would have to make himself visible; this would be the moment to get on his trail and, through him, get to his father, this Fritz Winkler you are looking for.”
“It’s a crazy plan!” Albert exclaimed.
“No, it’s not, it’s a good plan and you could have thought of it yourself if you weren’t sentimentally implicated in all this. In our line of work there is only one way to survive and do a good job, and that is, as you are well aware, by getting rid of any personal attachments. The advice is free, but you should pay for the drink. American intelligence is richer than British intelligence.”
Albert knew that Charles Turner was right. It was the only viable plan that might catch Fritz Winkler, but he would have to have Amelia’s consent to put it into action; she would not separate herself from Max for anything in the world, and he was not willing to let her go; both he and Friedrich depended implicitly on the tormented Spanish woman.
In spite of his doubts, Albert laid out Turner’s plan to his bosses and asked them to give him a free hand to convince Amelia by any means necessary.
Then he decided that the best thing to do was to talk to her alone, so he went out one morning and walked up and down outside Max’s house until she came out.
“What are you doing here?” she said, surprised to see him.
“I’m going to invite you to breakfast, I need to speak to you.”
They went to a café, and in spite of Amelia’s protests, he ordered an elaborate breakfast. He made her eat. There were shortages of everything in Berlin, especially for those people who had barely nothing to begin with, as was the case of the family made up of Max, Friedrich, and Amelia.
Albert told her that he worked for American intelligence, that journalism was now his cover, and that he was on a mission to find Fritz Winkler. She listened to him in silence and only furrowed her brow a little when he confessed that he was an agent, but she said nothing. Albert told her of Turner’s plan and waited to hear her reaction.
“So in the end... Well, I understand why I became a spy, but why did you?”
“My country entered the war and I couldn’t be a simple observer anymore.”
“You did well, I’m glad you took the step.”
“Will you help me?”
“No, I won’t. I’m finished with all of this, and ‘all of this’ was quite enough, don’t you think?”
“Just tell me if there is anything that will make you do it.”
“There is nothing in the world that would make me abandon Max, not even my own son. Is that good enough for you?”
“So you would only do it for Max.”
Amelia was going to reply but she said nothing. Albert was right, she would do anything for Max, but looking for a Nazi scientist had nothing to do with the two of them.
“Amelia, things aren’t going well for you and Max. He has lost everything and you have nothing. Friedrich lacks the most necessary things. He has lost his mother, his father is an invalid, and there are days when he goes to bed with only tea in his stomach.”
“It’s the same as happens to thousands of other German children,” she said grumpily.
“We will pay you well, well enough for you to be able to live without worrying for some time at least. I’m not asking you to do this in the name of any ideal, or to save the world, but I’m offering you a job that will help you help Max and Friedrich, that’s all.”
“So, you’re offering me money... well, well, well! I’ve never done anything for money before!”
“I know, but you’ve lived long enough to know that money can be necessary. You need money now. What will you do when you finish selling everything that used to belong to Max? Yo
u have very little left to sell, what, a lamp? Your mattresses? The clothes you wear? Show me what you’re taking to sell on the black market today.”
Amelia took half a dozen silver-plated napkin rings out of her bag.
“They’re not silver,” he said.
“No, they’re not, but they’re pretty, and I guess someone will give me something for them.”
“And what will you do when there’s nothing left? You can’t even...” He fell silent, afraid of what he had been about to say.
“I can’t even prostitute myself because I have been mutilated, and who would pay for a mutilated woman? Is that what you were going to say, Albert?”
“I’m sorry, Amelia, I didn’t want to offend you.”
“And you haven’t offended me. There are lots of women in Berlin who are prostitutes in order to provide for their families. Why should I be the exception. I just don’t have a body I can offer, because Winkler ensured that they destroyed it.”
“So tell me: How will you get food for Max and Friedrich?”
“You think I don’t ask myself the same question? You think I don’t go to sleep asking myself this? I don’t know what to say to Friedrich when he’s in bed and he says to me in a little voice before going to sleep that he’s hungry.”
“Well, think about my offer. Come to Cairo with me, let yourself be seen; if Winkler is there, then he will want to kill you and will come out of his hidey-hole. We will take care of him, then we’ll get his father, and that’s an end to it.”
“Just like that.”
“Just like that.”
“Max and Friedrich can’t stay here alone.”
Albert tried to hold back his smile. He could see that Amelia was not so obdurately opposed to his offer as she had been at the beginning of the conversation.