by Pierre Frei
The major reached into the small bay tree behind him, and after a little groping about produced a small microphone from among the leaves. He broke the fine feed line with a jerk. A loose contact. Such sloppy work,' he remarked dryly.
The waiter brought the menu, and Berkov ordered a bottle of Crimean champagne. 'Yes, major,' said the waiter, and clicked his heels.
'Hasn't been properly re-educated yet,' remarked Berkov, amused. 'Usually the Germans adapt very quickly. Take Russian Eggs, for instance, that savoury little starter - they've renamed it Soviet Eggs. I can recommend it, by the way. And how about saddle of venison to follow? My boss's contribution to the cultural life of Berlin. General Bersarin doesn't just enjoy racing around the city on his looted Harley Davidson, he goes hunting in Goring's old preserves. He decides when the season ends. Oh, by the way, do you remember our first meeting?'
'You were looking for the grave of that man Kleist.'
'I've been reading up on the subject. She wasn't his mistress - Henriette was a romantic girl who made a suicide pact with the poet.'
Ashburner was glad to see the waiter bringing the champagne and their starters. It meant he didn't have to say anything on a subject where he was out of his depth. 'What's your sport?' he asked, changing the subject to be on the safe side.
'We played tennis at the Frunse military academy. Marshal Tukhachev- sky was keen to make his young officers gentlemen in the Western model. Stalin had him executed. An irreplaceable loss to the Red Army.'
'You're very outspoken, Maxim Petrovich.'
Ah, well, the microphone installed by our comrades from the Kommissariat just happens to be out of order.'
'What Kommissariat is that?'
'The Narodnyi Kommissariat Vnutrennikh Del, probably better known to you as the NKVD. The People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs.'
That brings me to my request. I need your help. My German colleague, Inspector Dietrich, is investigating the murders of two women. He wants to compare them with a similar pre-war murder case, which means questioning a former CID officer called Wilhelm Schluter, at present an inmate of the Brandenburg penitentiary. To do that he needs a visitor's permit from the NKVD.
'Two murders?'
'Of two pretty, blonde young women.' Ashburner handed him the records of the investigations and the photographs of the dead women. Berkov instantly recognized Karin. His face turned stony.
'Is something the matter?' asked John Ashburner. Berkov heard him as if from a great distance.
'No, no, it's nothing.' He hid his face behind the notes, but he wasn't reading them. He was thinking of those few weeks of passion with her, hearing her warm voice: 'Come here, Maxim Petrovich.' He felt her soft body again, breathed in her pleasantly sharp perfume. He would have liked to groan out loud, but he said only, 'I believe I can help your German colleague. I play chess with Colonel Nekrassov of the NKVD. I'll let the colonel win; that will put him in a good mood.'
Master Sergeant Washington Roberts was waiting behind the shops. A narrow access for delivery trucks led there from Wilskistrasse. This was also where the big, zinc garbage bins stood. Their lids refused to close, they were so full of garbage from the requisitioned shops and apartments. Chocolate bars that had just been broken into, half empty cans of baked beans, luncheon meat, condensed milk - the Americans threw away scraps that would have fed a hungry family for days. It all went to the American garbage dump and, by order of the chief army doctor, had quicklime tipped over it before the bulldozers ploughed it in. Even the rats couldn't dig for it.
Gerti Kruger waved to her brown skinned boyfriend from the back door. He waved back, with a broad grin. They would eat and dance at Club 48, and later go back to her place to make love. Her landlady was happy to close both eyes in return for a packet of Lucky Strikes.
Gerti was looking forward to the evening, and she wasn't going to let even Ziesel the garbage truck driver spoil it for her. Ziesel came in just before the dry cleaners' closed, to collect the empty chemicals containers. Sergeant Chang had lined them up ready.
'Get a move on, do, we're about to close.'
'Oh, so the lady can't wait to see what her black stallion's going to stick into her.'
'My Washington at least has something to offer a woman. Unlike you, you feeble wimp. Can't even get your little finger up!'
'When we get to have a say in things again, you'll be the first we shave bald, you Yankee whore.'
Gerti laughed out loud. 'You're too stupid even to shave a head. You see to your garbage bins, they're brimming over.'
'Cunt. Yankee tart,' muttered Ziesel as he went out. 'Good evening, sergeant,' he ingratiatingly greeted the American.
Washington Roberts watched Ziesel lift several empty bins off the truck and heave the full ones up on it. The sergeant's eyes widened. A slender white hand was hanging out from under the lid of one of the containers.
The black Packard limousine drove down Unter den Eichen with its blue light flashing, a corporal from the Women's Army Corps at the wheel. The US city commandant was in a hurry. He sat in the back with his face set like stone, trying to digest the news that had reached him a quarter of an hour earlier.
The sentry at the entrance to the military hospital saluted. The limousine stopped outside the main building. A captain of the US Medical Corps was waiting for the general. 'May I lead the way, sir?'
'Please, doctor.' General Henry C. Abbot followed the doctor down a narrow flight of steps. The bright neon lights of the mortuary met them.
Several uniformed men were gathered around an autopsy table in the background. Colonel Tucker moved away from the group. 'I hope it was right to let you know, sir.'
'Of course. Don't talk nonsense.'
'This is Captain John Ashburner of the Military Police, sir,' Tucker introduced the man. Ashburner saluted. Abbot offered his hand. Tucker indicated the head of the German-American Employment Office. And you know Mr Chalford.'
The general nodded. 'Hello, Curtis.'
Curtis S. Chalford passed one hand awkwardly over his thin fair hair. His rosy face with its pale-blue eyes was distressed. He was clearly at a loss. He cleared his throat. 'They called me because they could tell at once that she was a German employed by the army. Of course I immediately knew who she was. I'm very sorry, general.'
The city commandant bent over the marble slab. They were all silent. The dead woman had been covered up to her chin with a white sheet. Her regular features, surrounded by blonde hair, looked calm and grave. Captain Ashburner broke the silence. 'General Abbot, I have to ask you formally: Did you know this woman?'
Henry C. Abbot silently bowed his head. It was both confirmation and a last goodbye.
HENRIETTE
'DETTA!' SHIMMERING SUNLIGHT filters through the branches of the old trees, falling like a cap of invisibility on the blonde hair of the girl in the grass. 'Detta!' The girl ducks down even further into the long grass. 'Time to get changed, Detta!' Get changed? Why? What's wrong with her tartan blouse and jodhpurs?
'Detta!' The voice is dangerously close. The girl picks up one of last year's fir cones and flings it into the bushes in a high arc. The sound will lure Adelheid the wrong way. Detta doesn't want to get changed. Getting changed will mean a bath, nothing wrong with that, but a bath will inevitably be followed by hair brushing, quick and hard, and the stupid frilly dress that makes her look like a twelve-year-old even though she's fourteen.
Anyway, why all this fuss? Just because visitors are coming from Potsdam? 'Important visitors,' as Adelheid puts it, pursing her lips elegantly. Detta carefully peers above the grass. The governess has turned her back. A good opportunity to disappear among the rhododendrons - three strides will do it - and run to the stables. If she saddles Henry quickly enough she can be off long before Adelheid appears.
Oh, how stupid: Adelheid is already standing by the horsebox, patting Henry. There's no getting past her. Or is there? Hans-Georg suddenly appears and starts talking to the governess, leads her
away from the stable. Her brother is sixteen, but his smooth, dark head of hair makes him seem older. How good he looks. He turns briefly, gives her a conspiratorial grin, and leads Adelheid a little further away. Detta quietly opens the door of the box. No time to saddle the horse. She quickly gets the snaffle on Henry and mounts him bareback. Duck her head at the door, dig her heels in outside, and off they gallop. No, not along the gravel drive. Hans-Georg and Adelheid are walking there, but straight ahead into the trees.
The gate at the end of the park is child's play for Henry, they've jumped it dozens of times, but you can easily lose your seat without a saddle, particularly when Henry jams on the brakes instead of jumping. Detta sails solo over the bars, rolls over as she comes down, and finds herself sitting in the meadow, surprised. Henry turns and trots briskly home. 'You beast!' she hisses after him, and sets off on the long walk back, slightly dazed and with a triangular tear in her jodhpurs over her left thigh.
A red-striped marquee has been put up behind the house. It's crowded with people. Detta hopes to get past, but Bensing has seen her. Bensing, clad not as usual in shirtsleeves and an apron but in dark-blue livery with gilt buttons, takes a deep breath, thrusts out his chest and trumpets: `Henriette Sophie Charlotte, Baroness von Aichborn.'
Father is suddenly beside her. As Bensing is announcing the next guest, he steers her through the throng towards a slender gentleman in tweed. 'Imperial Highness, may I present my daughter Henriette?"
Detta bobs a half-curtsey. Adelheid has practised it with her, and has taught her that a full curtsey is due only to the Kaiser; the Crown Prince gets a half-curtsey, even if he isn't really a Crown Prince any more and nor, in the tenth year of the Weimar Republic, is the Kaiser a Kaiser.
, my dear Aichborn, what a splendid young lady.' An appraising glance at the firm, girlish thigh showing through the tear. His Imperial Highness likes them young.
A little riding accident. I hope your Highness will excuse us.' Mother removes Detta from the danger zone. 'You'll be confined to your room for a week.' she says sternly. 'Hans-Georg will bring you your meals.'
'Yes, Mother.' The fourteen-year-old smiles to herself. That won't be so bad, not if Hans-Georg can visit her.
The gong summons the family to breakfast: bacon and eggs, kidneys, grilled sausages, tomatoes and toast. This is 'English morning' at Schloss Aichborn. Miss Imogen Thistlethwaite, the English governess from Somerset. makes the two younger siblings sit down at the table. 'Fritz, sit still. Viktoria, put your hands on your lap and straighten your back.'
Ah. Bratwiirstchen,' says the Baron with pleasure when he sees the sausages.
'Speak English, darling,' his wife reminds him.
'I bet none of you know what Haferbrei is in English,' Hans-Georg challenges the company. Detta looks affectionately at her big brother. He looks fabulous. He's a senior officer cadet, and home on leave. Now that Germany has a proper army again, not just a ridiculous force of a hundred thousand men by kind permission of the entente, he has a whole career laid out ahead of him. Of course he will join the traditional Aichborn regiment, the Ninth Cavalry in Potsdam, known popularly as the 'von Neun' because so many of its blue-blooded members' names contain the aristocratic von.
'Haferbrei is porridge.' Detta's reply comes quick as lightning. She is twenty, and has been speaking fluent English since she was six.
'What are you going to do this morning?' her father asks.
'I plan to show the girls how to shoot,' Hans-Georg announces.
'The girls' are Detta and the girl with the black, bobbed hair just coming downstairs in culottes and a shirt with two top buttons undone - which is two too many. She is yawning. 'What an unholy hour - when all good people are still in their beds,' Miriam complains, casting Hans-Georg a glance that Detta doesn't like at all. The extremely chic Miriam Goldberg is heiress to the banking house of Goldberg & Cie. She arrived yesterday in her sensational white BMW sports convertible. Hans-Georg has invited her to Aichborn for the weekend. 'I ought really to be in Biarritz. Grandfather has rented the Braganzas' villa. He's negotiating with the Portuguese there - he's planning to move the bank to Lisbon, and the family's supposed to go too. Totally crazy, what would I do in Lisbon? When the Berlin season's about to begin any moment! Lilian Harvey is giving a phenomenal cocktail party on the Pfaueninsel, and the Bulows are planning a ball at the Adlon. I mean, are we going to miss all that just because of this new Reich Chancellor? The man doesn't even speak proper German, and he has no sex appeal at all,' she says, nonchalantly dropping the latest fashionable term into the conversation and sipping her tea. Another glance at Hans-Georg, who returns it with a smile.
What on earth, Detta wonders crossly, does he see in that snake in the grass? 'Let's go shooting,' she says out loud, although she is not particularly fond of the sport. However, she would be happy to go fishing, hoe weeds, cycle or catch butterflies with her brother, just for the sake of his company.
Bensing bends down behind the wall of the nursery garden and puts a clay pigeon in the sling. 'Pull!' calls Detta in her clear voice. The little disc rises in the blue August sky. Detta raises her gun and pulls the trigger. A loud bang. Her target falls into the nearby meadow, intact. The shot comes down on the greenhouse in a fine shower of lead pellets. 'Oh, shit.' Detta lowers the shotgun in disappointment.
'Your turn, Miriam.' Hans-Georg stations himself behind her. Miriam leans back, pressing close to him. Like a cat with a tom, thinks Detta scornfully, and traces Miriam's shot into the void with satisfaction. Impatiently, she snatches the gun from her hand.
'You have to settle the butt into your shoulder, Detta.' says her brother, looking lovingly at Miriam. 'Look straight along the barrel. Follow the course of disk, swing with it, take a step forward and press the trigger as you move. Ready. Bensing?'
Sensing is ready. Detta waits. 'Pull!' A swinging movement, a bang, the clay disk shatters into a cloud of white. Again. 'Pull!' Swing, bang, a hit. Now she has the knack of it. Her brother is beaming.
Miriam is pouting flirtatiously. 'Come on, Georgie, never mind this silly old shooting.'
'Georgie', indeed! Detta reloads, throws Miriam the gun. 'Here, you do it.' Miriam jumps back in alarm. The gun falls to the ground. Hans-Georg picks it up. 'Sensing, pull!' He shoots a double. Detta tries, but she hits only one of the two flying disks. 'You lower the gun after the first shot, then you take aim again,' her brother tells her. He knows all about these things, he's a soldier after all. 'Pull!' She hits both clay pigeons. Hans-Georg is pleased with her. The gong goes for lunch in the house.
'Well, how was it?' asks the Baron.
'Boring.' Miriam helps herself to a tiny chicken wing and half a stick of celery. Detta tucks in heartily.
'Detta has a real gift for it,' Hans-Georg praises her.
'Maria Inocencia is arriving the day after tomorrow,' Mother tells them. 'I'd like everyone who can to speak Spanish to her, even if you may not be as fluent as in English.' Maria Inocencia is a cousin from Madrid.
'I wonder if she can shoot?' Detta tries it out loud in Spanish. 'Me pregunto si Maria Inocencia es buena tiradora.'
'No seas tonta. Una mujer espahola no tocaria nunca un arma,' Mother tells her in elegant Castilian. A Spanish woman doesn't touch a weapon.' The Baroness was born an Alvarez de Toledo.
There is more shooting after lunch, this time with a rifle and a telescopic sight. Hans-Georg has put up the target by the cowsheds: the heap of dung behind it will catch the bullets. 'Point the gun, take aim, breathe out, pull the trigger slowly, rather as if you were squeezing a sponge, or you'll swerve to one side.' Detta follows her brother's instructions and aims at the centre of the target, using the cross-hairs. Slowly, she pulls the trigger. The recoil hurts. A three. Not a good start. When she finally hits the twelve her shoulder is hurting like hell, but she doesn't let anyone see, if only because of Miriam, who is watching with a bored expression.
'Well done, Detta!' Hans-Georg is genuinely proud of his sister.
'We'll go hunting together this autumn.'
Detta beams. 'Shall we go for a ride later? Miriam can have Senator. He won't try anything on with her.'
Another time, my dear,' Miriam says. 'Coming, Georgie?' The two of them disappear into the park.
I suppose they just can't wait, thinks Detta with venom.
The sound of an engine catches her attention. An aeroplane is skimming low over the trees and comes down like a hawk on the lawn behind the house. A daring landing. The pilot climbs out of the open plane and comes towards Detta, taking off his flying cap and goggles. A brown, masculine face smiles at her.
'Thomas Glaser,' he introduces himself. And you must be Hans-Georg's sister Detta.' Suddenly Detta's heart is thudding, and there is a rather pleasant tingling inside her. 'Where's your brother, then?'
'Somewhere in the park with his new flame.' Funny, but the thought of Miriam suddenly doesn't bother her. 'Do you always come calling by plane?'
He grins. 'Not on the Kurfiirstendamm. The overhead tram cables would get in the way. Have you ever flown?'
'Not yet.'
'We'll take a little trip tomorrow.' He doesn't ask if she wants to, this astonishing man, he just decides. She imagines flying through the air, pressing close to him in alarm, an unrealistic thought since the two open seats in the Klemm 25 are arranged one behind the other, but it's nice all the same. Even the hope of a ride with Hans-Georg pales in comparison.
They have all changed for the evening. The Baron wears a starched shirtfront with a wing collar under his dinner jacket. Hans-Georg looks fantastic in his white uniform jacket, but Detta has eyes only for her airman. He appears at the top of the stairs, looking round for help. 'Could someone please tie my bow tie for me?'
'Come down, Herr Glaser, and I'll do it,' calls Detta eagerly.