Emma felt treated like a criminal, though she acted as if she were being driven to an appointment. These boys were not going to detect the slightest nervousness on her part. She peered out of the window with interest, twisted round for a backward glance, turned her head from side to side, opened her handbag with a casual air. The relaxed gestures of a day out sightseeing. It was imperative that she keep her rising panic under control. How extraordinary that the city was functioning again after the heavy bombardments, as if they had never happened. Traffic was as hectic as ever, with buses, trams, carts, motor cars, pavements milling with people. She saw a clock on the Potsdamer Platz, which was quite near where she used to live. It was still intact, hands pointing to a quarter past eleven. A telling detail. The clocks were right, it was business as usual, trains and trams on time, arrests made on schedule. Gestapo at the ready, motor running. It was clear the orders were for her to be picked up at eleven and brought in at half past.
“Emma Regendorf-Verschuur, where were you yesterday?”
The sombre man questioning her tried his best to be civil. A form of civility that could turn nasty in an instant. He resembled a boxer in a jacket, sleeves bulging with muscles, ready to let fly at any moment.
“In Geneva, with my husband and his head of department, Herr Adam von Trott of the Foreign Office. But why do you ask? And why am I here? I should like to telephone my husband.”
The man facing her said nothing. This could hardly be called an interrogation, it had more of a sequence of silences with the occasional query thrown in, a smirk, a sigh, a cigarette being lit, a weary gesture. And the constant tapping of a shoe on the floor.
Emma looked past the man into a tiny courtyard, or rather a shaft, which admitted some daylight. Such a sad little nook, overlooked by the architect, a hole with no purpose other than to deepen the gloom of the surroundings. The silence and murkiness of the building began to oppress her. She felt the fear welling up again. Everyone in Germany knew about this address, this place where she now was. Everyone avoided this street. The pavements were deserted, the entire premises radiated menace. How in heaven’s name could she make her escape, what kind of attitude should she take? She forced herself to think of her father, which calmed her down somewhat. All this was about him – she had realised that at the first question. Not about Carl or Adam, thank goodness. Not yet. Her father was safe in Switzerland, for the time being anyway. She had not thought of him as someone important enough to be watched by the Gestapo. Her father, whom she looked up to and dearly loved but never felt she really understood. The unusual relationship between her parents perplexed her periodically, but it remained a mystery. Harmonious for the most part, open-minded, alert, witty, but on the edges there was loneliness. They both seemed to have distanced themselves, or else outgrown each other.
“What is your father’s occupation in Switzerland?” the lugubrious man said, his tone making it clear that he did not expect her to tell the truth.
She replied curtly that he worked at the Dutch embassy in Berne and that she didn’t know exactly what his job entailed. “My father didn’t discuss his work much at home.”
The man leered at her. He probably didn’t discuss his work much at home either, Emma thought in a flash of grim amusement. The fear receded. She had to get away from there, and quickly.
