Tempelhof is the older, shabbier airport in Berlin, a prewar terminal whose nostalgic displays of early passenger flight become the setting for Xavier March and Charlie to obtain a car as they try to escape. Its ordinary travel routines offer a narrow opening, but the false identity Charlie uses makes that opening precarious.

Setting and appearance

Unlike Flughafen Hermann Göring, Tempelhof is described as primitive and worn. The departure terminal, built before the war, is decorated with images of pioneering aviation: corrugated-fuselage Lufthansa Junkers, pilots in goggles and scarves, and women travelers in cloche hats. The display evokes an earlier, apparently innocent age of flight even as March and Charlie use the airport for an illicit departure by road.

March and Charlie at the terminal

March takes up a position near the terminal entrance, pretending to study the photographs while Charlie approaches the car-rental desk. She performs the role of a woman in distress who has missed her flight and has family waiting. The agent consults a typed sheet, then agrees to rent her a car and asks for her driving license.

The license bears the name Magda Voss, a twenty-four-year-old from Mariendorf. March recognizes it as belonging to a woman murdered on her wedding day five days earlier; Max Jaeger had left it with papers from the Spandau shootings. Charlie’s successful performance therefore depends on a document tied to another person’s death, and March deliberately looks away while the rental agent records its details.

The car and the risk of detection

Charlie receives the keys to a four-door black Opel with ten thousand kilometers on its odometer. Five minutes later, March joins her in the parking lot: he navigates while she drives. He has not previously seen her at the wheel, and her exaggerated caution in the busy traffic seems unlike her usual manner.

The rental creates an immediate exposure. A copy of the agreement will be sent automatically to the police the next morning, and the use of a murdered woman’s license could attract attention. March calculates that the delay over the Sunday and Monday Führertag holiday may give them until Tuesday before the police act. By then, he expects they may be safe, arrested, or dead. The car is thus both their means of moving onward and a record that could betray them.

Narrative significance

Tempelhof brings together the novel’s contrast between public normality and concealed danger. The terminal’s aviation photographs preserve a reassuring image of travel, while the transaction at the rental desk turns routine paperwork into a vulnerability. Charlie’s composed deception secures the Opel, but the document that makes the escape possible also links them to a murder investigation.