Black Out (46 page)

‘Troy, Troy, Troy. What do
you
believe? Don’t answer that! I can tell you. Troy, you believe nothing.’

She knelt at his feet, took his hands in hers and pulled him down to her. She held him by the head, face to face, their noses almost touching, one hand spanning the lump on the back of his head and the cut on his temple, the other palm spread across his cheekbone.

‘Troy,’ she whispered hoarsely, ‘if you believed in anything it would be in justice or whatever you want to call it, or maybe the rule of law. I prefer justice. At first I used to think that’s what drove you. Justice. That’s not the way it is. The guys you catch could swing or walk free for all you cared – you love one thing only, the pursuit. You have a sense of means without a sense of ends. You can’t see beyond the pursuit. You’re like some fifth horseman of the Apocalypse. After War and Famine comes the Avenging Demon. Never asks where it’s all leading but never gives up. It’s as though you’re no part of the system that follows, the system it all fits into. I am. I know what I do. I know what connects with what. You don’t. You never did. So you can’t ask me what I believe.’

From saint and martyr to demon possessed in a thousand easy moves, thought Troy. Her mouth closed on his. As she pulled back from the kiss to look at him, four years of rage and pain welled momentarily in his eyes. Tosca licked the tears, kissed Troy on each eyelid, on the forehead, all over his face. Pressed into the flesh of her cheek, smothered in the smell of Tosca, he said as clearly as he could, ‘I honestly thought you were dead.’

‘Well. It’s time to fuck the ghost.’ And she tore the shirt from his back.

The radiator creaked and strained in the corner, occasionally kicking out with a knock that echoed around the building in a slow diminuendo. Troy stood in the window looking down into the street. The greyest of days. The streets empty of people. A joyless Christmas morning silence, broken only by the near-subliminal hum of aeroplanes. Tosca had been an age in the bathroom. He was fully dressed. Hands in his overcoat pockets, waiting again. There was a gentle rap on the door. Troy opened it. A small, dark man, buried in a huge grey overcoat, his face half-hidden by a scarf wrapped up over his chin and a trilby pulled well down on to his forehead.

‘Excuse me,’ he said in near-perfect English and swung his attaché case forward to indicate his wish to come in. Troy stepped aside. The man set down the case on the bed and turned back to Troy. Troy wondered whether Tosca had a gun, and what he should do if the man produced a weapon. The man unwrapped a layer of scarf revealing the kind of face that has five-o’clock shadow all day, and pushed his hat further back on his head. He looked to Troy to be about forty-five.

‘At last,’ he said.

‘At last?’ said Troy. ‘At last what?’

‘At last we meet. A little late, but not too late I believe to express my gratitude.’

Troy stared. He could not place the face, he could not place the accent. A Czech, a Pole, one of those airmen that used to be so abundant in England only a few years ago?

‘You weren’t to know what you were doing for me. But believe me, it helped my faith in humanity to know that my death was not ignored. Strange as it may seem it gave me a grudging respect for the Metropolitan Police that I had scarcely felt in all my years in London.’

A sepia photograph, a paler patch on patterned wallpaper where it had once stood came flashing back through Troy’s mind, even to the mundanity of the flowered pattern itself.

‘You’re Peter Wolinski,’ he said.

The man glanced impatiently at the bathroom door.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘and if you will forgive me this will be but a short reunion. If you would be so good as to tell Major Toskevich I called.’

‘Toskevich?’

‘If you ever have to adopt an alias, Inspector Troy, you will find it easier to adjust the closer it is to your own name. But, then I suppose that was exactly the logic your late father employed. He never ceased to be one of us you know, but I doubt there was any way he could have told you. Well, I’ll bid you goodbye.’

He opened the door, and Troy grabbed him by the sleeve.

‘My uncle too?’ he asked.

‘Good Lord no. A complete maverick. What nation in its right mind wants a secret agent who tells the truth from a soapbox at Speaker’s Corner? Only the most far-fetched paranoiacs in the Secret Service could ever think he was one of us.’

With that he was gone. Troy turned to the case. He listened to the sound of running water in the bathroom. He flicked the catches on the case and opened the lid. It was empty but for a fat bundle of crisp, white five-pound notes. He looked once more at the bathroom door. It had opened noiselessly and she was standing in it. Fully clothed and made-up. She bent to pull on her shoes, saying as she did, ‘Go ahead. It’s yours.’

Troy picked up the bundle and riffled a few sheets.

‘Are they real?’ he asked.

‘Of course they’re not real. You think I’d waste a thousand smackeroos on a fuckin’ Nazi? We ran ’em off by the wagonload during the war. Never got used. I just helped myself to a handful.’

‘Dieter said there were few secrets in Berlin,’ Troy sighed.

‘Von Asche’ll never spot the difference. They’re the best. Pay the guy and take your chance. It’s a good scheme. I could have thought it up myself.’

‘Was the messenger your idea too?’

‘No – I think Peter was just curious. I think he felt he had to prove something to you. I guess after four years he wanted to let you know he was still alive. Something like that. You know these Poles, they’re not like you and me. They’re half-crazy to begin with.’

‘You and I are alike?’

Troy split the bundle into two and stuffed a wad in each pocket of his overcoat. Tosca slipped on her fur coat and told him it was time to go. Out in the street Troy asked how he would get back.

‘No problem. We’re only on the Schadowstrasse. The end of the block and you’re back on Unter den Linden. You could practically spit through the Brandenburg Gate.’

‘What do I do?’ he asked, clueless. ‘Just walk across?’

Tosca slipped an arm though his and tapped his shoulder lightly with the side of her head – walking along in the bitter biting cold like young lovers.

‘Of course,’ she replied. ‘With me along, you think anybody’s going to ask you a damn thing? Just walk right into the British sector. I am known in these parts. Believe me, baby, I am known.’

She eased her grip on him slightly and kicked out a few paces in mock goose step.

‘I don’t think anyone’s going to find that funny,’ Troy said.

At the Brandenburg Gate four soldiers stood bored and cold. Troy wondered if they would salute Tosca or block his way. They looked, but there seemed to be not a flicker of recognition or concern on their faces, and as Tosca stepped under the arch two of them shouldered their rifles in a semblance of duty and moved off. The arch was chipped and scarred from bullets, parts of it flaked and crumbled almost before the eyes, the dust of a thousand-year Reich.

‘I’ll see you at Gatow tonight,’ she said, and pecked him on the cheek, the perfect wife seeing off her commuter husband on the 8.10 from Weybridge.

‘What?’

‘I thought the RAF wangled you on to a night flight out?’

‘They have. But how the hell do you expect to get into a British base?’

‘Oh baby, this is so elementary. Two and two are four – you get my drift. Now, Gatow is an airfield. That means planes land there, right? Now how do planes land – yes I know they have pilots – but, my stupid angel, they also need air traffic control or they’d be flying up each other’s asshole like New England turkeys in a blizzard! Who do you think runs air traffic control? We do. Not a
single damn plane could make it down the air corridor to land if we told the Krauts on this side to pull air traffic control.’

‘Your world,’ he said, ‘is composed of so many shades of grey … it isn’t even worth guessing any more.’

‘Suit yourself – but Uncle Joe and the Missouri haberdasher have a few little deals going here and there. I wouldn’t be surprised if Stalin hasn’t got a tasteless tie for Christmas. Trust me. I’ll be there. Pay the Kraut and get out to Gatow. And don’t mess around. I don’t have all day. Bob Hope’s playing Tempelhof tonight. I wouldn’t want to miss him!’

‘Curiouser … ’ said Troy.

‘It’s all part of the game.’

‘… And curiouser,’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose you knew my father?’ She shook her head, grinning.

‘Or Tom Driberg?’

‘Now you’re being silly.’

She pecked him on the cheek again, turned, and with what Troy would have said was a skip in her step, set off quickly back down Unter den Linden. Troy looked to the guards. One of them made a beckoning motion, pointed to the West and then turned his back on him. Troy walked through the arch, hearing the sound of his own shoes clatter on the flagstones in the vast silence as though he were the only person in all Berlin. Everywhere the piles of rubble had been turned into shining white mountains by the overnight snow, but nothing on earth could make the man-made ruins seem natural. A landscape in white, slashed by jagged lines. It reminded Troy of the day nearly five years ago when he and Bonham had followed the ragtag army of Stepney schoolboys out to the ruined streets on the Green. Another white, dazzling landscape of war’s detritus. The silence shattered. Planes overhead. No more Heinkel, no more Dornier. Douglas Dakotas droned and purred. Rising out of Tempelhof.

Clark showed Troy to a booth in the mess at Gatow. The mess was three-quarters empty, but the dozen or more men at the bar seemed hell bent on making up for it by celebrating Christmas as loudly and as drunkenly as they could. It seemed a bleak variety of joy.

‘Just the single men who weren’t allowed full passes, sir. The married men are off the base and anyone who got a pass has somewhere better to go. You’ll be fine here.’

He looked out of the first-floor window at the snowstorm swirling past the window and down to the ground, where snowploughs battled to keep the runways clear.

‘I wouldn’t bet on anything running to order, if I were you.’

‘That’s OK,’ said Troy. ‘You get off. I’ll be fine.’

‘I’m sorry it’s all been a waste of time, sir.’

Troy looked at Clark. It wasn’t mere pleasantry. The man meant what he said.

‘It hasn’t. I paid von Asche at lunchtime.’

Clark looked surprised, then a smile broke the front of deceptive misery.

‘Have you told Inspector Franck, if you don’t mind my asking?’

‘No. I think he’d rather not know, don’t you?’

Clark shook Troy’s hand, a little awkwardly.

‘Been a pleasure, sir.’

‘No, Mr Clark, it’s been an education.’

Clark set off down the room. He’d just reached the door when Tosca backed in, wearing her Master Sergeant’s uniform, shaking the snow from her coat. She almost collided with Clark, threw him a friendly grin, said a quick ‘Hi, Swifty’, and rushed up to Troy breathless and beaming.

‘Gee, get a load of this weather.’

She flung herself down in the booth, opposite Troy. It was the same uniform, the same face, only the haircut was different. He could hardly believe it.

‘I thought I’d never make it.’

‘“Hi, Swifty”?’ Troy said. ‘Hi, Swifty! You know Clark?’

‘Sure. And he knows me. Where the heck d’you think I got the coffee you had at breakfast? I told you, I’m known in these parts. I come here quite often. Though every time I have to put on this damn uniform it gets tighter. I’m surprised it fits at all after all these years.’

She breathed in and patted her stomach.

‘Is there anyone you don’t know?’

‘What’s that supposed to mean? As if I can’t guess.’

‘How long have you known Wolinski?’

‘Nowhere near as long as you think I have.’

‘But he was a Russian agent in London, wasn’t he?’

‘He wasn’t there to sell chopped liver.’

‘But you didn’t know him?’

‘Will you drop this. Jesus. I told him it was a dumb idea to show up now. It would only set you thinking. No. I didn’t know him. Now can we talk about something else!’

‘When you left London. When you faked your death. What was I supposed to believe?’

‘That I was dead. I had to do that. I really had to.’

‘You left everything behind?’

‘Of course — I had to throw you off the scent. I knew you’d come looking — if you lived that is — and I knew that if you thought I was alive you’d never give up. There was a real danger that you’d blow my cover. My job was over — I wasn’t there to watch Jimmy, I’d no idea what he was up to till you came along — and I wasn’t there to control Wolinski — I mean, I never even met the guy till 1946 — I was there to see that nothing about the opening of the second front was held back. With D-Day the job was done. I guess they wouldn’t have pulled me so quickly, but once you had your shoot-out with Jimmy I could see all hell breaking loose. Zelly turned purple — maybe permanently — and Jimmy found himself shipped out to France on day two.’

‘They told the Yard it was day one.’

‘Well — they would, wouldn’t they? Day two was bad enough. They sure as hell weren’t going to let Jimmy risk his neck on day one. I mean, even Churchill wasn’t allowed over on day one!’

‘So you gave up everything?’

‘Sure — it would have been a convincing murder if I’d packed
first! I lost some good stuff. I had this cute little silk dress … and I could have used my jewellery.’

Troy needed no reminding of her jewellery.

‘I have something of yours,’ he said gently.

‘You kept a souvenir?’

“Yes. I have your copy of
Huckleberry Finn:’

‘That’s OK you can keep it.’

‘And I have a pair of silver-mounted pearl ear-rings.’

She looked at him quizzically, smiling sweetly, as though foxed by the choice he had made from all she had left behind, but in seconds the realisation hit her. She buried her face in her hands, bent her head — spoke through the fingers.

‘Oh God. Where did you find it?’

‘In Wolinski’s flat. Not the first time I went there, not the second. The third. You dropped it in that middle room of his. I suppose it was some time in May. You went there after you and I met, after you and I had discussed the case — of which you now tell me you knew nothing.’