A Patriot in Berlin

by Piers Paul Read

  Sometimes, if she snuggled up to him, a strong arm would come down around her shoulders; but there were occasions when he would rebuff her, turning away to face the wall. She could not fathom his moods. At times he was boyish and cheerful, at others sombre, almost grim. Frequently he would tease her, with evident affection, but on occasions he would become moody and silent, behaving as if he loathed her. He had dreams from which he awoke grinding his teeth, and even in the midst of making love a look of hatred would come onto his face and a physical ferocity replace the gentleness that had inspired his earlier caresses.

  After one or two solicitous enquiries about his insomnia and bad dreams had been rebuffed, Francesca came to appreciate once again the truth of what Stefi had said about Russians: they had learned to keep themselves to themselves. Unlike most of her American friends, Andrei disliked analysing his feelings or discussing the past. He made a number of depreciating remarks about the debilitating effect of psychoanalysis: introspection, he seemed to think, was unworthy of a man.

  Whenever Francesca touched on his marriage, she found Andrei reluctant to discuss it. He would not even tell her the name of his wife. ‘You are now the only woman in my life.’

  ‘But before you met me …’

  ‘Love is eternal, and eternity has no before or after.’

  He was equally reticent about his family. She sensed that he was fond of his parents, of his sister and of his son, but she gained no impression of the kind of life he led in Moscow, a subject that particularly interested her since it was a life she might come to share. She made some oblique references to this – the future – but found that here too he was unwilling to be drawn, even into conjecture. She saw only too clearly that their time in Berlin would soom come to an end and, while she had no wish to test a bond so freshly formed, she could not bear to imagine that they would simply go their separate ways.

  Although they were able to spend their nights together, the days were hectic and were often spent apart. Then there came a lull before the storm – a moment when the catalogue had gone to press and the works had all arrived in the warehouse in Tegel, but there was a week still to go before the hanging could start. That Sunday was one of the first in the past six months when Francesca had not gone into the office or worked at home. Both she and Andrei therefore had the luxury of lying in bed until ten; making an American breakfast with English muffins and bacon and egg; reading Die Zeit and Welt am Sonntag and Time magazine while listening to a compact disc of Tosca.

  It was one of the first hot days of June, when the sunshine seemed to insist upon an excursion of some kind – to Charlottenburg, Potsdam, Köpenick or the Grosser Mügelsee. However, they lingered so long over breakfast that it was twelve before they were dressed. They therefore decided simply to take the S Bahn to the Friedrichstrasse station, and from there walk to the Museum Island. In the Pergamon Museum they studied the superb displays of classical antiquities – the gate of Ishtar from Babylon, the Sumerian temples, the great Pergamon altar itself, all brought to Berlin by German archaeologists in the nineteenth century. Later, as they walked back down Unter den Linden towards the Brandenburg Gate, Serotkin spoke to Francesca about the rise and fall of empires and the fickleness of destiny. She only half listened. She was happy simply to be leaning on his arm.

  They passed the Brandenburg Gate, crossing the great swathe of no-man’s-land where the Wall had once stood.

  ‘I guess that in terms of world history,’ said Francesca, ‘the Berlin Wall will hardly rate a mention.’

  ‘Not, certainly, if you compare it with the Great Wall of China.’

  ‘Unless to compare and contrast: a wall in China to keep the barbarians out, a wall in Germany to keep them in.’

  ‘You are confident that history will see the Communists as barbarians?’

  ‘Isn’t shooting people who want to emigrate barbaric?’

  ‘Two hundred people were shot trying to escape from East Berlin over a quarter of a century. In Detroit, the same number are shot in a week. Add to that the number who die as a result of drugs, and one is entitled to wonder what is meant by civilization.’

  ‘People cannot be civilized if they are not free.’

  Serotkin looked at her with amused condescension. ‘The Roman Empire was a military dictatorship. The barbarians were democratic.’

  Francesca was getting out of her depth. ‘Let’s not argue,’ she said, clinging more tightly to his arm.

  They were now walking down the long boulevard leading from the Brandenburg Gate to the column surmounted by the Goddess of Victory. The whole area was redolent with history. To their right, through the trees of the Tiergarten, they could see the Reichstag, burned down at the time of the Nazis, now rebuilt. A little later they came to the Soviet Memorial, a stone monument flanked by two tanks and two cannon from World War II, and dominated by a huge bronze statue of a Soviet soldier, a rifle with fixed bayonet slung over his neck.

  Here Serotkin stopped amid the cluster of tourists and looked up impassively at the two live Soviet soldiers who remained guarding this monument to their country’s triumph.

  ‘I didn’t realize,’ said Francesca, ‘that there are still Soviet soldiers in Germany.’

  ‘Some have left but others must wait until homes have been built for them in Russia.’

  ‘And what will the Germans do with this memorial when they go?’

  ‘Demolish it,’ said Serotkin grimly.

  ‘Or move it to the Pergamon Museum,’ said Francesca. ‘After all, it’s the nearest thing to a Soviet altar.’

  ‘No, they will demolish it,’ said Serotkin again. ‘They will not want a constant reminder in the middle of their capital city of who it was who freed them from Hitler.’

  ‘Wasn’t it kind of a joint effort?’

  ‘Yes. American money and Russian blood.’

  ‘There were the British …’

  ‘Marooned in Britain.’

  ‘And the French.’

  ‘Defeated.’

  ‘The Americans, then.’

  ‘Neutral, until Hitler declared war on them.’

  ‘It was Stalin who made a pact with Hitler.’

  ‘He had no choice.’

  Francesca did not want to get into an argument about the past, nor, it seemed to her, did Andrei. She could tell from the movement of his jaw under the skin, as he clenched and unclenched his teeth, that he was biting back words – not words directed at her but some dispute that was going on in his own mind.

  She took his arm, a gesture that was meant to signify that she loved him whatever their differences of opinion. He did not shake her off but turned and looked at her with an expression bordering on contempt. ‘Tell me, Francesca, since you know so much about history. When have Russian soldiers marched through the Brandenburg Gate?’

  ‘At the end of the war, I guess.’

  ‘And before that?’

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Chasing Napoleon, on his retreat from Moscow.’

  ‘I thought he was defeated by the British at the Battle of Waterloo?’

  ‘Finally, yes. Wellington dealt with an ad hoc army, assembled in a hundred days. But it was the Russians who defeated his Grand Army in 1812. Just as with Hitler, we are employed by the West Europeans to dispose of their tyrants.’

  ‘While unable to get rid of your own.’

  Serotkin frowned. ‘We disposed of the Tsars.’

  ‘But Stalin died of natural causes.’

  ‘Under Stalin,’ said Serotkin, ‘we were admired by many and feared by all. Now that we are democrats, Russia is universally despised.’

  ‘At times,’ said Francesca, ‘you sound as if you wished that Stalin was still around.’

  Serotkin hesitated. ‘Stalin was ruthless, but any government is ruthless when it comes to its nation’s vital interests.’

  ‘He was more than ruthless,’ said Francesca. ‘He was cruel.’

  ‘For cruel necessities you s
ometimes need cruel men,’ said Serotkin. ‘It used to be thought that the Russians could only be governed by terror.’

  ‘But not now …’

  ‘We shall see.’

  ‘You’re not governed by terror, are you?’

  He paused, then said: ‘It is always preferable to be governed by love, but sometimes one has to choose between two different loves.’

  ‘Maybe you think you have to choose when in fact you can have both.’

  He turned towards her and once again looked into her eyes, but this time his expression was sad. ‘I think you know, Francesca, how much I love my country. When … all this is over, I shall have to go back.’

  ‘Would you like company?’

  He hesitated.

  Francesca blushed. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to put you on the spot.’

  ‘What about your job? Your tenure?’

  As a reply, she simply squeezed his arm.

  ‘Francesca …’ He hesitated again, as if searching for the right words. ‘Francesca, there are things about me … things that I have done and things that I must do. You don’t know me. I am not what I seem.’

  Thinking of the hairdye, Francesca smiled. ‘Didn’t you say that a woman’s conscience is her intuition? Well, when I’m with you I feel it’s right, and when I’m not, I feel it’s wrong.’

  ‘There are other things than love.’ As he said this, he sounded uncertain.

  ‘A month ago, I would have agreed.’

  ‘The exhibition, the paintings …’

  ‘Who wants art when you can have life?’

  Serotkin turned and looked at Francesca as if to see whether or not she was sincere in what she said. ‘If you had to choose,’ he asked, ‘between me and all those paintings in the exhibition, one or the other – not to have, but to exist – which would it be?’

  She did not hesitate. ‘You.’

  He looked away as if this was not the answer he wanted. For some time he stood silently staring up at the bronze soldier towering above the memorial. ‘Valentin Rasputin once wrote: Truth is remembering. He who has no memory has no life.’ He turned back to face Francesca. ‘There are things in our past, you see, that no Russian can forget, and the memory leads him to a certain course of action. But in time that action also becomes a memory, just as our being here will become a memory.’

  He turned to walk on, took a few paces, then stopped and once again looked directly into her eyes. ‘In a month’s time,’ he said, ‘on the fourteenth of July, Bastille Day, I shall come back to this Soviet altar, and if you are here, I shall ask the same question, and if your answer is the same, then I promise you that we shall remain together for the rest of our lives.’

  FIFTEEN

  After two weeks in Berlin, Nikolai Gerasimov could no longer postpone his trip to Leipzig. It was clear that Inspector Kessler was beginning to wonder whether or not to cut his losses and send him back to Moscow; and General Savchenko, to whom he spoke from time to time on a secure line from the former Soviet Embassy, now the Russian consulate, on Unter den Linden, was also impatient. Gerasimov’s excuse – that the Germans were keeping him busy – was beginning to wear thin.

  Kessler appeared happy to let him conduct investigations on his own: indeed, he encouraged him to do so. When Gerasimov told him that he was going to Leipzig, Kessler informed the city’s police and provided him with a letter ‘to whom it may concern’ asking for full cooperation. A room was reserved in a hotel, a first class ticket provided by Kessler’s office, and Gerasimov was met at Leipzig’s palatial railway station by a plainclothes detective from the city’s police.

  Leipzig depressed Gerasimov. He remembered, from his study of German literature at the Institute of International Relations in Moscow, that the city had been described by Goethe in his Faust as ‘a little Paris’. Now, after nearly fifty years of socialism, it was more like a large Nizhni Novgorod or Dnieperpetrovsk. Many of the older edifices still showed traces of the war: some bombed out blocks had not been rebuilt, others had the pockmarks left by Soviet shells. The postwar buildings were mostly tawdry and shabby, as yet untouched by the transfusion of hard currency from the West.

  The young Leipzig detective who met Gerasimov at the station had clearly been moulded by the old regime. Inadvertently, he addressed Gerasimov as ‘comrade’ and drove him with some pride to a modern tower-block hotel. Gerasimov recognized it at once as a Soviet-style Hilton. They waited for more than a quarter of an hour in the scrum around the reception desk as a sullen girl slowly searched for their booking among scraps of paper scattered over the broken-down computer. Gerasimov felt at home.

  After handing Gerasimov his card and promising any assistance should it be required, the Leipzig detective clicked his heels and departed. By now it was mid-afternoon. Not wanting to stay in Leipzig any longer than he had to, Gerasimov left his suitcase in his room, returned to the lobby and bought a map of the city from the hotel shop. If he was watched it would look as if he meant to do some sightseeing before settling down to work.

  Gerasimov did not even look round to see if he was followed as he walked to the centre of the old city: he took it for granted that he was under surveillance. He looked at the Old Town Hall and the old Commercial Exchange; he went into the Church of St Thomas and, on coming out again, paused to look at the statue of the church’s former organist, Johann Sebastian Bach.

  Opposite the church was a café. He went in, sat down and ordered a cup of coffee and a slice of strudel. One of the tourists by the statue of Bach looked round every now and then to make sure he was still there. Gerasimov paid for the coffee and the strudel and, when the tourist’s attention was distracted, went into the kitchen of the café and, without a word of explanation, out through the back.

  He climbed onto the first tram that came along. It took him along the Martin Luther Ring and Harkorstrasse. He got off at the Fine Art Museum, and there waited on the traffic island in the middle of the road. No car had stopped when he got off the tram, nor did one alter direction when Gerasimov got on the next tram travelling in the opposite direction. As it approached the centre, he got off again by the New Town Hall, hailed a taxi and asked the driver to take him to the corner of Goldschmidt and Nürnbergerstrasse, a block away from the showroom of the Volkswagen dealer, G. Bedauer.

  Again, no car was hovering as Gerasimov paid for the taxi. To be doubly sure, he walked round the block, stopped at a shop window. He was not being followed. He reached the forecourt of the Autohaus Bedauer just as a rubicund, fifty-year-old man was closing up.

  ‘Good evening. Herr Bedauer?’

  The man turned. ‘Yes? How can I help you?’

  He was not a local: Gerasimov could tell from the accent. He was probably a Wessie come to give his country cousins a lesson in free enterprise.

  ‘I am sorry to have come so late in the day,’ said Gerasimov in a slangy western German. ‘And I’m not even here to buy a car.’

  ‘Never mind, never mind. We are here to serve. That is what the people here will not understand.’ He opened the door to the showroom, invited Gerasimov to enter, and then led him between two shiny new Golfs to his office at the back.

  As the two men sat down, Herr Bedauer behind his desk, Gerasimov handed him the letter from Berlin’s chief of police. ‘I’m working on a special investigation,’ he said. ‘All in confidence, of course.’

  The dealer read the letter, then handed it back to Gerasimov. ‘Always happy to help the forces of law and order.’

  ‘We are interested in a white Volkswagen van sold by you a little under two years ago, probably in July, possibly June ’91.’

  ‘It can’t have been before July.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because that’s when I started in business. My first sales were in July ’91.’ Herr Bedauer stood and went to the filing cabinet behind his desk. ‘Have you the registration?’

  ‘Unfortunately not.’

  ‘Chassis number? Engine number?’


  ‘No.’

  ‘There will be more than one,’ said Bedauer. ‘When the Ossies got their Deutschmark, they went crazy. I sold everything Wolfsburg sent me.’ He thumbed through the files. ‘If my secretary was still here, she would know where to look … Commercial vehicles … here we are. July 1991, you say?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Bedauer took out a file and sat down at his desk. He went through the papers. ‘We sold twenty-two vans that July.’

  ‘How many were white?’

  ‘Wait a moment.’ Bedauer went through the file once again, removing some of the papers. ‘Here we are. Eight white vans.’

  ‘Now, do you happen to know if any of them are still in Leipzig?’

  ‘Most, I should imagine.’

  ‘The van that interests us is not in Leipzig.’

  ‘Stolen, eh?’

  ‘Used for an illegal purpose. So if you could remove, for example, those vans that have been serviced here over the past years or so.’

  Bedauer looked through the seven invoices. ‘Grützner … that’s still in Leipzig. So is Dunklebeck. He’s opened up a building supply business. Doing well. And Kuhn, the flower shop. I see that almost every day. But these five. I don’t know. I’d have to check the service department but the garage is closed.’

  ‘Could you do it in the morning?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And if, in the meantime, you could give me the names and addresses of the five …’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘I would be grateful.’

  Bedauer took out a pen and started to write, slowly and methodically, on a pad. ‘Telephone numbers?’

  ‘If possible.’

  ‘They will be on Dieter’s Roladex.’

  ‘Dieter?’

  ‘Our sales manager.’ Bedauer stood and went to a desk out in the showroom. He returned a few minutes later and handed the list to Gerasimov. ‘If you leave a number,’ he said, ‘I’ll call you tomorrow when I’ve had a look at the service records.’