by Craig Thomas
"Professor Dokter Goessler is, I know, very anxious to meet you, to offer his help — it is a remarkable compliment—" McBride almost sensed the unspoken addition of to someone like you, but opted to accept the enthusiasm, the desire to be merely helpful.
Outside the terminal building, a black Zil saloon drew alongside them almost in the instant that Lobke raised his arm. There was even a uniformed chauffeur — one or two arriving passengers glanced at the little tableau, then disregarded it as if dissatisfied with the size or make of the car. McBride slid across the bench seat at the back, and Lobke climbed in beside him. The chauffeur pulled the sun-visor down, and accelerated away from the terminal doors.
They picked up the autobahn heading south-east into the city through the suburb of Wedding. Lobke seemed impressed and distracted from him by the passage of the numerous Mercedes saloons, the Porsches and Datsun sports cars. McBride indulged the immediate excitement of tall buildings, the neon silent but endlessly boastful. The advertisement of the wirtschafiwunder, a slick, affluent stranger in a peasant economy. West Berlin, he sensed immediately, postured like a glamorous, bejewelled model against the temporary chic of a ghetto or a slum. The city shouted at him, demanded he accept its image as reality.
He had been to Berlin before, researching Gates of Hell, but then the city had evidenced to his tunnel-vision the remnants of its battering in 1945, its German-ness, its foundation of ash rather than its post-war substance. Now, he had no preconceptions — he was there to study documents, follow an old, cold trail, and the city leapt upon his senses.
There was a short delay at the checkpoint. The guards seemed uninterested, in the late afternoon sunshine, in McBride as an American, but they checked Lobke's papers thoroughly, even though he had obviously crossed from East to West earlier in the day. On the East German side, the barrier was up almost immediately, and there was a smart salute for the car from the guards. The grey breeze-blocking of the Wall was almost obscured from the consciousness by the ceremony, the swiftness, of their arrival in East Berlin. Except that the Wall was suddenly high enough to cast a long shadow, out of which only after a few seconds did the car emerge into the slanting sunshine again.
One of the Vopos on the checkpoint telephoned the arrival of McBride and Lobke less than a minute after their crossing.
McBride, ringing from Koblenz, had booked a room at the Hotel Spree, an ugly block of pale concrete on the Rathausstrasse near the river and the Marx-Engels Platz. The porter seemed entirely respectful, the desk staff willing and welcoming. The hotel foyer was modern — polished dark wood, greenery and thick carpet, a coffee-shop open-planned to one side. He could have been in any modern four-star hotel in the world.
Lobke left him in the foyer, shaking his hand with a formal warmth, and promising that Professor Doktor Goessler would be certain to contact him. Lobke watched him get into the lift behind the porter carrying his bag, waiting until the door sighed shut, then placed his ID on the desk in front of the clerk.
"Where's the secure phone?" he said. The clerk seemed unsurprised, nodding to a row of four plastic globes sprouting from the wall alongside the coffee-shop. "Second from the left," he said.
Lobke crossed the foyer, watched by a woman in a beige coat and boots who was sitting in the foyer in order to be noticed. Lobke thought he recognized her from the television news programmes. Lobke didn't like the Hotel Spree and its spurious Westernism. He disliked it because it was part of a facade — behind it the grimy dullness of the DDR waited to displace fantasy. To jump out and remind the dreamer that it was a joke, nothing more substantial. On the contrary, he liked West Berlin, liked any messenger-jobs to the Federal Republic, or the rest of Europe. The shiny toys were real there.
Meanwhile the stupid cow in her Italian boots and West German coat waited for her dreary friends from East German TV or the pretend-glossy magazines. He dialled headquarters. Asked for Goessler after identifying himself.
"Chief?"
"Rudi, how did it go?"
"He's booked in. Seems to be enjoying himself — I think he'll go all the way with you, Chief."
"Rudi, what TV stations are you watching these days?"
Lobke laughed. "Ours, naturally."
"OK — well done. I think I shall call Herr Professor McBride at once, and introduce myself."
"Goodbye, Professor—"
Lobke put down the telephone, winked coarsely at the woman in the beige coat who turned her head away immediately, and then he went out of the revolving doors into the evening sunshine, to walk along the Rathausstrasse to Marx-Engels and the Unter den Linden. He liked to look at the Brandenburger Tor with the low sun coming through its columns. It seemed to hold out a vague promise, made to him personally.
McBride unpacked methodically as soon as the porter left, with the tip in dollars that he was not, by law, allowed to receive at all. He always staked his claim to possession of any temporary home by spreading his things around — the toiletries on the bathroom shelf especially helped to establish his claim. While he was still putting socks and pants into a drawer, the telephone rang.
"McBride."
"Ah — a call from Professor Goessler of the University for you, Herr McBride."
"Put him through, please."
McBride straightened at the telephone, as if before a superior. The window of his room looked over the shop roofs on the Rathausstrasse, towards the cathedral. He was pleased it did not face in the opposite direction, where he would have seen, beyond St Hedwig's, the Wall.
"Professor McBride?" The voice of a jolly man— an image he would not have connected with an East German Marxist historian. He shook his head at his own misconceptions.
"Professor Goessler, good of you to call me, sir."
"The pleasure is mine. Please, you are comfortable at the Hotel Spree — it is suitable?"
"Sure, fine, Professor."
"Good, good — if you had given us time, I would have booked your room for you. However, you have not made a mistake with the Spree. Tell me, my friend, are we to get right down to business, as you would say?"
"I'm in your hands, Professor. I haven't changed my ideas since I wrote you—"
"And you expect to find what you are looking for here in Berlin, in our archives?"
"What do you think my chances are, Professor? You've been through all that stuff the Russians gave back in the "60s and "70s."
"My friend, I have only scratched the surface, I assure you!"
McBride felt a thin, needle-like sense of satisfaction that Goessler seemed ignorant — and a disappointment at the work in front of him. Needles in haystacks.
"I see — but you'll give me freedom of access?"
"Naturlich — oh, I'm sorry. No, but you speak German, of course. My friend, perhaps we can have dinner together this evening?"
McBride looked at his watch. Six, almost.
"Sure. Here any good, Professor?"
"A rather bland cuisine, but it will not hurt us. Yes — shall we say eight?"
"Sure. Ring my room when you arrive, Professor, and I'll meet you in the bar."
"Excellent. Goodbye."
McBride put down the telephone, and crossed thoughtfully to the window, recognizing the process of revising prejudices going on inside him. How could he complain at the treatment? He stared at the cathedral, blackening in the shadows and the low streaming sun.
He suddenly received a curious image of himself crawling over the face of that cathedral, checking each of the figures and gargoyles carved on it, looking for a piece of paper with its secret message stuffed up one stone nostril of one of the hundreds of stone saints and devils. He laughed. If Smaragdenhalskette had dropped a couple of its stones in East Berlin, then he would find them.
November 1940
McBride hunched down between two rocks, jammed in as if afraid he might lose some precarious hold. The greatcoat — which he had wanted to abandon half a dozen times — now kept out the searching wind that moaned off the se
a, moaned against the low cliffs of the cove. The tide had just turned, and the sea — because the wind was from the north and against the tide — was choppier than when he had rowed in. It would be harder for him to pick out the submarine when it surfaced bow-on to the cove. The deflated carlin float was hidden only yards from him.
He'd returned the way he had come, avoiding the guard-posts since, despite his uniform, he had no movement order or excused-duty chit. It had taken him almost three hours. He looked at his watch again, then took up the signal-lamp. If the submarine was out there, he wouldn't know it until it surfaced; He was early, and all he could do was to signal periodically and hope they were using the periscope.
He flashed the morse-signal, M, put down the lamp, and listened. He'd heard a couple of cars and a truck pass along the road above him, but nothing had stopped. Yet he knew that by now they must be searching for him — someone would have found either Willi or Friedrich or both of them long before, and they would have been able to describe him and what he'd been doing when Friedrich surprised him. And they'd want to finish him off, deducing that he'd be taken off by submarine before light. And from one of the narrow, sheltered coves at the northern tip of the island, near l" Ancresse Bay.
He listened. Impatient, he picked up the signal-lamp again, hesitated more out of pride than caution, then flashed his morse dash-dash identification out to sea. The rain had stopped, but the wind was colder now, angering the sea as if to provide another barrier to his escape. He hugged the lamp to his chest while despising its use as a comforter.
Then, almost involuntarily, he flashed out the ident once more, gripped by a panic he could not laugh at or depress. He put back his head, and breathed as deeply as he could, inhaling and exhaling regularly for a minute or more. When he looked at the choppy, threatening, empty sea again, he could hear the sound of engines; identified them almost at once, and waited until the German S-boat rounded the low headland, its searchlight sweeping the tossed surface of the water, then — more in hope than expectation — flickering and dancing along the cliff-face, off the huddled groups of rocks. The tide on which he had come in had removed all traces of his arrival.
The S-boat — he watched it in helpless fascination — moved inshore and he could just make out the toy-like figures in caps and duffel-coats behind the coaming, the sailors at the bow operating the searchlight, or waiting armed with rifles and machine-guns.
He thought he detected the sounds of vehicles from the cliff-top even as the searchlight bounced away above his head, but the noise of the S-boat's twin diesels boomed off the cliffs, magnified and drowning any other noise. He felt his body-temperature drop, the wet rocks press on him. Then the searchlight moved on, sweeping back out to sea. The S-boat moved away, and in less than another minute had rounded the opposite headland, and its engine-noise died away.
Then he heard the shouted orders from above him. He had heard a truck stopping. He fumbled with the signal-lamp, adding to its shielding with his cupped hand as he flashed his signal on and off, again and again. The S-boat would be back, or another might be following, and in minutes — when the troops sent to search the cove had descended the cliff-path — he would be unable to signal.
"Come on, come on — for Christ's sake, come on," he muttered over and over like an incantation, flashing the ident out to the rough, empty sea, listening to the banging of the truck's tailboard, the scuffling of boots and the clink of metal which some freak of the wind brought to him clearly. He might even hear them click on their torches. "Come on, come on, come on—"
October 198-
McBride wondered whether the crepes suzette after the richly sauced venison was for his benefit, or whether Professor Goessler was indulging himself in the surroundings of the Hotel Spree's dining-room and its cuisine. McBride felt full, and impatient. Goessler — florid, large, beaming, grey hair swept back into wings at the peripheries of a bald pink dome, bulbous nose and full lips — was someone who spoke little while he ate, except for pleasantries concerning the meal. Who would settle the bill had not been decided, but McBride — with some quiet amusement — considered it was more likely to be American Express than the University Bursary.
When Goessler had finished his crepe, he sat back, dabbed his mouth with his napkin in a tidy little gesture that would have suited a smaller head and more delicate hand, and beamed once more on the American.
"Not for your goodwill, you understand," Goessler said with unexpected perception. "This is what they serve here every night, not just when Americans are resident."
McBride laughed, put down his fork. The crepes were beginning to pall on him, possessing a certain unmistakable Germanic heaviness, richness.
"Coffee?" Goessler nodded, and McBride summoned the waiter. "Schnapps?"
"Bring me an Asbach brandy," Goessler told the waiter without replying to McBride, as if he had been irritated. There was also a barely masked casualness of authority, as if it had been long-accustomed, about the way he addressed the waiter. "And you, my friend?"
"I'll pass — just coffee."
"Bring a pot, and leave it," Goessler instructed, and the waiter nodded. "Large cups," Goessler called after him. He beamed on McBride, as if reassuming a role. "Now, of course, you wish to talk. Go ahead."
Permission to speak? McBride was puzzled by Goessler, and resolved the German academic must be interested in his work. Perhaps too interested — then again Goessler, interrupting him as he was about to speak, said: "Do not worry, my friend, I am not concerned to steal your work—" Again the broad smile, and the mouth almost overfilled with dentures. "No, I can imagine what you must think of me. Softening you up, mm?" He indicated the plates before them, looked with passing regret at the remains of McBride's crepes. "No, I am at present at work on more dialectical material — the official history of the German Communist Party, from the beginnings. I don't think any work of yours is likely to throw up new material for me, eh?" He put back his head, laughed, then smoothed the wings of grey hair flat against his head. "No, no, not that I would not perhaps change places with you—" He leaned forward confidentially. "To be truthful, much of my research is extremely dull. I do not suppose yours is, mm? What is it — what invasion plans are you wishing to discover?"
"Illuminate, you mean? Each one of the Fallen, every invasion up to and including Barbarossa." McBride returned the unblinking stare, the slightly fixed smile. Then Goessler nodded, as if releasing him from an hypnotic control.
"Very well, but I warn you, the bones have been well-picked by the Soviet Historical Academy."
"But for their purposes, not mine."
"Ah, true — they weren't writing for the American mass-market." Goessler laughed disarmingly, and McBride felt it impossible to be nettled by the implied slight. "Anything in particular, my friend?"
McBride had weighed the moment in advance, while showering. He could get nowhere without Goessler — Goessler might know people, as well as documents. He had decided to tell him.
"A little-known invasion plan without a Fall designation — called Smaragdenhalskette? He turned the remark to a question on the last word. Goessler crinkled his shiny forehead, then shook his head. The grey wings of hair loosened their grip on the sides of his head. He brushed them back again.
"The name means nothing to me — but, we can put some of my postgraduate students to work with you, Professor, to save you time." He clapped his hands together, possibly at the arrival of the coffee and brandy. "Yes — we shall do that for you, certainly. Your own little research team — and we will see what turns up, mm?"
* * *
David Guthrie sat in one of the beige PVC chairs with a tubular steel frame common to many current affairs programmes. Opposite him sat a renownedly belligerent interviewer, a low glass table between them. Guthrie always insisted on this staged informality when he was interviewed on television, rather than become a talking head and trunk behind a desk. He was never pedagogic in his manner, eschewing all suggestion of lecturin
g or hectoring that a formal setting might convey.
Red light — a camera moving in on him, the interviewer aware of the director shouting in his earphone and the link-man's voice across the studio. Guthrie felt the slightest pluck of tension; adrenalin sidled through him. He smiled in the general direction of the interviewer, half-profile to the oncoming camera. Behind the cameras, beyond the meagre area of carpet, the bareness of the studio suddenly impressed itself upon him — he kept the smile, but deepened it as if prior to serious thought. His little circle of bright light, himself spotlit — and the rest of it nothing more than a facade.
"Secretary of State, we've heard on the news tonight of a further spate of fire-bombs in Belfast, of two bombs being defused in Birmingham, and an explosion in Glasgow. What do you say to those people who tonight are concerned for their safety?"
Guthrie did not clear his throat, but leaned slightly forward, talking to the interviewer but at points of emphasis turning to the camera.
"I wish there was better news — I can only tell you that the Government, in co-operation with the police, the Special Branch and the security forces in Ulster, is committed to hunting down and removing into custody the people guilty of these hideous crimes—" His eyes glittered, and the interviewer, who knew Guthrie as well as anyone in television, suffered the familiar moment of doubt as Guthrie seemed to shift into a higher gear of response, of emotion. He could not decide — ever — whether it was a political or a human response. "I saw the film of those people being carried out of the wreckage of that supermarket in Belfast — just as your viewers did. We want this business finished."
"But, Mr Guthrie, many people may well consider you to be one of those guilty men. Is it not your forthcoming meeting with the Irish Republic's Prime Minister and his Cabinet colleagues that has provoked this latest round of outrages?" The interviewer disturbed his papers, as if checking his own question.