Field Gray (36 page)

GERMANY, 1954

T
hings were quiet at the Pension Esebeck, and there was little to do except eat and read the newspapers. But
Die Welt
was the only paper I was keen to read. I was especially interested in the small ads at the back, and on my second morning in Göttingen I found the message for Field Gray that I had been waiting for. It was some verses from the Gospel according to Saint Luke, 1:44, 49; 2:3; 6:1; 1:40; 1:37; and 1:74.

I took the Bible from the shelf in the sitting room, and went to my own room to reconstruct the message. It read as follows:

Having burned the note I’d made of the message, I went to look for Vigée and found the Frenchman in a little walled garden overlooking the canal. As usual, he looked as if he hadn’t slept; his eyes were half closed against the smoke from his cigarette, and there was a little cup of coffee in the palm of his hand, like a coin. He regarded me with his usual indifferent expression, but, as before, when he spoke it was frequently with the added emphasis of a firm nod or a quick shake of the head.

“You made your peace with God, yes?” His German was halting but grammatical.

“I needed some time to reflect,” I said. “On something that happened in Berlin. On Sunday.”

“With Elisabeth, yes?”

“She wants to get married,” I said. “To me.”

He shrugged. “Congratulations, Sébastien.”

“Soon.”

“How soon?”

“She’s waited five years for me, Émile. And now that I’ve seen her again…well, she doesn’t propose to wait any longer. In short, she gave me an ultimatum. That she would forget all about me unless I married her before the weekend.”

“Impossible,” said Vigée.

“That’s what I said, Émile. However, she means it. I’m certain of it. I never knew this woman to say anything she didn’t mean.” I took one of his offered cigarettes.

“That’s hardly civilized,” he said.

“That’s women,” I said. “And it’s me, too. Up until now, everything in the world I ever wanted was never quite as good as I thought it would be. But I’ve a strong feeling that Elisabeth’s different. In fact, I know she is.”

Vigée picked a piece of tobacco off his tongue and for a moment regarded it critically, as if it might have been the answer to all our problems.

“I was thinking, Émile. The POW train won’t be here until next Tuesday night. If I could spend Sunday with Elisabeth, in Berlin…Just a few hours.”

Vigée put down his coffee cup and started to shake his head.

“No, please listen,” I said. “If I could spend a few hours with her, I’m sure I could persuade her to wait. Especially if I arrived with a few presents. A ring, perhaps. Nothing expensive. Just a token of my feelings for her.”

He was still shaking his head.

“Oh, come on, Émile, you know what women are like. Look, there’s a shop full of inexpensive jewelry on the corner of Speckstrasse. If you could advance me a few marks—enough to buy a ring—then I’m sure I could persuade her to wait for me. If this wasn’t my last chance, I wouldn’t ask. We could be back here by Monday evening. A full twenty-four hours before the train is even due in Friedland.”

“And what if you chose not to come back?” he said. “It’s very difficult bringing people out of Berlin across the Green Border. What’s to stop you from just staying there? She doesn’t even live in the French sector.”

“At least say you’ll think about it,” I said. “I mean, it would be a real shame if I allowed my own disappointment to cloud my eyes next Tuesday evening.”

“Meaning?”

“I want to help you find Edgard de Boudel, Émile. Really I do. But there has to be a little give-and-take, especially in a situation like this. If I’m to work for you, then surely it’s best that I’m completely in your debt, monsieur. That there’s nothing unpleasant between us.”

He smiled a nasty little smile and threw his cigarette over the wall and into the canal. Then he quickly gathered the lapels of my jacket in his fist and smacked me hard across both cheeks.

“Maybe you’ve forgotten La Santé,” he said. “Your boche friends, Oberg and Knochen, and their death sentences.” He slapped me again for good measure.

I took it as calmly as I was able and said: “That might work on your wife and your sister, Franzi, but not on me, see?” I caught the hand he was waving near my ear and twisted it hard. “No one gets to slap me unless I’ve got my hand in her panties. Now, take your paws off this cheap French suit before I teach you the Method on tough.”

I looked him in the eye and saw that he seemed to relax a little, so I let go his hand in order to prize his fingers off my coat, and that was when he punched me with a right hook that rocked my head like a balloon on a stick. Probably he’d have punched me again but for my own presence of mind, which is another way of saying that I banged its hard bony covering firmly against the bridge of his long hooked nose.

The Frenchman yelped with pain, and finally letting go of my coat, he pressed his fingers to the side of his nose and took several steps back until he reached the garden wall.

“Look,” I said, “stop trying to polish my chin and take it easy, Émile. I’m not asking for the return of Alsace-Lorraine, just one lousy Sunday afternoon with the woman I love. Some compassionate leave, that’s all. And none of that gets in the way of me helping you find your traitor. I help you, you help me. Unless you want me to enroll in a course at the university, it’s not like I have anything much to do before next Tuesday evening.”

“I think you broke my nose,” he said.

“No, I didn’t. There’s not nearly enough blood. Take it from someone who’s broken a few noses in his time. Although nothing on the scale of that Eiffel Tower on your face.” I shook my head. “Hey, I’m sorry I hit you, Émile, but for the last nine months a lot of people have been getting tough with me and I’ve had enough of it, see? I have to look at my face every morning, Frenchman. It’s not much of a face, but it’s the only one I’ve got. And it’s got to last me for a while yet. So I don’t like it when people think they can knock it around. I’m sensitive like that.”

He wiped his nose and nodded, but the incident hung strong in the air between us like the smell of burned hops from a brewery. And for a moment we both stood there stupidly, wondering how to proceed.

It could have been worse, I told myself. There had been a brief moment when I had actually contemplated tipping him over the wall and into the canal.

He lit a cigarette and smoked it as if he thought it might improve his humor and take his mind off his nose, which, now that he had wiped away the blood, was already looking better than he might have supposed.

“You’re right,” he said. “There’s no reason at all why this thing can’t be fixed. After all, it is, as you say, just one Sunday afternoon, yes?”

I nodded. “Just one Sunday afternoon.”

“Very well. We will fix it. Yes, I tell you, I would do anything to get de Boudel.”

Including lie to me, I thought. After I had served my purpose and identified de Boudel, there was no telling what the French might do with me: send me back to La Santé, to the Amis, even the Russians. France was, after all, cozying up to the Soviet Union in its foreign policy, and the return of an escaped prisoner was not beyond its perfidy.

“And a ring?” I asked, as if such a bauble really mattered to me or to Elisabeth.

“Yes,” he said. “I’m sure that can be arranged also.”

GERMANY, 1954

O
n Saturday, Grottsch and Wenger drove me back to Berlin, as agreed; and on Sunday, I returned to Motzstrasse, only this time my two companions insisted on accompanying me to Elisabeth’s door.

I let her kiss me chastely on the cheek, and then made the introductions.

“This is Herr Grottsch. And Herr Wenger. They’re responsible for my safety while I’m in Berlin, and they insist on looking around your apartment, just to make sure everything is kosher.”

Elisabeth frowned. “Are they policemen?”

“Yes. Kind of.”

“Are you in any trouble?”

“I can assure you it’s nothing to worry about,” I said smoothly. “It’s not much more than a formality. But they certainly won’t leave us alone until they’ve had a good look around.”

Elisabeth shrugged. “If you think it’s really necessary. But there’s no one else here. I can’t imagine what you think you’ll find, gentlemen. This isn’t Hohenschönhausen, you know.”

Grottsch stopped and frowned. “What do you know about Hohenschönhausen?” he asked suspiciously.

“I can see your friends aren’t from Berlin, Bernie,” said Elisabeth. “My dear man, everyone in Berlin knows about Hohenschönhausen.”

“Everyone except me,” I said truthfully.

“Well,” she said. “You remember the Heike factory?”

“The meat-processing factory? On the corner of Freienewelder Strasse.”

She nodded. “That whole area is now occupied by the State Security Service of the DDR.”

“I thought that was in Karlshorst,” I said.

“Not anymore,” she said.

“You seem to know a lot about it, Fräulein,” said Wenger.

“I’m a Berliner. The communists pretend the place doesn’t exist and the rest of us pretend not to see it. It’s an arrangement that suits us all very well, I think. A very Berlin kind of arrangement. It was the same with Gestapo headquarters on Prinz Albrechtstrasse. Remember?”

I nodded. “Of course. It was the building that no one saw.”

Elisabeth looked at Grottsch and Wenger and frowned. “So? Go ahead and search.”

The two men walked through the apartment and found nothing. When they were quite satisfied at finding nothing, Grottsch said, “We’ll be outside the door.” And then they left.

I moved her away from the door in case they were listening and into the kitchen, where we embraced fondly.

“What were you thinking of?” I said. “Mentioning the Stasi like that?”

“I don’t know. It just sort of came out.”

“Still, you recovered it pretty well, I thought. I’d forgotten about Heike’s meat. In the army, we lived on that stuff.”

“That’s probably why they shot him. Richard Heike.”

“Who? The Russians?”

She nodded. “Who are those two characters?”

“Just a couple of thugs who work for French intelligence.”

“But they were German, weren’t they?”

“I think the French rather enjoy making us do their dirty work.”

“So that’s what you’re doing.”

“Actually, I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“That’s a comforting thought.”

“I told the French I had to come here and ask you to marry me. That you’d given me an ultimatum.”

“Not a bad idea at that, Gunther.” She pulled away from my embrace and started to make us coffee. “I don’t much like living on my own. To be alone in Berlin is not like being alone anywhere else. Even the trees here look isolated.”

“You mean you really would like to be married?”

“Why not? You were kind to me, Gunther. Once in 1931. Again in 1940. A third time in 1946. And then a fourth time last year. That makes four times in twenty-three years. My father left home when I was ten. My husband—well, you remember what he was like. Very free with his fists was my Ulrich. I have a brother who I haven’t seen in years.” Elisabeth took out a handkerchief and dabbed her eyes. “God, I hadn’t realized it until now, but you’ve been one of the only constant figures in my life, Bernie Gunther. Perhaps the only one.” She sniffed loudly. “Shit.”

“What about your Americans?”

“What about them? Are they here, drinking coffee in my kitchen? Are they? Do they send me money from America? No, they don’t. They fucked me while they were here, the way Amis do, and then they went home to Wichita and Phoenix. Oh, yes, there was another one I didn’t tell you about. Major Winthrop. Now, he did give me money, only it wasn’t like I asked for it or wanted it, if you know what I mean. He used to leave it on the dresser, so that when he went back to his wife in Boston, it meant he went with a clear conscience because we’d never had a proper relationship. At least, not according to him. I was just some little choco-lady he saw when he wanted someone to suck his pipe.” She blew her nose, but the tears kept on coming. “And you ask me why I want to get married, Gunther. It’s not just Berlin that’s an enclave, it’s me, too. And if I don’t do something about it, soon, then I don’t know what’s to become of me. You want an ultimatum? Well, there it is. You want to me to help you? Then help me. That’s my price.”

I nodded. “Then it’s lucky I came prepared.” I handed her the ring box Vigée had given me. Bought, he said, from a secondhand shop in Göttingen, but for all I knew, he might have stolen it from the dwarf, Alberich.

Elisabeth opened the box. The ring was not Rhinegold, but it did at least look like something valuable, although in truth I’d seen better diamonds on a playing card. Not that it seemed to matter to her. In my experience, women like the idea of jewelry no matter what it looks like. If they like you, then they’re almost always pleased to see a ring of any size and color.

She gasped and snatched it out of the box.

“If it doesn’t fit,” I said lamely, “then I suppose there’s a way of fixing that.”

But the ring was already on her finger and seemed to fit well enough, which was her cue to start crying again. There could be no doubt about it. I had a real talent for making women happy.

“Just so you know,” I said. “My wife died, twice. The first one after the first war and the second one soon after the second. That’s not a record you can be proud of as a husband. If there’s another war, you should probably take the precaution of divorcing me quickly. But frankly, I’ve always been better at finding other people’s husbands or sleeping with their wives. What else? Oh yes, I’m a born loser. That’s important for you to know, I think. This, at least, explains my current situation, which is not without its hazards, angel. I daresay you’ve gathered that. A man doesn’t work for his enemies unless he has little choice in the matter. Or no choice at all. I’m just a cheap paper knife. People pick me up when they need to open an envelope, and then they put me down again. I don’t have any say in the matter. As far back as I can remember, that’s all I’ve been when I thought I was more than that. The truth is that we’re just what we’ve done and what we do, and not what we ever want to be.”

“You’re wrong,” she said. “It doesn’t matter what we’ve done or what we do. What matters is what others think we are. If you’re looking for meaning, then here it is. Let me supply that for you. To me you’ll always be a good man, Gunther. In my brown eyes, you’ll always be the man who was there for me when I needed someone to be there. Maybe that’s all any of us need. You want a plan or a purpose, then look no further than me, mister.”

I grinned, liking her resilience. You could tell she was a Berliner, all right. Probably she’d been one of those women with a bucket who’d cleared the city of rubble in 1945. Raped one day, rebuilding it the next, like some Trojan princess in a play by some marble-headed Greek. Made of the same stuff as that German aviatrix who used to fly missiles for Hitler. You could say that’s why I kissed her—properly this time—but it might just as easily have been because she was as sexy as black stocking tops. Especially when her eyes were fixed on me. Besides, most German men prefer a woman who looks like she has a healthy appetite. Which is not to say Elisabeth was fat, or even large, just well-endowed.

“I expect you’re wondering if there was a reply to your letter,” she said.

“It was beginning to itch a little.”

“Good. At the very least, I want to see some scratch marks for what you put me through to get this. I’ve never been so scared.”

She opened a kitchen drawer and took out a letter, which she now handed to me. “I’ll finish making that coffee while you read it.”