The Vengeance of Rome

FORTY-EIGHT

The German officials were not particularly friendly as they gave my papers close inspection, but they were polite enough before passing on up the train, leaving the customs men to check Herr Stross’s bag as carefully as they checked mine. As the train moved slowly across the border into Austria, I saw little but a few street lamps, the occasional pulse of a distant headlight; then we had stopped again. The Austrian immigration and customs people were as efficient as the German, and when they saw I was going on to Rome asked fewer questions of me than they asked of Herr Stross.

The train under steam again, I settled back into my seat to sleep. For the first time in many months, my anxiety was melting. As dawn became a golden pink, we reached Innsbruck. Shaking hands, Herr Stross departed to find a taxi while I hurried between platforms to catch the Milan express. We were away shortly after sunrise, and this time I sat in an Italian train. A cheerful, upper-class Italian family made me welcome, offering me newspapers, food and general hospitality, as if I were visiting them in their home. I took a plate of sausage, settled into a seat and read the Popolo d’ltalia. It was a pleasure to enjoy uncensored news.

For the second time in my life I passed through Austria. This part of the country reminded me of Switzerland, when Esmé and I had hurtled through the mountains, driven by Annibale Santucci in his wonderful Lancia. Lying cheerfully in the busy bosom of the Bertolli family, rarely able to see out of the window, I read every newspaper and magazine they possessed. Oblivious of excited children, complaining well-dressed gentlemen, and elegant, apologetic women, I read about a dynamic, optimistic Italy and her vital, masculine leader and rediscovered my future.

At the Austrian border customs routines went very casually. We were soon on our way into Italy. The sunlight shone on rivers and streams, and the whole landscape was somehow richer and warmer. Cheerfully, I welcomed the Italian officials when they boarded the train. I returned their salutes with a smile and a raised arm. The Italians were far more easygoing than the Germans or Austrians. One officer even returned my salute as he glanced through my Spanish identity papers and was almost apologetic when he asked if I had obtained my entry visa. He could not find it in the passport. I told him I was returning to Italy. I was not aware I needed a visa. I had not needed any special documents for Germany, when I had come in. I had not realised that since Hitler’s coming to power the Italians had grown wary. They were taking large numbers of refugees. Dissident Nazis, socialists and communists had flooded into Italy since 1933. Anyone entering the country from Germany was under special scrutiny.

The immigration men were regretful. I would have to disembark while they found out if there was any reason why a Spanish citizen could not at least pass through Italy. They warned me I might not be allowed to stay, but rather be asked to go home via France on the Florence train. In Florence I could catch the Barcelona express along the French coast. Even here, however, they were not entirely sure if the French authorities would allow me passage. These were troubled times. Someone really should have warned me about the visa situation. Had I checked with the Spanish consulate in Munich? Possibly I could apply for a temporary visa while a more permanent one was arranged. I had better come with them to their office. They would help me with my luggage. Someone would make a phone call. Sadly they could not delay the train on behalf of one passenger.

I heard all this with considerable dismay. I had no wish to go through France, where I had unresolved problems with the law. Barcelona was one of the key communist cities of Spain. If Brodmann caught up with me there the Red Spaniards would certainly turn me over to the Russian authorities. I begged the officials to let me go on to Rome, where I had many Italian friends and contacts in the government and where I could easily sort out my papers. They had their rules. They would help me in any way they could, but they had few choices. It was obviously inconvenient for me to go all the way back to Munich. Perhaps someone there could be telephoned.

In another desperate nightmare I was escorted into a police car and driven through shabby streets to the unprepossessing police offices. At least I was not placed in a cell. They were, indeed, very kind to me, bringing cups of coffee, sending out a call for their chief in Brennero asking him to come to the office as soon as possible, looking up the telephone number of the Spanish consulate in Milan. They did everything they could to put a call through to someone from whom we could take advice and perhaps get the number of the Spanish consulate in Munich. Keen supporters of Il Duce, they were flattered by my reiterated enthusiasm for their country but were not very great admirers of the new German government, describing the Nazis as thugs and homosexuals. They knew Hitler had been directly responsible for murdering Röhm and his men. They were the first people I heard calling that savage butchery ‘the night of the long knives’. Hitler was a neurotic heading a court of grotesques. An evident feminine homosexual and hysteric, he had turned on his own kind and made an enemy of the Catholic Church, persecuting priests of every persuasion. Hitler had perverted Fascism, produced a travesty of Mussolini’s philosophy and politics. One of the Italians, the genial, red-faced, middle-aged Captain Cavori, also mourned what was happening in Spain. Primo de Rivera lacked the character of Mussolini. Now my poor country was likely to become little more than a satellite of the Soviet Union. At least Hitler had averted Bolshevism and civil war. He was not sure that was possible in Spain. Only Italy was truly stable.

I spent all day and all the next night in Brennero. Allowing me to keep myself clean and change clothes, the officials fed me well and worked hard to make my stay comfortable. I resisted drawing on my personal friendship with Mussolini, especially after what I had been told, yet the fact remained that neither the Spanish Embassy nor the Germans could help me get to Rome. I must return to Munich and obtain the appropriate visa or get myself a ticket for Barcelona and try to obtain a visa there. If so, I would have to give them my papers and have them returned to me once I got to Spain. I would not be allowed to disembark from the train en route.

I dared not give up my papers or reveal my US documents. I had little money left. Any further travel must be made in third class. I thought this hardly fair since I had originally purchased a first-class ticket. Once more the officers were courtesy itself. Regulations did not permit me to stay any longer in Italy. They advised me to go back to Vienna where the Spanish Embassy would doubtless accommodate me.

I was in a terrible position. I had good reason for not contacting the Spanish Embassy. I was not even sure how good my documents were, since they had been obtained in North Africa. Gallibasta was by no means a common name. They could easily check on me. My Spanish was imperfect. If I told them I had been living on Majorca, my connection with Stavisky might be revealed. Reluctantly I decided it would be better to take the Vienna train and use my American papers. In Vienna, at least, I would be safe from the German authorities. But where would I find money? Perhaps Otto Strasser could help if he was still there?

After a short, uncomfortable stay in Italy, I found myself in a third-class carriage crowded with peasants and workers who stared curiously at my suitcase and my smart clothes. I was immediately stereotyped as a Jewish travelling salesman. They had seen the police helping me aboard and decided I was some sort of crook forced to leave Brennero in a hurry and returning to Vienna to rejoin my kind. The Austrians among them showed the most appalling prejudice, far worse than anything I had experienced at the hands of the Germans. I attempted to explain how I was a Spanish citizen, an engineer. Those who could understand me at all merely laughed and told me to shut up. Some even made attempts to open my case until I threatened to call the guard and report them to the police when we arrived at the next station. Not for years had I experienced such wretched humiliation. The journey now became a horror. When we eventually pulled into Vienna, I disembarked quickly, my clothes stinking of working-class sweat and worse.

Unless Fiorello was still there, I knew no one in the Austrian capital, but I found some cheap lodgings not far from the station. In the privacy of a room reeking of cheap sausage and sauerkraut, noisy from the street outside and the business of the other lodgers around me, I tried to take stock of my situation. Without the appropriate papers, I was not going to get into Italy unless I could find someone to smuggle me over the border. I would have to forget Rome as an immediate destination. By living frugally, I could survive in Vienna for a while. I wished now that I had stayed with the Fraus and travelled with them. At least in their company I would have made some sort of modest living. Now it was too dangerous for me to go back to Munich. I had burned my bridges. Every instinct told me I would not be safe until Hitler was certain he had rounded up all his enemies. My association with Röhm was enough to damn me. The likes of Baldur von Schirach would perhaps even put two and two together. I had been released almost by accident, because I was not associated with the old Nazis. If I was picked up again, I was not likely to be so lucky.

I became deeply despondent. I had no friends in Vienna. My only acquaintance, Herr Stross, was in Innsbruck and not likely to be staying long, even if he could have helped me. Budapest would be even worse for me, and the only person I knew who had been living in Prague, but might now be in Vienna, was Otto Strasser, himself even more of an SS target than I. Perhaps if I stayed for a while in Vienna I might be able to pick up some information or learn a way of getting into Italy which would not involve me obtaining a visa. Could I somehow contact my cousin Shura with his useful connections with Stavisky? Of course, this association was a two-edged sword. The newspapers said Stavisky was in France. Shura would be with him. But I was still unwilling to risk travelling in a country where I could be arrested at any moment. Perhaps it made sense to go back into Spain, as the immigration people had suggested? I could try to contact Signor Frau’s relatives or possibly make my way to Majorca, where I still might find acquaintances.

With my money dwindling, I spent two or three fruitless weeks in Vienna, trying to find work and contacts. I found neither. The country was in another economic crisis. They had no work for locals, let alone for a desperate foreigner. Everywhere I went people assumed I was a Jew. This alone was enough to weaken my morale. While Austria had no official policy towards Jews, decent people did not want to employ them. And no matter how often I assured prospective employers that I was Spanish, they were too blinkered by their prejudices to believe me. They disliked the Spanish almost as much as they hated Jews. Only Jews offered me work, but at such disgusting terms I was bound to refuse.

Eventually, having failed in two attempts to cross the border, I had no choice but to work for a Jewish motor mechanic who put me to repairing the cars of his richer co-religionists. I had never in my life sunk so low, but it paid for food and accommodation over the workshop. I stood this humiliation until the winter, when I could not afford fuel for the stove in my lodgings and was having to wear one of my summer suits over the other. I could not buy winter clothing, and the Jew had no cast-offs to offer me. The cold was the final blow. I could take no more. Deciding it was probably safe now to risk returning to Germany, I determined to throw myself on the hospitable mercy of the Frau family while I decided what to do. Anything was better than having to bite my tongue and suffer under the ignominy of the Jewish heel.

Desperation and circumstance made me rationalise the situation. Perhaps I should have stayed in Vienna or tried to get to Prague, but the only friends I had were the Fraus. So one January morning, not long after my thirty-fifth birthday, I took a bus from the working-class Jewish Quarter and began my journey to Munich.

The bus was packed with returning Germans who had been visiting relatives for Christmas, and I felt I would be anonymous among them. Almost with relief I found myself looking forward to seeing Munich again. Ironically, it proved almost as difficult to get back into Germany as it had been to get into Italy. The authorities were carelessly suspicious and unwelcoming, in spite of my insistence that I was Spanish and not Jewish, that I had a job and a home in Munich. Eventually, I think, they reasoned that no foreign Jew in his right mind would be trying to get into their country and let me in. By early February, no doubt looking considerably older than my years, I arrived back in Munich and went immediately to the little mews where I had left the rest of my belongings. I was anxious to get some winter clothes and the small amount of money I had left there. I arrived late in the evening around the time I knew the Frau family went to bed. No lights were on in the house, and I was hesitant to wake anyone up, but I was too cold to follow my conscience. I rapped loudly on the door, calling out to Signor Frau. Eventually the Fraus’ next-door neighbour came out. He told me that they had left a month ago.

I was distraught. Where had they gone?

‘I don’t know. They had some trouble with the police. He thought it best to visit his cousin. Could that be in Spain somewhere? His boy was beaten up a couple of times. You know how it is. We’re thinking we should leave too if things get any worse. It used to be a good living here, but it’s drying up.’ The Fraus had not left a forwarding address. They had relatives in Madrid, he knew. They had packed everything in a wagon and planned to make a living on the road. He suspected the whole mews was being watched intermittently by plain-clothes men. All Italians, indeed all foreigners, were under suspicion.

‘Don’t ask me why. We’ve always been law-abiding. Munich’s no longer what she was, my friend.’ Everyone was willing to turn against you, to brand you a Jew if it suited them.

Horrified, I thought of my property. Had the Fraus left it behind or had they taken it with them? I had left some of my things in their storerooms. Was there any way of getting in? The neighbour suggested I come back in a couple of days, when the landlord would be there. He was bound to let me have a quick look for any possessions I had left behind. The neighbour’s impression, however, was that the place had been cleaned out. Anything the Fraus had not been able to pack into their wagon, they had sold or given away. The organ had been carried in a trailer behind the main wagon.

I reflected that I might have crossed paths with my old friends on their way to Italy. How I wished I had accepted their invitation to journey with them, to take my chances with their little travelling show. In Frau’s company, at least, I might have persuaded the Italian authorities to admit me.

Tears came to my eyes as I walked away from the door. I no longer had even my old sanctuary. I did not dare stay on the street for long. That night I slept as best I could in the old organ shed, with rats and other vermin for company. The show organ was there but most of my possessions were gone! They had been stolen. My plans. My passport. My pistols. All I found were a few drawings and some bits and pieces of clothing. I folded the plans and put them in my pocket. I had no choice but to take them with me. In the morning I knew I had no alternative. Humiliating though it was, I would go to Prince Freddy Badehoff-Krasnya’s apartment, throw myself on his mercy and beg him for help. My hopes, my dignity, my very identity had been stripped from me. What had seemed impossibly dishonourable to me, even as a prisoner in Stadelheim, now became my only alternative. I would take whatever charity I could from that vicious blackmailer and pornographer.

The next morning I roused myself from the dirty straw I had slept on and tried to clean myself off. I had spent my last money and could not afford a cup of coffee. I had expected to pick up my remaining marks from the envelope stowed with my papers and anticipated being fed by the Fraus for a few days. I could not quite remember where Prince Freddy’s house was. I was dishevelled and dirty and twice was stopped by the police as I wandered around Munich trying to get my bearings. My Spanish passport reassured them. Not until the afternoon did I find Prince Freddy’s tree-lined suburb. I rested on a bench in the park until I was moved on with threats and curses by a policeman who voiced his disgust at my appearance and what he assumed was my race. I knew that soon I must be picked up for vagrancy, now a serious crime in Germany. I had welcomed the new law when it was introduced. Now, as a vagrant, I might be recognised at police headquarters and find myself back in Stadelheim. I was so tired and hungry, the world began to seem phantasmagoric, unreal, at once deeply dangerous and euphorically safe. Nothing which was to happen to me in the next several hours would seem strange.

Nearing twilight, the air grew cold and the light dim as I approached the house. Not very long ago I had accepted such luxury as Prince Freddys as normal. Now I received suspicious stares from the few people I passed. I was too tired to care what they thought as I trudged up the avenue rehearsing in my mind how I would approach Badehoff-Krasnya. He owed me something. I hoped the sight of me would at least embarrass him and make him take me in. I was obsessed with the thought of warm clothing. I imagined I could get an overcoat from him, a bowl of hot soup, some socks, a bit of sausage. Some bread. Even more than the food I wanted some kind of recognition, for I was beginning to doubt my own identity.

At last I saw the house and walked up the drive, feeling the sharpness of the gravel under my thin soles. No lights shone anywhere. Had Prince Freddy fled with Kitty, perhaps to Hungary?

Like an automaton I rang the bell. It echoed into silence. I knocked and the house responded with that hollow, dead sound which tells you a building is empty. I knocked again and again, until the last of my strength had gone, and then I sat on the step and wept.

Later, hearing soft footfalls in the drive, I looked up. A tall figure emerged from the twilight. He wore a well-cut leather coat, a heavy fur hat, a scarf. I envied him those clothes. He must be very warm.

Approaching me, the man paused, his voice soft, enquiring, even sympathetic. It took a moment for me to realise he was speaking Russian. My spirits leapt. And then fell. Could it be Brodmann?

‘Dimka, is that you?’

Dimka? Few any longer knew me by that name. I must indeed be hallucinating! The last time I had seen this man was in the deep Sahara. By now he must surely be dead. Logically, if he were dead then I too was dead and a friend of the dead. Not only did I no longer care if this were true, I welcomed it. Shaking, I rose to my feet, my arms outstretched.

‘Kolya! Oh, Kolya. It is so good to hear you again. I can’t believe it’s you. Are we dead?’

‘Not at all, Dimka dear. Speaking for myself, I am very much alive. Dimka, Dimka. What has become of you?’ He was standing over me, his hands reaching out to embrace me, to lift me up. When I saw his smiling face, I began to weep. ‘I suspect I feel a little more alive than you at the moment.’

I clung to him. ‘Oh, Kolya. You are an angel of providence. I can’t believe it. Where have you been? How did you find me?’

His laughter was soft. He was a little older, of course, but just as handsome, just as aristocratic in every movement he made. I had never loved any man as much as Count Nikolai Feodorovitch Petroff.

‘Where have you been?’ I asked again.

‘Oh, Berlin, most recently. Before that I was in Prague for a while. And, of course, Libya.’

‘What are you doing in Munich? Are you a friend of Prince Freddy’s?’

‘Not exactly,’ he said. ‘My people told me you were here. This place has been under surveillance. I have a new job these days, working for the government.’

‘What are you doing? Intelligence work?’

‘You’ve guessed it, Dimka dear.’ He reached a black-gloved hand to the lapel of his coat, which he turned back to display a small badge. He seemed at once embarrassed and amused. ‘I’m in the special branch of the political police. I was recruited last year. The Russian section.’

I grew dizzy with relief. I had a friend in the police, a new, powerful ally.

I let Kolya guide me back down the drive to the street. It was almost dark. Cars and trams went by on the distant main street. I smelled woodsmoke and pines. As we reached the kerb a car drew up. Kolya bent to open the back door. ‘I wonder if you’d be good enough to get in, Dimka dear. We’ve been wondering if you were still in Munich.’

I obeyed him. The car was comfortable and warm. I saw only the back of the driver’s head. ‘Where are we going?’

‘Gestapo headquarters. There are some questions we need you to answer for us. We’ll give you some coffee.’

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Would there be any chance of a sandwich, too, perhaps?’

Of course, I had gone mad. Kolya, unlike all the others in whom I had invested my love and trust, save Mrs Cornelius, would never betray me. But he did have an onerous job to do. He had been commissioned to seek out his fellow Russians and compile dossiers on them for his masters. Better than anyone, he knew who the émigrés were and what their politics were. He knew where to find them. He knew the political colour of their groups, the cafes and restaurants they frequented, the magazines and books they published. Earlier he had been sent to interrogate Prince Freddy, after the ‘Mongol’ had been rearrested for peddling pornography. His predecessors had looked over all the blackmailer’s materials, including films, photographs and the Frau Oberhauser scrapbooks. Little of Badehoff-Krasnya’s career was unknown to Kolya. His job was to investigate everything and everyone associated with such people. Kitty was in Budapest. She had been released after she betrayed both her master and myself. I had wanted to make her my new Esmé, but she secured her freedom by telling the Gestapo what they wanted. She had accused me of molesting her at an early age, branded me a pederast and a paedophile. Her statements were shown to me. She had told them I was a Jew and informed them of my Russian alias. When Kolya had received my dossier, he had known me immediately. But he had not known how to save me.

He told me all this in the interrogation room at Gestapo headquarters. He treated me kindly. I had drunk the promised coffee, eaten a sandwich, smoked a cigarette. He played no games with me. He let me see my massive Gestapo dossier, mostly taken from Prince Freddy’s own records. He explained how it had been compiled and why he could not possibly intercede for me without immediately condemning himself to a concentration camp.

‘The evidence is too strong, Dimka dear.’

‘But Kolya, I am accused only by a dead woman, her mad daughter and a discredited pervert. What crimes have I committed? What proof is there?’

‘Under the old German laws, these accusations would need to be proven beyond a shadow of doubt. Under the new German laws, you have committed several crimes not even listed here. Since the Führer cleansed the stables after the Röhm putsch, the party has become increasingly intolerant of deviance, both moral and racial.’

‘Kolya, you know I am not a Jew. You know my origins are purely Russian.’

And in this, I fear, he did betray me. He turned away into the shadows, out of the circle of light created by the overhead lamp. ‘I do not know that, Dimka,’ he said. ‘The evidence is against you. I have explained how, if I were to deny that evidence, I would also be in jeopardy. However aristocratic my blood, I am still, in the eyes of the racialists, an inferior Slav. What I have had to do to convince them of my family’s Nordic origins! We are descended from the Russ who came from Scandinavia to establish their leadership over the Slavs.’

‘But that is also my blood,’ I told him. ‘I am from Kiev. My father counted the blood of the Russ in his veins. Our family is as ancient as any on this continent!’

‘I believe you, Dimka. But now, if you cannot prove you are not Jewish, you are guilty. Your recent privations have added to that impression. And then there is your circumcision, your connection with Stavisky and his gang, with Odessa.’ He sighed and poured me another cup of coffee, offering me a chocolate Lebkuchen on a plate. ‘My hands are tied, Dimka dear.’

I accepted the cake and ate it greedily. Many months had passed since I enjoyed one as good. I washed it down with more coffee.

‘They have evidence that you did not merely interfere with Fräulein Kitty, Dimka. They know about that young Italian girl, Hecate Frau. You were often seen with her. Some of my colleagues suspect the Fraus were part of an Italian spy ring as they have vanished. We were hoping you knew where they were. And then you apparently had some sort of association with Röhm. Baldur von Schirach helped us there. He seems to have exonerated you from the worst suspicions. These investigations, of course, were not mine. I came rather late to your case. They gave it to me because of your Russian origins and that’s the only reason we are sitting here together. Otherwise, some unsympathetic stranger might have arrested you.’

‘I did nothing with that little girl. She was sweet. She was my friend. We had a common interest in the cinema. The family were supporters of Mussolini. They were not subversive in any sense.’

‘Aha. The cinema.’ He raised an elegant eyebrow.

‘Kolya! Kolya! How can you think such things? We went to cowboy movies together. I was lonely. She loved the cinema. Prince Freddy blackmailed me into that pornography. I hated it. You know how much I hated such things, Kolya. You yourself saved me from my captivity in Egypt!’

‘Well, one or two of my colleagues believe the theory that a victim ultimately becomes a predator. My superiors believe you might have been part of a circle of Jewish pornographers and pimps luring young girls into prostitution and making filthy films. They see you as a rather stereotypical Jew. And I must admit your career, at least superficially, verifies such prejudices —’

‘I am not a Jew, Kolya. I am not a pornographer. I am not a seducer of little Christian girls! My God, this is like a comic strip from Der Stürmer. You speak of me as if I was invented whole by Streicher!’

‘I know, Dimka. But the evidence is so much against you. Frau Oberhauser’s accumulation of press cuttings — the airship scandal, from which, you’ll recall, I was able to save you. In the Paris newspapers you were already characterised as a Jewish swindler. Much as I would like to speak up for you in that matter, I would not be believed. My bosses have already read the files. Their minds are made up.’

‘My letters to Göring offering to help in the rebuilding of the German air force! My one-man airship? What about those? I could still help them build it. The ship would be ideal for spying out enemy territory.’

‘I think those letters to Göring might have been a mistake. You know how these people take others’ ideas for their own credit. That’s the whole game these days in Berlin.’

‘Then what can you do for me, Kolya?’ I nursed the last inch of coffee in my cup as if I would never taste coffee again. ‘Am I to be returned to Stadelheim? What will my sentence be?’

‘There isn’t much I can do, Dimka. But we are having this conversation in the hope that I can find some way of helping you. You will not go to Stadelheim. And you will not be sentenced, as such. Your chances of release are, I will admit, very slim. If you can tell me anything to mitigate whatever fate they plan for you, you must let me know.’

‘What kind of thing?’

‘Well, if you have other associates who knew Röhm for instance. You are acquainted with Hanfstaengl, yes? And that traitor, Busch? Perhaps you know where left-wing Jews might be hiding. Any left-wingers, in fact . . .’

‘I have no other friends left in Germany. Hanfstaengl would not help me. I did not know Busch was a traitor. What did he do?’

‘He was arrested in the early days. When they released him, he tried to go to Vienna, no doubt to broadcast lies about his incarceration. He was arrested again, tried to escape and was shot, it seems. These other friends of yours . . . ?’

‘The friends I had were neither Jewish nor left-wingers. They were good Nazis. Even the journalists sympathised with Hitler. I hate socialism and communism, Kolya. You understand that, surely. Look what they have done to our country!’

‘Drug dealers, then. Your cocaine habit . . .’

‘It wasn’t a habit, Kolya. I have had no cocaine for months. The last I got was from Prince Freddy. He lured me into his confidence. I have been able to buy none since.’

‘You had no other contacts in Munich? What about the priest, Father Stempfle? Didn’t you know an SS man called something like Zeuss?’

‘I met Stempfle once or twice. In a beer cellar. I never knew any SS men, I swear.’

‘No one at Simplicissimus?’

‘Nor at the Flashlite.’

‘This Gloria Cornish, your co-star, as I understand it —’

‘She abhors all drugs. She was a platonic friend of Herr Göring’s. She was forever trying to get me to stop. Do you know where she is now?’

‘She might have gone abroad. What can you tell us about her? Her name has been linked with a Major Nye, an English intelligence officer.’

‘She hates politics. Nye was infatuated with her, that’s all. I can tell you nothing else. I would rather be shot now than compromise that wonderful woman.’

‘Don’t worry. She is in no danger. There was that other Englishman you worked with. Desmond Reid. Was he not a critic of the government?’

‘Well, he was no friend of communism. He might even have thought Hitler soft on Röhm. I have had no contact with him since the last picture we made together. I thought he had left the country.’

‘He’s in Czechoslovakia. Help yourself, Dimka! Give my superiors something.’

‘Have I no right to defend myself against Prince Freddy’s false accusations? Against Kitty’s?’

‘Unfortunately Prince Badehoff-Krasnya died in Dachau two weeks ago. He had apparently bribed guards. Sadly he was due to be transferred to better conditions in the Belsen camp. Some relatives had interceded for him. As for Fräulein Kitty, I am told she is no longer in custody. Released from the women’s quarters in Stadelheim, she took a train immediately for Budapest. I’m afraid they have left you high and dry, Dimka.’

‘Contact Mrs Cornelius. Believe me, she is a good friend of Hermann Göring. She will speak for me.’

‘I will get in touch with her personally, I promise, assuming she is still in Germany. I am not sure how much good even a well-connected English actress can do for you, however. Have you any other friends?’

‘Hanfstaengl is in Berlin, too, isn’t he? Some American journalists.’ I named Morgan and Grisham among them. ‘And Miranda Butter. I don’t know what has happened to her.’

‘These are all foreigners and, apart from Miss Butter’s, their words are not worth very much, I fear. She was Mussolini’s mistress for some years and arranged to have many of his articles published in America. Then something happened and she came to Berlin. She was infatuated with Hitler. But Hitler already had people who were buying his articles. She returned to New York last December. Do you know if any of those journalists had reason to oppose the policies of the present government?’

I could not absorb so much information, if information it was. ‘I have not been in touch with them recently. They were not, I will admit, all entirely enthusiastic about Hitler. But this was ages ago, when I first arrived in Germany. Surely they have long since been replaced by their editors?’

‘Anything you can think of will be useful and will in turn let me do what I can to help you. Miss Butter, I think, is beyond reproach. Since returning to America she has written the most laudatory pieces about the Führer. Some have appeared in the New York Times and the Washington Post!

‘Then surely she can speak for me,’ I said. ‘I had no idea she was linked with Il Duce, but we were good friends. A word from her would make a difference, wouldn’t it?’

Kolya lit two cigarettes and handed me one, tapping my dossier with his index finger. ‘We have already interviewed her. She did not speak very well of you at all. She seems to think you a liar and a charlatan who deceived Mussolini with some hare-brained nonsense. She considered you a turncoat, perhaps even an Italian spy. Your behaviour towards her in Rome was apparently not the most gentlemanly.’

Were all women by nature so treacherous?! ‘It was not I who betrayed her, Kolya. You know how loyal I am to my friends and lovers. I had no choice. That Jewish bitch Sarfatti was forcing me to be her lover. I was being blackmailed.’

‘She mentioned your association with that Jewess.’ He flicked through the dossier, pausing now and again to read. ‘You seem to have made yourself rather vulnerable to blackmail, Dimka.’

‘I have trusted too many people. Oh, Maddy! Maddy!’ Suddenly I found myself breaking down. My body began to shake. The tears started in my eyes. I could not stop weeping. The tiredness, the humiliation and now this awful shock had taken control of me. How could Maddy, whom I had helped see the political light, who had been my pupil in the ways of the world, betray me? Now I knew she had been Mussolini’s lady friend for so long, much was coming clear. At every turn I had been deceived.

‘Shoot me here, Kolya,’ I sobbed. ‘My life is meaningless. All I had hoped to do for the world, all my loyalties, all my loves and friendships, are ashes. I am robbed of any future. My future, too, is ashes.’

‘Unfortunately, Dimka dear, I have no orders to shoot you.’ Kolya came to put a hand on my shoulder. ‘Let us continue. There must be something we can think of between us.’

But there was nothing. My mind was numb. A little later Kolya had me escorted to a comfortable cell and gave orders to let me sleep as long as I needed. He said he would return the next day, and we would put our heads together.

The following afternoon he supplied me with sheets of paper and a pencil. He asked me to write down the names of the journalists I had known and what I thought of their political attitudes, their failings and weaknesses. Then he asked me a little about Mussolini and the work I had been doing with Il Duce. What surprised me was that he did not show a great deal of interest in my association with the Italian leader. Either Maddy had told them everything or Kolya did not wish to compromise me. Even when I mentioned some of my inventions, Kolya did not pursue this avenue. I suspected his masters knew nothing of my real strengths and weaknesses, and he was not going to compromise me any more than I had already compromised myself.

I filled the sheet as best I could.

By the following morning Kolya had finished his interrogation. He had been unable to find anything which would stop the inevitable. I asked what was to become of me. He spread his elegant hands. I would soon be taken to Dachau under indefinite arrest. He would do what he could for me. I would be given a violet armband marking me as a privileged prisoner, an Ehrenhäftling, with an individual cell. If he saw any chance of obtaining my early release he would put matters in motion. Meanwhile, he suggested I reconcile myself to my fate. After all, there were worse ones, including that from which he had rescued me several years earlier.

I wept when he eventually left my cell. I feared in my heart that I was forsaken for ever, and I would never see him or any of my beloved friends again.