by Joseph Kanon
“You’re mistaken,” he said evenly. “Emil Brandt is in the west.”
“Is he? Try Burgstrasse. He’d probably appreciate hearing from you. Especially if you told him his wife was coming to visit. That ought to cheer him up.”
Sikorsky turned away, marking time by lighting a cigarette. “You know, it sometimes happens that people come to us. For political reasons. The Soviet future. They see things as we do. That would not, I take it, be the case with her?”
“That’s up to her. Maybe you can talk her into it—tell her how much everybody likes it on the collective farm. Maybe Emil can. He’s her husband.”
“And who exactly are you?”
“I’m an old friend of the family. Think of it as a kind of coal delivery.”
“From such an unexpected source. May I ask what prompts you to make this offer? Not, I think, Allied cooperation.”
“Not quite. I said a deal.”
“Ah.”
“Don’t worry. I’m not as expensive as Tully.”
“You’re talking in riddles, Mr. Geismar.”
“No, I’m trying to solve one. I’ll deliver the wife, you deliver some information. Not so expensive, just some information.”
“Information,” Sikorsky repeated, noncommittal.
“Little things that have been on my mind. Why you met Tully at the airport. Where you took him. What you were doing in the Potsdam market. A few questions like that.”
“A press interview.”
“No, private. Just me and you. A good friend of mine got killed that day in Potsdam. Nice girl, no harm to anybody. I want to know why. It’s worth it to me.”
“Sometimes—it’s regrettable—there are accidents.”
“Sometimes. Tully wasn’t. I want to know who killed him. That’s my price.”
“And for that you would deliver Frau Brandt? For this family reunion.”
“I said I’d deliver her. I didn’t say you could keep her. There are conditions.”
“More negotiations,” Sikorsky said, glancing behind him at the door. “In my experience, these are never satisfactory. We don’t get what we want, you don’t get what you want. A tiresome process.”
“You’ll get her.”
“What makes you think I’m interested in Frau Brandt?”
“You’ve been looking for her. You had a man watching Emil’s father in case she showed up.”
“With you,” he said pointedly.
“And if I know Emil, he’s been mooning over her. Hard to debrief a man who wants to see his wife. Awkward.”
“You think that’s the case.”
“He did the same thing to us when we had him. Won’t go anywhere without her. Otherwise, you’d have shipped him east weeks ago.”
“If we had him.”
“Are you interested or not?”
Behind them the door opened, a summoning burst of Russian. Sikorsky turned and nodded to an aide.
“The British are responding. Now it’s grain. Our grain. Everybody, it seems, wants something.”
“Even you,” Jake said.
Sikorsky looked at him, then dropped his cigarette on the marble floor and ground it out with his boot, an unnervingly crude gesture, a peasant under the shellac of manners.
“Come to the Adlon. Around eight. We’ll talk. Privately,” he said, pointing to Jeanie’s pen, still in Jake’s hand. “Without notes. Perhaps something can be arranged.”
“I thought you’d say that.”
“Yes? Then let me surprise you. A riddle for you this time. I can’t meet your price. I want to know who killed Lieutenant Tully too.” He smiled at Jake’s expression, as if he had just won the round. “So, at eight.”
Jake backtracked down the hall, nervously turning Jeanie’s pen over in his hand. None of it would work, not Shaeffer with his borrowed Soviet cap, not even this meeting, another negotiation in which the pieces never moved. I can’t meet your price. Then why had he agreed? A sly Slavic smile, squashing a cigarette as easily as a bug.
The office door was closed but not locked, the desk just as Jeanie had left it, tidied up for lunch. He put the pen back in its holder, then looked over at the files. Where did she eat lunch? A mess somewhere in the basement? He pulled open the drawer where the pending folder had been to find a thick wad of carbons, the rest a row of alphabetical tabs. Frankfurt to Oakland. Even without the name to help, it must be here somewhere. And then what? A message through channels, a cable to Hal Reidy to track him down? Weeks either way. Whoever he was sailed nameless on the Atlantic, another t uncrossed. Jake slid the drawer shut.
He put his hand on the next cabinet, where Jeanie had filed the police report weeks ago, and, curious, flicked the drawer open to see if it was still there. Tully had a thin folder to himself. The CID report, all of it, with ballistics; an official condolence letter to the mother; a shipping receipt for the coffin and special effects; nothing else, as if he really had been swallowed up in the Havel, out of sight. He looked at the report again, but it was the same one he’d seen, service record, previous assignments, promotions. Why is Sikorsky still interested in you? he wondered, flipping the pages and getting the usual blank reply.
He opened the drawer below, rummaging now. Something cross-referenced, perhaps, like the files at the Document Center. Kommandatura minutes, food supply estimates, all the real business of the occupation, drawers of it. He worked his way back up to the transfer file and opened it again, automatically reaching for the T’s, idly thumbing through and then stopping, surprised, when the name leaped out at him. Maybe another Patrick Tully, luckier. But the serial number was the same.
He took the sheet out. Traveling orders, Bremen to Boston, a July 21 sail date. Home to Natick at the end of that week. A new wrinkle, but what kind? Why come to Berlin? Not to fly on to Bremen, with no luggage. The obvious answer was payday, to collect the traveling money for the trip home. Then why go to the Document Center? Jake stared at the flimsy. There hadn’t been any orders in his effects. Was it possible that Tully hadn’t known? Still up to business as usual while his ticket home floated through the paper channels that crisscrossed Germany?
“Find what you’re looking for?”
He turned to see Jeanie standing in the door with a sandwich and a Coke.
“You’ve got a nerve.”
“Sorry. It’s just that I did remember his name, after you left. So I thought I’d get the address. I didn’t think you’d mind—”
“Next time you want something, ask. Now how about getting out of here before I find out what you’re really up to.”
He shrugged, a schoolboy with his hand in the principal’s file. “Well, I said I was sorry,” he said, putting the paper back and closing the drawer. “It’s not exactly a state secret.”
“I mean it, blow. He finds you in here, he’ll have both our heads. You’re nice, but you’re not that nice.”
Jake held up his hands in defeat. “Okay, okay.” He went to the door, then stopped, his fingers on the knob. “Can you tell me something, though?”
“Such as?”
“How long does it usually take for orders to come through? Copies, I mean.”
“Why?” she said, suspicious, then put the Coke on the desk and leaned against the edge. “Look, things get here when they get here. Depends where they started. Your friend was in Frankfurt? Any time. Frankfurt’s a mess. Munich comes right away, but Frankfurt, who knows?”
“And if they were canceled?”
“Same answer. What is this, anyway?”
“I’m not sure,” he said, then smiled. “Just wondering. Thanks for the help. You’ve been a peach. Maybe we can have that drink sometime.”
“I’ll hold my breath,” she said.
He left the office and started down the sweep of opera house stairs. Any time from Frankfurt. But the dispatcher’s orders were already here—why not Tully’s cancellation, which must have been earlier? Unless no one had bothered, letting death cancel itself out, a no-sh
ow on the manifest, one less paper to send.
Outside he took in the line of jeeps stretched across the forecourt like one of the old taxi ranks at Zoo Station or the Kaiserhof. Now they parked here, or at headquarters in Dahlem, motor pool branches, waiting for different fares. If you wanted a ride, this would be the place to come. Unless you already had a Russian driver.
He got back to Savignyplatz to find Erich playing with some of the girls from down the hall, their new pet. More attention, Jake thought, than he’d probably had in his life. Rosen was there with his medical bag, drinking tea, the whole room oddly domestic. Lena followed him into the bedroom.
“What happened?”
“Nothing yet. Sikorsky wants to have dinner at the Adlon.”
“Well, the Adlon,” she said ironically, patting her hair. “Like old times.”
“Not for you. Dinner for two.”
“You’re going alone? What about Shaeffer?”
“First I have to set things up.”
“And then I go?”
“Let’s see what he has to say first.”
He took Liz’s gun from the bureau and opened the chamber, checking it.
“You mean he won’t do it?”
“Well, at the moment he says Emil’s in the west.”
“The west?”
“He says,” Jake said, catching her anxious expression in the mirror. “Don’t worry, he’ll do it. He just wants to do a little fencing.”
“He doesn’t believe you,” she said, still agitated.
He turned to her. “He believes me. It’s his game, that’s all, so we play by his rules.” He took her shoulder. “Now stop. I said I’d get Emil out and I will. This is the way we do it. He’s the kind of guy who likes a little dinner first, to break the ice.”
She turned away. “It’s true? That’s all, dinner?”
“That’s all.”
“They why are you taking the gun?”
“Seen the Adlon lately?” She looked at him blankly. “Lots of rats.”
CHAPTER 17
It went wrong from the start. The Russians, for no apparent reason, had set up a checkpoint at the Brandenburg Gate, and by the time Jake had shown his ID and was waved through he was late. He lost more time trying to find his way through the deserted shell of the Adlon, rescued finally by a man in a formal cutaway who appeared out of the dark like a ghost from the old days, a desk clerk without a desk. Given the damage, it seemed a miracle that anyone still lived here at all. The lobby and main block facing the Linden were smashed, but a rough path had been cleared through the rubble to a wing in the back. The clerk led him with a flashlight past small heaps of brick, stepping over them as if they were just something the hall maid hadn’t got around to yet, then up a flight of service stairs to a dim corridor. At the end, as surreal as the rest of it, was a brightly lit dining room, buzzing with Soviet uniforms and waiters in white jackets carrying serving dishes. The open windows looked down on the gaping hole where Goebbels’ garden had been, and Sikorsky sat near one of them, blowing smoke out into the night air. Jake had barely started toward him when a hand caught his sleeve.
“Whatever are you doing here?”
Jake jumped, more nervous than he’d realized. “Brian,” he said numbly, the florid face somehow surreal too, out of place. He was sitting at a table for four, with two Russian soldiers and a pale civilian.
“Not the food, I hope. Although Dieter here swears by the kohlrabi. Have a drink?”
“Can’t. I’m meeting someone. Interview.”
“You couldn’t do better than this lot. Took the Reichstag. This chap here actually planted the flag.”
“He did.”
“Well, he says he did, which comes to the same thing.” He glanced across the room. “Not Sikorsky, is it?”
“Mind your own business,” Jake said.
“You won’t get anything there. Blood out of a stone. You’ll be at the camp later? Ought to be quite a blowout.”
“Why?”
“Haven’t you heard? The Rising Sun’s about to set. They’re just waiting for the cable. Be all over then but the shouting, won’t it? Six bloody years.”
“Yeah, all over.”
“Cheers,” Brian said, lifting his eyes toward Sikorsky as he raised his glass. “Watch your back. Killed his own men, that one did.”
“Says who?”
“Everybody. Ask him.” He drained the glass. “Actually, better not. Just watch the back.”
Jake clamped him on the shoulder and moved away. Sikorsky was standing now, waiting for him. He didn’t offer to shake hands, just nodded as Jake took off his hat and placed it on the table facing his, brim to brim, as if even the hats expected a standoff.
“A colleague?” Sikorsky said, sitting down.
“Yes.”
“He drinks too much.”
“He just pretends to. It’s an old newspaperman’s trick.”
“The British,” Sikorsky said, flicking an ash. “Russians drink for real.” He poured a glass from the vodka bottle and pushed it toward Jake, his own eyes clear and sober. “Well, Mr. Geismar, you have your meeting. But you don’t speak.” He took a puff from his brown cigarette, holding Jake’s eyes. “Something is wrong?”
“I’ve never looked at a man who wanted to kill me before. It’s a strange feeling.”
“You weren’t in the war, then. I’ve looked at hundreds. Of course, they also looked at me.”
“Including Russians?” Jake said, poking for a reaction. “I heard you killed your own men.”
“Not Russians. Saboteurs,” he said easily, unaffected.
“Deserters, you mean.”
“There were no deserters at Stalingrad. Only saboteurs. It was not an option. Is this what you want to discuss? The war? You know nothing about it. We held the line. Guns in front, guns at your back. A powerful inducement to fight. It was necessary to win. And we did win.”
“Some of you did.”
“Let me tell you a story, since you are interested. We had to supply the line from across the Volga, and the Germans had the shore covered from the cliffs. We unload the boats, they shoot at us. But we had to unload. So we used boys. Not soldiers. We used the children.”
“And?”
“They shot them.”
Jake looked away. “What’s your point?”
“That you cannot possibly know what it was like. You cannot know what we had to do. We had to make ourselves steel. A few saboteurs? That was nothing. Nothing.”
“I wonder if they thought so.”
“You’re being sentimental. We didn’t have that luxury. Ah,” he said to the waiter, handing him some coupons. “Two. There is no menu, I’m afraid. You like cabbage soup?”
“It’s one of my favorites.”
Sikorsky raised his eyebrows, then waved the waiter away. “It’s as Gunther says. Fond of jokes. A cynic, like all sentimentalists.”
“You’ve discussed me with him.”
“Of course. Such a curious mix. Persistent. What did you want? That, I still don’t know.”
“Did you pay him too?”
“To discuss you?” A thin smile. “Don’t concern yourself. He is not corrupt. A thief, but not corrupt. Another sentimentalist.”
“Maybe we don’t want to be steel.”
“Then you will not win,” Sikorsky said simply. “You’ll break.”
Jake sat back, staring at the hard soldier’s face, the shine of sweat literally metallic in the bright light. “Tell me something,” he said, almost to himself. “What happens when it’s over?” The old question, turned around. “The Japanese are going to surrender. What happens to it all then? All the steel?”
Sikorsky looked at him, intrigued. “Does it feel over to you?”
Before he could say anything, the waiter came with the food, his frayed white sleeve too long for him, almost dipping into the soup. Sikorsky began to eat noisily, not bothering to put out his cigarette.
“So, shall we beg
in?” he said, dropping a chunk of bread into the soup. “You want to make conditions, you say, but you really have no intention of bringing Frau Brandt to us. So what are you playing at?”
“What makes you say that?” Jake said, thrown off-balance.
“She’s the woman I met in the Linden? Not just a friend, I think.” He shook his head. “No, no intention.”
“You’re wrong,” Jake said, trying to keep his voice firm.
“Please. But it’s of no importance. I’m not interested in whether Herr Brandt has his wife. Pleasant for him, perhaps; of no importance to me. You see, you have brought the wrong thing to the table. Next time, try coal, something that’s wanted. You can’t negotiate with this.”
“Then why haven’t you moved him?”
“I have moved him. The minute you told me where he was. If you knew, perhaps others know too. A precaution. Of course, perhaps not. You work on your own, Gunther says. He admires that in you. A man like himself, maybe. But he’s a fool.” He looked up from the soup. “We are not fools. So many make that mistake. The Germans, until we destroyed them.” He took the soaked piece of bread into his mouth and sucked it.
“But you kept him in Berlin,” Jake said, not letting it go.
“Yes. Too long. That was your Lieutenant Tully. Keep him, I may need his help, he said. A mistake.”
“Help in doing what?”
“Get the others,” Sikorsky said simply.
“Emil would never—”
“You think not? Don’t be too sure what a man will do. But as it happens, I agree with you. Not like Tully. Now there was a man who would do anything.”
“Like use Lena. To make Emil help.”
“I thought this too—that it was his plan. So, as you say, I looked for her—the bargaining chip. But now I see it was a mistake. Tully didn’t know.”
“Know what?”
“About you. What use is a wife with another man? No use. The unfaithful Frau Brandt. You see, Mr. Geismar, you have come on a fool’s errand. You offer her—you pretend to offer her—but I want his colleagues, not his wife. She’s of no use to me anymore. She never was, it seems. Thank you for clarifying this matter. It’s time Brandt left Berlin. There’s no reason to keep him here now. Not at Burgstrasse. You knew that how?”
