They were halfway down the corridor when Paul stopped abruptly. ‘Someone’s coming.’
Voices. Two women. Getting closer.
‘In here.’ Clara pushed open the nearest door. A storage room lined with shelves of linen and medical supplies.
They pulled the wheelchair inside and shut the door. Clara pressed her ear against it.
‘.?.?. told me it was urgent,’ a voice was saying. Sharp. Familiar.
Clara’s leg began to shake. She knew that voice.
‘We didn’t have any notice of the request. Herr Dankmarr is checking now. He wants us to delay them. The nurse was very insistent. She had a strange accent.’
‘What sort?’ The first voice was closer now. The voice Clara recognised.
‘I’m not sure. Maybe from the border. It sounded almost British at one point.’
‘British? A British nurse is most unusual.’
Brandt. It was definitely Brandt. That low tone, yet sharp and crisp pronunciation. It was unmistakable. Clara looked at Paul, who had gone white.
‘Where is she now?’ Brandt asked.
‘Room fifteen. The Rothstein patient.’
The footsteps moved away further down the corridor.
‘We have to go,’ Clara whispered. ‘Now.’
Paul opened the door carefully. The corridor was empty. They moved fast, wheeling Hannah towards the entrance.
The nurse at reception looked up. Her eyes narrowed when she saw them, and she reached for the telephone.
‘Keep going. Don’t stop,’ said Clara under her breath.
‘We are just putting the patient in the ambulance,’ she said to the nurse. ‘I will be right back.’
‘Wait,’ said the nurse.
Clara ignored her. Paul pushed the wheelchair faster. Through the doors out into the cold air. The ambulance was right there, engine running, Max at the wheel. He threw his cigarette out of the open window and jumped out. He ran around to the rear of the vehicle and flung open the doors, before lifting Hannah from the wheelchair. She was crying now, silent tears streaming down her face.
‘Get in,’ ordered Max. ‘Clara, you sit up front.’
Paul climbed in the back with Hannah and Clara took up position in the front passenger seat. Max slammed the doors closed and ran for the driver’s seat, jumping in behind the wheel.
The ambulance lurched forward.
Through the wing mirror, Clara watched the doors of the facility, expecting a guard or a nurse or Brandt to run out any minute now. But there was no one. Within seconds the ambulance was hurtling through the gates and out onto the road.
They’d done it. She’d done it. This time she hadn’t stood at a window and watched. This time she hadn’t done nothing. The Levins’ faces flashed through her mind – the mother’s blank expression, the baby wrapped in blankets, the empty apartment.
Clara’s eyes burned. She blinked hard but couldn’t stop the tears. ‘We got them out,’ she whispered as the ambulance sped towards Berlin, putting distance between them and the Neuruppin clinic with every passing minute.
Chapter 20
Twenty minutes outside Berlin, the thumping from the rear of the ambulance shattered the tense silence. Max had been driving carefully, fast enough to matter, slow enough not to draw attention, but now Clara exchanged a sharp look with him as he guided the vehicle to the roadside.
Clara jumped out and ran around to the back, pulling open the doors.
