Page 60 of The Girl with a Secret
“You have done good work here, since you’ve been with us, Miss Herzelfeld,” Lieutenant Pennell remarked. “Very good work.”
Rosa would have been relieved by such a comment, save for the rather calculating look in the lieutenant’s eyes, the narrowed purse of his lips. “Thank you, sir,” she said quietly.
“I have a different sort of task for you now,” he continued, “but one that could help us greatly in our efforts. In this line of work, we sometimes have to do the unexpected, don’t we? Think outside of the box, as it were.” He smiled, as if inviting her to share a joke, but Rosa had no idea what it was, and in any case, she wasn’t in the right frame of mind to find anything funny.
“Sir?”
He took a file from on the desk in front of him and tossed it to her. Rosa found herself having to lunge forward to catch it, drawing it closed before the papers within fluttered out.
“Have a look at that,” he said, and then turned away to face the window, as if he hadn’t a care in the world.
With great trepidation, Rosa opened the file—and then gave a revealing gasp out loud at the photo of the handsome man on the first page, his blond hair brushed back from his forehead just as she remembered, his bright gaze staring straight at the camera, unwavering, piercing.
Hauptmann Ernst Weber.
“I can see he’s familiar to you,” Pennell remarked, turning around as Rosa gaped down at the photograph of the man she’d once thought she’d loved, her heart twisting inside her as a thousand memories flashed through her mind in a poignant kaleidoscope. Ernst smiling tenderly down at her. Ernst laughing, plucking a glass of champagne from her fingers as she grinned up at him, silly with love. Ernst threading his fingers through hers.Rosa, if I could change the world…
“Yes,” she said after a moment, her voice a little hoarse. She knew she could not deny it. She closed the file, and Pennell raised his eyebrows.
“You don’t want to read any further?”
“No,” Rosa replied quietly.
“Weber was captured a few months ago,” Pennell told her, “but he’s only come to us in the last few days. Perhaps you didn’t see in his file, but he commanded a squadron of fighters that have been bombing Britain for the last year.” He paused, as if waiting for a reply.
Rosa slowly shook her head. Ernst was here, in England? At Cockfosters Camp? Maybe just meters away from her right now… the thought made her head spin. “I…” She licked her lips. “I didn’t know.”
“I didn’t expect that you would.”
“I didn’t even know he was a pilot,” Rosa told him. “He wasn’t… when I knew him.”
“He started his training in September 1939,” Pennell told her. “Just after war was declared. The Waffen-SS, as you might know, are only involved in land operations. Weber must have asked to be transferred to the Luftwaffe… or perhaps it was a punishment of some sorts?” He glanced at her in query, his eyebrows lifting, his eyes flashing with insight. “You know the average lifespan of a pilot in the Luftwaffe is just five weeks? About the same as the RAF, but I imagine it starts to feel like a death wish. You might have noticed, from the transcripts you’ve translated, that some of the pilots are starting to seem, shall we say, a bit despondent? Thirty percent losses across the board, with not enough air crew to replace them. It must all begin to feel rather futile, don’t you think?”
He withdrew a cigarette from his jacket pocket and lit it while Rosa watched him, having no idea what sort of response he expected from her. What could he possibly want with her, in regard to Ernst? And yet… Ernst was here. After the conversation she’d just had with Peter, it seemed incredible. Impossible. And most, most unwanted…
“I would imagine it does, yes,” she agreed after a moment. She hesitated, and then decided to be direct. “Is there a particular reason you have called me here, Lieutenant Pennell?” she asked. “Is there a way you believe I can help?” Even if she had absolutely no idea how, and in truth she didn’t want to know. Didn’t want to have to eventhinkabout Ernst Weber.
Pennell smiled briefly before he took a drag of his cigarette. “As a matter of fact, yes, but it’s not what you might think. Weber is in an interesting frame of mind—quite disillusioned, I’d say, with both the Luftwaffe and Hitler himself. I gather he was something of an acolyte, back in the day? Quite young, when he joined the SS.”
“His family…” Rosa swallowed. Ernst had told her he had joined at his father’s urging, a shrewd political decision after Hitler came to power. He’d insisted he wasn’t like some of the other officers, who were rabid in their convictions. And yet what had she really been able to believe?
Still, it had been the so-called gentlemen, the Nazis who managed to seem like reasonable men, who had come to her father’s house. Sometimes Rosa wondered which type of man was actually more dangerous; at least with the officers who were vociferous in proclaiming their convictions, you could not let yourself be deceived.
“If he had strong convictions,” she said after a pause, “he tried to hide them from me.”I don’t like it any more than you do, Rosa…She swallowed. “How… how did you come to know of my… association… with him?”
“It came through the transcripts, Miss Herzelfeld. Weber mentioned it himself, to his cellmate, another disillusioned soul. Talked about a sweet Jewish girl he knew, back in the day, and how her father treated officers for the clap. It wasn’t hard to put two and two together.” He smiled, coolly. “We are intelligence officers, after all.”
“I… see,” Rosa said after a moment, her voice faint.
The knowledge that Ernst washere, and he’d been talking about her, and other staff had heard and understood, felt utterly overwhelming—and defeating. What must they think of her? She knew that secret listeners eavesdropped on all the conversations between prisoners; they were the ones who recorded the transcripts that Rosa then translated. She suspected Peter was one, although he hadn’t spoken of his work, just as she hadn’t of hers. Could he have heard Ernst himself?
The prospect was appalling. But surely not… he’d seemed so surprised when she’d told him about her association with SS officers. She hadn’t had the opportunity, or really, the courage to mention Ernst to him then… How on earth, Rosa wondered with a sinking feeling, would he react, knowing the SS officer she’d fallen in love with was righthere, at Cockfosters Camp? It felt like some sort of monstrous joke, and her life was the punchline.
“Miss Herzelfeld,” Pennell said, sitting up straight and stubbing his cigarette out, “I will be direct, as you seem a young woman who appreciates candor. Weber undoubtedly has information that could be essential to the war effort, in particular regard to some wireless transmitter codes. He’s mentioned them in passing, but kept himself from giving the actual codes away. All he needs is a little nudge in the right direction, and we think he’ll offer those codes up himself. We needyouto give him the nudge.”
Rosa’s mouth dropped open. “What…” she began faintly, shaking her head as if to clear it. “How?”
“Not in the way you’d think. You’re not a trained intelligence officer, obviously, nor an interrogator, so naturally we don’t expect you to do either. We don’t want you to do either, in fact. The last thing you should be doing is talking shop with a man like Weber!” He paused to give her a stern look, his dark eyebrows drawing together. “But you did know him,” hecontinued, “once upon a time, and he’s still clearly fond of you. We want to act on that knowledge.”
