‘Do you know where Yuri lived?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is there anything there they’d like to get their hands on? Anything incriminating?’
Bella frowned, thinking back to the suite of tiny rooms behind the church. The very bareness of the place argued against Schultz’s suggestion, then she remembered the thick sheaf of manuscript Yuri had hidden in the church itself. That, at the very least, deserved to be somewhere a little safer, out of the reach of Kalb’s men.
‘You’ve read it?’
‘I know about it.’
‘And?’
‘It’s a fable, really. It’s about faith. And about the Old Ukraine.’
‘Really?’ Schultz drew a finger across his throat, and then reached for the bottle. ‘You’re sure you won’t take a drink?’
*
Schultz ordered the same driver to accompany Bella to the church that Yuri called home. By now, thanks to their efforts to find Larissa, the two of them were getting to know each other. Berndt Fischer was an older man, late forties at least, and had been with Schultz since the outbreak of war and the campaign in Poland. At first, he’d been wary of Bella but her perfect German and the tales she told from her posting to Berlin had impressed him and when she’d lightly enquired about what the war was doing to his boss, he’d been surprisingly frank.
‘Schultz copes,’ he’d said, ‘because he’s that kind of man. Give him a task and he’ll get on with it, but there are some days when you know he’s really angry, and he’s definitely drinking too much.’
‘Because he wants to forget? Blot it all out?’
‘Because it helps. We love the man. He’s big on the outside and big on the inside. Most of the people he has to deal with are dwarfs.’
They were skirting the city centre, heading for the old town. Most of the fires were out now but curls of smoke still hung in the cold night air. Berndt stopped to let a long file of Russian prisoners under guard cross the road. Most of them were carrying picks or shovels, hunched against the rain, and Berndt said they were probably heading for what remained of the Ginzburg Skyscraper.
‘They’re tidying up,’ he said. ‘Very German, but I’m guessing you’d know that.’
‘And the rebuilding? When will that start?’
Berndt laughed, and then shot Bella a look.
‘Is that some kind of joke? The Russians did this in the first place, and they’ll be the ones to put it all right.’
‘You mean those men?’ Bella nodded at the soldiers.
‘No. I mean proper Russians. Your lot. When they’re back in charge again.’
Bella nodded. Schultz had said exactly the same thing. Turn your back on Berlin, she thought, and you’ll find yourself looking at thousands of kilometres of steppe every morning. The music from the homeland will be as martial as ever but, out east, this war is suddenly a very different proposition.
‘You told me you’re a Rhinelander this afternoon,’ Bella said idly.
‘That’s right. I grew up in Rheydt. At school I was in the same class as Goebbels.’
‘Really?’ He suddenly had Bella’s full attention. ‘What was he like?’
‘He was a little fellow. He always had trouble with his foot, couldn’t walk properly, not his fault. He was crazy about acting and we laughed at him at first because he tried so hard to play all these parts. He wrote some of the plays himself. I can see him now, flinging his arms around, beating his chest, going down on his knees, trying to kid us he was someone else. Another thing: he was mad about the pastor. His name was Mollen, Johannes Mollen, and when you couldn’t find Goebbels you knew he was at confession. I was pals with his family. His mother wanted him to study theology because that way the Church would pay for him to go to university.’
‘And now? You ever see him? Make contact? Take tea at the Promi?’
‘Never.’
‘Then maybe you should,’ she laughed. ‘Before my friends in Moscow turn up and ruin the party.’
They were bumping slowly up the hill in the Old Town towards the dome of St Sophia.
‘Just here,’ Bella indicated an alleyway on the left. ‘We have to walk. You’ve got a torch?’
Berndt led the way, the light from the torch pooling on the wet cobblestones. The black shape of the church loomed ahead. Berndt pushed through the gate. In the beam of the torch, Bella could see two wooden trestles abandoned in the graveyard.
‘Someone’s been sawing wood,’ Berndt peered around. ‘You can smell it.’
He was right. Bella could smell it, too, the sweetness of the resin. Berndt unholstered the pistol he was carrying and stepped towards the door of the church. The door was a centimetre or so open. There was mud on the flagstones inside.
‘Someone’s been here. Recently.’
The body of the church was suddenly cold and standing in the darkness Bella could hear a steady dripping from a leak. There was a new smell, too, a different sweetness. Incense, she told herself.
‘Where is this thing?’ Berndt was sweeping the torch left and right across the plain wooden pews. ‘Can you remember?’
‘Yes.’ Berndt’s torch had settled on the altar. Everything valuable – pictures, icons, the cross on the altar – had gone. ‘Over there,’ Bella told him. ‘There’s a loose flagstone in the corner.’
Berndt led the way again. When a sudden noise erupted from the corner, he spun round, levelling his gun, but it was only a bird.
‘Shit,’ he said. ‘These places give me the creeps.’
‘There—’ Bella was pointing down at the flagstone. ‘Yuri managed to get his fingers beneath one corner. There’s a knack.’
Berndt grunted and handed Bella the torch. On his knees, he succeeded in wriggling his fingers under the flagstone. Then he leaned back, pulling hard, and the flagstone began to hinge upwards. Bella stepped sideways, letting the light fall on the cavity inside. Instead of a thick wad of manuscript, she found herself staring at a book.
‘Was that there, too?’
‘No.’
‘Fetch it out.’
Bella knelt beside him and lifted the book out. Berndt let the flagstone fall, and the dull thud disturbed another bird in the darkness.
‘What is it?’ Still on his knees, Berndt nodded up at the book.
Bella shook her head. She’d seen hundreds of these books in her years in Berlin, probably thousands. It was the Reich’s new bible. How fitting, she thought, to find it in a Ukrainian church.
‘Well?’ Berndt was getting impatient. ‘Does it have a title?’
‘Yes. Mein Kampf,’ Bella had opened it. ‘With Hitler’s personal signature.’
Berndt struggled to his feet.
‘We need to take a look outside,’ he growled.
‘Why?’
‘This is the SS. They always leave a message. There may be others. Komm.’
Bella followed him out of the church, glad to be in the open air once more. At Berndt’s suggestion, she’d left the book on a pew. Outside, the rain was heavier, and Bella could hear the tolling of a distant bell, carried on the wind. Berndt was moving cautiously around the side of the church, following the path that led to Yuri’s quarters. Then, abruptly, he stopped, and Bella watched as the beam of the torch tracked slowly upwards.
At first, she couldn’t believe it, not here, not beside a church. They were looking at a crude wooden cross, two stout timbers, freshly sawn, nailed together and erected against the biggest of the trees. Hanging on the cross, totally naked, was a thin figure she recognised only too well. The beam of Berndt’s torch had steadied on Yuri’s head. The wreckage of his face lolled against his bony shoulder. His mouth was half open and rain, pinked with blood, was running down the whiteness of his cheeks. His one good eye had been gouged out while the other, still swollen, was closed.
Bella remained quite still, staring up, barely aware of the rain and the darkness. Was he still alive? Breathing? Just? Was it her duty to somehow get him down, ease the pain o
f the nails they’d used to crucify him, show a little tenderness, a little mercy, try – at the very least – to be with him at the hour of his passing? She shook her head, knowing that it was already too late, that they’d probably killed him elsewhere before plotting this grotesque piece of theatre. Then the beam of the torch wavered and she felt the lightest touch on her arm.
‘Komm…’ It was Berndt. Enough, he was saying. We go.
23
MONDAY 29 SEPTEMBER 1941
The house, Edwardian as far as Moncrieff could judge, was built into a wooded slope, facing south. In the sunshine, from the flagstoned patio, he could almost touch the stands of beech, ash and yew. The locals, according to his host, called this area ‘Little Switzerland’, and he could understand why. The soft green swell of the hills had a genteel charm quite at odds with the mighty Cairngorm landscapes of his youth, but it touched him nonetheless. Barton had promised him peace of mind, and here it was. Rural Hampshire at its best.
Ursula Barton had delivered him yesterday afternoon. Matheus Groenbaum, she’d told him, was German, a Jewish doctor from Lindau who’d fled Bavaria after the murderous chaos of Kristallnacht and settled in England. He’d met and married an Englishwoman after she’d lost her husband, and he now occupied their family house in the hills north of Petersfield.
Groenbaum, she said, had abandoned conventional medicine for something she called Gestalt therapy. Barton had used him for MI5 casualties on a number of occasions and had been impressed by the results. Groenbaum took people in difficulties, people who’d tied themselves in all kinds of knots, and made them well again. Still trying to account for the missing week in Moncrieff’s life, Barton had previously consulted a senior physician in Harley Street, a man whom she trusted, and he’d told her that it was probably too late to find some rogue substance or other in Moncrieff’s bloodstream. By now, he’d told her, all traces would have gone. Best, therefore, to concentrate on the mind rather than the body. Hence Moncrieff’s presence in the deckchair, face lifted to the autumn sun, his eyes closed as the soft footsteps approached.
‘Tea, Mr Moncrieff? It’s dandelion and burdock. I picked the dandelions myself.’
‘It’s Tam. I thought we agreed last night.’
Geraldine was tall and slim, blonde hair carefully curled, the blush of an early ride still visible in her smile. She kept a horse stabled just down the road. It was a big bay gelding, she’d told him last night, and it knew every inch of the surrounding hills. Once, when her first husband was alive, they’d persuaded it into a horse box and driven to Dorset for a day’s hunting. She’d never hunted in her life and she’d loathed the experience. The horse was called Thatch. And she suspected they were both pacifists.
‘My husband will be joining you shortly,’ she said. ‘Call me if you’d like more tea.’
Gestalt therapy? In German, the word meant ‘shape’, as in ‘shape in the darkness’, and if the latter phrase was any clue, then Moncrieff was only too happy to volunteer. Ursula Barton, with her usual bluntness, had made him uncomfortably aware of just how fragile he’d become. That, somehow, had to stop and if Matheus Groenbaum could glue him back together, then so be it.
He arrived moments later, a tall man, darkly handsome, tanned face, still in tennis whites after an early game on court at a neighbouring house. Watching him and his new wife together at supper last night, they might have been married forever. The same physical ease. The same effortless charm. These people are comfortable in their skins, Moncrieff had thought, and they were tuned into exactly the same wavelength. A subtle glance, a nod, a wink, the ghost of a passing smile. This was a language so subtle that itself spoke volumes. That’s all it took, he told himself, if you were lucky enough to find the right partner.
Groenbaum fetched a stool and perched himself beside Moncrieff. He was nursing a glass of apple juice, cloudy and probably home-made, and the warmth of the sun raised a light film of sweat on the broadness of his face.
‘You won?’
‘I did, Tam. I blame my partner. She’s better than me in every department. If I’m lucky, I get to hand her a towel at the end. She’s brutal at the net. I admire that. Golf is your vice, Ursula tells me. Is she right?’
‘I played a bit in Scotland. Up there it’s difficult not to.’
Groenbaum nodded and studied his glass for a moment or two. Watching him, Moncrieff wondered what else Barton had shared. Ex-Marine? Owner of a falling-down house in the mountains? Hopelessly in love with a serial traitor? A man so careless, so confused, that he’d somehow misplaced an entire week?
‘We address the whole person, Tam. You need to know that.’
‘We?’
‘Myself and Gerri. We’re a team. We share everything. We find that makes a difference. You can be part of that team. We’d like that very much.’
Moncrieff could only nod. Team? He hadn’t a clue what this invitation could possibly mean.
‘Ursula gave me the impression that fitness really matters,’ he said.
‘Ursula’s right. We have a weights room. I’ll show you later. We also have a number of local circuits in the hills, various distances, different gradients, but, given your accident, it might be wiser to start with the weights. Your mobility will return but we ought to err on the side of caution. In the meantime, we need to get to know each other. In Lindau, I spent nearly ten years dispensing various medicines, and you know what it taught me? That most of our troubles happen up here.’ He tapped his head. ‘Gestalt, Tam. Getting you back together again, whole, complete…’ – the lightest touch on Moncrieff’s arm – ‘… ready for anything.’
Moncrieff nodded. Groenbaum’s English was faultless, barely accented, and he spoke with an easy grace that still managed to preserve a certain authority. No wonder Gerri had dispensed with widowhood so quickly, he thought. To most women, this man would be irresistible.
‘You liked the tea?’ Groenbaum nodded at Moncrieff’s half-empty cup.
‘It was a little bitter for me.’
‘That’s good.’
‘Good? How so?’
‘We find that most people can’t cope with being honest. You’re an exception already, Tam. Come with me.’
Moncrieff struggled to his feet and paused to let a moment of dizziness pass. He had the feeling that he’d passed a test. Had the tea been deliberately undrinkable? Was this all it took to put a man on the road to recovery?
He was following Groenbaum around the corner of the house. At the end of a gravelled path lay what looked like a driving-off platform on a golf course. From here, the garden dropped steeply away to a stream below, climbing again to the other side of the valley. The flanks of the valley were thickly wooded, magnificent stands of beech, autumn-gold in the sunshine.
‘There’s a choice of drivers,’ Groenbaum nodded at the bag of clubs waiting in a wheeled cart. ‘You choose.’
‘You want me to tee off?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where to?’
‘It doesn’t matter. I want you to put the ball in the trees. You’ve played the game before. We’re talking no more than seventy yards. I just want you to concentrate on the swing, the impact, the sweetness of that little ball flying off into nowhere. What happens to it afterwards is not your concern. You’ll never see it again, never spend a moment worrying about where it might be. And that, Tam, is the whole point.’
‘It is?’
‘Yes.’ From the pocket of his tennis shorts he produced a golf ball and a wooden tee.
‘Just the one?’ Moncrieff was staring at his hand.
‘Just the one.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Of course.’
Moncrieff took the ball and weighed it in his hand. Then he planted the tee, giving himself plenty of room to swing. He hadn’t done this for a while, more years than he cared to remember, but he told himself that you never lose the balance, the grip, that feeling of transferring all the power you can muster into that single, brief, explo
sive moment of contact.
He stepped back from the tee, gazing across the narrowness of the valley to the trees. How many other golf balls had flown across this gap, and where were they now? Did Groenbaum, or his wife, or some flunkey, scour the woods once a week, reclaiming precious golf balls? Or had the woods become a giant nest for these little white eggs?
‘Remember it’s you, Tam. Part of you. You don’t need to choose which part, which memory, which relationship. Not yet. All that matters is that sense of departure, of getting rid of it, and of not giving a damn about where it’s gone. You’re ready to give it your best? Just nod.’
Moncrieff nodded. Then he took a tiny step forward, letting the face of the club kiss the ball, letting his long legs settle, getting the space between his feet just right, flexing his wrists, drawing back the club. No practice swing, he told himself. Be brave, be confident, let the club descend at the very edge of this mighty arc, maximum power, maximum impact.
He was ready now, the club raised, his head down, his eyes focused on the waiting ball. Then came a flashback to a course and a moment he didn’t recognise, a younger Tam Moncrieff, same stance, same intense concentration, and he unleashed the elastic in his shoulders and his back, and brought the club face smoothly down, a sweet blur of effort that sent the ball high across the valley. His head lifted to watch it disappear over the trees and there came a moment of the purest release when he realised that Groenbaum was right, that something deep inside himself had shifted, that he was a little lighter, a little more free.
Groenbaum’s soft applause was music to his ears. He was about to nod again, a nod of thanks this time for Groenbaum letting him into this little secret of his, but then his attention was caught by a brief glint of sunlight beneath the trees. Binoculars, he thought. I’m being watched.
*
Schultz was reading the morning edition of Novoe Ukrainskoe Slovo when Bella knocked on the door of his office in the museum. They’d talked last night after Berndt had brought her back from the church in the old town. She’d cleaned him out of schnapps, but he didn’t begrudge her a drop. There wasn’t enough alcohol in the entire city to salve the wound she needed dressing.
Kyiv (Spoils of War) Page 24
