Madrigal

by John Gardner

  Boysie lay back and rubbed his hands. No messages came, and when the waiter (this time accompanied by a white-coated assistant) arrived with the trolleys, there was no Dom Perignon. The waiter was sorry but Herr Oldcorn’s doctor had stipulated anything but alcohol. Would a nice Perrier water be acceptable? Of course, Boysie told him with a smile, his mind performing a complete karate uechi thrust at Warbler.

  *

  Satiated in the aftermath of food, Boysie lay back on the pillows, lit a cigarette, and planned for the night. Within half an hour he knew exactly what he would do, and damn the consequences. He swung out of bed, opened the wardrobe, and transferred the clip of dummy ammunition from the car coat to the breast pocket of the Hawkes two-piece worsted. Back in bed, he opened the first of the two books, Willett’s The Theatre of Bertolt Brecht.

  He was still sitting propped up and reading when Warbler arrived. The time was four-thirty, and Warbler carried a larger briefcase than before.

  ‘All set. The big moment, eh?’ Warbler said cheerfully.

  Boysie retasted the greengages in the back of his throat. It was going to happen. He nodded, mouth twitching.

  ‘Good. Go get dressed.’

  ‘Passport and papers?’ asked Warbler when Boysie returned to the bedroom. Boysie touched his pocket, nodding.

  ‘There is nothing I can say then but good luck. Come back quick.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Boysie. Now he could taste the chicken as well as the greengage.

  ‘I’ll be waiting at Checkpoint Charlie between ten-thirty and eleven. I hope you will be there.’

  ‘I’ll be there.’ Forced confidence. They shook hands. Boysie swallowing hard every second; he shouldn’t have had the Pflaumenkuchen on top of all that chicken. The shrimps had joined in.

  In the car park the Jensen started in one. To the left Boysie saw Warbler climbing into the Volkswagen. He put the Jensen into drive, released the brake, and moved slowly out into Dahlmannstrasse, then into Kurfürstendamm, heading towards the Friedrichstrasse and Checkpoint Charlie, a cigarette between his lips and terror coursing every fibre. In a strange way the terror drove him on like a kind of fantastic death wish.

  *

  At the same moment Boysie was leaving the Bristol Kempinski, British European Airways Flight 569 from Zurich turned at a height of 15,000 feet, in the Epsom holding stack ready to make her approach to Heathrow. In the tourist compartment of the Trident, Charlie Griffin sat cheerfully reading Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. He had been taking a fortnight’s holiday near Lake Maggiore. Griffin had fallen for Maggiore the previous year when he had visited it at Boysie’s request, and to some confusion. Idly Griffin glanced up from the page and wondered if there would be much mail waiting at home. He would eat out tonight; the house had been empty and Rubin was not due back until the morning. Might even put up at some hotel, thought Griffin, returning to the tragic affair at Holcomb, Kansas.

  Chapter Three: Shark

  When the shark has had its dinner There is blood upon its fins.

  Brecht, ‘Moritat’, from The Threepenny Opera

  Taut at the wheel of the Jensen, Boysie tried singing to himself. It was a nervous throaty hum, eventually emerging as ‘I Wonder Who’s Kissing Her Now’; as the car drew nearer to the Wall and Checkpoint Charlie, the mind backed away from the facts, hiding behind an old lyric as an alcoholic hides behind a bottle. The street lights were yellow, like those at the firing range on the previous evening. Yellow. Yellow. Boysie forced his thoughts away from the shattered car, an act more physical than mental, vomit rising from the undigested contents of his stomach. Chicken. (Yellow.) Greengages, Shrimps. Yellow Rosy Puberty. Mu-lan. Back to the womb. Elizabeth was far away, Mu-lan was here. Boysie could turn away from the Wall and be with her in a matter of minutes. With her. Having her. Escape to the comforting prenatal state by vivitombment in soft, yellow flesh.

  The Jensen rolled gently into the Friedrichstrasse. Ahead were the hutments of Checkpoint Charlie; the lights more brilliant. Boysie changed the lyrics. ‘I wonder who’s Kiesinger now?’ He laughed aloud, hysteria hovering somewhere in the background. A mental check: passport, ticket to the Berliner Ensemble, no weapon (safer, he had decided), clip of dummy ammunition in his right jacket pocket, leather shooting gloves in left breast pocket, watch synchronised before leaving the hotel. The time was exactly 5.55. An NCO in German field-grey greatcoat waved him through the western checkpoint, hardly looking at the car. Boysie need not even have reduced speed. As he drove through, he had the impression that several uniformed men stood inside the main hut looking towards the Eastern Sector. One of them, he was certain, was Gazpacho. Someone was certainly using big night glasses.

  The business of getting into East Berlin took only twenty minutes and, to Boysie’s surprise, was relatively easy. When the barrier raised, Boysie drove through, still on the Friedrichstrasse but now on the other side. It was psychological, he told himself, this feeling of bleakness.

  There were quite a lot of people about. They looked happy enough. There were two young girls giggling. What the hell? Use your loaf, Boysie-boy, what did you expect? Ape men? Wagonloads of prisoners? Bloody great Russians with snow on their boots muttering Da and shooting up the joint? Berlin Capone-style? Still there was that feeling, the intangible something. A stark quality? A difference? A mental sour odour.

  The Berliner Ensemble Theatre was just where Warbler said it would be, exactly where the map showed it—the dark classic facade with the cheap white banner hanging over the entrance, announcing that Dreigroschenoper was playing tonight. Boysie parked the Jensen, positioned for an easy get-away, slid from the driving seat, and locked up. The Bertolt-Brecht-Platz was definitely bleak—there was no psychological blunder over that. Mud; the black untidy shape of the theatre; a couple of unhealthy trees; a red-brick cinema wall bearing an excruciatingly bad poster for (of all films) a Western—the guy in the Stetson and Levis carrying a Peacemaker had a vague Germanic look about him. The area was reasonably lit; a clank of trams filtering from the bridge, an occasional glint from the river across the road. Boysie slowly walked up the theatre steps, turned, and looked at his watch. Nearly 6.30. Half an hour. Time to walk through the moves as Warbler had suggested. Not that it particularly mattered now. His mind was made up. They could do what they liked about it when he got back, whether they believed him or the other thing. It just did not matter.

  Even under the street-lighting conditions Boysie recognised the view, etched into his brain from Warbler’s photographs: the bridge and, behind, the angular rise of the apartment building. He clicked down on the stopwatch stud of his Navitimer and began to walk quickly towards the bridge. It was easy enough locating the door in the apartment building. At a fair, unrushing speed it took three minutes and eight seconds from the theatre to the green peeling paintwork entrance. Boysie double-checked that it was the correct door. Nobody about. The timing would be all right. Hands driven hard into the suede coat pockets. Boysie walked back towards the theatre and The Threepenny Opera.

  Dangerously, Boysie thought, Warbler had acquired one of the most conspicuous seats in the house for him—a well-placed box to the right of the stage. For some reason, which he could not quite place, the name John Wilkes Booth kept running through his head. He did not know anyone called Booth. There was Booth’s Gin, of course. Something he had read somewhere? Perhaps the guy was an actor. Boysie had been to see the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Aldwych a couple of times lately. Could be one of that lot. The name worried him. Yet, as the lights dimmed and the curtain raised on the garish, strange Soho street with the ‘beggars begging, thieves thieving, whores whoring,’ and the ballad singer nasalising the ‘Moritat,’ Boysie, with only a couple of words in his vocabulary, became engrossed in Brecht’s politically rejigged version of the musical.

  When the first half was over, the Navitimer showed exactly 8.30. Boysie just sat there befuddled, coming out of the dream. He had broken through a language barrier and understood
. Him, the twit Oakes, Mostyn’s little puppet, had understood through the force of actors acting and singing their guts out in an alien tongue. He looked down stupidly at the watch, the second hand moving in its relentless circle. Time present. Time passing. Every fractional second was vital. Who the bleeding hell was Booth? He was losing valuable time. At least the deal had to have the feel of reality. Move now. Reluctantly, as ever, Boysie stood up. Stepping through the crowded corridor outside the box, he headed down the side staircase, through the foyer, and out into the open, beaming-in on his death date with Iris MacIntosh.

  There is a rule in Eastern-bloc countries, as in many European cities, that overcoats must not be taken into the auditorium. Grim, tubby ladies enforce the regulations, and attendants even shout at you if you try to get a Dannimac into the dress circle. Nobody seemed to have taken this into consideration, and, if the timing was to be right, Boysie had no chance of picking up his coat in exchange for the brass disc used as a cloakroom ticket. The result, outside in the chill, was a feeling of complete conspicuousness and a specific touch of the brass monkeys. Frost was creeping into the night air, and Boysie moved faster than intended. He crossed the bridge and reached the apartment building like an Olympic walking champ. A good thing, he told himself, lost some time in the theatre; anyway, get the farce over, hustle back for the second act. He was looking forward to the brothel scene.

  There was nobody inside the apartment entrance. A sour smell of stale vegetables, grey, rough-painted walls, broad, curving stone steps. Boysie took them two at a time. First landing. Second landing. The numbered doors. His shoes made too much noise, an echoing clunk in the emptiness. A door faced him. Number l0. Boysie moved to the right. The next door was Number 9. Wrong way. Music coming from behind the door of Number 9: martial, a military band creeping noisily through a poor amplifier. Back, past 10…11. Flat Number 12. Boysie stopped, breathing heavily, anxiety catching up with him again. This time it was horrible black beetles frugging in his lower bowel. Coleoptera, that was the posh name for beetles, Boysie had read it in a book, Children’s Encyclopaedia or something. Copulating Coleoptera. In clogs. His hands shook as he pulled on the tight black leather gloves. At least the brain still functioned and the sequence was running true.

  The door opened smoothly and closed quietly. The key turned silently in the newly oiled lock. The Berlin network knew its stuff. Boysie stood still for a moment, eyes growing accustomed to the darkness, getting his bearings, mental thought-pictures shifting from Warbler’s photographs to the plan of the flat. The bedroom door was straight ahead. There was more light there, coming in from the street with the faint rumble of occasional traffic. The bottom half of the window was open and the Mauser lay on the floor. Next to it a spare set of ammunition. Hell, he had forgotten about the spare clip. That would be difficult to explain. Think of something later. No time now, the watch showed 8.35. At Checkpoint Charlie they would just be doing the swap. He had about three minutes. The window was an ordinary eighteen-pane, cheap wood-and-glass effort, not sturdy. Poor workmanship, Boysie reflected somewhere at the back of his thoughts.

  He worked quietly. Safety catch off, bolt pumped back to eject the steel-core bullets.

  Five clicks, five live rounds spinning away and thudding dully on to the carpet: one hit the end of the bed with a clack-thwump. Boysie picked up the spare clip of live cartridges and dropped them into his inside pocket, then to the right-hand jacket pocket for the dummies. He had to tilt the rifle towards the light source from the window to get the clip in place. Down with the thumb. Bolt home. One dummy round up the spout and four in the magazine...8.36

  On his knees, Boysie took up the aiming position, looking over the sight up the Friedrichstrasse. He had to push the bottom part of the window sash up another couple of inches. It rattled, badly worn. A game. If Mostyn could play games with life and death, so could Boysie. Christ Mostyn would never have him again, the bastard. If this job proved anything, it cleared up the fact of Boysie’s independence...8.37.

  Left eye closed, the bright sliver of foresight gleaming and accurate between the backsight V. Do everything. Adjust range. Boysie gingered the range screw with leather-coated thumb and forefinger. Butt into the shoulder once more. Cheek cold against the woodwork. Sweep the whole target area. Comfortable. Coming up to 8.38. Time for baby. It was almost real, looking down the sights for the car. Two heavy lorries went by, then a mixture of vehicles. Boysie identified a cream Skoda and a couple of rattling Zaporojets. Then something was coming fast with lights full on. Outriders as well. Motorcycles. They had not estimated that—three in a Victor formation ahead and some behind. Lights not dipped. The glare murderous. Impossible to sight. A very doubtful business if the ammunition had been the real thing. With the outriders, he would not have stood a chance. Coming in very close now. Sighting towards the rear. Bloody dodgey. First pressure on the trigger, then a shriek of apprehension before the cold muzzle of the automatic pistol touched the back of his neck and all the lights in the flat flared on.

  The voice in his ear was rough, low, and most unfriendly, apart from being deplorably accented.

  ‘Just put it down and stand up quietly, Herr Oakes.’

  Supreme effort controlled Boysie’s bowels, yet the training of the Department of Special Security set off mechanical brain signals. From the front Boysie sadly saw the motorcade sweep away. He partly turned his head to the left. The hand which held the Stechkin machine pistol behind his ear was encased in a military glove, a bit of uniform sleeve showed as well, and Boysie got the impression that the Stechkin was fitted with a shoulder stock. Nasty. It made the odds most uneven. There was no question of bravery. Boysie could feel his shoulders go rigid with shock, and the left corner of the mouth twitching with all muscular control gone. The upper part of his thighs churned into a kind of meat jelly. Filletted Gelée de viande, as the French would have it. But the mechanism of self-preservation remained. Boysie bowed his head. How would those actors at the Berliner Ensemble convey defeat? He tried to think himself into it, slowly lowering the rifle from the shoulder towards the floor, crossing and changing the hands so that the butt came round to the left. Let the shoulders droop. Now the right knee up, foot flat, balanced on heel and ball, still lowering the rifle and beginning to push up, as if to stand and leave the Mauser on the ground. Very slowly. Then the flash of action. In one movement, Boysie swung to the right, away from the Stechkin’s muzzle, at the same time bringing the butt end of the Mauser up and back hard, very hard in the general direction of the heist man’s crotch. An audible phlump.

  Boysie heard the man scream and saw the automatic pistol, complete with shoulder stock, fall forward as the assailant jack-knifed in extreme agony, clutching at his past, present, and future. The rest was easy, taking, in terms of time, the hairbreadth of a second. Boysie pivoted on his left foot and went into the third and fourth movements of a judo block and throw. The hefty character who had held the Stechkin was in uniform and at a fatal disadvantage. As Boysie began the throw, it flashed through his mind that the uniform was Russian, not East German. The attacker somersaulted over Boysie’s hip, his buttocks and legs hitting the window as Boysie pressed inwards against the man’s thigh, heaving downwards, hands locked on his victim’s arms. There was a ripping smash of glass and woodwork as the man’s heavy back struck the window.

  Boysie had been right—it was either bad workmanship or the landlords just did not bother about maintenance. The whole window went out in a concave of splintering wood and glass. Boysie gave an extra pull, then let go. The Russian’s original scream of pain turned into a high-frequency note of terror, fading as he fell. There was a quick glimpse of a frightened, red, bulging face slashed by broken glass as the body tumbled out to streak untidily down to the pavement.

  At the same moment a burst of automatic fire roared from the direction of the bedroom door, flinging great chips of stone from the wall to the left of the incapacitated window. The burst went upwards, blasting at the an
gle where ceiling met wall.

  A sharp peal of command. The language Russian. The meaning plain. ‘Stop!’ Explosively authoritative.

  Boysie turned, ready to dive for the rifles. Useless. The bedroom was painted a dirty white, the end of the double bed a faded pink board, scratched and old. Somewhere there was relief, a painting over to the right by another piece of furniture, he thought. Three men stood inside the door. Two wore the sheepskin coats and red-starred fur hats of the Soviet Militia, the third was in a civilian greatcoat and black 1930s broad hat. All three held Stechkins with shoulder stocks, the pair of Militia men handling them in the offensive manner, turned sideways with the butts pushed into the elbow, so that on automatic fire the high cylic rate pulled the weapon round to the right in a raking movement. The civilian was reloading his pistol. There were other people behind the door to the living room from where the command had come. Boysie did not have to pretend any more. His knees collapsed like broken sticks, arms shooting upwards as if operated on pulleys.