Chapter 10
The train rumbled on through the evening, stopping several times on its journey. At each stop, Lizzie glanced at Hannah, and they exchanged a look. It said, ‘I’ve got your back. We’re in this together.’
Without stating the plan out loud, they intuitively took turns to nap, and around midnight the train lurched to another screeching halt, and a harsh light filtered into the compartment, waking Lizzie, whose turn it was to rest.
Her eyes were groggy with sleep, and she was disoriented but quickly got her bearings.
Their lives depended on being alert, and SOE agents were frequently drilled during training to spring into action from a deep sleep, speaking only their undercover language.
Lizzie checked her watch. It had been hours since she’d had a drink, and her throat was parched.
The other passengers had drifted off into an uneasy sleep, and the loud sliding of the door jolted most of them awake.
A piercing announcement commanded passengers to leave the train now if Frankfurt was their destination.
‘Have your papers and luggage ready,’ ordered a nasally voice as two soldiers entered their compartment, guns slung over their grey-green uniforms. Lizzie’s heart thudded as she reached for their cases, ready for inspection.
Every checkpoint put their cover on trial, and there were so many things that could go wrong.
Lizzie still wore her raincoat, partly for warmth but also so her hidden weapon was within reach should she need it.
Her fingers closed over a steel knitting needle again, and she sat back down and waited for the soldiers to approach them.
They checked Hannah’s papers, which showed they were sisters-in-law with permission to travel to Berlin. Lev, Hannah’s co-leader in the Lavender Network, was an expert forger who had created her documents.
One soldier barked at Lizzie to pass him her papers, which he studied meticulously until her dry throat scratched and she longed to fidget.
All the while she sat still as if she were used to having her papers checked on every journey, which was everyday life under the Nazis.
They always watched for the first sign of an enemy to the regime, whether a rebelling Jew or other undesirable.
By the time he signalled for Lizzie to open her case, she was lightheaded with nerves and braced herself.
The only downside of being safe in London with Jack for extended periods was that it took her time to readjust to the constant danger of living undercover. And the night train to Berlin, surrounded by German military and suspicious faces, was no gentle transition.
Lizzie watched the soldier’s big rough hands search through her case, prodding at the personal contents until some of her clothes fell onto the grubby floor.
Hannah bent to retrieve Lizzie’s blouse and disarmed the soldier with a seductive smile.
Female Resistance and SOE agents had all manner of weapons at their disposal, and one of the most powerful was their feminine wiles.
The soldier continued poking in Lizzie’s case, and she thought her heart might burst as she watched his hand hover close to the concealed lining that contained the wads of Reichsmarks. She could barely breathe and prayed silently for mercy, as she often did in tense moments on missions.
The soldier pushed her case aside abruptly and moved to Hannah’s.
As she leant over the case to show him the contents, her cleavage in her dress distracted the soldier from giving her case the same thorough search.
Lizzie looked at Hannah in admiration, reminded just how brilliant she was in action.
It had been some time since they worked together as undercover sisters in Paris, but Hannah clearly hadn’t lost her touch.
The soldier questioned Hannah as his eyes strayed from her face and lingered on her chest, but the sting had gone out of his words. Lizzie saw he was too busy falling under her spell to think of anything as dull as examining the case.
Hannah replied in perfect German, and the soldier took so long to complete the check whilst ogling her instead of inspecting the contents, the other soldier eventually barked at him to hurry. ‘We have many more to check. Let’s move on now.’
Pride swelled in Lizzie. No one would guess that the stunning young woman with the bewitching blue eyes was not only one of the most legendary figures of the French Resistance but also a Jew born in Berlin.
When the soldiers had finished their inspection of the other passengers, one even leafing through the pages of the priest’s Catholic bible, they left in a flurry, leaving the door wide open behind them.
Glancing around at the other faces, Lizzie saw a woman glaring at Hannah.
It was obvious she didn’t like the way she had flirted with the soldier, and Lizzie looked at Hannah to see if she had noticed.
Hannah was organising the contents of her case and stashing it back on the rack.
As she sat down, she locked eyes with the hostile woman, and Lizzie hoped she wouldn’t rise to the bait.
She needn’t have worried. Hannah was a professional and buried her head in a book she had extracted from her case.
Soon after, she closed her eyes, and Lizzie took over the night watch as the train shuddered relentlessly through the dark German countryside towards Berlin.
As night deepened, the compartment became colder, and Lizzie buttoned her raincoat and wound her scarf around her neck to keep warm.
She longed for a sip of water, but there were no facilities, and her stomach rumbled as she shifted in the hard seat, waiting for the long night to merge into morning.
The hostile woman smoked like a chimney, and the small, airless space was thick with smoke.
Lizzie needed the toilet but held it in as long as she could, so she didn’t have to push through the crowded corridor full of passengers who had no seat.
Several uncomfortable hours later, Lizzie’s eyes flickered open again when Hannah touched her hand.
‘We’re almost in Berlin,’ she whispered.
The grey promise of daybreak seeped through the blackout blinds.
‘How do you know?’ Lizzie asked.
‘I glimpsed the industrial buildings. We must be reaching the station soon. Ready?’
Lizzie stretched and yawned. ‘As ready as I’ll ever be. You?’
Hannah nodded, her eyes solemn. She had carried out operations in Germany but hadn’t returned to her birthplace since she left after the Nazis took her family.
‘Are you alright?’ Lizzie whispered, squeezing her hand. She could see the emotion building in Hannah as they drew closer to the city.
‘I will be,’ she said, raising her chin, defiance written across her flawless features. ‘This is the moment I’ve been waiting for since November 1938.’
Hannah didn’t risk saying the word, but Lizzie knew she was thinking of Kristallnacht, the murderous state-sponsored riots which became known as the Night of Broken Glass.
Thousands of Jewish-owned businesses, homes, and synagogues were destroyed, and broken glass littered the streets of the Reich.
The cold-blooded beatings, murders, and mass arrests of around 30,000 Jews who were then transported to camps marked an ominous escalation.
It was the turning point in the Nazi persecution of Jews who had stayed in Germany and Austria, desperately clinging to the hope that things would get better and the horrors would pass.
Lizzie’s chest tightened as the thoughts engulfed her. As awful as those events were, the reports of the industrial-scale murder of countless Jews that had landed in Baker Street made Kristallnacht look like a skirmish.
A weary-looking conductor wearing a rumpled dark blue railway uniform poked his head through the door and announced they would arrive in Berlin in five minutes.
Lizzie retrieved their cases from overhead and passed them to Hannah, thankful military or railway police wouldn’t check them again on the train.
The engine soon spluttered to a stop, and the exhausted passengers gathered their belongings and prepared to file off the train. Soldiers pushed ahead as civilians waited to exit the busy doors onto the crowded platform.
Lizzie’s stomach dropped as her feet touched the hard ground of Berlin. A cluster of Gestapo monitored the new arrivals, and every pulse in her body seemed to vibrate as she walked with Hannah, both holding their small suitcases, preparing to play their new role.
The concourse was emblazoned with Nazi flags, and Lizzie flinched at the realisation that the most dangerous mission of her life was about to begin.
It made being undercover in occupied France seem simple.
There was no other way out except past the lurking Gestapo, who studied every figure as they streamed down the platform.
Despite wartime and the sheer number of people flooding into the capital city, Germanic order prevailed, and they stopped anyone who caught their attention.
Lizzie held her breath as they neared the men in leather coats. If they could just make it out of the station without being stopped, they would have made it safely to Berlin. She avoided eye contact with the men and kept her back straight, but her head slightly bowed.
They had almost passed the forbidding group when a voice commanded, ‘You with the red scarf. Don’t go any further.’
It was Lizzie’s worst nightmare, and despite the early morning chill, her skin beneath her dress was clammy.
She thought of discreetly signalling to Hannah to go ahead without her, so at least one of them would make it, but she decided against it.
That would ruin their cover as sisters-in-law travelling together and might attract more attention to them.
Hannah must have reached the same conclusion for she too stopped and the two of them walked side by side towards the Gestapo, trying to look like war widows from Alsace returning to the Fatherland, and not two spies who had come with the sole purpose of extracting intelligence on Hitler’s secret weapons.