by John Lawton
“Then I’m surprised you still handle their account. But they must have been very useful to your Company over the years.”
Wilderness, in his own mind, had put a capital C and italics on Company—and Frank had clearly heard.
“You can drop the sarcasm. Didn’t I already say I’ll do it? This is for Nell—that’s the only reason, right?”
“Yes. Be in Berlin the day after tomorrow. A Schieber meeting.”
“OK. I get it.”
§205
It said something about the conflict Eddie felt between his very vocal complaints and his oft-silent loyalty that they were on a plane over the Irish Sea before he said, “Why do you need me in Dublin?”
“I can talk Bernard into this. He may not take much convincing, but if he’s left alone … it’s his nature to look at things from half a dozen different angles, like a threepenny bit, and that’s the precursor to worry. So we won’t leave him alone. I need to be in Berlin. I don’t want Bernard in Berlin until the last minute. If the Russians get preemptive and try a snatch we’ll have nothing to trade. It’s not as if they’d have any difficulty finding him in Berlin. So you sit with him—in Dublin.”
“I’d be his minder?”
“Yes. Keep him occupied. He likes a game of chess. You like a game of chess. That ought to work. He’s hard to beat, by the bye.”
Eddie just said, “A threepenny bit has twelve sides.”
§206
Dublin
Wilderness checked them both into the Shelbourne.
Then he called Bernard Alleyn.
“Pawn to Queen’s Bishop 2.”
“Ah … you’re back. Another language or a refresher course?”
“Neither. I’m here to see you.”
“OK. Hmmmm … How about lunch tomorrow?”
“I’d prefer tonight.”
“Tonight? Alright. It’ll be after nine. You’re in Duke Street?”
“No, I’m at the Shelbourne. Room 202.”
Nothing in Bernard’s words conveyed a hint of suspicion. Innocence or training? The guileless guile of a man who’d lived a double life for twelve years and surely suspected everyone and everything.
When they’d rung off, Wilderness said to Eddie, “When he gets here give it thirty seconds of polite and chummy, then lose yourself for an hour.”
“Glad to, but I’ve never been to Dublin before.”
“This is Ireland Ed—Dublin—there’s a pub every twenty yards. Or have you changed the habit of a lifetime?”
§207
“I want you to come back to Berlin with me. To the Glienicke Bridge.”
Bernard nodded. Much the same as he did when he watched Joe make a poor judgement in chess. If he felt shock or surprise it lurked well below the surface.
“I see,” he said, and Wilderness was quite certain he didn’t.
“I wouldn’t ask if there were any other way. A West German was arrested just outside Dresden a few days ago—smuggling a wanted Czech dissident into the West. I’ve talked to the Russians, who’ve taken this out of the hands of the East Germans, and struck a deal or the makings of a deal. They’ll trade the German for you. And … I didn’t offer. They asked.”
“For me? They asked for me. Not just any old has-been spy?”
“For you. They asked for Bernard Alleyn, but they meant Leonid L’vovich Liubimov.”
“I see,” Bernard said again.
“I wouldn’t ask—”
“Yes, yes … I know, you just told me that. This must be very important.”
“It’s … vital.”
“Literally so? Vital as in a matter concerning life and hence concerning death?”
“Yes.”
“My death?”
“That’s not my intention. For one thing, I’ll be in the line of fire too.”
“Well … If I must die on the Glienicke Bridge with a Russian bullet in me … I could not choose better company. But why would either of us choose to die? For what would we be risking death? For Germany? East or West? For a matter of state? Another shuffle on the Cold War’s chessboard. Knight takes pawn, bishop takes knight. Does any of it matter more than that? Are affairs of state so important to either of us anymore? East Germans arrest a West German. Charges of spying or subversion will be bandied around. Someone goes to prison. Someone gets ransomed. If not for me then for someone else. Does it, any of it, have any impact on us? We’re in Ireland, Joe. It’s not John Bull’s other island anymore. It is, mercifully, a country of no significance on the world stage whatsoever. As far as the Cold War extends, we might as well be in Laputa or Brobdingnag. And yet you think we should risk everything for the life of one man?”
“It’s a woman. I’m doing this for a woman.”
“She must be a very important woman.”
“The most important woman in my life … after my wife, that is.”
“Ah,” a touch of incredulity. “Surely not your mother?”
“No. My mother died hunched over a gin and lime in an East End boozer almost thirty years ago. She left me to fend for myself. I wouldn’t lift a finger if it were her in this mess.”
“But she died.”
“And in dying, left me.”
A flicker of something surfacing in Bernard.
“My mother left me. My mother left me and she did not die. It would have been easier for me to understand if she had died.”
“You never talk about your mother. Do you really want to talk about your mother?”
“Of course not. We should talk about the woman we are to rescue. You haven’t yet said who she is, and I can only assume you want to know I’m on board before you do tell me.”
“It’s Nell. Nell Burkhardt.”
“Oh my God.”
Bernard had required not a moment to remember. Nell had sprung his memory open like a jack-in-the-box.
“Of course,” he said. “We must. I understand. Really, I understand.”
“You’d trade yourself for Nell?”
“My life is a series of ragged ends, ten years in tatters. Who knows? Going back might gather up the threads. I have almost nothing to lose. Kate despises me, my girls will soon be at universities in England—the one place I dare not visit. Who knows why Russia wants me back? A quick trip to a gulag, a long day with Ivan Denisovich—or the Order of Lenin. If you think we can save Nell …”
“Thank you, Bernard. I can’t do this without you. But I’ve no intention of handing you over.”
“Then … what? What is the trade? What happens at Glienicke?”
“What happens is that the other side gets a look at you and knows it’s you. Just enough for them to think we’ll trade.”
Wilderness flipped open his briefcase. Laid a Walther PPK-L 7.65 on the bedspread.
“If it gets tricky we may have to shoot our way out. In fact, I’m damn certain we’ll have to. Just try not to shoot me or Nell. Every other bugger is fair game.”
Bernard picked up the gun.
“You do know how to use one?” Wilderness said.
Bernard felt the weight in his hand.
“Hmm … Lighter than they used to be.”
Flicked out the magazine.
Looked at it.
Pushed it back in.
“I’m a trained agent, Joe. Just like you. But I haven’t fired a gun in … oh hell … twenty-three years. Do the hand and the eye forget?”
“No idea. I’ve never given mine the chance to forget. But, times move on. If we get close enough I can kill an apparatchik with a Barclaycard.”
“Whatever that is.”
Bernard took aim at a vase of dried flowers perched upon the mantelpiece. Wilderness was reassured to note that his hand was rock-steady.
“Now,” Bernard said. “Tell me you have a plan B.”
§208
Hampstead, London
There was, it turned out, a worse feeling than being homeless in your hometown. It was sitting in a caff only yards from your own fro
nt door, waiting for your wife to go out to a coffee morning or some such, so you could sneak into your own home like a burglar.
He sat in Il Barrino on the corner of Perrin’s Lane, where he’d a good view of anyone coming out of Perrin’s Walk. He’d been there about twenty minutes when, right on time, Judy appeared with the twins in their double pushchair—Molly chattering away, Joan looking at everything as though directing her first film.
They turned left up Heath Street and left again into Church Row.
11:00 a.m. Coffee with Lucinda Troy, sister-in-law of the Troy in Prague. Judy would be there an hour at least.
The cistern on the upstairs loo came off the wall easily enough. Inside the little safe was his entire stash from the Finnish rackets, a few hundred in white fivers, about five hundred dollars acquired in various dodgy deals he’d rather his wife never knew about, another clutch of passports from half a dozen countries in half a dozen names but all bearing his photograph, and the Baby Browning with which he’d killed the KGB agent in Vienna. He left the gun. He left the sterling—his once-upon-a-time, running-away-from-home fund. He’d never run away from home. Until now.
He was in and out of the house in less than twenty minutes—all bathroom fittings back in place. He’d swept up the dust, mopped up the small splashes of water with his handkerchief—Irish linen, a real honker of a hanky, a red J embroidered in one corner, a Christmas gift from his mother-in-law. He dropped it in a bin in Heath Street. And then—and then … temptation struck and nailed him to a chair in the corner caff. Rationality and irrationality went mano a mano inside his head. He wanted to see Judy come home. He wanted to see his girls come home.
Three-quarters of an hour later they did. On the opposite side of the street, moving slowly as the girls peered in every shop window from patisserie to estate agent.
Joan was still looking around. Her eyes turned to the caff, and to him. Then her hand came up, pointing at him. She said something—her vocabulary was huge but her pronunciation could still be babyish. She might have said “Daddy,” she might not.
All the same, Judy tucked her into the pushchair, folded her arms back into the blanket, and Wilderness was pretty certain her lips had said, “It’s rude to point.”
Then they rounded the corner into Perrin’s Walk and vanished from his sight.
§209
Wilmersdorf, Berlin
“Who is this bitch?”
Frank was on the doorstep at Grünetümmlerstraße.
“Name’s Trudie. She has my old room on the top floor.”
“She wouldn’t let me in to see Erno. When you said Schiebers, I figured you meant to meet here.”
“I did. But—she’s appointed herself Erno’s guardian. Let me talk to her.”
As they climbed the stairs, Frank said to Wilderness’s back, “I mean, is Erno really that ill?”
Wilderness stopped, turned.
“He’s dying, Frank. Let’s not piss this woman off any more than we have to.”
The door was open. Trudie stood sentinel.
“You too?”
“Trust me,” Wilderness replied. “Erno does want to see us. We are old times to Erno. The last of old times.”
“I do not doubt you, but now is bad times.”
“I understand. I’ll come back later. We’ll both come back later.”
“And this is the wrong place for a meeting of your ‘Council of Criminals.’ ”
“What?”
“Not now, Frank. Just pipe down.”
“Fuck this. I have a suite at the Kempinski. We don’t need to duck and fuck like this. Council of Criminals, my ass!”
“I can’t go near the Kempinski. Nor can Ed, and Bernard sure as hell can’t. It’s always crawling with English spooks. All it takes is for just one of them to recognise one of us—”
“OK. OK. I get the picture.”
“The room I had at the Hotel Prignitz … we’d need to have Ed’s beer belly surgically removed to get him in there. I’ll get a better hotel for Eddie and Bernard somewhere we can all—”
“I said. I get it.”
“May I make a suggestion?”
They both looked at Trudie.
“For the last two weeks I have slept in this room. On the sofa. You wish to see Erno. I understand. I want peace for Erno. You will understand. Why don’t you take my room on the floor above? Little has changed since you lived there, Joe Holderness. Light the fire and do what you must.”
§210
The twins looked around the room. Wilderness had lit the fire. It was still scarcely better than freezing.
Rikki spoke.
Wilderness was not sure he’d ever heard Marti speak.
“I never thought I’d set foot in this room again.”
“You’re looking good Rikki. You both are.”
With their Crombie blue overcoats, their cashmere red scarves, their handmade shoes and their pigskin gloves.
“We prosper, Joe. Frank says you have a proposition for us.”
“I do. The Glienicke Bridge, Friday. I need back up.”
“You want someone killed?”
“Only if it all goes wrong.”
“And you think it might?”
“Yes. We’re exchanging prisoners. On the bridge, on the line. If it goes wrong, you’ll know. You can ignore any raised voices. I can handle shouting. But if there’s so much as a single shot, take out everyone on the other side except the woman.”
Rikki looked silently at his brother. If there was an exchange of meaning between the two, Wilderness could not see it.
“Who will be on the other side? East Germans?”
“Russians.”
“A moment if you would.”
The twins went into a huddle by the door. Wilderness could hear just Rikki’s whisper. If Marti was replying it was in nods and ticks.
Then they came back to face Frank and Wilderness.
“We … kill Germans.”
“I know.”
“If you want us to kill Russians the risk goes up and so does the price. It doubles.”
“From what to what?”
“A German would cost you a thousand pounds each—so four thousand sterling.”
Wilderness pointed to the black bag on the table.
“There’s about four grand in dollars, and the equivalent of about another three thousand dollars in Finnish markka. I don’t have any sterling and I have no way to get any. It’s a take-it-or-leave-it.”
“We take it.”
Rikki was literal. He had taken the bag and handed it to his brother before he’d reached the end of his very short sentence.
“Friday night? What time?”
“Midnight.”
“We’ll be ready. And, Frank—Langley still hasn’t paid us for von Pfeffel.”
“Guys, guys … not in front of the children.”
And Wilderness wanted to slap him.
When the twins had left, Frank said, “Three grand in Finnish moolah? You been running rackets I don’t know about?”
And Wilderness wanted to slap him.
§211
Wilderness booked a hotel for Eddie and Bernard, out of sight. Out of the over-populated, over-policed city centre—a Bismarck-era villa in Dahlem, once the home of a Berlin baron of industry or trade. Something the Nazis had confiscated from its owners, that the Americans had confiscated in turn and sold to the highest bidder.
He could have stayed there too. Waited for Eddie to arrive.
He didn’t.
Trudie had given him choice.
And temptation.
Lying on a rug, on the floor of his old room, under the eaves at Grünetümmlerstraße, listening/not listening to Berlin settle, it seemed to Wilderness that time was unwinding, that he was caught in its loosening spring, its cosmic clockwork, heading inexorably back to 1948 … 1947 … that trickster memory was playing with his ears. He could hear airfreighters dropping down to Tegel and Gatow, all those Lancasters and York
s, all those Douglas C-54s, keeping Berlin alive as Stalin’s grip tightened around it. Bread and beef and coal. Then he could hear Nell trying to make coffee as quietly as possible to avoid waking him—an effort that always failed. And then he could hear the heavy tread of Yuri Myshkin’s boots upon the stairs—for a small man he seemed incapable of the light touch.
He dragged the eiderdown off the bed. A pillow for his head. He couldn’t sleep in that bed. God knows, the mattress might have been changed half a dozen times in twenty years—it was the axe with four new handles and two new blades, but still the same axe. It was the same bed. He couldn’t sleep in that bed. Not without Nell.
§212
In the morning he went down to Erno’s. Trudie was raking hot ash out of the stove, red and pungent.
The coffee pot sat on top of the stove. Three china cups on the floor next to her.
“I heard you get up,” she said simply.
Then, “He’s asking for you.”
She poured. The smell of coffee conjured up thoughts and memories for Wilderness that were probably beyond her imagination. Two years spent as Schiebers, smuggling coffee. It seemed to him he had reeked of coffee, that his clothes had reeked of coffee, that his flat had reeked of coffee—as Nell had so often pointed out. Time’s spring unwound again for a moment.
“Take Erno’s cup in with you. He’s been awake for hours. Always with first light. It’s why he sleeps so much in the day.”
Erno was just about sitting up. Glasses on the end of his nose, reading yesterday’s Tagesspiegel.
“Did I hear Frank yesterday?”
“Yes. Sorry about that. It seems he’d like to see you.”
“And I him. If this is endgame, I’d like a sense of an ending.”
“Meaning?”
“A fond farewell, even to those of whom I was not particularly fond?”
“Well … I’ll bring him when this is over. Ed will be here in a couple of days. And Bernard Alleyn too.” Erno plucked the glasses off his nose.
