Into Darkness

by Anton Gill

  'I've got my contacts. I don't need yours.'

  Adamov smiled. 'No you haven't. Not anymore. You may not like it, but you need me.' He let that sink in, then leant forward and said, 'Listen: they'll get rid of the car and they'll get new clothes for you.'

  'How much have you told them?'

  'They don't have to know anything about you - except your size in suits. Off the peg, that one?'

  'Yes.'

  'Not what you're used to, but needs must ... ' Adamov smiled. 'You think I talk too much. But you're not the only one to be nervous.' He paused. 'Kara was a good friend.'

  'I know.'

  They were silent. Neither felt like eating any more. Adamov said, 'Let's have that schnapps.'

  'Yes. '

  'We must meet tomorrow. Early.' Adamov took out a pen and scribbled on a scrap of paper. 'This is where I'm staying. It's a colleague's flat - he's gone away - perfectly safe. Where are you? In a hotel?'

  Yes.'

  'Check out tomorrow, you won't need it anymore.' Seeing the doubt in Hoffmann's face he added, 'I'm your best friend now, like it or not. Don't forget how much I know. And I haven't passed a word on to anyone. I don't care if you believe it or not, that I've been working against these fuckers all the time I've been peddling porn to them, but believe this: I'm helping you for Kara's sake.'

  He swallowed what was left of his drink.

  59

  Hoffmann stood at the end of Uferstraße at 08.00 hours on the following morning. The sun pushed through a persistent haze which blurred the outline of the buildings, dappling the cobblestones with light. He waited, watching the handful of people who emerged from doorways on their way to work. After a while the street fell silent. He waited a little longer, as long as he dared, unable to gauge whether he was being watched or not, before setting off down the street. He carried his small black leather bag, and he kept a hand on the gun in his pocket. He had left the car at the hotel: time enough to check out and deal with it after he had seen what Adamov had to offer. He held himself ready in the meantime; but no trap had been set for him in the street. He'd have to brave the apartment. Of course they might be waiting for him there. And yet he could scarcely believe that Adamov had set him up. He'd kept the most important secrets. If he hadn't, Hoffmann wouldn't have left Berlin, let alone got this far.

  He approached the house and rang the bell Adamov had indicated. He heard footsteps descending a staircase and moments later the door opened. Adamov stood there in trousers and a vest. But his face was alert.

  He led him into the house, the ground floor of which was deserted and run-down.

  'Lot of people have left,' said the film director, leading the way up the scruffy wooden staircase. 'Plenty of people dead too. Cholera and typhoid in the suburbs. Not a healthy place to stay long. Hope you didn't drink your tap water.'

  They passed the first floor, where the open front doors of flats revealed empty, dirty rooms beyond them. In some, furniture was tumbled about, or pushed aside in disarray.

  'Been quite a few arrests too. Everybody's getting very jumpy. I'm the only tenant left here. And after tomorrow, when I'm gone, the rats'll take over. Doing a running battle with the fuckers as it is.'

  He pushed open a door on the second floor which revealed a spacious, untidy flat. Adamov was the kind of person who could turn a hotel room into a tip within an hour of his arrival. Books and clothes were scattered about, and in the bed crouched a very young, scared brunette.

  'Don't worry. She's Romanian. God knows how she got here. Speaks about three words of German.'

  'Are you sure?'

  'You really must calm down. She does speak some French, thank God, so we at least communicate. But she's as thick as two short planks.' He dropped his voice slightly. 'She isn't a spy. My friends here lent her to me. And she's more frightened of you than you are of her. She thinks you're a Gestapo raid.'

  'What are you going to do with her?'

  'When?'

  'When you leave.'

  'She'll get by. I know a survivor when I see one. Drink? There's some beer, but it's warm. Can't offer you coffee, I'm afraid. Or there's this.'

  Hoffmann declined the proffered bottle of Bols. 'Aren't you cutting down?'

  'Certainly I am. I only have one of these before breakfast. Now, you've got a car you need to lose. What else?'

  Hoffmann almost laughed, it sounded so easy; but the girl worried him. 'Who are your friends?'

  'Some of the old Monbijou gang are still here - remember them? They need money to get out of town, because they're not as well bankrolled as the others. They've got clothes, petrol and some equipment. And they'll take the car.'

  'What'll they do with it? It's a Volkswagen - you know only officials get them.'

  'Only officials get cars, end of story. But don't worry. They've got their own contacts. Nothing thrives like the black market when there's panic in the air - that's the time when no-one pays any attention to it.'

  'I'll need some other transport,' said Hoffmann, glancing past Adamov to where the girl had got up and was washing herself in a china bowl, perched on a dresser in the bedroom.

  'She'd better not use up all the water,' growled Adamov, following his gaze. 'I haven't shaved yet.' He grinned. 'Transport shouldn't be a problem - only it won't be a car. A bike?'

  'Anything beats walking.'

  'Walking beats getting caught.' He looked at his watch. 'I have to go out now. Make the arrangements.'

  'I'll go back to the hotel, get my stuff.'

  'Where are you staying?' asked Adamov.

  Hoffmann hesitated.

  'They'll need to know where to collect the car. You tell the staff there that you're having a mechanic pick it up. There's something wrong with the transmission that needs fixing.'

  'What's the deal?'

  'The car's worth a lot. Anything else, you and I can settle up later.'

  'And if I don't hear from you again?'

  Adamov shook his head. 'All the trappings are gone, Max. You've got no backup. I'm all you've got. Anyway, why should anyone double-cross you? You've got goods to trade.' He held out his hand. Hoffmann gave him the keys to the VW, and told him the name of the hotel.

  'Where shall we meet?' he asked.

  'You know the Panorama Tower on the Rosentalhügel? It's gone now - it burned down last December - but the remains are still there. At about - ' he looked at his watch - 'Four. You'll have to take your chances. Anything could happen between now and then.' He stood up to go. 'Give me five minutes. Then go yourself, and watch your back.'

  As soon as the door was closed, the girl came away from the vigil she'd been keeping by the bedroom window, glancing at him on her way to the kitchen. She quickly re-emerged, holding a blackened kettle, at which she pointed with a crooked smile which nevertheless transformed her face.

  'Thé?'

  'Merci,' said Hoffmann. The girl shrugged, smiled again, and returned to the kitchen.

  60

  As he returned to the hotel, Hoffmann noticed a man on a street-corner selling the Arbeiter-Zeitung, and bought one. Glancing through its two sheets, he saw, at the bottom of the front page, an item about him, 'believed to have committed suicide as a result of his crimes being exposed'; but there was a very full description. No photograph, thank God; the few that existed of him were - all but one - old, and grainy. In his work, you didn't publicise your looks. There was his official identity mugshot, of course; but in that he was wearing glasses and still had his moustache. His big frame was a problem, but his regular features, despite his large nose, were commonplace and, he hoped, forgettable. He didn't like that full description, though.

  He'd reached the hotel by ten. A different desk-clerk was on duty. The man looked up as Hoffmann approached. Then he inclined his head slightly. There'd been something in his eyes - was it a warning? Or commiseration? Hoffmann didn't like it. A very thin man in a blue suit which hung loosely from his shoulders approached him across the lobby.

&nbs
p; 'Dr Friedmann?'

  'Yes?'

  The man flashed a card. 'Security Police. Schmidt. May I have a word?'

  'Of course.' Automatically he reached for his papers.

  The man raised his hand. 'I don't need to see your ID,' he said. 'Friedmann; Ministry of Aviation. From Berlin. Now here. For how long?'

  'Three days.'

  'Doing what?'

  'Damage assessment.'

  'I'd have thought there was enough for you to do at home.'

  'Colleagues are taking care of that.'

  'Naturally.' The man had small eyes, deeply set in their orbits. The skin surrounding them was grey. His hair and his pencil-line moustache were a dead black. He looked like a skull wearing a wig. 'And what are you doing here precisely?'

  Hoffmann stood on his dignity, though he wasn't sure the ploy would wash with the Gestapo. 'I make a report, and return with it to headquarters. If it's any of your fucking business. What was your name again?'

  The thin man raised a deprecating hand. 'It seems very extravagant. You come all this way by car just to do a job which someone here could do just as easily, and telephone his findings through.' Schmidt was enjoying himself. He thought he had a catch in the net. So he was giving this B-Movie performance. Now, he was even examining his fingernails. Hoffmann looked around the lobby. About a dozen people; one youngish man in a buttoned-up suit pretending to read the Deutsche Allgemeine. He might as well have been holding it upside-down. Was that the back-up?

  'I'm not just covering Leipzig. Dresden too.'

  'But they haven't touched Dresden.' The angular chin came up.

  'Yet.'

  'So you think they will? Maybe you hope it?'

  'What are you talking about?' Hoffmann knew where this was leading. Had Schmidt been tipped off? Adamov? Impossible. Though he would never expose his back to Adamov, he had never questioned his loyalty to Kara, and he was certain that Adamov retained that.

  His palms were sweating. Then he saw that the policeman's attention had been distracted. He was aware that the lobby was emptying, and that the desk-clerk was abandoning his post. A low, distant hum came to his ears. He knew what it was, and at the same moment the scream of the sirens confirmed it. He looked at the thin man, who seemed to have shrunken further.

  'Well, Dr Friedmann, we must defer the pleasure of this conversation. Do not leave the hotel until we have contacted you again.' He gave Hoffmann what he clearly hoped was a bayonet-sharp stare, before turning on his heel and hurrying as fast as his dignity would let him towards the hotel doors. The hum had developed, more quickly than seemed possible, into a roar.

  61

  What their targets were, Hoffmann had no idea, but they were close. He threw himself behind the heavy mahogany reception desk as the first bomb hit.

  The building shook and the central chandelier trembled, though any fragile sound it made was drowned by the noise of the explosion. At the same moment the shock-wave blew in the main lobby doors and shattered their glass. Behind the desk, Hoffmann could hear the shards flying and smashing into the walls and furniture.

  He cowered lower. The next bomb was further away, but its force still made the hotel shudder. One of the tall palms by the orchestra daïs slowly toppled and fell into the debris. There was no sound of anti-aircraft fire, nor of the lighter, faster noise of Luftwaffe fighters; only the relentless crashing, like the footfalls of a malevolent giant, of the bombs. The RAF was doing its work unchallenged.

  The raid went on for ten minutes, which seemed like ten hours; but after the second bomb no more fell close enough to do damage to the Imperial. They had come for the railway station.

  Hoffmann got to his feet. He smoothed his jacket, brushing off the worst of the plaster dust, took his room key from the rack behind him, and, picking his way through the wrecked lobby, made his way upstairs to his room. He packed the two leather bags, which had always been stashed in the VW, quickly, leaving the old suitcase and his soiled clothes behind. He left the room so that it still looked occupied. Praying that the car had escaped the raid unscathed, he replaced his key on its hook, and made his way out of the hotel just as the all-clear was sounding.

  A few staff were beginning to emerge, too dazed and wrapped up in their own fear and relief to pay him any attention. One elderly porter's trousers were stained, and he was ashamed, trying to conceal the wet patch.

  The first bomb had struck just beyond the far side of the square in which the hotel stood, and two of the buildings there had tumbled to rubble behind their façades, which still stood, ending in jagged edges towards the roofline. Rubble littered the square as far as the steps of the hotel, and the dead and dying lay scattered amongst it. A near-naked woman, her clothes torn off by the blast, reclined, in a parody of sleep, at the foot of the steps.

  Further off, an officer lay supine, clutching at the air with arms reduced to stumps. In the centre, pinioned by a large piece of masonry, was a sack-like shape, the pulverised remains of a man in a blue suit. The body had no head. As he skirted the square towards the wounded officer, Hoffmann found it, face up, and undamaged, the dark eyes open and still carrying the startled expression which was their last.

  A lean, skull-like head. Gestapo-man Schmidt had not made it in time. Over all hung a momentary silence, as deep as the silence of snow.

  Hoffmann looked up from Schmidt's face. Other people were beginning to emerge from cellars. Two men, the older carrying a doctor's bag, were making their way to the officer, who still groped the air, but uttered no sound. Hoffmann went over to them, and as he drew closer he could see that there were shallow, bloody craters where the officer's eyes had been. The doctor knelt over him, and gently probed the man's torso with strong, long-fingered hands. Then he stood up.

  'There's nothing we can do,' he said. 'I'll ring for an ambulance if I can, but...' he let the words hang. 'He probably doesn't know he's lost his arms. He probably doesn't even know he's lost his eyes.' He turned to the younger man. 'Stay with him.' Then he made his way over to the hotel. God knew if the phone lines had survived.

  Hoffmann retraced his steps to the alley behind the hotel which led to the hotel car park. It was empty. There'd been no opportunity to tell the hotel staff about the 'mechanic' who'd be along to pick the car up, but as the place was unguarded the Monbijou boys obviously hadn't had any trouble.

  They'd worked fast, that was for sure. Hoffmann looked at his watch. It was only an hour since he'd arrived back at the hotel from his meeting with Adamov. Schmidt was dead, but the guy who'd been in the lobby reading the DAZ might still be around. There were no other bodies in the square. Hoffmann was without transport, with nowhere to hide, and five hours to kill. The grain of comfort was that, with the car gone, anyone watching the hotel might think he'd made off, frightened by the encounter with the Gestapo - the tousled room he'd left behind wouldn't fool anyone if the car was gone without explanation. But the air-raid would have interrupted surveillance, and there probably hadn't been any before his meeting with Schmidt. Schmidt had been very sure of himself. Hoffmann was certain that, had it not been for the air-raid, he would be under arrest now. He remembered the clerk who'd checked him in. Had he put in the report to the Security Police? Above all, was Schmidt working alone or not? Hoffmann was big game: there'd be competition for the honour of bringing him in.

  It was a pleasant day, not unbearably hot, for which Hoffmann, with his two bags and his leather coat, was grateful. There was even a cool breeze, but that didn't solve his immediate problem, which was to get his head down somewhere. It occurred to him, also, that either Adamov might have been killed in the raid, or that Adamov might think him dead. He'd nothing left to trade, and even if he could contact the Monbijou boys, they might not be impressed, even if he gave them all the money he had left. But he wasn't going to go down yet.

  He remembered the bar on the Ritterstraße. He made his way there. His route skirted the track of the air-raid, and he passed tableaux from a landscape in hell. Grou
ps of women were already shifting rubble, indifferent to the scenes of ordinary grief being played out near them as they worked: an old man, the grandfather perhaps, on his knees in the dust, in his shirtsleeves, silently cradling the body of a little boy, maybe three years old, stroking his hair; a woman in a black dress patterned with white flowers, standing on bleeding bare feet, keening to herself; a girl in her Bund Deutscher Mädchen uniform, long blonde hair in plaits, in the doorway of a ruined house, smoking a cigarette, rocking a battered pram.

  Ritterstraße was untouched by the raid, but every building in it was shut, and the bar he was looking for, the Red Hen, a cellar dive that was once used as a clubhouse by the city's lightweight criminals - forgers, conmen, burglars - didn't have a sign up any more. He descended the iron stairs to its door, and knocked, but the sound echoed within.

  He returned to the street. Five hours in the open didn't appeal to him. He thought of Auerbach's again, but it was too likely to be frequented by soldiers and SS. He hefted his bags onto his shoulder and made for the one place where he'd be sure to blend in with the surroundings - the station. There'd be secret police on duty there, of course; but he knew their surveillance methods well enough to handle them, and the crowds would help him.

  62

  The massive bulk of the station had taken a knock or two but still stood unbowed. Under the huge curve of the roof, he bought himself a paper cup of ersatz coffee and found a seat on a long wooden bench facing the platforms.

  There were only three or four trains in, all passenger traffic, the carriages stretching back beyond the giant black locomotives which hissed and growled and occasionally screamed in a shroud of white steam. He was far from alone here, and there were people sitting amidst their bags who looked as if they might have been waiting days for a connection.