Rafikov smiled thinly. ‘So many layers to an onion,’ he said.
Tom remembered Amelia’s comment about wolf packs. How similar they were to humans in their social structures. How their leaders could be ferocious, territorial and protective. Fitz hunted alone. Rafikov looked out for himself but also looked after his own.
What was the USSR’s interest in this?
This was bigger than naming names. Although that was the place to start because that was what everything kept coming back to. Their names, our names. Anyone named would be vulnerable, blackmailable, at the very least an embarrassment. Glasnost. Perestroika. The arms talks …
‘That’s it,’ Tom said. ‘You don’t want anything to derail the arms talks.’
General Rafikov smiled.
‘Your East German allies, however …’
‘I have to ask,’ Rafikov said. ‘It would be best if you weren’t offended. You’re a smart man. A good officer. You understand things. Why don’t you come over to Moscow’s side?’
‘Why the fuck would I do that?’
‘Your government doesn’t trust you. Your friends think you’re a murderer. Your woman is having an affair. Your child is probably dead.’
‘He’s alive,’ Tom said fiercely.
‘Kidnappers tend to kill their victims.’
‘I’d know if he was dead.’
‘You’d know?’
‘Of course I would.’
‘All the same. You should consider my offer.’
‘And embrace a world where clothes don’t fit, you can’t buy the books you want, vodka’s the only thing that will keep you warm, and you have to wait fifteen years for a washing machine only to discover that it doesn’t work?’
Rafikov smiled sadly.
‘See,’ he said. ‘You’re half Russian already.’
75
Four decanters stood on a walnut Welsh dresser in Great-Uncle Max’s house. It was the kind of dresser that was too large and too well made to have lived in a Welsh cottage. Around the neck of each decanter was a silver label on a finely wrought chain. Two of the labels were Georgian, perhaps Edwardian copies, one was art deco, the last high Victorian. Granny would know.
It was shaped like a vine leaf and full of very swirly holes that made it look like lace. In order, the labels read port, brandy, brandy and Madeira. All of the decanters were crystal, two were hand-cut, one machine-cut, one wide-bottomed and smooth. That one was a ship’s decanter, because the wide bottom stopped it sliding off the table in a storm.
As all of the decanters were a third full, Charlie decided that must be the polite level for decanters to be filled. He sniffed the stoppers of them all, tasted the brandy and decided he didn’t like it. And then he tried the Madeira and decided that he liked it enough to take another sip.
Great-Uncle Max’s house was seemingly empty.
It was also, Charlie had decided, huge, as big as his school, perhaps bigger. So far the only people that he’d seen were gardeners who walked the grounds in pairs at intervals so regular that Charlie could time them on his Seiko. Most of the boys at school wore Timex and they liked his Seiko. Even Michaelides.
Charlie liked it too.
A pair of gardeners passed the terrace every twenty minutes.
That meant it took an hour to walk right round Great-Uncle Max’s garden since he had three pairs of gardeners. Unless only two pairs walked, of course, while one rested. In which case the time fell to forty minutes. The circumference of the grounds was four miles if everyone walked at 4 mph, which was how fast books said humans walked. If only two of the three pairs walked at any one time then the circumference fell to 2.7 miles. This only held true if no one stopped to talk or have a cup of tea.
Charlie didn’t think they did.
They seemed very intent on their walking.
Checking his watch, he decided that Great-Uncle Max must have forgotten the time. It had been a strange day, which didn’t mean it had been a bad one. A race through country lanes in a Rolls-Royce that purred and roared and bucked on the corners had been especially exciting, if only because Great-Uncle Max used his gears to break and insisted on accelerating out of corners early.
Since then, Charlie had eaten lunch in the kitchens, served by an old man who’d looked at him so strangely that he’d excused himself to check his reflection in a looking glass in a downstairs loo. His hair was neat, his top button fastened and his tie straight.
These were the usual things that worried grown-ups.
Charlie had buttoned his jacket in case it wasn’t meant to be undone. Only the sixth form were allowed to walk around at school with their jackets unbuttoned. They could put their hands in their pockets too.
It didn’t make any difference.
The old man still looked at him strangely.
Lunch was cheese ploughman’s. Charlie knew what a cheese ploughman’s was because this was what Grandpa ordered in the Bugle, if they went there at the weekend. After lunch, the old man showed him to the billiard room, which held a table like a pool table but bigger, with fat legs carved from dark wood.
Apparently the table was so heavy the roof had to be taken off and a crane used to lower it into place. That was how Charlie knew the man was really very old. The man had been there. The table was old, so if he’d been there when it was new he must be older.
When Charlie had suggested Great-Uncle Max might like a game the old man had looked worried. He’d gone to London, he told Charlie.
‘But I have to be back at school by three-thirty.’
‘I’m sure he’ll be back before then.’
It was business, you see.
‘Is he a friend of my grandpa’s?’
The old man said that he was sure they knew each other. Great-Uncle Max knew everybody. And Charlie said, in that case, they definitely knew each other because Grandpa knew everybody too. The man smiled a little at that and asked if Charlie would like anything else to eat. But the ploughman’s had been large and Charlie had only eaten the last of it to be polite.
‘I’m fine, thank you,’ Charlie said.
The old man had nodded, slightly doubtfully, and suggested that Charlie play billiards against himself. Charlie didn’t want to admit that he didn’t know the rules; so he nodded and waited until the man left, before putting down the cue he’d picked to pretend to play the game.
The old man had locked the door behind him, which seemed strange.
Walking across to check, Charlie realized the doorknob had a face. It didn’t look like Great-Uncle Max. Not even a much younger Great-Uncle Max. He wondered if Great-Uncle Max was on the other side. Although he knew the door was locked, he tried it anyway.
Human nature.
That was what Grandpa blamed for most things people did that didn’t make sense. Charlie had applied this maxim to school, and realized quite quickly that tradition also played its part. Things that didn’t make sense tended to involve human nature, tradition or both …
Charlie wondered where people with animal legs fitted in.
There were two of them, carved in marble and standing either side of an empty fireplace. The woman had no clothes and a twist of ivy across her tummy. The man had horns and legs so hairy he might have been wearing shaggy plus fours. He was carrying panpipes. The woman was holding a large curling shell.
Charlie tried every door in the billiard room in turn.
One opened on a shallow cupboard lined with billiard cues. Another let through to a shabby utility room with a glass door to the gardens. The final door revealed a lavatory with a cast-iron cistern set high on the wall. Charlie set its chain swinging and watched it for a while.
The glass door to the garden was unlocked, so Charlie sat on the brick steps and watched the sky fade through colours so muted he couldn’t quite say when one became another. As he sat, he tried to work out why the old man would lock the billiard room but leave the glassdoor open.
His original thought was that the man had wanted to
keep him in.
That would have been odd. Now he wondered if it was to keep him out of the rest of the house, which would be odder. Not least because Charlie could walk round to the side and simply let himself in by another door.
Instead he went to look at the box hedges.
If you pretended a line ran from each that couldn’t be crossed you could make a maze in your head. After a while Charlie gave up that game and headed down narrow stone steps and between trees to a little graveyard.
He liked it.
Most of all he liked the stone angel.
She was wearing a nightie and the rain had worn her nose smooth. It was possible her stone was cheap because bits of her cheek came away on his fingers when he stroked it. In the distance one of the gardeners glanced over.
So Charlie waved. After a moment the man waved back.
He said something to his companion, who pulled out a radio and began talking. He didn’t stop though, or come over to say Charlie shouldn’t be touching the angel. They just kept walking. Charlie watched until they were out of sight.
‘Master Fox … Master Fox …’
The old man sounded so worried that Charlie felt guilty.
‘Out here,’ he shouted, then remembered shouting was rude and scrambled to his feet as the old man hurried down from the terrace.
The man breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of him.
‘I’m sorry,’ Charlie said.
‘It’s all right,’ the old man said.
He looked back at the house and seemed puzzled. ‘The door to the garden was open,’ Charlie explained. ‘I didn’t think you’d mind.’
‘Don’t get old,’ the man said. ‘Now. Time for bed.’
‘But I have to be back at school.’ Charlie checked his Seiko and it was worse than he’d imagined. Much worse. ‘They’re going to be cross.’
‘It’s all right,’ the old man promised. ‘Great-Uncle Max called them. Said that his meeting had run late. The headmaster said it would be fine to bring you back tomorrow.’
‘But I don’t have pyjamas. And where will I sleep?’
‘We’ve prepared you a bedroom.’
‘We?’ Charlie asked.
‘I mean me. Let me make you some cocoa first.’
‘Thank you,’ Charlie said. He didn’t like cocoa, not really; but it was the right thing to say, and he followed the old man up to the terrace and into the house. The kitchen where he’d had his lunch was huge, with three sinks, which was one more than Granny had. He sat where he’d sat for lunch and waited while the old man heated a saucepan of milk and fussed around in the pantry.
‘Where’s the man who collected me from school?’
‘He’ll be back later.’
‘And then?’
‘He’ll return you.’ Putting a plate of biscuits on the table, the old man fetched a big mug and filled it with cocoa. ‘Drink up before it gets cold.’
The biscuits were foil wrapped with Viscount written on them and tasted of orange, as you might think orange would taste, if you’d only ever heard it described. Charlie loved them. He ate the first carefully, nibbling round the edges. When the man didn’t scowl, he took another and ate that faster.
‘Your cocoa’s going cold,’ the man reminded him.
Reaching for the cup, Charlie took a mouthful. The chocolate taste was disappointingly thin after the biscuits. The old man was right though. His cocoa was lukewarm and not really that nice. Charlie drank it quickly.
He started to feel strange a few minutes later.
‘Another biscuit?’ the old man asked.
Charlie shook his head, and heard as much as felt the thud as he fell forward and hit the table. It wasn’t enough to keep him awake.
76
It was early in the morning, too early for regular visitors, and East Berlin was only just stirring, when a Red Army guard at the entrance to the Soviet embassy on Unter den Linden stepped forward to deal with a taxi that had stopped unexpectedly, right outside the gates.
His determination to make the driver’s life hell wilted the moment General Rafikov wound down a rear window.
‘Get that barrier up now.’
The guard wondered if he should apologize, took one look at Rafikov’s scowl and decided silence was safer. He’d done what he should do. Stopped an unexpected car. Inside that car, Tom Fox was shocked to realize just how much he was counting on help from the man they’d come to meet. How much less certain he was these days that he could.
Marshal Milov, the commissar.
The lieutenant at the front desk was expecting them. He recognized Rafikov. And the officer at Rafikov’s side, a grim-faced KGB colonel, didn’t look like someone who’d appreciate being asked his name.
‘The old man’s here?’ Rafikov demanded.
‘He landed an hour ago, Comrade General.’
‘Is he alone?’
The lieutenant hesitated. ‘I’m not sure, sir.’
That would be a no. Rafikov sighed. ‘We’ll show ourselves up.’
As they walked towards the lifts, Rafikov turned to Tom and said, ‘I should tell you that Frederika Schmitt is dead. She threw herself from the fire escape at the gym rather than face arrest.’
‘It wasn’t that high,’ Tom said.
Rafikov shrugged. ‘She died in the ambulance.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Tom said. He meant it too.
‘I’d have thought you’d be delighted.’
‘And the woman they arrested at the squat?’
Rafikov sucked his teeth. ‘You should be less of a romantic,’ he said. ‘It’s not a good quality in a man like you. Now, FitzSymonds … You wouldn’t find him making that mistake. He and I, we’re cut from the same cloth.’
‘All the same …’
‘The Kripo have a copy of that tape you recorded and the case is closed. They’ve decided that Frederika killed both men. So, yes, I’m sure they’ve kicked your Instandbesetzer back on to the streets.’
‘And me?’ Tom asked. ‘Am I likely to be arrested?’
‘Of course not. I’m sure there’s a room for you at the Palasthotel if you want it. Although you might need to buy clothes.’ General Rafikov looked amused. ‘I’m told your luggage went to West Berlin, even if you didn’t. I believe Colonel Schneider has invited the British consulate in West Berlin to make arrangements for your return. He’s waiting to hear back …’
The lift let them out on a landing painted in improbable blues. A huge oil of the Russian steppes filled a spot where Stalin’s portrait once hung. A marble bust of Lenin stood on a plinth in one corner. A door stood open and in the doorway stood a white-bearded man with hair to his shoulders. Marshal Milov appeared to be wearing a yellow silk smoking jacket.
‘That uniform suits you,’ he said.
‘That’s exactly what General Rafikov said.’
‘No doubt he tried to turn you. I told him you wouldn’t.’
The marshal’s hair was thinner than the last time he and Tom had met; but his beard was combed through and his eyes as fierce as ever. He’d reached an age where his face was so lined it was hard to tell what were scars and what were creases. ‘Still,’ Milov said. ‘Suppose I’d better ask too. Do you wish to defect?’
‘No, sir.’ Tom shook his head.
‘We’d promise to appreciate you.’
‘I don’t believe in what the Soviet Union stands for.’
‘You don’t believe in what the United Kingdom stands for either.’
‘I was born there …’
‘No,’ the commissar said. ‘You were born on some shitty little military base in Cyprus. I checked. Born dead, brought back to life, given to nuns for the first week in case you died again.’
He looked at Tom’s face.
‘You realize there’s more at stake here than your son’s life?’
Not for me, Tom thought. Not for me.
77
Charlie woke and wondered why he wasn’t wearing any clothes. He also wond
ered where he was and why there was no furniture in the room, not even curtains to stop the light from waking him.
Finally, he wondered how scared he should be.
‘You shouldn’t be.’
‘Be what?’
‘Scared. It won’t help.’
‘How do you …?’
‘Know what you’re thinking?’ The girl in a nightie sitting on the bare boards by his feet smiled. ‘How do you think I know?’
Charlie rubbed his eyes and she laughed.
‘Hello,’ Becca said.
‘I thought you only came at night. When everyone was asleep. That’s what you said. Were you telling lies?’
‘This is an emergency.’
He felt too sleepy for it to be a real emergency; but under the sleepiness his tummy was tying itself into knots and his heart was beating too fast. Charlie wasn’t good at recognizing feelings. That was always one of the problems. But he thought he must be quite frightened for Becca to come in daylight.
‘Is that door locked?’
‘What do you think?’ she asked.
He thought she should have answered properly.
Sulkily, he climbed to his feet and almost fell over. His knees were rubbery and his legs weren’t working very well. His fingers didn’t feel properly connected to everything else. Catching sight of himself in a window, Charlie decided he looked very small. And decided that might be because the room was very big and the ceiling very high. Becca didn’t look anything because she didn’t have a reflection.
One door, locked. Three windows, painted shut.
He was still in Great-Uncle Max’s house, though. He recognized the terrace and the gardens. A fireplace on the longest wall was covered with plywood. The plywood was screwed tight at the corners. Charlie tried pulling at the edge and broke a nail. ‘Don’t cry,’ Becca said.
‘It hurts.’
‘You can’t start crying yet. You shouldn’t cry at all.’
‘What should I be doing?’
‘Looking for something useful.’
‘Like what?’ Charlie asked crossly.
Becca looked worried. ‘I don’t know.’
Nightfall Berlin Page 24