Chapter 27
Clara checked her watch as she stepped out of Ursula’s house into the chilly evening air.
It was several days on from the delivery of Max’s daughter and Friedrich had said he’d be working late again due to another logistics meeting that could run past midnight.
The empty apartment would feel less lonely if she had something purposeful to do.
As she walked towards the tram stop, she thought of Max who she had met with just the night before to make sure his wife and daughter were doing well.
He had taken her to a different apartment, because apparently their location had been compromised.
In other words, the authorities knew where Max and his family lived.
That information could only have come from within the Jewish community, and it made Clara both sad and frightened.
Max’s exhausted face haunted her. A man forced to uproot his newborn child and recovering wife, together with their other child, because someone had sold them out.
She was beginning to feel increasingly claustrophobic in the city.
That, in turn, made helping the Jewish women and babies all the riskier, but she knew she couldn’t abandon them.
The betrayal cut deeper than any external threat.
It was sickening to think someone in the Jewish community was feeding information to Fuchs.
Someone was betraying their own people for safety, or food, or simply out of fear.
People like Max’s family were paying the price with their lives while the informant slept safely in their bed.
The thought made her stomach turn and her resolve harden. She had to find out who was doing this.
She knew where to find Fuchs – he’d be leaving the station now after his shift. If she was going to follow him, to see who he was meeting with, tonight would be perfect. Friedrich wouldn’t be home to worry, and she had her legitimate travel pass if anyone questioned her presence on the streets.
Clara made her decision. She took the tram towards her apartment, getting off a couple of stops earlier and heading towards the police station. Her heart hammered as she walked, but her resolve was firm.
The streets of Berlin felt different at night now, darker, more watchful. Clara pulled her coat tighter around her shoulders as she hurried along the cobblestones, her footsteps echoing off the silent buildings that looked like sentinels on night duty.
Clara positioned herself across from the police station, using the shadows of a doorway for cover.
She didn’t have to wait long. Fuchs emerged right on schedule, his bulky figure unmistakable even in the dusk.
He turned left, away from the main thoroughfares, heading back across the city.
Clara assumed he was heading for the Jewish district.
She followed at a distance. Every instinct screamed at her to turn back, but she thought of Max’s wife, of all the women whose names had been crossed off Hans’s lists and knew she couldn’t turn back, even if she wanted. She was in a position to make a difference.
The street lighting in Berlin had been restricted since the outbreak of war.
There was a single lamp alight at the other end of the road.
Deep shadows pooled in the recessed doorways and arched entrances of the tenements.
There was the occasional shopfront, long since shuttered up for the night.
The metal gratings created a maze of vertical shadows.
The streets felt uncomfortably intimate.
The buildings themselves seemed to lean inwards, narrowing her path as they loomed over her.
Clara quickened her pace. Ahead of her Fuchs’s silhouette moved with the confidence of someone who knew the streets well.
He came to a halt at a tram stop. Clara ducked into an alleyway.
There was no way she could stand at the stop with him.
She watched from her hiding spot, quickly taking her headscarf from her bag and covering her head, tying it under her chin.
At that moment, the tram came along, and Fuchs boarded.
Then as a group of women shuffled onto the tram, Clara darted out and joined them, smuggling herself aboard.
She sat down on a seat and keeping her head turned, looked out of the window.
Twenty minutes later, Fuchs got off the tram and much to Clara’s luck, so did several of the women who she had got on with earlier. Once again, she used them to hide herself from sight and began trailing Fuchs from a safe distance.
Soon they were deep in the Prenzlauer Berg residential district.
On the other side of the road, she noticed two men making their way up.
They were hurrying along, heads down against the wind, talking quietly.
Although they didn’t appear to be a threat, Clara moved closer to the shadows of her side of the street.
She kept to the shadows, maintaining her distance as Fuchs moved deeper into the narrow streets.
He walked with purpose, clearly familiar with the route.
After about ten minutes, he stopped at a small café that looked closed for the night.
The windows were dark, but Clara noticed a faint light coming from what might be a back room.
Fuchs didn’t go to the front entrance. Instead, he slipped down a narrow alley beside the building. Clara crept closer, using parked cars and doorways for cover. She positioned herself behind a delivery truck where she could see the mouth of the alley.
A few minutes later, a figure emerged. A thin man in his forties, wearing a worn coat and a hat pulled low over his face.
Even in the dim light, Clara could see his nervous gestures, the way he kept glancing around as if expecting to be watched.
The two men spoke in hushed tones for several minutes.
Clara couldn’t make out what they were saying, but she saw the man hand Fuchs a folded piece of paper.
The exchange was brief. Fuchs pocketed what he’d been given and disappeared back down the alley. The other man waited a moment, then headed in Clara’s direction.
This was her chance. She needed to see where this informant lived.
Clara began to follow, keeping well back as the man made his way through the winding streets.
Her heart pounded as she realised she was getting deeper into unfamiliar territory.
The man moved quickly, but nervously, constantly checking over his shoulder.
She was so focused on her target that she didn’t hear the footsteps behind her until it was too late. She spun around just as a hand clamped on her arm.
‘Frau Bergmann, what a surprise. Guten Abend.’
Clara stared into the eyes of Fuchs.
The smell of alcohol on his breath assaulted her senses. She moved her head away and took a step back. ‘Guten Abend,’ replied Clara, hating the way the nerves in her voice betrayed her.
‘What are you doing out here at this hour?’
‘A home visit,’ replied Clara.
‘At this time of night?’ Fuchs took a swig from a hip flask he produced from his pocket. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
‘Unborn babies aren’t aware of the time of day or night,’ replied Clara.
‘And as you say, it’s very late. I must get home, my husband will be wondering where I am.
’ She went to sidestep him, but Fuchs was surprisingly nimble and moved quickly into her path.
He grabbed at her arm, his fingers tightened around her bicep, while he shoved the flask back into his pocket.
‘Don’t be so hasty. I haven’t finished with you yet.’ Fuchs licked his lips.
Clara glanced up and down the road. The dark street was empty. ‘I need to go home,’ she said, trying to assert some kind of authority.
‘I should report you for being out at this time of night without good reason,’ said Fuchs. He stepped closer to Clara, his body no more than an inch from hers, his nose almost touching her own.
‘I told you. I’ve been visiting a patient.’ She turned her head away.
Fuchs grabbed her face with his other hand, forcing it back to his. ‘Not here you haven’t.’
‘If you don’t let me go, I’ll have to report you to your superior,’ said Clara as she tried to free her arm. This made Fuchs hold her even tighter.
‘Oh, I don’t think you’ll do that,’ he sneered. ‘It might lead to more questions about what you’re doing here than what I am.’
‘My husband will report you to your superiors and make a formal complaint,’ said Clara, fear and anger emboldening her.
Fuchs let out a derisory snort. ‘You think your husband will protect you. Well, let’s see how he protects you now.’
The next thing Clara knew, she was being bundled across the pavement by Fuchs towards what she thought was a doorway but was in fact a narrow passageway.
‘Let me go!’ She struggled against him, but he was bigger and stronger than her.
His hand clamped around her windpipe, squeezing hard, restricting her voice and narrowing her airways.
It was all she could do to breathe, let alone try to call for help.
She grabbed at his hand to try to release the pressure, but it made no difference.
Fuchs pushed her into the passageway, walking her backwards further into the darkness out of sight of anyone. Clara frantically clawed at his hand, and then in desperation at his face, but her gloved hands just slid from his sweaty skin.
She couldn’t let this happen to her. She refused to let it happen.
Yet at the same time, she didn’t know how to stop it.
She managed to get her glove off her right hand and then with all the breath and energy she could muster, she kneed him between his legs while at the same time, dragging her fingernails down his face.
He cried out. Keeled over. His grip simultaneously letting go of her throat.
‘Fucking bitch,’ he gasped.
Clara tried to push him out of the way. The passageway was too narrow for her to try to get by easily. She didn’t know where it led, and she wasn’t prepared to take a risk. Running further into a dead end was not an option. She had mere seconds to act.
With another shove, she tried to get past, but Fuchs stood his ground. He grabbed her by the hair and slapped her hard across the face.
Clara swayed. Everything was going black. Her vision blurred. She felt sick.
Then she was aware of being shoved against the wall, the back of her head banging against the brickwork. Another wave of nausea swept over her. Her head was spinning. It was like having too much wine where her senses were dulled and reactions heavy and delayed.
And then she was alert all of a sudden as she felt Fuchs’s spin her around, pinning the side of her face to the wall, his boot kicking first her left foot and then her right foot apart. His hand capturing both her wrists in his. His body pressing her against the wall so she could barely breathe.
She cried out then. ‘NO!’
She tried to spin her body away from him, to move her feet together.
‘Shut up,’ he snarled, his alcohol-soaked breath hot against her face. ‘No one is going to help you. Not even your husband. See how he likes this.’
Clara cried out again as she felt his hand grabbing at her underwear. Tears streamed down her face. Tears of fear. Tears of anger.