“I don’t understand.”
Kurnov closed his eyes, wearily. “According to what’s been printed,” he explained, “the box contained details of nearly every wanted Nazi. The Jews have already said they’re prepared to pay a million …”
He paused. Bock watched him attentively, head to one side.
“… But that’s for everything. We will pay a million. But just for the folder that contains the material about me and the folder about you …”
Bock smiled. He recalled his relief of that morning. He knew Kurnov would have it worked out.
“… And he’ll still have everything else to sell. If he deals with us first, he’ll double what he stands to get …”
He hesitated, looking at the statement again.
“… And if he balks at one million for just two folders, then we’ll offer him two million …”
He threw the statement down.
“… In fact,” he said, “he can have it all.”
He looked up at the surgeon. “I want several bank drafts, starting with a million …”
“There’s no way …”
“You’ve got bank-authorization documents,” broke in Kurnov. Bock nodded agreement.
“That’ll enable a withdrawal,” Kurnov said. He nodded his head back towards the study. “Tonight,” he insisted. “I want it tonight.”
The surgeon hurried away and Kurnov sipped his drink. The bank-drafts would be an embarrassment if they were found in his possession, he thought. Still, his stature was such that a search was unlikely.
“We’ve no guarantee there’s going to be another call,” said Bock, reiterating the doubt as he returned, holding out the written authorizations.
“There will be,” said Kurnov, taking the papers. “Look at it psychologically. From the Jews, he knows he can get a million, probably more. But he still calls you. For all we know, he might have contacted other people, trying to get through to the Nazis as well. What does that indicate?”
Bock looked at him blankly.
“Remember his expression … ‘the money that was rightfully his’ … and his Bavarian accent. He’s a German, a Nazi most probably. And although he’s prepared to screw everybody, he’s still got an inbuilt reluctance to deal with the Jews.”
“That’s a wild assessment,” said Bock.
“No, it’s not. It’s an intelligent analysis of what we know so far.”
Still Bock looked doubtful.
“Look at another indicator,” pressed Kurnov. “There would be no point in telephoning just once. He probably assesses you as a link with a lot of Nazis, because of the work you did just after the war. And thinks you have access to a great deal of money. So even if the Jews came up with a fortune, he’d still come back to you, just to see if you’d top it. There’s never been a shortage of money in the Party,”
“I hope you’re right,” said the surgeon, unconvinced.
“So do I,” muttered Kurnov, fervently.
(13)
Because it was Saturday, with the conference suspended, tours were organized throughout the morning. Kurnov allowed himself to be carried in the crowd toward the waiting coaches, but carefully avoided contact with everyone around him. His fame within Russia assured his superiority and no one challenged his insistence upon a seat by himself, at the rear of the bus.
The first stop was at Berlin’s famous zoo, for which Kurnov was grateful. Slowly, he allowed himself to drop further and further behind the main party, anxious to avoid being trapped by his own companions. Twice the party slowed, to permit him to catch up. Each time he feigned interest in the animals and mumbled a vague apology befitting a man still feeling unwell. The main thoroughfare was intersected by minor paths. He maintained the slow progress, apparently intent upon bordering cages, again preparing the shrugging apology, but no move came from the party ahead. Suddenly he darted sideways, hurrying into an even narrower walk and heading for the exit out on to Budapesterstrasse. He had to fight against running, still tensed against a yell of challenge that would destroy everything. He dodged traffic to cross the busy main road, then cut down Wickmannstrasse, walking close against the tall buildings, seeking their concealment.
He turned right, into Landgrafenstrasse, looking at his watch. Nine forty-five. Tempelhof was at least thirty minutes away. It took nearly ten minutes to find a taxi and he was perspiring with nervous annoyance as he settled back, snapping out the address in Hermannstrasse. As the noisy, diesel-driven Mercedes edged through the morning traffic, he forced himself to relax, seeking old landmarks, needing the comfort of nostalgia. This was the greatest risk he had taken, he realized, bringing his thoughts back inside the vehicle. Several times back there in the zoo he’d seen the frowns of bewilderment from Russians unable to reconcile his behavior with whatever illness he was suffering. So far, his luck had held. Amazingly so. But it couldn’t last, he accepted, realistically. Now he had vanished, in broad daylight. Which amounted to near-insanity. Would the excuse that he had become lost in the labyrinth of pathways be as acceptable as the illness? Hardly, he decided. There was bound to be a report made to Moscow, he thought; his conduct was almost infantile. But it had to be. Again the helplessness of his position washed over him and he grimaced, to himself, then shrugged, in resignation. He was like a puppy chasing a leaf in the wind, he thought, running without direction. He hesitated, correcting the simile. More like the leaf, he decided, thrown whichever way people decided to blow.
It had been madness to take this chance, he suddenly thought, angrily. He did not know if Gerda were still alive. Or if she retained the habits of thirty years ago. He stopped, re-considering. If she were alive, he thought, then she would have retained the habit. Dull, boring Gerda had always been a woman of rigid, unchanging routine. Only in clothes was there constant change. It was an odd psychiatric paradox that hadn’t occurred to him before.
He paid the taxi, looking nervously around, then went through the main gate of St. Thomas Kirchhof. Immediately inside the cemetery he stopped, trying to recall the location of Heini’s grave. Had he ever visited it? He must have done, he supposed, when the boy was buried. He couldn’t remember. Methodically, he began searching for the tombstone, moving along the winding pathways. Overhead, the jets roared in arrival and departure. He wondered how many nervous flyers were made more frightened, with a flight-path immediately over a cemetery. Occasionally he glanced up, envious of the freedom of those cocooned passengers, going anywhere they wanted. He would sacrifice the £3,000,000, he thought, for just one such ticket.
All around him the graves were assembled in their orderly rows, the headpieces heavy with Germanic stone-masonry. He couldn’t recall ordering a gravestone for his son. Gerda would have done it, he decided. It was the sort of thing she would have enjoyed doing, studying the designs and involving herself with sympathetic officials who would have fawned upon her, conscious of his position. She would have ordered several black suits and dresses, he was sure.
He had almost passed the stone, black with neglect and tilted sideways from some long-ago accident, before he realized it was the one he was seeking. Weeds strangled over the mound and leaves from a nearby tree were banked against one side.
“Heini Köllman,” he read, “‘Born July, 1926, died May, 1943.’”
How abrupt, he thought sadly, that a person’s life should be dismissed so briefly. A statistic, nothing more. He had slowed, under the pretense of examining another grave, trying to recall his son’s image. He could not remember him, he realized. He had a vague recollection of a thin, intense boy, rolling the cant phrases of National Socialism in his mouth like a schoolboy tasting sweets. Heini had had fair hair, he determined. Or was it? He couldn’t be sure. It was like trying to identify a casual acquaintance through a fog. He broke away from the past abruptly, remembering why he was there.
And then he saw her. She was lingering over another mound, two graves away, disguising her pilgrimage. Every Saturday for over thirty years, he reflected
, in amazement. How many people must have guessed in that time? As he watched, she looked up, toward Heini’s resting place, and smiled. She was an old, gray-haired woman, he saw, with varicose legs bulging the heavy, darned stockings, which puckered around her ankles, when she stooped beside the adjoining abandoned burial-place. Her straggling hair had fallen from its retaining band, half covering her face. Her shabbiness shocked him. Gerda, who had changed at least three times a day when his position in the inner caucus of the Party had made unlimited funds available, wore a suit shining with use and the shoes, half-on, half-off her feet as she squatted, were trodden down at the heel. A slut, he thought. A fading, aging slut. How ugly she was. To imagine, he thought, that he’d actually married the clumsy woman getting to her feet fifteen yards away. And gone to bed with her. Touched her even. And made love, albeit more from duty than from desire.
He shivered, like someone coming into close contact with a person suffering an incurable illness. Horrible, he thought.
She began walking away, and he turned to avoid her, but as she went by their arms actually brushed. She glanced an unseeing apology, hurrying on. He allowed her to get about twenty-five yards ahead before turning, to follow. She walked jerkily, as if she suffered from rheumatism. It was her thigh, or maybe her back, he thought, professionally. She had tried to simulate a model’s walk, he recalled, all those years ago. And had succeeded, he remembered. Yes, she had once had quite a graceful carriage.
He was worred about her realizing the man near the grave was in the same bus-queue, but she seemed oblivious to her surroundings, glancing constantly at her watch as if she feared being late for an appointment. He sat six rows behind, eyes fixed intently on the back of her head as the vehicle wound its way back through Charlottenburg en route to the city center. She got up in Westfälischestrasse and he hurriedly glanced away, stupidly fearing identification. Quickly, just before the bus moved off, he followed. She was some way ahead in the Saturday-morning flurry of shoppers, but he had little difficulty in keeping her in view. She was obviously in a hurry, he decided. Several times she consulted her watch, bustling up Paulsbornerstrasse into Brandenburgische and then turning almost immediately into Duisburgerstrasse. He had moved closer, fearing he might lose her as she twisted through the streets, and was only feet away when she turned into the building where apartments had been constructed over shops. He was at the entrance when the concierge looked up and greeted her.
“Guten Morgen, Frau Pöhl.”
He moved on, smiling. His luck was holding, he decided, desperate for omens.
Frau Pöhl? He wondered where she had got that name. Wasn’t there some member of her family named Pöhl? He couldn’t remember.
He looked around, anxious for a taxi. How, he wondered again, as the vehicle moved off towards the hotel, would his story of becoming hopelessly lost be accepted?
Five miles away, Suvlov replaced the telephone, considering the result of that morning’s surveillance. He shook his head, sadly. Kuraov must be insanely desperate, he decided, to behave as he was doing. Who, he wondered, was the old lady whom he had so clumsily followed?
In the Seelingstrasse apartment, the two Jewish agents gave a detailed report of their observation of the man whom Mosbacher had identified from their file pictures as the person he had seen leaving Bock’s flat the previous evening. Perez fingered the thick file that had been amassed over the last thirty years on the wife of Heinrich Köllman.
“Frau Pöhl?” he mused. “Well, we wanted confirmation. I never guessed he would provide it for us so positively.”
“He’s running scared,” said Mosbacher, unknowingly echoing the thoughts of the Russian secret policeman.
“Not yet he isn’t,” argued Perez. “He’s not as scared as he’s going to be.”
He looked up, inviting the argument from the fat man facing him.
“If it works,” said Mosbacher definitely, “then one day you’ll hate yourself.”
“Bullshit,” rejected Perez.
There was nothing, thought Mosbacher sadly, that could save their friendship. Whatever the outcome of this operation, their association would never be the same again.
(14)
There were many related telephone calls in Berlin that day.
The first, by carefully rehearsed design, was to the apprehensive Bock. He feared the call, of course, staring at the strident telephone like a small animal gazing hypnotized at the snake whose bite it knows will kill. And with that same inevitability, facing danger instead of running from it, he reached out, picking up the instrument.
Immediately he heard the accent, the fear cut through his drug-induced shield and, dry-mouthed, he mumbled single-word responses to the instructions, twitching at the other man’s harshness. The man had Nazi training, he decided. All the intonations were there, so similar to Buchenwald.
Like water bursting a blocked stream, his anxiety flooded over immediately he telephoned Kurnov, who had arrived back at the hotel thirty minutes earlier to find his explanation of getting lost easily accepted by the other Russians.
Kurnov sighed at the babble, closing his eyes. Bock was becoming an encumbrance, he thought. And a danger. He could never leave Berlin with the man alive. He paused, considering the decision. He’d killed before, countless times. But it was always quite automatic, dispatching people with the lack of feeling of a scientist killing animals upon which he had experimented and written opinions, and for which he had no further use. With Bock he would be for the first time killing someone he knew, albeit distantly. He wondered if it would make any difference. He smiled into the chatter coming through the receiver, personally embarrassed at the reservation. A ridiculous thought, he decided. Of course it would make no difference, no difference at all.
The Bavarian had been curt, Bock reported. The surgeon was speaking in spurts, as the recollections came to him, with the anxiousness of a pupil wishing to recount verbatim the lessons from a teacher he wished to impress. The Bavarian had appeared even more confident than before, laughing almost as if he had expected the suggestion when the surgeon had put forward the idea of purchasing only two folders, leaving the rest to be sold to the highest bidder.
“Did he agree?” snapped Kurnov, urgently.
For several seconds there was no reply, as if Bock were unsure of the answer.
“Did he?” demanded the Russian, shouting.
“Yes,” replied Bock, simply, at last. Then he added, He said, “What else could you do?”
Kurnov considered the reply, the familiar feeling of helplessness coming again. A leaf blown in any direction, he decided again. The Bavarian knew the value of what he held, and was aware they would do anything to recover it.
“He said ‘us’?” queried Kurnov.
“Yes,” reported Bock. “The moment I identified the files, he started laughing.”
“What did he say?”
“He said, “‘So Heinrich had to come running’,” replied the surgeon.
Kurnov stared down at the telephone number the Bavarian had given and which he had written, under Bock’s dictation, upon the bedside pad. He checked his watch. Three minutes before he had to make the call.
“So he mentioned my name?” said Kurnov.
Again Bock hesitated before replying. Then he said, “Of course. Once I’d mentioned the files, it was a fairly obvious inference, wasn’t it?”
Kurnov slumped, weighed by fatigue and the inability to run the negotiations as he would have liked. If only that gibbering fool at the other end of the telephone could be trusted. But he couldn’t, certainly not with anything upon which the life depended. So Bock was useless. He paused, halted by the word. Bock had exhausted his use, he thought. In a few minutes, he would be taking over the discussions with the Bavarian. Carefully hidden in his briefcase were the bank withdrawal forms that Bock had already signed. So when should the man die? Tonight? Kurnov shook his head in the empty room. It was ridiculous to eliminate his only contact in Berlin before he held
the file in his hand. But he must deal with him immediately afterwards, he thought. Bock’s collapse was far too dangerous to be allowed one minute beyond what was absolutely necessary.
It was almost time to make the telephone call.
“Stay in your apartment tonight,” ordered Kurnov. “This has got to be finished. Soon. I might need help.”
“Of course,” concurred Bock, immediately. It would be wonderful, he thought, to complete everything so that he could go back as he was before. He replaced the receiver and headed for the bathroom. It was only temporary support, he reassured himself. Once this was over, he would stop again. It wasn’t difficult. He’d done it before, for God’s sake. His hands shook as he re-pared the injection.
On the far side of the city, Kurnov took off his wristwatch and placed it on the bedside table, so he could watch the sweep of the second hand wiping away the time. He was very frightened, Kurnov realized. Because it had been far easier to move unrestricted around Berlin than he had expected, he had gained confidence, he knew. But equally, he accepted, it was a brittle sureness, easily shattered.
The second hand moved quickly past the six and sped up the watchface, and the hour hand moved almost imperceptibly to one o’clock. Somewhere outside the hotel-room, a distant clock struck agreement.
The breath jerked from him, in stages, and he pulled himself upright, nervously. He recognized the symptoms, the abandonment of hope he had seen so often in his experiments. Not yet, he determined. He was a long way from capitulation. He’d win. He knew he’d win. He always had. There was no reason why there should be a reversal now. He twitched, disconcerted, recognizing the shallowness of his confidence.
Swallowing, the Russian picked up the receiver, obtained an outside line and dialed, holding the instrument away, as if there might have been an electrical shock from it. The receiver at the other end was lifted after the second ring and a voice came almost cheerfully on the line. The Bavarian accent was very pronounced, he thought.
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