Flight from Berlin by David John

Denham’s chest, and sent him crashing against the landing wall. He had barely slid to the floor when a hard blow struck the right side of his head, knocking him flat. A mewling pain cried from his jaw and ear, and blood filled his mouth where he’d chomped down on his tongue.

Chapter Nine
    S ince the final month of the Great War, Denham and violence had shunned each other like repelling magnetic forces. Lately something had switched, and he seemed to be attracting it. He’d been attacked. And a week ago in Friedrichshafen, in the brush with those Brownshirts, he’d sensed how near violence was. As near as rain after catching its scent on the breeze. One ill-judged word, one ambiguous glance, would have released it.
    From somewhere in the dark along the landing came the scratching of a mouse. Easing himself up, he leaned against the wall, closed his eyes, and concentrated on breathing.
    The blood in his mouth tasted sour and ferrous. It was both unexpected and familiar, like the taste of strong liquor after years of temperance. The taste of violence.
    He’d had a sense of two, maybe three men rushing past him down the stairs. In the dim light of the landing he’d seen only the departing back of the shot-putter in the raincoat. The front door of the building had slammed with a ghostly echo.
    He nudged his door open with the tip of his foot. A soft light from the courtyard reflected on the ceiling of his sitting room, enough for him to see the devastation. His books were strewn across the rug, and opened, as if each had been individually searched; there was almost nothing left on the shelf. The armchair had been turned over and the threadbare cushions pulled from their covers.
    He stood up and heard the blood singing in his ear, but the pain in his back where he’d hit the wall was abating. He picked up his hat and entered the apartment, noticing his hands shaking. His few pictures—of Tom’s junior cricket team, and a sepia photograph of his parents on their wedding day—had been pulled from the walls and the backs torn off the frames. In his bedroom the mattress was turned over and all the drawers pulled out, emptied, and searched. Again he noticed the rich, hempy smell of that cigarette.
    When he saw his father’s gold cufflinks untouched in the saucer on the chest of drawers, he knew for certain his visitors were not burglars.
    Who were they?
    He lit an HB and watched the glowing tip.
    If they were police of some sort then he had plenty to choose from. Apart from the regular police—the Orpo, who patrolled the streets, and the Kripo, who caught felons—there were also the Gestapo, the secret police, sadists who sifted through denunciations, and the SD, the Sicherheitsdienst , who controlled state security and intelligence. This last one was the Gestapo’s shadowy twin, and he had little idea of what it did, apart from sending shudders up everyone’s spine. But the more he thought about it, the less he believed that any of them would do such a crude job and allow themselves to be surprised in the act. If Gestapo professionals were investigating him he would never know they’d been in his apartment.
    His head began to ache. Under the bed he found a quarter-full bottle of Johnnie Walker, uncorked it with his teeth, and took a generous swig. A rough anaesthetic, but it did the trick. Lying back on the bare mattress he focused on Tom, and on Anna, and on beautiful girls, and on the soaring sensation he’d experienced that afternoon from the prow of the airship, the sunlit white clouds like a child’s picture of heaven.
    He opened his eyes.
    ‘Seven Beautiful Girls from the USA’ . . . the feature article with photos in the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung. He’d read it over dinner at the Kurgarten. That’s where he’d seen that girl before. The lovely tall girl who’d walked into the Adlon as he was leaving.

Chapter Ten
    M artha Dodd, the daughter of the ambassador, linked her arm in Eleanor’s and led