Century Rain

by Alastair Reynolds

  “Amen to that,” Floyd replied under his breath.

  It was a short taxi ride to the Hotel Am Zoo, a good place at the fashionable end of the Kurfurstendamm decked out with high-class marble and chrome so clean and polished that you could eat your dinner off it. At least the hotel hadn’t changed much. Floyd knew it well enough, since he and Greta had stayed there on two or three occasions in the early fifties. Given that familiarity, it had seemed like the obvious place to head for. But once Floyd had checked in and carried their very few belongings up to the single room they’d just paid for, he began to feel the onset of an annoying but familiar sense of guilt. It was as if he was consciously cheating on Greta, visiting this old romantic haunt of theirs with another woman. But that was absurd on two counts, he told himself. Greta and he were no longer an item—even if the door to them being an item again in the future hadn’t been completely closed. And Auger and him—well, that was just ridiculous. Why had the thought even entered his mind? They were here to work on an investigative matter. Strictly business.

  So what if he liked her? She was nice looking and clever and quick-witted and interesting (how could a lady spy be anything but interesting? he thought) but any other man would have said the same thing. Liking her did not take great strength of character. You didn’t have to see past superficial flaws: there weren’t any—except maybe the way she kept treating him like somebody who not only didn’t need to hear the truth, but who couldn’t handle the truth. That part he didn’t like. But it only made her more fascinating to him: a puzzle that had to be unravelled. Or unwrapped, perhaps, depending on the circumstances. When she had finally fallen back to sleep after her nightmare, Floyd had lain awake on the lower bunk, listening to her breathing, thinking of her under the sheets and wondering what she was dreaming about now. He wasn’t crazy about her. But she was the kind of girl he could very easily allow himself to become crazy about, if he wanted to.

  But none of that meant anything. She must have walked through life with men like him falling at her feet, squashing them underfoot like autumn leaves. It probably happened so often that all she noticed was that nice crunching sound. What would a girl like Verity Auger want with a washed-up Joe like him? He was Wendell Floyd. A jazz musician who didn’t play. A detective who didn’t detect.

  If he hadn’t kept back that postcard, she wouldn’t even have let him join her on the train.

  In which case, maybe he wasn’t so dumb after all.

  “Wendell?” she said.

  “What?”

  “You seem preoccupied.”

  He realised that he had been standing at the window, moping there for at least five minutes. Across the Kurfurstendamm, a group of workers were bolting together a tall pressed-steel monument to the first ascent of Everest. The young Russian airman was depicted standing astride the summit, raising his gloved fist in what was either a cheery salute to an overflying aircraft or impish defiance at a vanquished and obsolete God.

  “Just thinking about old times,” he said.

  Auger was sitting on the bed, leafing through a telephone directory. She had her shoes off, stockinged legs crossed over each other. “When you were here before?”

  “Guess so.”

  “I’m sorry if I’ve made things awkward between you and…” She paused to jot down a telephone number, using a pad letter headed with the name of the hotel.

  “Greta,” he said, before she had a chance to say the name. “And no, you haven’t. I’m sure she knows the score.”

  Auger looked up, her finger poised halfway down one page. She was sucking on a strand of hair, as if it helped her to concentrate. “Which is?”

  “That you and I are here on business. That you didn’t even want me along for the ride. That there’s nothing more to it than that.”

  “She’s not jealous, is she?”

  “Jealous? Why should she be?”

  “Exactly. No reason in the world.”

  “We’re just two adults with some mutual interests in Berlin—”

  “Saving money by sharing a single room.”

  “Precisely.” Floyd smiled. “Now that we’ve got that out of the way…”

  “Yes. What a relief.” She looked down at the telephone directory again, wetting a finger to turn one of the tissue-thin business pages.

  “I should have found a different hotel,” Floyd said.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” He turned back to the bed, his attention lingering on the shape of Auger’s calves under those stockings. They weren’t the longest legs he’d seen on a woman, or the shapeliest, but they were some way from being the worst.

  “Floyd?” She’d noticed him staring, and he snapped his gaze up to her face, a little embarrassed by the direction his thoughts had been taking.

  “Did you get anywhere with that telephone number?” he asked. She had used the telephone several times while he had been looking out of the window, but he hadn’t been paying attention to the outcome. A certain amount of talking had been involved whenever she placed a call, since they all had to be relayed through the hotel switchboard, but his rudimentary German made listening in a pointless exercise.

  “No luck so far,” she said. “I already tried this number from Paris, but figured there might be a problem with the international connections.”

  “I tried it as well,” Floyd said. “It didn’t work for me either. The operator said it was as if the line had been cut off. How could a big firm like that not have paid their bill, or not have anyone to answer their telephone? Haven’t they heard of answering machines?”

  Auger called through again. She spoke very good German each time, or at least what sounded like very good German to his ears. “Nope,” she said. “Line’s totally dead. It isn’t even ringing at the other end.” She smoothed a hand over the letter from Kaspar Metals, uncreasing it. “Maybe this number’s wrong.”

  “Why would they print the wrong number on the letterhead?”

  “I don’t know,” Auger said. “Maybe they changed the number but still had a lot of the old paper lying around. Maybe the man who sent this used old stock he’d had lying in his desk for years.”

  “Sloppy,” Floyd said.

  “But not a crime.”

  “Did you check the directory as well?”

  “It lists the same number,” she said. “But the directory looks old. I don’t know where to go from here. We have an address on the letter, but it’s just a generic post-office-box address for correspondence to the whole steelworks. It’s not specific enough to be useful. It doesn’t even tell us exactly where the factory is.”

  “Wait,” Floyd said. “Maybe we can bypass Kaspar Metals entirely—just get in touch with the man who sent that letter, and see what he has to say.”

  “Herr G. Altfeld,” Auger said, reading from the paper. “But Altfeld could live anywhere. He might not even be in the telephone directory.”

  “But maybe he is. Why don’t we check?”

  Auger found the Berlin area private-number directory and passed the heavy, dog-eared book to Floyd.

  “Here we are,” Floyd said, leafing through it. “Altfeld, Altfeld, Altfeld… a lot of Altfelds. There’s got to be at least thirty of them. But not many with the first initial ‘G.’ ”

  “We don’t know for sure whether that ‘G’ refers to his first name,” she observed.

  “It’ll do for now. If we don’t hit the jackpot, we’ll move on to all the other Altfelds.”

  “That’ll take for ever.”

  “It’s elementary drudgework, the kind that puts a roof over my head. Pass me a pen, will you? I’ll start making a list of the likely candidates. And see if you can rustle up some coffee. I think it’s going to be a long morning.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  Auger knew it was the right number as soon as the man answered the telephone. His authoritative, slightly schoolmasterly tone only confirmed her suspicions.

  “Herr Altfeld.”

  “Excuse the in
terruption, mein Herr, and excuse my very poor German, but I am trying to trace the Herr Altfeld who is an employee of Kaspar Metals—”

  The call was terminated before Auger could say another word.

  “What happened?” Floyd asked.

  “I think I struck gold. He rang off a little too enthusiastically.”

  “Try again. In my experience, people always answer the telephone sooner or later.”

  She dialled through to the hotel switchboard again and waited while her call was connected. “Herr Altfeld, once again I must—”

  The line crashed dead again. Auger tried once more, but this time the telephone rang and rang without being picked up. Auger imagined the sound echoing around a well-appointed hallway, where the phone rested on a little table under a print of a familiar oil painting—a Pissaro or a Manet, perhaps. She persisted, allowing the phone to keep ringing. Eventually, her patience was rewarded by the receiver being picked up.

  “Herr Altfeld? Please let me speak.”

  “I have nothing to say to you.”

  “Mein Herr, I know you talked to Susan White. My name is Auger… Verity Auger. I’m Susan’s sister.”

  There was a pause, during which it seemed quite likely that the man would hang up the telephone again. “Fräulein White did not have the good grace to keep her appointment,” Altfeld eventually replied.

  “That’s because someone murdered her.”

  “Murdered her?” he repeated, incredulously.

  “That’s why you never saw her. I’m here in Berlin with a private detective.” Floyd’s advice: tell the truth wherever possible. It could open a surprising number of doors. “We think Susan was killed for a reason, and that it had something to do with the work being done at Kaspar Metals.”

  “As I said, I have nothing to tell you.”

  “You were good enough to offer to speak to my sister, mein Herr. Will you at least do us the same favour? We won’t take up much of your time, and then I promise you won’t hear from us again.”

  “Things have changed. It was a mistake to talk to Fräulein White, and it would be an even bigger mistake to talk to you.”

  “Why—is someone putting pressure on you?”

  “Pressure,” the man said, laughing hollowly. “No, I have no pressure at all now. A generous retirement settlement saw to that.”

  “Then you don’t work at Kaspar Metals any more?”

  “Nobody works there any more. The factory burnt down.”

  “Look, mein Herr, I think it would really help if we could talk. It can be anywhere of your choosing. Even if it’s just for five minutes—”

  “I am sorry,” Altfeld said, and hung up again.

  “Pity,” Auger said, rubbing her forehead. “I thought I was getting somewhere that time. But he really doesn’t want to talk to us.”

  “We’re not giving up,” Floyd said.

  “Shall I try to ring through again?”

  “He probably won’t talk to you. But it doesn’t matter—we know where he lives now.”

  The black Duesenberg taxi growled to a halt at one end of a leafy suburban street in the suburb of Wedding, five kilometres from the heart of the city. Long lines of cheaply built dwellings housed the many workers and bureaucrats who toiled in the nearby factories. The Borsig Locomotive Works was the largest employer in the area, but the Siemens factory was not far away and there was a string of other industrial concerns in the neighbourhood, including Kaspar Metals, they presumed.

  “That’s the house,” Auger said. “The one on the corner. What shall I tell the driver?”

  “Tell him to pull over a couple of houses beyond it.”

  She said something in German. The taxi purred forward, then pulled to the side of the road and slid in between two parked cars.

  “Now what?” Auger asked.

  “Tell him to keep the meter running while we check out the house.”

  Auger had another brief exchange with the driver. “He says if we pay now he’ll wait another ten minutes.”

  “Then pay the man.”

  Auger had already changed some of her funds into Deutschmarks. She passed a couple of notes to the taxi driver and repeated her instruction for him to wait. The driver turned off the engine and they got out.

  “I’m impressed with your German,” Floyd commented as they opened the garden gate and walked up the little gravel path to the front door. “Is that what they teach all the nice young spies?”

  “They thought it might come in handy,” Auger said.

  Floyd rang the bell. Presently, a shape loomed behind the frosted glass and the door creaked open. The man standing in the hallway was in his fifties or sixties, dressed in shirt and braces, with small metal-rimmed spectacles and a neatly trimmed moustache. He was shorter and thinner than Floyd. His features were delicate, and in his very fine hands he held a duster and an item of pottery.

  “Herr Altfeld?” Auger said, followed by something in German that included the word “telephone.” That was as far as she got before the man closed the door.

  “Shall I try again?” she asked.

  “He won’t open it. He doesn’t want to speak to us.”

  Auger leaned in and rang the bell, but the man did not reappear. “That was him, though, don’t you think?”

  “I guess so. This is the address that goes with the number you called.”

  “I wonder what’s got him so scared.”

  “I can think of a thing or two,” Floyd said.

  They walked back down the garden path and closed the gate behind them.

  “Short of breaking in and tying him to a chair,” Auger said, “how would you suggest we proceed now?”

  “We wait in the taxi. If you can keep the driver copacetic, we’ll just sit tight here until Altfeld makes a move.”

  “You think he will?”

  “Once he’s sure we’ve left the neighbourhood, he’ll want to get out of that house so he doesn’t have to put up with us ringing the doorbell or calling him on the telephone.”

  “This is all familiar territory to you, I guess, Wendell?”

  “Yes,” he said. “But usually the worst thing I have to worry about is a slug on the chin.”

  “And this time?”

  “A slug on the chin sounds just dandy.”

  Auger persuaded the taxi driver to take them once around the block, so that they would appear to be leaving the scene if Altfeld happened to be watching them from behind his curtains. Once they had returned to Altfeld’s road, the taxi driver parked the car in a different space further up the road than before, but still within sight of the house on the corner.

  “Tell the driver he may be in for a long wait,” Floyd said, “but that we’ll pay him more than he’d earn taking other rides.”

  “He still doesn’t like it,” Auger said, after passing on Floyd’s instructions. “He says it’s his job to take fares, not play private detective.”

  “Feed him another note.”

  She opened her purse again and spoke to the driver, who shrugged and took the proffered money.

  “What does he say now?” Floyd asked.

  “He says he could get used to his new profession.”

  They waited and waited. The driver thumbed through the Berliner Morgenpost from front to back. Just when Floyd was beginning to doubt himself, the front door of Altfeld’s house opened and a man emerged wearing a raincoat and carrying a small greaseproof-paper bag. Altfeld closed the garden gate behind him and set off down the street, stopping next to one of the parked cars and getting inside. The vehicle—a black nineteen-fifties Bugatti with white-wall tyres—grumbled into life and bounced away down the road.

  “Tell the driver to follow that car,” Floyd said, “and remind him to keep a nice distance.”

  Contrary to Floyd’s expectations, the taxi driver turned out to be reasonably proficient at tailing the other car, with Floyd only having to urge him to hold back once or twice. Two or three times, the driver swerved confide
ntly down a side road and re-emerged after some twists and turns just a few cars behind the one they were following.

  The pursuit took them back into town along more or less the same route they’d followed to reach Wedding. Soon they had crossed the Spree and were skirting the edge of the Tier-garten, Berlin’s vast green lung. Near the western end—not far from the Hotel Am Zoo—the Bugatti slowed and veered into a parking place. The taxi cruised past, only stopping when they had turned a corner. Auger paid off the driver while Floyd walked to the corner and eyed Altfeld’s car. He was just in time to observe the man emerge from the car, still carrying the paper bag. They followed him all the way to the Elephant Gate of the Zoologischer Garten, watching from a distance as he paid his entrance fee and strolled inside. Floyd knew the zoo very well. Greta and he had visited it on almost every one of their trips to Berlin, strolling around on carefree afternoons until the sky turned dark and the shimmering neon lights of the city beckoned.

  Overhead, the sky threatened rain but never quite delivered it, like a yapping dog with no bite. Early on a Sunday afternoon, the zoo was beginning to fill up with families accompanied by fractious children who had a habit of bursting into tears at the slightest provocation. Floyd and Auger bought tickets and kept a decent distance between themselves and Altfeld. The crowds were just thick enough to provide cover, while still allowing frequent glimpses of the man in the raincoat.

  They followed Altfeld to the penguin enclosure. Ringed by a spiked iron fence, it was a sunken concrete landscape of artificial rocks and shelves surrounding a shallow, squalid-looking lake. It was feeding time. A young man in shorts flung fish at the anxious, pressing mob of penguins. Altfeld stood by the railings, at the front of the small gathering of onlookers. There was no sign that he knew he was being followed. Soon the zookeeper picked up his empty bucket and moved elsewhere, and Altfeld took that as his cue to dig into his little paper bag and hurl silvery titbits to the birds.

  Across the bowl of the penguin enclosure, someone caught Floyd’s eye. It was Auger: she had made her way to the other side and had somehow managed to get to the front of the crowd of spectators, and was now pressed hard against the railings. Rather than paying attention to Altfeld, she was staring in obvious transfixed fascination at the bustling congregation of penguins, with their neat black morning suits, silly little flippers and expressions of utmost dignity, even as they belly-flopped into the water or fell over backwards. It was as if she had never seen penguins before.