He found Duisburgerstrasse easily, hesitating on the opposite side of the road. There was no way to isolate her apartment to determine from a lighted window if Gerda was home. A friend, he thought, rehearsing his story. He’d say he was a friend of her husband’s. She’d always been stupid. She wouldn’t question too closely, exposing the obvious emptiness. Positively he pushed across the road, stopping immediately outside the entrance. The door was closed but not locked, he saw, gratefully. Inside an uncovered bulb gave a yellow, tired light. Softly he opened the door, tensed against any sound. The concierge’s office was to the right, fronted by a small counter. The office door was open and there was a light burning in the room behind. Faintly, he could hear the scuffling of the woman behind the door. Probably eating, he guessed. Silently, he eased across the vestibule, his eyes always on the opening. He heard voices and halted, then smiled, recognizing from the formality of the words that she was watching television. Excellent. She would be distracted, careless of the hall. Quickly he hurried across, dodging around the stairwell. He stared back, waiting for the challenge. Nothing. He smiled again, happily. Still walking carefully to avoid sound, he mounted the stairs, testing each step before putting his weight fully down, pausing at every turn to ensure the landing was empty. His leg began to ache again. He was desperately tired, he realized.
Gerda’s apartment was on the third floor, he discovered. For several moments, he stood before the door, gazing at the number. He was very frightened, he accepted. He’d been a fool not to prepare properly a reason for suddenly confronting the woman to whom he would appear a scruffy, disheveled stranger. She’d panic, he thought, trying to remember her reaction to sudden surprises. Yes, she’d definitely panic. She might scream, even. What if she put a burglar-chain across the door and refused to admit him? His stomach lurched at another thought. What if she had married again and there was a man inside? Pöhl could be a married name as easily as an assumed one. Or she might have a companion, some woman whom she had befriended and lived with for company or financial help. He swayed, dizzy from fear and fatigue and exhaustion and hunger. It didn’t matter, he dismissed. Having got this far, he had to make an approach. There was nowhere else to go, no hiding place he could otherwise choose. It would be very easy to cry, he realized. Perez was a bastard.
Hesitantly, the first attempt hardly making any sound, he knocked at the door.
Inside, Gerda jumped, overreacting, like a stranger in a foreign country being shouted at by an official. It could only be Heinrich, she determined, instantly. Herr Muntz had said the approach might come any time. And there had been that strange call to the office that morning, with no explanation for why he could not come in. Three appointments had had to be canceled and she was sure they’d lost at least two clients. Only Heinrich’s reappearance could have caused Herr Muntz to behave like that.
She sat, her body rejecting any movement. Again there was the knock, louder this time. She stared down, immediately. She wore her oldest suit, the one shining with use, and there was a stain where a piece of fat from the almost exhausted ham had fallen upon her already grubby blouse an hour before.
She started toward the bedroom, but the knock came again, insistently. She hadn’t time, she knew. If she delayed, he might go away, imagining she were not in. She hurried her hands to her hair, squeezing and pushing the collapsing bun at the nape of her neck. Her lip trembled with emotion and annoyance. She had so wanted to be beautiful when he came. Perhaps once he was inside the apartment she would be able to change.
Outside Kurnov heard her doubtful footsteps. He’d been listening, ear to the door. No conversation. At least she was alone. Trying to subdue the noise, in case she detected the caller was a man, he cleared his throat, preparing to speak first. He would have to be quick, to quell her fear.
The door lock clicked, but it didn’t open immediately. Gerda pulled it uncertainly, apprehensive of what would confront her.
The two frightened people stared unspeakingly at each other. Gerda reacted first, her carefully held face breaking with disappointment when she saw the man was not who she had been expecting. Since that morning in the lawyer’s office, she had created a mental image of how Heinrich would reappear. Illogically, she had imagined him no older than when she had last seen him. And smart, very smart. He always had been. Perhaps a businessman’s black suit and overcoat. Or maybe a leather topcoat. He always had liked the leather uniform coats.
But this wasn’t him. She felt cheated. Her face twisted at the grubby old man who stood before her, his body held to one side as if he were about to collapse. The smooth, almost artificial face was spotted with isolated patches of beard, like dunes on a sandy shore, and his eyes were staring, fixedly, as if he were in shock. She began to close the door, feeling frightened.
“Frau Pöhl …” blurted Kurnov. He hadn’t spoken immediately, as he had planned. And now he had started badly. Quickly he corrected himself, knowing the key. “… Frau Köllmann … please …”
Gerda stopped, alert but still unsure. So he was connected with her husband. Representing him, perhaps. Herr Muntz had said he might send a friend. He was obviously someone in the Party, otherwise he would not have known her true name.
Immediately she reopened the door, beckoning him in, and instantly Kurnov became unsettled by her reaction. Why hadn’t she asked questions, demanded explanations? He nervously stopped inside the door, prepared to turn to run from what might confront him.
The flat was badly furnished, he saw, nearly every piece of furniture aged and worn. Obviously it was beyond her means, but Gerda would want to live here because it was fashionable and people might be impressed. She always had been stupidly snobbish. There were three doorways leading from the main room and he looked towards each, but no other person appeared. So she was alone. And there was no sign of a television or any newspaper. Hence the absence of startled, terrified recognition. At last things were going his way.
“Frau Köllman …” he tried again, but Gerda interrupted, anxious to prove herself.
“I know why you’re here,” she announced, smiling at him.
Kurnov interpreted the look as one of triumph and stared back, eyes searching the apartment again.
“What …?” he stumbled, confused.
“Herr Muntz told me … warned me I might get an approach to help Heinrich … I was expecting it …”
“Muntz …?”
What a stupid man, she thought. How he must irritate Heinrich with his inability to grasp quickly what was being explained to him.
“Herr Muntz … a fine man … a loyal Party member,” she enlarged, enjoying the role, savoring the memory of how she had once been able to treat people in the disdainful way she was behaving toward the visitor. “Here, in Berlin. He’s with the Organisation der Ehmaligen S.S. Angehörgen.”
Kurnov groped against the door, feeling the support go from his legs. The Nazis had him! He’d escaped one trap to walk into another. And this one was worse than any other … far worse.
“No, wait …” he began, weakly gesturing with one hand. If he didn’t sit down soon, he’d fall, he knew.
Gerda looked at the cheap clock on the mantelpiece.
“I must telephone him,” she hurried on. “I made a promise that if there were any contact, I’d call him immediately. The Party want to help Heinrich. They know he’s in trouble.”
Kurnov blinked, finding difficulty in focusing. She was alone. And the Nazis didn’t know yet. He strained to try to understand the rambling woman, remaining before the door to prevent her leaving. Again the hand moved, aimlessly.
“Wait,” he repeated. Desperately he began talking, mouthing the thoughts without consideration, as soon as they came to him. “Don’t call anyone … not yet. There’s a lot to discuss … I’ve lots of messages from Heinrich … Plenty of time for telephone calls later …”
His mind was running ahead, trying to work out what had happened. There wasn’t a trap, he guessed. From what she had sa
id, he reasoned they had just inveigled her as a dupe, knowing her stupidity and confident she would perform exactly as instructed. He was safe. Gulping air, he pushed away from the door.
“I’m very tired,” he said plaintively. “And hungry. Heinrich promised you’d help …”
She wavered uncertainly. She had undertaken to notify Herr Muntz immediately. But the man swaying before her did seem exhausted. And he had had contact with Heinrich perhaps only hours or days before. Another thought intruded, one that had occurred frequently since her conversation with the lawyer. She wanted desperately to know where her husband had been, why he’d chosen to appear again, and why he’d never contacted her, all these years. Half an hour wouldn’t matter, she convinced herself. Just thirty minutes. That wouldn’t be long to encompass thirty years.
“Please …” she gestured to a chair. Damn, she suddenly thought. Why had she eaten all that ham?
“Brandy?” she offered. “Or coffee?”
Kurnov nodded, settling in the chair. Tiredness pressed in upon him, like a weight.
“Both?” she queried.
Again he nodded. It was almost too much effort to speak any more. Had the Jews felt like this, he wondered, driven to the point of not caring whether they lived or died? It was very easy to give up, accepted Kurnov. The slightest setback destroyed any confidence he built up.
She handed him the liquor. He needed both hands to hold it and choked on the first sip. His eyes began to water, but he drank again, enjoying the sensation as the drink suffused his body.
“And food,” he said, urgently, his voice hoarse from the brandy. “I’m very hungry. Anything.”
She moved away behind him, and he heard crockery and cutlery rattling. He leaned back in the chair, eyes closed, the hand holding the drink supported by the arm-rest. The Jews had come closer than he had realized to breaking him, he decided. If he hadn’t taken the precaution of locating Gerda, by now he would have been screaming in the streets outside, his mind twisted by the stress. Almost, he decided. But not quite. And that was the important difference.
With difficulty, he opened his eyes, then moved to the edge of the seat. He’d kept ahead so far by being cleverer than they were. But it was too soon to relax.
He stumbled to the dresser where Gerda had the drinks, refilling the glass, then using the excuse quickly to examine the apartment more closely than he had so far been able to do. It was empty, he confirmed. His face twitched at the squalor of it. Certainly it was neatly kept, he conceded. But then Gerda always had been tidy. He remembered when she had had closets of clothes she had listed them in a tiny notebook always kept in the top left-hand drawer of her dressing table. How different everything here was from the luxury of the Berlin house she had once occupied. All this furniture was cheap and second-hand, the legs of the bed and table tilted haphazardly, like a young foal first learning to stand. The stuffing was bulged in nearly every seat-back and had actually burst through in some cases. In the bedroom he saw a suit hanging on the outside of the cupboard, covered with plastic. It looked new. He frowned, wondering why she kept it like that. The dressing table once occupied by silver-backed brushes and every cosmetic that could be bought or looted from Paris was now bare, and verdigris whirls discolored the mirror. The bedroom floorboards were uncovered, he saw, apart from what looked like a handmade rug on one side of the bed.
He turned back into the living room, moving to the chair in which he had first sat. It was the best in the room, he realized.
Little of value to steal, he assessed. It hardly mattered. He couldn’t take the chance of going to a pawn shop, anyway. It would have to be money. From the condition of the flat, and the messy, untidy way she was dressed, he didn’t think there would be much of that, either.
In the kitchen, Gerda shaved what she could salvage from the ham, chopping the surviving sausage finely to make it appear more. She added sauerkraut and bread, then started mixing the coffee.
How dreadful he was, she thought. She nibbled her lip, sadly. Heinrich must be in serious trouble, to associate with a man like that. Would Heinrich be as scruffy and ugly? she wondered.
She hoped not. Heinrich had always been such a fine, upright man.
“The peacock strut of a gentleman officer,” she recalled Bormann once saying. How proud she’d been.
She arranged the meal carefully on a tray, laying everything upon tray-clothes. At least he would see how her husband was used to being treated. Kurnov stared at the food greedily, snatching at the bread before she had placed the tray on the low table before him, knocking some of the sausage from the plate. He crammed his mouth, gulping the food, ignoring the criticism in her face.
“There’s wine,” she offered.
He grunted, unable to talk.
She struggled with the cork. Heinrich would have opened it, she thought. Crumbs stuck in his throat and he coughed an ugly sound.
“How well do you know my husband?” she asked.
Sure of herself, she had always been able to conjure a demanding arrogance, remembered Kurnov. He was eating slower now, knowing he would have to control himself to digest the meal. He sipped the wine, arranging the story he had prepared while she was in the kitchen. It was perfect, he had decided.
“Very well,” he asserted, swallowing. “His best friend.”
The sausage tasted stale, he thought. And the ham was dry, too.
“How …?”
“Poor Heinrich,” said Kurnov, surely. “He’s suffered very badly. Very badly indeed.”
Immediately Gerda’s attitude faltered, as he had known it would.
“Tell me …”
“At the end we were captured, a group of us, by the Russians …”
“Did they discover what …?”
“No,” said Kurnov, immediately. “No, we managed to get away from the camp so there was no link. There were months of being moved from camp to camp. They never bothered with a trial or anything like that. They just used us all as slaves …”
“Heinrich … a slave?” She shuddered.
Kurnov nodded, happy at the effect his story was having.
“We’ve been shuttled everywhere, over the years. East Germany first, then Poland … even the Ukraine …”
She sat heavily in a sagging chair opposite, head down. She was very near to tears, he thought.
“My poor darling,” she said, almost to herself.
“Then they began to break up the camps,” he continued, easily. “We were back in East Germany by then. Suddenly, for the first time in years, the authoriies started taking greater interest in our backgrounds … something to do with resettlement … official inquiries were opened …”
She looked up, concentrating. Her eyes were wet, he saw.
“It was obvious from the questions what was happening. And that, after all these years, there was a risk of our being exposed. Thank God the camp was on the point of disbandment. Security was lax …”
“So you escaped?”
Kurnov nodded and Gerda smiled. That sounded like Heinrich. No matter how much hardship or deprivation, his spirit would not have been broken.
“Tell me,” she prompted, smiling in anticipation of a story that would prove her husband’s courage.
Kurnov shook his head. A good liar told no more lies than were necessary. Thank God she was so stupid, he thought. The account didn’t sound as convincing as he had planned.
“It’s too long,” he avoided. “Perhaps tomorrow.”
“But where is he?”
Kurnov sighed. She was so malleable, she would accept anything, he decided.
“Still behind the Wall,” he announced.
Her face contorted angrily, and the words burst out.
“Why? Why didn’t you bring him with you? He could be caught, imprisoned again …”
He raised the limp hand, trying to quieten her.
“No,” he said. “No, he’s quite safe.”
She shook her head, refusing the assurance.
“Heinrich is frightened he would be recognized, even after all these years,” said Kurnov. Still she looked unsure.
“He’s actually safer, where he is. He sent me across to contact the Party … we had addresses …” he added.
“But not the name of Herr Muntz?” she intoned, suddenly suspicious.
“Is it likely that we would be provided with the identity of the leaders, until we had been thoroughly checked?” he fenced, easily. She nodded, satisfied.
“When can he come across?” she asked.
Kurnov shrugged, his eyes closing despite the conscious effort to stay awake.
“Herr Muntz,” declared Gerda, positively. “He’ll know what to do. I’ll to go Herr Muntz, immediately.”
“No,” Kurnov jerked awake, nervously. He’d handled it badly, he thought.
“Please … a moment …” he faltered on. “I need rest. I cannot answer the questions they would want satisfied now. I’ve spent three days, without sleep or food, trying to reach here to help Heinrich. Let me rest, a few hours. A bath, perhaps …”
“I’ll tell Herr Muntz not to come for several hours,” offered Gerda.
“Do you think they could wait, knowing one of the heroes of the Third Reich was so near?”
He was putting forward a poor argument, he knew, but it was impossible to assemble his thoughts. She was looking at him uncertainly, unsettled by his attitude. Soon doubts would begin. She offered more wine and he accepted, even though it would accelerate the sleep that was washing over him.
“Heinrich and I devised a plan,” he ad-libbed, desperately. “We didn’t know how long it was going to take for me to make contact. He isn’t going to appear at the meeting point for another three days. It would be pointless, contacting Herr Muntz tonight. We could achieve nothing.”
It was a vacuous argument, he accepted. The sudden change in the woman’s attitude disturbed him. It wasn’t going to be so easy after all.
“Who are you?” she asked abruptly.
Man Who Wanted Tomorrow Page 21