He saw her descending the huge marble staircase. She didn’t look up. She was wearing a bright floral-print dress with long sleeves, and carried nothing but her handbag. She wore no make-up. Her shoes clipped purposefully across the marble floor as she headed towards a side door off the reception area, her well-cut dress brushing across her legs. Once again he noticed the athletic grace with which her hips swung and her body moved. He also noticed many men casting similar furtive looks as she passed by but, unusually in this place, their appreciation remained silent. Nobody mentioned it or offered any of the usual ribald remarks.
She passed close by Hencke but gave no sign of recognition. He allowed a respectable distance to develop before following her out through the side door, striding after her. She led him quickly away from the central reception area with its crowds into increasingly remote areas of the Chancellery where many fewer people scurried around. For several minutes he followed along anonymous corridors, up and down flights of stairs, through reception rooms, until he had become completely disorientated. It was as if she were trying to lose him, had she already changed her mind? He hurried around yet another corner to find himself in a bare corridor echoing in its emptiness. She had gone, disappeared. He’d lost her and lost himself into the bargain. He had no idea where he was or what she wanted of him. Why the secrecy? What was he doing here? Where the hell had she gone? He was stumbling mystified along the corridor, growing more bewildered with each step, when a hand reached out and dragged him into a doorway. It was Eva. Putting a finger to her lips, she pulled him into a small, windowless secretarial office with two desks and typewriters, and papers strewn across the floor. The room had been vacated in a hurry. She showed no interest in their surroundings and was leaning against the door, ear to its panelling, listening. He moved across to join her but once more she raised a finger to her lips, demanding silence. A few moments later came the sound of booted footsteps approaching from the way they had come, hesitating, scraping in uncertainty, then quickening and moving sharply onward. Before they disappeared completely the footsteps broke into a run, bringing a wry smile of satisfaction to Eva’s face.
‘I thought as much. They’ve put a man to keep an eye on you,’ she whispered.
‘Following me? Why?’
‘I told you many would be jealous.’
‘They suspect me? Of what?’
She smiled reassuringly as she saw the look of alarm twitching around his eyes. ‘Everybody is suspect in this city. It was only a few months ago that generals in the High Command tried to kill the Fuehrer. And you they suspect because you’re different, you’re new, dropped in out of the blue. They don’t yet know what your vices or ambitions are. Everybody in Berlin has vices and ambitions, and they’re all recorded somewhere on somebody’s files. But not yours, not yet. Perhaps you should make it easy for them, present them with a written list,’ she chuckled impishly.
He showed no sign of appreciating the humour. ‘Who are “they”?’
‘Practically everybody. No …’ She paused while she considered her response, her ear to the door once more checking for further sounds of pursuit. ‘Come to think of it, probably Goebbels or Bormann. The rest of them seem to have lost interest in what goes on here. Yes, probably one or other of that rotten pair.’
The lids closed slowly over his eyes and his lean face sagged as he contemplated the horror of his position. Under constant watch, with seemingly no chance of finding the opportunity he sought. Now locked in some mysterious conspiracy with Hitler’s mistress. His eyes flashed open. ‘What am I doing here?’ he demanded.
‘Come with me’ was all the explanation she volunteered. She grabbed his hand and, after listening once more for sounds outside, proceeded to lead him through the labyrinth which made up the service areas and passageways of the Chancellery. Several times she stopped to ensure they were not being followed, but they were deep inside the disused section of the Chancellery, evacuated because of bomb damage, and there was no one about. They started to climb, up flights of stairs littered with debris, fallen chunks of plaster and the occasional brick or abandoned file. In one section the wrought-iron balustrade had fallen away and paintings sagged at drunken angles from the wall; elsewhere the lights had failed, but she seemed surefooted and to know precisely where she was headed, leading him onwards with the aid of a small torch she had taken from her handbag. They were several storeys above the inhabited section of the Chancellery before they came to a set of tall doors. She tried the handle, but the door refused to budge. Once more she tried, before appealing to Hencke. He turned the handle; the door wasn’t locked, just jammed. He put his shoulder to it and it gave way with a shudder, covering him in a shower of plaster dust.
He was still brushing the dust from his SS uniform when she pulled him inside. Even in the darkness he could see they were in a magnificent library, perhaps forty metres long with towering mahogany bookcases on all sides. Some of the bookcases were empty, their contents strewn on the floor or thrown into packing cases which stood abandoned in the centre of the room. Every one of the tall French windows was smashed, some hanging crazily off broken hinges, yet elsewhere the room seemed almost untouched. A sumptuous tapestry adorned the far wall and fine oil paintings still hung in their places between the bookcases. Beautifully carved chairs, desks and expensively covered chaise-longues were scattered around, and a tray of coffee waited on one of the tables. Hencke picked up the pot but it was stone cold and there was a deep ring of dust around its base. It hadn’t been touched for several weeks.
‘What on earth are we doing here?’ he demanded once more.
‘I wanted to show you the view,’ she said, leading him to one of the windows. Outside there was a small balcony which afforded a panorama of the city. A huge sweep of Berlin was scattered before them in the early night, from the Brandenburg Gate and the wooded Tiergarten lying behind, to the ruined Reichstag which had burned in 1933, and onwards to the ministries, embassies and hotels that crowded along Unter den Linden. Many of them were burning now. Through the low-hanging clouds of smoke and dust that swept across the city they saw the silhouettes of great cathedrals, hospitals, monuments, boulevards and railway stations, thrown into stark relief by the fires that glowed all around. Away into the distance the whole city was lit by flame. In some places conflagrations burned out of control and consumed whole blocks where the firefighters had given up in despair; in others there rose the flicker of fiery geysers where a gas main had been breached and was burning, despite the order issued days before to cut off the last of the supplies. Elsewhere, on street corners and in courtyards, they could see the flickering campfires of the Hitler Youth, lit not so much for physical warmth as to comfort the spirit while they manned roadblocks and waited for the assault. Where buildings still stood they burned, where they lay in ruins they smouldered, and this once-great city of Berlin was cast in the light of its own pitiful destruction.
Yet it was the sounds, the noises of a city dying around them, which made the deepest impact. There was no sound of warfare; the artillery bombardment had stopped for the moment and, although they couldn’t know it, the Anglo-American aerial bombardment had stopped too, for good. The Russians were now so close that the pilots of the British Lancasters couldn’t know at night whether they were bombing ally or enemy. But there were other sounds; in place of the noise of battle came that of the capital tearing itself apart. The screams of a battered city yielding to final assault; the pathetic cries for help of the injured and maimed still trapped in the rubble; the drawn-out death rattle of masonry as buildings gave up the struggle and collapsed; the crackle of flame; shattering glass; frantic shouts of alarm as a horse-drawn ambulance tried in vain to force its way through the chaos; the tears of children wandering the streets in search of parents who would never come home. The howling of dogs driven frenzied with terror. Yet, as in the madness of a nightmare, though assailed by the cries of misery they could still hear raucous shouts, laughter even, as many of those who were left anaesthetized themselves in drunkenness, lust, revenge. While naive civilians cowered in their cellars still praying for salvation, soldiers who had given up all hope wandered the streets looking for distraction. Occasionally a shot would ring out, whether as a sign of success or failure in that search there was no way of telling, but news of what was going on in the cellar of the Chancellery had spread like disease and with it had been wiped out any last vestige of military discipline and self-control.