Nightfall Berlin

by Jack Grimwood

‘You’re the oldest. You’re meant to know.’

  ‘It’s all right. No need to get upset.’ She brushed her fingers across his bare shoulder. It felt somewhere between a shadow and a breeze.

  ‘I’m not normal,’ he said. ‘That’s what they say at school.’

  Becca laughed. ‘No one is. But you have to discover that for yourself.’ She looked sad. ‘By then the damage is usually done.’

  ‘Can I ask what happened?’

  ‘Best not,’ she said, sounding scarily like Dad. ‘You’d only tell them. And it’s not like I really know. It was lots of little things.’

  ‘Mummy’s straw that broke the camel’s back?’

  ‘It was an accident, you know. You can tell Daddy that. He pretends he believes it, but he doesn’t really.’

  ‘Was it?’ Charlie asked. ‘You promise?’

  ‘If I promise, does that mean you’ll tell Daddy?’

  Charlie nodded. ‘I promise.’

  ‘And so do I,’ Becca said. ‘We should have been better friends. I’m sorry.’

  ‘The gap was too big.’

  ‘Who said that?’

  ‘Mummy, when she was talking to Daddy. She thought I couldn’t hear.’

  ‘They always think you can’t hear.’

  ‘I know,’ Charlie said. ‘Did you know I was an accident?’

  The girl came to kneel in front of him and she put up her hand to hold his face, although Charlie couldn’t quite feel her fingers. ‘That was me,’ she said. ‘I’m the reason they got married. Mummy wanted you …’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Charlie said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  He was crying and looking round for his sister but she was gone. The room was empty, the windows painted shut, the plywood still firmly fixed over the fireplace. There was no way out.

  ‘Keep looking,’ she said. Her voice was in his head, not outside like last time.

  ‘I’ve looked,’ Charlie protested.

  ‘Look again …’

  78

  It was only when Marshal Milov shut the door behind them that Tom realized General Rafikov was not included in their conversation.

  The office that Milov had commandeered was panelled in dark wood and smelt and felt like the inside of a cigar box. Opening a window, the commissar reached for a humidor and hesitated. ‘Want one?’ he asked.

  Tom shook his head.

  ‘I’m meant to be giving up too.’

  With a sigh, Commissar Milov, Marshal of the Soviet Union, settled himself behind a desk and indicated that Tom should pour him a glass of water, and then take a chair. ‘In your own words,’ he said.

  ‘My son’s been taken and my wife is having an affair.’

  ‘Are the two related?’

  ‘No,’ Tom said. ‘They’re not.’

  ‘That’s good,’ the commissar said. ‘In situations like this, simple is best.’ He reached for the humidor he’d resisted, bit the end off a Cohiba and spat towards the waste basket.

  ‘Here,’ Tom said, flicking a heavy gold desk lighter.

  ‘This is when you tell me who took him.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said.

  ‘Of course you do. There’s no point taking him otherwise.’

  Marshal Milov sat back and blew smoke at the ceiling. Then he drew deep on the cigar and shut his eyes, keeping his thoughts and the smoke inside. ‘Such things are done to frighten,’ he said finally. ‘To bend the victim to the shape required. These people will not kill him. Not yet. Not until they’re certain you cannot be bent to shape.’

  Reaching into his pocket, Tom put Charlie’s postcard on the desk. ‘Being killed isn’t the worst thing that can happen to a child.’

  ‘You speak from experience?’

  ‘Yes,’ Tom said.

  ‘Do they know that?’

  ‘I would imagine so …’

  ‘Then they found the right lever.’ The commissar drew on his cigar and held the smoke before letting it rise in a trickle. Standing up, he opened the window a little wider.

  ‘Maya will complain,’ he said. ‘She always does.’

  ‘She’s here?’

  Wax Angel had been a sniper in Stalingrad in her teens, a ballerina in her twenties, a prisoner of the gulags shortly after. When Tom first met her six months before, she’d been a beggar, sitting on church steps in Moscow, carving winged figures from stolen candles. It was the candles that gave Maya her nickname.

  Wax Angel.

  ‘You think she’d let me come alone?’

  Marshal Milov looked at the Cohiba sadly, stubbed it out on the inside of a drawer and pushed it into his pocket. ‘Now all I need to do is remember it’s there … Don’t get old,’ he added. ‘Not if you can avoid it.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘I fought at Stalingrad. I led tanks across the Vistula into Germany. I was there when Berlin fell. I stood up to the Boss in the worst of the bad days and lived. Now I worry about being discovered smoking.’

  ‘You control the destiny of millions.’

  ‘It’s not as much fun as it should be. That’s the truth of it, Tom. I’m old. I’m tired. I’m glad the woman I love is with me. I’m glad my granddaughter’s found a man she loves enough to give him a child. I’m glad Gorbachev’s in the Kremlin scaring the shit out of old men like me. But I’ve had enough of it. Even giants should be allowed to sleep.’

  The marshal said it without irony, and Tom realized he was speaking for his entire generation: those who’d turned back the Nazi invasion at a cost of dead brothers, fathers and sons; who fought beside their sisters, mothers and daughters. Men for whom the ghosts of those dead were more important than the lives of the living, because it was only a matter of time before they joined them. The commissar hated Moscow and barely left his dacha. For Tom, his son’s abduction was everything. But Tom was not a fool, he knew something bigger was needed to bring a man like Milov to Berlin.

  ‘What is this really about?’ Tom asked.

  ‘You expect me to tell you?’

  ‘A man can hope.’

  ‘Hope gets you killed, Tom.’

  ‘Luck is good. Skill is better. Something my son said.’

  ‘A wise child.’

  Looking up, Tom met the old man’s eyes.

  ‘Sir Cecil Blackburn was a paedophile. In Berlin after the war he ran a club of some sort. It was used by British, American and Soviet officers …’ Tom stared at the old man. ‘I’m not telling you anything you don’t know, am I?’

  The commissar smiled.

  ‘He was blackmailing London,’ Tom said, ‘into letting him return. And I was the officer sent to …’

  ‘Kill him?’

  ‘Bring him back. I don’t believe we intended to let Sir Cecil publish his memoirs. I doubt we even intended to let him appear in court. I think we simply felt it would be safer if he was in our hands.’

  ‘Any idea why?’

  Tom thought of Flo’s missing name; Lord Brannon, the Queen’s cousin, blown up to order on a Westmorland lake. London would do anything to stop that getting out. Including taking Sir Cecil back.

  He shook his head.

  Reaching for the humidor, Milov took another cigar, lit it and closed his eyes. There was a moment of silence. When he opened them again, Tom could tell he’d made a decision.

  ‘I will need the memoirs.’

  Tom opened his mouth to object and the commissar held up his hand. For a second he said nothing, and simply seemed to be thinking, unless he was collecting his thoughts. ‘When you find them, when that time comes,’ he said, ‘I will need the memoirs. That is my price for helping save your son.’

  ‘You’ll get me to London?’

  ‘So you can be arrested? Of course he won’t …’

  The voice came from a different doorway, and Tom stood to greet the elderly woman who’d slipped into the room. She sniffed the air, looked at the open window and glanced reproachfully at her husband. She smiled at Tom, though.

  They hugged, and Wax Angel
stepped back to examine his face, one hand coming up to touch it. Her own face was high-cheeked and lined, weathered from work camps and a life lived outdoors.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Tom asked.

  ‘You think I’d let him out alone?’

  Despite himself, Tom laughed.

  ‘That’s better,’ Maya said. ‘Now, tell me all about it. Begin with your boy being abducted. How did your enemies do this?’ She listened carefully, stopping Tom only once to check a detail. ‘A Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud Coupé? Right. Now him’ – she glanced at her husband – ‘what price has he asked?’

  ‘Sir Cecil Blackburn’s memoirs.’

  ‘If he finds them,’ Marshal Milov added.

  ‘When he finds them,’ Maya said. ‘When he finds them it might be best if he loses them again, permanently. Isn’t that right?’

  ‘Maya.’ Marshal Milov’s voice was sharp.

  ‘The world is changing,’ she said. ‘We should let it change. Gorbachev would like to abolish nuclear weapons. This the West has refused. So he will accept a reduction instead. There are to be talks. It’s possible that people in the negotiations are named in the memoirs. Not kindly.’

  ‘Maya …’

  ‘He should destroy them. The world cannot afford these talks to be derailed.’ Wax Angel glared at her husband. ‘The commissar knows this. He knows, too, that there are people on your side and ours who would like nothing more.’

  Marshal Milov sighed.

  Walking to the humidor, he took a cigar and shrugged. ‘You’re cross anyway. What difference will it make?’

  ‘It will make me crosser.’ She took the cigar from his fingers and returned it to the box, letting her hand brush against his.

  ‘Tell Tom the rest,’ she ordered.

  The commissar sighed. ‘We have someone in the GDR Politburo.’

  ‘With respect,’ Tom said, ‘they’re your puppets.’

  ‘Less so, year on year. So it still pays to have someone inside. Now would be a bad time for that to be revealed. So, you can see, for a while at least, London and Moscow’s interests align.’

  ‘Your man might be on Sir Cecil’s list?’

  ‘We can’t take that risk.’

  ‘Who will you send to London?’ Tom asked.

  Maya came to stand in front of him. Her face was stern and her gaze steady. For all her age, her determination was steely.

  ‘Who do you think?’ she demanded.

  79

  There was a story about a spider Mummy used to tell Charlie before he learnt to tie his shoes properly. He had to be able to tie his shoes to go to school. He only discovered that later.

  If he’d known, he’d never have learnt to tie them at all.

  The spider kept making a bad web, which kept breaking. The king, who was hiding from his enemies, watched the spider endlessly making bad webs and decided to have another go at getting his kingdom back. This time he managed it, just as the spider eventually managed to make a web. It couldn’t have been very good at being a spider though. None of the spiders Charlie had seen had ever had trouble making webs.

  Charlie shivered. He wasn’t cold exactly, but he felt very naked, and there was nowhere to go to the loo. He didn’t need to go but was worried about when he did need to. He also wanted to know why they had taken his clothes. He knew he was definitely still at Great-Uncle Max’s because the gardeners passed by the window regular as clockwork. Hammering on the glass didn’t help.

  None of them even glanced at the house.

  Not only was the sash window on which he hammered painted shut but it also had a bolt sunk into its crossbar. The bolt needed a hexagonal key to remove it and there were identical bolts on the other windows. Trying not to be dispirited, Charlie turned his attention to the door. He began by listing everything about it that was strange.

  For a start, it had locks, plural.

  Secondly, the newer of the locks was fixed the wrong way round.

  A shiny Yale had its slot facing into the room. The only reason you would do that was … This bit wasn’t really part of the list.

  It was more of a conclusion.

  The only reason you’d do that was so people inside would need a key to let themselves out; while those outside would only need to turn a latch to let themselves in. That thought didn’t make Charlie feel any better.

  The bottom lock was Victorian, very simple, and the deadbolt hadn’t been engaged. Its black metal cover looked flimsy. Perhaps they didn’t think it worth locking. Either that, or it was so old that they’d long since lost the key.

  What Charlie needed was his picks.

  Except those were at school, where he should have been. The school would have noticed that he hadn’t returned. Matron always came round to check everyone was in bed before the bell rang for lights out. Daylight outside said that now was tomorrow. He should definitely have been back at school by now.

  Yale locks were easier to pick than mortise locks. So Felix, the man in Cuba, had said. But to pick the Yale he’d need …

  Charlie wished Becca would come back.

  He missed her in real life and he missed her here; and he knew Mummy said life wasn’t fair, every time he said something was unfair; but Becca dying really wasn’t. It wasn’t fair to anyone. He couldn’t even remember the last thing that Becca had said to him before she got in her Mini that morning.

  Don’t touch my things, probably.

  It was possible she was telling the truth about not driving into the tree on purpose. She’d looked normal when she said goodbye, and hadn’t sounded strange. Charlie was much better at sensing what other people were feeling than he was at working out what he felt himself. Becca must have looked and behaved normally when she got into the car or he’d have noticed.

  Keep looking, she said.

  I’ve looked.

  Well. Look again …

  If she told him to look then there must be something in this room that he needed to find. It would be cruel otherwise. He could waste a whole day, if he had a day, looking for something that wasn’t there.

  Remember the spider, Mummy would have said.

  He began searching the floorboards for a nail that he could prise up or work loose; but all of the nails were hammered flat and so firmly sunk into the boards that, even if he didn’t have bitten fingernails, he’d never be able to get them up.

  Maybe there was something else?

  Something trapped in the filthy cracks between the boards.

  Charlie skimmed the room, walking too fast and looking left and right without really seeing anything. He hated himself in the window. It wasn’t simply that he looked afraid. He was much too little for his age.

  He decided it would be best if he stopped looking at his reflection and started looking at the floorboards instead, properly this time. Walking up one edge of the room, he looked only at the gap between boards one and two. Then he walked back, looking at the gap between boards two and three. He made the turns at each end without letting himself stop or look away from the floor.

  Charlie had searched almost all the room before he started to panic. It was hard not to be worried when you’d looked at eighteen gaps and there were only two to go. Missed it.

  That sounded like Becca.

  But the voice had been his own.

  Charlie walked back over the bit he’d just covered.

  Kneeling, he peered at the dust and grit trapped between the boards. There, half buried, was a hairgrip. One of those pieces of bent metal covered with tortoiseshell plastic that small girls and women wear. Becca used to hate them.

  He couldn’t get it with his fingers and had no nails to reach into the gap. So he needed to think. That was fine. Thinking was about the one thing he could do. He found a floorboard splintered enough at the edge to let him break free a needle of wood and he used that to coax the hairgrip from the gap.

  As he reached for the hairgrip, he heard tyres on gravel and the rumble of an engine he recognized. The Rolls-Royce
was back.

  80

  Sun glinted off the Moskva River on to the Vodovzvodnaya Tower.

  The roof of the British embassy could be seen across the river from the Kremlin office that Sir Edward Masterton was about to visit. Her Majesty’s ambassador to the USSR had been here before.

  Not often, but once or twice.

  Then, as now, he’d entered through the Borovistky Gate, the Spasskaya Tower entrance being reserved for heads of state. As Sir Edward’s car passed into the Kremlin, he remembered a joke Premier Khrushchev had told years before.

  A farmer from the Urals drives into Red Square and parks in front of the Spasskaya Tower. A guard rushes over. ‘Don’t park there. The Politburo use this entrance.’ The peasant looks at the gate, considers his rusting lorry and shrugs. ‘It’s okay,’ he says. ‘I’ve locked it.’

  Smiling, Sir Edward climbed languidly from his Jaguar.

  The ambassador worked hard to be never less than elegant. He was English, it was expected. He’d be happier, however, if he knew why he’d been summoned.

  London had been no help. Chernobyl, the coming arms summit, Baltic autumn exercises … Nothing had happened or not happened as far as they were aware. His call had worried them though. The Foreign Office had ended the call from Sir Edward dreading whatever bombshell Gorbachev intended to drop now. The grandson of peasants, the son of a tractor driver wounded killing Nazis, he was a hard man to read.

  Sir Edward put the man’s unusual approach down to his having been a child when his grandfather was arrested. Although not shot, his grandfather had been tortured for months as a Trotskyite and the effect on Gorbachev’s family had been devastating. Gorbachev said he wanted to see those days gone for ever and Sir Edward was inclined to believe him.

  Chernobyl seemed the most likely reason.

  Reports of emergency field hospitals set up to treat those irradiated while trying to cap the reactor were still coming in. It was fairly obvious that news from the area was being heavily censored. And given what Pravda was saying, God only knows what was being kept back. Sir Edward looked at the woman who’d climbed from the Jaguar’s other side. She was black, immaculately dressed and ferociously bright. Mary Batten ran the embassy’s Intelligence.