by John Lawton
“How pleasant to have your blessing.”
“It gives me no pleasure to be your conscience. It never has.”
“Right now my conscience doesn’t need you, because my mind was made up half an hour ago. Nell, you can be so fuckin’ po-faced. And if there’s any Hinterbliebenen it’s us not Masefield. We’re the Hinterbliebenen, Nell. You and me, and we have been since 1948.”
He stepped past her into the street.
He did not look back.
He’d been unnecessarily cruel and he knew it.
He did not look back.
He kicked himself all the way to Bleibtreustraße, but he did not look back. If he lived though the night he would have a lifetime in which to look back, a lifetime for Nell Burkhardt to tumble into his dreams.
§166
Wilderness got Dickie Delves out of bed.
“I need the car.”
“Eh? What? I thought Gretchen gave you keys to the BMW?”
“It’s your car I need. The Austin-Healey.”
Delves looked flummoxed.
“Not quite with you here, old man.”
“I’m going east. I need something with a bit more oomph.”
It was pleasing to know he had guessed right—that “oomph” would be the word Delves would understand, and that it probably answered all the questions Delves might now not bother to ask.
Still in his pyjamas, Delves gave him the keys and followed him down to the street, where the preposterous toy in British Racing Green was parked next to the sedate, anonymous BMW.
“There’s a couple of things you need to know. First off, only three gears, with overdrive on second and top, but you can manually—”
“Just tell me how fast it goes, Dick.”
“Factory specs will tell you 106, but I’ve tweaked it here and there and had 114 out of her on the autobahns, and nought to sixty in eight seconds. Look, Joe, you’re not planning anything . . . well . . . foolish, are you? I mean . . . you will bring the old girl back in one piece, won’t—”
To slam the car into gear and roar away seemed to Wilderness to be the only way to stop Delves talking.
By the time he got to the zoo, the rain that had loomed since dusk had burst upon the city, hammering down on the canvas roof of the car. This was good, rain was good, rain was what he wanted.
At Checkpoint Charlie the border guards were nonchalant. They’d seen him before; they’d seen the car before, just not in this combination. It was obvious nothing of what had happened on the Glienicke Bridge had got out yet. Yuri was telling no one, and that meant the game was still in play.
§167
There was no guard outside the Adlon, just a doorman sheltering from the storm who paid no attention to him. Wilderness took the stairs. He’d have the element of surprise, he told himself, as they would not be expecting him or any hostile force inside the safety of the Adlon, but there would be no element of surprise in stepping out of a stuttering, creaking lift. He’d expected Pavel or Arkady to be by the lift door on the fifth floor, but the corridor was empty.
Wilderness could hear nothing from inside Yuri’s room. Gun in his right hand, he turned the doorknob as gently as he could with his left. Surprise had no part in it. Yuri was alone in the room, perched on the edge of an armchair, and didn’t even look up. Wilderness aimed his gun at Yuri, uncertain whether he would ever be able to pull the trigger.
Softly, “Yuri.”
Yuri did not look up.
Wilderness walked up to him, knelt down. The glassy blue eyes seemed to be focussed on his left hand. A small pill nestling in the palm, the tin open on the side table, half a dozen pills scattered. And Yuri dead.
He set his gun down on the table. Felt for a pulse in Yuri’s neck. Looked into his eyes. Yuri dead.
He thought back to the bridge. How Yuri had turned red in the face, had tried to keep his gun on Wilderness but had surrendered to the pain and clumsily clapped his right hand, still holding the pistol, to his left arm. He had groaned, he had sworn.
“Черт возьми! Еще раз . . . ”
Oh fucking hell. Not again.
And he had wilted.
Wilderness had holstered his gun, crossed the line, but before he could reach Yuri, Masefield had caught the little man, one hand supporting his shoulders, the other tossing the pistol aside. Then he had reached into the pocket of Yuri’s overcoat for the tin of pills. He held it out to Wilderness.
“It’s nitroglycerin, and I don’t have enough hands.”
Wilderness had slipped a nitro pill under Yuri’s tongue.
Yuri had breathed, sighed, cursed again.
“Другой прекрасный беспорядок, Стэнли.”
Another fine mess, Stanley.
Wilderness had said, “Я же вам сказал.”
I told you so.
Masefield had beckoned on the Russian soldiers at the southern end of the bridge, who had been rooted to the spot, and had turned Yuri to face them. Then he had steered him step by slow step in their direction. A man with a giant toddler learning how to walk. Wilderness thought he heard Yuri muttering his name, “Joe, Joe, Joe.” Or it could just have been monosyllabic sighs and curses. Or it could have been angels in the winter wind . . . “Joe, Joe, Joe.”
He had looked behind him. Alleyn was ten or twelve feet away. Hands still sunk in his overcoat pockets, eyes on Yuri’s retreating back.
Wilderness had walked past him, muttered, “What the hell are you waiting for, Bernard?” and walked on, back into the American Sector, back into West Berlin.
It was entirely up to Alleyn whether he followed or not . . .
“Joe, Joe, Joe,” whispered on the wind, and hundred-dollar bills carpeted his stepping westward.
Now a voice behind him said, “Он умер?”
Is he dead?
“Yes. Died reaching for his pills.”
Arkady Vasilievich drew level, standing over him. He had a Makarov in his hand, but it dangled at the end of his arm pointing at nothing.
Wilderness said, “I’m going to move my right hand. I’m not reaching for the gun. I’m going to close his eyes.”
The Russian squatted down next to him, looked into Yuri’s eyes much as he had done himself.
“Then do it. You were his friend. I just worked for him.”
Wilderness reached out and with the thumb and largest finger of his right hand closed Yuri’s window on the world.
They stood up. The Russian was in shirtsleeves, a soft chamois leather holster strap twining itself around his shoulders—he slipped the gun back in.
“Perhaps this is timely. It pays to know when to die.”
“Will you or I be that lucky?”
“Who knows? I doubt you would have been the one to shoot him anyway.”
“Probably not.”
“And you have come for your Mr. Masefield?”
“Of course.”
“Then you had better take him. I’m afraid I have my hands full just now. I have to get the general’s body back to Moscow, which cannot be a secret—died in the line of duty after all—a state funeral to follow, no doubt. But I also have ten thousand bottles of claret which must be a secret. I haven’t room or time for Mr. Masefield.”
“You’re keeping the wine?”
A wry smile from the Russian.
“You have a plan for getting it back to the West?”
“’Fraid not . . . the plan includes just me and Masefield.”
“Then I say again, take him. He’s yours.”
The Russian called out to his partner.
“Pavel. Tell Masefield to get ready!”
Pavel’s head appeared through the open door connecting the rooms.
“Что?” What?
“The general is dead. Tell Masefield he’s got two minutes.”
Again, “Что?”
Wilderness stepped aside. Let Pavel get a look at Yuri.
“Только добро погибает юным.”
Only the good die young.
“Just do it, Pavel.”
Wilderness pointed at his gun.
“OK?”
“Yes. OK. Just try not to shoot anyone between here and the West. I don’t want any dead border guards. Even if they are only fucking Germans. We already have a diplomatic incident on our hands just explaining what happened on the bridge.”
“Or,” said Wilderness. “What didn’t happen.”
“Liubimov? You’re welcome to him. If he doesn’t want to come home . . . fukkim. No Order of Lenin, no dacha, no state pension. Fukkim.”
“Masefield will take some explaining too.”
Arkady Vasilievich looked at Yuri, looked back to Wilderness, a plot cohering at the tip of his tongue.
“Well . . . you stormed in here, waving your gun around, scared the general to death and abducted our prisoner, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Wilderness. “I’m sure that must have been it.”
§168
Wilderness had left Delves’s car further down Wilhelmstraße, close to the corner of Französische Straße.
“Get in.”
“Where are we going?”
“North, over the Marschall Bridge and out through the Invalidenstraße checkpoint. The Russians will have to report your escape simply to cover their own arses. The Germans will expect us to go south to Checkpoint Charlie. So we’ll go north. I reckon we have about ten minutes before the balloon goes up.”
“Can we get there in ten minutes?”
“Trust me, Geoffrey. Get in and trust me.”
Three blocks along Französische Straße Wilderness turned left into Friedrichstraße about four hundred yards north of Checkpoint Charlie. There was no traffic. The rain was getting heavier and the streetlights began their flickering dance, which seemed so characteristic of life in the East. Everything worked some of the time. Nothing worked all of the time.
Wilderness floored the accelerator. Under the railway tracks at the Friedrichstraße Bahnhof, across the Spree, to bring the car to a halt a few feet from the turning into Invalidenstraße.
“Why have we stopped?”
“Geoffrey, you’re all questions and no answers. Get out. We’re folding the roof back.”
A strange, if not pointless, feature of the Austin-Healey 100M was that the windscreen folded down onto the bonnet, level with the top of the wooden steering wheel. It was the kind of car that an upper-class English prat would drive wearing goggles and a scarf, rather in the manner of Mr. Toad in The Wind in the Willows—but, then, as far as Wilderness was concerned Dickie Delves needed only a few warts to be Mr. Toad.
With the roof tucked away, the windscreen flat, Wilderness walked all around the car, as though weighing it up. Then he let air out of each tyre in turn and Masefield watched the car drop by about an inch.
“Every little helps,” Wilderness said. “Now, get behind the seats and keep your head down. As low as you can go. And don’t budge until it’s all over.”
“Until what’s all over?”
“Just shut up and do as I say.”
“I can’t. I’m scared.”
“Geoffrey. It’s me. Holderness. There’s nothing to be scared of.”
“I know it’s you. And there’s everything to be scared of. This scares me. You scare me. You’ve always scared me.”
“Geoffrey. It’s not four hours since you dared a KGB general to shoot you.”
“That was in another lifetime.”
Wilderness said nothing. Got back into the driver’s seat, swung the car onto Invalidenstraße, and let it sit, idling.
Checkpoint Charlie had grown hugely in four years. Had spread out to the size of Clapham Junction, as the Russians added traffic filters and barriers so close together that they created a chicane no car could take at speed.
Invalidenstraße was simpler. Constrained by the river ahead of it and the old Army Medical School on the right, which either the Germans or the Russians seemed loth to demolish, there was no way to spread out. It remained a narrow crossing point, perhaps the narrowest, with two simple swing barriers about eighty yards apart, the furthest right on the Sandkrug Bridge itself, where the British Sector began. If they made it, he’d feel far happier explaining to the British than to the French or the Americans. Not that he thought any explanation was required. Not that he had any intention of ever explaining.
A year or two back, a bunch of students had tried to crash through in a bus in broad daylight. They almost made it, but by the time they hit the border barrier the bus was riddled with bullets and veering off course. The walking and wounded had disembarked within two feet of freedom, and the Russians had demanded better precautions. The trees in front of the medical school had been thinned, a second inner barrier had been erected, and something resembling a provincial British bus station had been built between the two, with high, angled, concrete shelters and glaringly hideous sodium lights. It was still the better bet—practically straight, a slight wiggle before the first barrier, but no filtered lanes and no chicane. All he wanted was for the lights to go off. To stop their dance and just give up for a couple of minutes.
The Invalidenstraße checkpoint was “Germans only.” At this time of night the guards would be expecting a bit of peace and quiet. The international traffic would be through Checkpoint Charlie, whose motto might as well be “we never close.” But, if Invalidenstraße also never closed it certainly slept. They’d be expecting nothing, they’d be dozy and lazy, and on a night like this they’d be sheltering from the storm and whoever drew the short straw would be the lone poor bastard standing out in the rain.
The street lamp above him was already out. The line of lamps ahead of him, trailing away to the checkpoint a quarter of a mile off, were flickering. All he wanted was for them to stop dancing.
There was a crack of lightning bright enough for Wilderness to catch a glimpse of the lone bastard on duty, then all the lamps went out at once.
“Head down. Don’t move. Shut up.”
He had the car up to sixty in less than eight seconds and at sixty-five he flicked the headlights on. Lone Bastard was caught in the beam like a dopey rabbit. Self-preservation proved the better part of valour, and as the car shot towards the barrier he jumped aside, not even attempting to hoist his sub-machine gun. Wilderness ducked, blind for a second as the car shot under the barrier. Head up. Pushed it to seventy before the second, ducked again and heard the windscreen shatter as the steel arm of the second barrier scraped along it, felt shards and splinters pepper his forehead, found himself blinded by the blood streaming into his eyes . . . and lost control.
The car hit the kerb on the passenger side, spun one hundred and eighty, burst a back tyre on the kerb, spun twice more and came to rest against the railings of the Sandkrug Bridge, facing back into East Berlin.
He sat a moment, tasting blood and silence. Rested his forehead on the broken steering wheel. Wiped the blood from his eyes. Climbed out into the road. Saw figures moving inside a goldfish bowl. West Berlin coppers in their bucket helmets . . . and handful of Tommies . . . and a lieutenant in British Army uniform, mouthing at him—lips moving without sound. Then suddenly he could hear again, a bang inside his head, and realised that the man was calling him a “stupid twat” in German—“Dumme Fotze, du dumme Fotze!”
The border guards were squaring off to each other, East to West, West to East, rifle to rifle, across the barrier, but no one fired.
“Yeah,” said Wilderness. “I’m sure you’re right.”
And handed the man his diplomatic identity card. He’d always thought of it as something off a
Monopoly board—Get Out Of Jail Free.
The lieutenant wiped the blood from it and shone a torch at the card and then at Wilderness.
“Diplomatic! As in diplomatic bloody incident?”
“Do you know of any other kind?”
“You flash bastards.”
“Fuck off.”
He turned his back on Wilderness, walked to the barrier waving his arms at the border guards saying, “It’s all over. Stop. Stop. Everybody stop!”
Wilderness heard a noise behind him. The sound of a man vomiting. Masefield was on the tarmac behind the car. Wilderness offered him a hand up. He was shaky, trembling, lost.
“Oh God,” Masefield said. “You’re covered in blood.”
“And you’re covered in puke, but am I complaining?”
Masefield looked around him, back at the border, at the waving arms and brandished guns, listened for a moment to all the shouting.
“Nothing to be scared of, you said.”
“They won’t shoot now. Shooting into no-man’s-land is one thing, so’s shooting Flüchtlings in the river. Firing right across the border at British troops . . . they don’t want to start World War Three. Give ’em a minute and they’ll bugger off.”
“What . . . what now?”
“We bugger off as well.”
“Where? I mean . . . where can I possibly go now?”
“I don’t know where you should go, Geoffrey. It’s entirely up to you. The world may not be your oyster but it’s sure as hell your pint of whelks.”
Wilderness walked away, off the bridge, down Invalidenstraße. A hundred yards on, vision blurred once more by the blood running into his eyes, he knelt down and washed his face in a puddle of rainwater. Once down, the effort of getting up again seemed beyond him. He did not want to linger, he did not want to give Masefield the chance to call out to him while he was still within earshot, he did not want to hear so much as a thank you. He did not want to attract the attention of the West Berlin Police. Telling border guards to fuck off was one thing, tackling regular coppers another. Out past midnight. Covered in blood. Armed. It would take some explaining. The diplomatic identity was both protection and process—a process to be avoided. He dragged himself to his feet and set off in the direction of the Lehrter Stadtbahnhof. It looked like he felt. Once as busy as Waterloo but a ghost of a station since the division of Berlin, caked in grime, its empty spaces sprouting weeds and birch saplings among the broken beer bottles, a no-man’s-land entire unto itself . . . but one train still stopped there—the S-Bahn. He paid his thirty pfennigs, rode the S-Bahn, high above dark and drowned Berlin, past the skeletal ruins of the Reichstag, along the edge of the Tiergarten, to Savignyplatz and walked from there back to Erno’s.