The Butchers of Berlin (30 page)

Inviting Gersten to play there looked like sound Russian strategy. Otherwise the local cops would have been round to put an immediate stop to it.

The band finally took a break. Gersten came and found them. He wore a white Russian-style shirt, drenched in sweat. He was grinning and exhilarated.

‘Come and meet Josef. We have about twenty minutes before the next set.’

Josef sat in a back room away from the rest, playing a lazy game of cards, surrounded by bodyguards. He was baby-faced and mean, no more than thirty, younger than Schlegel expected for a
barracks leader. He inspected Schlegel with uncurious eyes. He did not offer to shake hands, though he had Gersten’s. Schlegel stood with his behind his back, not wishing to anyway.

Josef gave his cards to a bodyguard and suggested they step outside. It was breathtakingly cold. Josef told Schlegel it was the one time in the week the huts warmed up. His English was fair.
Schlegel asked where he had learned it. Josef appeared unwilling to answer, not being the type for pleasantries, then said he had attended the School of Oriental and African Studies in London for
two years.

Morgen wandered off into the night, looking like he wouldn’t bother to come back, leaving Schlegel to arbitrate what he could only suppose was the trap being set for Lazarenko.
Negotiations were lubricated with the passing of a bottle, which Josef told Schlegel was better than what the rest drank, which would turn them blind.

Gersten appeared intent and businesslike, studying Josef as he spoke English to Schlegel.

Josef said, ‘I will only say this once. Translate it the way I say it. No interpreter’s gloss.’

He spoke rapidly, forcing Schlegel to absorb what was said, rather than translate as they went along. It took all his concentration. His world was spinning and unless he shut one eye he saw
everything double.

Josef didn’t appear at all drunk although he had knocked back two enormous swigs.

Schlegel addressed Gersten. ‘He says the three men dying in the paint vat was Lazarenko’s work, and Lazarenko is a cruel man with a habit of weeding out Russians. More to the point,
he is not Ukrainian as he pretends but former secret police GPU. One of the dead men recognised him from the time when he committed many atrocities around Zwiahel in northern Ukraine. He murdered
hundreds of Germans and collaborators too. His expertise on the subject is based on his own crimes. He used a slaughterhouse hammer and knives to dispatch his victims. He is, furthermore, really a
Bolshevik spy operating with a false passport. Such passports are easily obtained from the émigré office by going along at lunchtime when they are handed out for cash. He says that
while Lazarenko’s passport is a proper one all the information on the paperwork is false.’

Josef took another huge pull. Between the three of them they had almost finished the bottle in ten minutes.

Gersten appeared in a state of shock.

‘Can this be true? I thought Lazarenko was suspect, but this?’

‘It’s what the man said.’

Someone came out and told Gersten the next set was about to start. He went inside without another word. Josef stuck his fingers down his throat, threw up copious amounts of liquid, straightened
up and held out the last of the bottle for Schlegel. Seeing he had little choice, he downed it in one go, the searing liquid burning his throat. He wanted only to stagger off after Morgen but Josef
said, ‘As our guest it is rude to leave before the end.’

The music went on and on. Schlegel found himself a corner, where he managed to prop himself and more or less pass out, coming to from time to time, when the stamping reached a crescendo. There
was no sign of Morgen, which didn’t surprise him.

It was the only time he experienced drunkenness and the hangover to be simultaneous. He was too far gone to leave and supposed he would have to throw himself at Gersten’s mercy for a ride
home.

At last the evening broke up, though the card games showed every sign of carrying on. Schlegel found himself staring at a dark, gaunt man sitting at one of the tables. The room was still
reeling. The man came briefly into focus. Grigor! Schlegel wondered what on earth the Jewish hearse driver was doing playing cards in that crowded and deafening, smoke-filled room. A look passed,
perhaps one of sardonic amusement on the other man’s part, except Schlegel was too drunk to tell.

When he looked again the man was gone. Schlegel shook his head and wrote it off to drunken hallucination. The room was full of dark, gaunt men as it was.

Gersten had a driver waiting. Schlegel collapsed in the back failing to make sense of what he had translated. Gersten was still high, going on to the driver about what a great time had been had
by all.

They dropped Schlegel off outside his house because Gersten wanted to go around the corner to Grosse Hamburger Strasse.

Sybil was asleep and gasped when she woke to find Gersten sitting on the end of her bed. She presumed he had come to extract his price.

Seeing her fright he said she was quite safe.

‘Look, I didn’t shut the door and the light in the corridor is still on.’

He told her about playing music with a band of Russians, ‘As unbelievable as that sounds.’

He said what a strange and sentimental people they were, so long as you didn’t cross them.

‘I wanted to see how you were settling in. I can’t sleep. I sometimes stay downstairs. Don’t worry, I won’t make a habit of this.’

Sybil prayed for him to go away. She supposed such men helped themselves as and when. But he made no move other than to say to give him her arm.

‘Not your hand. Pull up your sleeve.’

He cut her across the inside of the arm, just a shallow cut, whether with a scalpel or a knife she was too astonished to tell. It didn’t hurt as such. The action struck her as more mundane
than cruel, although she was reminded of her previous observation.

He bandaged the cut using a clean handkerchief, pulling it tight and making a knot, reciting, ‘Left over right, right over left.’

He went to the door.

‘There, you carry my mark. Happy hunting. Take tomorrow to acquaint yourself with your new role. Think of strategies. We will meet again on Monday and begin in earnest. In the meantime,
enjoy your day off.’

The back exit of the holding centre took Sybil out into Sophienstrasse. She was still in a state of disbelief at the events of the last thirty-six hours.

She had walked in the same way on first being taken there, through a garden gate next door to the Evangelical church. The gate was locked. The guard told her she would be given her own key,
which she used to let herself out into the street that Sunday morning. She supposed it was like checking in and out of a hotel, not that she ever had, all very civilised and polite. On arrival her
papers had been checked by a concierge, who showed her the register which needed signing every time she left and returned. The place was in noted contrast to the block where she had lived with her
mother: clean-smelling, uncrowded, silent and still. The privilege of space, she thought.

Her single room was basically furnished but clean, with proper sheets. The first-floor common room was where meals were taken. Her companions were nine young men and three women. Everyone tried
very hard to behave as though their unique situation was ordinary, but the atmosphere was brittle and Sybil supposed this was how a laboratory rat must feel: cared for, caged and inspected. People
were friendly and polite in a robotic way. They said little, flicking through magazines and playing table tennis. Some were still out working. The name Stella came up and Sybil wondered if it was
the dangerously beautiful Stella from fashion school.

As Sybil walked out that crisp dawn, taking her first uncertain steps down the empty street, the same question drummed in her head: how realistic was the task she had been set
of trying to lure this killer? Not at all. It would be only a matter of days before Gersten made her hunt down other fugitives like the rest of them.

At the same time she felt giddy at the prospect of seeing Lore.

As she walked on, gaining confidence, seeing everything with fresh eyes, a part of her she didn’t much like told her the whole thing could be seen as an unexpected relief in a horrible
way. The pressure of survival had been removed. She could move freely. She could still see Lore, if they were careful. She didn’t have to fear patrols.

They were bound to pack her off in the end along with the rest, she was under no illusion about that. But in the meantime, because of her specific task, the question of betrayal was neither here
nor there.

She had wanted to ask whether any of the catchers didn’t come back at night, whether they jumped off bridges or drowned themselves in lakes or just started running and didn’t stop
until they died from exhaustion. But she could answer the question herself. Only those with a taste for compromise had been chosen.

Gersten had said to her, not unkindly, ‘It’s you and me now.’

After Torstrasse, Invalidenstrasse and Alt Moabit, over the river and down Franklinstrasse and across the canal and down to Hardenbergstrasse, past old haunts from student
days; some of the cafés gone, some still there. She thought of Kranzler’s white chairs and summer drinks. In the window of a closed restaurant she read an ominous sign: ‘I
charged extortionate prices which is why I am in a concentration camp now.’

The sight of her reflection in shop windows made her wish she were someone else. She had never done that before, not even at her lowest. Turn right down the Ku’damm and she could be with
Lore in twenty minutes. Instead she turned left, back through the Tiergarten. The bare branches of the few trees left reminded her of lung diagrams in biology classes. She tried to imagine her
breathing stopped. Seeing how most things broke down, it seemed a miracle the heart lasted as long as it did.

Would she remain Sybil Todermann until the moment of extinction, or become lost in the larger universal pain?

Men in wheelchairs were being pushed with a mournful air. No one looked happy. There were fewer dogs and kids. She talked briefly with one dog owner, an old woman standing idle while the dog
rooted around pointlessly. It was the first time she had talked to anyone in her new role.

She rode trams, standing on the cold, open platform, watching the receding street. She took buses. She got on trains at random, making an effort to run up the stairs, despite her aching legs.
She stared blatantly, hoping to be denounced, so she could show her new card, with a frozen smile. Before she had always felt horribly conspicuous. Protected now, she may as well have been
invisible.

Somewhere along the way she became aware of the tall young man behind her. Was she being followed? She saw him again at Bahnhof Zoo in the arcade, a space mainly given over to
limbless veterans, who weren’t supposed to beg but no one stopped them. A patrol passed and Sybil instinctively held her breath before remembering the card in her pocket. Outside she did a
swift U-turn, as if she had forgotten something, and nearly bumped into him. His hat hid most of the white hair.

Her first reaction was anger that Gersten thought she could not be trusted. She realised she had seen the young man before, standing in the crowd in Rosenstrasse, as it was getting dark, before
her arrest.

He knew he had been spotted but continued to tail her, looking sheepish. She was reminded of times when men had followed her in the street, plucking up the courage to approach.

They were spared the embarrassment of standing next to each other at tram stops because the streets had become crowded with workers returning from night shifts. At one point Sybil thought she
had lost him when he failed to get on because of the squash. She loitered in Nollendorfplatz to see if he turned up. Sure enough, he stepped down from the next tram as the clock struck. Sybil
wondered how she would get through the rest of the day.

At the Bollenmüller she was served by the same waitress with greasy hair and had to send back her omelette because the white was uncooked. Like a thrifty little hausfrau she paid out of her
per diem, collected and signed for that morning in the cubbyhole by the back door where she checked in and out.

Sybil entertained the ridiculous notion of summoning the young man loitering outside and offering him a cup of tea and a truce for the day, so they would spend the afternoon as if life were
ordinary, before formally shaking hands and departing.

At Brunnenstrasse she got on a train and got off as the doors closed, crossed the platform and jumped on one as it left in the opposite direction. She saw the man stranded on
the platform. Feeling a rush of excitement, she resisted the temptation to wave.

After one stop she turned round and returned to Brunnenstrasse and walked to the Jewish hospital, where she found Franz in the day room. She knew he hung out there when off duty because he
didn’t like where he lived. He had told her pointedly it was usually possible to find a bed with one of the nurses, and the kitchen was generous with its handouts.

He gave her a crooked smile.

She had come to see if he was safe after not turning up the other day. She could tell he was hoping she had really come back because she wanted to resume their relationship.

She said nothing of Gersten, made out she was still underground and was desperate for papers. It was impossible for her to stay where she was.

Playing along, he said he would see what he could do.

‘Can you protect me? I can’t afford to wait.’ Suppressing a spasm of revulsion, she forced herself to put her hand on his arm and say, ‘Whatever it takes. I see that
now.’

Part of her was thinking if Gersten ever made her a catcher she would settle the score by turning in Franz. Another part of her said Franz was her likeliest lead to the man she was looking for.
She was sure he knew much more than he let on.

She had no clues to the identity of her quarry or his whereabouts. He could be underground or he could be sitting in the next room at the hospital. He seemed to have a freedom of movement.
Gersten said he liked dancing and had been to the place on Auguststrasse. What was she supposed to do? Get a job as a waitress? Enrol for dancing lessons? On the other hand, it was a shrinking
world. He liked girls. He liked dancing. The chances were he was the same age as her or not much older. Perhaps she had known him through college, as part of that large, party crowd. They’d
stuck together. She had the strongest image of sitting with Franz in a café and the same way they had of warming their hands on their tea mugs. It even crossed her mind the person she had
been sent to find was in fact Franz.