“There was no place like the Priory,” were the clipped words coming through the phone line.
Heywood took a deep breath. He was about to say,Tony, just between the two of us, something truly awful’s about to happen, but the connection went dead, a cable cut by a submarine, or a satellite hit by a meteor. Heywood thought of redialling, but you can’t restore the magic of a conversation that’s been ripped apart. He consoled himself; he had confided enough. He had almost shared his burden. Tony would have listened. Words of support,It’s a test, Irving, your toughest. I admire you for facing it full square, had nearly been expressed. Gratitude, a volcano of affection, erupted inside Heywood and he resolved that when he came to draw the Bitrap line, no matter the arguments from others, the consul in Berlin would have redemption. He owed him that.
The phones in the Rote Rathaus were also ringing. Most calls were standard fare – ambassadors claiming to have important instructions from imperious officials in capitals about planned visits by heads of state and demanding to speak to the Chief of Protocol. Such calls were shunted off to subordinates for rehearsed answers. Of course the limo will be bullet proof. Yes, a masseuse will be on standby in the suite. Thank you, it’s vital to know tomato soup causes the great man indigestion. Important details, the nuts and bolts of protocol. But the call from Pullach, von Helmholtz took himself. Graf Bornhof inquired whether the consul had been in yet. “In about an hour,” the Chief of Protocol replied.
“Sorry to be pushy, but Randolph McEwen is calling daily.”
“It will be casually staged. I’ll keep a lid on it.”
“I’m sure. I don’t need much. Confirmation that you’ve read the riot act will be enough. With that I’ll stare McEwen down.”
“He’s done this before. He sees demons under his own pillow. I don’t admire witch-hunts.”
“You don’t have to convince me. He’ll be retired in a few months. Let’s coddle him that long.”
“I’ll call you when I’ve spoken with him.”
The Chief of Protocol hung up. He shook his head. He had never heard a more ridiculous story. Plutonium smuggling! McEwen was old and eccentric and becoming deranged.
When Hanbury entered, Von Helmholtz was standing by the balcony doors, attention fixed on the skyline. With a slight head movement he bade the consul to join him before opening a door and stepping out. Traffic noise drifted up. The narrow balcony was wet from a rainshower. An upward draught transformed their breath into mist. “What will this look like in ten years?” von Helmholtz reflected. “The cranes spin their cocoons. I suppose we’re optimistic something beautiful will burst out.”
“The process is extraordinary,” Hanbury said carefully.
“Without parallel. Is it happening too fast?” Jack hammers in the distance sounded like an artillery platoon. “Well, I didn’t ask you here to listen to me speculate.” Von Helmholtz closed the door to his office behind them. “Thank you for last night’s party,” he said. “I’m sorry I was unable to stay long.” The two men on the balcony stood surrounded by the city’s dull roar. A new movement of air brought a drizzle so fine it didn’t fall; it attached itself as a thin, damp veil to solid objects. “We’re outside to avoid the risk of our conversation being overheard.” Von Helmholtz said this casually. Hanbury answered with a light remark about Berlin’s traditions, but von Helmholtz ignored it. “Tell me about Günther Rauch,” he said. A moment passed. Von Helmholtz saw the consul keep his eyes on the skyline, eventually shifting his gaze to him, then back to the skyline. His expression skewed into a question mark.
“Has Gundula talked to you about him?” Hanbury asked. “Is she in difficulty over her columns?” A question answered by a question, thought von Helmholtz. He knew about the evening in Friedensdorf. He knew more about it than he wanted. When Pullach suggested the consul should be told to leave, he put his foot down and rejected the wishy-washy case. He told Graf Bornhof he would agree to nothing without seeing details. A thick file was rushed up in which he read the biographies of three people. The two he knew something about had been twisted beyond recognition. “No, it’s nothing to do with Gundula’s columns,” von Helmholtz said. “I know you two went to see him. Tell me about your interest in Günther Rauch.” The consul shrugged. “There isn’t much to say. I met him years ago, not long after the Wall went up. I wanted to see him again. Gundula located him. We went to a pub he uses. He hasn’t changed.”
Going through the thick file, von Helmholtz read about all three. He skimmed reports from around the world by Warsaw Pact embassies on Hanbury the diplomat. He glanced through confidential personnel records on Hanbury the bureaucrat. He saw a photograph of a naked woman behind the window of the consul’s house, proving Hanbury had loved. The part of the file that chronicled the life of Gundula Jahn had sickened him. But the account of the Friedensdorf evening with Günther Rauch he had read very closely, because the whole case hinged on that.
“Do you plan to see him again?” von Helmholtz asked.
“Probably yes. Why not?”
“Stay away from him,” von Helmholtz advised. He observed Hanbury grip the balcony railing. I need an explanation for that one, the body language said. “You were overheard in Friedensdorf,” the Chief of Protocol continued. “Günther Rauch talked about a new political party. He asked you to help with money.” From the beginning, despite all he had read, von Helmholtz had planned to say no more than this. “My God!” Hanbury cried. “That was in jest. Günther Rauch was spinning a vision. He did that twenty-five years ago too. Who would take it seriously?”
“The Stasi did. He spent years in jail.”
“It was harmless then. It’s harmless now. And the Stasi don’t exist anymore.”
Von Helmholtz had not previously seen the consul so assertive. If you find yourself fencing with a diplomat, the Chief of Protocol once advised a trainee, feint as much as he does. “Our preference,” he said carefully, “is not to have more Stalinists on our hands.”
“Günther Rauch’s a Marxist, not a Stalinist.”
“One turns into the other.”
The consul scowled. “In Günther Rauch’s case that’s rubbish.” A pause, then, “Can I ask something?” Von Helmholtz nodded. “Do you check the Stasi files for people like me?”
“Of course not.”
“I have a Stasi file. I came across it by chance.” Hanbury described it. For a long time von Helmholtz listened to what he already knew. Why the file was started; how reports continued to be added. “Someone looked into it recently. Somebody checked me. If it isn’t a standing procedure, then who would do that, and why?”
“I don’t know,” von Helmholtz answered as if the subject annoyed him. How far from, or close to a lie is a denial of knowledge? Von Helmholtz had never found a satisfactory answer. He took only the slightest comfort from the fact that he was now denying things he knew to protect the consul’s peace of mind.
“Was that file search connected to being overheard in Friedensdorf?” Hanbury pressed. “Is the Cold War still on?” he said sarcastically. “Are the spies still out?”
Von Helmholtz didn’t like the questioning. He might endlessly have to repeat,I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know. Suppose Hanbury asked about the twenty-four-seven operation? Suppose he explored the link to Gundula and learned of the theory that she was acting on behalf of a former lover in charge of a nuclear plant in the Ukraine, and that Hanbury stood accused of abetting plutonium trafficking? Denying he knew all this, denying he’d read it in a file – it would be like repudiating honour.
The consul was thinking many questions. Von Helmholtz could tell. It was obvious from the way he gripped the railing with growing agitation. To forestall them, he said quietly, “You may be right in part. Remnants of that period are still about. There’s people who can’t let the past go. In six months it will be different. Leave Günther Rauch alone for half a year. Can you do that?” He met Hanbury’s stare and knew that somewhere in the middle of a fur
ther stretch of silence he obtained consent.
“He’ll think I betrayed him,” Hanbury said at last. “Gundula predicted it would happen. She thinks making and dropping friends is something I do for a living.”
“Then don’t drop her,” von Helmholtz advised. He steered the consul back into his office. “Do you still have a few minutes? I’m worried about her.”
Sitting on the two leather sofas at right angles in the poise of statesmen, they talked about her as if she was their ward. The Gregor Donner Reich columns had damaged Gundula, von Helmholtz feared. Her new work lacked fire. She needed a fresh challenge, something that played to her strengths. With her special style and ability to breathe life into complex issues, she should become a foreign correspondent. But to get started she needed help. Hanbury was a friend. Had he discussed it with her? Von Helmholtz recalled having once or twice suggested he do so. Could the consul work on it? “You’ll be with us for a few years yet…unless you have other plans.” Hanbury’s careful smile said,I hope to stay forever. The Chief of Protocol rose. At the door the consul impishly said, “Let me know when the Cold War leftovers are in the garbage.” The Chief of Protocol laughed. An agile performance, he thought, right down to the witty end.
An hour later Schwartz entered Das Klecksel where a miasma of tar and nicotine seeped out of the walls and curtains. But what public house doesn’t reek of cigarettes, stale air and yesterday’s grease smoking off the oven? Despite the mingling of disagreeable odours, the professor and consul were regulars because Hanbury liked the place. Schwartz wondered whether it was because of the pub’s name. Das Klecksel. All newcomers were taken by it.
Some said the name was homage to Wilhelm Busch, poet and caricaturist, who created an epic work in 1884 about a delinquent student of art called Maler Klecksel. The pub went back to 1885. The dates meshed. Others said the name was a Berlinerization. What would a Berliner do with the word Klecks, a blotch, or stain? He would corrupt it, into Klecksel, a term for a minor stain, or disfigurement, something misbegotten. The pub’s name, by this analysis, was chosen to capture the essential nature of the lives of its clients. Did not each of them have a reputation that was smudged? Did they not all have consciences as convoluted as blots in a Rorschach test? A variant to this approach was that the pub’s founder, through the name, had wanted to draw attention to the fact that each of the regulars was no more than a speck of colour, a dreary little blotch on the complex canvas of Berlin life.
The first time Schwartz and Hanbury drank in Das Klecksel, the waiter, a fill-in, a student, eloquently presented the theories of the origin of the name. Once finished, he said he could do it in English too, for the place was often full of tourists. The professor popped him a five-mark piece for the effort and waved him off. From that point on the consul loved the place. It possessed something special, as had The Tankard.
Schwartz slid behind a table with a view of the door. The plank floor made a hollow sound whenever someone entered, like jackboots on a wooden bridge. But this was audible only in the early evening. Later a cannon would have to go off to rise above the tumult. Or a bomb. The current owner swore that happened once in ’ffl. A forty-pounder sliced through the building’s upper floors, going off the moment it came to rest next to the piano. The player, as well as the current owner’s mamma and papa behind the bar, along with a few dozen regulars, all of them defying the screaming air raid sirens, were instantly ripped apart.
A few years later, human stains duly scrubbed away, Das Klecksel was restored, as was the clientele. The piano again punched out songs worshipping Berlin’s air, the cafés on the Ku’damm and the seduction of Emma on a bench by the Krumme Lanke. Once more the floor looked as if for centuries it had been absorbing gobs of mustard, portions of sauerkraut and spilt beer. And the walls sported the same mixture of Berlin memorabilia that graced them prior to the blast: photographs of city life in the 1890’s, assorted Prussian military decorations, random newspaper headlines from all the decades, drawings by Busch of Max und Moritz and prints of the rawer strata of society by Heinrich Zille. For the regulars, Klecksel history was world history and it came to be divided into two main epochs, pre- and post-big bang. Only the erection of the Wall in ’61 was grudgingly admitted as also epoch-defining.
The woman tending the bar this evening was a direct import from one of Zille’s seamy drawings: a busty, big-boned, round-bottomed creature, with rapacious lips and a crude tongue. Schwartz occasionally listened to her. How Berliners love to belittle, he thought, and how readily they move to other arts they keep well-polished, those of berating, humiliating, moralizing. How the city functioned at all was an enduring mystery for the professor. Take something basic, take a saleslady whose job it should be to talk sweetly to customers. In Berlin she would normally begin with a reproach – that her attention was being sought – following up with a show of high frustration that a customer had dared enter the store. Rudeness next, especially if the customer asked to look at something on a shelf. It was no different in the banks, the post office, the car repair depots, the hospitals, the police. The Police! Try phoning them! A car theft? I don’t do car thefts. Colleague Horst does; he’s away at a spa recovering from stress. Call back the day after tomorrow. Even better, try next week. Is it any wonder, Schwartz reflected, that after listening to the standard early morning rebukes, the first one from a bus driver, followed by one at the post office, and then from a teller at the bank, that people feel anger stirring? Is it any wonder their aggravation gets transferred, first to other customers in the queue, then to people on the street? And doesn’t it stand to reason that they react in kind? Doesn’t that explain why every day the whole city starts to snarl? Schwartz visualized how a thousand epicentres of aggression each sent out pugnacious waves that soon engulfed the city. Even the caring souls, who really did begin the day intending to treat the world with charity, would join the ranks of the haranguing. In such circumstances, how does anything positive get done? The energy was there, but the aggression misdirected. The professor considered it a monumental waste. What was needed was discipline, a finer sense of order. “What d’yuh want?” glowered the barmaid. “A beer,” said Schwartz. “Really? Now that’s different.” She plodded back to the bar.
The professor looked at his watch. Where was the consul? Five minutes late was usual, but fifteen was pushing it. The article on the social page had been a surprise, Schwartz admitted it. It showed he and the consul were not as friendly as he believed. He needed to get closer still. What bargain could they make? What might Hanbury accept in return for Schwartz’s use of the consul’s access to places from which he was barred? Schwartz wasn’t sure. Perhaps an outright request for a favour, as with Geissler’s book, was best. Some people enjoy doing other people favours. Hanbury arrived the moment the barmaid banged a glass down on the table. “Another,” Schwartz told her. She huffed. Couldn’t he have ordered two at the start? Schwartz observed that Hanbury, easing onto the bench against the wall, was preoccupied and for a while the conversation was all one way. A fine splash this morning, in the paper. A brilliant party you had. You’re on the map now. Part of the landscape. You must be pleased.
The professor dropped compliments in a steady rhythm, but the consul was unresponsive. He actually seemed melancholy. Schwartz finally inquired if anything was wrong. “It’s been a rough day.” “A pressure cooker?” Schwartz inquired. Why wouldn’t the consul’s staff go easy on him after a large party? It’s human to need time to recuperate. “Oh, that wasn’t the problem,” Hanbury said listlessly. Schwartz asked more questions and offered understanding. Meeting people all day long must be tiring. No, not too many at all, not really, not today. Of course, nothing is more tedious than staff problems. In the university the academics are like dogs going for each other’s throats. Was that a problem? Not at all. Far from it. Today, in fact, the staff was in high spirits. Perhaps the mail. A heavy burden. Letter upon letter. All wanting something. There were some letters, yes. Mostly invitations
. Four out of five had to be regretted. The usual. Not so challenging. Isn’t the telephone miserable? An invasion of privacy, the bearer of bad news.
“You can say that again,” said the consul with undisguised disgust, adding that transatlantic calls were the worst. “It got so bad today I threw the receiver down.”
“Family?” Schwartz wondered, to keep momentum going.
“Not family. Headquarters. Monstrous people.”
A little more coaxing and the main features of Heywood’s call came out. “Why don’t you do some reporting then?” Schwartz said.
“I can’t compete with the wire services. Heywood knows that. He’s setting me up, but for what?” The consul, obviously rattled, was drinking fast. For Schwartz, Hanbury’s crisis as it unfolded was like a gift being unwrapped. But he was amused too. He had never seen anyone so upset by the need to do some writing. “Maybe you can’t compete in speed,” Schwartz said encouragingly, “but in sensitivity, depth, accuracy…you could beat the wire services every time. Wire services don’t think.”
Hanbury laughed darkly. “I did political reporting in Kuala Lumpur. The ambassador went through bottles of red ink improving my drafts. It’s true. I admit it. I don’t have a knack for it, not for writing. My mind doesn’t work that way. Not like yours. You have a talent for thinking things through.”
Schwartz bowed cordially. “But you’re the diplomat. You have the better position.” He lifted his glass. “Well, to our respective strengths.” Their glasses clinked. “You’re too hard on yourself,” he added. Hanbury shrugged. What’s there to report on, he asked. What subjects could he write about that would interest headquarters? “Why don’t we pool our strengths?” Schwartz suggested. He began to develop a line of thought. “If I were in your shoes, knowing what I know, what would I report?” Hanbury said he’d like to know that too.
A slight sneer formed on the edge of Schwartz’s steady gaze. “In your shoes, I would report on Germany’s prospects. First set the scene; a look back; what has shaped the Germans? Then an analysis of where they are today; are they fulfilling themselves as a nation? Finally, the future. What’s Germany’s destiny? Fifteen, perhaps eighteen reports. Your foreign policy makers ought to value work like that.”
The Berlin Assignment Page 40