The Berlin Package

by Peter Riva

  Pero shook his head, clearing the memory. Heep was elbowing him in the side. “Hey, Pero, have a look at what Susanna has brought, you gotta see this.” Heep was so excited he skipped the introduction. Pero and Susanna shook hands while Heep and Danny were fussing with the hero’s costume’s collar, on a much worn looking leather jacket, US Air Force around 1965. Heep said, “Okay, Danny put it on.” He slipped the jacket on.

  Susanna walked away and put on headphones. Danny said, “testing, one two three.” Susanna walked back, pulled the lapel back and, with her fingernail, seemed to turn some hidden screw.

  “Try it again.” She walked away.

  “Testing one two three.” Danny looked at her.

  “Is that all you know how to say?” She asked.

  Danny instantly became Richard Burton in manner and voice: “One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six. All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and we stopped at the rim of the ice-edged fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in the snow and bring out whatever I can find …” He paused, “That do you?”

  Susanna was astonished. They all were. They had just been given a private audience to the presence of Dylan Thomas. Danny had become Dylan Thomas—he spoke like him in that singsong Welsh accent, and he stood like him, cocky, assured, on the edge of wanting to run away. It was the way Richard Burton had played him, but Burton had done Under Milk Wood, not a Child’s Christmas in Wales. Pero asked, “Danny, you’ve been practicing, taking the concept for this film a little further, haven’t you?”

  He grinned, “Seen Funeral in Berlin over and over, listened to Under Milk Wood like it’s in my head. I figured that if he could pull off something he hadn’t done before, playing a spy, but similar to something else he had done, well, maybe we’ll pull this off. I got the BBC to record it for me and help. In return, they get my recording for next Christmas, free. They were happy and so am I. The radio sound recordist there,” Pero noted he used the BBC correct title, “had worked with both Richard Burton and Dylan Thomas. He really helped.”

  Heep asked worriedly, “You planning to play this in character, a Welsh role?”

  “No. To understand the man, Burton, his movement, I had to trace his mental footsteps. First part’s over. Now this movie, built on his performance in Funeral, will be the second part, time to show what I can do for the part. It’s a fine balance to make the character my own, build my own character.” He turned to Heep, “If you see me screw up, see too much Burton or not enough depth, tell me, okay, Mr. Director?” They all laughed. It was encouraging. Danny wasn’t anything like the Hollywood action man they had been expecting. He had worked at this, wanted this to be right. He would succeed. Now there was no doubt in Pero’s mind or Heep’s.

  But then Pero had a strange thought. “Wait, you don’t mean to tell me that lapel microphone will be used for these scenes. Surely it’s only a backup; it’ll have too much ambient noise, LA will go nuts.”

  Susanna walked over, calmly, and put the headphones over his ears, pulled out a cigarette pocket-sized digital recorder and pressed a few buttons, suddenly, there came the purest recording of Danny’s voice, “One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea town corner now and out of all sound …” Impossible, Pero thought. Better than any boom microphone, clearer than on a sound stage, it was truly amazing. Yes, he could hear other ambient sounds, but natural, far off, unrecognizable. Taking off the headphones he asked, “How’s this possible?”

  In clipped English, speaking in a professional monotone, Susanna explained, “Neue technology Herr Baltazar, Non-Dynamic-Insulating-Oscillating technology, NDIO as an acronym,” she paused and scowled, “since you Americans like them so much.”

  All Pero could think of was the Swahili for yes, ndiyo. He thought he saw that in Heep’s eyes since he too nodded.

  Suzanna, however, did not approve of doubting Americans. She continued, “A monofilament of organic fiber, grown to match the tuning of the human ear, is placed across a magnetic oscillator, placed within a half meter of the object it is supposed to record—not the voice box, just the object. Technology does the rest. The filters, I built myself, they are complicated but stable. The programming I borrowed from friends in Stuttgart at the university. They are complicated differentiation equations to allow for separation of ambient noise. But, you will note that there are no anti-waves here, Mr. Baltazar.” She said anti-waves like an insult. No doubt, she hated sound wave technology built on those principles. “I have perfected the first studio quality hidden microphone recording system.”

  Pero had to ask because what he had seen and heard was so incredible, “How hidden?” They walked over to Danny. She showed Pero the thread, sewn in a straight line into his collar, just beneath the fabric, almost invisible. The control box was not a box at all. Inside the jacket was a flat card, about half the size of a credit card and thinner. A little six-centimeter wire dangled down his jacket. “Well, that’s amazing!”

  She smiled.

  “I can see a flaw, however.”

  Heep shot Pero a glance of warning. Danny looked puzzled and Susanna looked like her internal boiler was being turned up as her face flushed. Heep wondered how close she was to blowing.

  Pero deliberately used a serious tone, “Have you considered properly,” he paused, she glared, “if you are properly prepared,” he paused for another moment, she shifted her shoulders, “for the nightmare of total, unbridled success? Have you given any thought to what it truly means to be a worldwide success, a multimillionaire?” Having gotten the joke, Heep and Danny laughed; Heep patted her on the shoulders.

  Susanna lowered her head and said nothing. She looked a little lost.

  Suddenly ashamed for teasing her, Pero said, “Look, I am sorry Susanna. I just meant to compliment you really. And, please, my name is not Mr. Baltazar, it’s Pero. I would be honored if you would call me Pero.” She looked at him hard, gauging his words. “And I am honored to be in the presence of such genius. Your family will be proud.” It was a bit patronizing, he knew, but she seemed to need assurance, even so obvious a compliment—creative geniuses usually need reassurance.

  Staring into his face, she suddenly sniffed a little and ran off, crying. Heep said, “She’ll be fine Pero. I did warn you to go easy. She’s been working on this for ten years, got kicked out of school, missed her doctorate, they had so little confidence in her. Her marriage failed—he was an idiot from Miami—and a bunch of us have been secretly funding her. That’s why she became a sound tech on films and TV, to earn money. This microphone? She built it in memory of her mother. She calls it the SilkeWire.”

  Suddenly it dawned on Pero where he had seen the face before.

  “Oh damn, Heep!” Pero looked at Danny, “Do you understand?” Danny shook his head. “Remember about twelve years ago there was a terrorist attack on a bus in Lebanon on the way to Syria? It was a splinter group, a sect of the Hezbollah who conducted the attack; there was a renowned Hezbollah higher-up on board. In the attack, they captured a German journalist, unrecognized as such initially, Silke Reidermaier. For four weeks everyone assumed she was dead, but secretly she was recording every day—a diary …”

  “Oh God yes, I remember, she recounted the beatings, the rapes, and torture … that tape played everywhere.”

  “Right. When they found her secret recorder, they beheaded her and sent the tapes with her head to prove their ruthlessness. It backfired. Hezbollah cleaned house, killed them all. They even returned the woman’s equipment and clothing, as if that would help. How old was Susanna back then, twenty-two?”

  Heep said, “Maybe twenty-three.
I’ll see if she’s okay in a moment …”

  But just then, Susanna came striding back. “I was not having you men standing there discussing me … oh, I know you are, don’t deny it.” She stared at Pero “Either you are the biggest fool there ever was or you’re perhaps the kindest man I’ve met.”

  “Both,” he said. Heep chimed in his agreement. They all laughed, even Susanna.

  Danny coughed to clear the air and said, “Now that it’s all settled, and I am miked for God’s sake, can we practice this scene?” And so they got down to business—rehearsing, blocking the scenes, talking professional, and all the while, the police kept observing, never intruding. The public was nowhere to be seen.

  But just after lunch, just as they were getting ready to film, a man arrived with his own police escort.

  One of Danny’s assistants came over to tell Pero that he had company. “There’s a Mr. Tische to see you, seems important.” He gestured to the large man wearing a black cashmere coat standing with the police. The police officer who came with him, a new face, had more bars and a gold cluster on his coat. Brass. Pero told the assistant to tell them he’d be right with them.

  Pero went, slowly, into the museum foyer where Heep was setting Danny up for the scene, walking it through. He interrupted him. “It’s an emergency Danny, sorry.” Danny nodded okay and went off studying the script. Pero pulled Heep aside.

  Pero explained what he wanted, and then Heep called Susanna over and gave her instructions in his fluent German. It’s an interesting language. What Heep said were simple instructions, but they had the whip of authority and urgency. Susanna did as he asked, no questions. There was a moment when she looked up into Pero’s face with a furrowed brow, but he patted her arm to tell her not to worry. She shied back. Five minutes later, Pero was back outside, to greet Geschäftsführer Tische of the TruVereinsbank.

  The man’s face was full with a wide jaw. His ears were big, his slicked hair combed over a balding head. His eyes were coal and close set. Even at over seventy, his shoulders were wide, his hands thrust with purpose in his camelhair coat pockets, and later Pero could only describe his stance as powerful. This was a man used to giving orders.

  He got right to business. “Herr Baltazar, is there nicht somewhere privat we can talk?”

  “How about in the museum? It’s closed to the public.”

  “Proceed.” His police officer looked to accompany them, but Tische motioned him to stand there and wait. There was no doubt who had the authority. The police that came with him were solely under his control.

  They walked past Heep, with headphones on, and Danny Redmond. Geschäftsführer Tische had no interest in either; Pero doubted he recognized Danny or wanted to. He had that sort of disdain for being anywhere as commonplace or public as this, a place where people were working. Pero guided him to the right as they entered the museum foyer, over the cut wooden block flooring that made no echo of their footsteps into the first of the two great train halls.

  The Technisches Museum houses all sorts of technical marvels, from computers to telephones, from bikes to cars, from gliders to planes, from models of boats to ships. For Pero, the most interesting were the trains. The museum was cobbled up from the ashes of WWII, in a declining industrial Berlin. An old railway locomotive yard, with two locomotive sheds, each in an arc, one next to the other, converted to hold some of the industrial world’s most marvelous steam engines.

  Steam engines are living things. It’s not that diesel and electric engines aren’t massive, fast, and powerful. They are. But steam is a force, an energy that turns a lump of iron into a living, breathing, snorting, thing of iron, brass, and steel beauty. You can smell a steam engine, smell its vapors—the overheated oil in its bearing and the ashes in its boiler. All these mingle to one distinctive odor.

  To see a steam engine powering along the track is to understand the age of the train, to feel the romance of the rails. To ride on the fireman’s platform is to ride the back of a steel whale.

  In this one museum are some of the finest designs of locomotives ever assembled. As good, in its way, as the Louvre or the MET are to art, so too, the Technisches Museum can show you the best of the best of German train engineering from the mid-1800s through to the present.

  And then, then, in the middle you come to the prized pieces, the ’30s Weimar Republic locomotives with their speed, clean lines and elegance, all art deco and ready to be admired. Next to them are the trains of the Third Reich, swastikas and all, ready to be feared. Power, speed, and capability oozing from every rivet, every polished knob, with massive wheels, they seem all efficiency coupled with might. In the middle of those dark, threatening machines was a cold, dark lesson.

  Before Berlin public money can be spent on a museum, it has to demonstrate that it serves the greater good. It was voted on, democratically, that the greater good of the German people must be continuing reminders of their past, WWII to be exact, the concentration camps to be precise. For its respectful reminder, the directors of the Technisches Museum chose to place, in the middle of all that Nazi glory and steel and power and might, one lonely boxcar, one human cattle car. Children visiting the museum jump up and down, from one locomotive to another and, suddenly, find themselves in this strange wooden box, complete with photographs on the inside of humans being herded to camps. It put the use of technical ability in perspective and was, for Pero, one of the most poignant atrocity memorials he had seen.

  He walked Herr Tische quietly past the trains, turned left down between the Swastika adorned locomotive on the left and turned right, up the stairs and into the cattle car. The entrance was low as was the roof. They both barely could stand upright. “Now, Herr Tische, how can I help you? It is private here, not a sound except for ghosts.”

  Tische’s voice had a two-tone resonance, at once clipped, clear, and powerful and yet floating on a guttural carrier sound coming from deep in his throat. “A melodramatic touch Mr. Baltazar, so American of you. My parents traveled in one of these, so if anything, you help my position without knowing it.”

  “As guests or hosts?”

  Tische’s face reddened. “Don’t play games you are ill-equipped to win, Mr. Baltazar.”

  “I was not the one who sent three thugs to roust us at an airport Mr. Tische. I was not the one playing games.” He decided to take a chance, a wild guess, “And I was not the one who, how shall I put this, interdicted US and German government employees on an autobahn yesterday.”

  Tische’s eyes came up too quickly He knew. Pero now knew he knew. “Both were most unfortunate. It was not supposed to happen on the autobahn. They were supposed to slow and give up the … what do you people call these things … ah yes, the package.”

  “What package?”

  “I said, don’t play games with me, Mr. Baltazar. Your coat, given to that bum, gives you away. It had a detectable signature. I hope you don’t want children, I am sure the bum didn’t.”

  Pero caught the tense. Had they killed the homeless man? He decided to string Tische along, “Ah, that package, the one I refused to keep. The one I forced that idiot Arnold to take back after he had stuffed it in my coat pocket. It’s not my job, being a courier. I don’t do that.”

  “So you gave it back?” Pero guessed Tische wanted to know if it was in that car accident.

  “Yes, that is not my job. Besides, I am here to film, I had no idea they were even going to contact me.”

  “Mr. Phillips seemed happy on leaving the airport, he did not look like a man who was, shall we say, turned down.”

  “Oh, he agreed to help after the filming was over …”

  “You are lying. Mr. Baltazar, where is the package. It was not in the car.” Tische was getting angry, he leaned forward, backing Pero into the wall, making his threat clear, and he was bulky, heavier than Pero was. His teeth showed in a snarl, “We are not like those Arabish idiotin in Kenya. We will not be stopped so easily.” Instantly, Pero realized that Tische had connected all th
e dots about him, about Pero thwarting the Arab’s terrorist plans in Kenya. Hell, he had better intel sources than Pero did. This was serious. Tische was almost salivating, “Do you think we care if we exterminate you and Mr. Heeper, as well as that buffoon actor? My employee has a fractured jaw. If I allow him, later, he will kill that man as easily as I could kill you now.” Suddenly there was a six-inch steel blade aimed at the fatal region of Pero’s liver. It was poking his new ski anorak, the outer skin of which made a little plop sound as the tip pierced the Gore-Tex.

  Oh my God, I am going to die right here, all for a lousy package! His thoughts caused his voice to waver, showing his fear, “What exactly do you want then?”

  “The package.”

  “You know I don’t have it. I gave it back to Arnold for God’s sake. If I had it, any detector could spot it in an instant if what you say is true. I assume that’s why you think it wasn’t in the car wreck?” Pero needed to put doubt into his head. Tische nodded, so Pero continued, “Well, maybe they missed detecting it or maybe it wasn’t even them in the car …”

  “It was clean, the car. And it was the three embassy people, one diplomat, one CIA operative, very pretty I was told, and one Internal German Sicherheitsbeauftragter.” (security officer) “Our men shot them and their car crashed and burst into flame. I was not planning to lose them so quickly.” Pero had the idea that a lengthy torture was probably a forte of his.