The Pursuit of Pearls Read Free Page B

Hitler Leibstandarte bodyguard were at the Führer’s side. The usual car of followers was absent.
    How vulnerable he was. All it would take would be a single shot and the leader of all Germany, the object of all this adulation, would be extinguished like a lightbulb, along with the fears of an entire continent. Clara wondered if she was the only person who had such a thought. German civilians were never told about attempts on the Führer’s life, but Clara had heard that in Munich several years ago, during a parade like this, a pistol had been found in a newsreel camera mounted on the roof of a car, the barrel of the gun pointed down the lens. Another couple of other assassination attempts had been averted at the last minute. Each lucky escape only served to convince Hitler more firmly of his deepest belief: destiny was on his side.
    As he came parallel to Clara, a shaft of sun lanced through a rent in the clouds, and a finger of light pointed down towards his car. Hitler’s bright blue gaze turned in Clara’s direction and seemed to penetrate right to where she was standing.
    Clara ducked her head, turned sharply, and pushed her way back through the throng. She had a long day ahead of her and a party to attend that evening. And today of all days she had chosen to move.

CHAPTER
2
    S tepping over the bags she had dumped in the hallway and shrugging off her coat, Clara looked around her new home.
    For an actress working in the Babelsberg studios, just a short distance away through the Berlin forest, this place couldn’t be more perfect. It was set in a colony of houses built in the nineteenth century by rich Berliners seeking respite from the city on the bucolic shores of the Griebnitzsee. The villas, all of them by up-and-coming architects, boasted a variety of styles—sweet, gabled cottages in the early nineteenth-century Germanic domestic fashion and turreted mock-baronial palaces, alongside modernist constructions with clean lines and open-plan spaces. Since the 1920s, the original owners—the bankers and industrialists—had given way to film stars, and now the little group of houses was known locally as the Artists’ Colony. It was Berlin’s version of the Hollywood Hills—an oasis of luxury just a short drive from the city center for those who could afford privacy and architectural distinction.
    Not a category that included Clara Vine.
    Although her acting contract with Ufa kept her in regular film work, she was far from the heights of stardom that promised a place in the Artists’ Colony. It might have been her half-English heritage or the rebellious twist to her smile that prevented directors from casting her in leading roles. Or perhaps it was merely that the preferred template for a Reich film star was blond and buxom—a pattern fitted perfectly by her friend Ursula Schilling, who had been one of Ufa’s top actresses until the previous year, when she joined stars like Marlene Dietrich and Billy Wilder in the sanctuary of Hollywood. This was Ursula’s house, and Clara was here only until Ursula decided when, or if, it was safe to return.
    If she didn’t know better, Clara might have wondered how Ursula could bear to leave it. Though small, the house, like every other in the Artists’ Colony, was exquisite in every detail. It had been designed by Mies van der Rohe, with a steep-gabled, red-tiled roof, vanilla-painted façade, and teal-blue shutters on the windows. Beech, oak, and pine trees grew all around, shielding each house from any sight of its neighbor, and giving each dwelling a sense of total rural isolation.
    The front door opened directly into a paneled, open-plan drawing room running the entire length of the house, furnished with bookshelves and a piano. Expensive rugs covered the polished wooden floor, and there was an armchair soft enough to sink into and never get up.
    Ursula had been gone for months now, but the way she had left the house, you would think she had taken a shopping trip to