The Story of Henri Tod (26 page)

There was silence. Then Henri Tod spoke. His voice was even, the tone almost casual, but his message rang through, like a machine gun hitting only bull's-eyes. “We're going to do it anyway, Blackford. If you helped, it would make it safer for everyone. With that cable from the Pentagon backing the tanks, Ulbricht's enterprise would collapse. I think it will anyway, with just the three tanks. All I can say is, I'm disappointed.” Henri reached over his desk and pressed a buzzer.

“And there's something else I have to say, Blackford, and I'm very sorry about this. You can understand, though, that I can't let you leave now until Sunday. After Rheingold.”

Blackford sat down on the edge of the bed. He smiled. “Well, well. Maybe it would be safer still if you just killed me?”

“Don't say that. Even in jest. The Bruderschaft does not kill people like you.”

“Is this”—Blackford gestured toward the room—“to be my quarters? And”—he pointed to Mateus, who stood now inside the door—“that my guard?”

“Mateus will look after you.”

“I will need some books.”

“There is a library upstairs. Mateus will bring you books.”

Henri rose, as did Bruni. There was an awkward moment, the moment when, under normal circumstances, both he and Bruni would have extended their hands to say good night, but now they wondered if the gesture would be reciprocated. Blackford, recognizing the problem, took the initiative, extending his own hand, which first Henri, then Bruni took. They were on their way out.

“Henri?”

He stopped at the door.

“I got the report on Mr. Frank. I tried to get you earlier. His name is Dmitri Gouzenko, he does work at the Amtorg Trading Corporation, he cropped up in East Berlin only a month ago, and last Tuesday a young woman who goes by the name of Mrs. Gouzenko began to live in his apartment.”

“Thank you, Blackford.”

Blackford said nothing, and the two men left. Mateus spoke:

“I am to get you some reading matter. Do you wish anything to eat or drink?”

“Yes, I'd like—” but what was the point in wisecracking with Mateus? “Yes, I would like a scotch and soda.”

“Very well, sir.”

He left the room, and Blackford could hear the lock turning.

He went instantly to inspect the door. It was a conventional door constructed from heavy wood, with rails, stiles, and six panels. The door lock was of heavy brass. Blackford turned the doorknob, which moved the latch bolt, but, of course, Mateus's key had moved the dead bolt into the striker plate on the doorframe—the locked position. Right above the doorknob was the keyhole, in its own cylinder. So that the model was clearly of the kind that provided for a key to be used on either side of the door. He looked about him to see whether there might be means of overpowering Mateus. It would not be difficult to make a bludgeon out of one of the legs of one of the chairs. Yes, he could do that. He could also simply try to overpower Mateus. The guard was big and heavy and powerful, but Blackford was well trained. He reflected on this alternative. But first, he thought, it would pay to check on Mateus's style, and this he would be able to do soon now, when he brought down the drink and the books.

He heard the key turning and Mateus's voice through the wooden door. “Sir, please open the door, and then step back and stand in front of the desk with the door open.”

Blackford opened the door and found himself facing the muzzle of a Luger. Obediently he stepped back five paces, and now there were twenty feet between him and Mateus. With his left hand Mateus carried a suitcase which he deposited to the left of the door, his eyes always on Blackford, his pistol pointed at him. “I am sorry about this, sir, but my instructions from Herr Henri are very explicit. It won't be for very long, after all. Every time I come to the door, we must proceed as we have just done. You must not come within reach of me. Now I will fetch you your drink.” He went out again, locking the door.

Blackford went to the suitcase and lifted it up on top of the desk. It contained six books, a dozen magazines, an unused toilet kit, three pairs of shorts, T-shirts, socks, a sweater. He would be a pampered prisoner. All he needed to do was find a way to outwit Mateus before Sunday. Or overpower Mateus.

He decided he would begin by cultivating him. But in stages. This was, after all, two-thirty in the morning.

He heard Mateus's voice, and went, with ostentatious docility, through his ritual. Open the door; step back in full view of Mateus, who is there with his pistol aimed at my stomach; come to a halt by the desk.

Mateus, with one strong hand, deposited a tray on a side table by the armchair opposite the door. On the tray was a full bottle of scotch, an ice container, and a large bottle of soda. Blackford moved as if to go to the tray.

“Stop, sir! That's right. You must not be in the same part of the room as I am in.” Pistol pointed at Blackford, Mateus backed out of the door, swung it closed, and Blackford heard the key turning. And, through the door, “Good night, sir. There is a buzzer on the desk if you should need anything. Don't hesitate to call me. Ring when you desire your breakfast.”

“Very well. Good night, Mateus.”

“Good night, sir.”

34

Margret Nilsson had succeeded in arranging her schedule at the hospital to coincide with Franz's as much as possible. She was with him as an assistant when he did surgery, and the chief nurse indulgently gave Margret primary responsibility for the care of Franz's patients, which made for additional moments together. Several times a week Franz would call for Margret to come to his office to take postoperative notes on a patient, and it was made known that when Franz was dictating, he was on no account to be interrupted; and, with a leering smile here and there, the staff went along. So what business of theirs was it that Franz also had a wife and little girl? He did his work, so did Margret. So let them go ahead with their amorous dictation, even if during hospital hours.

But the existing relationship was not what Margret wanted, and Franz often told her how unhappy he was at home without Margret, and how unsatisfactory his wife was, and Margret said that they must go away together and live a normal life instead of continuing the imposture. But go away where? West, of course.

Franz agreed but said there was a money problem. He could not in good conscience go without leaving provision of a sort for his wife and child, and he set the sum at ten thousand marks that he must leave her, in the form of civil settlement—alimony, so to speak. The difficulty lay in amassing such a sum of money, on his paltry savings. Margret said she could come up with twelve hundred marks, and perhaps borrow as much as another eight hundred. But that, together with what Franz had in savings, came to only one half the figure they so desperately needed.

It was one morning after a passionate interval with Franz during the dictation hour, when yet again they had wondered how they could find the necessary money, that Margret stopped at the post office. She was there to buy a stamp with which to mail a letter to her sister in Leipzig, where Margret had grown up and gone to school with Claudia. There was a line behind the counter where stamps were sold, and while waiting in that line her eyes traveled to the post office bulletin board. She noticed a sign that appeared fresher than the others, no doubt only recently posted. It announced a government award of five thousand marks to anyone who gave information resulting in the arrest of any seditious enemy of the republic. The terms were of course general, but Margret found her heart racing. Five thousand marks.

She had sensed that the two times Claudia had come to her—the first to obtain penicillin, the second to pass along a vial of blood for examination—Claudia's vaguely stated reasons why she had not gone directly to a doctor, or to a hospital, indicated that she was hiding something. Which meant hiding somebody. Hiding what? Hiding whom? Well, she thought, surely that is the business of the government to discover, not me?

She read the sign again carefully. Her responsibility was merely to provide the police with leads, not to do anything more than that. “Confidentiality is guaranteed,” the sign went on.

Margret resolved to discuss the matter with Franz at their next private meeting, early that afternoon. She liked Claudia. But she loved Franz. And it was not right, in any case, for her to run the risks Claudia had imposed on her. Would she, she wondered, now need to give a reason for not having gone earlier to the police with information about the penicillin and the blood?

She would need to have an excuse that sounded reasonable. On the matter of the penicillin, she supposed it would do merely to say that Claudia was under the impression that as a nurse, Margret could get the penicillin free or at small cost, and that Claudia had distinctly given her the impression that it was for her own use. But the blood … She perked up. Why not say that Claudia had confessed her private fear that she had contracted a venereal disease, but was ashamed to go to the regular doctor to find out? That struck her as plausible and imaginative. But why then did she choose this moment to go to the police? Why, because it had suddenly occurred to her that Claudia had asked not only for a reading on venereal disease, but for a full analysis of the blood, so that now Margret wondered whether there might be involved some fugitive from justice …

She would try it out on Franz, which she did, and he thought it not only prudent, in the event that suspicion might at some point attach to Margret for dispensing drugs without authority, but also a capital idea for raising the necessary money which, the moment it was handed over, would free them to go off to the West and live happily ever after.

Caspar was both sad and excited. He had taken the greatest care to assemble in the laundry bag he carried every week to the laundress what he wished to take with him to the West. He reasoned that if he and Claudia traveled on the S-Bahn with the Saturday afternoon traffic the chances were slight that, carrying only a laundry bag, he would be stopped and examined. And even if that happened, his escape would not necessarily be aborted. For one thing, he was, after all, the nephew of Walter Ulbricht, and he carried a formidable identification card designating him as a clerk attached to headquarters. His last name wasn't Ulbricht, but in a pinch he could let it be known who he was and where he worked. All he and his girlfriend were doing was going to West Berlin for a couple of days, and taking a few souvenirs for friends.

He had tucked into the bag his father's letter, freshly sealed in an envelope. A few photographs, his father's portable typewriter—that was by far the bulkiest item; indeed the only bulky item—and then underwear, shirts, an extra jacket and pants, socks, all of these carefully rumpled to look as though they were being taken to be cleaned or pressed. No matter.

And then he had written a letter which his mother would discover later that night or the following morning. He had been careful not to disclose in the letter that he had any premonition, let alone specific knowledge, of the events planned for just after midnight, and of course not a hint of his knowledge of Operation Rheingold on which he had been personally briefed the night before by Bruni. Henri had been asked by his tank commander what exactly would be the deployment of the East German armored cars that would reinforce the barricades, and exactly how far away were the reserve Russian tanks to be situated, and Henri had judged that only a knowledge of why this information was so necessary could justify the intensity of Caspar's rather dangerous search for the answers, and for that reason had dispatched Bruni to talk with Caspar. It was merely a happy coincidence that he and Claudia thought to leave East Berlin only a few hours before leaving East Berlin would cease to be possible—unless, of course, Henri succeeded with Rheingold. He told his mother he was unhappy with the diminishing freedom of East Germans, that he would make every provision for her if she elected to join him, that he would write regularly, that he loved her very much, that he intended to marry Claudia, and that his very first child he would name after her if it was a girl, and after his father if it was a boy. He sealed the envelope and, with tape, affixed it to the mirror of the bathroom outside his bedroom, knowing that only when his mother came looking for him would she notice it.

He glanced at his watch. He would rendezvous with Claudia at Berchtesgaden at five, and already it was a quarter past four. His bundle was by no means too heavy to walk with, so that rather than while away twenty minutes and then take the bus, he decided to walk. His mother was out of the house, so there were no problems going out with his laundry bag.

He went to the alleyway off Warschauer Strasse and sidled up to the abandoned door which opened, as always. He glanced about him, but there was no one in sight. So he turned left, and walked in the dim light toward siding number 4, and up to car 4. He took the laundry bag in his left hand and with his right hand positioned the key. But the door was already open, which meant that Claudia had already arrived. It was wrong of her to forget to lock the door, even though she expected him, and even though this would be their last time there. He climbed the platform stairs and turned to the car door, which was also open. Never mind—after today it would not matter. He proceeded down the familiar corridor toward the living quarters. It was totally dark. He called out, “Claudia?” and was instantly blinded by a searchlight. From behind, he was struck above the kidney by a club, and he fell to the floor.

The blow was the gentlest thing that happened to Caspar Allman that long evening. Four hours later, Walter Ulbricht invoked his authority as commander in chief personally to give the orders to the firing squad, and Caspar had to be seated and tied to the chair by the wall because he could not stand, or even sit, without slumping. Claudia was then brought out, manacled, and placed, standing, beside him, to go down with the same volley. They looked at each other. He could not speak, and she chose not to. Ulbricht was in any case delayed for only the very few minutes he needed to confer telegraphically with Ustinov and to call up the Soviet military commander to advise him instantly to telephone his American counterpart in the Western sector to warn him to be prepared for something the Bruderschaft were calling “Operation Rheingold.” He entered the military courtyard briskly, and took in jubilantly the sight he saw. Let all his enemies perish so, he thought, as he gave the command to the firing squad.