Then We Take Berlin (39 page)

“The reason?”

“He had been in the war from start to finish. He survived everything. Everything but what he saw in himself.”

“Is that the abyss? Our selves?”

“I don’t know. You’ve heard me speak of Rada? Rada Lyubova? She killed herself the same year. I know of no one who looked deeper into herself than Rada. Two world wars and a revolution had not driven her to suicide. But something did. Some accumulation of grief, some final straw.”

“And yet you did not tell me.”

“Everything takes time. It takes years for people to get to know one another. I know your body far better than I know your mind.”

“Have we got years, Wilderness?”

§124

January 1948

A cremation without service in Wilmersdorf—in the American Sector. Secular to the point of silence. Nell did not even ask to receive and scatter the ashes.

Yuri turned up in full dress uniform. Bright blue against the snowbound cemetery. Nell hugged him. Wilderness stood with Erno a respectful distance away. Watched one of the huge hands gently patting her on the back.

Then she came over to Erno. Hugged him. Then Wilderness. Stood back looking up into his eyes. He’d never seen her cry and this occasion would be no different.

“Nothing has changed,” she said. “This changes nothing.
Wer sind wir? Was sind wir?
We are what we were. We are as we were. A man who was dead came briefly back to life and now is dead again.”

“Is Yuri waiting?”

“Yes. He waits for one of us.”

“Then let me be the one.”

She nodded.

“Go home with Erno. I won’t be long.”

Yuri was sitting at the wheel of a huge pre-war Krasny, painted up in field green, a Red Army star on each door, a plume of white smoke trailing from the exhaust.

Wilderness got in beside him.

“Can you drop me back at Grünetümmlerstraße?”

“Конечно, of course.”

The car moved off, passing Erno and Nell. She did not look at them.

“You did this, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“And you told Nell to be in Pariser Platz on the twenty-sixth?”

“Yes.”

“But you didn’t tell her why?”

“No. Suppose it had all gone wrong? Supposing Max Burkhardt had not been among those set free for Christmas?”

“Suppose he had died on the march? He must have walked two hundred miles.”

“Over that I had no control. Joe, do not overestimate my power. I did what I could. I got Max bumped to the top of a list of prisoners of war who could be released. I could not commandeer a jeep or a railway train.”

“Or a decent pair of shoes?”

“Or even a decent pair of shoes. I had no contact with Max. I rearranged names and dates on pieces of paper back in Moscow. Once they had set off I knew what would happen. My people would escort them as far as the Gate and then abandon them. And, believe me Joe, they were the lucky ones.”

“How long?”

“Что как долго?”

“How long have you been setting this up? How long were you planning this?”

“Since May 1945. Since the day Marie told me her husband had vanished in the Battle of Berlin. Of course, he could have died in that battle. And if he didn’t, a Volkssturm member is twice as hard to find as a Wehrmacht soldier—no uniform, no rank, no number . . . no papers. When Marie died I did not stop looking. Only from then on I was doing it for Nell.”

“For Nell?”

“Yes, Joe . . . for Nell. You and I have this in common. We do for Nell.”

All for Nell? Wilderness could not bring himself to believe this for a single second. It just added to the complicated mixture that was Yuri. “Who is Yuri?” had run through his thoughts a thousand times this last year. He came back to Nell’s phrase, the same one Peter-Jürgen von Hesse had used back in Hamburg—turned it over in his mind.

Wer sind wir? Was sind wir?

§125

That night Nell said, “He never asked about my mother.”

Wilderness said nothing.

She curled up in the curve of his arm.

“What do you want of life, Wilderness?”

“I want . . . to watch sunset all day . . . to see forty-four sunsets in a single day.”

“That’s nice. You make that up?”

“No. I wish I had.”

“There are times I think my life has scarcely begun . . . and then I think of all that is gone and gone for ever . . . and then with a twist of my mind I am back at the beginning . . . I am Max Burkhardt’s little Lenchen again . . . back at the jumping-off point . . . and my feet have never left the ground.”

Jumping-off point. That was the phrase Rada had used. What is a place of birth but a jumping-off point?

“You came back to your jumping-off point.”

“Where else could I go?”

“Anywhere.”

“Anywhere on a map of geography. We are talking maps of the heart.”

“I know . . . you told me, you are a Berliner.”

“Don’t make me sound corny, Joe.”

“I wasn’t. But loyalty to a city is like loyalty to anything else. It may exact a price. Loyalty can be like a ball and chain. People can be like a ball and chain. They can drag you down into the grave with them.”

“Are we talking about my father?”

“No, we’re talking . . . in the abstract.”

“Are you telling me neither people nor place matter to you?”

“No. But what matters most are ideas.”

“Am I an idea?”

“You’re every idea I’ve ever had. Or shall ever have.”

“That sounds so sweet, so romantic . . . but it’s bullshit isn’t it?”

Wilderness said nothing.

A plane turned in the sky above them, and the roaring heart of piston engines smothered the sound of the beating heart of the woman lying next to him.

§126

Nell insisted they return to work the next day.

“Grief is pointless. Grief kills. Grief is what drags you down into the grave.”

He awoke to find her fully dressed, even to her topcoat. A pot of coffee cooling on the gas ring.

She stood by his bed, nimble fingers doing up her buttons, and said again, “Nothing has changed.”

He grabbed a cup of coffee and took it back to bed with him. She’d want at least a quarter of an hour between her arrival at Schlüterstraße and his. He fell asleep and when he woke up again it was half past nine.

Wilderness got to Schlüterstraße late. Another fragment of a morning Fraggy-bashing, punctuated by the refined sarcasm and acid disdain of Rose Blair. It was gone ten and some. In time to find her cobbling together her tenses or elevenses, toasting bread and making coffee on the tiny paraffin stove she kept on top of a steel filing cabinet. She did not, ever, offer to share her coffee with him. He might well have declined anyway—the smell of NAAFI coffee had become like body odour over the last year. It clung to Spud and Pie Face. He wondered if it clung to him. The olfactory stigmata of the
Schieber
.

“You’re late,” he heard as he passed her door.

“Late for what?”

“You have a visitor,” Rose Blair replied with heightened emphasis on the “or.”

He opened the door to his office.

Burne-Jones was in the visitor chair—which showed some respect—with his feet up on the desk, which didn’t.

It had been a year, almost to the day it had been a year.

“Just in from Blighty, are we?”

Burne-Jones swung his long legs to the floor and stood.

“By all means, let’s not stand on formality. No salutes. No hint of recognition that we might both be in His Majesty’s service.”

“I get all the sarcasm I need from the bird in the next office. In fact she exceeds my ration. And you didn’t come to Berlin to swap salutes and handshakes.”

“Have I called at a bad time?”

“You know damn well you have, or Miss Blair isn’t doing her job.”

“Y’know, Joe. I think becoming a corporal might have gone to your head.”

“Then make me a sergeant and see if it goes to me feet.”

“Glasshouse, Joe. Never forget where I found you.”

A pause that might be deemed respectful on Burne-Jones’s part.

“I had heard about your girlfriend’s father as it happens. Sounds dreadful. As though the war never ended for him.”

“Him and thousands like him. If the Russians get you they can string that war out into infinity.”

“Quite.”

Burne-Jones rummaged in his briefcase and slapped a folder on the desk. Game over.

“Why don’t we both sit down? There are things you need to know.”

Wilderness pulled the file towards him.

Inside were three typed sheets and a mug shot.

“Jean-François de Villefranche. Civilian attached to the French Military Government. What we have on him is all in there.”

Wilderness flipped through the pages.

“And the problem is?”

“We think he might be one of them.”

“Queer?”

“Commie.”

“Working for the Russians or just sympathetic?”

“The former.”

“Do the French know?”

“No. And if they did they’d handle it with all the delicacy of a man trying to make tea while wearing boxing gloves. Broken china all over the place.”

“And you want?”

“To know. To be certain.”

“And then?”

“Not for you to know. We turn him, we turn him in. Entirely down to circumstances. His address is in there. Apartment in the French Sector. Turn him
over
. Tell me what you find.”

For minute Wilderness read on in silence.

Then said, “There’ll be a shopping list.”

“Fire away. I’ll take notes.”

“Two sets of lockpicks. Half a dozen screwdrivers in all sizes. A penknife with a carbon steel blade. Black trousers. Black shirt. Pea jacket. One of those peaked caps every other German bloke seems to wear. Rubber-soled shoes, size ten. A canvas bag. A blanket. Scissors to slice it up. A couple of rolls of sticky tape. Pigskin gloves, as thin as they come. A jar of concentrated nitric acid and an eyedropper . . .”

“Bloody hell . . . slow down. What’s the acid for?”

“You surely don’t want me to use gelignite?”

“Joe, I don’t want you to leave any trace!”

“It may be necessary. Why don’t we get it just in case?”

“If you can’t crack a safe the way you did Rada’s then don’t try. No one must ever know you’ve been there.”

“OK. All the clothing should be secondhand and looking like it, except the gloves. Get them new.”

“Sounds like I’m kitting you out as a cat burglar.”

“
Fassadenkletterer
. That’s what Berliners call them. But the English has more poetry.”

“And a camera.”

“If you say so.”

“And take your gun.”

“What?”

“Rose tells me you never carry it. Take it when you do this job, and any other job that comes up.”

Wilderness nodded, wondering how much dust it might have gathered after twelve months in a drawer.

“And a vehicle? You can hardly do this using a jeep.”

“Public transport.”

“What?”

“You’ve seen too many Scotland Yard films. Thieves escaping in a fast car. It’s bollocks. Easiest way to lose any tail is on foot and on an underground train. He lives in Blaumontagstraße. There’s a U-bahn station quite close. And if it restores your faith in the traditions of the Yard . . . throw in a magnifying glass.”

“My, you really have got to know Berlin, haven’t you?”

“It’s what you asked for.”

“OK. You’ll have all this by tomorrow morning. You do the job tomorrow night.”

“No. I do the job tomorrow afternoon.”

“What in broad daylight?”

“I’d do it in narrow daylight if I knew what it was. You just tell me what I’m supposed to be looking for and leave it to me.”

§127

Wilderness had not pulled a job since Cambridge. Just putting on the gloves was pure delight. Picking the lock was too easy. Not leaving a mess took more time than robbery. He photographed every document in the apartment, and he searched for anything hidden. Few people had imagination when it came to hiding anything. Under the mattress, under the bath, in the cistern, behind the gas fire. Villefranche had papers from the Allied Kommandatura at the back of his shoe rack. Wilderness photographed them and then put them all back.

Burne-Jones smiled as he took the film from Wilderness. He did not tell him what it was he’d found.