‘Last week’s, I’m sorry to say,’ he said as he sat down, noticing Adam’s glance at the newspaper. ‘Nothing you won’t have read back in London. I thought it might assist in our recognizing one another.’ He removed his gloves and reached across the café table to shake hands. ‘My name, as I’m sure you’ve surmised, is Etherege. Welcome to Berlin. Your first visit, I believe?’
‘It is. I have long wished to travel here but I have not found the opportunity to do so until now.’
‘You could not have chosen a more auspicious time to arrive in the city,’ the diplomat said, waving his arm negligently in the direction of one of the white-aproned waiters. ‘1871 has so far been an extraordinary year for the Prussians. And for Germans in general. They now have an emperor, as I’m sure you know.’
The waiter approached the table and stood by it, bowing as he did so.
‘What will you have, Carver?’
‘Oh, coffee will be sufficient. Without milk.’
‘Zwei Tassen Kaffee, bitte. Schwarz.’
The waiter, nodding his head repeatedly, left them.
‘In other circumstances, I would relish the prospect of witnessing the birth of a new Germany,’ Adam said. ‘But, as Sunman must have told you, I have a very particular reason for coming here to Berlin.’
‘Ah, yes, the friend who has gone missing. The friend with family connections with the city.’
‘Have you learned anything about Vernon?’ Adam asked.
‘A little, but I am not certain that what we have learned will be of any value to you. Nihil ad rem, as the lawyers might say.’
‘Perhaps you should allow me to be the judge of whether or not your information is of relevance to the affair.’ Adam smiled, hoping to remove any hint of impoliteness from his remark.
‘Ah, the affair.’ Etherege returned the smile. ‘And just what is the affair? That is a question which I cannot help but ask myself. Sunman told me of your visit, but he was a little unforthcoming about the reasons behind it. And behind your interest in Harry Vernon.’
The return of the deferential waiter with their coffee allowed Adam a moment before he needed to answer. He wondered how much, if anything to tell, the elegant man from the embassy. Sunman had trusted the man enough to enlist his aid but had advised caution in revealing too much of his mission: ‘The less Etherege or anyone knows, Adam, the better.’
‘Vernon is an old friend. As you know, he works at the FO. He has been subject to severe pressure of late. His closest colleagues, Sunman among them, have grown concerned about his state of mind.’
‘He is suffering from neurasthenia?’
‘I would not go as far as to call it that, but he has become a little erratic, shall we say, in recent months.’
‘Erratic enough to disappear from London without trace.’
‘Not entirely without trace.’ Adam tasted his coffee. It was strong and bitter. ‘There were signs that he had taken the boat train to the Continent. We assumed that he would come here, where he has connections.’
‘You were correct in your assumptions. He has indeed arrived in Berlin. After Sunman telegraphed me, I sent a man to the Potsdamer Bahnhof to watch for Vernon.’
‘And he turned up?’
‘On the train from Paris. With a young woman. Our chap followed them for a while.’
‘So you know where they are?’ Adam could scarcely believe his luck.
‘Alas, no.’ Etherege looked mildly embarrassed, as if he had been caught out in some insignificant but undoubted faux pas. ‘Vernon gave our chap the slip. He lost them near the Gendarmenmarkt.’
‘Harry realized he was being followed?’
‘Probably. Although it is a busy area of the city. Our chap may simply have lost sight of the cab in which he and his companion were travelling.’
Adam sighed. ‘So we have no notion of where Harry is. He could be anywhere.’
‘Nil desperandum, old chap. I’ve told the man who lost him to damn well find him again.’
‘In a city the size of Berlin?’
‘There is a limit to the number of places he could be. He is a gentleman, is he not?’ Etherege picked up his coffee cup and peered at it as if fearing it had been somehow contaminated in the journey from the bar to their table. ‘He will not be lodging with some working man’s family in Moabit or patronizing some low haunt in Wedding. He will be in a hotel within a stone’s throw of Unter den Linden, I’ll warrant.’ He set down his cup without drinking from it. ‘And there are other means of tracing his whereabouts than simply traipsing the streets of the city.’
‘There are?’
‘But of course. One can ask discreet questions in the right places.’
‘I am far from certain that I know where the right places are in Berlin.’
‘Ah, but you have the inestimable advantage of my local knowledge upon which to draw.’ Adam looked at the man from the embassy, who was now smiling ironically, all trace of his earlier embarrassment gone. ‘You must come to Frau Kestelmann’s tomorrow evening,’ Etherege said with the air of a man bringing a long debate to its conclusion. ‘If your friend Vernon is still in Berlin, one of her guests will know of it.’
‘Frau Kestelmann’s?’
‘A lady of much charm and intelligence. Her origins are a trifle mysterious, although rumour has it that she was once an actress in Munich. She came to Berlin in the aftermath of the ’48 revolutions. Somehow she has manoeuvred herself into a position of great influence in the city’s society.’ The diplomat smiled again, as if in enjoyment of a private joke. ‘Nobody quite knows how. Her Thursday evening gatherings are attended by all the best and the brightest in Berlin. One would almost say that she presides over a salon if the word were not so damnably French.’
‘And you can contrive to get me an invitation?’
‘Oh, the lady is quite the Anglophile. There will be no difficulty. Sunman mentioned your literary success to me. I will tell her that you are a writer whose book on his travels in European Turkey was the sensation of the season in London. She will be falling over herself to meet you. And I will not be stretching the truth by too much.’
Adam laughed. ‘I think perhaps you will,’ he said. ‘My Macedonia book has not been much talked about in the last few years. And, if I believe my publisher, it has long since ceased to sell.’
Etherege waved his hand briefly, dismissing the young man’s remarks. He picked up his cup again and this time sipped the strong coffee. ‘A little exaggeration will do no harm,’ he said.
* * * * *
Arthur Bury looked across the Alexanderplatz. He had located his quarry once more. His superior, Mr Etherege, would be pleased, just as he had definitely not been pleased when Arthur had been obliged to report that the man and woman he had followed from the Potsdamer Bahnhof had disappeared. He had told Arthur in no uncertain terms that they must be found again and found quickly. The young British embassy official had set about doing so immediately. It was not the kind of work he had expected to be undertaking on his first posting abroad, but he was eager to please.
He had trailed around the most expensive hotels on Unter den Linden, asking questions of porters and describing Harry Vernon and his companion to bellboys. Eventually, at one of the hotels closest to the Brandenburger Tor, he had struck lucky. A doorman named Karl, dressed in a uniform more resplendent than that worn by any member of the new emperor’s army, remembered them. They had booked into the Deutscher Hof the previous day, although not under the name of Vernon. No, they were not in the hotel now. The lady – if, indeed, she was a lady, and Karl was not at all sure she was – had gone shopping. The gentleman had left separately. Arthur had missed him by no more than five minutes. However, by a stroke of good fortune, Karl had heard what instructions that same gentleman had g
iven to the cab that had picked him up outside the hotel. For the payment of a small gratuity, the doorman was prepared to share the information he had overheard. Vernon had told the cabman to take him to the Alexanderplatz. After thanking Karl in his not entirely correct German, Arthur had hailed another cab outside the Deutscher Hof and headed off down Unter den Linden.
When he had arrived at the Alexanderplatz and paid off his driver, Arthur had had another piece of luck. The square was as busy as it always was, thronged with people and horses and carriages; on one side, a troop of soldiers was marching through Alexanderplatz towards the red tower and frontage of the recently built city hall, the Rotes Rathaus. Arthur’s eyes had been drawn to the marching men – and he had immediately noticed his quarry standing on the pavement to their left. He had been no more than fifty yards away from him.
Vernon was not watching the soldiers, but nor was he looking in Arthur’s direction. He had been staring up at the sign of a Photographisches Atelier, his hat in his right hand as he brushed his left through his thinning hair.
And now, even as the soldiers moved into the distance and out of the square, Vernon still continued to gaze vacantly at the sign.
Just as Arthur was beginning to think that his fellow Englishman must have decided, for unfathomable reasons of his own, to have his photograph taken, he was approached by another man. This man was most definitely German. He was tall and thin and had, Arthur thought, the air of a man accustomed to the exercise of authority. The newcomer raised his hat to Vernon, who waved his own, still held in his hand, in a vague greeting. The two men moved away from the entrance to the photographic studios, the German’s hand in the small of the Englishman’s back as if he was guiding him in the direction he wished him to go. It was he who was doing most of the talking, although Vernon made the occasional remark and, at one point, seemed to be gesturing in the direction the soldiers had just disappeared.
Arthur decided that he needed to be close enough to hear what was being said. He set off along the pavement, eyes fixed on the two men, and almost immediately careered into a large gentleman in black, who turned furiously to confront him. ‘Entschuldigen sie mich,’ Arthur said, raising his hat and stepping swiftly to one side. He quickened his pace, leaving the large gentleman behind. For a moment, he thought he had lost sight of those he was following, but he spotted them again approaching the corner of the square where it joined Spandauer Strasse.
As they reached it, the distinguished-looking German raised his arm in what Arthur initially thought was some kind of salute. Seconds later, he realized his mistake. A barouche drawn by two elegant greys detached itself from a group of carriages on the far side of the street and made its way towards them. The man had been beckoning it to him. The driver of the barouche dismounted and opened its door. The German stood back and indicated that his companion should climb into the carriage. Vernon hesitated briefly and then did so. The German followed him, speaking briefly to the driver, who climbed back to his seat, flicked his whip in the air above the horses’ heads and guided the barouche into the traffic.
Arthur, who had broken into a run when he saw what was happening, arrived at the pavement edge just in time to watch the vehicle disappearing into the distance. ‘Damn, damn, damn,’ he muttered to himself. He sighed deeply and wondered what he should do. He had lost the man Vernon again. Mr Etherege would be furious.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Frau Kestelmann owned a large and imposing villa on the edge of the Tiergarten. After presenting their cards, Adam and Etherege were ushered into a room on the first floor which seemed to have been transported into modern Berlin from the previous century. Sweeping scrolls and curlicues of stucco decorated its walls and ceiling; paintings of classical ruins hung either side of the door through which they had entered, and a full-length portrait of a bewigged gentleman in court dress could be glimpsed at the far end of the room. Meissen porcelain stood on a series of occasional tables placed at regular intervals around the walls. On one, Adam noticed figurines of characters from the commedia dell’arte – Arlecchino, Pantalone, Colombina – arranged in a richly coloured dance; on another was a vast bowl with porcelain putti perched uncomfortably on its perimeter as if about to dive into the depths of whatever liquid it might hold. There was, however, no chance to admire more of the room’s decoration as their hostess was gliding across an elaborately patterned Persian carpet to greet them.
‘Ah, you must be the English traveller whose praises Mr Etherege sang,’ she said, holding out a white-gloved hand for Adam to take. Like her salon, Frau Kestelmann looked to be a refugee from a more elegant world than the workaday Berlin in which her visitors lived. She spoke English as if it were her native language but one which she had nonetheless decided, for obscure reasons of her own, to pronounce with a thick, Teutonic accent. ‘Welcome to my home. I have asked my bookseller to despatch Travels in Ancient Macedon to me. It sounds perfectly fascinating. I must read it as soon as I possibly can.’
‘I hope your bookseller will be able to locate a copy of it, Frau Kestelmann. It has become almost as rare as a Shakespeare First Folio.’
‘Oh, he will find it,’ she said with careless confidence. ‘I have paid him to do so. But, come, you are a stranger here in Berlin. I must introduce you to some of my other guests.’
Frau Kestelmann took Adam by the arm and swept him past Etherege into the middle of the room. It was already filled with people in groups of three and four, sipping drinks and conversing in the exaggeratedly bright voices peculiar to such gatherings. For the next twenty minutes Adam was paraded around the party by his hostess like a racehorse led through the paddock before the start of the Derby. He shook hands and exchanged pleasantries with several dozen people whose names, dutifully delivered to him by Frau Kestelmann, he knew he would not remember the following morning. A general, festooned with medals, was eager to hear Adam’s opinion of recent events in Paris, of his own army’s siege of the city and the chaos which apparently reigned now the French had been left to their own devices. The general’s wife wished to know what ladies in London were wearing that season – Adam was hard-pressed to formulate an answer. An author who had, Adam was informed, written a novel about marital infidelity in Brandenburg that was much admired, took his hand and scowled ferociously at him. After lecturing him briefly on the merits and demerits of modern European fiction, he stalked off, demonstrating every indication of being mortally offended, although quite why, Adam had not the slightest idea.Before he had any time to ponder greatly on the novelist’s rudeness, Frau Kestelmann led him briskly on to his next encounter – this one with a jolly, moustachioed man who had, according to his hostess, once been Prussia’s minister of justice.
It was all thoroughly exhausting and Adam was delighted when the social carousel finally ceased to swirl so rapidly around him and he was left alone. Frau Kestelmann had deserted him, floating away to envelop another guest in her overpowering social embrace. He was able to stand and contemplate the huge portrait he had seen when he had first entered. Who was its subject? he wondered. A prince or a duke, perhaps? The Germans of the last century had had so many. His speculations were soon interrupted.
‘Carver, may I present the Graf von Ravelstein.’ Etherege appeared suddenly at Adam’s shoulder, accompanied by a tall, ramrod-backed man in his fifties. The newcomer’s hawk-like face was marked by a duelling scar on his left cheek. Clearly, in his youth, he had been a member of one of the student fencing societies in which such a scar was a badge of honour. ‘Ravelstein, this is a countryman of mine, Mr Adam Carver.’
The German inclined his head in acknowledgement but made no attempt to shake hands. Adam, who had been preparing to do just that, was obliged to change his mind and bow slightly in response.
‘I have heard of Mr Carver, of course,’ Ravelstein said. ‘He is the gentleman who travelled in Macedonia and Thessaly and wrote of his most interesting expe
riences there. It is a pity that his book has not been translated. He would have many readers here in Berlin and in the new Germany.’
The Graf spoke fluent English and, unlike Frau Kestelmann, with only the faintest hint of an accent.
‘Perhaps you could recommend a Berlin publisher to our young friend,’ Etherege suggested, a hint of mischief in his voice.
‘Ach, publishers,’ the count said, ‘they are a villainous crew. I know nothing of them. But I am surprised Herr Brauer was unable to assist you.’
‘Herr Brauer?’ Adam was puzzled.
‘The writer with whom you were conversing. The gentleman who invents adulteries among the Brandenburger bourgeoisie.’ Ravelstein’s contempt for the ill-tempered novelist could not have been clearer.
‘We did not find the opportunity to talk of publishers,’ Adam said.
‘Of course not. I do not believe that you can have come all the way from London and taken up residence in the Deutscher Hof to exchange the gossip of authors with that fellow.’
‘No, indeed. I had not met him before today.’
‘But then, I think to myself, why has Mr Carver arrived in our city? Does he have some particular purpose in mind?’
‘I am here only to see the new Germany of which you spoke a moment ago.’
The count nodded several times, as if pondering an exceptionally difficult philosophical problem, and then stroked the scar on his face. ‘And Mr Etherege here is to be your guide. Does he, I wonder, perform that service for all Britons who travel to Berlin? Surely not.’
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