by Len Deighton
‘Gloria is worried?’
‘You’re not looking your best, Bernard. Surely other people have mentioned it to you?’
‘No, they haven’t.’
‘Don’t get snotty. You’re looking bloody rotten if you want to hear the truth of it. Gloria thinks you should see the doctor and I agree with her.’
‘See a doctor? What am I supposed to be suffering from?’
‘Stress can do strange things, Bernard. You’re probably overworked…I don’t know. But you’re damned jumpy and suspicious all the time. And apart from that you don’t look well.’
‘I’m one hundred per cent,’ I said.
‘My man in Harley Street is really wonderful, Bernard. Would you go and let him give you a check-up: as a personal favour to me.’
‘I do believe you’re serious.’
‘Of course I am. And I promised Gloria to talk to you.’
‘I’ll think about it.’
‘No. Say you’ll go. I’ll make the appointment.’
‘I said I’d think about it.’
‘I’ll phone you next week. I’m going to keep on at you until you go.’
‘For God’s sake, Tessa.’ Then, realizing that I was being inappropriately rude, I gave her a kiss on the cheek. What I didn’t tell her was that even a routine check-up like that would have to be reported to the Department. I didn’t want anyone there asking if I was sick. All kinds of complications would follow. They were just looking for an excuse to put me on the shelf.
I saw Joppi again. He was a skilful dancer and Gloria was loving every moment. She gave no sign of thinking that the prince should go and see a doctor. As they went gliding round the floor I regretted that I hadn’t made more effort at Frau Brand’s dancing classes back in Uhlandstrasse when I was twelve years old. ‘And he’s a friend of George’s?’ I said.
‘Friend? George can’t stand him. George detests Germans; you know that, Bernard. He turned away the offer of a Mercedes agency. He won’t even buy a second-hand German car for resale.’
‘So why do you come here?’
‘Ita is one of my best friends. She’s a sweet girl. We go shopping together. And when it’s my turn to arrange one of my charity lunches, you’d be amazed how many of those ladies want to meet a princess.’
‘I was wondering when I could collect that fur coat,’ I said, having given up hope of being able to introduce the subject with more subtlety.
‘It was George who first met them,’ said Tessa. ‘He met Joppi at Mass; George always attends Mass, you know. You’d never guess that’s where they met would you?’
‘No, I wouldn’t have guessed that.’ I watched Joppi laughing with Gloria and hugging her as they danced together and said, ‘Perhaps you’d like to visit us out in the sticks, and have dinner one evening?’
‘We’d love that, Bernard my sweet. But please don’t say bring that bloody coat because the answer is no.’
‘It’s just that –’
‘Your Gloria is a nice girl. I don’t know her very well but from what I see of her I like her. And I like the way she worries about you: you’re a lucky man. But I’m not going to deliver Fiona’s fur coat for you to give to her. It’s just not on, Bernard. It’s wrong and I’m surprised you don’t see that.’
‘Come to dinner anyway,’ I said.
‘It’s almost summer,’ said Tessa.
‘Yes,’ I said as the music stopped.
‘Do look,’ said Tessa, her amused voice not concealing the malicious pleasure that coloured her view of the world. ‘He’s probably propositioning her now. He’ll invite her to go to Rome for the weekend, or to the penthouse they keep in New York. It must be very tempting.’
It was no use showing anger. No one was exempt from Tessa’s Schadenfreude. ‘It’s getting late,’ I said, ‘and I have to be up early tomorrow.’
Generously George insisted upon us going back to his Mayfair apartment for a nightcap. And then, leaving Gloria and Tessa to chat, he drove me back to collect the car near Dicky’s house. ‘That house of Joppi’s,’ said George suddenly. ‘It’s full of rot.’
‘Is it?’ I said.
‘I went upstairs to use the bathroom. My God! You should see the woodwork. And it’s established in the walls…the plaster. You didn’t notice?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘To get rid of that, the whole house will have to be gutted.’
‘Did you tell him?’
‘And be the bringer of bad news? No. Poor fellow. I couldn’t bring myself to spoil his evening.’
‘Didn’t he have it surveyed?’
‘He listened too much to that fancy architect – all stainless steel and indoor plants – I can’t stand those fellows.’
‘No chance of redress?’
‘Suing the builders, you mean? Compensation? No chance at all. They were right cowboys. Those people form a new company for every job, and go bust as soon as they are paid. Those people work like that.’
‘Poor Prince Joppi,’ I said.
‘Yes, poor devil,’ said George solemnly. Had Tessa not told me George’s real feelings, I might have thought he meant it. He was a good driver, careful, alert and considerate of other road users. When a young fellow in a dented Ford came roaring past him on the wrong side and gave a toot on the horn to reprimand George for driving too safely, George just pulled over and made more room for him.
‘Stupid bastard!’ I said angrily.
‘Perhaps he had a bad day,’ said George mildly. Sometimes I wondered whether it was his piety that provided him with such remarkable tolerance. If so, it was a convincing argument for Roman Catholicism. ‘You’re a man of the world, Bernard,’ said George suddenly.
I was about to give a flippant answer but I realized that George had something on his mind. So I grunted and said I would like to think so.
‘Any experience of drug addiction? Cocaine, heroin, that kind of thing?’
‘I’m not an expert.’
‘There’s a fellow hanging around Tessa…She was talking about drugs the other night, saying that there is a lot of nonsense talked about them, and I don’t doubt there is.’
George went silent. I said, ‘I’d better get this clear, George. You think this fellow is selling drugs to her?’
‘Yes, Bernard, I do think so,’ he said cautiously.
‘Give me his name and address.’
‘I don’t want to overreact,’ said George. ‘That could bring about the very thing I’m so anxious to avoid.’
‘There’s no harm in checking,’ I said. ‘I know good people who would give you some answers within a couple of days.’
‘Calls himself Bill Turton but I wouldn’t give too much importance to that. He’s a prosperous-looking American; not young.’ Having started to confide in me, he stopped and thought about it for a moment. ‘It wouldn’t be so easy, Bernard. He’s one of those people without a fixed address: hotels, clubs, rented places, one country to another. Never stays long anywhere.’
‘Is this what Tessa tells you?’
‘She invited him up for drinks the other evening. I didn’t like him at all. I could see he was charming and friendly and all that but I had an instinctive reaction.’
‘You may be worrying unnecessarily.’
‘He was there at the Joppis’ tonight.’
‘Was he?’ I was surprised and wished George had brought the matter up when there was an opportunity for me to see the man.
‘Always lots of that sort of muck available at the Joppis’. Did you go upstairs?’
‘Upstairs? No.’
‘One of the rooms upstairs…They think it’s very smart and sophisticated.’
‘I noticed that there was a mood…a sort of hysteria.’
‘Hysteria. Yes, that’s the word isn’t it? I can’t imagine how people can bear poisoning their own bloodstream with chemicals. Do you know that Tessa won’t eat processed food because of the chemical additives? And yet she…’
‘I’m
sorry, George.’
‘That’s why she wanted to go. Did you notice how animated she became?’
‘Not any more than usual. She’s always in high spirits, you know that, George.’
‘A big fellow: grey wavy hair and glasses.’
‘There were a lot of people like that,’ I said.
‘This fellow has a little rim beard and no moustache. Curious-looking cove.’
‘I didn’t see him,’ I said truthfully. It could have been a description of Mr Bart Johnson, but Bart Johnson was dead.
13
It was the morning after Prince Joppi’s party that I was walk ing along South Audley Street and bumped into Rolf Mauser. Rolf was about seventy years old, a wartime artillery captain who didn’t let anyone forget that he’d won the coveted Knight’s Cross. He was an unprincipled rogue but he had an engaging manner, and when he worked for my father, and later as the barman in Lisl’s hotel, I saw a lot of him. It was Rolf Mauser who’d shown me how to pick a lock and how to hold a playing card out of sight while shuffling the rest of the pack. When I was a child I’d been devoted to him and even though I’d long since seen him for what he really was I’d never completely shaken off some of that awe. Although for me Rolf had become an elderly figure of fun, underlying the fun there was something ruthless and frightening.
I was surprised to see him here in London, for the last I’d heard of him he’d settled down to live permanently in East Berlin.
‘You’re looking well, Rolf. What are you doing in London?’ He was a big fellow and wore one of those heavy brown leather overcoats with plenty of straps and buttons. Its tight fit made him look as if he was about to explode out of it. This impression of impending detonation was heightened by the rosiness of his cheeks and nose.
‘Bernd! Hello! I’m visiting my relatives. I have a cousin who lives in Luton.’
‘Where are you living nowadays?’ I asked.
He bent his head and touched his green loden hat as if to ease the constriction of its band, but it would be possible to read into this physical gesture a hint of apology. ‘I’m still in the East. When you get to my age, Bernd, you’re looking for peace and quiet. And what’s more it’s cheap.’
‘Still in the same apartment?’ He’d put me up there once. His apartment was large, comfortable but somewhat neglected, rather like Rolf himself.
‘Prenzlauer Berg, yes. Fifty-five marks a month! The rent of my apartment is the same now as it was twenty-five years ago. Can you say that about any apartment in the West?’
‘No.’
He lowered his bushy eyebrows and defensively added, ‘Sometimes there are shortages: but basic foodstuffs – bread, milk, meat and eggs – are cheap. So are restaurant meals, and fares and theatres and concerts. I’m comfortable in the East, Bernd. Very comfortable.’ It sounded like a little speech he’d rehearsed.
‘And a little money goes a long way over there,’ I said.
His face stiffened. Mauser had worked for the Department and was probably in receipt of some small pension through the good offices of Schneider, von Schild und Weber, the bank which discreetly handled such delicate financial affairs in Berlin. Social security payments for the old – unlike almost all other types of benefit – are not high in the DDR. Only a dedicated cynic like Rolf could be extolling, even to me, the wonders of this regime under which he’d chosen to retire, while he was largely living on the proceeds of the pension he’d got from trying to overthrow it. ‘That’s what I was saying, isn’t it?’
‘It’s good to see you, Rolf.’
‘So I have to line up for groceries and meat sometimes: I don’t mind lining up. I have time to spare. And when I walk home from the shops I don’t have to worry about being burgled or mugged.’
‘You’re lucky. Where are you going?’
‘Yes, I am lucky,’ he asserted as if he wasn’t quite sure of my sincerity. ‘No matter how tough they are with the youngsters, old fellows like me can come and go as we like. I don’t have to climb over the Wall, Bernd.’ He grinned.
If I knew anything about Rolf Mauser – and I knew quite a lot – he would never see eye to eye with any socialist regime. He was a rebellious loner. The Communists, like the Nazis and indeed the Church, had always welcomed converts to their cause but it was difficult to imagine Mauser acquiring sozialistisches Staatsbewusstsein, that unquestioning en thusiasm for the regime that the DDR expects of its citizens. Mauser was a pragmatist and a self-centred one at that. Long, long ago I’d heard my father describe Rolf Mauser as the sort of arrogant, bellicose German who earned for his race the civilized world’s contempt. Calmly my mother had asked him why he went on employing him; because he’ll do things no one else will even attempt, replied my father.
‘Come and have coffee?’ I suggested. I guessed that he would be very short of hard currency, and casual cups of coffee are one of the first things such indigents sacrifice.
‘I’d like that, Bernd. That’s the one thing I can’t get at a reasonable price. Luckily my son sends me a packet every month. I can’t live without a cup of good coffee in the morning.’
There was a smart little coffee house nearby and we walked there quickly with Rolf complaining at great length about the weather. ‘It gets right into my bones,’ he said as we sat down. It was the dampness, of course. Rolf, like most Berliners, found the marginally warmer English climate poor compensation for the penetrating chilly moisture that most natives don’t even notice.
The coffee house was a chintzy place that I knew well. I used to have coffee here with Fiona when we worked in a nearby office. That was before we were married. I ordered a big pot of coffee before we found a table. It was the best way to get things moving.
‘How is Axel? I haven’t seen him for a long time.’ I was at school with Mauser’s son. At one time we’d been close friends.
‘They live in a nice house in Hermsdorf but his marriage is not too smooth. Ever since that wife of his got that wonderful job and started earning big money she’s become a monster.’ He shrugged and reached for a Danish pastry.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Work work work that’s all she thinks about. She’s a career woman,’ he said contemptuously. ‘But Axel won’t hear a word against her. I don’t see the attraction she has for him. He needs a real woman.’ I’d heard Rolf railing against his daughter-in-law for many long years. The way he spoke of her you wouldn’t think the marriage had lasted a couple of decades and that they had a teenage son.
‘Axel was one of the brightest boys in the school,’ I said. Rolf had always been smug about the way Axel was consist ently top of the class. He especially liked to tell my father that Axel had done better than I had.
He tore the wrapping from a sugar cube. There was a ferocity – if not to say malignity – to everything he did. Hellos, goodbyes, even thank-yous were a part of this belligerent spirit. I wondered if it was a pose he’d cultivated to maintain his authority as a young army officer, a pose that eventually devoured his true nature. ‘And now he’s working as a clerk in the Polizeipräsidium. I know, it’s a waste of a good brain, but he won’t listen to me.’ He tossed the sugar into his coffee.
‘I suppose he’s worried about his son.’
‘His son? What is there to worry about?’
‘I didn’t mean that,’ I said. ‘I meant that Axel probably works hard to keep his marriage going so that his son has a mother and father and a settled home life.’
‘Nonsense!’ said Rolf Mauser. He chewed his pastry, his mouth moving as if in anger.
‘Axel loves the boy,’ I said. ‘I remember how he assembled a racing bicycle for him. He put it together with such loving care.’
‘I know, I know. The kid had an accident: some fool in a Porsche: broke his leg; kept driving, didn’t stop. He’d had a few drinks, I suppose. Axel blamed himself. That’s stupid isn’t it?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. In fact, of course, most fathers would have felt equally guilty. It was only rough
necks like old Rolf who saw things in such a simplistic light. I suppose it was the war. I remember Rolf telling stories about the last days of the Berlin fighting. Hauptmann Rolf had been sent off on patrol with a ‘flying court martial’ and they summarily executed anyone on the street who couldn’t give a proper account of himself. They shot him there and then and hanged the body in full view with a sign saying ‘I deserted my post’. Axel had said he couldn’t imagine his father doing such things but I saw Rolf in a different light. I knew that Rolf could be a cold-blooded killer if he thought it necessary.
Perhaps my thinking was communicated to him, but if so it arrived in a distorted form, for he said, ‘If Axel had served in the army he might have kept a better sense of proportion.’
‘Is that what the army gave you, Rolf?’
He furrowed his brow, his eyebrows bristling so that he looked ferocious. I remembered being frightened of such grimaces when I was a child. ‘Ever dream, Bernd?’
‘Of being rich, or a film star?’ I knew what he meant of course but I couldn’t resist jollying him along. The fact was that I didn’t want to hear his dreams; I didn’t want to hear anyone’s dreams. I had enough of my own.
‘I don’t sleep so well nowadays. I went to the doctor; he said it was my age. Stupid little schlemiel.’ He leaned forward. ‘I always dream about my time in the army, Bernd. I remember things I haven’t thought of for years. And such detail! I got command of a self-propelled artillery battery when the battalion was out of the line. My battery commander went down with some kind of fever, I didn’t know you could get fever in the middle of a Russian winter but I learned a lot in Russia. It was Christmas and we were refitting in Krasnograd. Ever heard of Krasnograd?’
‘I don’t believe I have,’ I said.
‘A God-forsaken dump in the middle of nowhere. But there were trees; a lot of trees considering that the region had been fought through. The men liked the trees, it reminded them of home. Heavy snow and wooded country side: with an effort of imagination it could almost have been the homeland. The peasants remained there of course, they always did. Russian peasants would sooner die than leave their village, they were all like that. I couldn’t understand it. Then, in the middle of my daily bowl of pea soup – that powdered muck, but the cook had found some ancient potatoes to go into it – the signals lieutenant came back from headquarters and told me that the battery was mine. Wow! Did that soup suddenly taste good!’
