Pavel & I (45 page)

‘What's on it anyway?' she asked.

This time she got an answer.

‘Scientific papers,' he said. ‘Curricula Vitae. A number of addresses.'

‘It's incomplete.'

‘Yes.'

‘You cut out a part. That's why there was a photographic lens on your desk, and a flashlight. You looked at the film and cut some of it out before you brought it up to me.'

‘Yes.'

‘I tried to figure it out. Why you did it. Then it became clear. You didn't trust me with the whole of the film.'

‘No. I didn't. Couldn't risk it.'

‘What's on the missing part?'

‘Another address. Photos of a man entering and leaving a building. Details about his activities during the war. I only read scraps and pieces. My projection didn't work very well, and I had to work fast.'

‘So you were clever then, too. Worked fast. And thought fast. Faster than now.'

‘You're angry with me,' he whispered.

‘I haven't the faintest idea what sort of man you are.'

She said it and the phone started ringing. It was hard to tell whether it had been her words or the phone that had made him flinch.

The phone rang. He was in the midst of it, making up his mind, and the phone rang. It was a heavy black phone that sat at one end of the desk, next to the cigar box. A cigar cutter lay by its side. Pavel remembered that he still hadn't had a cigarette. Sonia hadn't brought him any. He could have lit a cigar but felt too self-conscious to do so. One did not steal from the dead. He slipped a hand into the tweed jacket and searched it for cigarettes. He found a shilling piece and a rusty screw.

The phone rang a second time.

It might be best to just make a run for it. Take Sonia by the hand, climb into the Colonel's car and drive as far as they could before the morning, when Fosko's corpse would be discovered, alongside an agitated Peterson, and the Brits would declare a manhunt. She might forgive him then, after a bath and a shave, at least until such a time as they got caught. It seemed impossible that they would not get caught.
This was occupied Germany, a roadblock every few miles. He didn't even carry a passport. It might buy him a few days with her. And nights. He wondered whether he was willing to throw away both of their lives for those few nights.

The phone rang a third time.

Pavel could shoot the Colonel. That part didn't make much of a difference to anyone, only in court they might say it was murder. It would be an act of mercy. He could shoot him with Peterson's gun, which might help hide their tracks, assuming that Peterson was nowhere to be found. Unlike Fosko, one
could
get rid of Peterson; march him out of here; make him disappear. Why not? The man deserved it. He was a torturer. Boyd had been under his fist and knife. Others would be. Over time, it would seem like justice, killing Peterson.

The phone rang a fourth time.

Assuming they did get away; collected their money and his papers, and got out of the city. A few days' head start was all they needed. Where would they go? Back to the US, where he had a wife, and a mother who loved him? Russia might have him, but Sonia wouldn't come. France might do for a while, though they'd treat her as an enemy. He pictured her telling her story over there to a bunch of resistance fighters. How she went to bed with a midget, on His Majesty's service. Much could be forgiven for that, especially in France. The one person who wouldn't forgive was Anders. He had never fallen for her lipstick smile.

The phone rang a fifth time.

‘Where is the boy?' he asked all of a sudden.

‘Shit,' she said. ‘The boy.'

Her eyes fastened on the phone. Pavel saw it and made a grab for the receiver. By the time he got to it, the caller had already rung off. He tapped down on the fork, but the connection was gone. He tried to speak; his mouth was dry, his tongue looking for spit to speak by.

‘Where the hell is Anders?'

Sonia reached over and dialled Franzi's number. There was no answer. She tried again, but the line went dead halfway through the second ring. She could not even get the operator.

‘He's at Paulchen's. He was meant to pick up a projector. But he never came back. Something must have happened.'

They both turned to stare at the Colonel. It dawned on them how he'd gone about finding Sonia.

‘Is he alive?' she screamed at him, and the Colonel blew a bubble. Pavel got up and stood over him with the gun, the second time that evening.

‘You bastard,' he said.

It wasn't clear to Pavel whether he was answered by a cough, or laughter.

Surely,
he thought to himself,
I'm going to shoot him now.

Sonia gathered momentum and kicked the Colonel right in the crotch. It little changed the sounds he was making.

While Sonia kicked and Pavel wavered – while Fosko bled and spoke through bubbles – while Anders sat, broken-nosed and broken-hearted, a leering Georg looming large on his horizon – while I stood waiting in one much mended stocking, boot in hand and a host of roaches crushed upon its heel – while Söldmann slowly rotted, up in his attic's grave, and Franzi, long forgotten, stamped star shapes into rolled-out dough for cookies – while Berlin sat at cards, sat in blankets and mittens, trumping clubs with hearts, or boiled up ice upon the cooker in order to soak dinner-stained crockery – just then, at that very moment, General Dimitri Stepanovich Karpov's long-boned finger pressed down upon the front doorbell of Colonel Fosko's private residence in western Berlin. It had a celebratory air, that
ringing; he'd even shed the kid glove for its pleasure. A moment before, at Karpov's signal, his adjutant, Georgian Lev, had cut the phone cable where it led into the house; cut it deftly and spat tobacco at its shower of sparks. Karpov's men had long since surrounded the villa, a little surprised that nobody was about to guard the compound. The General had not yet decided whether or not to deal civilly with Fosko. As it turned out, he would be spared this particular decision; the Colonel, he was soon to learn, was indisposed. The bell rang through the house for a full minute. Karpov had the good sense to stand somewhat to the side of the door and only present his profile. With a man like Fosko, he mused, it was hard to predict when exactly he would start shooting.

He was not greeted by bullets, however. Rather Pavel Richter opened the door, pale and tweed-coated, an English firearm slack in his hand. The women from the surveillance photos was by his side. Underneath her fox fur, Karpov noted, she seemed to be wearing nothing but a black lace bra. He cocked a brow and took the time to make a formal bow before he placed them under arrest. Sensibly, neither of them attempted to resist. He requested to see the Colonel, and with what struck him as something akin to mirth, they led him up the stairs to meet him. Karpov's men, meanwhile, searched the house for hidden dangers. They found me on my bug hunt and warmed their hands against the boiler. I did not speak any Russian and could not even ask them what the hell was going on. You imagine it: a storyteller locked out of his own tale. It turns one into a historian, that retrospective scrounger of fact. I cannot think of a more sordid occupation.

The bell rang downstairs. It reminded her of something she had heard on the radio once, before the war. An American writer of crime fiction fielding a question about the paroxysms of his plot. ‘When I don't know what happens next, I have someone come through the door with a gun.' Dead bodies littering his prose. It had all seemed frivolous to her. Before the war.

Pavel accepted it first. ‘We better open.' There was no fight in his voice. They walked down together, like a couple expecting dinner guests. At the bottom of the stairs, Sonia reached out to grab his hand. She found it holding a gun; recoiled and wondered whether he had noticed the motion. They passed a window and saw movement in the garden. ‘The Russians,' Pavel said flatly. It amazed her that he could tell from so casual a glance.

The General was tall and polite. He was accompanied by the man she had hit with a frying pan: those watercolour eyes, they ran with recognition.

‘Take me to the Colonel,' Karpov instructed after disarming Pavel. He had a man pat Pavel down, but searched Sonia for weapons himself. She had to unbutton the fur for this, endure an embrace. His hands did not linger. He was a gentleman, or else he liked boys. When they were done, they led him up the stairs and
towards the Colonel's study. The youth with the water-eyes left the procession to go to the bathroom and piss. He left the door open, leaned his rifle against the wall; stooped and spat chewing tobacco past his own jet of urine. In a single gesture he became everything Pavel was not.

The first thing Karpov did, upon entering the study, was shoot the monkey. He shot it casually, pulling a handgun from his coat pocket and putting it back as soon as the barrel had cooled. He bent briefly to examine Fosko's wound, then walked over to pick up the two parts of the microfilm off the floor. Lev rejoined the group, still buttoning his trousers. Two of the Russians were briskly ordered to search the rest of the house.

‘This film has been damaged.'

Karpov's voice was perfectly composed. In his efficient leanness he cut a sharp contrast to the dying man. The General rounded the desk and sat in Fosko's chair.

‘Where is the rest?'

Pavel shot Sonia a glance. ‘We don't know. That's how we found it. On Söldmann.'

Karpov considered this, pursed his lips, then barked something at the blond youth. He spoke in Russian.

Pavel paled, stuck to English. ‘But we don't know anything.'

‘I believe you have said this before, Mr Richter.'

‘She doesn't know anything.'

‘We'll see.'

‘We can't. Go. Not right away.'

‘And why not?'

Sonia watched Pavel run his hands through his hair. She liked the gesture. It spoke of exasperation. It was suicidal, she knew, but she liked a Pavel who was finally out of his depth.

He did not stay like this. The hands dropped, and the tongue took a turn; switched alphabets in fact, spoke the language of rape. It held
Karpov's attention. He gestured to his subordinate and had him fetch a chair so that Pavel and he could have a civilized conversation. Soldier to soldier, man to man. Sonia spoke no Russian and felt left out. All she understood was a name, oft repeated.

Haldemann.

She stood, trying to remember where she had heard it before.

Pavel tried to explain about the boy. That he was being held, in all likelihood, by a gang of German hoodlums. ‘A good boy,' he explained. ‘From the streets of Berlin.'

Karpov made a gesture to indicate that he was not impervious to the plight of a minor; that he was a cultured man, a sentimentalist even, despite the world.

‘Alas,' he said, ‘the times are bad.' He softened his mockery with the hint of a smile, right around the eyes. ‘What can you offer me, Mr Richter?'