“Yes.”
“Give me a phone number and I’ll contact you. From where did you get the police car?”
“Their car park in a village up the road.”
“Take it back before it’s missed. Go on then,” as Schmidt just looked at him.
“Will you help me?”
“I will speak to you later.”
Schmidt got into the car, drove off and Daniel looked at the other man. “Get a couple of injuries,” he said.
“Pardon?”
Daniel pulled up his sleeve and wiped the blood from his face. “You were in an accident. Remember? Scrape your arms or something, maybe even your leg. I am sure you know how to do that.”
The man did as he was told while Daniel walked over to his car. Was he an idiot or something, he thought. He had no obligation to help Schmidt and what the man had done here was criminal. Daniel could have been killed. As he bent to look inside the car sirens hit the air. Two police cars, an ambulance. They drew parallel. Daniel straightened.
Two policemen alighted from each car. “Are you alright, sir?” one of them asked.
“Just a few abrasions,” Daniel replied.
“What happened?”
Fritz looked at Daniel before answering. “I did not see the car,” he said. “This is a blind corner.”
“You’re German, aren’t you?” the policeman said. “Can I see your licence?” Fritz held it out. “Are you used to driving in Great Britain?”
“I do it regularly,” Fritz replied. “It was the corner.”
The policeman looked at Daniel. “What do you think of this accident?” he asked.
“I’m not at all happy about it,” Daniel replied. “But it is a blind corner.”
“We will need you both at the police station and particularly you.” This time to Fritz. “Have you any injuries?”
None that were serious, Daniel replied, and the next hour was busy as both the car and truck were towed away after the area had been examined. Daniel refused the offer to go to the hospital. He had tetanus shots recently, he told the ambulance crew, but it would be good for the other driver to receive one.
They gave it to him where he was on his refusal to go with them and the police car took them to the police station. It was an hour before Daniel was able to leave and Fritz was still being questioned. As he walked out of the station Schmidt crossed the car park.
“I need help,” he said.
Daniel looked at him speculatively. How the man thought he had any right to ask for anything he could not quite understand. Schmidt had Shirley tortured when she was in East Germany. He had hounded Daniel constantly in his time there. He had been the instrument of incarcerating and torturing many people, which included having ladies raped. He was a member of the Stasi until the fall of the government in East Germany and had done many things which had not endeared him to the west. Now he had nearly killed Daniel.
“If the truck had hit me differently I would be dead,” Daniel said. “How could I have helped you then?”
“It did not hit you differently because I planned it carefully. I am not stupid.”
“You cannot plan which direction a truck will go once the driver gets out and you did not know what I would do when I saw it,” Daniel said. “I could have easily been killed or even been injured very badly. I think you were aiming to kill me.”
“I was not aiming to kill you. You are trained to respond to things like this and you’re not stupid. Well, maybe you were before because you could easily have been caught out in what you were doing. But the fact that you weren’t caught out shows you know what to do. It is what I would have done.”
“Well, that’s the highest acolade I’ve received for a while,” Daniel said rather sarcastically.
“Huh?”
“Acolade. It means….”
“I know what it means,” Schmidt said. “I am not as uneducated as you like to think.”
“I don’t think you’re uneducated,” Daniel said. “Why do you want my help?”
“I was only doing my job in East Berlin,” Schmidt replied. “And you weren’t so good. You raped a lady not long after you moved to East Berlin.”
“I did not rape her,” Daniel said. “I pretended to rape her to stop your henchman doing it and then I got her out of the country. I don’t do that sort of thing. What do you want?”
“Protection.”
“Protection from what?”
“I am being hunted by men who will not accept that East Germany is now free from communist rule and who are trying to get me to help them. I want you to ask your government to protect me. I have accepted things as they are and am happy to leave it that way. But the people with whom I mixed in East Germany are ruthless and do not care who they hurt to get what they want.”
Daniel frowned. “It might get you arrested if you ask for that. You did some pretty horrific things yourself and it appeared you enjoyed doing them. You treated Shirley very badly and you would have done more if she had not escaped.”
“It was part of my job,” Schmidt said. “You know what would have happened to me if I had refused to do the things that were expected of me. When you hold the kind of post I held in a place like East Germany you have to do what you’re told.”
“Some of it was part of your job. Why don’t you just go back to Germany and start a new life?”
“I am wanted by the German authorities,” Schmidt said.
“There are other countries.”
“I can help the British and the Germans,” Schmidt said.
“Oh? How?”
“There is a plan to overthrow the German government.”
“How do you know that?” Daniel asked.
“I have access to a lot of information,” Schmidt replied. “Will you help me or not?”
“What will you do if I don’t help you?” Daniel asked.
“I don’t know.”
“It will mean I’ll have to take you to English Intelligence.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Which means, as I said, that you may be imprisoned.”
“I will risk that. Will you take me?”
“I will take you,” Daniel said.
“Today.”
“I have no car,” Daniel said.
“I will pay for it to be fixed. You do not need to use your insurance. I can drive you up to London.”
Daniel shook his head. “No. I will make my own way there and will meet you at the Intelligence headquarters.”
“How will you get there?” Schmidt asked.
“That is my problem.” Daniel looked at his watch. “I’ll meet you at four this afternoon.”
He turned, walked away and did not know what to think about anything. He did not trust Schmidt at all but if Schmidt wanted to hurt him why hadn’t he done it when the truck crashed into the car? The man near the truck could easily have got to Daniel before Daniel was able to produce a gun. Except, of course, that the accident in itself could have killed him. He shuddered as he thought of it and of the two tiny little boys who needed him, of Shirley who was pleased to have him back. Should he ring her and tell her what had happened?
But he didn’t want to worry her and she could do nothing to help. He made for the station, his mobile phone to his ear as he walked. “Johann? This is Daniel. I need your advice.”
----------------
Shirley looked at her watch as she walked down the long corridor at the university towards the crèche where she worked part time. Twelve and she had been lecturing for two hours after doing some administrative work. It had been a lively morning with a lot of participation from her students and something she enjoyed. A fix of academia, she told Daniel, and she needed to keep her brain oiled. She was not much older than the students herself but probably eighteen year olds would think someone five years their senior was ancient. She knew she had at that age.
Except for Connie because Shirley had never really thought of age where she was concerned. A good friend
ten years her senior, Connie had befriended a fifteen year old who was three years younger than her peers at university and made a rather lonely teenager feel accepted. She had introduced her to the ways of the world and having her probably kept Shirley out of trouble. Now Connie was Shirley’s mother-in-law courtesy of Shirley’s marriage to Daniel and the two women were still the best of friends.
Which was where Shirley was going with little Samuel and Michael now. Katy and Martin would be at school but would want to see the babies. Shirley and Seth would enjoy playing with them. Shirley went into the crèche and the babies put their arms out to her.
She lifted them and nuzzled into them. “Hello Samuel. Hello, Michael.” They giggled and pulled her hair, two adorable little eleven month olds who were increasingly becoming more active.
“Have they been alright?” she asked Lois, the leader of the crèche.
“Good as gold. They’ve been content and they’ve been playing with the other babies. They even managed to make a tiny tower of blocks before knocking them to the ground. They always fascinate me. When will you be bringing them again?”
“Not for a couple of weeks. I’m doing a concert in Berlin at The Philharmonie next week so we’ll be away for a few days. Thank you for looking after them.”
“You’re welcome.”
Shirley strapped the babies in their double pushchair and made for the exit of the university. It had been a beautiful summer with the temperature well into the thirties. She, Daniel and the babies had spent a couple of weeks in Devon on holiday. They also went to their house in Compiegne for ten days, a place Shirley loved which had originally been Daniel’s house. Altogether the summer had been good.
And totally different to a year ago, she thought as she strapped Michael and Samuel into the back of the car. A year ago Daniel was in East Germany on the run though not obviously because everyone thought him dead. Only Shirley knew he was alive after going to fetch his body and discovering that it was not him but a young man on whom Dr. Schneider, a member of the Underground, had done plastic surgery.
Shirley had taken out of East Germany a coffin in which she thought Daniel would be, alive and well. It had taken a lot of preparation and ingenuity to get out of a country from which she had had to escape earlier. Because she had been instrumental in identifying a member of the Chain Quintet, a group of five spies, the East Germans felt she could give them more information. With the help of British Intelligence Nagel, the fifth member which she had identified, was given in exchange for her taking Daniel’s body out of the country.
But when she reached England she discovered that it was Lala and Emile’s two sons, Kurt and Gerard, who had been left behind in East Germany after Shirley took Lala and Emile out in a plane, who was in the coffin. Shirley had not seen Daniel again until he came through the Brandenberg gate when it was opened in November and in that time did not know if he was alive or dead.
She was more than fortunate, she thought. A husband she adored. Two babies she loved with all her heart. Parents who thought the world of their two daughters. Susan, Shirley’s sister who lived in Berlin with her husband, Stefan, and tiny daughter, Lisette. Connie, Paul and their family. A good job at the university. Her career as a singer. Her writing. Her research. Soon she would be starring in another film.
But where Daniel was concerned she was never at all sure what he did. She knew he worked for Intelligence and she knew he was doing administrative work rather than being in the field. Well, maybe she thought, because she did not trust him an inch. If he did not work actively for them it would, she rather felt, alter as time progressed. She started her car and began to drive towards The Sylvans.
Lunch would be a snack, Connie had told her the previous day when she rang her, so it did not matter too much when Shirley and the babies arrived. So maybe she would stop on her way to see Anna and Hugh. Parents of Joshua, her husband for four months after she divorced Daniel to make the East Germans think he was on the level and had cut ties with the west. They liked Shirley to keep in touch and loved the babies as if they were their own grandchildren.. They still missed Joshua after his murder and would talk about him on occasions. Whether they knew he had murdered his first wife, Shirley did not know. He only told her that minutes before he died and before threatening to kill her.
But he had let her go and that she never did understand in view of him being the kind of person they knew as a member of the Chain Quintet. He had an assignment to kill someone when he was himself killed who was more than grateful to Shirley for what she did in discovering Joshua’s true identity.
Michael and Samuel knew the couple well and were not averse to the attention they received when Shirley arrived. Anna and Hugh were obviously pleased to see them all. Hugh had a day off work, he said, and they were hoping to go to Berlin for Shirley’s concert at the Philharmonie on third October. It would be a chance for Anna to see her parents and the rest of her family. “We just bought your last book,” Anna said, leading the way into the lounge carrying Samuel while Hugh carried Michael. “I didn’t dare to start reading it until I have ages to do so because once I do I know I’ll never put it down. Tomorrow I havn’t got much to do so I’ll probably start on it then.”
“I brought you a signed copy,” Shirley said. “You didn’t have to buy it.”
“That means I can read it too,” Hugh said. “Is it a thriller?”
“Partly, with a touch of romance. It’s set in Paris mostly.”
“Did you enjoy your time in Compiegne?” Anna asked.
“Yes, thank you. It was hot there too. We talk French and German a lot with the babies and they’re picking up all three languages. They say quite a few words now. It will save them the bother of learning the languages when they get older.”
“They’re bright little boys,” Hugh said. “Are you going to Berlin for long?”
“Just a few days,” Shirley replied. “Are you staying with your parents, Anna?”
“Yes.” Anna’s parents, a couple who had got Anna out of East Germany when she was in her teens but who still lived there now. Shirley had not as yet met them though she had heard a lot about them, both from Joshua and Anna and Hugh. Maybe she could while they were in Germany, she suggested.
“They’d like that,” Anna said. “They’re great fans of yours and are also going to your concert. Have you eaten?”
“I’m on my way to Connie.”
“I’ll get you drinks then and some cake. I made Samuel and Michael’s favourite ones because I thought you’d come soon.”
Shirley stayed for nearly an hour, memories inevitably filling her mind of when she was with Joshua in this house during their short marriage. She had given it to the Laings after he died and they liked it, she knew. To them it was a bit of him. They showed her the garden they had been working on for a few months. Large, beautiful, well planned and, Shirley rather felt, in memory of Joshua who enjoyed gardening.
He was a murderer, she knew, and had killed often in his work as a double spy. But he also had a softer side to him which she had seen often and particularly in his last few minutes when he could have so easily killed her, which he threatened to do but did not. After he died she did not want to keep living in the house, the memories too acute and her guilt at her part in discovering who he really was.
“We’re planting Joshua’s favourite plants here,” Anna said, pointing to a part of the garden which had been newly dug. “He’d like that, wouldn’t he?”
“He would love it.” Shirley felt her throat constrict at the look on Anna’s face. She hadn’t wanted Joshua to die even in view of the kind of man she knew he had to be. It would have meant she could not remarry Daniel and she had to admit she was pleased to be married to him again. But Joshua’s death had been a shock and particularly as she was there when it happened. She had not loved him as she did Daniel but she had some tender moments and they had been as close as any couple sexually.
But for Anna and Hugh it was worse because Joshua
was their son. He had lived in their granny flat before he married Shirley and the couple had liked that. He visited for at least an hour each day after he and Shirley married and Shirley often went with him. He was an integral part of the couple’s lives.
“He liked wild flowers best which is what we’re putting in here,” Anna said. “This one is the green winged orchid. It should flower in May. The rest are orchids but aren’t flowering at the moment. We’re also going to put in a few poppies.” Anna put Samuel in a little swing they had set up especially for the babies while Hugh put Michael in one next to it. She began to gently push. “I still miss him so much.”
“I’m sorry,” Shirley said. “I really am.”
“Thank you. I’ll just go and get us some drinks and cake.”
Anna turned abruptly. Hugh took over pushing the swings. “You don’t expect to outlive your children,” he said.
“No, you don’t.”
“Paul was lucky. He thought his son dead but he wasn’t.”
“Yes.”
“If Joshua hadn’t died what would you have done when Daniel came back to the west? I know you loved him best even though you said you did love Joshua.”
“I don’t know,” Shirley said. “I’ve thought about it a few times. I think I would have stayed with Joshua.”
“But you would have wanted to be with Daniel.” The words were a statement and not a question.
“I do love Daniel with all my heart,” Shirley said. “And I often feel guilty that I married Joshua because it was on the rebound. I liked Joshua very much and came to love him but I did use him and that wasn’t right. I never for one minute thought though that the wall would come down or that Daniel would return.”
“He used you too,” Anna said, walking to the kitchen door. “I know he loved you very much but his original intention I would imagine was to find out about Daniel.”
“Two wrongs don’t make a right,” Shirley replied. “Will you both please forgive me?”
“We have nothing to forgive,” Hugh said.
The Berlin Vendetta: Book 3 in the series 'The Enigmatic Defection' Page 2
