The Story of Henri Tod (27 page)

35

Blackford was surprised when, late in the afternoon, he heard the key turn and saw not Mateus, but Henri Tod come in through the door. Mateus, following his master, took note of the warmth with which Herr Henri greeted Blackford. There was no pistol this time, presumably on the assumption that if Blackford attempted anything the two were enough to restrain him. Henri saw that Mateus did not quite know what was expected of him, so he told him to lock the door from the outside, that Henri would ring for him when he was ready to depart. Henri sat down in the armchair opposite the door, while Blackford lay propped up on the bed.

“I'm not here to try again to persuade you, Blackford. By this time tomorrow, Operation Rheingold will have been done, and if it works, it could be the turning point of the Cold War. I am not here to proselytize. But possibly I will not see you again. Because tomorrow, after it's over, I am going for my sister. I reason that whether our plan works or doesn't work—and I am confident that it will work—tomorrow will be just tumultuous enough to make it the ideal day to go for her and snatch her away in the confusion.”

“How will you get her across the intersector boundary if they've got it closed up?”

“I won't have any trouble. I have West German papers, and they precisely don't
intend
to mess with West Germans, Casper told Roland this morning; they want us in West Berlin, not East Berlin. I don't know what kind of papers Clementa has. We were both born in Hamburg, so she's properly a West German. She may have some sort of a Russian document, if she went and married that Gouzenko man. Besides, we're talking about eight in the morning, nine o'clock at the latest. Even if we failed, which I repeat we will not, there is no way by then that the Vopos can hermetically seal 45 kilometers. There are weak points where, for a day or two, the problem will be a few strands of barbed wire.

“Oh. I haven't told you, Blackford, what they plan. I got hold of a copy of Operation Chinese Wall. There has not been anything so elaborate since the Maginot Line—”

“Equally impregnable?” Blackford asked.

“You Americans make the mistake constantly. The Maginot Line was never penetrated. It was circumvented. The wall they plan to build, if they follow the 1950s specifications, includes everything you can imagine. A high concrete structure, with spikes, broken glass, machine-gun turrets, thirty meters of no-man's land, mined; hunting dogs patrolling a narrow alley on either side of the strip; then a smaller wall, again with barbed wire and broken glass, and electrical trip switches and flares. It would take a while to raise that structure throughout the city of Berlin, Blackford; but it would then be as impenetrable as anything can be created by the mind of man.… But they will not build it—not after Rheingold, they will not. And anyway, we were talking about me and Clementa. If things went bad, at worst we could swim across the Spree. Clementa and I swam a great deal during the two summers in Tolk. How wonderful the prospect is! But as I say, I shall be preoccupied with her. Perhaps she will need medical attention. I plan to devote myself entirely to her until she is well, so that I may even take her away, perhaps to London. But eventually I will be back here, probably with her, to resume the work of the Bruderschaft.”

Blackford looked at the darkly handsome, animated face of Henri Tod and felt the excitement he felt.

“You've got a remarkable organization, Henri, I have to compliment you on it.”

“Thanks. We have helped a lot of people.”

“Yes. And you've also done a little bit to relieve the population problem.”

Tod smiled. But quickly added, “Wherever there has been any doubt, we have not harmed anyone. And remember that simply because tyrants rule over one half of Germany, it does not follow that those tyrants exercise legitimate civil authority.”

“Let's not go into that. You are a trained philosopher. I'm only an engineer.—So I may not be seeing you? For a while. Which reminds me, are you going to take twenty-five thousand marks with you tomorrow?”

“Yes. I see no moral point to be served in welshing. If he's KGB, then my problem becomes simply to rescue my sister, instead of merely ransoming her.”

“Tod, do you mind my asking you where you get your money?”

“Yes. Because although I trust you, you might disapprove; and it would make you uncomfortable just to know.”

“It makes me uncomfortable not to know. But then, it's just curiosity.”

Tod looked over at Blackford, lying on the bed helpless, his hands linked behind his head. On impulse he spoke up. “Would you promise me you would not reveal the answer to your question?”

“I promise you.”

“A member of the Bruderschaft is employed by the Marshall Plan people, in the division that holds your counterpart funds. You have nearly two billion marks of credit in that fund. Well, subtract from that two billion marks about two million marks, which we have embezzled. Our moral justification is that we are serving your purposes and giving you”—Henri lapsed now into English—“positively the biggest bang for a buck, as they say in America.”

“Well, I'll be damned. You have embezzlers, tank drivers. Do you by any chance have any alchemists in the Bruderschaft? You could do away with Third World poverty, and get a Nobel Prize.”

Tod stood, and smiled. He walked over to the desk and pressed the buzzer. Almost instantly the door opened and Mateus came in. Tod approached Blackford and embraced him. “Will you wish me luck?”

“Yes, Henri. I am morally free to wish you luck.”

Tod walked out of the room.

An hour later, Mateus brought in Blackford's dinner. And Blackford embarked on his plan.

“Why don't you sit down in the chair over there, Mateus, and talk to me. It is lonely, eating alone.”

“Well, sir, very well.” He locked the door, waited for Blackford to fetch the tray from the coffee table back to the desk, then sat down, putting the pistol carefully in front of him on the side table.

“Help yourself to a little scotch”—Blackford pointed to the bottle on the ledge by the chair.

“Thank you, sir. This will be an exciting night. I am going to listen all night long to the radio.”

“How I wish I could also. It will be a historic night, Mateus, no doubt about it.”

“Well, sir, perhaps I could arrange it so that we could both listen. Yes, I think that should be possible.”

“Mateus, tell me. Do you by any chance have any vodka? I am inclined to have a drink of vodka with my dinner.”

“Vodka! When you can have scotch, sir? But of course, that is no problem at all.” He retrieved the pistol, inserted the key in the lock, but kept his eyes on Blackford the entire time, as Blackford nibbled on the peanuts that had come in a corner of the tray. “I will be right back.”

In a few moments the voice came, and Blackford went through the drill. Open the door, peer at the pistol, retreat to the desk area. Mateus came in, smiling, pistol in one hand, vodka bottle in the other. He finessed the rules to the point of taking the vodka over and depositing it on the desk, but his pistol hand was always level.

“Ah, thank you, Mateus. But tell me, did you forget about the radio? It is almost nine o'clock.”

“The radio. Of course.” Once again, the same ritual of withdrawal. As soon as the door was locked Blackford took the bottle of vodka into the bathroom, emptied it, and filled it with water.

In a few minutes Mateus was back. Genial, but, as required, formal in his attention to duty. “I think, sir, that under the circumstances it would be better if you were to plug the radio in, and perhaps attach the antenna to the pipe there,” he pointed to one of the several pipes that traversed the ceiling.

“Of course,” Blackford said, attending to the details.

“I am not sure, sir, what the reception down here will be like. But we will see.”

The reception was gratifyingly good, and they heard the usual Saturday evening fare, flicking from station to station.

“Do have another drink, Mateus. It will be a long evening. I'm going to have another vodka,” at which he poured his water glass half full. Mateus looked up, arched his eyebrows, and poured himself an equivalent amount of scotch.

“Tell me, Mateus,” Blackford said, relaxing on the cot, the pillow set up to support his head and shoulders, “tell me, how long did you know Henri's parents?”

Blackford struck oil. It was a gusher. Mateus, it transpired, had gone to work for the Toddweiss family just after the First World War, in which he had fought. The highlight of his social history had been an encounter with an Austrian corporal. Yes, the one and only Austrian corporal.

“You mean to say, Mateus, that you knew Adolf Hitler as a corporal?”

Mateus could not have been more gratified to have been asked that question, to which he had given the answer perhaps one thousand times. He described in great detail what Schicklgruber, as he referred to him, looked like, what he said, the circumstances of their encounter (“Oh, sir, he was very imperious, even then”). Blackford poured himself another half glass from the vodka bottle. (“I don't want to be asleep when Operation Rheingold comes about,” he commented. “No, sir,” said Mateus, doing as much with the scotch for himself; “I'll see that you are awake.”) Mateus had then returned to Hamburg, and a friend of his who worked for the Toddweiss family recommended that he seek employment there as a groom, since he had had cavalry training in the army. “The Toddweisses were fine people to work for.”

“Then you knew the family even before Henri was born?” Indeed he had known the family
well
before Henri was born, Henri not having been born until after the Toddweisses had been married for five years.

As the time went by Mateus's voice blurred, as did Blackford's. He persevered with his bottle of vodka; indeed an unstated competition had begun, reaching the point where Mateus thought it would be impolite not to keep company with “my host. Or perhaps, sir, I should not, under these lamentable circumstances, refer to you as my host. On the other hand, sir, I should not want so to presume as to ask you to think of me as
your
host.” To which Blackford replied, with a little blear in his voice, that he did not remember ever having a more attentive host, and that he was fascinated by what he had learned of the background of the Toddweiss family, and what happened after Henri was born, and Hitler—Schicklgruber—was elected?

It was just after one in the morning that the first indication came that something unusual was going on. Mateus's hand on the radio dial had become a little unsteady, and he found it progressively difficult to manipulate the dial in such a way as to go from station to station in pursuit of fresh bulletins. Blackford poured from what was the bottom third of the vodka bottle, and Mateus instantly followed suit.

“Here's to Rheingold, Mateus.”

“To Rheingold, sir.”

Blackford chugalugged. So did Mateus.

“Keep the radio on, Mateus—” Blackford's intonations were progressively hortatory, and Mateus found himself responding, and doing, as Blackford indicated.

“Yes, sir, I will do that.”

“Because, Mateus, I think I am going to catch just a little catnap before the excitement. Just ten minutes, that is all. But you must keep listening. But before, I think I will just have one last toast to Rheingold.” He poured himself a glassful this time, watching the level on the vodka bottle sink to below the label.

“I would not let you drink alone, sir,” Mateus said, taking all but a few ounces of what was left in the scotch bottle.

Blackford closed his eyes and began a slow snore, his face turned down, his chin on his chest. He was gratified to see, out of the corner of his eye, Mateus take the last of the scotch into his glass, but was alarmed at the thought that he might then decide to go back upstairs. In the event he did so, Blackford would wake up, profess renewed interest in the radio, and demand more booze.

What happened was that Mateus's head began to nod. Within a very few minutes his head lay over the back of the armchair and he was snoring, mouth wide open, one hand on the glass, beside which lay the pistol.

Blackford waited a few moments, at which point his confidence was complete. He rose, and walked over toward Mateus. He leaned over and gently removed the pistol and put it into his pocket. He was now in command. But he did not want to gloat over a Mateus awake and aware of how he had tricked him. And he especially did not want to have to fire the weapon at the old man. The problem would be to get the key from Mateus's pocket without waking him. He was glad to see that it was on a chain attached to a loop on his belt. The radio was now abuzz with reports from the intersection boundary. A breathless commentator was describing the rolls of barbed wire outside the Brandenburg Gate, the rapidly congregating crowd of protesters, the armored cars with riflemen, weapons poised, looking over the crowd. Mateus's body slumped to the right, and it was in his right pocket that the keys lay. Blackford studied the conformation of Mateus, and resolved that he had no alternative than to pull gently on the chain and hope that the keys would slide up Mateus's pocket without waking him. He pulled with infinite care, a half inch at a time. Mateus registered nothing, and the keys, reaching the wider part of the pocket, began to follow the tug more easily. In a moment they dangled under the key chain. The radio spoke of the shouts of the crowd at the Vopos, and of the human wall of Vopos giving protection to the work squads that were laying the barbed wire concertinas. Whether to withdraw the key, or attempt to disengage the chain from the belt loop? … He would find it easier, Blackford decided finally, to unclip the entire key ring from the chain. With infinite care, he did so. He was safe now. It did not matter if Mateus did wake up. Besides, there was always the pistol. He tiptoed to the door, and slipped in the key.