Chapter 30
Lizzie unlocked the door to the cipher room. Only when she saw Tom standing there did she realise she’d been holding her breath since the knock. He had told her not to worry, and that he knew how to lose a shadow, but she had worried just the same and feared he might have been arrested.
‘What happened?’ she said.
Tom grinned and withdrew a waxed paper package from an interior coat pocket.
Lizzie gasped. ‘You got it. And I think you enjoyed it too!’
‘I did, rather,’ Tom said. ‘It’s been a while since I did the grassroots stuff. Usually, I just let them follow me.’
Lizzie reached for the package, and he released it. She paused. ‘What do you mean you let them follow you?’
‘There’s often someone on my tail here. It doesn’t bother me, and I just evade them when I need to. Most of the time I’m not hiding anything, so I let them exhaust themselves tailing me with no reward.’
‘If I’d known you are routinely followed, I wouldn’t have asked you to collect it,’ Lizzie said, her stomach lurching. If he had been spotted, the dead drop spot was compromised, and she must let Brunner know at once.
Tom patted her shoulder. ‘I told you. No one saw me. I know how to lose them when I want to.’
Lizzie was doubtful, but it was too late now. Being in Switzerland grew stranger every day. In Nazi-occupied territories, if you had a shadow, your time was nearly up, and you’d better either lose them or kill them.
Tom removed his coat and hung it up. ‘Bloody cold out there. It’s back to winter again after that short burst of spring.’
Lizzie was desperate to open the package and read what Brunner had left for her, but she hesitated. Tom was proving to be a rock, but she still wouldn’t tell him the purpose of her mission.
Tom took the hint. ‘I’ll bring us some tea and biscuits whilst you do what you have to do.’
Lizzie smiled, grateful for his understanding. ‘You risked your neck to get it. Thank you, Tom.’
‘Anytime,’ he said, making a sign to lock the door before leaving the room.
Lizzie did as he said and then sat down and rested the little package on her knee. Nestled inside the creased paper was another copy of an excerpt from Brunner she was seeing enemies at every turn.
Her fingers closed over the folded paper, and she spread it on the table to study, her heart thudding so hard it pounded in her ears.
There were several entries recording purchase transactions of Feingold, which Lizzie recognised as the standard term for bullion.
It literally meant Fine Gold, and the dates ranged from spring to autumn 1941.
Brunner now he saw the writing on the wall for the Reich.
He was worried his time prospering from the depravities of the Nazi regime was drawing to a damning close, and he would be judged harshly for his part in enabling the laundering of Nazi-looted gold.
Lizzie sat at the table, shaken to the core as the realisation of what they were doing to the Jews washed over her.
It was even worse than she could ever have imagined.
It was worse than the reports she’d read at Baker Street.
It was worse than what she and Jack had talked about in their discussions at the flat when they pondered the unfolding events of the war.
It was far worse than anything her father had predicted in their gloomy talks about the atrocities the Nazis were committing.
When Tom returned, she told him Pemberton had come looking for her. ‘He’s an impatient sod, isn’t he?’ he whispered, and they both dissolved into laughter.
The tension in Lizzie’s body streamed from her eyes in uncontrolled tears. She couldn’t bear to tell him what she’d just discovered. That would make it too real.
Tom touched her shoulder. ‘Are you alright?’
Lizzie nodded and put on a brave face. ‘All this silent subterfuge is getting to me, that’s all. I’m used to seeing the enemy coming, but Bern is more unnerving.’ She pushed the horrors of dental gold into the recesses of her mind, knowing they would haunt her when she lay in bed, trying to sleep.
‘Did you get what you need?’ Tom asked, passing her a handkerchief with a flourish.
She accepted it and wiped her eyes. ‘Yes, thank you. I’ll send it to London in the next pouch.’ She’d already hidden the terrible paper in the picture's frame on the wall like last time, because stashing it in the safe would mean curious staff members might stumble upon it.
Tom said, ‘I’ll give you a tip to make things a little easier on you whilst you’re here.’
Lizzie looked at him. ‘All tips are welcome.’
‘Bern is a silent battleground of spies. We have the Americans, the Soviets, the Germans, and the Swiss to contend with. It would be stranger if Legation members weren’t followed.
Take it in your stride and only lose them when you absolutely must. That way they think you’ve nothing to hide and will lose interest.’
‘That is a clever tip. So, rather than choosing a different café for lunch because I think I’m being watched, I should just lean into it?’
‘Exactly. That’s what us crusty old spy-types do who are hung out to dry in outposts like Bern, where not a lot happens on the surface, but everything happens underground.’
The rest of the afternoon passed quickly when she returned to her desk, where Pemberton had placed piles of documents awaiting her attention.
He went out for a late afternoon meeting and left her to it.
A copy of a newspaper lay discarded on a table, and Lizzie browsed through it when she took a break and drank a cup of tea.
Since she’d arrived, the newspapers had been full of reports of thousands of refugees arriving at the border, desperately seeking sanctuary in neutral Switzerland.
Jewish families had fled Vichy France when the Germans occupied in November, the previous year.
Some were said to be stateless, stripped of their citizenship by the Nuremberg Laws, and others who had already escaped to France were foreign-born and were now being forced to flee their French refuge.
Lizzie’s stomach churned as she read. Her thoughts turned to Liesel when she read about Jews arriving at the Swiss border.
She had been right to risk her cover to get the Berlin-born Jewish girl and the family to safety in Bern.
If she had left Liesel at the orphanage, she might still be in hiding as an Aryan girl under the care of Mother Clara.
It would only have been a matter of time before someone noticed something that gave her Jewish heritage away, just as Lizzie had.
As far as the mixed family was concerned, Lizzie doubted they wouldn’t have been caught.
Their presence at the convent was too conspicuous, and they had escaped just before the latest round of sweeps that targeted mixed-marriage Jews.
Lizzie read on, feeling physically sick.
The last permitted Jews from Germany and Austria, from mixed marriages, were also being hunted in final Nazi roundups, and Switzerland was their only hope to escape being deported to concentration camps.
The report said most were turned away at the border, no matter how deadly their fate, and the Swiss federal government’s position in Bern remained the same.
Only political refugees qualified, not victims of racial Nazi persecution and anti-Jewish statutes.