by Craig Thomas
When he had closed the door behind him, draped his raincoat over a chair, and slipped off his shoes, he poured whisky from an almost empty bottle into a toothmug, and stood at the window looking across the darkening river, occasionally shifting his half-seeing gaze to his right, where the Deutsches Eck promontory marked the confluence of the Moselle and the Rhine. His eyes were gritty with a bad night's sleep in the gasthaus in Norden, after the evening ferry journey back from the island, and aching from the whole day's driving back to Koblenz. His mind creaked through the grooves of disappointment and frustrated rage the blind Menschler's words had worn.
A barge passed slowly across his vision towards the confluence of the rivers, from his vantage hardly seeming to move. It possessed an apt, facile symbolism. A woman collected washing at its stern — that didn't fit the symbolism, and he smiled, sipped again at the whisky, almost shrugged off his mood. The first street lamps were coming on along the Moselstrasse, and the brake lights of the cars sprang out as red globes as the cars pulled up at traffic signals. Behind him in the unlit room his scattered — now useless, fatuous — papers, which he had enjoined the maid not to dust or tidy, and the leaning heaps of reference books subsided into gloom. Even so, his mind could not ignore them; an inward eye focused on them more clearly than his retinae registered the passage of the barge.
He had had it in the palm of his hand—
He'd blown it, crapped out on a blind man. The Woodstein of World War Two had gone down without throwing a punch!
He knew he was easing himself into a better mood — the bitterness was gone from the self-mockery, which might have been an effect of the whisky. Still, a blind man! His innate self-confidence, the blooming ego under the sun of his best-selling status, his greater potential, combined to prevent him from long periods of self-condemnation, self-awareness. He no longer had anything to fear from the less-clever men who eased past him into the grandly titled chairs of study or into the plush administrative grades. Menschler, therefore, was not an interview board of one, turning him down; without enemies, real or presumed, McBride was unable to categorize Menschler with them, and thereby retain an anger towards him. He was the dead, keeping the grave's secrets.
There'd be others—
He turned away from the window, put down his glass on the writing-table, ignored the open notebooks, the last pages of his trace of Menschler through army pension records and the telephone exchange, and fanned out instead the letters he had collected from the desk.
His eye was caught by the smallest notebook, but only momentarily, in which on three neat pages he had summarized his knowledge of Emerald Necklace. Little more than the faintest trace of an old perfume. He picked up the bulkiest letter, feeling through the envelope another, enclosed letter.
Gaps in Wehrmacht records, in the Führer Directives, in the papers of the General Staff. And a tight-lipped silence—
He shrugged off a returning investigative mood, and ripped open the outer envelope, from his university and presumably forwarding the other letter. He was seized — perhaps in compensation for disappointment — with a childish mood, with the eagerness of discovery of a child from a home where mail seldom came.
Excitement became self-mockery until he had carried the letter to the window. An air mail letter. And he recognized the handwriting? Yes, strong, small, neat. Gilliatt's hand. Peter Gilliatt, who had helped his mother out of Ireland in "41, and got her to America, had written to her in New Jersey, but whose mail had lost the cold trail after his mother had moved them west, to Oregon. Gilliatt must be an old man by now—
McBride savoured not opening the letter, the little childish excitement warm as the drink in his stomach. An old, familiar world was coming back with that handwriting, the red-blue edging of the envelope. The handwriting retained the secret of Gillian's age. He'd found out that McBride was in Portland, and written to the faculty — McBride nodded in self-compliment. Gates of Hell — Gilliatt had read it. Had he written about that? After all, his mother had been dead for nearly four years, and he'd never even met Gilliatt—
He'd entertained the fantasy, when the letters used to come to Jersey and his mother never seemed to tire of talking about Gilliatt, that the Englishman was his real father, despite the disparity of name. At first, the fantasy possessed romance — until his accidental consultation of a dictionary for the meaning of the word bastard in a book he was reading under the bedclothes with a torch. Then the fantasy had become shameful and secret, and he'd gone back to believing in the fact of Michael McBride, dead and buried in Ireland.
A long preamble, compliments on Gates of Hell, references to Michael, an invitation to visit him — and, certain as signposts, the change of tone. The hushed, secretive tone, and the sudden temptation to look over his shoulder communicated to the reader. The wrist adopting a nervous twitch as if to turn the letter's contents away from eyes that might be watching behind the double-glazing.
My visitor told me you were in Europe, but not where, hence my writing to you at your university. He seemed inordinately interested in your current field of study, and to smile as if he possessed prior information. He suggested — in a very oblique manner — that your work might have a bearing on the events of 1940 in which your father and I were together involved. I should welcome an opportunity of talking to you on this subject — your mother knew little, and I have no doubt would have told you nothing. I, too, have felt bound by certain security restrictions. Until now. I have been bluntly warned not to help you, without being told why. I am irritated by the presumption of it all!
Therefore, if this reaches you, and you have the time, come to me and we shall go over some very old times together. I doubt you have ever known what happened to your father, and perhaps it is time you did.
* * *
It was as bald and provoking as the trailer to a mystery film. McBride was amused, intrigued and disturbed in a complex moment of emotion. Instinctively, as soon as he had read the signature he moved away from the window and laid the letter carefully on the writing-table. Gilliatt had deliberately constructed his story with a novelist's sense of having to grab his reader. Half a dozen mysteries were hinted at, and strangers moved at the edges of the page, concealed in shadow. McBride felt himself enmeshed, as it was intended he should be.
The room darkened as he revolved the last paragraphs in his mind, and sipped the last of the drink. When the telephone rang, it startled him out of his reverie, but with the shock of cold water, or a threat. He shrugged, smiling away the insidious effect of the letter.
"McBride."
The voice was distant, official, clipped.
"Herr Professor Thomas McBride?"
"Yes, who is that?"
"The Embassy of the Deutsches Democratisches Republik." McBride felt an irrational chill, an aftermath of his day-dreaming, then recollected his hoped-for outcome of the call. Yet now he was impatient not to go to East Berlin, just as over the past weeks he had pestered the DDR authorities for a 'scholar's visa" for the chance to inspect archives on the other side of the Wall. He tried to shake off Gilliatt's unspecified claims on his time.
"Yes?"
"Your permission to visit Berlin to consult certain historical records has been granted, Herr Professor." A pause into which McBride should have dropped his gratitude like a silver collection.
"Thank you, but I'm afraid I'm very busy right now—"
"Herr Professor, the visa and the other papers are valid only for a few days. Besides, the importance of the papers you wish to see—"
"Yes, I see—"
"You wish to refuse this excellent, unique opportunity, Herr McBride?" There was academic demotion in the mode of address. "Herr Professor Goessler of the University, our leading expert on these documents returned to the Democratisches Republik by our Soviet friends — and one of our leading authorities on the Fascist period—" A slight pause, as if the sentence had escaped him in its own complexity, then: "He has agreed to place himself at your disposal�
�" It was not an inducement; rather, quiet outrage.
"I see—" Gilliatt's letter was indecipherable on the table in the darkness of the room. Smaragdenhakkette. Who could tell?
Why in hell should Menschler get the last laugh? It was as if the writing on the pages of the letter were in secret ink, and the warmth applied to its revelation had now gone, and the symbols were disappearing once more. He shrugged.
"Sure — and thanks. Thanks. I'll drive up to Bonn tomorrow and collect the papers."
"Good. But that is not necessary — they have been put in the post to you today. You may book a flight for tomorrow afternoon. Good hunting, Herr Professor."
The official broke the connection. McBride was left with the return of an older and more powerful scent than the fate of a father he had never known. He did not for one moment consider why the East German embassy should be concerned with his unimportant documents at eight in the evening.
CHAPTER TWO
Arrivals
November 1940
Don't freeze, don't freeze—
Awareness running through his body, concentrating for split-seconds in the soles of his feet, his hands, the centre of his back where the rifle or machine-pistol would be aimed, the back of his head. The moment of silence after the soldier had given his order, and McBride listened for the first step back, the adjustment the German would make to let him drop at a safe distance. No scuffle of boots—
Drop!
His hands seemed to come unstuck from the icy guttering very, very slowly, and his body drop through the air much too unaffected by gravity — he was floating, it wouldn't work — and his body could see the gun, the white upturned face backing away — then his boots hit the soldier a glancing blow, his fall was broken, he struck the concrete heavily, winded, rolled over, tried to get up and knew he was moving as awkwardly as if his legs were under water, then saw the German down on one knee, trying even more slowly to bring the machine-pistol to bear. He'd been caught by McBride's lack of delay, but he was recovering. McBride's arm and shoulder hurt from impact with the ground as he thrust up into a crouch, and hurled himself against the German, felt the rough serge of the field-grey against his cheek, the cold metal of collar-tabs, the edge of the helmet against his head — heaved rather than cannoned against the soldier, knocking him backwards. He heard the explosion of breath, the sharp clatter of the machine-pistol, as he rolled over the German, raised his upper torso and looked down into the young, scared face, its mouth opening much too slowly to yell. McBride pulled at the helmet strap, and jerked the head back. The mouth contorted, remained silent except for a gurgle, then McBride struck the German with his fist, below the ear. The head lolled when he let it free.
Immediately, he climbed to his feet, aware of the shadows alongside the shed, sensing the rain-blown night, aware of the silence beyond the muffled noises from inside. Then he dragged the unconscious — possibly dead — soldier up against the corrugated wall and left him, moving away immediately towards the pier-end of the shed. When he reached it, he paused. There was another hour and a half before the shifts changed, and he could not wait. The German would be unaccounted for within five minutes.
He was surprised at the manner in which his mind sought the amusing, the unexpected, solution, even as he looked at his watch and some more urgent part of the organism collected swiftly the few sensory impressions along the pier. A radio, muffled hammering, the spit of welding equipment, the patter of the sleet against the wall of the shed. He turned round with deliberate calm, and walked back to the unconscious German.
He bent over him. There was breathing, tired and quiet. He lifted the head like an easily bruised fruit, and removed the helmet. Then he tugged the German out of his greatcoat, the back of which was sodden, and removed his boots. He removed his own donkey-jacket and boots, became in seconds a German soldier. He buttoned the greatcoat right to the throat, picked up the machine-pistol, and returned to the pier. He paused only for a moment, as if patting mental pockets for required and necessary equipment, then began walking with a tired, bored shuffle towards the warehouse and the barrier.
And with each step the nerves increased, as he knew they would however much he attempted to disguise them in confidence, in indifference. He was aware of his heart-rate increasing, of his body-temperature rising; employed deep-breathing to calm himself, gripped more tightly the stubby barrel of the machine-pistol.
He was past the warehouse, and the barrier at the end of the pier was the only thing in his vision, when someone spoke in German, and he knew the voice was addressing him. The man he appeared to be. But he caught the note of uncertainty, too, just as clearly as he heard the footsteps coming from the side of the warehouse, closing on him.
"Friedrich, where the devil have you been? Friedrich—?"
The puzzled tone hung on the air like frost. McBride was a hundred yards or so from the barrier, and a man he could not turn to see was coming from behind him. Each footstep separated in time, almost to the rhythm of the dance-music he could hear from a radio. He half-turned, and slipped, sliding onto his back, his greatcoat billowing like a skirt. The soldier behind him burst into laughter.
"Friedrich, you're pissed, you bastard! Where is it, where's the drink, you selfish little—?"
McBride rolled onto his side, propped on one elbow, the machine-pistol pointing up into the German's face.
"If I kill you, I'll attract their attention, I know that. It just won't do you much good, old friend," he observed in German. Drink, drink—
It was coming to him. The German's mouth kept slowly popping open and closed, then he began sucking his cheeks to wet his dry throat.
"What's your name?" Puzzlement almost approaching the catatonic. "Just tell me your name — it might save your life."
"Willi — Willi Frick."
"Well done, Willi." McBride stood up, leaned against the German with a smile, and pressed against the nerve below his ear, just behind the chinstrap. Willi slid against him, gently declining. McBride pulled the rum flask from his pocket, and spilled liquor into Willi's mouth, down his chin and onto his coat. He let Willi lean unconsciously against him as he checked his own papers again — Friedrich Bruckner, and his rank, unit and number.
"Come on, Willi, you're going on a charge, and me with you."
He slipped Willi's right arm round his neck, hefted him upright, his own arm round Willi's waist, and walked him towards the barrier, making an exaggeratedly slow approach in the shadow of the warehouse, stepping out into the light only at the last minute — but by that time a Kriegsmarine Leutnant was already calling him.
"Soldier, what the devil are you doing? You, there!"
McBride snapped to attention, and Willi began to slide to the ground — McBride grabbed him, straightened the body. Someone laughed behind the officer, who seemed suddenly to consider it all as simply another scheme to make him appear foolish. His face contracted as if he had sucked a lemon and he marched across to McBride, who tried to adopt peasant stupidity as his habitual expression.
"What's going on—" Nose wrinkling, suspicion gleaming in his eye. "This man's drunk!"
"Sir—"
"No excuses — breathe on me, you dummy!"
McBride exhaled. The Leutnant shook his head in obvious disappointment. The guards behind him had formed a knot of eager spectators — one or two of them trying to make McBride smile or laugh by mimed antics and expressions. They were fifteen yards away — too far to hear his replies, his claims to identity. He kept a rigid face as the officer continued.
"Where did you find him?"
"Heard someone singing behind one of the warehouses, sir!" he snapped out.
"Him?" The Leutnant was disgusted. McBride nodded. "And now he's passed out — you weren't going to report this, were you?" Again the gleam of realization and superior understanding. McBride looked guilty. "Trying to sneak him back to his billet, weren't you?" McBride swallowed, nodded. "What's your name?"
McBride barked out
his assumed identity.
"Him?"
"Frick, sir."
The Leutnant made a note (with a gold-encased pencil) in a little notebook contained in what might have been a slim cigarette-case. He put them away with a quiet triumph.
"Both of you — report to me in the morning. Now, get that disgusting clown out of my sight!"
"Sir."
McBride grabbed Willi's body more securely, kept his head down as he half-pulled him past the barrier, to the raucous laughter — soon quietened by the Leutnant — of the rest of the guards. He could hear them discussing the likely charges with the Kriegsmarine officer as he moved beyond the cold splash of the light above the barrier and the guard-hut. He heaved and pulled at the unconsciously-resisting Willi, a chill bath of perspiration covering his body from the effort and the bluff. He couldn't control his body's relief, and it irritated him. Eventually, he was in the shadows of a seaman's church opposite the Albert Pier, and he thankfully dropped Willi into the shadows by the wrought-iron gate. He looked up. A chill, unwelcoming little church, the rain like a shiny skin on something gone cold. He shivered, and moved swiftly away, the machine-pistol over his shoulder, the sweat drying on his forehead at the line of the helmet and under his arms. He wasn't quite ready to smile. He hurried up the Quay to the North Esplanade, out of the centre of the town.
October 198-
McBride wondered whether it was courtesy on the part of the attache who met him at Tegel or the habit of security, that the man acquired his papers and ushered him through Customs and passport control in the terminal building. McBride had flown in on a Trident to Tegel, West Berlin's principal airport. He wondered briefly why the Cultural Exchange Committee of the Democratic Republic had bothered to send an escort to the airport, and was more surprised at the deference with which he was treated, and the obvious and studied compliments on his book, Gates of Hell produced like mottoes from Christmas crackers by Herr Lobke. The young man seemed anxious to please, yet almost too aware to be the pleasant, rather naive, person he exuded in McBride's direction.