A Patriot in Berlin

by Piers Paul Read

  ‘I’ll be out and about,’ said Gerasimov. ‘I’ll call you, if I may.’

  ‘Give me a little time.’

  ‘Around eleven?’

  ‘Fine.’

  Gerasimov took a tram back to the centre of Leipzig. He watched the news on television in his hotel room, then went out again to have supper in the restaurant beneath the Old Town Hall, Auerbach’s Cellar. This too brought back memories of his study of Goethe’s Faust: however, Gerasimov did not choose it for its literary connotations. It was, he thought, the kind of place a tourist would choose, which might persuade his shadow that, after they had lost him that afternoon, he had disappeared into an art gallery or a museum.

  Gerasimov also wanted to find a place where he could talk to someone unobserved. The trouble with Leipzig, or any of the other cities in East Germany, or Eastern Europe for that matter, was the homogeneity of the population. Under the Communists, it had been almost as difficult to enter East Germany as to leave it. As a result, there was no national or racial diversity in the population of Leipzig. All the people you saw in the shops or the streets had the same white faces. In a local Gaststätte, Gerasimov would have stood out in the crowd, just as Faust and Mephistopheles had in Auerbach’s Cellar in Goethe’s poem:

  Those two travellers coming from afar,

  Their foreign fashion tells you what they are …

  Gerasimov could still remember the lines. Now, as he ate roast pig’s knuckle, he observed, as he had suspected, that the very celebrity of Auerbach’s Cellar had drawn in foreign tourists and visiting businessmen, so that no stranger was any more noticeable than any other.

  While Gerasimov was eating and drinking, he concentrated on his food or his beer. It was important to savour the taste so that he could take back memories to Moscow. Between courses, he opened a copy of Der Spiegel, sometimes reading the magazine, sometimes studying the list of names, addresses and telephone numbers that he had been given by Bedauer.

  Two of them were commercial enterprises, three private individuals. Rather than wait for Bedauer to look at the service records, Gerasimov could try telephoning the private buyers that evening on the pretext that he was looking for a secondhand van. The chances were good that this would reveal whether or not the van was still in Leipzig. The danger here was that the buyer who was Orlov’s associate might not only lie; he would also be alerted by the enquiry and then warn Orlov that someone was on his trail. There seemed no alternative but to see each person face to face.

  Gerasimov rose early the next morning and took a tram out to the St Alexis Church on Philipp-Rosenthalstrasse, built to commemorate the 22,000 Russian soldiers who had died fighting Napoleon in the Battle of Leipzig. Gerasimov was more interested in German launderers than Russian glory. He walked past the premises of St Alexis Wäscherei, one of the two commercial premises on the list. He did not care whether or not he was being followed by the Leipzig police: one could not know what he was doing from the cursory way he glanced into the yard behind the laundry and saw bags of dirty linen being unloaded from a white Volkswagen van.

  Mentally, Gerasimov crossed that name off his list. He walked on for half a mile or so, then caught a tram to a stop a short distance from 52 Giesenstrasse, the second address on his list. This was a painter and decorator, and Gerasimov expected to find a small shop. Instead, it was a large block of flats: clearly the man worked from home. Gerasimov went into the block. The lift was new: an illuminated number showed that it was now on the seventh floor. If Gerasimov waited, anyone following would know to which floor he had gone. Wearily, he started up the stairs.

  On the thirteenth floor, he came to the flat. He rang the bell. As he waited, he heard the screaming of a child. A bedraggled woman came to the door, a sniffing one-year-old clasped to her hip.

  ‘Is Herr Thiele there by any chance?’

  ‘He’s out on a job.’

  ‘Ah, I was wondering …’

  ‘He’ll be in this evening.’

  ‘I have his address but not his number.’

  ‘OK. Hold on.’

  The woman went back into the flat, leaving the door ajar. Gerasimov waited. She returned with a card.

  ‘I can’t remember who gave me his name …’ Gerasimov began.

  The child wiped its nose with the back of its hand. The mother looked restless. ‘He put an ad in the paper …’

  ‘Or could I have seen his name on the side of his van?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘A white one? A Volkwagen?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘That must have been it.’ He put the card in his pocket. ‘Many thanks. I’ll give him a call.’

  It was now eleven. Gerasimov called Bedauer from a public box. ‘Yes,’ said Bedauer. ‘I’ve been through the records. St Alexis Wäscherei have their van serviced here regularly. Rolf Rosegger … you can cross him off. Apparently he traded in the van for a Suzuki jeep three months ago. He’s a friend of one of my lads. The painter hasn’t had his van serviced here: they think he may service it himself. No one knows about Dieter Bleicher or Manfred Kraus. Neither has been here since they bought the van.’

  After thanking Herr Bedauer, Gerasimov put down the telephone, irritated that he had been told largely what he knew already. The laundry and the painter had been crossed off the list. Rosegger was a possibility; the trade-in could be a ruse; but if he was a friend of one of Bedauer’s young mechanics he was unlikely to have worked for Orlov. That left only two: Bleicher and Kraus.

  Bleicher’s address was out on the road to Torgau and Dresden, the furthest from the centre of Leipzig. Gerasimov decided to tackle him first: he could call on Kraus on the way back to his hotel. He took another tram, changing several times on the way. It was almost one before he reached Bleicher’s address. It turned out to be that of a bookshop. It was closed for lunch. There was no sign of a Volkswagen van.

  Gerasimov settled down in a Gaststätte with a glass of beer and a plate of sausage, sauerkraut and roast potatoes. At two, he walked back to the small square in the centre of the suburb, looking into one or two shop windows before returning to Bleicher’s bookshop. He sauntered past the entrance, then stopped, as if something in the window had caught his eye. In point of fact, there was little on display to tempt anyone: it appeared to have been, and perhaps remained, a state owned shop selling dusty titles from the days of the DDR.

  A young woman sat on a tall stool behind the counter, tying up bundles of books with old fashioned paper and string. She had dark untidy hair and steel-rimmed glasses.

  ‘Is Herr Bleicher here?’ asked Gerasimov.

  The woman looked up. ‘One moment.’ She continued with her work and only when the knot was tied, and the loose ends of string trimmed with scissors, did her attention return to Gerasimov.

  ‘You want to see Herr Bleicher?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘A private matter.’

  The woman frowned, got off her stool and went through to a room at the back of the shop. A moment later she returned, followed by a small, balding man.

  ‘Yes?’ he asked.

  ‘I represent Allied Insurance,’ said Gerasimov.

  ‘And?’

  ‘A white Volkswagen van was involved in an accident …’

  ‘That is nothing to do with us,’ said Herr Bleicher. ‘It was stolen.’

  ‘Ah. When was that?’

  ‘When was it Lisle?’ The older man turned to the young woman who was sitting once again on her stool.

  ‘October or November.’

  ‘Did you report it to the police?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And your insurance company?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And did you replace it with another Volkswagen van?’

  ‘No. With a Ford. But what has that got to do with the accident?’

  Gerasimov’s mind was working quickly. The theft could well have been a way to cover up the fact that the van had be
en given to Orlov, but they would hardly have waited to report it until October or November. ‘Nothing as such,’ he said. ‘It has nothing as such to do with the accident, but in insurance we are always interested in whether or not claims are settled …’

  ‘Interested! I should say so. They knocked twenty per cent off the price for wear and tear when the van was almost brand new.’

  ‘Your policy was not new for old?’

  ‘Who knows what it was! All that damn small print. If you ask me, we were better off before when we didn’t have to worry about that sort of thing.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Gerasimov. ‘My superior, Khrulev, would agree.’ He studied the man’s face for any recognition of the name Khrulev. There was none.

  ‘Insurances, taxes,’ muttered Bleicher. ‘A fat lot of good that’s done us, eh, Lisle? No one wants to read books any more. They’re all watching TV and videos.’

  ‘So you can’t help me with the van?’ asked Gerasimov.

  ‘Help you? I thought you were meant to help us.’

  ‘Try our company next time.’

  ‘Allied, you said? Give me your card.’

  ‘Alas, I’ve run out. Business is so good.’

  ‘For you, perhaps.’

  ‘You don’t know where the van is at present?’

  ‘Oh, of course. The thief sent me his name and address!’

  ‘I’m sorry. A silly question.’

  ‘Ask the police. I filed a complaint. But they’ll never find out who stole it. They never do, now. They’re too busy fighting the skinheads. What a mess, what a mess.’

  Gerasimov, more or less satisfied by now that the bookseller was not the man he wanted, began to move towards the door. ‘I’m sorry to have taken up your time.’

  ‘You don’t want to buy a book? Something by Lenin, perhaps? We are selling his collected works at half price. Or Engels, or Marx, or Ulbricht? They’ll be collectors’ items in a year or two.’

  ‘Thank you, no. Perhaps some other time.’ Gerasimov fled out into the street.

  Gerasimov’s hopes now rested on Manfred Kraus, hopes not just of finding Orlov but of getting back to the fleshpots of West Berlin. The day, starting cloudy, had now cleared. The late afternoon sun shone on the dilapidated buildings and colourless shops passed by the tram that took Gerasimov back towards the centre of Leipzig. In Russia he found such shabbiness tolerable because it was familiar, and the familiar was even lovable, like an old pair of slippers: but here, in Germany, it somehow seemed like a mirror held up to the face of the eternally slothful Slav. Gerasimov imagined a reproachful voice saying: ‘The Romans left roads, the British railways. What will remain from the Russian Empire?’

  This line of thought brought on in Gerasimov one of his occasional fits of depression. East Germany had always seemed the showpiece of the eastern bloc, ahead in every way of the Soviet Union. The shabbiness of socialist Leipzig appeared to Gerasimov the very best he could hope for from the future. If he played his cards well, he could hang onto his job, and perhaps put some icing on the cake of his basic pay and conditions by doing favours here and there, or by using trips abroad to import some Western electronic goods; but Gerasimov knew that he would never have the vision or the determination to cut loose and stay in the West as Orlov had done. It was not that he had much to go back to in Moscow: the slut, Ylena; a son whom he rarely saw; and possibly some kind of revenge from Georgi’s gangster friends. But to succeed in the West, he knew, you had to be the type to get yourself out of bed in the morning; actually to work in your office rather than simply pass the time of day; to have ideas and follow them through, instead of waiting for orders and then carrying them out with only a semblance of zeal. Gerasimov could comprehend the concept of professionalism – being good at one’s job as an end in itself – but initiative was another matter. It was not the sort of thing a Russian had in his bones.

  As he pursued Orlov, Gerasimov grew increasingly convinced that his quarry must have foreign blood. It was not like a Russian to sustain a covert scam over so long a period of time. After the Revolution the émigrés had mostly settled passively in the big cities of Western Europe and America, working as waiters and taxi-drivers, or, if they were lucky and had an aristocratic name, marrying an indigenous heiress. The only Russians to have made their fortunes were the Russian Jews. Perhaps Orlov has some Jewish blood, or German blood, like Lenin.

  Gerasimov changed trams at the railway station on the Platz der Republik. Avoiding surveillance was almost second nature to him, which in itself, had he thought about it, might have told any surveillant that he was not what he seemed. But the chances were that Kessler suspected it already. That did not matter. What was important was to find Orlov before they did. He got off the second tram on the Petersteinweg, a block from his destination, which he then approached on foot by a circuitous route. Turning a street corner, he waited once again in front of a shop window to make sure he was not followed. Reassured, he walked on down the street of tall nineteenth-century apartments, their walls still black from the soot blown from the factories since the time of the Kaiser.

  Even before he reached it, something caught his eye – a glint of gold that was the only colour in the otherwise gloomy street. When he reached it, he found that it was a small brass plaque that had caught the reflection of the setting sun. On the plaque, in black lettering, was written: Manfred Kraus, Private Investigator.

  The entrance to the office was through a door that led directly off the street. There was a bell. Gerasimov pushed it.

  ‘Yes?’ A woman’s voice.

  ‘To see Herr Kraus.’

  There was a short silence, then: ‘Have you an appointment?’

  ‘Unfortunately, no.’

  Another silence. ‘What is it about?’

  ‘A personal matter.’

  ‘Your name?’

  ‘Kessler.’

  ‘One moment.’

  Gerasimov waited. Then came a buzzing, and the door clicked open. Gerasimov walked up some steps and came to a second door just as it was opened by a small, frumpish, middle-aged woman. She nodded, stood back to let him enter and, pointing to a faded blue sofa, asked him to wait.

  Gerasimov did as he was told. The woman went back to her seat behind the desk, and continued to type on a heavy manual typewriter. When she had finished, she put the letter into a folder and then stood to put the carbon copy in one of the brown filing cabinets behind her desk. Gerasimov noticed that the drawer ran easily, and with a rumble, as if it was empty. It seemed likely that if Kraus was a private detective he had not been in business for long.

  The furniture in the office was familiar to Gerasimov. The desk and the cupboards had the same beech veneer found in the offices of every state enterprise from the River Elbe to the Sea of Japan. The green plastic telephone had an old-fashioned dial, and the heavy plastic intercom with black cloth over the speaker might have been a radio from World War II.

  There was a click and from the speaker came a man’s voice. ‘Please ask Herr Kessler to come in.’

  The frumpish secretary got to her feet, beckoned to Gerasimov and went to open the door to the inner office. Gerasimov smiled to thank her; she did not smile back.

  A tall man, aged over fifty and wearing a suit, rose reluctantly from behind the desk. He did not offer to shake hands but, as the secretary closed the door behind him, pointed to a chair, saying: ‘Please sit down.’ The impression he gave was of a busy doctor seeing a tiresome patient at the end of a difficult day. The pedantic, mildly irascible expression on his otherwise unexceptional features, together with his neatly trimmed grey-flecked hair and rimless spectacles, led Gerasimov to promote him from a general practitioner to a hospital consultant; or, had one passed him in the street, one might also have taken him for a company director or a senior civil servant. The only anomaly that Gerasimov noticed was an underlying nervousness that contradicted his authoritative manner which in turn seemed inappropriate in this two-roomed office in a back street
of Leipzig.

  ‘How can I help you, Herr Kessler?’ Kraus asked.

  ‘I was wondering,’ said Gerasimov, ‘whether you could undertake some investigative work on behalf of a client?’

  Kraus had a ballpoint pen poised over a pad. ‘You are …’

  ‘Acting for this client.’

  ‘A company?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Named?’

  ‘Khrulev.’

  Kraus hesitated for a second too long before noting down and repeating the name Khrulev. ‘And what is the nature of the investigation?’

  ‘We wish to find a vehicle …’

  Kraus frowned. ‘Perhaps the police …’

  ‘A white Volkswagen van, purchased here in Leipzig in July 1991.’

  In the fading light of the afternoon, it was difficult for Gerasimov to see the expression on Kraus’s face.

  ‘More important,’ said Gerasimov, ‘there is also a man …’

  Kraus held up his hand. Gerasimov stopped.

  ‘Ah yes, I remember,’ said Kraus. ‘You wrote to me about it. Let me find your letter.’ He scrawled on the pad, then turned it to face Gerasimov. Don’t talk here. ‘Here we are. Yes. Your client, if I am not mistaken, owns a Bulgarian import–export agency which formerly bought shoes from a factory in Weissenfels …’

  ‘Correct,’ said Gerasimov, writing on the pad: Auerbach’s Cellar, 19.00. He turned it to face Kraus.

  ‘After the change from Mark to Deutschmark, the shoes became too expensive for the Bulgarian market, but their quality not sufficiently high for the Western market. As a result the factory closed down …’ Kraus scrawled on the pad: This is madness. I am watched. He turned it back to face Gerasimov and pointed to the outer office.

  ‘So far as I remember,’ he went on, ‘your client offered a Volkswagen van to pay for the residual stock and while the management took possession of the Volkswagen they were unable to deliver the shoes because in the meantime the factory had been taken over by the Treuhand organization.’

  ‘Quite correct,’ said Gerasimov, pushing the pad back to Kraus, having merely underlined his original message: Auerbach’s Cellar. 19.00.