The Little Drummer Girl (67 page)

Rossino let out a soft Italian oath. "So how long are they staying?" he complained.

The small pieces were stacked on the front passenger seat. Having locked the boot, the driver began unloading them, but Franz's trolley wasn't going to take all of them at once. One shabby carrier bag in patchwork leather, and two umbrellas, his and hers. A paper carrier bag with a black cat on it. Two large boxes in festive wrapping, presumably belated Christmas presents. Then she saw it: a black briefcase. Hard sides, steel frame, leather name-tag. Good old Helg, thought Charlie; spot on. Minkel was paying off the cab. Like someone else Charlie had once known, he kept his coins in a purse, and spilt them into his palm before parting with the unfamiliar currency. Mrs. Minkel picked up the briefcase.

"Shit," said Charlie.

"Wait," said Rossino.

Laden with parcels, Minkel followed his wife through the sliding doors.

"Around now you tell me you think you recognise him," Rossino said quietly. "I tell you, why don't you go down and take a closer look? You hesitate, you're a shy little virgin." He was holding her by the sleeve of her dress. "Don't force it. If it doesn't work, there's lots of other ways. Frown. Adjust your spectacles. Go."

Minkel was approaching the reception desk with small, slightly silly steps, as if he had never done this before. His wife, holding the briefcase, was at his side. There was only one receptionist on duty and she was occupied with two other guests. Waiting, Minkel gazed round in confusion. His wife, unimpressed, sized the place up. Across the lobby from them, behind a smoked-glass partition, a group of well-dressed Germans was assembling for some kind of function. She studied the guests disapprovingly, muttered something to her husband. The reception desk became vacant and Minkel took the briefcase from her hand: a tacit, instinctive transaction between partners. The receptionist was a blonde in a black dress. She checked the card index with her red fingernails before passing Minkel a form to fill in. The stairs were hitting Charlie's heels, her damp hand was sticking on the wide banister, Minkel was a misted abstraction through her astigmatic spectacles. The floor lifted to her and she started her hesitant journey towards the reception desk. Minkel was stooped over the counter, filling in his form. He had put his Israeli passport at his elbow and was copying out its number. The briefcase stood on the floor beside his left foot; Mrs. Minkel was out of shot. Placing herself on Minkel's right, Charlie peered crookedly over his shoulder as he wrote. Mrs. Minkel entered left, and was looking at Charlie in puzzlement. She nudged her husband. Aware finally that he was being studied at close quarters, Minkel slowly raised his venerable head and turned to her. Charlie cleared her throat, acting shy, which was no hardship. Now.

"Professor Minkel?" she said.

He had grey troubled eyes and looked even more embarrassed than Charlie was. It was suddenly like supporting a bad actor.

"I am Professor Minkel," he conceded, as if he were not quite sure. "Yes. I am he. Why?"

The sheer badness of his performance gave her strength. She took a deep breath.

"Professor, my name is Imogen Baastrup from Johannesburg and I'm a graduate in social studies from Witwatersrand University," she said, all of a rush. Her accent was less South African than vaguely Antipodean; her manner mawkish but determined. "I had the great good fortune to hear your centenary lecture last year on minority rights in racially determined societies. That was a fine lecture. It changed my life, in fact. I meant to write to you but never got around to it. Do you mind, please, if I shake your hand?"

She practically had to take it from him. He stared foolishly at his wife, but she had the better talent and was at least giving Charlie a smile. Taking his cue from her, Minkel smiled too, if wanly. If Charlie was sweating, she was nothing to Minkel: it was like dipping her hand in an oil pot.

"Are you staying here long, Professor? What are you doing here? Don't say you're lecturing again?"

In the background, out of focus, Rossino was asking the receptionist in English whether a Mr. Boccaccio had checked in from Milan yet.

Again Mrs. Minkel came to the rescue: "My husband is making a European tour," she explained. "We are having a holiday, lecturing a little, visiting friends. We are really looking forward."

Thus encouraged, Minkel himself managed finally to speak: "And what brings you to Freiburg--Miss Baastrup?" he asked, in the thickest German accent she had ever heard off stage.

"Oh, I just thought I'd better see a little of the world before I decided what to do with my life," said Charlie.

Get me out. Christ get me out. The receptionist was regretting that no reservation could be found for Mr. Boccaccio, and alas the hotel was full; with the other half of herself, she was handing Mrs. Minkel a room key. Somehow Charlie was thanking the Professor again for a really stimulating and instructive lecture, Minkel was thanking her for her kind words; Rossino, having thanked the receptionist, was heading briskly for the main entrance, Minkel's briefcase mostly hidden by the smart black raincoat over his arm. With a last bashful effusion of thanks and apologies, Charlie went out after him, careful to show no sign of haste. As she reached the glass doors, she was in time to see the reflected image of the Minkels peering helplessly round them, trying to remember who had it last and where.

Stepping between the parked taxis, Charlie reached the hotel car park, where Helga,wearing a loden cape with horn buttons, sat waiting in a green Citroen. Charlie got in beside her; Helga drove sedately to the car park exit, put in her ticket and money. As the boom lifted, Charlie began laughing, as if the boom had triggered off her laughter. She gulped, she put her knuckles in her mouth and her head on Helga 's shoulder, and broke into helpless, glorious mirth.

"I was incredible, Helg! You should have seen me--Jesus!" At the junction, a young traffic policeman stared in puzzlement at the sight of two grown women weeping and laughing their heads off. Lowering her window, Helga blew him a kiss.

In the operations room, Litvak sat over the radio, Becker and Kurtz stood behind him. Litvak seemed frightened of himself, muted and pale. He wore a headset with one earpiece, and a throat-pad microphone.

"Rossino has taken a cab to the station," Litvak said. "He has the briefcase with him. He's going to collect his bike."

"I don't want him followed," Becker said across Litvak's back to Kurtz.

Litvak pulled off his throat pad and acted as though he couldn't believe his ears. "Not followed? We're got six men round that bike. Alexis has like fifty. We've put a homer on it and we've got cars standing by all over town. Follow the bike, we follow the briefcase. The briefcase takes us to our man!" He swung to Kurtz, appealing for his support.

"Gadi?" said Kurtz.

"He'll use cut-outs," Becker said. "He always has done. Rossino will take it so far, hand it over, somebody else will take it on the next stage. By this afternoon, they'll have dragged us through small streets, open country, and empty restaurants. There's not a surveillance team in the world that could survive that without being recognised."

"And your special interest, Gadi?" Kurtz enquired.

"Berger will stay on Charlie all day long. Khalil will phone her at agreed intervals and places. If Khalil smells a rat, he'll order Berger to kill her. If he doesn't call for two hours, three hours, whatever their arrangement is, Berger will kill her anyway."

Seemingly undecided, Kurtz turned his back to both of them and wandered down the room. Then up again. Then down again, while Litvak watched him like a madman. Finally Kurtz picked up the hot line to Alexis and they heard him say "Paul" in a consultative, do-me-a-favour sort of tone. He spoke quietly for a while, listened, spoke again, and rang off.

"We have about nine seconds before he reaches the station," Litvak said wildly, listening to his headset. "Six."

Kurtz ignored him. "I am advised that Berger and Charlie have just entered a fashionable hairdresser's," he said, coming back down the room again. "Looks like they're going to have themselves prettied up for the great event." He drew to a halt before them.

"Rossino's cab just reached the station concourse," Litvak reported in despair. "He's paying him off now"

Kurtz was looking at Becker. His regard was respectful, even tender. He was an old coach whose favourite athlete had finally found his form.

"Gadi has won the day, Shimon," he said, his gaze still upon Becker. "Call off your kids. Tell them to rest up till evening."

A phone rang and again Kurtz took the call. It was Professor Minkel, having his fourth nervous breakdown of the operation. Kurtz heard him out, then spoke long and soothingly to his wife.

"It's a really nice day," he said, in suppressed exasperation as he rang off. "Everyone's having a great time." Putting on his blue beret, he went off to meet Alexis for their joint inspection of the lecture hall.

It was her most fraught wait ever, and her longest; a first night to end first nights. Worse still, she could do nothing alone, for Helga had appointed Charlie her ward and favoured niece, and would not let her out of her sight. From the hairdresser, where Helga,under the hair dryer, had received her first phone call, they went to a clothes store where Helga bought Charlie a pair of fur-lined boots, and silk gloves against what she called "finger marks." From there to the Cathedral, where Helga imperiously treated Charlie to a history lesson, and from there again, with much giggling and insinuation, to a small square where she was determined to introduce her to one Berthold Schwarz,"the most sexy person ever--Charlie, you are certain to fall completely in love with him!"Berthold Schwarz turned out to be a statue.

"Is he not fantastic, Charlie? Do you not wish we could lift his skirts once? You know what he did, our Berthold?He was a Franciscan, a famous alchemist, and he invented gunpowder. He loved God so much he taught all His creatures to blow each other up. So the good citizens build him a statue. Naturally." Grasping Charlie's arm, she cuddled her excitedly against her. "You know what we do after tonight?" she whispered. "We come back, we bring some flowers for Berthold, we put them at his feet. Yes? Yes, Charlie?"

The Cathedral spire was beginning to get on Charlie's nerves: a fretted, jagged beacon, always black, stalking out ahead of her every time she turned a corner or entered a new street.

For lunch they went to a smart restaurant where Helga treated Charlie to Baden wine, which had been grown, she said, in the volcanic soil of the Kaiserstuhl--a volcano, Charlie, think!--and now everything they ate or drank or saw had to be the subject of wearying and facetious innuendo. Over the Black Forest pie--"We must have everything bourgeois today"--Helga was again summoned to the telephone, and returned saying they must leave for the university or they would never get everything done. So they entered a pedestrian underpass lined with prosperous little shops, and emerged before a portentous building of strawberry sandstone, with pillars and a curved front with gold lettering above it, which Helga was quick to translate.

"So here is a fine message to you, Charlie. Listen. ‘The truth will make you free.' They are quoting Karl Marx for you, is that not beautiful and thoughtful?"

"I thought it was Noel Coward," Charlie said and saw a flash of anger pass across Helga 's over-excited face.

A stone concourse surrounded the building. An elderly policeman patrolled it, eyeing the girls incuriously as they gawked and pointed, tourists to their fingertips. Four steps led to the front entrance. Inside it, the lights of a large hall glinted through darkened glass doors. The side entrance was guarded by statues of Homer and Aristotle, and it was here that Helga and Charlie lingered longest, admiring the sculptures and the pompous architecture while they secretly measured distances and approaches. A yellow poster announced Minkel's lecture for that evening.

"You are scared, Charlie," Helga whispered, without waiting for an answer. "Listen, after this morning you will triumph totally, you are perfect. You will show what is truth and what is lies, you will show them also what freedom is. For great lies, we need a great action, it is logical. A great action, a great audience, a great cause. Come."

A modern pedestrian bridge led across the dual carriageway. Macabre stone totem-poles presided at either end. From the bridge they passed through the university library to a student café slung like a concrete cradle over the carriageway. Through its glass walls, while they drank their coffee, they could watch staff and students leave and enter the lecture hall Helga was once again waiting for a phone call. It came, and as she returned from it, she saw something in Charlie's expression that angered her.

"What is the matter with you?" she hissed. "You are filled with compassion for Minkel's charming Zionist opinions suddenly? So noble, so fine? Listen, he is worse than Hitler, a complete tyrant in disguise. I buy you a schnapps to give you courage."

The heat of the schnapps was still burning her as they reached the empty park. The pond was frozen over; early darkness was gathering; the evening air prickled with specks of freezing water. Very loudly, an old bell chimed the hour. A second bell, smaller and higher-pitched, tinkled after it. Her green cape pulled tight around her, Helga at once let out a cry of pleasure.

"Oh, Charlie, listen! You hear that little bell? It is silver. You know why? I tell you. A traveller on his horse lost his way one night. There were robbers, it was bad weather, he was so glad to see Freiburg that he gave a silver bell to the Cathedral. Every evening now, it rings. Is that not beautiful?"

Charlie nodded, trying to smile, but without success. Throwing a strong arm round her, Helga gathered her into the folds of her cape. "Charlie--listen--you want I give you another sermon?"

She shook her head.

Still holding Charlie to her breast, Helga glanced at her watch, then down the path into the half darkness.

"You know something else about this park, Charlie?"

I know that it is the second most awful place in the world. And I never award first prizes.