Then We Take Berlin (34 page)

The ginger tomcat perched on the highest shelf looked down at Wilderness. Erno did not look up.

Just said, “Ah, the boyfriend. I had wondered when you might call.”

“Yes,” Wilderness said. “And you’re the forger.”

Now he looked up. His glasses unhooked from the right ear to dangle by their brass loop from the left.

“And you’re the
Schieber
.”

“She told you?”

“My dear
Schieber
. We’re talking about a woman whose honesty may well be her only vice.”

“Well, we’re all
Schieber
s of one sort or another aren’t we?”

“Indeed, it is the norm. I cannot think of any other reason why Nell would tolerate one let alone . . . admit one. She is so earnest, so adamant about sharing in the common fate.”

“Not so long ago, thinking like that would have got you killed.”

“Quite, so easy to die of obedience or conformity. Now, what can I do for you Herr Schieber?”

“An identity card.”

“What kind of identity card?”

“A pay book. British army regiment. Welsh Guards.”

He picked up a pencil now, ready to take notes.

“Date of birth and name?”

Thinking on his toes. If he made his doppelgänger older, what was his war record?

“August 3 . . . 1926 . . . Rupert . . .”

Most officers were Ruperts or Tobys.

“Rupert Charles . . .”

Most officers had three Christian names. You weren’t a proper toff without three initials. Most officers had a posh surname hyphenated with a common one. Burne-Jones sprang to mind to be readily dismissed.

“Rupert Charles Montgomery Tatten-Brown.”

“Montgomery. Hmm. How patriotic. And the rank?”

“Second Lieutenant. No . . . make that first lieutenant.”

“You want pips with that?”

“You got pips?”

On the wall above Erno’s desk was a cabinet of fifty tiny drawers, something out of an apothecary’s shop—the chemical symbols in gold leaf that had faded into near-nothingness.

“Welsh Guards . . . Welsh Guards . . . let me see.”

A few seconds rummaging in CuSO4 and two shoulder pips were placed on the desk in front of Wilderness.

“You got pips for everything?”

“More or less. You want to pass for a tram inspector or an SS Standartenführer, I’m your man, although the tram inspector will cost you more. And if you really were an SS Standartenführer wanting to pass for a tram inspector you can double any figure you might be thinking of. And I’d still call the police. Now, you want the tree to put on your cap?”

“Tree?”

Erno held out a Welsh Guards cap badge.

“That’s not a tree, it’s a leek. And I already got the cap and badge.”

“What’s a leek?”

“Sort of like an onion.”

“How quaint . . . no swords or daggers . . . just vegetables. Food is so much more important, you will agree. Were you thinking of paying me in food, Herr Schieber?”

“If you like. What do you want? Chocolate? Tinned stuff?”

“Coffee.”

“Consider it done.”

“Coffee is the one thing Yuri never puts in a
pajok
. Far too precious.”

“Yuri? Who’s Yuri?”

§109

“Who’s Yuri?”

They were seated at opposite sides of the little table in the portion of Nell’s room that passed as “dining.” A close parody of the prim and proper. Once in a while this seemed to be what Nell wanted. And the rest of the time she was content to sit on the floor or sprawl on the bed.

He had brought fresh eggs. Nell had scrambled them and served them with tinned broad beans she had been saving. She stirred the egg on her plate slowly and looked up at him.

“Yuri was . . . is . . . my mother’s protector. An NKVD major.”

“Was? Is? You mean he’s your protector?”

“I think he is, although he does not visit as regularly as he used to and the
pajoks
are fewer.”

“
Pajok
?”

“Food parcel. You bring
pajoks
. You just didn’t know the word.”

“Protector?”

“A man who took you on board in ’45, who brought you
pajoks
and told every other Russian that you were his was a protector. If he did none of those things he was a rapist. My mother avoided rape by accepting his patronage, his sexual exclusivity . . . and his
pajoks
.”

“Yet still he brings you
pajoks
.”

“For which he receives nothing but my lasting gratitude. He hasn’t been here in weeks. It is his habit just to vanish from time to time.”

§110

Yuri showed up the next day.

When Wilderness returned late in the afternoon a small man in a nondescript uniform was sitting with Erno, drinking the coffee he had given Erno yesterday.

He did not know how to read Russians in uniform. He’d passed them in the street every day. One or two even came to the Marrokkaner. Laughing loudly, never breaking their circle, wanting to know no one. But, then, he’d never tried. And if those who spoke Russian never tried talking to Russians who would?

They were raggy men in baggy pants and jackboots. Some of them were even raggy women. Collar flashes could be blue, could be yellow, but, as with Yuri, were mostly dirt-coloured. The only thing that broke up the muddiness of his battledress was a row of medal ribbons in all the spectrum of the rainbow, the single gold star of a major on each shoulder, and the shiny brass button on the flap holster that held his seven-shot Nagant revolver.

He’d lost track of the initials too. The Soviet Union and the Third Reich had this in common—they’d invent a new organisation and a new acronym on the spot to cope with contingencies. Nell had said he was NKVD in 1945. It was easiest to go on thinking of him that way.

Yuri hoisted his cup of coffee, by way of toast, by way of greeting.

“Good good,” he said. “Is yours?”

Yuri swirled the coffee in his cup and downed it in a single gulp. Erno poured a cup for Wilderness, muttered an apology about the lack of milk. Yuri cradled the empty cup in hands that seemed huge, out of all proportion to his body, with fat fingers, broad flat thumbs and tiny slivers of fingernails—brown hands peeking out of brown sleeves, hands that had been calloused and scarred and tanned. And in the sunburnt, Asiatic face, nut-brown and wrinkled like a walnut, when his deep blue eyes opened from their narrow slits, they twinkled with mischief. He held out the cup for more.

“Good good,” he said again, and Wilderness realised he had not answered.

“Yes,” he said. “Part payment. Erno is doing a little job for me.”

This was one way of flushing the fox out. Major Myshkin would hardly be sitting there if he too were not “one of us”—a
Schieber
of one kind or another.

The cup was laid gently down on one of the piles of old newspapers that seemed to serve Erno as furniture. The right hand slid across his midriff to flip the button on his holster.

Wilderness’s gun was in a drawer in Fasanenstraße. He wasn’t even sure which drawer.

Yuri withdrew his hand and Wilderness found himself looking down the barrel of a saxophone-shaped Hungarian pipe, as Yuri gestured with it.

“Perhaps you can do a little job for me?”

The left hand rummaged in his jacket pocket, pulled out a worn, square tin of Ogden’s Walnut Plug.

“That might be possible,” Wilderness said. “How much would you like?”

The tamping and the lighting up, the sucking and the puffing slowed the conversation to a tortoise crawl.

“Fifty pounds. I can use fifty pounds.”

“I can get your brand of tobacco too, if you like. It’s English.”

“Da, so. My own private
pajok
.”

Suck, puff, breathe out a cloud of smoke, suck puff, puff puff. Wilderness had never found this unpleasant—it had been Abner’s choice of brand too—but he had concluded in childhood that men smoked pipes only to make other men wait.

“From Leeverrpol, da?”

“Da,” said Wilderness.

“But . . . you must bring to me.”

“What? In the East?”

“Da. I cannot always come West. And I can hardly stand in Tiergarten like a Berlin
Hausfrau
.”

“Where in the East?”

“That should be a moveable feast. We’ll move around. Points east, east of Pariser Platz.”

“A hundred.”

“Is that your price?”

“No. The quantity. It has to be worthwhile if you want me to shift stuff over the line, and run the risk of your cops as well as ours . . .”

“My people will leave you well alone, believe me.”

“And ours are at their nosiest at the line . . . a hundred pounds of coffee and I’ll deliver to you in the East.”

Suck, puff, cloud.

“Okeydokey, Englishman. A hundred pounds a time. Now, can we talk money or had you forgotten that?”

Wilderness had not forgotten the money any more than a dog forgets to eat, but he was worrying about something just as vital—where could he get a hundred pounds of coffee?

§111

Later that night, in the Marrokkaner
.

“You said what?”

“A hundred pounds of coffee.”

“Jesus wept,” Pie Face said. “You silly sod.”

“All the same, my character not withstanding . . . you can get a hundred pounds?”

“Possible. Risky. Someone might notice.”

“What’s the most you’ve ever got out at one time?”

“Sixty. Week before last.”

“So you’ll try?”

“Yeah. I’ll try.”

It was Eddie’s habit to hear everyone out before speaking. He spoke now.

“How are we going to shift it? I can’t manage twenty pounds under me greatcoat, let alone a hundred, and we’re almost out of greatcoat weather. Any minute now the MPs’ll be able to nick the black-marketeers by pulling in anyone daft enough to be wearing an army greatcoat in the sunshine.”

Wilderness said, “We motorise. We have three staff jeeps at our disposal. Mine, Eddie’s, and Spud’s. And once we cross the line we’re free of our blokes—they’ve always been the real threat, not the Russians. We’ve always had more to fear from our own lot just selling by the bag on the street.”

“Vehicles get pulled just like blokes on foot,” Spud said. “An’ that’s a fact.”

“We won’t have it on display.”

“MPs know the hiding places. And they got mirrors to look under the car.”

“Jerry cans,” Wilderness said. “How many jerry cans does a staff jeep carry?”

“Four,” said Spud. “But there’s fixings for six.”

“Capacity?”

“Twenty litres each.”

“Can we pack a hundred pounds of coffee into that space?”

“Just. Only just. But it would mean no spare petrol.”

“And when have you ever run out of petrol driving around Berlin?”

Spud smiled the smile of acceptance.

“Brilliant, Joe. Bloody brilliant.”

Wilderness nodded and waited. Watched Spud improvise.

“I slices the bottoms off the cans in me workshop, bit o’ spot welding, fit ’em back with an inner sleeve, and bob’s yer uncle—six giant coffee cans undetectable to the nosy copper.”

Eddie was smiling too.

“Might work,” he said. “You never know.”

Walking back to Fasanenstraße, Eddie said, “And the money? You never mentioned it and they never ask. They’re like a pair of schoolboys. They care more about the lark than the profit.”

“He’ll pay over the odds, and I insisted on Western marks. No minus money. For all I know he prints his own.”

“How can coffee, how can anything be worth more in East Berlin than it is in the West? We’re getting four hundred reichsmarks a pound as it is.”

“’Cos it don’t stay in East Berlin. Leastways that’s my feeling. Yuri is big time. Party apparatchik. Commissar during the early part of the war. I reckon anything we sell him will go to the arselickers and the comrades back in Moscow.”

“Ruins yer faith in humanity, doesn’t it?”

“Yep. I’ll never vote Commie again.”

“Big time? This Yuri is . . . big time?”

“Like I said.”

“Are we big time now, Joe? Bulk orders? A hundred pounds at a time?”

“There’s sod all profit and sod all pleasure in selling half a dozen bags at a time to the stick insects.”