The Hidden War

by David Fiddimore

  ‘Yes I did.’ As I heard her voice, I felt her hand on the back of my neck, and then a light kiss there. ‘What have you brought me this time?’

  ‘How about me bringing you a sleepless night?’

  ‘That too. You hungry, Liebe?’

  It was all our act. I’ve told you that already.

  ‘I could murder an omelette, if anyone feels up to it.’

  Magda wandered over from a table where she had failed to get a couple of GIs to buy her a bottle of counterfeit champagne. She blew me a kiss when she sat down. Marthe came back out of the kitchen with a couple of bottles of wine and four glasses. How did she keep her fingers around the stems of four wineglasses?

  ‘Italian white wine.’ She pulled out a chair and sat down. ‘The kitchen has a contract with some bad men from Sicily. A lorryload came in just before the blockade happened.’ She raised a glass to me, and looked me gravely in the eye. ‘Prost.’

  I was juiced by the time that Max walked in with Red Ronson. Ronson stayed up at the bar for a while. Then he danced with one of the chocoladies. I took Max over to a small table and asked, ‘You follow me here?’

  ‘Yes, pard. I wanted to ask you something.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What happened to that girl Grace? I was nuts about her you know.’

  ‘You were only sixteen.’

  ‘I was in love with her. Weren’t you in love when you were sixteen?’

  ‘Sure; with my cricket bat.’ Then I knocked over my drink, and said, ‘Sod it!’

  Maxwell fetched me another. Marthe looked over and smirked; she thought I’d had enough. When he came back I said, ‘I was nuts about her myself. I saw her again last year.’

  ‘Are you still nuts about her, Charlie?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘So am I. Where is she?’

  ‘She went to Palestine . . . Israel . . . whatever they’re calling it this year. She joined the rebs.’

  ‘Hot damn, Charlie! Is she a Kike?’

  Red danced past. It was the first time I’d seen a man who could look over both of his partner’s shoulders at the same time. I concentrated on Max, and asked him, ‘Would it matter if she was?’

  He stood up and looked down on me, shaking his head and his mop of red hair.

  ‘In the short term, for a quick poke, I guess not . . . but if I tried for anything longer my old man would disinherit me without a second thought. No Jew blood in the Maxwell line . . . and I weren’t meant to grow old poor.’

  ‘You call that love?’ I snarled, and fell off my chair. I hadn’t got so shit-faced for months. That Max was a nice kid, but there was something about him that always brought out the worst in me.

  I opened my eyes in a very comfortable bed in a palatial room, pinned to the mattress by a hundredweight of bedclothes and a heavy bedspread. The bed frame was gilded wood, the curtains rich gold brocade, and there was a gold garland pattern on the white walls. My head hurt. I had been disturbed by Red Greg opening the curtains, and letting in a golden day and the air that went with it.

  ‘Where am I?’

  ‘They say that in all of the American gangster movies, don’t they? You are in my zone in my apartment, which happens to be the largest part of one of Hermann Goering’s Berlin houses. He kept his mistresses and a horse here. Even after he was too fat to ride either. You like?’

  ‘Grotesque. It’s like an Edwardian brothel. It makes my head ache.’

  It was as grotesque as the powder-blue uniform and blue suede riding boots that Red Greg was wearing. His row of medals was so extensive that if he fell over he’d be struggling to stand again. The German Iron Cross seemed to figure prominently among them. ‘I get it. That’s one of Fat Hermann’s uniforms, isn’t it?’

  ‘From his wardrobe: I found it here. I had it tailored to fit me, and I wear it whenever I am feeling fascist.’

  ‘Are you’re feeling fascist this morning?’

  ‘Very fascist. Are you ready for breakfast?’

  ‘If I eat again I’ll die.’

  ‘Don’t worry about that, it’s the effect of the drug. It’ll wear off quickly, and you’ll be very hungry.’

  ‘What drug?’

  ‘The Mickey I slipped in your drink so we could get you here.’

  ‘Here being the Russian Zone?’ I was waking up.

  ‘That’s right, Charlie: you’re quick this morning. I guess I kidnapped you.’

  I didn’t feel quick, and was momentarily dizzy when I stood up. I was naked. I was also scared and ashamed, because I didn’t know what I’d been up to. There was an eight-hour blank between my ears. Russian Greg read my mind.

  ‘Don’ worry, Charlie. You still a virgin. You wan’ the bathroom?’

  ‘I want a shower.’ Sweat had dried on me, and I stank.

  ‘You’ll feel better after breakfast,’ the Russian informed me. ‘It will give me time to confide in you, and apologize . . . and maybe make mends.’ His English wasn’t perfect but he always got close to it.

  I stood under the shower for ten minutes. It was hard to believe that I was still in Berlin, because the scalding-hot water was endless. I imagined it washing all of the bad stuff out of me, and draining it out through my legs and my toes as a grainy black fluid, and then suffusing my clean new body with a golden buttery glow. That’s a trick which works for me. Charlie was himself again when I stepped out. My clothes were laid out on the bed. They had been cleaned, and pressed. My boots gleamed back at me from the floor.

  I followed the smell of cooking through suite after suite of enormous beautiful rooms, until I fetched up in a diner. It was dominated by a huge polished dining table that could have seated fifty. Russian Greg sat at a smaller table in a bow window overlooking a beautiful formal garden. He was still wearing Goering’s uniform, and had dribbled soft egg down the front. The empty shells of four more littered the tablecloth in front of him. My sheepskin flyer was draped over the back of a chair opposite him. I sat down in it.

  ‘I take the medals off for dinner,’ he explained. ‘I fall in the soup I drown.’ That was accompanied by a great guffawing laugh.

  A chef – you know, one of those tall guys in a big white hat and pinny – came in on cue. My tray consisted of enough kippers to feed a small fleet – where the hell had they got those from? – and a plate of scrambled egg, bacon and kidneys. When you thought about what the population outside had to eat, it was obscene. I was about to love every flawless mouthful. Greg was right: I was ravenous.

  ‘OK, shipmate,’ I asked when I pushed my plate back, ‘what’s all this about?’

  Russian Greg waved one of his fat fingers in front of my face. His feet didn’t reach the floor, and he was swinging his legs lightly from side to side like a child. He always did that when he was happy.

  ‘Starts with you being naughty in an aeroplane last year, Charlie.’

  He was just fishing. He can’t possibly have known what I was doing before my demob. Red intelligence just wasn’t that good.

  ‘That sounds like a good story, Greg. Tell me the rest of it.’

  ‘You think I don’t know?’

  ‘There is nothing to know. Tell me the rest of this story you made up.’

  ‘Is good story.’

  ‘I’m sure it is.’

  ‘Wait for the coffee.’

  The chef brought the coffee in a tall silver coffee pot with a swan-necked spout. It was probably worth hundreds of pounds. The coffee, like the pot, was exquisite.

  ‘This aeroplane,’ Russian Greg continued, ‘was Avro Lincoln bomber airframe number ED617. You flew from Waddington. I can tell you the names of the crew in there with you if you please . . . and the date in your flying log. You can check.’

  ‘I made a few radio calibration flights on weather spotters before I left the service, Greg. Is that what you mean?’

  ‘This time you fly close to the border: close to Soviet territory.’

  I was uncomfortable because the little fag hadn’t
a fact wrong so far. Maybe he was going to lock me up for spying after all.

  ‘If I was on a flight that strayed into your air space it would have been by accident.’

  ‘No it wouldn’t,’ Greg admonished me. ‘You . . . were . . . spy . . . ing.’ He sang the sounds out like that, and wagged a finger in my face. He was grinning. I didn’t respond. He made a business of lighting a cigar. He offered me one, and I shook my head. He said, ‘On this flight you spoke to a Soviet fighter pilot: aircraft to aircraft.’

  I remembered the bizarre encounter now. A woman pilot in one of their new MiG 15 jet fighters had formated on us high in the cold night sky. She had told my pilot that she was just looking for company; someone to talk to. She had a voice like Marlene Dietrich, and perfect English. I remembered that she sounded as sad as hell, and that her voice had haunted me for weeks afterwards. She had said that she was about to be arrested. Her husband and children already had been, and this was her last flight. Tim, our pilot, had offered to take her into an Allied base, but she turned us down, and dropped away. The incident had lasted less than five minutes. She must have told her interrogators about us. I can understand our offer pissing off the Soviets: I had told Tim that at the time.

  ‘I don’t think that ever happened, Greg.’

  He shrugged. ‘No matter, Charlie. Just background. I was pleased it was you in that plane when I found out.’ I wondered how he had. One of our bastards in blue must be passing operational records to the Soviets.

  ‘Background for what?’

  He leaned towards me. ‘Background for you, Charlie. The dame’s being rehabilitated. She’s collecting cowdung on a new collective farm less than fifty mile away. Her husband’s in a tank factory near Moscow . . . an’ their two boys are being reeducated in a school in Smolensk. I can get them all here together, but only once. It has to work first time: no second chances. I get them out of Russia; you get them out of Berlin, an’ out of Germany to the West . . . just like you did with those two Jews . . . I’m depending on you. That way they stay together, yes?’

  I sat back. So they knew about my Joes as well. Had Tommo set me up? Russian Greg was studying the pattern his cigar smoke made as it lifted. Occasionally he moved his hand to put a curl in it.

  ‘Why should I?’

  Russian Greg looked at me and said, ‘One thousand dollar . . .’

  ‘I don’t need the money, Greg . . .’

  ‘Ten thousand dollar. You can buy six houses in England with ten thousand dollars. Rent them out, and you never work again . . .’

  I shook my head. Too much bloody risk. What had I told Elaine about take no chances being my middle names? I sensed that the mood had changed. When I looked at the Russian again I noticed, with shock, a fat tear running down each of his cheeks.

  ‘What?’ I asked him.

  ‘Is my sister.’

  Bollocks.

  Chapter Fourteen

  ‘Suits me to stay another day,’ Max said. ‘Anyway, I lost Red. God knows how long it will take me to find him again.’

  We were in Black Market Gasse, an alley off the main mart, sitting either side of a card table and drinking black tea. The old lady who ran it kept an eye on us, and leapt up to refill our cracked cups every time we looked like leaving. It was good tea. An old man in a decrepit soldier suit stood alongside Max. He had a tray made from a piece of cardboard on a string around his neck. The tray was full of German medals. Maxwell sorted through them. He held up an ornate, royal blue and gold Balkan Kreuz on a black and silver neck ribbon.

  ‘What’s this?’ he asked me.

  ‘The Pour le Mérite. It was awarded for sustained acts of extreme heroism. Only the bravest of the brave got it. They call it the Blue Max.’

  ‘I like that. Why?’

  ‘Haven’t a clue.’

  ‘I’ll take it.’ He asked the old man, ‘How much, Pops?’ I translated for him.

  The old man said, ‘Thirty dollar.’

  Max said, ‘Ten.’

  The old man said, ‘Twenty dollar.’

  Max said, ‘Ten,’ and held out the bill. The old man took it without a word, and handed the medal over. While Max was hanging it around his neck I spotted a tiny enamelled lapel badge, in the shape and colour of a forget-me-not. I’d seen someone with one in London, hundreds of years ago. The old man looked at me without blinking. He had watery eyes. He said, ‘Thirty dollar,’ in the same hopeless voice.

  I gave him a twenty and a ten, and pinned the badge on my jacket. I couldn’t believe how quickly the collapse had come: the blockade was only a week or so old, and already they were selling the family medals. By the way, the dollars were the occupation units – ten to the dollar US.

  ‘You just bought the highest award for bravery in the world . . . for a buck,’ I said to Max.

  ‘Yeah. My old man will be impressed, won’t he?’

  ‘You don’t deserve it. You deserted.’

  ‘You got that completely wrong, Charlie. I ran away from dropping bombs on the Kraut, didn’t I?’ I nodded. ‘So it stands to reason that the Kraut would give me a medal for that if he knew about it. Think of all the Krauts I didn’t kill. I earned this medal better than anyone else earned theirs.’

  It was quite easy to get fed up with the little bastard.

  ‘Look, Max, I don’t want to see you for the rest of the day OK? . . . Anywhere, Capisce?’ It was Max’s turn to nod. He blew on his tea to cool it. ‘Just meet me out at the Pig tomorrow morning, and make sure Ronson’s with you or we’ll leave him behind.’

  ‘But I can’t find my way around without him, Charlie. I told you that.’

  ‘You’ll soon work out where you are when the Reds start shooting at you for straying outside the corridor. Now bugger off.’

  Marthe had an hour or so before she reported to the kitchen in the Leihhaus. We drank weak coffee in her sitting room. There were two sacks of coal in the corner; everyone in Berlin was laying up stores for later. She wasn’t too worried about using the last of the coffee because I had brought her a big bag of it, along with the usual stuff. Cigarettes – some to smoke and some to sell – and a pair of stockings . . . and some safety pins. Half the fucking Continent had run out of safety pins. I’d even found time to get a big bag of PX boiled sweets for Lottie, who was at school now that it had reopened.

  I told Marthe what was troubling me. ‘There was an old soldier in the Tiergarten, selling his medals.’

  ‘I know him. Don’t feel too bad. He steals them from corpses, and their widows. He does all right.’

  ‘How did we all get to this?’ She didn’t answer me. After a comfortable silence during which I filled my pipe, and she lit a cigarette, I asked, ‘Why did you let Greg take me away last night?’

  ‘This is Berlin. I work for him, Charlie. They treat you bad?’

  ‘No, nothing like that. He just wanted to talk. He had a business proposition for me. Something he wanted me to do.’

  ‘His kind of business is usually dangerous: you going to do it?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Why do you still work at the Leihhaus? I can easily give you enough.’

  ‘You are not always here, Charlie . . . nor is your friend Tommo. The people there look after me.’

  I spoke without thinking: some things are better that way.

  ‘After they were bombed out during the war, my mother and father always kept a suitcase under the bed. It contained a change of clothing for them and my sister, and all their documents . . . in case they needed to run again.’

  ‘Why are you telling me this, Charlie?’

  ‘Because I want you to start keeping a suitcase under the bed.’

  ‘Where would I run to?’

  ‘You would run with me.’

  ‘To England?’

  ‘If that’s what you wanted.’

  She said, ‘So,’ breathed out a long stream of tobacco smoke, and stubbed out the butt in a heavy glass ashtray. It was the sort of ashtray that fallen ladies accident
ally kill their pimps with in B movies. So was such an odd word, and I didn’t quite get where it fitted. It was like the full stop in a sentence which had come to a natural conclusion. Then she asked, ‘You want to go to bed now?’

  I could do pauses as well. Eventually I said, ‘Yes please. Tonight, when you’ve finished your shift.’

  She smiled. That was good because Marthe never smiled a lot.

  ‘You are the first man to say please . . . in a long time.’

  ‘Gut. Good.’

  ‘Do you love me, Charlie?’

  ‘No, but I’m thinking about it.’

  ‘I am thinking about it also.’

  I said it again, ‘Gut. Good.’

  She said, ‘It would be nice to love someone again.’

  I realized that I agreed with her. Something cracked.

  ‘Yes. Yes it would.’

  That night I slept in the family bed, and Lottie slept on the sofa. It didn’t make any difference. When I woke up she was jammed between us. Her floppy rag doll was in her arms.

  Maxwell and I waited out by the Pig until the gunfight started. It was like the Battle of New Orleans. We dived under a parked ambulance, and stayed there. Soon two Snowdrops joined us, so it got a bit crowded.

  ‘Who is it?’ I asked one. ‘The Werewolves?’

  He loosed off the magazine of his sub-machine gun in the general direction of an old hangar about a quarter of a mile away. Bullets pattered off the road near us in response. Whoever they were could shoot straighter than the Lootwaffe guys lying alongside us.

  He grunted, rolled on his side, and changed the gun’s mag.

  ‘You seen too many of them Lon Chaney films, bud.’

  ‘There was a bunch of Nazis left over at the end of the war. They called themselves the Werewolves, and caused a bit of trouble.’

  ‘Never heard of them, bud.’ He let rip with another ten-second burst that went all over the shop. Birds lifted from the long grass between the runways. ‘These is the Berliner Kardinals.’ He pronounced the word as Kar–din-arlez.

  ‘Who they?’ Max asked him.

  ‘They used to be a football team. They’re trying to steal the flour in that warehouse.’