The Map

by T. S. Learner

  ‘Why not? According to our records, Molivio damn near killed the man, and Tyson is very close to the chap. Surely Winthrop would like to take a shot?’

  ‘I don’t know. When he was working underground in France for me, he was good, one of the best. August doesn’t do anything he doesn’t want and he’s suspicious as hell.’

  ‘But did he feed you anything?’

  ‘He tried to get me to think he was in North Africa. Like he was in Port Said already. I think he knows the welcoming reception at the hotel was ours.’

  ‘We have to keep playing him, but he’s definitely not in Egypt. La Veuve Joyeuse hasn’t docked yet. I checked.’

  Malcolm thought for a moment then swung around to Nesbit. ‘Why north?’

  ‘I heard geese. Geese begin to migrate north this time of year – from Africa to northern Europe – Scandinavia, Denmark and Germany. He’s also lying about Cohen. They’ve been in contact,’ Norris concluded, leaving no room for debate. Norris looked across at the map they had pinned on the blackboard. Every major cathedral town in France was circled in red. He picked up a piece of chalk and with one long sweep drew a line from the bottom of Spain up through France curving east over Germany.

  ‘From the cry I’d say it was Barnacle geese. They have a preference for Holland and northern Germany. Get the Germans on the phone,’ he instructed Malcolm. Malcolm didn’t move.

  ‘I didn’t know you were a birdwatcher, Nesbit,’ he remarked, coldly.

  ‘Ah, but I know you’re a sentimentalist, Hully,’ Norris retorted, then picked up the phone himself, pausing, receiver in hand. ‘What was the colour of Edouard Coutes’s Fiat again?’

  §

  The ship lurched again and Shimon reached out to stop his inkpot from sliding across the table. The sound of the sailors racing over the deck to secure the sails ran across the low ceiling as the beams of the small merchant vessel creaked and groaned with each new wave, the guttural Dutch sounding through the tiny cabin. Shimon sighed then lifted the bouquet of cloves to his face, breathing in the heady scent in an attempt to quell his seasickness. I am from a desert people, he told himself, my stomach shall never make peace with the sea. Just when he thought he might have to vomit, the inhalation worked and the nausea subsided. Steadying himself against the edge of the desk, he opened the chronicle at its last page and began writing furiously, calculating he had only a short time before the next heave of the ship would distract him.

  The sound of the cabin door opening broke his concentration.

  ‘Husband.’ Uxue’s voice seemed to float across the surface of the parchment, but for a moment he ignored it.

  ‘Husband, I have fear.’

  Shimon swung around. Uxue, her face chalky pale, her legs spread to steady herself, stood in her plain travel dress, her full womb now visible under the hessian weave.

  ‘Uxue.’ He got up and navigated his way to her, using the corners of the fixed wooden bed, their travel chest fastened by ropes to the floor, and the edge of the desk. Then he took her in his arms.

  ‘We will be safe. It is just a small storm – it will pass.’

  To his surprise, she pushed him away. ‘It is not the storm I am afraid of, husband. It is you and your stubborn will. You will have all three of us condemned and executed. I know it!’ She sat heavily on the bed, her face grim. ‘Why England? An enemy of Spain. Why risk all to seek an audience with the King, you, a simple physic? This is suicide, Shimon.’

  He sat next to her and picked up her hand. It was freezing. Absentmindedly, he began rubbing it. ‘Why the misgivings now, Uxue, when I have explained all to you before?’

  ‘Because maybe I find that I am not as noble as you are. I want to live, Shimon, I want to live and be happy with my child.’

  ‘And you will, Uxue, I promise.’

  ‘And with you.’ She was staring wide-eyed at him, knowing if anyone could promise this, it would be him. He turned away, unable to keep looking into those questioning black eyes. He got up again. He had to move, to throw himself into his own determination.

  ‘I’ve told you. I’m on a mission for peace. This is greater than us, than our child. The great treasure I have found will stop a future war – one more widespread than Europe has ever known, a religious war that will tear brother from brother. It will help broker peace between Catholics and Protestants, both in England and in Germania and eventually France itself. But I have to begin with a tolerant monarch, one who still wavers. King James is rumoured to be a secret Catholic. He will give me an audience, especially when he hears what I have to offer.’

  ‘Husband, there is no war between the Protestants and Catholics.’

  ‘But there will be, a long war that will fall like a shadow across Europe, one that will last for decades, hundreds of thousands will die. I can prevent this, Uxue. I have the power.’

  Furious, she struck out at the straw pallet. Straw and dust rose with the blow. Startled, Shimon stepped back. He had never seen her so irate – was it the pregnancy? he wondered, but was wise enough to say nothing.

  ‘So we are sailing to England for you to talk the King into preventing a war that hasn’t even started? Shimon, I have stood beside you this whole journey, believed in you and your great search, but now I have my doubts.’

  ‘You are human and fallible, this is only natural.’

  ‘If I did not love you, I could leave,’ she said, almost as if telling herself and not him.

  He kneeled on the hard wooden floor and laid his head in her lap, the swell of her full womb a warm curve against which he buried his ear.

  ‘Do you want me to release you? I believe we have enough money. You could return to Irumendi and start a life there without me.’

  Her fingers crept through his long black hair. Without him knowing, she started to cry silently.

  ‘You couldn’t release me even if you wanted to. We are woven together; words of the same song.’

  ‘Indeed.’ But still he dare not lift his eyes to her.

  ‘But, husband, tell me how do you think a single man will stop the birth of a war?’

  ‘Faith, Uxue, and the miracle of a legacy.’

  On the other side of the room a sudden gust of wind ruffled the pages of the chronicle.

  21

  There was a bitter wind coming off the Alster. After spending the night sleeping in the car at the side of the road they had driven for hours, winding their way through the bottom of Germany, crossing into the country from Saarbrücken, then up towards Cologne, skirting around the main town, through the devastated medieval city of Münster, then Bremen and finally into Hamburg. The cities, caught in a frenzy of rebuilding, still bore the tell-tale scars of the intense Allied bombing, much of which had transformed historical Gothic centres into skeletal ruins, leaving vast empty lots stretching between the surviving buildings – the incongruous end of a terrace, the blank wall once attached to a whole row of houses, now a mute witness to unimaginable destruction; the tall industrial brick chimney left standing like a curious totem pole, the only remnant of some nineteenth-century factory; the spire of a church emerging like a single note from a pile of rubble. The sight had reduced August, no lover of the Nazi regime, to silence.

  August and Izarra stepped out of Hamburg’s central post office. They had waited in line for a good half-hour, nervously scanning the milling crowd for uniforms or anything indicating possible MI5 or Interpol presence and when they’d finally reached the counter there had been no telegram from Jacob – a worrying sign, although August was determined to hide his growing anxiety.

  ‘Now what?’ Izarra asked, shoulders hunched, as they walked back to the car through the wind-driven drizzle.

  ‘We go see a friend of mine.’ August tried to sound as confident as possible, but he knew they stood out as strangers among the odd clusters of grey-coated pedestrians that hung around the edge of the city square, some walking purposefully through the drizzle, others loitering in a listlessness around the stalls selling b
ratwürst and hot pretzels.

  As they drove through St Pauli great swathes of flattened ground, interspersed with the odd old red-brick tenement, came into view.

  ‘Fifty thousand dead in one night, it must have been hell,’ August said, as much to himself as to Izarra.

  ‘Death is death,’ Izarra retorted, bitterly. ‘But when I look at this, all I can see is Gernika.’

  ‘Not all Germans supported Hitler.’

  ‘Perhaps, but the collective always pays no matter what.’

  They drove down Grosse Bergstrasse, where he could see cheap barracks-like buildings had been constructed, no doubt to house the many made homeless at the end of the war.

  A Jeep passed them, slowing to check the numberplate, a small Union Jack fluttering from the aerial. August was careful to keep his gaze straight ahead.

  ‘British?’ Izarra asked.

  ‘The occupying forces. The British have Hamburg, the Americans Bremen. Both are dangerous for us.’

  The Jeep turned at the next corner, to August’s relief.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Speicherstadt, the old warehouse district, to one of Jimmy’s contacts, and an old friend of mine, Karl Haardt. He was one of the founding members of the Thälmann Battalion – a brigade made up of German Communists and resistance that fought in your war, the Spanish war, many to the death. He was a close and loyal friend. We had a few things in common.’

  ‘Like what?’

  He glanced over, smiling wryly. ‘You really don’t want to know.’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘Women, chess and jazz. Not necessarily in that order. But all three got us through Aragon, Madrid and the siege of Bilbao. Although Karl wasn’t so lucky.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘He got hitched. Although I’d lay money he’s no longer married. Anyhow, the main point is that he’s a Hamburger born and bred. There ain’t nothing he doesn’t know about this city. The good, the bad …’ They had now turned into the Reeperbahn, its garish neon lights advertising strip shows and burlesque glittering through the evening mist like aberrant lighthouses. A particularly fat prostitute came into sight, resplendent in a tight pencil skirt, flesh rippling over the waist, and a tight spangly top, cleavage gleaming like the underbelly of a whale. She had cornered a diminutive man in a suit, at least six inches shorter than she was. ‘And the grotesque,’ August concluded, inexplicably cheered by the sight. On the other side of the road he noticed the Ernst-Merck Halle was advertising an upcoming concert by Lionel Hampton.

  ‘That’s new; Hitler banned jazz.’

  ‘Franco’s not keen on it either,’ Izarra said, dryly.

  They drove on alongside the rows of warehouses that backed directly onto the broad canals, the car gliding across the wet, glistening pebbled lanes through the back alleys.

  ‘Speicherstadt, we’re here.’ August pulled the car up at a street corner and looked up at a broken street sign. ‘Zippelhaus. From what I can see from the map I think we have to turn at the bridge here, Kornhausbrücke. Karl is working in a warehouse on Holländisch.’

  There were only workers, poorly dressed in old heavy jackets and the flat caps the local sailors like to wear, walking home in small groups scattered through the narrow streets, the Gothic warehouses towering over the streets like a relentless wall of mercantilism. A surprising number had survived the bombing.

  ‘The Allies concentrated on the port – where the battleships and U-boats were being constructed. They flew down the Alster using the Church of St Nicholas as a landmark and dropped most of their bombs on commercial areas like Steinwerder and around the fish market, and onto St Pauli and Altona – heavily populated working-class districts. Hitler did the same to London during the Blitz.’

  ‘How come you know so much?’

  ‘I’ve been here before, for a week in 1948. I had some cleaning up to do for the SOE, bringing in an agent who we originally thought had gone missing. The whole place was bleached honeycomb back then. I’d never seen a city so devastated.’

  They pulled up outside a warehouse. The sign over the door read: ‘Importeur von exotischen teppichen’. August looked down at Jimmy’s list he held in his hand. ‘This is it. I think Karl is the foreman here.’

  Just then a thin Arabic-looking man dressed in a kaftan and fez with an old fur coat pulled incongruously over the top stepped out of the large oak door, one hand holding his fez against the wind. He looked as if he were leaving for the night.

  ‘Go out and just ask to see a Karl …’ August scanned the list again, ‘… Haardt, and use that charm of yours on him, the one you save for strangers, but not so much that he mistakes you for a whore.’

  ‘I’ll try my best,’ Izarra quipped back then checked herself in the rear-view. ‘In what language? I don’t speak German.’

  ‘Try English. If he asks any more questions, tell him you’re a friend or relative of Karl’s first wife.’

  ‘First wife?’

  ‘He was married to a Spaniard for two weeks. I told you he likes women.’

  Izarra adjusted her lipstick, then stepped out of the car and approached the thin dark-skinned man, smiling. Within seconds he’d escorted her to the front door of the building and had yelled out Karl’s name. August watched from the car as the tall, craggy-faced German appeared at the warehouse entrance. Time flashed back as he recognised the lanky stance, the loose-limbed stagger that had not disappeared in the older man. Karl Haardt’s face was more battered and there was a new hollowness to the broad cheekbones, the high patrician nose and deep-set eyes. He was also walking with a slight limp, but the essence of the man appeared unchanged. The two men exchanged some words, then the younger businessman – obviously Karl’s employer – handed some keys to Karl and, after kissing Izarra’s hand, walked swiftly into the night.

  Karl and Izarra watched him disappear, then the German, after glancing in both directions, strolled over to the Fiat. August stepped out of the car and they embraced.

  ‘My friend, you are alive.’

  ‘You too.’

  ‘Gus, I wasn’t sure I’d ever see you again.’

  ‘But here I am.’ When August finally managed to free himself from the embrace he couldn’t help noticing Karl had tears in his eyes. The grey afternoon was now changing into evening and there was a thin veil of mist settling over the canals. August glanced down the empty street. He felt a prickle of awareness, standing there. Then it was gone.

  ‘Mein Gott, Gus, I would not have recognised you with this black hair – you look terrible, like a Slav stevedore. Come, I understand you need to get off the street.’ Karl ushered them both into the warehouse.

  The front showroom, deceptively plain from the outside, was lavish inside. The walls were hung with imported Arabic rugs and, in a small reception area, there was a brand-new desk with a modern leather chair behind it, in stark contrast to the evident poverty that surrounded the warehouse.

  ‘We import from Morocco to America. The Brits also help us with the English market – with the army base here there’s a lot of shipping now to Britain,’ Karl explained, as he hurried them through into the back warehouse. Apart from an apprentice who was busy hauling a crate of goods up from the canal using the crane jutting out from the top floor, the building appeared deserted. Karl ordered the youth to finish up as soon as he could, then led the others into a tiny office.

  It was a box within a box, a hardboard cube built into the corner of the huge warehouse space. Karl pulled a cord and a naked electric bulb illuminated an old chipped table pushed against one wall, a wooden chair pushed neatly underneath it. A stack of American magazines and some German papers sat on the desk; behind them, hanging from a nail in the wall, was a Betty Grable calendar dated 1950, and a certificate in German announcing Karl Haardt’s election as representative for the union of shipbuilders.

  ‘Humble headquarters, but it’s a job and they’re hard to find in Hamburg.’ Karl began pouring out three small glasses
of Schnaps while August pulled out the chair for Izarra to sit on, then rested against the edge of the desk, almost stumbling over a large artillery shell that sat end up on the floor, its bronze casting seemingly unscathed. Karl chuckled. ‘A souvenir from Operation Gomorrah in 1943, two hundred and seventy-seven houses flattened in one night, seven thousand dead. It has Made in Sheffield inscribed on its bottom, and luckily for us it’s been defused.’ He handed the Schnaps to Izarra and August. ‘Your beautiful friend here tells me you have driven all the way from Avignon. So first we drink, then I take you to a nice little hideaway I keep for such occasions. You will be safe there. It is so obscure not even my wife knows where it is, which …’ Karl nudged August, ‘… has been very useful when I am entertaining some nice lady friend.’

  ‘You’re married again, Karl?’ August queried, grinning.

  ‘Since liberation, Bettina has been a comrade in the party. She was on the outside during the war and helped smuggle food and messages into the labour camp. Liberation made me sentimental. I proposed the day after Hitler killed himself. So danke schön, Adolf. It’s been useful. In the ensuing chaos I got myself a new identity. And if you’re British military, I have been dead for at least ten years. So you see, you have to be nice to me.’ He winked suggestively at Izarra. ‘I am not in good health,’ he concluded, robustly, thumping his vast chest as if to emphasise the point. ‘But tell me, how did you know how to find me?’

  ‘Jimmy van Peters.’

  Karl skulled his Schnaps, then steadied his piercing gaze on August. For a moment August panicked. He knows about Jimmy’s murder and he’s heard the reports that I am the killer. August fought not to flinch.

  ‘Murdered, I hear – is it true?’ Karl asked, his voice friendly and level.

  August glanced across at Izarra. Jimmy and Karl had been close; he had no choice but to trust the German.