by Paul Colize
He remembered people screaming. He remembered the murderers exhorting their comrades to fight. He heard the agonised groans of the victims as they lay dying.
His story was long and painful.
I asked him if he had any idea what might have sparked the violence. He did not. One question led to another, and I steered him to the clue I had picked up. I asked if he remembered what record he was playing when the attacks began. He couldn’t remember. After a moment, he looked up, stared defiantly at me and asked why I wanted to know. I replied that it was something that had just occurred to me, nothing more.
Prompted by the question, he recalled a simple, harmless incident. A punter had sought him out during the evening, handed him a record in a metal case and asked him to play it. The sort of thing that happened all the time. As a rule, it was the regulars who put in requests, but he had never seen this man before.
As always, he listened to a few bars on his headphones, to make sure the request wasn’t a joke. The brief snatch he heard was fine; it was a decent rock track. He thought the fighting had probably broken out while that record was playing.
We sat in silence, pondering the implications of what he had told me.
Without knowing it, I had begun the long, grim hike into the darkness that engulfs me still, today.
I had witnessed the aftermath of a dress rehearsal. The worst was yet to come. But nothing could have been further from my mind.
Just as I was leaving the bistro, a man walked in. He wore the gaunt expression of a person who has reached the end of the line. People knew him: he was a local police officer. All day long, as a representative of the German authorities, he had witnessed the assailants – mostly American soldiers – being questioned by the military police.
Their reactions left him baffled. Most seemed completely unaware of the gravity of their actions.
Asked what motive had driven them to murder, most had given the same, enigmatic answer: the call of duty.
59: THAT ENDLESS FINAL CHORD
I was awake all night. I wandered the streets of Ramstein like a stray dog. I went from one bar to the next, drinking glass after glass and trying to listen in on the conversations around me. When each bar closed, I left and followed the silhouettes wandering in the semi-darkness, in search of the last bistro to close, or the first to re-open.
Early next morning, I returned to the station and bought a ticket for Berlin. I wanted to find out what the members of Pearl Harbor had set in motion, with their recording.
The journey took a full day. I changed trains in Mannheim, and again in Hanover. My appearance intrigued the authorities. Time and again, I was asked to present my papers and answer a string of questions.
I showed my ID so frequently, I became convinced of its authenticity. Even the most diligent police officers seemed reassured.
I reached Berlin early that evening. I was hungry. I was suffering the effects of my sleepless night. I had spent half my money and made do with a hunk of bread and a sausage from a street stall.
I went to the Yoyo bar. This time, the boss seemed in a good mood. He had a full house, the room was packed and punters were elbowing one another to the bar.
On stage, the resident group were on fire, thrashing and writhing and making some great noise.
I fought my way to the bar, ordered a beer and signalled to the boss. He nodded and carried on dashing from one end of the bar to the other. I waited a good while before he granted me his full attention.
He asked what I wanted. I hollered over the din: I wanted to contact the guys from Pearl Harbor.
A few days after being fired, Larry Finch, the bassist, had been found dead at the bottom of the pool in a luxury hotel near Palma de Mallorca. He had died of excess alcohol and dope.
The next day, Steve Parker, one of the guitarists, had put a bullet through his own head in a hotel room in Hamburg.
A few hours after that, Jim Ruskin, the other guitarist – the one who had given me the LSD – had been crushed under a train in the U-Bahn at Thielplatz station.
Lastly, the drummer Paul McDonald had thrown himself from the fifth floor of a hotel in London, one week later.
The police had come asking questions at the Yoyo bar, but there was nothing he could tell them. The deaths had occurred quickly, one after the other, but the police had been unable to establish any connection between them. They had completed their routine enquiry by closing the case on Jim Ruskin.
The Yoyo bar’s boss said my visit was a coincidence. Just a few days before, he had taken a call from a man by the name of West, an English detective hired by Steve Parker’s family to open an investigation into their son’s suicide. The boss looked sceptical. He reckoned Steve Parker’s parents were trying to clear their own consciences by advancing a classic conspiracy theory. There was nothing suspicious about the series of deaths, as far as he was concerned. The guys were crackpot alcoholic junkies, dedicated to abusing themselves and every substance known to man, right down the line.
Before returning to his clamouring clientele, he asked why I was looking for them. I told him I’d lent the group some equipment. But my story was unconvincing. I was too disturbed by what I had just heard. The boss clearly didn’t believe a word I said, though this didn’t seem to bother him in the least.
I got out of the Yoyo bar fast. I hardly knew where I was. My head was spinning. My stomach heaved with an inrush of fear.
I couldn’t believe the deaths were a coincidence, or some appalling example of the law of series. My intuition told me there was a connection between the domino deaths and that stormy night of March the fourteenth.
The more I thought about it, the more the certainty gnawed. I should have been dead by now. My unplanned return to the studio had sparked this carnage. I was responsible for the deaths of four men.
I found Gunther at the Graffiti. He was surprised to see me. He had put on still more weight. The place was jumping, but he was as unsmiling as ever. The crowd were going wild but the group that had replaced the Frames were musical midgets by comparison.
During our many conversations, Gunther had explained that the fervour that seemed to grip West Berlin was connected to the unique situation in which the population found itself. On the other side of the Wall, Soviet tanks were preparing to invade the city, and the whole of Europe after that. It was a matter of weeks, days, hours. Everybody knew it, and wanted to make the most of their last moments of freedom.
Gunther had predicted the Soviet invasion would take place on the day of the inauguration of the Television Tower, one of the few attractions in East Berlin that could be seen from the West.
The East German authorities were building a gigantic tower, rising to a height of over 350 metres: the tallest watchtower in East Berlin. Gunther said it was planned as a symbol of Soviet supremacy that would afford the Communist authorities a panoramic view of the reunited city.
He offered me a drink and I told him about the tragic fate of the members of Pearl Harbor. I told him I was convinced that what I had witnessed after the recording was somehow the cause of it all.
He thought for a moment. There were things on certain tracks, he said. You couldn’t hear them, but they were there.
I had no idea what he was talking about. He asked if I had heard the Beatles’ latest album. I said I had. I wasn’t really a fan, but I could see Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was a major piece of work. It had been selling like hot cakes since its recent release, and was playing continuously at the record shop.
Gunther suggested I listen carefully to the last track on side B, the already famous song ‘A Day in the Life’. The cacophonous, symphonic ending had sparked widespread comment, most of it wild approval.
I should listen through to the very end, he said, to the very last seconds, and carry on listening beyond that endless final chord.
60: IN GREAT DISTRESS
Dominique had been turning X Midi’s strange message over and over in his mind for days. He
tried several times to communicate with his patient, in hopes of obtaining further information, but without success.
Was he experiencing pain in one of his hands?
Did he want to make use of some object?
Perhaps feed himself?
Would he like someone to hold his hand?
Dominique scrutinised X Midi’s medical notes.
No mention of a scar or injury to either hand. But he noticed that the man had reacted when he was addressed in English during the initial tests at Saint Pierre.
Could he have spelled out an English word?
‘Main’? Dominique pondered the possibility for a moment, but quickly dismissed it as unhelpful. He read through the notes one last time, but could find nothing likely to shed any further light on the matter.
The medical notes weren’t exhaustive, however. Dominique knew that. In the first week of January, he contacted the team at Saint-Pierre Hospital and asked to speak to whoever had taken charge of X Midi when he was admitted.
The usual administrative barriers held firm, but he pushed hard and eventually obtained a vague promise that one of the care staff on duty at the time would call him back as soon as possible.
Then silence. Dominique decided to take a trip to Brussels, on a day off.
On Thursday, January the thirteenth, he walked into the admissions service at Saint-Pierre Hospital and asked to speak to a fellow physio.
After half an hour, a young colleague appeared. She listened and agreed to help.
The physio took Dominique to the emergency service, where they found a nurse who remembered X Midi.
She described some letters and numbers on one of his hands, but had no idea what they meant. The information had been passed to the police, however, and the details had been recorded in their report.
Dominique went straight to the relevant precinct, on Rue Marché au Charbon, near the hospital.
He held out no great hope, but was surprised to be greeted warmly by the officer in charge: Gérard Jacobs, a man in his early fifties, with a fine moustache and a gravelly voice.
Dominique explained what he was after, and Jacobs gave him immediate access to the report, including a note to the effect that X Midi’s left hand bore a series of letters and numbers: A20P7. The officer informed him that a group of IT specialists and a codebreaker had analysed the formula but had been unable to clarify its meaning. He passed Dominique the information held in the file, and noted that the police’s various attempts to identify the man had ended in failure.
Dominique promised he would pass on anything he turned up.
Next day, Dominique hurried along the corridor and burst into X Midi’s room.
His patient eyed him with curiosity.
Dominique sat himself on the bed.
‘A20P7.’
The man closed his eyes. They were blurred with tears.
‘That’s what you wanted me to find out, wasn’t it? Are you ready to tell me anything more?’
X Midi seemed to hesitate for a few moments, then blinked once.
Dominique walked over to the cupboard and brought out the alphabet board.
‘Remember? You remember how this works?’
The man indicated that he did.
Dominique placed the board in full view and gave X Midi a few minutes to take it in.
‘All set?’
The man continued staring at the board.
‘Vowel?’
No reaction.
‘So it’s a consonant! S? T? N? R? L? D? C?’
The man blinked.
‘C? Okay! That’s your first letter. Vowel?’
The man seemed unsure.
‘Vowel?’
He blinked.
‘E?’
Yes.
‘CE. Got it.’
The man closed his eyes and kept them shut. The exercise was exhausting. He remained motionless for some minutes, then opened his eyes once more.
Dominique started over, immediately.
‘Shall we carry on? Vowel? No? Okay. S? T? N? R? L? D? C? P? M? Okay! M is your third letter. CEM?’
Again, the man closed his eyes.
Dominique sensed he was closing himself off once more. He bent down and took X Midi’s hand.
‘You must help me, my friend. I don’t know any French words beginning with CEM. Do you want to help?’
The man seemed to have dozed off.
Dominique waited a few minutes more, motionless at the foot of the bed, holding the alphabet board.
At length, X Midi opened his eyes.
‘Shall we carry on with the word?’
X Midi showed no reaction.
‘Do you want to try a new word?’
Yes.
‘Vowel? No? Consonant.’
They went as far as the letter X.
‘You’re sure? X? CEM X?’
The man blinked.
Dominique battled on.
‘Vowel?’
X Midi broke into a sweat.
‘Consonant?’
Dominique launched into the sequence of vowels. The man stopped him at the letter L.
‘CEM XL?’
Yes. X Midi closed his eyes and kept them shut.
Dominique bathed his eyes, speaking softly.
‘CEM XL. Is that all?’
Slowly, X Midi opened his eyes once more. And Dominique saw he was in great distress.
61: THE POWER TO END MY OWN LIFE
I won’t communicate any further with the rest of the world. These exercises demand a superhuman effort on my part. I have read so many, many books, but now I can barely construct the simplest word. Consonants and vowels fight it out, relentlessly.
They have achieved their goal. I am reduced to silence. I am no longer a threat. My story will sink into oblivion forever.
They can find me now. It doesn’t matter. I must fulfil my self-imposed duty, the reason I stayed alive through all those years on the run.
I could have departed in peace if they had not robbed me of my last freedom, the power to end my own life.
62: IN HIS NOTEBOOK
When Michael Stern learned that his student helper Hilde Bachmann had found a promising lead, he raced to the telephone and booked a flight to Berlin.
It was almost the weekend, and his trip would pass unnoticed. Stern’s obstinate pursuit of his investigation had irritated his editor-in-chief. His boss had asked recently if he had indeed closed the case, and Stern had replied in the affirmative.
Since when, a portion of Stern’s own money had been sunk into his ongoing enquiries, with no proof to date of a single motive connecting the band members’ deaths.
His wife was becoming annoyed, too. After hiring two students to make hundreds of international calls from their home phone, her husband had left for Berlin to continue the investigation himself, paid for out of their own savings.
He seemed nervous and irascible lately. He was becoming obsessed with the whole business.
Michael Stern stepped off the plane at Tempelhof on Saturday, November the twenty-fifth, 1967, in the middle of the afternoon. He took a taxi, swung by his hotel and headed for the Viktoria Bar.
Fred Weiss remembered the telephone call that evening in March. The man who called had sounded frantic, under pressure. He had been looking for a musician as back-up for the same evening. He knew the Viktoria had a resident rock band, and wanted to hire the drummer.
The call had come through towards midnight; the place had been in full swing, with a packed house. Weiss had refused to call the session to a halt and send the drummer over. The man on the line had insisted and offered enough money to make him change his mind, but he had stood his ground.
That was when he had remembered one of his regular clients. A Canadian guy who said he was staying in Berlin while his girlfriend sang in a group. He was a drummer. He had let it be known he was available for temporary bookings, and left his card.
The man on the line was impatient, and Weiss couldn’t find
where he had left the card. He asked the man to leave a number, promising that he would contact the drummer, and get him to call.
Weiss confided that this was more a tactic to get the man off his back than a favour to his customer, who only called in occasionally, and who he found odd and not particularly pleasant.
The drummer had come by to thank him, next day. He said the evening had gone well. This was how Weiss knew the back-up gig had taken place.
Stern asked if Weiss had kept the drummer’s calling-card. Weiss wasn’t sure. There were dozens of cards pinned up over the bar. Stern insisted. Weiss studied them, frowning. Finally, he took one down and handed it to Stern. It was succinct and to the point:
Jacques Berger
Drummer – Batteur
A telephone number had been pencilled on the back.
Weiss said that was the number he had dialled. The call had gone through to a club whose name he couldn’t remember. He had spoken to one of the barmen. By chance, the drummer was in that night. He had given him the caller’s telephone number, thrown away the piece of paper on which it was noted and hung up.
Michael Stern placed a twenty-mark note on the bar and asked Weiss to call the club where Jacques Berger had been drinking that night.
Reluctantly, Weiss did as he was asked.
Stern hurried straight over to the Graffiti, arriving there at about 7:00p.m.
He went first to the restaurant, where he spoke to the waiters, trying to make himself understood as best he could. No one knew who or what he was talking about. One of the men directed him to the night club on the first floor.
The place was busy, already. A loud rock group were making heavy work of it onstage. The rest of the room was in semi-darkness.
Stern spoke to one of the bartenders, ordered a drink and asked if Jacques Berger was in.
The man didn’t know any Jacques Berger. He spoke a little English, so Stern gave him a few more details. The bartender said Berger was most likely Mary’s boyfriend. She was the lead singer with the Frames, an English group who had played there at the beginning of the year. They had left Berlin a few months ago.
