Free Woman in the Shadows by Jane Thynne

choice.”
    “We’re delighted you could make time for this, Herr Generaloberst,” said Albert obsequiously.
    “I’m delighted too, let me tell you,” Udet said, winking at Clara. “I nearly didn’t make it. I had an accident the other day. The plane was a complete shit crate. I escaped, but another inch and I’d have been singing soprano.”
    Behind Udet, Clara saw a pair of secretaries stop and signal to each other, covering their mouths and giggling. Those girls saw famous actors every day of the week, so if they went weak at the knees over Udet, he had to be a megastar. Everything Clara had heard about Udet’s charisma and the easygoing jollity that prompted people to besiege him in the street seemed true. She found herself warming to him instantly.
    “Ever done any flying?” he asked her.
    “I’m afraid not. But I saw your Olympics display last year.”
    Like everything he had a hand in, Hermann Goering’s Olympics gala for seven hundred guests at his Leipziger Platz home could not be called understated. A swimming pool had been built in the garden, complete with swans. There was a miniature French village, a carnival, shooting galleries, and a merry-go-round. An entire corps de ballet was brought in to dance on the moonlit grass, while above them Udet’s plane had performed a dizzying series of gliding acrobatics, swooping and circling in the sky.
    Udet beamed. “You enjoyed that, did you?”
    “It was the most amazing stunt I’ve ever seen.” It was the truth. The sight of the plane curving down in the night sky, twisting through beams of light with balletic swoops, had transfixed her.
    “I’ll arrange a flight for you, if you like.”
    “Oh, I don’t know…”
    “You’ll love it! It’ll help you get into character. Isn’t that what you actresses say?”
    “In that case, it’s very kind of you.”
    “Leave it with me. I’ll see what I can do.”
    Albert gestured to the pile of promotional material he was carrying. “We were wondering, Herr Generaloberst,” he said unctuously, “if you could spare the time, whether you could come to my office and sign some of these?”
    “And,” Clara intervened, “may I ask you for an autograph for a young admirer? A friend of mine named Erich has seen you fly, and he wants to join the Luftwaffe when he’s old enough.”
    Udet peeled off a postcard from the top of Albert’s stack. It was a shot of himself standing next to a Ju 87 Stuka dive-bomber, wearing his cap at a jaunty angle. With a flourish he scrawled on the back,
To Erich! Best wishes, Ernst Udet!
    Then he took another postcard, wrote on it, and handed it to Clara with a mock bow. She read,
Fräulein Clara Vine is invited to a party at Pommersche Strasse 4, Berlin-Wilmersdorf. October 18, 8:00 p.m.
    “I hope you can come and meet some of my friends, Fräulein. We should get to know each other, considering you are going to be my bride. Bring Herr Lindemann here with you. But be warned: I make a pretty lethal cocktail.”

CHAPTER
6
    A sharp breeze corrugated the surface of the Wannsee, setting the water dancing and nudging the boats against their moorings. Until a few years ago these boats had names like
Edda
or
Ute
or
Gretel
on their bows, but these names had now been painted over. They’d been replaced with grander, National Socialist aspirations like
Courage
or
Victory
or
Endurance.
Clara turned away from the view and shivered. Perhaps it was the chill breeze blowing through the opened French windows of the Goebbelses’ drawing room, but more likely it was the company that was gathered around her.
    The furniture had been cleared to make way for a crowd of women in bright sheath dresses, the glint of their jewelry competing with the gleam of silver death’s-heads on black SS dress uniforms. As always, it was an unnerving experience to be in close proximity to a bunch of SS officers. The bark of German conversation was interspersed with the familiar bray of the English upper