Nightfall Berlin

by Jack Grimwood

  ‘There are too many bloody questions you don’t ask.’ Amelia scowled. ‘Do you enjoy it?’

  ‘Amelia …’

  ‘It’s a fair question.’

  ‘No,’ Tom said, ‘it isn’t, and I don’t.’

  ‘Not even a little bit? I’m told most men dream of it.’

  ‘My dreams …’ Tom decided that was a conversation too far. ‘Killing eats a little bit of your soul. Every fucking time.’

  ‘But you do it anyway? If that’s really true, and you really don’t enjoy it, and killing doesn’t make you feel special, and you don’t get off on having done your duty’ – in Amelia’s mouth that last word sounded obscene – ‘you’re more dangerous than you know. Because you still –’

  ‘Can we stop now?’

  There must have been something in his voice because she let him take her hand and lock his fingers around hers, holding tight. They walked like that for a while. Tom imagined she knew she was a lifebelt.

  That without her he’d drown.

  92

  ‘The strangest thing,’ Tom told Amelia, ‘is the feeling of gratitude you get when you realize you’re still alive and that you aren’t going to die.’

  They were crossing the Spree for the third time, the dark water sliding silently by below their bridge. They were talking about Tom’s childhood. The bits of it he didn’t talk about. To anyone watching – and Tom increasingly felt confident that no one was – they must look like any other couple deep in conversation. He’d wanted to make straight for the iron bridge to reclaim the notebook. Of course he had. But he’d resisted the urge; the apparent aimlessness of their wandering was what would keep them safe.

  The conversation had begun with Charlie. All recent conversations, particularly those that Tom had with himself, began and ended with Charlie. From there, he’d been shocked by how many places it touched on the way.

  ‘Have you told your wife this?’ Amelia asked.

  ‘She knows none of it.’

  ‘Will you?’

  Tom shook his head. ‘There’s nothing she needs to know.’

  ‘Do you want to tell her?’

  It was a surprisingly astute question, although why should he have been surprised, unless it was at realizing the answer.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I do.’

  ‘But you won’t.’ Amelia smiled. ‘It really is love, isn’t it?’

  ‘Sometimes I surprise myself.’

  ‘When the police came,’ Amelia said, ‘I thought it was because he’d run away. Defected was the word we learnt to use. That wasn’t it …’

  ‘They searched the house?’

  ‘How do you know about that?’

  ‘It was a guess,’ said Tom, thinking about the package stuffed behind a greasy girder on the bridge they were approaching.

  ‘I’m not sure they really knew what they wanted. Maybe one of them did. They found photographs, though. Under a drawer in Daddy’s desk.’

  It was the first time she’d called Blackburn that. Amelia was deep in her childhood, Tom realized. Probably far deeper than she wanted to go.

  ‘My mother said they exaggerated. The detectives blew it out of proportion. My father taught at a university. Young boys fresh out of school. He’d always been good with a camera. He liked messing around in his darkroom. Of course he was going to ask some of them to model …’

  She fell silent. ‘Why am I telling you this?’

  ‘Because you have nobody else to tell. Because I’ve told you things I’ve never told anybody.’

  ‘Was that all true about your son?’

  ‘Dear God. Who’d lie about something like that?’

  ‘At the embassy they said you were a bad one. Those were the words they used. I went, you know. To see if they’d get me home. They said I came here at the GDR’s invitation. No doubt my hosts would return me eventually.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘A man called Henderson.’

  ‘Henderson doesn’t work at the embassy. He’s based at the consulate-general in West Berlin.’

  ‘What does it matter?’

  Tom wasn’t sure. He just felt it did.

  ‘We’re here?’ Amelia asked, looking at the steps down to the water’s edge. A river path led under the bridge. She went first; and they stopped at the bottom to watch black water swirl below their feet. It was dark now, a city of street lighting and headlights.

  ‘Where’s the package?’

  ‘I’ll go,’ Tom said.

  Amelia shook her head. ‘I’m going to have a pee.’

  Tom looked at her and she sighed.

  ‘We’ve been to a bar, had too much to drink, now you’re a man keeping watch while his companion has a quick pee. Where under there did you hide this package of yours?’

  Tom told her.

  ‘What are you going to do with it?’

  ‘I’m going to give it to them in return for Charlie. If it’s what they want –’

  ‘They’ll kill you,’ Amelia said. ‘The moment they have it. You know that, don’t you?’

  93

  Berlin 1945. Summer was giving way to autumn and Moscow’s allies, having finally arrived, had begun talking about how cold the captured city would be come winter. As if anything in Western Europe merited that word.

  The Soviets were half a week into a tidying-up operation. There were rats in the ruins, human and otherwise; feral children running in gangs, and recidivist Nazis, who traded on the fear they’d spent a lifetime sowing to keep themselves hidden. Maya had been at work for a week.

  Monday was meant to be her day off.

  It began with a message to call Milov, newly promoted and decorated for his part in the fall of Berlin. They were lovers by then, not yet married. He’d won the trust of those whose distrust saw you disappear.

  Maya went to see him instead.

  ‘Look what I found,’ she announced. ‘Brandy. The real stuff.’

  She’d found it in the cellar of a ruined restaurant near the Reichstag. She expected him to smile but his face was sombre and her own fell. When the commissar indicated a chair, she knew this was official.

  Unslinging her rifle, Maya took the chair.

  He sat in silence and she waited him out. She was good at that. Waiting people out. ‘I have a job for you,’ he said finally.

  The file he pushed over had a KGB crest.

  Inside, a photograph showed an NKVD general, said to have the ear of Lavrentiy Beria himself, scowling into a camera. A second photograph showed his ADC, a young man known to be ambitious.

  ‘May I ask a question?’

  ‘If you must,’ Milov said.

  ‘If they’re traitors, then … Why not just arrest them?’

  The commissar came from behind his desk and dropped to a crouch beside her. ‘Maya,’ he said. ‘These are not people you’d want to let live. And I was told to give you this.’ He handed her a heavy roll of canvas.

  The clue was in his words.

  You would want … I was told.

  This order came from above. The men to be killed were not traitors, they were dirty. Given that the Red Army had raped its way through Greater Germany, without Stavka, the high command, objecting … Maya wondered what you had to do for them to regard you as dirty.

  Inside the canvas roll was a German WG sniper rifle, self-loading, semi-automatic. With it came two rounds. Maya would have put money on 7.92 × 57mm Mauser, full metal jacketed, with precisely measured propellant that let it retain supersonic velocity for 1,000+ metres. But these had unlacquered steel cases.

  ‘Anschusspatrone,’ the commissar said. ‘Sighting-in bullets, machined to a brutally tight tolerance. Better than their standard sniper round.’ He hesitated. ‘Better than anything we can offer you.’

  ‘It’s to be done when?’ she asked.

  ‘Today. Without fail.’

  ‘Where do I find them?’

  ‘Reinickendorf-Tegelerforst. In a hunting lodge. There’s a footpath, with
open ground before the forest begins. Catch them on their way home, do it there.’

  Always shoot the officer first. That rule had been drummed into her at Stalingrad, and she’d carried it all the way to Berlin. If there are two officers, shoot the senior one … Sighting her rifle, Maya breathed in and let out half her breath, tightening her finger as they came into view.

  Two thousand seven hundred feet a second.

  Her round took the general between the eyes, cut his brain stem and sucked out enough bone, blood and jelly to splatter a tree behind. The bullet itself drilled through the tree and buried itself in a trunk beyond.

  Maya noticed none of that. Her attention was locked on the ADC, who’d dived for a ditch and was fumbling at his holster. She had him almost square in her crosshairs, when light glittered behind him and training rolled her sideways, as she hunted for the source. Same rifle as hers, same scope, same uniform.

  Her mirror image was dug in under a fallen tree.

  The telescopic sight of his rifle stilled as he found her.

  They aimed at each other in the same second and she fired first, her shot taking him through the eye, glass from his scope following her bullet through his brain. Swivelling back to her target, Maya saw him run for the trees and fired from habit, hearing a dry click.

  She crawled across to where the dead sniper lay and jacked the unfired bullet from his rifle, sliding it into her own. He, too, had been given only the number of rounds he’d need. In his case one. He was in uniform but without papers. The back of his head was missing and so were his dogtags. She waited patiently, through nightfall, night itself and into the dawn, but no one came. So she abandoned her rifle, kicked the dead sniper once to relieve her frustration, and headed home.

  The next night fifteen officers simply disappeared.

  Dmitri Luzhin, the ADC she’d been meant to kill, wasn’t one of them.

  94

  In the door of an administrative office near the zoo turnstile a middle-aged woman was shouting at a young driver, whose refrigerated lorry was parked by the entrance, smoke billowing from its badly fitted exhaust.

  When the woman finished, the young man shrugged, shrugged again and climbed into his vehicle, leaving her glaring after him.

  ‘He’s only brought half the required meat,’ Amelia explained.

  Hearing Tom laugh, the woman glared at him instead.

  ‘Outrageous,’ Tom said hurriedly.

  Amelia folded her arm through his.

  When Tom looked at her, she shrugged. ‘Your German is dreadful,’ she muttered. ‘And speaking Russian only draws attention to yourself. There’s no point using me as cover if you’re going to get yourself arrested.’

  Amelia’s logic was impeccable. He needed her if he was to pass unremarked in Tierpark, the 400-acre zoo built by East Berliners in the gardens of an old palace. The deal was she’d leave when the public did, and he’d remain. Pointing to a hoarding of a howling wolf against trees wild enough to be deep forest, she said, ‘That I have to see.’

  ‘Not sure the run’s open yet,’ Tom muttered.

  ‘You’ve been here before?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, thinking of Fitz.

  Amelia folded her arm through his when someone looked over.

  She was right. They blended in better as a couple. In her jeans, white shirt and black jacket she looked like a waitress. At least Tom thought she did, but it was still smarter than anything else he’d seen her wear. She even had a bag. Although it was more a cross between a rucksack and a satchel.

  ‘Two, please,’ Amelia said.

  The woman said something and Amelia nodded.

  ‘It shuts at sunset,’ Amelia muttered. ‘We’ll have less than an hour.’ Beyond the stile, she stopped at a rack of animal postcards. ‘Mate for life,’ she said, holding up swans. ‘And these? Fuck like rabbits. Although that should probably be rabbits fuck like bonobos.’

  When Tom blinked, she smiled.

  ‘Academics can be quite blunt about –’ Amelia switched suddenly to German and fired off a machine-gun fast sentence that ended with a laugh. Tom nodded to the woman approaching, which made her smile.

  ‘Where are you meeting him?’ Amelia asked.

  ‘The petting zoo.’

  Her eyes widened. ‘That’s sick.’

  I have news of your son. Meet me after dusk at the petting zoo.

  Knowing Henderson, it was probably his idea of a joke.

  The children’s area was beyond a wooden café with metal seats set outside, and a small orchestra on a dais, coming to the end of its performance. Half the chairs were occupied and a crowd had gathered behind those seated, unwilling to commit to being a proper audience but listening just the same. Couples held hands. An old man had fallen asleep in the front row. Everything felt so normal.

  Tom wondered why he thought it wouldn’t be.

  A small lake to one side. Open space to the other, with trees beyond. The lavatories straight ahead. The children’s zoo directly behind. It was well chosen. A man could easily spot another man coming.

  Toddlers fed corn to chickens, a girl of about five stroked a lamb grown big after spring, and a boy laughed as he fed an apple to a billy goat with balls the size of pomegranates. ‘Seen all you need?’ Amelia asked.

  Tom jerked his chin towards the block. ‘I’m just going to …’

  The cubicle doors locked and the windows above the basins opened, although Tom doubted an adult could climb through. By unspoken agreement they let the time creep to the point where Amelia should leave, and then slide beyond. The rest of the public left, animals settled, trucks trundled down narrow roads delivering food, while gangs of workers cleaned out cages, repaired fences and retired. Amelia and Tom watched and listened to all this from the trees.

  ‘What if it isn’t Henderson?’ she asked. ‘What if it’s someone else?’

  Tom shrugged. ‘I’d still have come.’

  95

  ‘Your son’s going to be all right,’ Amelia said.

  Tom wanted to believe her. After a while, he felt Amelia’s hand brush his and reached for her fingers. They held hands like teenagers, letting the sky darken and the horizon change colour, the fierceness of their grip entirely innocent. After darkness came quiet as the animals stilled. Soon the only sound came from whispering trees, wind in the wire of the fences and shuffling creatures settling for sleep. Only when they were certain of the silence did they head back to the petting zoo, slipping inside the lavatory block to keep watch through a slightly open window.

  ‘Over there,’ Amelia said.

  ‘Yeah,’ Tom muttered. ‘Seen him.’

  Henderson disengaged from the trees opposite, half an hour earlier than the time agreed. Stopping to stare at the building they were in, he crouched low and headed across the play area.

  A few seconds later he reappeared.

  ‘Hang on. That’s not him,’ Amelia said.

  She was right, it wasn’t.

  Colonel Schneider had edged into the moonlight.

  He still wore his metal-rimmed glasses; and if the glint on his lapel meant anything, he was wearing his Order of Patriotic Merit pin too. In his hand was a Makarov Pistolet Besshumnyy. Integral silencer, which meant a short slide, with the spring in the handle. Still took eight rounds though.

  The colonel’s eyes were shadowed beneath a hat but the rest of his face showed white in the darkness. As Tom watched, Schneider headed after Henderson. A moment later he was hidden by trees.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Amelia asked.

  ‘A Stasi officer.’

  ‘You think he’s brought reinforcements?’

  ‘I’d better find out.’

  Using the door at the front was too big a risk, so Tom opened a window at the back, and proved himself wrong by scraping through a gap he’d thought too narrow. ‘Don’t get yourself killed,’ Amelia said.

  Backing towards a wooden shed, Tom froze as a twig cracked away to one side. He slid behind the shed and watc
hed the block he’d just left to check that no one else was approaching it. He stayed utterly still until he was as certain as he could be that no one was there.

  It was always movement that gave you away.

  Readying himself to follow Schneider, Tom dropped to a crouch at the sharp cough of a suppressed pistol and pressed himself tight to his tree. No bullet whistled past his head or hummed away behind.

  He wasn’t the target. Not this time.

  Creeping forward, using scrub for cover, Tom skirted the playground as he headed for where the shot had been fired. He moved slowly, placing his feet with care and pausing between steps. On the edge of a crazy golf course, he stopped at a crouch and looked around.

  Henderson lay face down in a sandpit, quite obviously dead. Whatever news he’d had of Charlie, he wouldn’t be passing it on.

  A small, very neat and barely bloody hole at the base of his skull indicated how he’d died. Someone had trickled sand over his body.

  96

  Tom approached the block as carefully as he’d left it, stopping in the shadows to check that no one was following, no one was watching and his way was clear. He saw no movement and the play area itself was silent.

  ‘Amelia?’ he whispered.

  ‘She’s with me.’ Schneider’s voice was cold. ‘Now, come join us.’

  Tightening his grip on the pistol he’d lifted from Henderson, Tom debated his next move.

  There was a gasp from Amelia.

  ‘Fox,’ said Schneider. ‘You don’t want me to hurt her, do you?’

  ‘She’s a British citizen.’

  ‘She’s a friend of Instandbesetzer, troublemakers. And she’s been on your own government’s watch list for years. Greenham Common. Protests at power stations. A fire at Porton Down … Now. In you come.’

  Tom did as ordered.

  ‘And turn on the lights.’

  He did that too.

  ‘Off we go,’ Schneider said.

  Amelia shuffled from a cubicle for nursing mothers, with the Stasi officer behind her, gripping her by her upper arm, a Makarov to her head.

  ‘Does she know you killed her father?’ he asked.