by Len Deighton
‘I know what you’re thinking, Werner,’ I said, once Willi had gone.
‘What am I thinking?’ He was looking through the big plate glass windows at the almost deserted street. Yesterday’s snow had gone but the temperature had dropped, and every Berliner could recognize that low grey sky from which much more snow would come.
‘You think it’s easy for me to come breezing into town and talk about Lisl, and then I go home leaving you to do the things that have to be done.’
‘It’s not the same for you, Bernie,’ he said. ‘Lisl is my problem, not yours.’
‘She’s only got us,’ I said. ‘Whatever has to be done, we’ll do it together. I’ll get leave.’ Werner nodded mournfully so I tried to be brisk. ‘Selling the house shouldn’t be too difficult. But we’ll have to arrange somewhere for Lisl to go. Somewhere she’ll like,’ I added vaguely.
‘I’m a Jew,’ said Werner suddenly. ‘I was born in the war. My name is Jacob like my grandfather but they called me Werner because it was more Aryan. Lisl hid my parents. She made no money out of it, my parents had no money. She risked her life. The Nazis put people into camps for much less. I don’t know why she took such a risk. Sometimes I ask myself if I’d do the things she did to help comparative strangers. And to tell you the truth I’m not sure. But Lisl hid them and when I was born she hid me. And when my parents died Lisl brought me up as if I was her own child. Now do you understand?’
‘We do it together,’ I said.
‘Do what?’
‘Sell the house. Get Lisl into some nice residential home. Klara too.’
‘Are you crazy?’ said Werner. ‘You’d never get her out of that house in a million years.’
I looked at him. He had that inscrutable expression he’d developed as a schoolboy. ‘So what are you saying? Are they going to pull the house down around her?’
‘I’m going to run the hotel,’ said Werner. He stared at me defensively as if expecting strenuous opposition or a burst of laughter.
‘Run the hotel?’
He became defensive in the face of my amazement. ‘I grew up with her, didn’t I? I used to do the accounts. I know enough.’
‘She’ll not let you change anything,’ I warned him.
‘I’ll run it my way,’ he said quietly. It was so easy to forget the hard centre inside that sugar coating. But Werner could be tough too.
‘And make it pay?’
‘It only has to tick over.’
‘And what about the avalizing? What about your own work?’
‘I’m winding it up.’
‘You’d better think it over, Werner,’ I said in alarm as the implications struck me.
‘I’ve made my decision.’
‘Where will you live?’
He smiled at my consternation; perhaps that was the only compensation for him, maybe he’d been looking forward to it. ‘One of those upstairs rooms, I’m moving out of my apartment.’
‘What about Zena?’ I asked. I couldn’t imagine his young, tough, snobbish wife adapting to one of Lisl’s upstairs rooms or even to the suite with the refurbished bathroom of which Lisl was so proud.
‘It’s difficult for Zena to understand,’ said Werner.
‘I imagine it is.’
‘Zena says she has no debt to Lisl, and in a way she’s right,’ he said sadly.
‘For richer for poorer…with all my worldly debts…Or is it different now there’s women’s lib?’
‘I wish you’d got to know Zena better. She’s not selfish. Not as selfish as you think,’ he amended, as he realized just what he was claiming.
‘So what’s Zena going to do?’
‘She’ll stay in the apartment in Dahlem. It’s just as well really when you think of all that furniture we have there. We couldn’t move it to Lisl’s, could we?’
‘It’s a big step, Werner.’ He was giving up his work, his luxury apartment and, by the sound of it, losing his wife too. He’d lost her before; Zena’s constancy to Werner wasn’t something the poets wrote sonnets about. Limericks, maybe. I suppose that’s why I detested her so much.
‘There’s no alternative, Bernie. If I did anything less for Lisl I’d never be able to face myself again, would I?’
I looked at him. Werner was a good man. Perhaps he was the only truly good person I’d ever met. What could I say except, ‘You’re right, Werner. It’s the only thing to do.’
‘Maybe it will work out very well,’ said Werner, trying desperately to see the best side of it. ‘If the hotel could get some more holiday bookings, I could pay off the bank loan. I’m going to talk to some of the travel companies.’
He seemed serious about it. Didn’t he know that travel companies wanted only cheap bleak 200-room shoe boxes, run by sixteen-year-old high school dropouts who don’t speak any known language? What would a travel company do with a small comfortable hotel run by humans? ‘Good idea, Werner,’ I said.
‘Of course, I can’t wind up my business overnight,’ he said. ‘I have a few deals outstanding.’
‘How often do you go over there nowadays?’ I asked. Werner’s business required regular visits to DDR government officials in East Berlin. I didn’t ask him whether he was still reporting back to our people in Frank’s office. It was better that I didn’t know.
‘Not so often. Nowadays I can sometimes arrange a few of the preliminaries on the phone.’
‘Is it getting better?’
‘Not better; different. They are better at covering up than they used to be; better too at understanding what upsets the Western press.’ It was a harsh verdict coming from Werner, who tried always to be objective in such off-the-cuff remarks about the East.
‘How is Normannenstrasse these days?’
‘Very happy,’ said Werner.
‘Tell me more.’
‘The East Germans are number one on Moscow’s hit parade. Prague is no longer the centre of Russian penetration of the West and our friends in Normannenstrasse are rubbing their hands in glee.’
‘I heard the Stasi was getting a big shake-up over there.’
‘One by one the old gang are being got rid of. The same with the administration. It’s a smaller and better organization these days.’
‘Okay.’
‘Of course the KGB monitors it from day to day. If things are not going well, Moscow makes its displeasure known.’
‘Ever hear anything about that fellow Erich Stinnes?’
‘He’s the Moscow liaison. He got a big promotion.’
‘Stinnes?’
‘The KGB is riding high: no financial cutbacks for them. And the Americans are still running their networks from their embassies, and all US embassies are bugged from roof to cellar. They never learn.’
‘Is my wife involved in this reorganization?’ I asked.
‘Isn’t that who we’re talking about?’ said Werner. ‘She helped you with that “Structure Report” didn’t she?’
I didn’t reply. For ages now many had been saying that our networks should be organized quite separately from the embassies and other diplomatic organization. I’d spent a long time on a report about it, on the bottom of which Dicky Cruyer gladly signed his name. A lot of people, me included, thought that it would mean another big promotion for Dicky. It was the best work of that kind I’d ever done and I was proud of it. Some said that it must inevitably lead to a reorganization. But we reckoned without the Foreign Office. Even getting the D-G to submit the report was difficult. When the mandarins at the Foreign Office read it they stamped on it with such force that the whole building trembled. The Secret Intelligence Service was going to remain a part of the Foreign Office, its submissions rated no more important than those from a medium-sized embassy in Africa. Our offices would remain inside embassies, and if that meant that everyone knew where to find us, too bad, chaps! It was a depressing thought. And Fiona knew the whole story.
We sat in silence, watching the street where traffic raced past and some people waiting to cr
oss the road were hunched against the bitter-cold wind. ‘There is the matter of inheritance,’ I said finally. I suppose we’d both been thinking of Lisl all the time.
‘The hotel?’ said Werner.
‘You might work yourself to death and then find she’s left the place to a dogs’ home.’
‘Dogs’ home?’ said Werner puzzled. It was of course an entirely English concept: old German ladies were unlikely to bequeath their entire estates for the welfare of unwanted canines.
‘To some charity,’ I explained.
‘I’m not doing it to get the house,’ said Werner.
‘No need to get irritable,’ I said. ‘But it’s something you should settle before you start.’
‘Don’t be stupid, Bernie. How can I sit down with Lisl and tell her to write her Will in my favour?’ I didn’t try to answer through the sudden bellow of discordant sound that came from the jukebox. But after a few bars to test it the mechanic switched it off and started to replace the coloured panels.
‘She has no other relatives, does she?’
‘Yes she had,’ said Werner. ‘There was a sister who died in the war and another – Inge Winter – even older than Lisl. She used to live in France. Childless and probably dead by now. Lisl said I met her once when she came to Berlin but I don’t remember it. She has some sort of claim to the house. Lisl once told me that her father left it to both daughters but only Lisl wanted to live in it. But it was half Inge Winter’s. And apart from the sister, there could be relatives of Lisl’s late husband Erich. I must talk to her again.’
‘If Lisl said half the house belonged to her sister, the sister might be a signatory for the bank loan.’
‘I know,’ said Werner rubbing his moustache. ‘I was wondering if that’s why the sister came to Berlin.’
‘You’d better ask the bank,’ I said.
‘The bank won’t reveal anything to me without Lisl’s permission.’ He rubbed his moustache again. ‘It itches,’ he explained.
‘It will have to be sorted out,’ I said. ‘I’ll talk to her.’
‘No you won’t,’ said Werner immediately. ‘It would spoil everything. It’s got to look as though I want to go and run the place. It’s got to seem as though she’s doing me the favour. Surely you see that?’
It was a long time before I nodded. But Werner was right. He must have spent a lot of sleepless nights working it all out. ‘Shall I find out if the sister is still alive?’ I offered to do it more because I wanted to appease my conscience than because I thought it would lead anywhere, or be of any practical use.
Perhaps Werner understood what my motives were. He said, ‘That would be really useful, Bernie. If you could find out about the sister that would be the most important problem solved. I’ve got the last address she used in France. I got it out of that big green address book Lisl keeps in the office. I don’t know when it dates back to.’ He looked across to the bar counter where Willi Leuschner had been operating the chrome espresso machine, and said, ‘Willi’s coming with the bread pudding.’
‘And about time.’
‘He’ll want to sit down and chat,’ Werner warned. ‘Don’t mention anything about the hotel for the time being. I’ll phone and give you the sister’s address.’
‘Take a day or so to think it all over,’ I suggested. Willi was coming this way now, carrying the desserts and the coffees and some Kipferl – sweet crescent-shaped biscuits – that always marked the end of any of Werner’s diets. ‘It’s a big step.’
‘I’ve thought it over,’ said Werner firmly and with just a trace of sadness. ‘It’s what I’ve got to do.’
France, I thought. Why do I have to say such silly things? How the hell am I going to get time off and go to France to trace a sister who is undoubtedly long since dead and gone? And anyway wasn’t one Lisl in my life enough?
7
‘We could have bought a micro-wave oven,’ said Gloria suddenly and spontaneously.
‘Is that what you want? A micro-wave oven?’
‘With the money this damned flight is costing us,’ she explained bitterly.
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Yes.’ She was making a list in her head. She did this sometimes. And the longer the list got the more bitter hatred she had for the airline and its management. Fortunately for the airline’s management none of them were sitting in the seat next to Gloria on the flight to Nice. I was sitting there. ‘It’s a rip-off,’ she said.
‘Everyone knows it’s a rip-off,’ I said. ‘So drink the nice warm café, unwrap your processed fromage and enjoy the ambiance.’
The Plexiglass windows were scratched so that even the dense grey cloud looked cross-hatched. Gloria did not respond, nor eat the items set before her on the tiny plastic tray. She got nail varnish from the big handbag she always carried, and began doing something with her fingernails. This was always a dire portent.
I suppose I should have told her, right from the beginning, that our journey was made to fulfil a promise I’d made about finding Lisl Hennig’s sister. I should have realized that Gloria would be angry when the truth was revealed, and that I’d have to tell her sooner rather than later.
Looking back on it, I don’t know why I chose the airport departure lounge to tell Gloria the real reason for the trip. She was unhappy to hear that this was not actually the ‘mad lovers’ weekend’ that I’d let her think of it as. She called me names, and did it so loudly that some people on the next seat took their children out of earshot.
It was at times like that I tried to analyse the essence of my relationship with Gloria. My contemporaries – married men in their forties – were not reluctant to give me their own interpretations of my romance with this beautiful twenty-two-year-old. Sometimes these took the form of serious ‘talks’, sometimes anecdotes about mythical friends, and sometimes they were just lewd jokes. Oddly enough it was the envious comments that offended me. I wished they would try to understand that such relationships are complex and this love affair was more complex than most.
Sitting on the plane, with no work to do and nothing to read except the ‘flight magazine’, I thought about it. I tried to compare this relationship with Gloria to the one I’d had with Fiona, my wife whose fortieth birthday would be coming up soon. She’d always said she dreaded her fortieth birthday. This ‘dread’ had begun as a sort of joke, and my response was to promise that we’d celebrate it in style. But now she’d be celebrating it in East Berlin with Russian champagne no doubt, and perhaps some caviar too. Fiona loved caviar.
Would I have got as far as London Heathrow with Fiona and still been trying to pretend that we were embarking on some madcap romantic escapade? No. But the fact of the matter was that such a romantic escapade would have had a very, very limited appeal to my wife Fiona. Wait a moment! Was that true? Surely the real reason I wouldn’t have told her that this was a ‘surprise getaway’ was that my wife would not have believed for one instant that a sudden invitation to fly to Nice would be a romantic escapade. My wife Fiona knew me too well; that was the truth of it.
But at Nice the sun was shining, and it did not take very much to restore Gloria to her usual light-hearted self. In fact, it took no more than my renting a car for our trip to the last known address of Inge Winter. At work Gloria had seen me dictating and conversing in German, and sometimes my imperfect Russian was used too. So she was ill-prepared for my halting French.
It went wrong right from the start. The beautifully coiffured young French woman at the car rental desk was understandably irritated when I tried to interpose news about my need for a car into a private conversation she was having with her female colleague. She didn’t hide her irritation. She spoke rapidly and with a strong Provençal accent that I couldn’t follow.
When finally I appealed to Gloria for help in translating this girl’s rapid instructions about finding the vehicle, Gloria’s jubilation knew no bounds. ‘No compree!’ she said and laughed and clapped her hands with joy.
Despite Gloria’s unco
operative attitude we found the car, a small white Renault hatchback that must have been sitting in the rental car pound for many winter days, for it did not start easily.
But once away, and on to the Autoroute heading west, all was well. Gloria was laughing and I was finally persuaded that it had all been very amusing.
It was only a few minutes along the Autoroute before the Antibes exit. On this occasion, determined not to provide more laughs for Gloria I had a handful of small change ready to pay the Autoroute charge. Now, with Gloria bent low over a map, we began to thread our way through the back roads towards Grasse.
Once off the Autoroute you find another France. Here in this hilly backwater there is little sign of the ostentatious wealth that marks the coastline of the Riviera. Rolls-Royces, Cadillacs and Ferraris are here replaced by brightly painted little vans and antique Ladas that bump over the large pot-holes and splash through the ochre-coloured pools that are the legacy of steady winter rain. Here is a landscape where nothing is ever completed. Partially built houses – their innards skeletal grey blocks, fresh cement and ganglia of wiring – stand alongside half-demolished old farm buildings. Ladders, broken bidets and abandoned bath tubs mark the terraces of olive trees. Heaps of sand – eroded by the rain storms – are piled alongside bricks, sheets of galvanized metal and half-completed scaffolding. The fruit of urban squalor litters the fields where the most profitable cash crop is the maison secondaire.
But ‘Le Mas des Vignes Blanches’ was not such a place. Here, on the south-facing brow of a hill, there was a Prussian interlude in the Gallic landscape. The house had once been a place from which some lucky landowner surveyed his vineyards. Now the hillsides were disfigured with a pox of development, an infection inevitably rendered more virulent by the thin crescent of Mediterranean which shone pale blue beyond the next hill.