Then, three blocks farther along, some other jumped-up kraut reveling in his petty authority would growl, "Your papers!" The whole stupid farce would play out again.
Once, a particularly reptilian SS man-again, in Peggy's biased opinion-tried out his English on her, demanding, "What is an American doing in Berlin?"
"Trying to get out, pal. Nothing else but," Peggy answered from the bottom of her heart. "You want to send me home, I'll kiss your shiny boots." And were they ever. She could have put on her makeup using the highly polished black leather for a mirror.
For some reason, the SS man didn't like that, either. "It is a privilege to come to the capital of the Reich," he spluttered.
"I'm sure the RAF thinks so, too," Peggy said sweetly.
The SS man was a fine, fair Aryan, which only made his flush more obvious. "Air pirates!" he said, proving he not only read but believed Goebbels' newspapers. "They murder innocent civilians-women and children."
"Sure," Peggy said, and then, incautiously, "What do you think your own bombers are doing?"
"We strike only military targets," the SS man insisted. The scary thing was, he plainly believed that, too.
Peggy wanted to yank off his high-crowned cap and beat him over the head with it, in the hope of knocking some sense into him. But she held back-it was bound to be a lost cause. If you were the kind of jerk who joined the SS, you had to be immune to sense. She contented herself with, "Can I go now?"
"'May.' It should be 'may.'" Proud of winning a battle in her language, the SS man handed back her passport and waved her on.
She turned a corner-and walked straight into a police checkpoint. "Your papers-at once!" a beer-bellied cop shouted. Peggy produced the American passport. The policeman recoiled like Bela Lugosi not seeing his reflection in a mirror. As the SS man had before him, he barked, "What are you doing in Berlin?"
And, as she had before, Peggy answered truthfully: "Trying to get out." Only later did she wonder about taking a big chance twice running. How many chances had she taken? Too damned many-she was sure of that. Hadn't she been proud of acting more mature? She sure couldn't prove it today.
But she got by with it one more time. "Pass," the cop said, writing a note on a sheet clipped to a flat board. Any Gestapo official who examined all the reports various Berlin security officials compiled could figure out everywhere she went. For all she knew, some Gestapo goon did that every day. If she were a spy, it might have meant something. But she was only an interned tourist with a big mouth.
She couldn't even have fun shopping. Window displays had nothing to do with what you could actually buy. And everything you could buy required ration coupons of one kind or another. She got enough for food to keep her going. For almost everything else, the Germans didn't seem to feel obligated to take care of her.
And, after the Athenia went down, she couldn't get out. She'd tried to arrange another train ticket to Copenhagen. She'd tried to arrange a plane ticket to Stockholm. Once she was in Scandinavia, she could get to England. Once she was in England, she could get to the States…if the Germans didn't torpedo her on the way. And if they did, well, going down with her ship sometimes seemed more appealing than staying in Berlin.
But they wouldn't let her out. She got "Your papers!" when she tried to buy her tickets, too. And when she flashed her passport then, it wasn't magic. It was more like poison. They would frown. They would check a list. Then they would say, "I am very sorry, but this is verboten." They liked saying verboten. Telling people no was much more fun than saying yes would have been. You got to watch your victims throw the most delightful tantrums.
Peggy refused to give them the satisfaction. She just walked away both times. After failing to get the plane ticket, she hied herself off to the U.S. embassy. If she couldn't get help there, she figured, she couldn't get help anywhere.
By all the signs, she couldn't get help anywhere. The embassy personnel spoke English, not German, but they might as well have clicked their heels and intoned, "Verboten." What they did say amounted to, "Sorry, but we can't make the German government get off the dime."
"Why not?" Peggy snarled at an undersecretary-she'd made herself obnoxious enough at the embassy that the clerks had booted her upstairs to get rid of her. "Denmark's neutral. Sweden's neutral. We're neutral, for crying out loud. Why won't the Nazis let me out of this loony bin?"
The undersecretary-Jenkins, his name was, Constantine Jenkins-had shiny fingernails-painted with clear polish?-and a soft, well-modulated voice. Peggy guessed he was a fairy, not that that should have had anything to do with the price of beer. "Well, Mrs. Druce, the long answer is that the Germans say they're at war and they fear espionage," he replied. "That weakens any arguments we might make, because it means they can tell us, 'Sorry, emergency-we don't have to listen to you.'"
"Espionage, my ass!" Peggy blurted, which made the faggy undersecretary blink. She went on, "The only thing I've seen is what a horrible, run-down dump this place is."
"That is information the Germans would rather keep to themselves," Jenkins said seriously. "And besides, the short answer is, the Germans are just being Germans-sometimes they enjoy being difficult. And when they do, you can shout till you're blue in the face for all the good it does you."
"Being pissy, you mean. Shit," Peggy said. That made much more sense than she wished it did. She also made the American diplomat blink again, which was the most fun she'd had all day. She went on, "Can't I just sneak over the border somewhere? All I want to do is go home."
"I would not recommend it," he said seriously. "We can be of no assistance to anyone caught violating the regulations of the country in which she happens to find herself, and whether those regulations are just or humane is, I'm afraid, beside the point."
"Shit," she said again, and walked out of the embassy. A man standing across the street wrote something down. Were the Nazis keeping tabs on her in particular or on everybody who went in and out? What difference did it make, really?
They wouldn't let her go to Sweden. They wouldn't let her go to Denmark. They wouldn't let her go to Norway or Finland, either-she'd also found out that Oslo and Helsinki were off limits. The bastards wouldn't let her go anywhere decent, damn them to hell.
She thought about Warsaw. Regretfully, she didn't think about it long. Maybe she could get to Scandinavia or Romania from there, but she feared the odds weren't good. The Russians had pushed Poland right into bed with Germany. The Poles probably didn't want to land there, but what choice did they have when the Red Army jumped them? She wished Stalin such a horrible case of mange, it would make his soup-strainer mustache fall out. That'd teach him!
Then she had a brainstorm-or she hoped it was, anyway. She turned around and went back to the American embassy. The guy across the street scribbled some more. Maybe the Gestapo would have to issue him another pencil.
This time, Peggy didn't have to be so difficult to get to see the queer undersecretary. Constantine Jenkins eyed her as if she had a case of the mange. "What can I do for you now, Mrs. Druce?" he asked warily.
"Can you help me get to Budapest?" Peggy asked. Hungary wasn't exactly a nice place these days. Admiral Horthy's government (and wasn't that a kick in the ass? a landlocked country run by an admiral) was a hyena skulking along behind the German lion, feeding on scraps from the bigger beast's kill. When the Hungarian army helped Hitler dismantle Czechoslovakia, England and France promptly broke relations. So did Russia. But she didn't think any of them had gone and declared war on the Horthy regime. And if they hadn't…something might be arranged.