‘Or maybe like a jailer?’ I said.
‘I used to ask myself that question sometimes.’
‘And?’
‘In the end I decided there is no difference.’ His voice was firmer now. He had called my bluff and ended up master. For the next few hours – while I was in the DDR – I was a card in his hand and he could play me any way he liked. I opened the door. ‘Good-night, Herr Samson,’ he said. ‘May the Lord protect you.’
I grunted a goodnight.
I’d parked in the school alley across the road but the pastor’s car – a Trabant even older than mine – was sheltered in the nearby barn. It took me a few minutes to scrape the frost from my glass but the pastor had had the foresight to protect his windscreen with newspaper. Now he removed it and jumped into his car to watch me as I made repeated attempts to start up. He was going to see me off before he left; he didn’t want me following him.
Finally the loud rattle of my engine came, provoking a clatter of wings from the nearby trees as alarmed birds climbed sleepily into the night sky. I let in the clutch and moved forward cautiously, glancing in the mirror as I carefully negotiated the narrow stone entrance that bridged the ditch.
Reflected in the driving mirror I saw the pastor’s Trabant. As I watched, it lit up inside, as if he was testing a powerful flashlight. In its bright interior I could see his scowling face, his spectacle lenses flashing like silver dollars. Later I realized that this preliminary glow was some kind of misfire. Immediately the first blaze of light was overcome by a brighter one that transformed the car’s glasswork into sheets of polished silver. Fragments of flying glass caught the light of the explosion and enclosed the car in what was, for one brief instant, a great globe of glittering mirrors. Then it all fell to the ground and disappeared like snowflakes. By the time the force of the explosion came, I was through the entrance gate and on to the road. The blast almost rolled my car into the ditch, and the sound hit my eardrums like a thunderclap. The echoes of the explosion rolled across the yard and were replaced by a low hoarse roaring sound as the pastor’s Trabbie became a sizzling furnace.
Theo, you stupid bastard! They’ll come in and tear you all to pieces now. In my younger days I might have turned around, briefed them about reassembling and started them all running for cover. But I was no longer young. I stabbed the gas pedal. The glow of the fire disappeared behind a hill and I rolled up my car window and kept going.
All the following day I sat behind my desk waiting for the next hammer blow to fall.
‘A teleprinter intercept from Dresden,’ said Lida, putting it on my desk together with a fiercely strong cup of coffee. I looked at her; she stared back without expression. Frank Harrington in a characteristic gesture of support had assigned to me the brightest and best secretary in the building. Lida was a fifty-year-old widow with diamante-studded bifocals, a remarkable supply of brightly coloured woollens, an encyclopaedic memory and adequate command of most Western European languages.
‘How many of them is that?’ I asked her.
‘Five.’
‘But not Theo Forster?’
‘Not yet.’ Lida was a realist.
‘No,’ I said grimly. ‘Not yet. They’ll leave him to last.’
Lida had left my door unguarded and now the kid poked his head around it. ‘Can I see you, boss?’ His arms loaded, he pushed the door with a shoulder and entered crabwise.
‘I suppose so.’
The kid put two box files on my desk and opened the top one. ‘I’d better show you what I found,’ he said.
‘I know what you found,’ I said. ‘You found that there is no way to. immediately replace the DELIUS network as a means of putting people into place.’
‘Yes.’
‘No matter,’ I said. ‘With DELIUS compromised, all the Church networks are suspect. We’ll have to think of something drastic’
He stood by my desk stroking his files. ‘Why do they pick them up one at a time?’ he said. ‘Why not a swoop that brings them all in together? Keep the prisoners apart and interrogate them separately.’
‘It’s their system,’ I said. ‘Always one by one. They tap all the phones and watch all the houses and try to stampede the other suspects into doing something foolish. They hope to get leads to people they don’t know about.’
‘They have more or less got the lot now.’
‘More or less,’ I agreed.
‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m one hundred per cent,’ I told him.
‘You look done in. I hope you didn’t catch that Chinese ’flu that’s been going around the girls in the cashier’s department. It starts with a rough furry tongue. Have you got the same?’
‘I don’t think so, but I haven’t had time to match tongues with the girls in the cashier’s office.’
‘And stomach pains,’ explained the kid earnestly.
‘I’ve got a lot of work to do.’ He meant well, I could see that, but I needed time on my own. I needed to think.
‘They didn’t arrest the pastor,’ said the kid, waving some more papers at me.
‘Give them time,’ I said. ‘We’ll look at all the intercepts tomorrow. And we’ll see what Frank has to say. He might want to come back here and take charge.’
‘You haven’t told him yet?’
‘I’ll phone him in London. He’ll probably want to warn the D-G what’s happening.’
‘That should spoil his evening,’ said the kid.
‘Frank’s been around a long time. He’s seen the networks come and go.’
‘I suppose you get used to it. Is that what you mean?’
‘No, you never get used to it,’ I said. ‘You don’t break down and weep, but you don’t get used to it.’
‘I’ll see if there’s anything on the Magdeburg criminal police sheets,’ said the kid, balancing the contents of my out-tray on the top of his box files and making for the door. Then he stopped and said: ‘My father wrote to me the other day and asked me what I thought I would be doing when I was fifty years old. He said that if a man thinks about where and what he’s going to be when he’s fifty all the preceding years fall into place. Do you agree, boss?’
‘I’ll let you know,’ I said. Sometimes I wondered if he said these things to wind me up.
When he had gone, Lida said: ‘Shall I stay on tonight?’
‘No. Go home. Tell the night-duty man to switch his internal line through to me and give me two outside lines. I’ll sleep on the sofa.’
‘I sent your bags over to the Hotel Hennig but I didn’t ask for a room for you.’
‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘There’s a little attic room. Frau Hennig lets me use it when I’m in Berlin.’
‘And what about a meal?’
‘I’m all right,’ I said. I didn’t want her to mother me. She nodded and said goodnight, but about thirty minutes later she returned waving a flimsy sheet from the monitoring service. ‘I thought you’d want to see this immediately,’ she said. ‘Magdeburg area. A pastor severely burned in a vehicle fire. With it the news services are putting out a government warning about illegal storage of gasoline.’
‘Thanks,’ I said.
‘I think it’s our man. They are trying to play it down by means of the warning.’
‘Can I smell burning?’ I said. She looked at me and shrugged. ‘There is a burning smell,’ I said.
‘I was making toast. Is it forbidden?’
‘No, Lida,’ I said.
‘There is an electric toast machine for the office staff… If it is forbidden…’
‘No. No. Get along home, Lida. I’ll see you in the morning.’
‘Goodnight, Herr Samson.’ As she went out through the door the smell of burning was stronger and far more pungent.
Any last hope I was nursing, about Theo being eliminated from the list of suspects, was gone by midnight when it was confirmed that he’d been arrested. Theo was the last one to go into the bag. I read the message twice and then closed my
eyes to think about everything that had happened. The next thing I knew it was six in the morning and I was waking up with a headache and dry mouth, just like the girls with the Chinese influenza. I had just keeled over and gone to sleep at my desk. It wasn’t ’flu, it was nerves. Never mind all that stuff about the adrenalin flowing; real petrifying fear and despair brings only an overwhelming weariness.
Yawning and dishevelled I went and sniffed at early-morning Berlin – with all the sounds and smells I remembered as a child going to school. I had a stubbly face, bleary eyes and an urgent need for a cup of coffee. A car-pool driver took me to one of my old haunts, an all-night bar tucked away between the bus terminal and Witzleben S-Bahn. Its neon sign looked pale in the watery pink dawn. I went in and looked around at the people in there – truck drivers, railway men, pimps and night-shift workers – but the only face I recognized belonged to the proprietor.
‘Bernd. Long time, no see,’ called Sammy the owner without removing the cigar from his mouth. He was a plump, pink-faced Hungarian who used to earn a comfortable living from Berlin clubs and restaurants to which he sold alcohol, cigarettes and cigars stolen from the big trucks. Now he’d become almost completely respectable, providing food and drink to long-distance truck drivers at the end of the Autobahn that led through the DDR to West Germany. He was still selling alcohol and tobacco but his days of thieving were gone; he had a wholesale business and two large warehouses from which he could make just as much money without breaking the law.
I sat down and waited. The air was laden with smoke and coffee and the sweet smell of doughnuts. I drank a strong espresso coffee with a schnapps chaser and read a newspaper that some customer had left behind. There was no real news in it, just stories about TV stars and sports. Bruno Forster arrived eventually as I felt sure he would. He stood in the doorway looking around the room to find me. He was bareheaded and wearing mechanic’s coveralls with a railway uniform jacket. He was obviously on duty. When he spotted me he did not smile or wave, he came over to the table holding a packet as if he was about to deliver a warrant.
‘There it is, Herr Samson. Dad said you always wanted it.’ He dropped a heavy white envelope on to the plastic table-top.
‘Hello, Bruno,’ I said, looking up at him. Apart from a small wispy moustache he looked very much like Theo had looked in the old days. I didn’t touch the envelope.
‘He told me to give it to you. It’s the Blutorden.’ He spat it out – Blood Order – with all the contempt he could muster. It was a medal – one of the rarest of the Nazi decorations – and Theo had had one in his collection since he was a school-kid. I’d desperately wanted to add it to my modest little collection.
‘Thanks, Bruno. Will you have coffee? Or a drink?’
‘He’ll never survive prison. You know that don’t you?’ He stood over me and ignored the invitation.
‘Did you see him?’ I said.
‘You bastard. Are you satisfied now?’
‘Did you see him?’
‘Yes, they let me see him. He was crying.’ Bruno let me absorb that one. ‘He was sitting hunched up, with his arms round his knees. Sitting in the visitor’s room sobbing his heart out… like a child.’
‘Had they hurt him?’
‘What do you care? No, they hadn’t hurt him. They hadn’t tortured him the way your rotten Western newspapers say our detectives torture their prisoners. And if you’d left him alone he would be free and happy.’
‘He’s sick,’ I said. ‘They’ll probably let him out soon.’
‘You come into people’s lives and interfere, and make them miserable and stir up the shit. And where does it get you?’
‘It wasn’t like that, Bruno,’ I said. ‘Your father wanted to help.’
Bruno Forster looked around to be sure we weren’t being overheard. He had come through to the West on his S-Bahn train and I suppose they would ask him to account for every minute of his time. The S-Bahn management made sure their staff weren’t wandering around in the Western Sector of the city, for the managers were also vetted and kept under the strict scrutiny of the Stasi. That’s how the system worked.
‘Open your present,’ he said.
‘How is your mother?’ I could feel the medal through its wrapping but I didn’t open the envelope. It was as if by accepting the legacy I would be hastening poor Theo’s demise.
‘My mother won’t talk to me. I talk to her but she looks at me and doesn’t reply.’
‘She loves your dad.’
‘She blames me.’ He gave a short angry laugh. ‘They both do.’ His indignation came out with a rush. ‘You come along, and you tear the family apart. You tell them about the West. You tell them freedom is everything. You encourage the old man to help these maniacs who want to overthrow the State. I warned him over and over again. My mother takes him along to the Church and involves him and then, when he’s in trouble, who do they blame? Not themselves or you. They blame me!’
I fingered the envelope and I could feel the ribbon to which the medal was attached. Alone of all the Nazi medals it was worn on the right breast pocket, its ribbon threaded through the buttonhole.
‘I’m a socialist,’ said Bruno. ‘I’m loyal to my country. The DDR is a good place to live. They try. We have proper medical care and jobs for life. No crime, none of the perversion and hell you’ve made in the West. I tell my DDR friends that if they came over here and saw it for themselves they’d see the filth and the misery. They’d see how brainwashed your wretched workers are. They’d see the people living on the streets, the drugs and the horrors…’
‘But they can’t,’ I said. ‘They can’t come over here and see anything. You built the Wall.’
‘I’ve got to go back to work. I haven’t got time to argue.’
‘No, well maybe I’ve been brainwashed into thinking freedom is everything,’ I said. I restrained the desire to tell him that it was the filthy pollution – and the appalling working conditions at the government-owned cycle factory – that had brought his father prematurely to the point of death.
‘Open it up.’ He tapped the envelope. ‘Dad made me promise to give it to you. He told me over and over. I don’t know why you’d want it.’ As he looked around another thought struck him: ‘How did he know you’d be here? And how did you know I’d come?’
‘I guessed you might look in here. A lot of the S-Bahn workers look in here for a schnapps or a coffee.’
But he wasn’t to be fooled. ‘This place is a drop, isn’t it? Your bloody spy system! Is this how Dad’s network communicated with you? Is that how you told them you were coming? The S-Bahn?’
‘Don’t even start thinking about it, Bruno. You live in a place where even thoughts can be severely punished.’
Perhaps he was persuaded by that argument, for as he got to his feet he repeated his Party line about the West’s exploited workers and about me in particular. ‘You are a hyena, Samson,’ he said softly, so that his voice was almost a hiss. ‘You live on the corpses of good people who believe your damned fairy tales.’
‘Perhaps you are right, Bruno,’ I said. I’d known him since he was an infant in knitted hats and waving a rattle. I remember crossing Checkpoint Charlie bringing him a push-chair from the Ka-De-We department store. It only just fitted into the back of my car, and the frontier police were about to seize it from me until I gave them four cartons of American cigarettes. It was a foolish risk, for in those days the guards would sometimes react fiercely to any sort of attempted bribery.
‘You couldn’t leave him in peace could you? Not even when he was sick.’ He took a handkerchief and blew his nose loudly. ‘You call yourself his friend?’
I recognized his ranting for what it was: grief at the prospect of losing his dad, and regret that his ill will had meant missing so many precious years with his parents. I didn’t answer.
‘A Nazi medal,’ said Bruno. ‘It’s an appropriate gift. I’m glad I gave it to you in person.’
I knew he wouldn??
?t stay more than a few minutes; his masters became suspicious of prolonged delays in the West.
9
Hennig Hotel, West Berlin.
After my bruising encounter with Theo’s son I went to Tante Lisl’s hotel. The room I used was under the roof, reached by a steep flight of narrow wooden stairs originally intended only for the use of servants. It was midday. I closed the curtains against the daylight, undressed and went to bed. I needed sleep but sleep did not come easily; the cramped little room held vivid memories for me, not only of my school-days with Theo but of my father and of the day he died. Exhaustion finally claimed me and I did not wake up until late afternoon. I remained in bed for another half hour or so, hoping that someone would appear with comforts like broth and Bratwurst, but no one came. When I phoned the office to be sure no new emergency had developed Lida told me that her attempts to reach me had been met with someone telling her that I needed rest. Fortunately she had handled the office routine without my assistance.
Lida showed a disconcerting insight into everything that went on in the office. She told me that a query had arisen concerning someone who had checked out a BMW motor cycle the previous evening without entering into the book the required details of the driving licence and authorization code. In a voice devoid of any emotion she reported having told the motor pool to mark it ‘special arrangement for Mr Harrington’. That meant that she could just nod it through without it attracting further attention. Lida was a treasure.
My head ached, my eyes were difficult to open fully, and my mouth was dry. I pulled on an old roll-neck sweater and corduroy pants and picked my way down the creaking little staircase, along the landing, and downstairs to find something to eat. There was no one about; this was not the time of year for tourists, and businessmen found reasons to stay home when the Christmas season approached. From now onwards there was a slack period until the Berlin Film Festival in February. Lisl prospered in the Festival: her hotel had a reputation for being lucky. Directors, producers and even well-known actors and actresses thronged here because over the years so many of her guests had won the Silver Bear and all sorts of other awards. The two big expensive suites on the first floor were particularly lucky ones, so she said, although I’d noticed that when anyone asked which winners had slept in them, and won which prize at which Festival, Lisl always became somewhat vague.