by John Lawton
“I’d like to see Masefield. Explain the change of plan to him.”
“Of course. He’s still where you left him. He’s been reading all day every day since your box of books arrived.”
Out in the corridor Pavel was stuck on a straight-backed dining chair, reading, lips moving.
“Что значит paraphernalia?” he asked Wilderness.
What does “paraphernalia” mean? Wilderness tilted the book up to see the cover. Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene. One of the books he had shipped out to Masefield. Not perhaps his first choice as an English primer.
“Stuff, clutter, things. Although I think it originally had something to do with a dowry. It would be something like принадлежности in Russian.”
“Ah. ‘Stooff.’ Such a good word. So much simpler than принадлежности. ‘Stooff.’ I may get to like English after all. You want Geoffrey? He’s in there with all his stooff.”
Masefield was staring at the wall. A half-finished jigsaw on the rug at his feet—the Tower of London, complete with Beefeaters and ravens.
“Almost time, Geoffrey. Alleyn’s in West Berlin.”
Masefield’s head jerked as though Wilderness had snapped him out of reverie.
“You’ve seen Bernard Alleyn?”
Wilderness sat opposite him. Caught what he saw as a hint of nuttiness in his eyes. Dismissed it as nerves. After all, why would Masefield not be nervous?
“Yes. I picked him up at Gatow a couple of hours ago.”
“How is he?”
The question was gently startling. Masefield was asking a question it had not occurred to Wilderness to ask. How was Bernard Alleyn?
“He looks a lot better than he did when I got him out of the Scrubs a while back. I suppose you’d say he’s lost his prison pallor.”
“And of course, I haven’t.”
“Not yet, no. But you’ll be free soon . . .”
“How soon?”
“It would have been just about now, but I’m afraid there’s been a delay. It’ll be more like eleven o’clock. And it’ll be on the Glienicke Bridge. Bogusnik will drive you out. We’ll exchange in the middle. It’s . . . traditional.”
“You couldn’t just take me back with you now?”
“There are rules, Geoffrey.”
“You’ve never struck me as being the kind of man who gave much thought to rules.”
“There’s too much at stake not to in this instance. I suggest you pack.”
“Pack what? I own nothing. I’ve read all the books you sent. The chap outside is working his way through them now. I have nothing, and the really odd thing is that having nothing seems a bit like being free.”
“No . . . ‘stuff’?”
“Quite. No ‘stuff.’”
Wilderness got up to leave.
“Then I’ll see you in Potsdam. There’s only one rule. Do exactly what you’re told. Say nothing, do nothing unless I or Bogusnik tell you.”
“Will there be guns?”
Wilderness pondered the question. Remembered his first conversation with Masefield. “A spy is not a spy without his gun.”
“Of course there’ll be guns.”
“Ah . . . as if I wasn’t a bundle of nerves already.”
§162
The bridge across the Havel at Glienicke had a more formal name—the Bridge of Unity, but few would ever call it by that optimistic title, and certainly no Berliner would.
Under moonlight it looked grimmer than ever, a chiaroscuro of light and dark, everything starkly monochrome, black rather than its daylight dirty green, a couple of Bismarck-era guardian statues reminiscent of Berlin’s taste for the pompous, a striped, cantilevered barrier and a sign in four languages warning that the American Sector ended at the middle of the bridge. As if anyone could forget. As if anyone could make that mistake.
Two West Berlin coppers and three US military, a captain and two grunts, were waiting for them at the barrier. Wilderness approached, Frank just behind him, Eddie and Alleyn standing by the car, keeping distance.
“I was expecting Mr. Delves,” the captain said to Wilderness.
“You got me, Holderness, MI6.”
“We liaise with Mr. Delves. He should be here.”
“He had to stay home and wash his ego.”
“I’m sorry?”
Frank whipped out his identity card and said, “Shine your flashlight on this, kid, and then just do as the man says.”
The captain took a moment.
“All right. Colonel McKenna? Which one’s the prisoner?”
Alleyn raised his hand, like a child in school.
“OK. I’m not happy about this. I mean, we got very little notice. But OK. Now, am I to expect any trouble?”
Wilderness shook his head.
“If there’s trouble I’ll handle it. You don’t set foot on the bridge, whatever happens.”
“And how many of you are going up to the line?”
“Just me and the prisoner. Now can we get on with it?”
The captain turned to the two privates, made an upwards gesture with his right hand, and the barrier rose.
“McKenna?” Wilderness said to Frank sotto voce. “You look about as Scottish as spaghetti vongole. And how long have you been a colonel?”
“Who cares. Just do it, Joe. And watch the sarcasm. He doesn’t get it. Not all Americans are like me.”
“Thank God for that.”
Wilderness turned to Alleyn.
“Bernard? You ready?”
Alleyn came forward, stood next to Wilderness.
“Would it matter if I weren’t?” he said.
“Not a damn, Bernard, not a damn.”
The wind off the water was icy. Icy but appropriate.
Yuri stood a foot or so inside the DDR. Whoever was backing him up, Germans or Russians, he’d left at the far gates. Wilderness could just make them out, perhaps five, perhaps six of them. Masefield was about fifteen feet behind Yuri, away to the left, a small suitcase at his feet—the “stuff” he said he didn’t have. He was wrapped up fit for Shackleton in Antarctica, a rabbit fur Russian hat on his head and thick mittens on his fingers.
Wilderness wished he had a sable hat like Yuri’s, so much classier than rabbit, wished he was wearing mittens or gloves—his fingertips would turn blue the second he took his hands from his pockets. But Yuri wasn’t wearing gloves either—his left hand sunk in his overcoat pocket, his right toying with a button. Gloves and guns were a recipe for a blunder. How to shoot yourself in the foot in one easy move.
Wilderness showed his hands, the open gesture, and felt the sting of frost at once. He stood opposite Yuri, less than three feet away. The four men on the bridge in perfect symmetry. Two knights and a two rooks upon a chessboard.
“We can’t go on meeting like this, Yuri.”
“Joe, Joe, always the jokes.”
“Let’s do it, then.”
Yuri beckoned to Masefield, Wilderness to Alleyn.
Masefield took five steps forward and then stopped, staring straight at Alleyn. Wilderness turned. Alleyn had not moved.
“Bernard, for fuck’s sake.”
Still, Alleyn did not move.
Yuri said, “I thought you were ready?”
“Gimme a moment, Yuri.”
Wilderness walked up to Alleyn, put himself between Alleyn and Yuri, back turned, voice subdued.
“For fuck’s sake, Bernard. What is the bloody problem? We’ve been preparing for this for months. Don’t give me first-night nerves and don’t come the prima donna on me.”
“I’m not sure I understood a word of that. But . . . I’m not going.”
“What?”
“I won’t cross. You can’t make me. You don’t have the authority.”
“Bernard, I have the authority to blow your bloody head off if I so choose!”
“But you won’t.”
He was almost smiling as he said it, and Wilderness knew in his bones it had been a mistake to get to “know” Bernard Alleyn.
“Probably not. But Yuri will, and he doesn’t need any authority. He is authority.”
“Joe, take me back to England, lock me up and throw away the key. I’m not going back to Russia.”
“Why tell me now? Why not this afternoon? Why not last month?”
“Perhaps it has something to do with my first sight of a real Russian in God knows how long?”
“Jesus Christ. Stay put. Do not take so much as single step backwards, or so help me, Bernard, if Yuri doesn’t shoot you I bloody well will.”
Wilderness walked back to the line. Yuri’s eyes reading his face.
“So?”
“I can’t get him any closer, Yuri.”
Yuri stopped playing with his buttons, flipped one loose, parted his coat and unclipped the flap of the holster at his waist, where, in better days, he had kept his pipe. Now he drew out a Makarov 9mm and pointed it at Alleyn.
“Cross. I order you, cross!”
Alleyn sunk his hands deep in his overcoat pockets and stared back at him in silence.
“No man, no deal!”
“What do you mean, no bloody deal?” Wilderness said. “Yuri, I can’t make him cross. He’s your bloke. I agreed to bring him to the border. That’s all I can do. You can shoot him. I can’t fuckin’ shoot him. I’d get bleedin’ well court-martialled!”
“No man, no deal, no money!”
“Money?” Wilderness heard Masefield say—he’d almost forgotten about Masefield—“What money?”
“No money!”
“Yuri. Where’s the fuckin’ money?”
“Your man has the money. But unless Comrade Liubimov crosses over, you get nothing. Ничего не получите.”
“I have the money?” Masefield said.
“That wasn’t the deal, Yuri.”
And Wilderness watched as Masefield knelt down, cast off his mittens and opened the brown suitcase he had carried to the line with him, and saw the wind catch a dozen hundred-dollar bills and toss them in the air like dead leaves.
Then he saw as through a windowpane of streaked glass Masefield hefting the case, and with a swing of his arm he had hurled it high over the side of the bridge. The case spun like a bowled cricket ball, scattered its contents into the air, and all around them green snow fell as a hundred and fifty thousand dollars blew into the night. Then the splash as the empty case landed in the lake. Then the silence, broken only by the bird-like fluttering of falling money, wings against the windowpane. It had looked unreal. It felt unbelievable. He had done it. He hadn’t done it. He had done it.
Yuri turned slowly, took his gun off Alleyn, and pointed it at Masefield.
“I don’t care. Shoot me,” was all Masefield said.
Wilderness drew his Browning and levelled it at Yuri.
Slowly Yuri swung his arm around until they faced each other, eye to eye and gun to gun.
Behind them a clatter of boots as soldiers from each side began to run across the bridge. With his gun in his right hand pointed squarely at Yuri’s forehead Wilderness gently patted air with his left, waving the soldiers back. Yuri did the same, and neither side advanced any further. Wilderness and Yuri stood motionless, the tall man and the short man . . . looking into each other’s eyes.
“Well, Joe?”
“Well, Yuri. Another fine mess.”
A few feet away Masefield and Alleyn, the short man and the tall man, also looked into each other’s eyes, and there they could see themselves.
And the men holding guns could not.
§163
They left Eddie at the Kempinski, to “guard” the silent, unthreatening Bernard Alleyn. Wilderness wondered if he’d ever speak again. All the way back from Potsdam he’d sighed the sighs of a maiden in the throes of poetic Sehnsucht but said nothing. But then neither had anyone else. Eddie drove. Frank sat next to Eddie and stared through the windscreen. All Wilderness could see was the back of Frank’s head, and if the back of any head could convey expression this one would surely say “seething rage.”
Then, the remaining Schiebers gathered at Erno’s apartment on Grünetümmlerstraße.
Once inside, little or nothing would make Frank shut up.
“Tell me, Joe. Do you wax your fingertips every fucking morning just so money won’t stick to them? What is it with you? Every chance you get you blow. It’s like money was your Kryptonite. I give you fifty thousand dollars for Marte Mayerling. You blow it. You have fifty thousand coming to you for this caper. You blow it—and worse you blow my fifty thousand along with it. I never thought I’d say this about you. You impressed from the start way back in ’47 . . . you were the Cockney kid who thought big, you were the guy who was going to make us all rich—but kid, let’s face it, you are a loser! A two-time fucking loser. I am not hanging around to see us go under a third time, because nobody floats third time around. Consider me gone.”
But he wasn’t gone. He was still standing there. Puffed up with his own anger. A fat, lazy slob of a man in a Saks Fifth Avenue suit. Wilderness caught him under the chin with a right hook and decked him.
“Проиграем мы все.”
Frank stayed down, sat on his backside rubbing his jaw.
“What’s that supposed to mean, you cocksucker?”
Wilderness knelt down. Face-to-face. Frank wasn’t going to hit him back. Frank knew damn well he’d never win a fistfight or a gun fight with Wilderness.
“Проиграем мы все. Everybody loses. Get this through your thick head, Frank. This isn’t about you. Everybody loses. Eddie loses fifty fuckin’ grand. I lose fifty fuckin’ grand. Alleyn goes back to the fuckin’ Scrubs . . . and what in God’s name becomes of Masefield?”
“Should I care? The little bastard just tossed our money in the Havel.”
§164
“Erno. I need another gun and another passport.”
“I still have your Walther.”
“The one I shot Marte Mayerling with? No. Something traceless. Something that’s never shot anyone.”
Erno disappeared into the back room and emerged clutching a Smith & Wesson.
Wilderness laid his Baby Browning on the mantelpiece. The key to the Monbijou–Tiergarten tunnel was still hanging on its nail, where he’d left it two years ago.
“You’re going east?”
“Thinking about it, Erno.”
He took the key off the wall. It weighed more than his pistol. It weighed more than memory. He put it back.
“No. Why would I ever want to go down there again? What have you got for me?’
“Smith and Wesson 52. Untraceable, as you requested.”
Wilderness turned it over in his hand.
“Silencer?”
“Sorry, Joe. No can do. The magazine is full, but holds only five cartridges. .38 Specials. Much more stopping power than your Browning, and five is all I have, so . . .”
“’S’OK, Erno. I wasn’t planning on shooting anyone, let alone five times. If I fire it once I reckon I’m dead. It’s just . . .”
“I know. A precaution.”
“More than that. Not having a gun would be like . . . like going out without trousers.”
“The passport’s another matter . . . I need time. If you’re going east tonight or tomorrow, forget it.”
“I’ve made my mind up. I’m going tonight. I’ll go legit, through Checkpoint Charlie on my own passport. A fake’s too risky after all the times I’ve been through this year. And they can’t refuse a diplomatic. I’ll take my chances, as I doubt Yuri has been coherent en
ough the last few hours to tip them off. No, the passport’s not urgent. I’ll give you the details.”
“If I work through the night, perhaps . . .”
“Like I said. Not urgent.”
§165
In the stairwell a dark figure was waiting for him. Even wrapped up for winter, a heavy overcoat and a headscarf, he knew her at once. She turned as she heard the stairs creak.
“Joe?”
“Nell.”
“I was just at the Kempinski.”
“Then you don’t need me to say anything. Eddie never could keep a secret. It’s why he makes a lousy spy.”
“If it weren’t for your friends, would I ever know what you were up to? In 1963 did you ask for me? No—if it wasn’t for Erno I would have known nothing. And if it wasn’t for Eddie I would know nothing now.”
“You never want to see me, Nell, so what is it you think you need to know?”
“You can’t walk way from this.”
“That’s exactly what you told me in 1947. Remember? Rüdiger Wölk? I couldn’t walk away from that either. You sit on my shoulder like Jiminy bleedin’ Cricket.”
“You cannot leave Geoffrey Masefield to the Russians. No more Hinterbliebenen.”
The word gave him pause. So deliberately chosen, so complex in its meaning, invoking loss, bereavement, abandonment . . . those left behind The first time he’d hear the word, Erno had mumbled it after half a bottle of Polish vodka, and Wilderness had not heard the ‘b,’ and had found himself musing on a word that did not exist but was ripe with meaning, Hinterliebenen… those behind love… heartbreak added to abandonment. But, then, Frank and Eddie’s old nickname for Nell had always been “Breakheart.”
“At last, you get to the point. Nell, I’ve no intention of leaving our Geoffrey behind, and certainly not to Yuri’s tender mercy. But . . . let me ask you . . . who am I talking to, Nell Burkhardt or a member of Brandt’s staff? You want Geoffrey out; does the mayor’s chief of staff want a diplomatic incident? If I get him out will you be celebrating or just handling another diplomatic incident?”
Nell did not even blink at this. A thorough refusal to be chastised.
“Do what you have to do, Joe. Whatever the fallout, I will deal with it.”