Then We Take Berlin

by Lawton, John

  “My father killed himself.”

  “Oh my God. Why did you never tell me? How . . . how did he die?”

  “He died much as Max died and for much the same reason. He took off his clothes and walked out into the North Sea one day in 1946. If he hadn’t drowned, the cold would have killed him in minutes.”

  “The reason?”

  “He had been in the war from start to finish. He survived everything. Everything but what he saw in himself.”

  “Is that the abyss? Our selves?”

  “I don’t know. You’ve heard me speak of Rada? Rada Lyubova? She killed herself the same year. I know of no one who looked deeper into herself than Rada. Two world wars and a revolution had not driven her to suicide. But something did. Some accumulation of grief, some final straw.”

  “And yet you did not tell me.”

  “Everything takes time. It takes years for people to get to know one another. I know your body far better than I know your mind.”

  “Have we got years, Wilderness?”

  §124

  January 1948

  A cremation without service in Wilmersdorf—in the American Sector. Secular to the point of silence. Nell did not even ask to receive and scatter the ashes.

  Yuri turned up in full dress uniform. Bright blue against the snowbound cemetery. Nell hugged him. Wilderness stood with Erno a respectful distance away. Watched one of the huge hands gently patting her on the back.

  Then she came over to Erno. Hugged him. Then Wilderness. Stood back looking up into his eyes. He’d never seen her cry and this occasion would be no different.

  “Nothing has changed,” she said. “This changes nothing. Wer sind wir? Was sind wir? We are what we were. We are as we were. A man who was dead came briefly back to life and now is dead again.”

  “Is Yuri waiting?”

  “Yes. He waits for one of us.”

  “Then let me be the one.”

  She nodded.

  “Go home with Erno. I won’t be long.”

  Yuri was sitting at the wheel of a huge pre-war Krasny, painted up in field green, a Red Army star on each door, a plume of white smoke trailing from the exhaust.

  Wilderness got in beside him.

  “Can you drop me back at Grünetümmlerstraße?”

  “Конечно, of course.”

  The car moved off, passing Erno and Nell. She did not look at them.

  “You did this, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you told Nell to be in Pariser Platz on the twenty-sixth?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you didn’t tell her why?”

  “No. Suppose it had all gone wrong? Supposing Max Burkhardt had not been among those set free for Christmas?”

  “Suppose he had died on the march? He must have walked two hundred miles.”

  “Over that I had no control. Joe, do not overestimate my power. I did what I could. I got Max bumped to the top of a list of prisoners of war who could be released. I could not commandeer a jeep or a railway train.”

  “Or a decent pair of shoes?”

  “Or even a decent pair of shoes. I had no contact with Max. I rearranged names and dates on pieces of paper back in Moscow. Once they had set off I knew what would happen. My people would escort them as far as the Gate and then abandon them. And, believe me Joe, they were the lucky ones.”

  “How long?”

  “Что как долго?”

  “How long have you been setting this up? How long were you planning this?”

  “Since May 1945. Since the day Marie told me her husband had vanished in the Battle of Berlin. Of course, he could have died in that battle. And if he didn’t, a Volkssturm member is twice as hard to find as a Wehrmacht soldier—no uniform, no rank, no number . . . no papers. When Marie died I did not stop looking. Only from then on I was doing it for Nell.”

  “For Nell?”

  “Yes, Joe . . . for Nell. You and I have this in common. We do for Nell.”

  All for Nell? Wilderness could not bring himself to believe this for a single second. It just added to the complicated mixture that was Yuri. “Who is Yuri?” had run through his thoughts a thousand times this last year. He came back to Nell’s phrase, the same one Peter-Jürgen von Hesse had used back in Hamburg—turned it over in his mind.

  Wer sind wir? Was sind wir?

  §125

  That night Nell said, “He never asked about my mother.”

  Wilderness said nothing.

  She curled up in the curve of his arm.

  “What do you want of life, Wilderness?”

  “I want . . . to watch sunset all day . . . to see forty-four sunsets in a single day.”

  “That’s nice. You make that up?”

  “No. I wish I had.”

  “There are times I think my life has scarcely begun . . . and then I think of all that is gone and gone for ever . . . and then with a twist of my mind I am back at the beginning . . . I am Max Burkhardt’s little Lenchen again . . . back at the jumping-off point . . . and my feet have never left the ground.”

  Jumping-off point. That was the phrase Rada had used. What is a place of birth but a jumping-off point?

  “You came back to your jumping-off point.”

  “Where else could I go?”

  “Anywhere.”

  “Anywhere on a map of geography. We are talking maps of the heart.”

  “I know . . . you told me, you are a Berliner.”

  “Don’t make me sound corny, Joe.”

  “I wasn’t. But loyalty to a city is like loyalty to anything else. It may exact a price. Loyalty can be like a ball and chain. People can be like a ball and chain. They can drag you down into the grave with them.”

  “Are we talking about my father?”

  “No, we’re talking . . . in the abstract.”

  “Are you telling me neither people nor place matter to you?”

  “No. But what matters most are ideas.”

  “Am I an idea?”

  “You’re every idea I’ve ever had. Or shall ever have.”

  “That sounds so sweet, so romantic . . . but it’s bullshit isn’t it?”

  Wilderness said nothing.

  A plane turned in the sky above them, and the roaring heart of piston engines smothered the sound of the beating heart of the woman lying next to him.

  §126

  Nell insisted they return to work the next day.

  “Grief is pointless. Grief kills. Grief is what drags you down into the grave.”

  He awoke to find her fully dressed, even to her topcoat. A pot of coffee cooling on the gas ring.

  She stood by his bed, nimble fingers doing up her buttons, and said again, “Nothing has changed.”

  He grabbed a cup of coffee and took it back to bed with him. She’d want at least a quarter of an hour between her arrival at Schlüterstraße and his. He fell asleep and when he woke up again it was half past nine.

  Wilderness got to Schlüterstraße late. Another fragment of a morning Fraggy-bashing, punctuated by the refined sarcasm and acid disdain of Rose Blair. It was gone ten and some. In time to find her cobbling together her tenses or elevenses, toasting bread and making coffee on the tiny paraffin stove she kept on top of a steel filing cabinet. She did not, ever, offer to share her coffee with him. He might well have declined anyway—the smell of NAAFI coffee had become like body odour over the last year. It clung to Spud and Pie Face. He wondered if it clung to him. The olfactory stigmata of the Schieber.

  “You’re late,” he heard as he passed her door.

  “Late for what?”

  “You have a visitor,” Rose Blair replied with heightened emphasis on the “or.”

  He opened the door to his office.

  Burne-Jones was in the visitor chair—which showed some respect—with his feet up on the desk, which didn’t.

  It had been a year, almost to the day it had been a year.

  “Just in from Blighty, are we
?”

  Burne-Jones swung his long legs to the floor and stood.

  “By all means, let’s not stand on formality. No salutes. No hint of recognition that we might both be in His Majesty’s service.”

  “I get all the sarcasm I need from the bird in the next office. In fact she exceeds my ration. And you didn’t come to Berlin to swap salutes and handshakes.”

  “Have I called at a bad time?”

  “You know damn well you have, or Miss Blair isn’t doing her job.”

  “Y’know, Joe. I think becoming a corporal might have gone to your head.”

  “Then make me a sergeant and see if it goes to me feet.”

  “Glasshouse, Joe. Never forget where I found you.”

  A pause that might be deemed respectful on Burne-Jones’s part.

  “I had heard about your girlfriend’s father as it happens. Sounds dreadful. As though the war never ended for him.”

  “Him and thousands like him. If the Russians get you they can string that war out into infinity.”

  “Quite.”

  Burne-Jones rummaged in his briefcase and slapped a folder on the desk. Game over.

  “Why don’t we both sit down? There are things you need to know.”

  Wilderness pulled the file towards him.

  Inside were three typed sheets and a mug shot.

  “Jean-François de Villefranche. Civilian attached to the French Military Government. What we have on him is all in there.”

  Wilderness flipped through the pages.

  “And the problem is?”

  “We think he might be one of them.”

  “Queer?”

  “Commie.”

  “Working for the Russians or just sympathetic?”

  “The former.”

  “Do the French know?”

  “No. And if they did they’d handle it with all the delicacy of a man trying to make tea while wearing boxing gloves. Broken china all over the place.”

  “And you want?”

  “To know. To be certain.”

  “And then?”

  “Not for you to know. We turn him, we turn him in. Entirely down to circumstances. His address is in there. Apartment in the French Sector. Turn him over. Tell me what you find.”

  For minute Wilderness read on in silence.

  Then said, “There’ll be a shopping list.”

  “Fire away. I’ll take notes.”

  “Two sets of lockpicks. Half a dozen screwdrivers in all sizes. A penknife with a carbon steel blade. Black trousers. Black shirt. Pea jacket. One of those peaked caps every other German bloke seems to wear. Rubber-soled shoes, size ten. A canvas bag. A blanket. Scissors to slice it up. A couple of rolls of sticky tape. Pigskin gloves, as thin as they come. A jar of concentrated nitric acid and an eyedropper . . .”

  “Bloody hell . . . slow down. What’s the acid for?”

  “You surely don’t want me to use gelignite?”

  “Joe, I don’t want you to leave any trace!”

  “It may be necessary. Why don’t we get it just in case?”

  “If you can’t crack a safe the way you did Rada’s then don’t try. No one must ever know you’ve been there.”

  “OK. All the clothing should be secondhand and looking like it, except the gloves. Get them new.”

  “Sounds like I’m kitting you out as a cat burglar.”

  “Fassadenkletterer. That’s what Berliners call them. But the English has more poetry.”

  “And a camera.”

  “If you say so.”

  “And take your gun.”

  “What?”

  “Rose tells me you never carry it. Take it when you do this job, and any other job that comes up.”

  Wilderness nodded, wondering how much dust it might have gathered after twelve months in a drawer.

  “And a vehicle? You can hardly do this using a jeep.”

  “Public transport.”

  “What?”

  “You’ve seen too many Scotland Yard films. Thieves escaping in a fast car. It’s bollocks. Easiest way to lose any tail is on foot and on an underground train. He lives in Blaumontagstraße. There’s a U-bahn station quite close. And if it restores your faith in the traditions of the Yard . . . throw in a magnifying glass.”

  “My, you really have got to know Berlin, haven’t you?”

  “It’s what you asked for.”

  “OK. You’ll have all this by tomorrow morning. You do the job tomorrow night.”

  “No. I do the job tomorrow afternoon.”

  “What in broad daylight?”

  “I’d do it in narrow daylight if I knew what it was. You just tell me what I’m supposed to be looking for and leave it to me.”

  §127

  Wilderness had not pulled a job since Cambridge. Just putting on the gloves was pure delight. Picking the lock was too easy. Not leaving a mess took more time than robbery. He photographed every document in the apartment, and he searched for anything hidden. Few people had imagination when it came to hiding anything. Under the mattress, under the bath, in the cistern, behind the gas fire. Villefranche had papers from the Allied Kommandatura at the back of his shoe rack. Wilderness photographed them and then put them all back.

  Burne-Jones smiled as he took the film from Wilderness. He did not tell him what it was he’d found.

  He never did.

  Wilderness burgled a dozen apartments over the next few weeks in every sector except the Russian.

  “I’d love turn over one of the bastards. But what’s the point? We know who they work for.”

  “I was thinking more of Germans living in the East.”

  “Too risky. You get picked up on the far side of the line . . . you’d be gone for good. Not a damn thing I could do about it. You said it yourself . . . ‘if the Russians get you . . .’ As things are you get picked up this side of the line, I’d still find myself disowning you.”

  §128

  March 1948

  “Not a moment too soon,” Rose Blair said.

  “For what?”

  “Burne-Jones phoned. I rather think he expected to find you here. Instead—”

  The telephone rang. She picked it up.

  Wilderness heard her say, “Yes. He’s here now.”

  Then she thrust the phone at him without a word and went back to making toast.

  Burne-Jones said, “Get over to Elssholzstraße. You’re interpreting for General Robertson. My sources tell me Sokolovsky is up to something. You don’t just translate. You take mental notes. I want to know everything.”

  Then Wilderness heard the click as Burne-Jones rang off. No goodbye, nothing.

  “What’s at Elssholzstraße?”

  Rose Blair had a mouthful of toast and gulped it down to answer.

  “Allied Control Council. Or did you think Germany ran itself?”

  “I’m their interpreter, it seems.”

  “Then you’d better get over there. They start at half past two.”

  “Surely Eddie Clark’s their English–Russian interpreter?”

  “Of course, I stood him down not half an hour ago. Burne-Jones wants you there. After all, you’re supposed to be some sort of spy aren’t you? So, try spying for a while—at least you won’t be needing your kid gloves and your rubber-soled shoes. And they probably won’t want to buy any coffee either. I imagine Eddie’s sold them a lifetime’s supply by now. It’ll be a change for you on both counts I should think.”

  Elssholzstraße lay in Schöneberg, in the American Sector—a little over a mile away—in a Prussian palace that had been the Central Court before the war, the Kammergericht.

  When Wilderness got there General Clay’s Cadillac, its Stars and Stripes fluttering in the March breeze, was already parked in front of the palace. So was General Robertson’s Rolls-Royce—a happy little fat man leaning on the bonnet, nose-deep in a volume of Penguin New Writing.

  Eddie smiled when he saw Wilderness.

  “Sent for you have they? Mu
st be serious.”

  It was.

  “How often you done this?”

  “Done what?”

  “Interpreted for Robertson.”

  “Lots. Every time I drive the general, I do the chatting too. Not much to it. Stenographers take down everything in three languages after all. Anything Sokky says in Russian, you pass on to the general in English. You never translate what he says into Russian. Leave that to the other side. Stick to that and you can’t go wrong. Personally, I think Sokky speaks English, and for that matter probably French too, but he’ll not utter a word except in Russian. And afterwards they throw a nosh-up that makes us look like beggars. Caviar, cream cheese . . . you name it. Other ranks included. And they get narky if you don’t eat. I quite fancy an afternoon off, as long as you bring me out some grub. I’d miss the grub.”

  Wilderness saluted and introduced himself to Robertson. He was seated just to the right and just behind the general. He rather thought he might be the only man in the room without a row of ribbons on his chest.

  And then Marshal Sokolovsky walked in—“Hero of the Soviet Union” with five Orders of Lenin to his name, and to his chest. Forty or more medals, not as symbolic ribbons but real medals, pinned to his tunic. Marshal Sokolovsky reminded him of nothing quite so much as a Christmas tree. Or a walking scrapyard. Wilderness wondered how the man breathed. Wilderness felt . . . naked.

  Ten minutes later Marshal Sokolovsky rattled out. No caviar, no cream cheese.

  §129

  Eddie was still leaning on the Rolls, still reading.

  Wilderness came up running.

  “Look sharp, Ed. Robertson’ll be out in a second and in a stinker of a mood.”

  “What happened?”

  “Sokolovsky just bunked off.”

  “So . . . he’s Russian. That’s what they do.”

  “It had all the hallmarks of permanence. A great fuck-you, ‘Xуй тебе.’ Meet me at Paradies at six. I have to report to Burne-Jones, and I have to find Frank.”

  §130

  “Just like that?”

  “He let General Clay get as far as currency reform before he walked out.”

  “What do you mean by ‘let’?”

  “He was bristling. From the moment he walked in he was never not going to do this. He wasn’t listening to Clay or Robertson or the French bloke. He was playing with them. He’d no intention of staying. Whatever the plan is it’s in place. And I took a gander at the reception room as I was leaving. Normally they lay on a feast. There was nothing. They’d no expectations of entertaining anyone. No more free lunch.”