‘I was going to ask if they treated you okay.’
‘They half gassed me, stripped me, beat me and gave me a mock execution.’ Tom wasn’t sure why he said it. Actually, he was. He simply wanted her to go away and didn’t care if the bar was wired for sound. He probably wasn’t telling them anything they didn’t already know.
And they’d be rid of him tomorrow.
‘Christ,’ she said. ‘Sorry.’
She sat without being asked and Tom glared at her.
‘What?’ she asked.
‘That was your cue to go away. Why are you even in Berlin anyway? I’d have thought they’d have sent you home.’ Tom signalled for another vodka and the waitress brought it, collecting what remained of Amelia Blackburn’s wine from the bar on her way over. Amelia killed it in one.
‘I’ll have the same again,’ she said.
The waitress smiled.
By the time Amelia’s wine arrived, with a fresh Braugold Pils that Tom hadn’t asked for, but was quite prepared to drink, Amelia had just launched into a description of her work with wolf packs in the Ukraine.
‘I thought you’d flown in from the UK.’
‘I told you,’ she said.
‘Did you?’ He shrugged. ‘I was probably thinking about something else …’
She looked momentarily put out.
‘I had stuff going on,’ Tom reminded her.
She had the grace to look embarrassed in her turn.
All the same, the Ukraine? If he’d bothered to think of her at all, he’d have imagined her safe in a Chelsea flat, with Mummy living in a nice rectory in Cambridge, unless her link with Sir Cecil was too painful and she’d taken a little cottage in the Cotswolds.
His chip, Caro called it. Caro was right.
‘You’re a biologist?’
‘An animal psychologist.’ She smiled. ‘I’m told you’re a spy.’
‘Who told you that?’
‘I overheard one of the girls on the desk. I’m not sure she knew I speak German. She’d been up to your room.’
‘Not while I was there.’
‘I imagine not.’
‘Tell me about wolves,’ he said.
An Olympic athlete could manage 24 mph over a very short distance, and that fell fast at anything over a hundred yards. At full tilt, wolves could reach 40 mph and at over a hundred yards they’d barely got started.
‘Don’t try to outrun a wolf?’
‘Only if you’re feeling particularly stupid.’
They lived about six to eight years in the wild, could measure over sixty inches, with another twenty inches of tail, and weighed as much as 175 pounds. They mostly formed packs of under a dozen, and their howl could be a call or a warning. They travelled an average of twelve miles a day, gorged their food and could devour twenty pounds of meat in one sitting.
They would follow the scent of blood for miles, working as a team to corner their prey. The pack leader might lead the hunt, and be ferocious to other packs, but he was capable of letting the young feed first, happy to rough and tumble with his cubs and leave decisions to his mate.
‘That’s true,’ Amelia said.
‘I didn’t say it wasn’t.’
‘No,’ she said, ‘you just looked disbelieving … I mean it when I say decisions are often made by the pack’s matriarch.’
‘This is your own research?’
‘And others’.’ Amelia leant closer, her face bleak. ‘You know you said you didn’t think they had the right person? I know they haven’t. I studied under Claudia Strauss at the Humboldt. She’s not violent. She’s not an addict. There’s no reason she’d go anywhere near that flat. But her husband died trying to cross the Wall and she’s in disgrace.’
Tom remembered the grey-haired woman from the squat.
‘They tortured her,’ Amelia whispered. ‘They must have. I know her. There’s no way she’d confess to something she didn’t do otherwise. You’ve been arrested by the Stasi. You know what they’re like. You have to help me get her released.’
65
Tom slept better than he deserved and woke to a thumping headache, what remained of an insanely overpriced bottle of Sovetskoye Shampanskoye, and Amelia Blackburn half dressed, with one leg slipped off the bed, beside him. She was snoring gently, her face squashed into a pillow.
He was sitting on the edge of his bed, staring down at her and wondering what the hell, if anything, had happened, when his hotel telephone rang and Amelia opened her eyes. ‘Better answer that,’ she said.
‘Fox,’ Tom said.
He hoped it wasn’t Caro. He wasn’t sure he’d cope if it was.
‘All packed, I hope?’ Henderson was on the other end, sounding nauseatingly brisk. ‘I’m in reception. See you in a minute.’ He put the phone down without giving Tom time to reply and left him staring at the receiver.
‘That’s your car?’ Amelia said.
Tom nodded.
‘At least consider what I said.’
She wanted him to tell Fleet Street that the East Germans had arrested the wrong person. That Dr Claudia Strauss was no guiltier than he’d been. She wanted him to contact Amnesty International …
‘Did we …?’
She looked at him. ‘Did we what?’
Tom looked at the state of the bed, her shoes kicked into one corner, his jacket simply dropped on the floor. His head hurt, his mouth tasted foul, and he couldn’t work out if they’d taken off just enough clothes to have sex, or kept on just enough to ensure they couldn’t.
‘I don’t sleep with people who are drunk,’ Amelia said. She looked at him. ‘At least not the first time … Could you do me a favour?’
‘What?’ Tom asked.
‘Could you take something back for me?’
Tom felt suddenly sick. As if the hangover he deserved from the previous night had just caught up with him. ‘You have the memoirs?’
‘God. What is it with everyone? I didn’t even know he was writing his bloody memoirs. I’ve never read them. I don’t know what was in them. I have absolutely no interest in reading them –’
‘You’ve been asked that before then?’
She glared at him.
Tom smiled. ‘What do you want me to take back?’
‘It’s a letter to a friend at Imperial. About wolves. We used to work together. It looks like I’m going to be stuck here for a while. And I thought as you’re going back you could post it when you arrive.’
‘You don’t trust the East German post?’
‘Would you?’
66
‘Took your time,’ Henderson said.
Tom checked his Omega. ‘Five minutes max.’
‘More like ten.’
‘We’re running to a tight schedule?’
‘Of course. Alex here will drive us to Checkpoint Charlie. You’ll need to get out to cross on foot, as we’re on embassy plates and the GDR resolutely refuse to give you diplomatic status. Don’t worry though, your paperwork’s in order. We’ve confirmed that. We’ll pick you up the moment you’re through.’
‘And drive me to Tegel?’
‘The airport? We need to go to the consulate first. London’s idea. They’ve asked me to debrief you.’
About what? Tom wondered. Being arrested, being interrogated, being held in an East German prison?
‘And then the airport?’
‘Don’t worry,’ Henderson said heartily. ‘We’ll get you home.’
He nodded to his driver and the blue embassy Jaguar backed out of its slot, made an elegant three-point turn and slid itself into the traffic. Half a dozen East Berliners turned to watch it pass. Tom could see how the Jags had been chosen to give an ideal image of the UK, although he wasn’t sure that he or Henderson really merited one. Maybe Henderson simply wanted to make an impression.
‘Why are we crossing to West Berlin anyway?’ Tom asked.
Henderson looked at him slightly strangely. ‘To get you home.’
‘Why not
just fly me Interflug from Schönefeld?’
Henderson’s driver glanced in his mirror and pushed a button that raised a glass screen. A red light that said a microphone was live clicked off.
‘Makes sense for me to debrief you here. I fixed your original plans. London agrees I should do the debrief.’
‘When do I leave Berlin?’
‘Tomorrow. Just a couple of formalities first. Then we’ll have you out of here and safely home. That’s a promise.’
Henderson sat back, looked out of the window and fell silent. And Henderson was not the silent type. The pavements thronged with schoolchildren and East Berliners going to work. The sun was bright, the day colder than the brightness suggested. It was that time of year when summer ended without autumn having quite begun. ‘Everything okay?’ Tom asked.
‘Sir Cecil really didn’t pass you his memoir?’
‘He didn’t.’
‘He very clearly said he did in a letter we intercepted. Strange thing for him to lie about.’
‘Very,’ Tom said firmly.
The car slowed a little. It shouldn’t have slowed. The road was clear, the privacy screen was up and the listening light off. The rear of the Jaguar should have been cocooned, their words safely private. Tom glanced at the driver’s mirror but the man was looking straight ahead. ‘What I’m asking,’ Henderson said, ‘is what are the chances of the East Germans having it?’
‘It was burnt,’ Tom said. ‘I saw the ashes.’
‘There could be a carbon copy.’
He didn’t … Tom almost said it. He was thinking of the typed cast list, the lack of carbon-paper smudging on the back. Watching Henderson squirm, Tom wondered if it was really the communists that Henderson was worrying about. He’d started to think Henderson’s concerns were closer to home. That made Tom wonder what they’d actually had planned for Sir Cecil.
Whether he’d have got his day in court after all.
Henderson scowled so fiercely at the traffic building up that Tom wondered what his urgency was. And beyond the glass, the driver stared at the rear bumper of a Trabant. He stared so fixedly that Tom suspected it was the listening light and not the microphone that had been turned off.
‘I’m still surprised he didn’t try to take Frederika.’
‘Oh, he did,’ Henderson said. ‘I told him he couldn’t.’
‘I bet she liked that.’
‘She didn’t know. At least, I don’t imagine she did. I told him not to tell her. I mean, he could hardly expect to be welcomed back into the bosom of his family if he arrived arm in arm with a highly strung Ossi gymnast. He calmed down a bit after I showed him her file. Rather more lovers than he’d imagined.’
‘The bodyguard? Evgeny?’
‘Of course. Plus a couple of politicians. An actor. One of their dreadful rock stars. And she had a bit of a thing for a Stasi colonel. What really fixed it, though, was telling him why she was thrown off the team.’
‘Hip injury, I heard.’
‘While catching a child who fell from the wall bars …’ Henderson sneered. ‘I’m surprised they didn’t have her injuring herself saving a puppy from a swirling stream. I don’t suppose you watched that saccharine little bio-pic DDR-FS produced when she retired? Fiction from start to finish. The little bitch tried to strangle a teammate. Almost killed her too.’
‘Christ …’ Tom thought of the ligature round Evgeny’s neck. And then of Amelia’s friend, the grey-haired woman from the squat, who’d had a breakdown trying to live out the lie that she’d hated her husband. A man who died trying to get through the wall he was about to cross.
No wonder the GDR needed a scapegoat. Tom didn’t doubt that she’d been tortured into a confession.
Henderson’s driver had cut west on Karl-Liebknecht-Strasse and crossed the Schlossbrücke on to Unter den Linden, before turning left into Friedrichstrasse. Main roads the whole way. There was now an MZ motorbike behind and a Wartburg ahead. Tom tried to remember when the filthy Trabant became an almost-new Wartburg. ‘And Frederika’s hip?’ he asked.
‘She threw herself out of a window.’
Henderson must have felt Tom’s glance because he shook his head.
‘For real,’ he said. ‘She wasn’t tossed.’
Evgeny had been hit from behind, then strangled. The garrotting brutal enough to crush his windpipe. Tom’s first thoughts had been wrong. He was sure of it. The person who killed Evgeny wasn’t highly trained. Evgeny simply trusted her enough to let her close.
Amelia’s friend from the squat was taking the fall for a murder neither she nor Tom had committed. Rafikov would never know who’d killed his nephew. And the person who did it was going to get away. As for Tom, he wasn’t sure what he was walking into … But he was pretty sure it wasn’t a simple debriefing. Henderson was far too nervous, far too worked up.
The traffic was thickening on Friedrichstrasse.
Up ahead, lights were changing, green passing through amber to red. A signpost indicated that the checkpoint was a quarter of a mile away, and cars were edging into the right lanes. The thickness of the traffic said that the guards were being thorough today.
‘Who did you see in Moscow?’ Henderson asked.
Tom glanced across. A tic had started up in the corner of Henderson’s eye. The glance he gave Tom was impassive though. Studiedly so.
‘I didn’t go to Moscow,’ Tom said.
‘Oh, must have got that wrong. I thought you did.’
‘What’s going on?’ Tom demanded.
Henderson made himself sit back. Fold one knee over the other. It might have been more convincing if his fingers hadn’t gripped the Jaguar’s door handle so tightly. Who did you see in Moscow?
Tom wondered how much trouble he was in. What was waiting for him. How hard it was going to be to talk his way out of it …
Red, through amber to green.
When the Wartburg in front mistimed its gear change and stalled, Henderson swore viciously, the Jaguar shuddered to a halt and Tom made his decision. There were cars backed up in a side street wanting to push in, the Jaguar was blocking their way and pedestrians had begun to squeeze through the static traffic.
Unclipping his seat belt, Tom reached for the handle.
‘What the –?’
Henderson’s driver should have reversed; used his rear door to trap Tom so Henderson could drag him back inside. Instead, the Jaguar lurched into the Wartburg. And Tom was out of his seat, slamming the door behind him. Cutting through the middle of a shocked family, he headed for the busiest side street to lose himself in the crowd. He stopped only once, glancing back, one of a dozen pedestrians wondering what the commotion was. The boy who’d been riding the two-stroke MZ was standing on a bollard, scanning the crowd.
Tom ducked into a doorway before he could be seen.
Now he had the Stasi to worry about again. The doorway led into communal flats, and Tom followed a long corridor, thinking he’d trapped himself, until it exited into a small park where bronze children played with bronze marbles. Patting one of the statues on the head, Tom looked for the Fernsehturm towering over the city.
He found it and headed towards it. This time he kept his head up and shoulders back and concentrated on looking as if he belonged. He already knew where he was going.
67
‘Fox. Your Great-Uncle Max is here …’
The Soviet Union was red and spread halfway round the world from Leningrad to Vladivostok. In the atlas in Grandpa’s house the British empire was red and spread from Canada to New Zealand. If one was red then and one was red now, perhaps they’d swapped places?
‘Fox. I said your Great-Uncle Max is here.’
Charlie looked up to met Mr Marcher’s gaze.
He didn’t like Mr Marcher. This was a problem because Mr Marcher was his house tutor. He wasn’t sure if he didn’t like Mr Marcher because Mr Marcher didn’t like him or if it was the other way around.
There were a number of things Charlie
could say, but a brief look at Mr Marcher’s scowl told Charlie that none would improve matters. So he nodded, which was politer than the shrug he wanted to give, although still not polite enough to judge from Mr Marcher’s expression, shut the atlas and put it back.
Charlie liked the library. There were new books and old books, and books locked away behind leaded glass doors. The glass doors had little brass escutcheons around the keyholes. Escutcheon was a good word.
It sounded like it looked and most things didn’t.
He still hadn’t managed to pick any of the glass doors but he intended to before the term was out. He wanted to read Anatomy of Melancholy. He knew what Anatomy was. And he’d looked up Melancholy in the dictionary.
He was interested in how they’d fit together.
‘Fox … Did you hear me?’
‘Yes, sir. I’m on my way.’
Mr Marcher wanted to say, No, you’re not.
But Charlie was already dodging round his house tutor, leaving the man scowling after him. Grandpa helped. Grandpa had been to school here. Daddy hadn’t. Mr Marcher was always very polite to Grandpa.
‘Fox …’ Mr James was on the stairs.
‘My Great-Uncle Max is waiting?’
Mr James flicked a lock of hair out of his eyes. ‘Is he the one who sent you the Corgi toys?’
Charlie looked through the window to where a Rolls-Royce was parked at an angle in the forecourt. It was purple, with a canvas top folded back. It was the same car as his last model, just much larger. In the driver’s seat, an old man puffed contentedly on a cigar and watched in amusement as a Volvo estate tried to fit into a space his arrival had made too narrow.
‘1957 Silver Cloud Coupé.’ Mr James sounded awed.
‘You like cars, don’t you, sir?’
‘Cars like that.’
Charlie said, ‘Better go down, I suppose.’
‘Be back by three-thirty,’ Mr James said. ‘Make sure he remembers that.’ Mr James looked at the man with the cigar thoughtfully. As if suspecting he was the kind of man who might ignore rules.
‘I’ll be back long before then,’ Charlie said firmly.
‘I’m Charlie Fox,’ said Charlie, standing at the passenger’s side.
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