The Winter Garden (2014) by Jane Thynne Page B

the ordinary. Tread carefully.’
    ‘I always do. Where did this hint come from?’
    ‘A friend. He let us know that in the past couple of days your name had come up in conversation.’
    ‘Whose conversation? Where?’
    ‘At Prinz Albrecht Strasse.’
    Though Dyson uttered it without flinching, this address more than any other had the power to strike terror into a citizen of Berlin. The blank Prussian façade of the former Arts museum at
Prinz Albrecht Strasse 8 gave no clue to the horrors within. Since 1933 it had been the headquarters of the Geheime Staatspolizei, the Gestapo, who had the power, without the intervention of the
courts, to arrest, interrogate and send prisoners to SS concentration camps like Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald and Lichtenburg. Beyond its austere, vaulted entrance hall hundreds of bureaucrats
spent their days combing files and reports on citizens. Beneath them, in the basement, lay the interrogation rooms, a warren of white-tiled cells where information could be extracted in a more
direct manner. Once you arrived in Prinz Albrecht Strasse, no amount of acting talent could save you from what they had in store.
    A wave of fright hit her, like a blast of icy air. Deliberately she hesitated, taking out a cigarette, fixing it in a holder and inhaling.
    ‘Who exactly is this friend?’ He had to be either a policeman or a Gestapo member if he had access to Prinz Albrecht Strasse.
    ‘He works for them. He says an informer passed on your name.’
    An informer. That could be anyone. All Gestapo agents had their own network of informers, fanning out through every layer of society like a malign web enmeshing anyone who crossed its path. The
service depended on them heavily for denunciations of suspect or illegal activity. They were not always the obvious candidates. An informer could be a quiet neighbour, or a friendly butcher.
Postmen, shop owners, even children. Anyone with a secret to keep or who might be susceptible to blackmail. In one way or another the Gestapo viewed the whole population as an amateur police force
to assist in enforcing control. The idea was that nothing should escape the Gestapo’s net.
    Dyson was uttering calming words, like a doctor who had just delivered terminal news.
    ‘Look, we’re not worried. Nobody has talked about an arrest order. You speak German like a native. In their eyes you’re no different from an actress like Lilian Harvey –
she was born in Muswell Hill, wasn’t she? And, most importantly, they know your father . . .’
    They knew her father. It seemed incredible that the same nepotistic class structure which had governed Britain for hundreds of years might also hold sway among the Gestapo agents of Nazi
Germany.
    ‘And you take routine precautions?’ Dyson was saying. ‘You don’t talk on the phone? You vary your routine, you write nothing down. Don’t drink in doubtful
company.’
    ‘I take precautions, Archie.’
    ‘Fine. It may be nothing. But I would say you’re almost certainly being tailed. So I wanted to warn you to keep your guard up. And more importantly still, to lie low.’
    Lie low?
    ‘So should I attend the Goebbels’ party?’
    ‘You’ll have to go because you’ve been invited, and not to turn up might attract attention. But don’t do anything more at the moment. Do nothing. Enjoy your
filming.’
    ‘There’s a break in filming. I’ve finished my last film and we don’t start rehearsals for another few weeks.’
    ‘Enjoy your break then. Remember what I said.’
    While Dyson got up and went over to the bar to pay the bill and engage in some finely judged conversation with Herr Koch, Clara drank the syrupy remnants of her Weisse and tried to collect her
teeming thoughts. An informer had passed her name to the Gestapo. Who could it be? A lowly staffer at the studios, perhaps, or someone closer to home? How bizarre it was that just as she had
received an invitation to the Propaganda Minister’s home, another