Christopher's Ghosts

by Charles McCarry

  “No one has ever complained,” Christopher replied.

  “If you do snore or talk in your sleep, no one will hear you in this room. It’s out of the way. It’s a clean room, a quiet room. I take care of it myself.”

  As the woman spoke she stood in the open doorway, well away from the bed. She had excellent posture and a voice that carried without being loud. Christopher guessed that she was about thirty. She dressed to conceal her figure, in a baggy sweater and a long skirt, and her utilitarian eyeglasses and the way in which she did her hair and the drab colors of her clothes deprived her face of softness. Her eyes were noticeable, which may have been why she had been so absorbed in her book. If she wasn’t striking, it was by choice.

  “My name is Heidi,” she said. “Please stay inside the room. I’ll bring you something to eat around eight o’clock. We can go out at about ten. The streets are busier then.”

  “We can go out?”

  “Of course, we. A couple attracts less attention. This was not explained to you?”

  Christopher looked around at the blank walls and understood that he was a prisoner of this woman if that was her desire. The large brass key to the room dangled from her hand. She could if she wished slam the door and lock it from the outside and leave him to starve to death. It was a heavy oak door. The lock with its massive deadbolt was from the time of the kaisers. Like most things made by the artisans of that era, it did what it was designed to do. Any lock could be picked, of course, but picking this one without specialized tools could be the work of hours. As these thoughts passed through Christopher’s mind the woman watched him solemnly, as if puzzling out a note in handwriting she had not seen before.

  She handed him the key. “If you want to rest in peace”—another flash of smiling eyes—“I recommend you to lock the door and leave the key in the lock,” she said. “That way the door cannot be locked from the outside.”

  “Is there a way out from this floor?”

  “Down the stairs is easiest.” Now she was openly amused.

  “In case of fire, then.”

  “There’s a window at the back—that way.” She pointed. “A circus performer could go over the roof, then over the next roof and down the wall of that building balcony to balcony. Both the U-bahn and the S-bahn are nearby, in opposite directions.” She pointed to show him where the rail lines were.

  Christopher said, “Thank you, Miss. You’re very kind.”

  “Always on Saturdays. My name is Heidi.”

  “Heidi, then.”

  “Supper at seven o’clock. We eat simply here. Soup and bread. Then we’ll go out and pretend to be in love. Everyone in, Berlin has at least one lover. It’s for the privacy, a way to avoid the Stasi for an hour or two.”

  Heidi’s voice was lighter than it had been, her manner more relaxed. She gestured. She kept her glasses on, though, and stood well away from the bed. In his mind he had begun to call her by name. He had given her no name for himself, but nevertheless she said, “Until later, then, Paul.” Wolkowicz had told her his true first name. Who else knew it? A joke, a wink, an elbow in the ribs.

  After she left, Christopher locked the door and disassembled the Makarov. Everything was in working order. He put the weapon back together, failing on the first try because he did not know that the hammer had to be cocked in order to fit the slide back onto the frame. He chose a cartridge at random and pried it open with the knife. It, too, seemed to be everything it should be. With the weapons on his person he reconnoitered the rest of the top floor and found two unmarked doors, one of them a closet, the other locked. The single window at the back swung open easily. It looked down on a tiny enclosed courtyard four stories below. As Heidi had said, the only way out was over the steep mansard roof.

  In the wardrobe he found a sports newspaper that was badly out of date and a stack of paperbound books, some in German, some in Russian. He chose a book of poetry in Russian, Simonov again. One of his admirers must have spent a few days here and left this library behind. Christopher lay down on the bed, rolled onto his side in order to take as much advantage as possible of the tenuous light, and began to read—to study, really. His Russian was workmanlike but shallow. Simonov’s verse read, to him, like Longfellow or Whittier—entertaining, sentimental, with technique and the ideal reader more in mind than the work. He wondered if there was more to it than he thought. After a while he closed the book, put the pistol under his pillow, and fell asleep.

  He was awakened at eight o’clock exactly by a knock on the door—a single sharp rap that was in no way a signal. Obviously Heidi had no time for the frills of tradecraft. He was glad of that, and glad of her punctuality because it confirmed that his new cheap watch kept accurate time. Holding the pistol behind him in his right hand, Christopher unlocked and opened the door with his left. The hallway was dark. There was no sign of life or movement. A tray covered with a white cloth had been left outside his door. Under the napkin he found a bowl of potato soup, a chunk of dark bread, a piece of cheese, and a bottle of beer lying on its side. He ate the bland soup, which was heavily salted, and the tasteless cheese and the dense dry bread, but left the beer unopened. When he was finished he covered the tray and put it outside the door where he had found it.

  He waited for Heidi to knock on his door again. He had no idea what might occur later tonight. He had no plan. He hardly knew what his own intentions were. Nothing he could do would change the past. Nothing could make him understand it better. However, he was already in motion. An operation was like a poem in progress. It came from nowhere, it wrote itself, it changed itself, its existence was a matter of indifference to the world and even to the poet to whom it had been given so that he could asphyxiate it like a butterfly and mount it on a pin. He thought, I’d better stop reading Simonov.

  2

  Holding hands and flirting, Christopher and Heidi rode the S-bahn along the River Spree. Heidi seemed to be enjoying the charade. She had changed for the evening into a shorter skirt, heels, a necklace, lipstick. Her hair was looser, her face softer. She wore perfume. Christopher found it easy to smile at her, to squeeze her hand when she squeezed his. Watching their reflections in the window of the train, Christopher had to admit that her expert performance made them look like a couple on their way to bed.

  The night was dark, and on the other side of the Spree, a block or two away, the glow of West Berlin was bright—skyscrapers with every window ablaze, thousands of lights of all kinds burning. They got off at Ostbahnhof. It was Saturday and there were more people in the streets than usual. Heidi led the way to a street of cafés and bars. Nearby a door opened and the sound of an accordion and violins playing “Falling in Love Again” drifted into the street. Dietrich was everywhere. Heidi said, “Shall we dance?” She took Christopher’s hand and pulled him to her. They danced half a dozen steps along the sidewalk, Heidi pirouetting at the end. Her skirt ballooned prettily to reveal her knees. She smiled provocatively.

  Inside the bar where the orchestra played, Heidi had many friends. A large party of people made room for her and Christopher at their table. Coughing on smoke that rose from scores of burning cigarettes, Heidi introduced Christopher, calling him Horst, and between coughs put names to her friends, all of whom were more than a little drunk. Christopher was an object of curiosity to the women. “Dear God, Heidi, where did you find him?” one of them shouted. It was almost impossible to hear spoken words above the din of the orchestra and the noise of customers singing along with it. One of the men went to the bar and returned with a glass of wine for Heidi and a beer for Christopher. Just as he arrived the orchestra started playing “Whistle While You Work,” the Disney song that had been a great hit in the Reich before the war. Heidi leaped to her feet and led Christopher onto the small round dance floor.

  She danced expertly, like a teacher, eyes sparkling with enjoyment. “You’re pretty good,” she said. “You’ve got a little German accent in your dancing.” The music changed. She said, “Can you tango
?”

  Christopher said, “Why else are we here?”

  She slid a hand down his back and touched the Makarov in his waistband. “The other girls may ask you to dance,” she said. “Better say I’m the jealous type.”

  They danced for a long time, jostled by other couples. Now that they were off the street she had stopped flirting. Even in the slow numbers, during which she closed her eyes, Heidi danced discreetly, keeping space between them as if they were in a dancing class. Christopher studied the faces of the other dancers. They, too, danced with their eyes closed. These were working class people who had not always been working class people. Most were about his own age. He wondered who they used to be and what they were now. Had he known any of them in school, in the swimming pool or on the football field, had he seen them in the Tiergarten?

  The orchestra played a waltz. As they whirled around the floor, Heidi said, “Look behind you. At the end of the bar.”

  Christopher turned her and looked over her head. Stutzer stood at the end of the bar, his Alsatian at his feet, drinking a glass of brandy.

  “He will have three brandies, the first two straight with chocolate that he carries in his pocket, the last one with soda, and then he will go home,” Heidi said. “He comes here every Saturday night, always alone except for the dog, always at this hour.”

  She felt Christopher’s body grow tense. “No,” she said. “Not now, not here. Dance with me, look at me. Be a good boy. He’s not really alone. There are others here, his people, watching out for him. Stop staring. It isn’t safe.”

  On the way home Heidi told Christopher more about Stutzer’s habits. Soon after dusk every evening he traveled on foot, moving at marching pace, from MfS headquarters to the Mosque or sometimes to another safe house, and then walked back to headquarters in the early hours of the morning. Heidi thought that he slept and ate at the office, for he never went anywhere else. In public he dressed simply, in Old Bolshevik fashion, usually wearing a worker’s cap and a leather jacket. He seemed to like the illusion of being alone, seemed to enjoy the sensation of being exposed, but the people who looked after him were never far away. Though he rarely rode in it, his Volga sedan was always near at hand, inching along at walking speed, sometimes right behind him but usually keeping abreast on a parallel street. Bodyguards, both men and women, mingled with the other pedestrians if there were any, and if there were not, were posted in concealment at intervals along the way, muttering to one another over two-way radios. He was never alone, never unprotected—at least while he was on East German territory.

  He could be hunted, Heidi said. But not captured.

  “Hunted?” Christopher said, “You mean assassinated?”

  “What a mind you have,” Heidi said, looking up into his face. “What would be the point, to kill him? That would be a childish thing to do.”

  They were walking toward the Red Orchestra Inn on a wide, deserted street that paralleled the S-bahn tracks. She held onto his arm, tottering slightly in her high heels. Without her glasses her eyes seemed larger and bluer and much more serious.

  He said, “How do you happen to know so much about his habits?”

  “It’s a game,” Heidi replied.

  “For what purpose?”

  “To know what is interesting.”

  “That, or to take chances for the fun of it?”

  “You’re a good one to talk about that,” Heidi said. “I was told you were the silent type, a man who never asks questions. Apparently I was misinformed.”

  Christopher was probing for information, but there was no need for this. Heidi was providing all the answers she was prepared to give without benefit of being questioned. Obviously she was a trained and experienced operative, but who had trained her and then deployed her? The first and most likely possibility was that she worked for MfS, perhaps directly for Stutzer, and Wolkowicz was so hungry for a source, any source, inside East Germany that he had taken recklessly whatever bait was offered and signed her up, just to see what happened. In his book of rules it was better to make a mistake than to do nothing. The second possibility was that she was what she seemed to be, an honest traitor. The final possibility was that she worked for a third party that had reasons of its own to be interested in Stutzer and wanted to know who Christopher was and why he was getting in the way.

  Heidi stumbled on a patch of broken pavement but quickly recovered her balance, tightening her grip on Christopher’s arm. She was strong—not just strong for such a small woman, but strong.

  “Anyway,” she said, “I’m the only person you know in this part of town, so who else would tell you these things?”

  “Who indeed,” Christopher said.

  “Did you have a good time tonight?”

  “Wonderful. I haven’t danced in years.”

  Christopher wondered where she had learned to tango. Germans of her age and older usually performed the dance as a variation on the goose-step, see-sawing back and forth as the man took a step forward while bending over backward while the woman leaned forward, then the movement was reversed. The others on the dance floor had danced the dance that way. Heidi, however, tangoed as if she had grown up in Argentina, all sinuous legs and sultry come-ons and brusque refusals.

  “You tango amazingly well,” he said.

  “You noticed!”

  “How did that happen?”

  “A gramophone, a lonely room, a pillow for a partner, an old book of instructions. I am a tango autodidact.”

  They rounded a corner and the Red Orchestra Inn came in sight. She cocked her head as if she heard something, let go of Christopher’s arm and in her clattering heels dashed over the cobblestones and up the steps as if she had never stumbled in her life. She opened the front door with her key, let him in, then locked the door behind them—first with the key, then by throwing two deadbolts. Christopher was incarcerated again. Heidi put on her glasses, an unmistakable signal that their make-believe date was over. A car drove by and the headlights made her lenses glitter.

  “Go upstairs,” she said. “Good night. Sleep well. I have work to do to get everything ready for tomorrow.”

  What, he wondered, was everything? No lights burned anywhere in the hotel.

  Into the darkness he said, “How do you happen to be called Heidi?”

  Her glasses glittered as she turned her head. “It just happened. Everything just happens.”

  He climbed the creaking stairs and went to bed. Alone in the dark he wasted no time wondering about Heidi or who or what she belonged to or what her intentions were. Often enough he had entrusted his life to strangers who had no reason to trust him and no motive to let him live and he had always come out all right. He liked the girl. He smiled to himself at the memory of her on the dance floor. Heidi was the first of his caretakers who could tango—and the first whose German, when she had drunk a little wine, had the faint, almost inaudible accent that he had heard in it tonight.

  3

  Heidi unlocked the front door every morning at seven o’clock precisely. The morning after her night out with Christopher was no exception. As soon as he heard the turning of the key he went down the stairs two at a time and strode past the unmanned reception desk and into the street. Heidi would know immediately that he was gone. The stairs squeaked like a nest of rats, the loose glass in the outer door rattled no matter how softly the door was closed.

  It had snowed during the night, and though the pavement had already been trampled bare, the roofs of high buildings were still frosted. He joined a knot of workers who walked silently toward the S-bahn station. A few drew on cigarettes as if smoking in their sleep. Their clothes were drab and alike. No Miss Wetzel clad in shades of violet, shoes and hat to match, walked among them. No one talked to an animal as she had chattered to Blümchen. Christopher saw no one behind him, certainly not Heidi, but that did not mean that no one was there. For all he knew the man beside him was following him. In this Berlin, unlike the last one, the secret police drew no attention t
o themselves, and because they kept the entire population under continual surveillance, they had plenty of opportunity to perfect sidewalk skills. No one in the crowd paid Christopher the slightest attention even though they knew perfectly well that he was a stranger. Like airline passengers, but with better reason than fear of boredom, Berliners started no conversations in which they might be trapped for an entire journey. As was the German custom, Christopher carried his lunch in his briefcase. The cheap bag sagged a little under the weight of the Makarov pistol and the extra clips of ammunition that were also inside it, beneath the newspaper-wrapped bread and cheese and cold sausage of his uneaten breakfast.

  Christopher took a train headed in the direction of the Mosque. He got off at the first station after the Ostbahnhof at which a large number of other passengers also dismounted. He stationed himself at the back of the crowd, a step or two behind the slowest walkers. After a few blocks he split off by turning down a side street that ran parallel to the street in which the Mosque was located. The others trudged onward. He was alone. He did not walk onward into the street, in which the snow was fresh and undisturbed and without tracks of any kind. This was better luck than he had expected. He had come here early because he thought it possible that the Mosque was closely watched, front and back, and strongly protected only when Stutzer was in residence. Because Stutzer arrived at dusk and departed at dawn, the day shift must be a skeleton staff, if it existed at all. Locks and alarms—and for today, the snow—were likelier sentinels than armed men. Because of the snow he could go no farther today. All he could do was wait for the snow to melt. Half of secret life—more than half—consisted of waiting. Christopher was an expert killer of time. He read, he wrote poems in his head and composed imaginary conversations in one or another of the languages that he knew. He remembered his life, he dozed when daydreams tricked his brain into perceiving that he must already be asleep.