Charity

by Len Deighton

  That was in 1948. Now, almost four decades later, we were sitting in what had been the site-manager’s office during the construction work. At least we were sitting in a hut of which one badly scarred wall, and the concrete base block, had been its final remains. The old hut had remained abandoned and neglected on the edge of the Tegel runway until Rudi Kleindorf came and preserved it. Rudi was an oddball, a one-time professional soldier and self-advertising patriot who declared a sentimental attachment to this place. He’d put up a notice on the wall claiming that it was the last remaining trace of a miracle of construction work. Now, said Rudi’s notice, it was almost completely forgotten, even by those who came here.

  ‘So what is going on in Frank’s mind?’ said Werner, after I’d told him about Cindy, and about Frank’s reaction to her sudden intrusion into what Frank always considered his own personal fiefdom. When I shrugged Werner rephrased it: ‘What was the implication? Does Frank think she’s going to kill Jim Prettyman?’ Werner’s heavy irony seemed to be as much directed at me as at Frank. With Cindy as his house guest he felt defensive on her behalf. He got up and went to the refrigerator to find a bottle of carbonated water. He held it up: I shook my head. It was clubby enough, and German enough, for that sort of self-help and payment on trust system to survive. Perhaps that was what attracted Werner to this large prefabricated shack, half-hidden in the trees of Jungfernheide.

  ‘Kill Jim? Good God no,’ I said, pretending not to notice the little dig at me. ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘It was a joke,’ said Werner.

  ‘Yes, well Jim Prettyman knows where all the bodies are buried,’ I said. ‘And there are not many people left who might know the true story behind what happened on that night Tessa died.’

  ‘Is that what Cindy says?’

  ‘Cindy? She knows nothing about it, except that Jim left a box of papers with her the next day.’

  ‘So what did she want then?’

  ‘She wants more space in her office safe. I think she was hoping that I would ask her for the box file, and pay her a reward or something. You know what she’s like.’

  ‘Why didn’t you?’

  ‘Not with Cindy,’ I said. ‘Nothing is simple with her. You can bet it was some kind of baited trap. I take the box file from her, and she hits us with a demand for official recognition as Jim’s wife.’

  ‘Jim remarried.’

  ‘In Mexico. Cindy has been advised that Mexican marriages are not recognized under English law. She would like to see it annulled. It would give her the green light for a legal action against the Department.’

  ‘Yes, I remember now. And where would that leave Prettyman?’

  ‘Exactly. She’s a devious woman,’ I said.

  ‘You used to like her.’

  ‘Did I?’

  ‘You were always saying how clever and attractive she was. You used to say that she was the brains behind everything that Jim Prettyman did.’

  ‘Not Cindy,’ I said.

  ‘You don’t like any of your old friends these days, Bernie. What’s happened to you? Why are you so caustic? Why so suspicious of everything and everyone?’

  ‘Am I? Well I’m not the only one afflicted with that,’ I said. ‘There is an epidemic of suspicion and distrust. It’s contagious. We are all in its grip: you, me, Fiona, Gloria and the whole Department. Frank has got some crackpot idea that George had his wife killed because the Church wouldn’t give him a divorce. Even when my father-in-law’s superannuated moggy rolls over dead, I have to listen to some half-baked conspiracy theory.’

  ‘Yes, but cats have nine lives,’ said Werner. ‘There must have been eight other serious attempts.’

  ‘I must tell him that,’ I said. ‘It would be something more for him to worry about.’

  The conversation stopped while a British Airways jumbo trundled along the perimeter and revved its fans loudly enough to rattle the bottles on the bar counter, and shake the moths out of the fur collar of Werner’s ankle-length black overcoat. There were soft thuds on the roof as the snow was shaken out of the trees above us.

  I suppose all airports have hideaways like this: places where staff on duty can escape from work for as long as it takes to swallow a drink or two and smoke a couple of cigarettes. But this prefabricated cabin was not content to be a ramshackle refuge for airport staff. It pretended to be a club. The décor was contrived to make it seem like a private and exclusive spot for intrepid birdmen to gather to exchange stories about Richthofen. Its name was enough to tell you what it was – The Horrido Club. The word Horrido had gone into German folklore as being the word used by old-time Luftwaffe fighter pilots to proclaim an enemy aircraft shot down. Children’s comics and romantic military historians endorsed it. So did Rudi, who enjoyed nothing better than reading books about the war. But as I told him, none of the Luftwaffe fighter pilots I had asked could remember anyone ever saying Horrido: they simply said Abschuss! Rudi had just grinned. Like so many people who had fought in the war, Rudi had developed a possessive attitude towards it. He was apt to dismiss anything I said about that period as an example of the English sense of humour, which he much admired.

  Rudi had decorated the ‘club’ with all kinds of junk. There were model aircraft, baggage labels and sepia reproductions of old photos and posters. On the ceiling there were tacked two large sections of fabric bearing RAF roundels and one with a black German cross insignia.

  Sitting in the corner, nursing beers, there were two policemen and two engineers from Lufthansa. Rudi was there too. They’d been arguing about the football game they’d seen the previous Saturday. Now the argument ended with that suddenness with which such conversations can become exhausted. They downed their drinks, looked at the clock – an old RAF Operations Room clock with coloured triangles – and left.

  Rudi came over to say hello to us and offer us a drink. He was at least one hundred years old, a craggy-faced giant, with broken nose and battered cheekbones. His hair he could call his own, and his upright military bearing went well with the card he gave me advertising his new club. Since he had not yet decided upon a name for it, the card just had Rudi’s name on it – Rudolf Freiherr von Kleindorf – and the address and phone number. Small type under his name claimed him to be a retired Colonel of Infantry, ausser Dienst. Many times I had vowed to check up on the old rogue, and blow away these pretensions to aristocratic title and military rank. But Rudi was very old: one day soon I might be glad that old men are so often indulged in their petty vanities.

  We listened to Rudi’s extravagant description of his new club, the hard-sell message being larded with amusing gossip and the scandals that were a permanent part of Berlin’s high society. When Rudi finally departed, the club was empty, apart from me and Werner.

  ‘How often do you come here, Werner?’ I wondered if it was somewhere he came to take refuge from Zena; and from Cindy too.

  ‘You come here too,’ said Werner.

  ‘Not often. I’ve never liked this part of the city.’ Through the window I could see the forest. At this time of day in winter there was always a white mist threaded through the trees.

  It made me remember that day long ago when, as a schoolboy, I came here on a trip. One of our teachers, Herr Storch, an unrepentant Nazi, told the class about the vast dump of artillery shells that had been hidden under the trees of Jungfernheide during the final weeks of the war. It must have been a misty winter day exactly like this one. The dump was guarded by a dozen or so Hitler Youth boys. They were in their uniforms, and proud of the new steel helmets they’d got from the Spandau army clothing depot, together with ten Panzerfaust Klein 30 anti-tank rockets that were effective only when used as close as thirty metres. Accompanying the boys there were three elderly brothers named Strack. They were local men: foresters who had been given Model 98 rifles and Volkssturm armbands. Ruined by rifle-grenade training, the guns were virtually useless for shooting.

  Also here that fateful day, there was a broken-down three-ton a
mbulance – an Opel Blitz. Its transfer lever had jammed halfway into the four-wheel-drive position, and the vehicle had become inextricably stuck in the overgrown ditch from which the driver had been trying to reverse. The driver was a female civilian volunteer. Herr Storch described her vividly: she wore a fashionable hat and coat and chamois gloves, and was distinguished only by her Im Dienste der deutschen Wehrmacht armband. Standing round the ambulance there were eight nurses of a surgical unit, none them warmly clad.

  At this point in his story, my teacher Herr Storch kicked the ditch at the place the Opel had stuck as if to convince himself it had all happened.

  The nurses were on their way to a Feldlazarette of Busse’s 9th Army at Storkow. It was all futile, for Busse’s men were no longer there: tanks of Koniev’s First Ukrainian Front wheeling north had flattened and forgotten the Mobile Field Hospital. Storch had never been the sort of man to take orders, or even suggestions, from a woman. So there was little chance of the unit’s nursing sister – a grey-haired woman, long past retirement age commandeering Storch’s own vehicle, a six-wheel truck that he was loading with rations and rifle ammunition. Storch was, at the time, a lieutenant of a Luftwaffe signals regiment that had been pressed into service as infantry. He wouldn’t let the nurses have his truck. To take such a step would have been to invite execution at the hands of the ‘flying court martials’ that were to be seen roving the streets, interrogating the old and the young, the high and the low, with equal ferocity.

  While Storch was arguing with the nurses, unwelcome strangers stepped out of the mist. They were the ‘point’ of an armoured reconnaissance battalion of the 12th Guards Tank Corps. This was the other prong of the attack: Marshal Zhukov’s army heading south to cross the canal and descend upon the industrial complex of Siemensstadt. A large proportion of the foot-soldiers were fighting drunk on plundered schnapps. Some were injured and others burdened under incongruous assortments of looted domestic treasures. They were all hungry, and now they pounced with glee upon the unexpected bounty of German army rations. They also pounced upon countless tons of munitions hidden under camouflage netting. And with even greater glee they pounced upon the nurses.

  Storch had jumped down into the ditch to show us how he had survived. From there he had watched the killing of the Volkssturm men, the cruel deaths of the Hitler Youth boys and the repeated brutal raping of the nurses. He told the story with an intensity that horrified me and my classmates. ‘Defeat is shame,’ he yelled at us as the tears rolled down his cheeks. ‘And shame is having to watch barbarians defile your women while you do nothing – nothing – to defend them. Shame and fear. I did nothing, do you hear me: Nothing! Nothing! That is defeat.’

  What was he trying to tell us? We schoolboys watched Storch with consternation that did nothing to aid our understanding. I was the only foreign barbarian in the class, and his wet wide-open eyes stared at me for so long that the boys who had at first turned their heads to look at me turned away in confusion and embarrassment. I never did fully understand what motive he had for inflicting upon us the emotional trauma we all shared that day, but for ever afterwards even the name of this place was enough to bring upon me an ache of apprehension and misery.

  ‘Are you listening?’ Werner said loudly enough to bring me out of my reverie.

  ‘Yes,’ I said as the voice of Storch echoed in my memory and faded away.

  ‘I like aeroplanes,’ admitted Werner. ‘Remember all those models I built?’

  ‘I thought you bought them from that woodcarver,’ I said.

  ‘Black Peter?’ said Werner, showing great agitation. ‘What are you talking about? My models were immensely better, and far more detailed than those Flying Fortresses he made. His crudely carved models were just for selling to the American soldiers.’

  ‘Were they?’ I said innocently.

  ‘Don’t be stupid, Bernie. My Dornier X had all the engines in it. You could lift up the cowlings and see the details inside.’ He was passionate now, his voice quivering with indignation. It was so easy to crank him up, but I always felt guilty afterwards. It’s only our very closest friends who are so immediately vulnerable to our teasing.

  ‘The big flying boat? Yes, that was a good one, Werner. I remember that one. You kept it for years.’

  ‘What are you going to do about the Matthews woman?’ said Werner, as if trying to get even with me.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Frank expects you to follow up on her. He’ll ask you what’s happening.’

  ‘I can’t start cross-questioning her. She’s a guest, and very close to Zena. He’s dumped the radium mine problem on my desk. He told me you were doing something urgent for him. I thought he meant about Cindy.’

  Clever old Werner. But I fielded that one. ‘Frank doesn’t know she’s staying with you.’ I drank the drink Rudi had so kindly pressed upon me and then said: ‘Not so long ago, Werner, I looked up at the stars in the night sky, and wondered how they had come into such harmonious configuration. Everything seemed to be going perfectly. I was foolishly in love with Gloria, and I was beginning to believe – against all reasonable expectations – that she was deeply in love with me. My kids seemed to have recovered from the shock of their mother’s departure. Gloria and me and the children all shared our sleazy little suburban love nest in the sort of foolish happiness I had never known before. Of her own choice, Fiona had defected. Given average luck, it seemed like I would never see my father-in-law again. My brother-in-law George was packing his bags to become some kind of rich tax exile in Switzerland, and I was happy to say auf Wiedersehen and good luck to him. My job seemed secure. I was in London, and that elusive pension for which I was not officially eligible was almost within my grasp. You were here in Berlin, as happy as a lark, fixing up the hotel in conjunction with your lovely Ingrid. Can you remember those days, Werner? Those Elysian days.’

  ‘The Elysian fields were the dwelling of the blessed after death,’ said Werner, who could always find a way of dampening my euphoria.

  ‘I said, can you remember those days?’

  ‘No. What did Rudi put in your drink?’

  ‘Look at the situation now, Werner. Gloria hates me. Fiona is eating most of her meals on planes, and is too busy to stop work for five minutes to talk to me. My children have been kidnapped by my father-in-law. My job is on the line. The chance of my getting into any sort of pension scheme is zero. My father-in-law thinks someone is trying to poison him. My brother-in-law is being held as an enemy agent …’

  ‘And me?’ asked Werner, when my voice trailed off. I suppose he guessed I was trying to find some acceptable way to describe his reconciliation with his wife, the fiery Zena.

  ‘No news is good news, Werner,’ I said.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said grimly. He’d given up trying to persuade me that Zena wasn’t as bad as I thought.

  ‘Where is Jim Prettyman? What have you heard?’

  ‘Am I your friend?’ said Werner.

  ‘Sometimes I think you are my only friend.’

  ‘That would be paranoid,’ said Werner. ‘You have hundreds of friends – too many – even if they are mostly low-life specimens. And more supporters than I can count. Your wise words are endlessly quoted and your deeds recounted. Seriously, Bernard. You have many friends.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  Werner looked at me, took careful aim, and then hit me in the eye with a mossy clump of Schiller:

  ‘Freudlos in der Freude Fülle,

  Ungesellig und allein,

  Wandelte Kassandra stille

  In Apollos Lorbeerhain.’*

  ‘I don’t need poetry, Werner,’ I said.

  Werner said: ‘For the sort of work you do, you have an instinct that I envy. And over the years I have seen you combine that instinct with powers of deduction, and pull off the impossible.’

  ‘Now for the down side.’

  ‘But you make little effort to see things from the other point of view. Maybe that’s why you
bring such powers to

  * Joyless there, where joy abounded,

  Friendless and misunderstood,

  Walked Cassandra, fear-surrounded,

  In Apollo’s laurel wood.

  ‘Cassandra’ by Friedrich von Schiller. Translation taken from Treasury of German Ballads (Frederick Ungar Pub. Co. Inc., New York, 1964).

  your work: that unyielding single-minded determination. But at times like this, it cripples your reasoning.’

  ‘Is that what I’m doing now?’

  ‘You have become obsessed with discovering some dark secret about the death of Tessa Kosinski. At least, you seem to be obsessed with it. You drag it into the conversation every time I see you. But who was present at that shooting? You were.’

  ‘Not only me, Werner.’

  ‘Fiona has repressed her memories of that night,’ said Werner. ‘She remembers nothing. A hundred analysts working day and night wouldn’t dredge it up into her conscious memory in a hundred years.’

  ‘Who says so?’

  ‘The shrinks said so. You said so. You told me that Bret said exactly that to you in California after one of the debriefing sessions.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ I said. ‘I thought I recognized Bret’s flowery syntax. I remember now. But you’ve got to allow for the way Fiona was traumatized at suddenly finding herself in the middle of a shoot-out. She’s worked behind a desk all her life. She wasn’t ready for that especially nasty little blood-letting.’

  ‘No one is ever ready for it. But you handled it with your usual superhuman efficiency. You wrote out a detailed report and answered questions about it for weeks.’

  ‘I don’t see what you’re getting at, Werner.’

  ‘It was dark. Chaos. You were worried about Fiona, and about Tessa too. There was a lot of shooting. Men were killed. You shot and killed that KGB man Stinnes, and the man he brought with him.’