Page 31 of The Last Safe Place

“I was. Until recently, I was at least allowed to work as a medical carer.” Frau Kronberg’s eyes filled with sadness. Leonore opened her mouth to probe further, but the other woman continued, “Could we call one another by first names? We’ll be spending a lot of time together in the coming week.”

“Of course. I’m Leonore, but my friends call me Leo.”

“A lioness. It suits you.” Michaela held out her hand. “You can call me Michi.”

“Is that thing heavy?” Leonore stared suspiciously at the dark brown leather bag, which undoubtedly had seen decades of use.

“Here, try it.”

Leonore took hold of the bag and almost dropped it in astonishment. “Amazing! What have you got in there? Bricks?”

“That’s my secret,” Michaela grinned. “So, where do you work?”

“For the past few weeks, I’ve been a forced laborer in the munitions industry. Before that I worked as a secretary to a book publisher, but I always wanted to be a journalist.”

Michaela grimaced. “And the Nazis won’t allow that. My husband’s body had barely cooled before they tried to ban me from treating my Jewish patients. It’s only thanks to Lieutenant Ruben’s intervention I wasn’t pressed into forced labor.”

“I hate the Nazis.” Leonore had already learned from Eberhard Lange that Michaela’s husband had recently died after a long illness and that the Gestapo had immediately sent her a deportation order. Thank heavens they’d soon be turning their backs on the harassment by leaving this inhospitable country. On that thought, she grabbed her suitcase and left her tiny room with Michaela in tow.

Out on the street, she asked, “Are you looking forward to it?”

“To what?”

“To our training, of course. It’s going to be so exciting! We’ll be real agents.”

“You read too many detective novels,” Michaela replied good-naturedly.

“I don’t care. I can hardly wait.”

They took the bus to the agreed meeting point at Westkreuz station. The other ostensible agents were already waiting on the platform: Eberhard Lange, Anton Seifert, along with a man in Wehrmacht officer’s uniform.

Leonore reached instinctively for the star on her coat, before scolding herself as a fool. The officer clearly worked for the Abwehr and had been assigned to accompany the group to the mysterious training site on Lake Quenz.

“Good morning. I am Lieutenant Hesse and I shall take you to your destination today,” he introduced himself.

The train roared into the station, and Lieutenant Hesse escorted them to their reserved compartment. After theconductor had checked their papers and tickets, Lieutenant Hesse stood by the compartment door and announced, “Once again, I must urge you to maintain absolute silence about everything that happens in the next few days. At the Quenzgut, you must look like genuine prospective agents – nobody must suspect that your employment is a sham.” He cast each of them a piercing look.

As he gazed into Leonore’s eyes, heat rose into her cheeks. Lieutenant Hesse certainly cut a dashing figure.

After a long pause, during which nobody spoke, he continued. “The success of the mission stands or falls with your credibility. While the training center belongs to the Abwehr, we cannot rule out the Gestapo having its spies there. A single wrong word and our ruse will be exposed. I don’t need to tell you what will happen then.”

Each of the supposed agents nodded in turn, until Lieutenant Hesse smiled. “Now we have clarified that, I would like each of you, with the exception of Frau Kronberg, to spend the next few minutes choosing a code name, which you will use from now until you return to Berlin.”

Michaela cast him a questioning look.

“We had to assign one to you already. You are Heloise.”

Leonore thought the French name sounded quite distinguished, but Michaela’s eyes widened in horror.

Lieutenant Hesse, however, didn’t seem to notice. “We thought the name suited you, since Heloise was a healer who lived as a nun in the twelfth century.”

“Heloise also had a tragic life. She fell in love with Abelard, a lecturer twenty years her senior, who impregnated her. As a result, she was forced by her uncle to marry Abelard, although she detested the constraints of a conventional marriage.” Michaela made a sour face. “The uncle continued to seek revenge, arranging for her husband to be attacked and castrated.Abelard retired to a monastery and commanded Heloise to do the same.”

“I’m terribly sorry. I didn’t know.” Lieutenant Hesse had turned quite pale during her description. “Unfortunately, we can’t change your code name.”

“Let’s hope it’s not a bad omen,” Michaela replied.

Leonore stepped in to lighten the mood. “I already know my name. Nellie. Nellie Bly was the pseudonym of a fearless journalist in the last century in America. She did many courageous, exciting things – she wrote articles for a newspaper, smuggled herself into a mental asylum as a patient to write an investigative story, and even circumnavigated the world in seventy-two days.”