Chen was looking disgusted, but I was used to that. Then he took one hand out of his trouser pocket and rubbed his eyes. When he took the hand away his expression was weary and somehow clouded.
‘There’s something wrong there,’ he repeated. ‘And please stop spewing all that garbage. You’re only putting a strain on your imagination, and when you don’t have much of some commodity you want to use it sparingly. Anyway, I don’t believe a word of what you said. You were following me yesterday, you were going to follow me again today, and I assume you thought you could turn the refugees into a rope to hang me with. I mean, you’re well known for what I might call the hole-and-corner manner of your Ashcroft operations: friends, neighbours, your Ashcroft partner – it’s a wonder you haven’t grassed on any of your own staff yet. I’m sure one of them snaffles a rump steak from time to time.’
He was still looking wearily at me, and perhaps it was that expression in his eyes, but anyway, I wasn’t afraid of him any more. And at bottom what he said was only the abuse I was accustomed to hearing from Chen. If he’d really guessed what I knew about him, his approach would have been different. After all, everyone at Ashcroft knew he didn’t shrink from physical violence in an argument. He’d twice set about colleagues, and the only thing that saved him had been witnesses saying those colleagues had been indulging in racist language. For what that was worth. Just think of all the comparisons with Hitler and the Gestapo that I’d had to put up with from him over the years…
And who was he to say I had no imagination? Chen’s assessments were usually not entirely random, but in this case… well, if he’d had the faintest idea how much imagination I could summon up! Imagination had led me to the truth about him!
No doubt about it: Chen was down and out for the count. Which didn’t necessarily mean he might not get up again quickly; I never knew with Chen. He might think of some way to corner me any moment. I had to get him out of my apartment.
In the same emotional tone as before, I said, ‘I’m really sorry you think of me like that. I think we ought to have a serious talk about our partnership as soon as possible. We can’t go on like this. However,’ I said, looking at my watch, ‘I have to get down to the restaurant for when we start serving lunch.’ And although I hadn’t thought of it before – it seemed obvious, or so I thought, that I ought to offer him some inducement to leave – I suggested, ‘Why don’t you come back here after three or thereabouts? I’ll bring us up something nice to eat, and we’ll try to settle all our misunderstandings at our leisure, how about that?’ I smiled and raised my hands, shrugging, in an ironically powerless gesture. ‘I mean, we’re still working partners, aren’t we?’
I didn’t often manage to take Chen by surprise, but I’d obviously done it this time. He was staring at me incredulously.
‘And by the way,’ I went on blithely, ‘I was going to ask you to take a look at our inner courtyard some time anyway. We want to put some attractive climbing plants in, and I thought that as a gardener you might be able to help us. I know my request may come as a bit of a surprise just now, but…’
I was smiling again. Not a shred of malice in my head, a clear conscience, anxious to preserve harmony – good old simple-minded Max. I thought I could read Chen’s thoughts in his face.
After a brief pause, he said, ‘I hope you know what you’re doing.’
‘I know I’d like to get everything straightened out between us again.’
He shook his head. ‘You’re planning something, my dear Max. I’ve been in the business long enough to sense that. I really meant to go to Youssef now and tell him that my partner is spying on me. But don’t worry, there’s time enough for that, after all.’ He cast me a fierce, challenging glance. ‘First of all, I’d like to know if you’re really dangerous. That would be something new – good old Max!’
‘Dangerous…’ What an absurd suspicion. And from Chen of all people! It was no effort for me to stare at him as if he were talking utter nonsense.
‘Yes, well.’ Chen dismissed it. ‘See you later then, if you like. But think hard about what you’re going to say to me about yesterday evening. I’ve never turned in a colleague yet, and to be honest I’d hate to do it, even with you. However, I have to know the truth. And you can leave out all that nonsense about wanting to make sure I was innocent.’
He turned to the corridor and went a few steps before turning round once more. ‘Oh, and by the way, it is farfetched to say I follow up my words with deeds. I’m much too comfortably off for that, probably too cowardly too. But I’m not blind or stupid, I’m not entirely cynical either. Above all, however, I’m an Ashcroft man. And if I do now and then let a social misfit go, as you put it, that doesn’t mean I’d give any potential criminal a chance.’ He nodded to me. ‘Don’t forget that.’
I listened to him walking away, opening the door of the apartment and closing it behind him. His footsteps echoed on the stairs. For a while I waited in anxious expectation of hearing those footsteps turn back again. At last I sank back in my chair, exhausted, and stretched my legs.
Above all, however, I’m an Ashcroft man… what a joke! The best evidence that he was not an Ashcroft man, but was hiding something, lay in that very sentence. Since when did Chen feel he had to explain himself to me? I’m much too comfortably off for that, probably too cowardly too. Chen as a law-abiding little cog in the wheel, nothing more than a ‘good cop’ letting petty criminals off… had he forgotten that I’d heard him every week for years emptying buckets full of hatred and criticism over our world? And now, all of a sudden: That doesn’t mean I’d give a potential criminal a chance. Oh no? Even if I was by some chance doing him an injustice with my Hallsund comparison and he truly had no connection with any suicide bombers – what, might I ask, was he but a potential terrorist himself, with his corrosive, coarse talk? He’d be the perfect example of someone who so far had lacked only the right opportunity.
But of course he hadn’t lacked it. For one thing was certain: Chen would never have set things up to get into my apartment just to demand an explanation of why I’d been shadowing him. A man with a clear conscience wasn’t bothered by a thing like that. And if he was bothered, why hadn’t he gone straight to Youssef? That’s what I’d have done in his place. And no doubt he hated me as much as I hated him. That meant he couldn’t go to Youssef, and what he said just now had been an empty threat. Could I go to Youssef myself?
Not yet, I thought as I rose and went into the kitchen to pour myself a cognac, but maybe this evening. I’d simply tell Chen to his face, over our late lunch, what I thought, and I’d have a recorder running, and then we’d see! This time it was up to me to catch him on the hop. Today was by no means over yet.
I drained the glass, went into my bedroom and changed the coverall and boots for a pale brown suit and beige suede shoes. I planted a bug on myself in the tool room.
When I appeared in Chez Max a moment later, Ravelli greeted me with, ‘Hi, boss! Has the pretty chicken flown the coop?’
‘She’s still preening her feathers, Ravelli. Set two good servings of that sausage and sauerkraut aside, would you?’
Just before two I saw the last customers off. Half an hour later the dining-room was cleared and swept, and the dishes were in the dishwasher.
I was sitting at a table near the glazed door that led to the courtyard, drinking a glass of white wine and wondering how best to confront Chen with what I knew. Suppose he lost control of himself? Suppose he physically attacked me? Suppose he saw nothing for it but to shut me up, as they say? There were a number of things in the dining room – chairs, vases, candlesticks – that could be used as blunt instruments. I saw him before me, I could hear what he’d say: ‘So you’ve thought far enough to pinpoint me as a terrorist – but not far enough to work out that, to a terrorist, one victim more or less probably doesn’t mean much. You don’t think I’m going to let you simply walk out of here and wreck my entire organisation, do you?’
And then what
? Chen was ten years younger than me, and a good deal stronger and quicker off the mark.
Alexi came out of the kitchen with a tea-towel, stopped by the bar, dried his hands and said, ‘All done and dusted, boss. Would you like me to come in an hour early this evening? Then we could get that ivy out of the way before we start serving dinner.’
I hesitated. ‘No, Alexi, it can wait until tomorrow.’
‘Okay.’ He tapped his forehead. ‘See you later, and have a nice afternoon.’
‘Thanks, Alexi. You too.’
After he’d left, I went to close the front door, took out my telephone and called Chen.
‘Yes?’
‘Just calling to say lunch is ready.’
‘What luck. Here I was even boasting to everyone: my partner wants to wring my neck, but first he’ll wine and dine me at the incomparable Chez Max. Well, I know where my priorities lie.’
I jumped. ‘You were boasting about it?’
Chen sighed. ‘Joke, Max, joke! Since when do we go around proclaiming that we even exist? I’ll be with you in half an hour. And don’t forget: I want to know the truth.’
The truth, I thought as I put my phone back in my jacket pocket. Why did he of all people keep talking about the truth? How had that café owner quoted Chen yesterday? ‘A truth, or your truth – but the truth, what nonsense.’ And there, just for once, he was right. Could my truth be his as well?
As I took a table out into the courtyard and put it down near the barbecue, I was thinking: even if he admits everything, we’re still worlds apart. Even if he doesn’t deny the facts – there was, after all, a kind of moral truth. And if he had ever known what that was, how could he have come around to organizing suicide bombings?
I laid the table, stuck the bug under its surface, opened a bottle of Franconian wine and went into the kitchen to warm up the sauerkraut. Then I sat down near the glazed door again, poured myself more white wine, and looked up at the walls now clear of ivy. No one living in the rest of the building had a view down into the courtyard. When I had the former laundry converted to make it a restaurant, Ashcroft got me an order whereby all windows looking out on the yard must be bricked up. Otherwise I could hardly have put any tables outside without disturbing people. There were protests at first, of course, but after the first tenants were taken to court for rebuilding their living-room without a permit and in a manner calculated to offend against the Protection of Historic Monuments law, the others soon calmed down.
My eyes went to the barbecue. As I laid the table, I’d seen the handle of the axe in passing. Of course I hoped fervently it wouldn’t come to that, but if Chen really did run amok, I had a means of self-defence handy.
Ten minutes later there was a knock at the front door.
*
‘Are we on a date or something?’ Chen looked from the elegantly laid, flower-bedecked table in the courtyard to me and winked. ‘I thought we were more likely to be at daggers drawn, and all this time you’ve been wanting to marry me!’
‘I just thought this was an important moment, and so…’
‘Sure. Getting married is a very important moment indeed.’
‘I thought we had a few things to clear up, so I tried to create a suitable setting.’
‘What, in this courtyard?’
‘Why not? It’s such a lovely day. And don’t worry, no one can hear us.’
‘I’m not worrying.’ He looked sceptically at me. ‘But you look just the way I imagine someone who is shitting their pants.’
Then he went out into the courtyard, over to the heap of ivy, and looked around. I stayed by the door.
‘Would you like an aperitif? Or shall I get our lunch at once?’
Ignoring my question, he pointed to the ivy and asked, ‘Is that by any chance my funeral pyre?’
‘Oh, please, Chen! Do be serious for once!’
‘Serious?’ He raised his glance from the ivy and looked sharply at me. ‘Very well then – let’s be serious. Seriously then, this whole thing looks like you’ve set a trap for me. No staff on the premises, key turned twice in the lock of the front door, no one who can see or hear us here, and a man who’s already unsuccessful anyway and must now be afraid he’ll be informed on to his superior. Apart from all the rest of it… after all, there has to be some reason why you, having done hardly anything recently as an Ashcroft agent, start investigating me. You must have quite a backlog of resentment there?’
‘I’ve no idea what you’re…’ ‘Oh, come off it!’ He sighed, and said wearily, ‘Let’s not have any more of this stupid stuff.’ Then he raised his eyebrows in an exaggerated way, and shook his head as if rhetorically. ‘What, no years of fury with your clod of a partner? No jealousy, no envy? No constant feeling that you’re more upright, better behaved, more correct in general, but it still doesn’t pay off? Not even with women, in fact least of all with them. They’d rather go out with your clod of a partner. I saw you filming Natalia with your sexomat shooter. Incidentally, I would dislike it very much if we were to get into bed with the same woman, however indirectly…’
‘I was only filming her to…’
‘I don’t want to know why you did it,’ he interrupted me. ‘I just want you to know I saw you. Let’s hope you remember that when you get into the suit, and let’s hope it will spoil the idea of Natalia for you and you’ll feed some other woman into the simulator.’
I moved out into the yard myself, went over to the table and poured wine from the squat bottle. ‘Sure you wouldn’t like a drink before we eat?’
‘No, I would not like a drink. I’d like to know what’s going on around here.’
‘Don’t get so worked up,’ I replied, perhaps a little too energetically. But what on earth was he thinking of? When I’d gone to all that trouble with the table and the meal! ‘Let’s have a glass of wine together. And if you really distrust me…’ Suppressing my fury, I took off my jacket at a deliberately leisurely pace. ‘Here, look, all clean, no weapon, no trap.’
Chen stopped short and then shook his head incredulously. ‘Well, if I didn’t distrust you before, then I definitely do now. Maybe I need that drink after all.’
He came towards me, and I could sense the tension in him. As if he were ready to leap at me any moment. I wondered briefly whether to raise my glass to him, but then I was afraid my hand might shake. Chen drank without taking his eyes off me.
When he put the glass down on the table again, he said, ‘Right. We’ve had a glass of wine together. Now do I finally get an explanation?’
I put my hand in my trouser pocket and switched the bug on. At the same time I glanced to one side briefly, checking my distance from the barbecue. Chen was about five metres away from me. Was it his sweat I could smell?
I heard myself say huskily, ‘I know about you.’
Chen put his head to one side and opened his mouth as if we were in some comedy show. I’d seen him assume that expression so often. Always when something really mattered to me.
‘Oh yes?’ he said casually. ‘So what about it?’ We looked each other in the eye, and I suddenly felt my head was empty. And then it was anything but. My whole body felt as if it were on some kind of rack. All the same I knew this must go on, I must bring this business to an end. There was no going back.
My words sounded as if I’d learnt them by heart. ‘I know you’re a terrorist. You plan assassinations, you hide Iranians, no one except for suicide bombers comes out of Iran…’ I stopped and took a deep breath. Chen was still staring fixedly at me. ‘And you’ve managed to hide for years behind the things you say, because of course no one ever thought that someone in conflict with our society would proclaim his hatred so openly. For instance, those Iranians…’
‘The Iranians,’ he interrupted me in a loud voice, although I registered a slight tremor in it, ‘are refugees! Deserters from the Iranian army. The father of the family refused to go to a training camp for…’
‘Oh, Chen! Stop it, for goodness’ sake
!’ And suddenly I let fly. It all poured out of me. ‘Stop telling your lying tales! I’ve seen through you! You’re a danger! A subversive! An enemy of the system! A terrorist living a life of luxury! Women and whisky and planting bombs on the side! And then there’s your alleged success rate! You’ve probably just been hauling poor innocent souls before the courts over the years so that no one would get on your trail! Super-Chen! You of all people! You arrogant, spoilt bastard! You don’t know anything about human beings! I’m going to look into all your cases, and then we’ll see how many innocent men and women you’ve sent to labour camps! As if you could ever predict crimes in advance! You have to like human beings for that, you have to be able to put yourself in their place! And what can you do? You despise them, make them look small and ridiculous, nothing more!’
I was struggling for air. Chen had retreated a metre or so, and his face was strangely distorted, by fury as much as by fear. Of course! What else? I had him by the throat!
He said, ‘I’m going now. You’re right, I don’t particularly like you, and very likely it’s a fact that I can’t put myself in your place, but I can see that you’d like to murder me. And do you know something?’ He took another step back. ‘This is a case for the Ashcroft agency. You are the danger. You’re a crazed fanatic. You ought not to be on the loose.’
I laughed as I had never heard myself laugh before. This was total lunacy! Was I the fanatic? Was I the murderer?
And to show even more clearly how mad he was, I laughed. ‘Ha ha ha! Ho, ho! Ha ha ha!’
He turned to the glazed door.
‘Stay here, you bastard! We still have things to discuss!’
He turned his head to look at me, and once again I could see the fear in his face. I felt immense satisfaction. Let him crawl to me, the swine!
‘Stay where you are,’ he said tonelessly. ‘You’re overexcited. I’m going to send someone along to help you. Try to calm down. Drink another glass of wine. And don’t try following me. I’ll climb out through the window. It’s all okay – maybe you’re simply a little overwrought…’
Chez Max Page 12
