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She was being ridiculous; these were civilized people. This was the country of Beethoven, Schiller, Goethe, philosophers, scientists…She thought with a smile that she always considered the greatest poetry and drama to come from England. The greatest scientists from England, too. Newton! No one, not even Einstein, had surpassed Sir Isaac Newton.
Newton. Ian. Looking at the crowd, she realized that she was still horribly shaken by Ian Newton’s death.
Her mind was rambling. She was tired and she hurt deeply inside, where “pulling oneself together” could not be achieved.
The square was packed now. People were jostling one another to try to make room for more. They must be jamming the streets as well. Who was Friedrich Scharnhorst that so many were turning out to listen to him?
She stared around the square. It was surrounded by large buildings, some pretty high, seven or eight stories. Their windows would offer amazing views of the whole event. It was a lovely day, and many of the windows were open; reflections in the neighboring glass around them made them stand out.
What had Cordell done to prevent the assassination? Had he warned the police? The Brownshirts seemed to be everywhere, and they were heavily armed. Without more than a few hours’ notice, who do you trust? It would be a nice irony if the assassin was one of the Brownshirts. She almost smiled at the idea. It could be anyone—the man standing next to her, even. Did Cordell know? Who do you warn? Do you cancel the event? Warn Scharnhorst himself? What if he simply did not turn up? Or someone else was sent in his place? Someone who was expendable, who could be killed with no loss to the government.
People were getting restless waiting. She could feel the tension in the air. Then suddenly there was silence. Someone was getting up onto the platform, a man in a dark suit with an armband, white, with a black hooked cross on it: the swastika.
He called for attention, and instantly he received it. Over a thousand faces gazed up at him. He made a few remarks, very ordinary, all about what a great man Adolf Hitler was. He was greeted by an increasing roar of applause.
Then he announced Friedrich Scharnhorst, hero of the people, and stepped back with a wide gesture of deference, arm swinging as if he should have had a cape over it. Scharnhorst stepped forward.
He spoke and instantly the crowd fell not only silent but motionless. His voice was not pleasing at all. It was almost rasping, and of a higher pitch than Elena had expected, almost nasal in quality. Yet it was also mesmerizing.
She stood listening to him, just as everyone around her was doing. It was several moments before she even thought to look at anyone else. She saw the admiration in their faces, eyes fixed on the figure on the podium. No one shuffled their feet or pushed for a better position. Their attention was frightening in its intensity, a perfect photograph. They looked fixated, as if they were asleep with their eyes open.
She pulled the camera out of her bag and took off the lens cap. It needed only seconds to focus. She did not want to draw attention to herself. People might not wish to be photographed, even anonymously, so she must look as if her intent was to photograph Scharnhorst, and she was merely turning the camera sideways while she adjusted it.
She was careful. She wanted to catch the look of almost rapture on the faces of the crowd as they stared at him, mouths half open, eyes wide and bright.
At one point, Scharnhorst threw up his arm and shouted, “Heil Hitler!” and the crowd roared back at him, “Heil Hitler!,” arms raised in perfect copy of his.
She should not have been surprised. He had been saying the same things she had read in Hitler’s speeches. But somehow it was different to hear it in a voice imbued with passion, as if it made the most perfect sense, and from all around you, like a thunderous sea, the response echoed back.
She was glad she was holding the camera; it gave her a good excuse for not raising her arm in the Nazi salute. The noise of the crowd shouting the salute in unison was as powerful as a great tidal surge, carrying everything with it, destroying that which resisted it. No one could swim against it; it was enough not to be battered, to stay afloat, upright. What Scharnhorst was saying was nonsense; these people were listening to the emotion, not reason.
She took more pictures, some of Scharnhorst, some of the crowd. She was facing Scharnhorst and the buildings behind him when a single sharp crack rang out. For an instant there was silence. Even Scharnhorst stopped shouting. Then, very slowly, he crumpled and fell onto the floor of the podium…and lay still.
The scene was frozen.
Then it jerked into life again, men rushing forward to the body sprawled on the platform floor, bending over, trying desperately to stop the flow of blood. People were shouting. Brownshirts appeared all over the place. Then, as they realized what had happened, people sobbed, women started to scream. The crowd suddenly moved amid cries of rage.
Elena kept her camera high, for as long a range of focus as possible. She tried to keep her balance, but the crowd was carrying her along.
More shots rang out. Everyone was too hysterical to react in self-preservation. If anyone else was hit, Elena did not see it. Nor did she see if anyone was chasing the marksman. She heard people running. Was it because of the killer, or the uniformed Brownshirts shouting orders, trying to herd people who were in blind panic and could neither see nor hear them?
How had Cordell failed? Had he warned Scharnhorst’s people and they had taken no notice? Or had they tried, and they, too, had failed? Were they betrayed by their own people as well?
Ahead of her, the crowd was parting, moved by some force to make a pathway. She was close to the divide, and more Brownshirts were walking in line. They were carrying the body of Scharnhorst! They passed within feet of her. She could see clearly for an instant, long enough to take a picture, maybe not focused, of Scharnhorst with blood on his clothes and a cloth over his face. So he was dead. This could only be a corpse they were recovering, not a wounded man they were hurrying to the hospital.
Along the pathway, the crowds fell silent, except for one woman howling in anguish, as if she had lost her child.
There was panic. Elena was rammed and knocked, swept along, whether she wished to be or not. It took all her strength not to be pushed over and crushed, or at the very least, trodden on.
Had it been too late for Cordell to stop this? Or had he at least managed to prevent any British person being blamed? The shot had come from the high buildings on the other side of the square. She had seen the flash! Or was it only the glint of sunlight on something metallic or glass? Lots of the windows were open. People were watching, listening.
Elena had not thought before how grateful she was to live in relative safety and peace. She had not always thought much of her own government, and certainly did not always agree with them, but compared with this, they were sane, even boring.
As long as people like Oswald Mosley did not get into control.
The crowd was thinning around her. She must get out from among them. She turned and started to push her way toward the street and back to the hotel. There was nothing else she could do here. She had seen the man shot, right in front of her. There was death everywhere: the man in the hotel in
Amalfi, Ian on the train, and now Scharnhorst here in Berlin. She felt numb with dismay.
