Pavel & I (49 page)

They used to slaughter chickens like this.

When it was done, Pavel eased him gently to the floor. He turned to face Lev, his features calm and composed. Between them, in the staircase, the bark of broken bone. The Georgian stood, wide-eyed, choking on his twist of tobacco.

There you have it: Professor Dr Joseph Haldemann, rocket scientist, dead as a doornail. All this time my story has been about him, and no sooner does he take the stage than he dies, his neck broken, the taste of imaginary snail still fresh on his palate. He didn't know a thing about Fosko, Söldmann, and all the rest; had spent his days in ignorance, hiding out with the Brauns, his proletarian relatives by marriage, and slinking back into his shelter behind the sofa whenever someone thought to ring the bell. Oh, he had heard them, the stories of scientists who were being rounded up by the Russians and shipped eastward, to serve his namesake in the fortification of Socialism in One Country. The past two years had not been easy for the good Professor. First the Reich fell apart, and with it his hopes of unlocking the atom's secret. Then he found he had little hope of denazification on account of his distinguished record of service for yesterday's
Heimat.
As a potential war criminal, he was eligible only for the lowest category of ration card and consequently starved. But at least he was in the western half of the city, safe – or so he thought – from the Bolsheviks and their voracious appetite for German science.

As soon as he heard that the Soviets had no compunction about venturing into their allies' sectors for ill-masked abductions, and had compiled lists of preferential targets, he went into hiding. Cousin Manfred had a secret room. In the years of the Reich it had briefly housed a nephew who Witnessed to Jehova but saw this as no reason to share the burdens of camp life alongside Yids and Queers. Back then, Haldemann had known and kept his mouth shut; now he came looking for shelter himself. Manfred Braun wasn't enthusiastic, either about the Professor as a person, or at the prospect of having another mouth to feed, but the stamp collection the disgraced Nazi handed over to him did much to sweeten that particular pill. Not that Manfred gave a monkey's about stamps but he soon learned that he could get five pounds of fresh steak for a single pre-Napoleonic Thurn-und-Taxis, and that was good enough for him.

But there's no point in dwelling on Haldemann much longer. He was a scared old man, with crimes on his conscience, and a brain full of formulas that could scorch the earth. More to the point, he was dead; died mid-step, his hands numb and feet probing to escape a fall.

There can't have been much pain. The execution had been too professional for that. It is the executioner one should pity. There he stood, moist of eye, before Lev's loaded gun, asking himself whether he was visiting death upon those he loved most dearly.

Anders was restless. Pavel and the blond Russian had been gone for a quarter-hour. How long did it take to pick up one man? Sonia said he was called Haldemann. The name rang a bell somehow; perhaps he had heard it on the radio.

‘Is he important?' he asked.

‘Fosko was willing to pay thousands of pounds for him.'

The boy whistled. He had never met anyone quite as important as that.

His body hurt, and he was sure now that his insides were leaking, filling him up with his own blood. Even his hands and feet felt bloated, and he did not seem to be able to get enough breath. He wondered whether one could drown from bleeding on the inside. If so, he hoped Pavel would return to be with him when it happened. Perhaps they would kiss again, never mind it being yucky.

Beside him, Sonia sat as stiff as a doll. She did not react when he reached over and squeezed her hand, nor when he raised a hand to remove a strand of hair that had fallen to mask her face.

‘No need to worry,' he whispered to her. ‘They'll be right out.' There was no telling whether or not she had heard him. Anders sat and wondered how she could be so aloof.

At long last Pavel emerged. He was carrying an old man in his arms, staggering under his weight. A bruise showed in his face, narrow and oblong, from ear to mouth. Anders heard Karpov curse in Russian. Sonia did not move, only her lip started to tremble. Anders wished she would get a hold on herself and tell him what the hell was going on.

She saw it and knew he was lost to her. Perhaps she had already known it when he'd left her in the car. He hadn't kissed her. She hadn't asked him to. It had violated their mutual sense of decorum. Now he was carrying a corpse.

It was clear to her that he must have killed the man. It was there in his face, and in Water-Eye's angry gesture. The thought chilled her: that her Pavel was a killer. Everything ended here. The only question left to her was whether she would live through the night. Suddenly, in her chest, there unfolded an enormous need to live. It took her by surprise. She watched Karpov run over to Pavel, furious. The third Russian emerged from the building and saw they had been left unguarded. He rushed over to the car, waving his gun. Not one of them had made a move to escape.

Sonia watched them talking, Pavel and Karpov. At first, the Russian was agitated, but within a few moments he had calmed. The cigarette case appeared in his hand, took the place of his gun. The two men strolled the street, smoked and talked. They would be negotiating about Anders' life, and her own. It angered her that it was this way: two men smoking, figuring out whether or not she should live. Pavel looked like he had done this all his life. God only knew what he had left to offer; she would have thought he'd long run out of trumps. He had put the corpse down, and the old whiskered man was lying on the cobblestones, his head loose upon its trunk. The neck was broken.
She looked back up, to Pavel's hands, and found no trace of violence there. An hour earlier those very hands had held her own; had touched her cheek, and the rim of one ear. She hammered on the car window, but he was too far away to hear it. Eventually, they concluded their talk. Both men looked impassive, as though little enough had happened. Pavel stepped towards the car and, despite Lev's hiss, she rolled down the window. Pavel bent forward a little, gazed in. His eyes were veiled in shadow.

‘They'll let you go. All three of you. Peterson – your job is to explain Fosko's death to the British. Without mentioning Karpov and his men. I gave him my word you could do it. On my life, you understand.'

‘Yes, of course.'

‘Bring the boy to a hospital. And give her the money. Anything you can find at Fosko's. It belongs to her. Can you do this for me?'

Only then did he deign to turn to her. He looked as he always had. Eyes like moist pebbles, and a voice to charm killers.

‘Sonia?'

Tears blinded her. She lifted her hands into fists, then buried her face in them.

‘Who the fuck are you?' she started to ask, but never got past the first word. There was no hope for an answer.

A moment later she heard the boy call out and knew Pavel was gone. She did not see whether he'd just turned around or had been ushered away. Then Lev's bark: ‘Get out, all of you!' Anders made her leave the car. He opened the door and lifted her ankles out onto the street. The click of high heels on cobbles. She stood up mechanically, braced herself against the cold. Behind them, car doors closed and engines started. Wheels turning upon the icy road. Then silence. When she finally turned she was relieved to find the street empty.

They had even remembered to take along their corpse.

Our first stop was a hospital. I had thought that Sonia would refuse to come with me, but she trudged along obediently enough, holding the boy by one hand. Perhaps she was keen to get her hands on the money. Silently, walking shoulder to shoulder down Berlin's empty roads, we headed for the Virchow clinic. Inside, there was a line of people waiting to see the night doctor, but when they saw that we had brought an injured child a few of them waved us ahead, content to sweeten their pain with the knowledge of their own nobility. The doctor who welcomed us looked like he should have been pensioned off a decade earlier. He wore a Tolstoyan beard and pulled up the right shoulder in a manner that suggested he suffered from rheumatism. He examined Anders gruffly, frowning over the bruises that clustered around the back of his spine, and straightening the nose between his practised thumbs. Upon his muttered suggestion, I slipped him some money, and he found the boy a shot of morphine.

‘Who did this to him?' he asked while the boy got dressed. Sonia and I exchanged a long glance.

‘He fell down the stairs,' she said at last. The old man nodded, and helped Anders with his shoes.

‘If this happens again,' he whispered to him, though none too quietly, ‘you should move somewhere where there aren't any stairs.'

We left in a hurry, walking down the hospital's long, draughty corridors and flattening ourselves against the wall whenever a nurse passed with a gurney. Outside, I bribed and bullied an ambulance driver to run us back to the Colonel's villa. He pocketed the money and we squeezed into the driver's cabin next to him.

‘Grünewald,' he said testily, his face close to the dash so he could see out of the one corner of windshield that he'd scrubbed free of frost. ‘Long fucking way.'

‘Just get us there, my friend,' I told him, my thoughts alive to other issues.

I watched them while we sat in the ambulance, the boy and the woman. They looked shell-shocked; huddled together in silence, in their eyes a look of total incomprehension. I sympathized with their feelings of betrayal, but something else busied my heart: Pavel's commission, so emphatically given, to look after his loved ones. He had forgiven me, had trusted me with their lives. It felt as though our friendship had finally been consummated.

Mine was a muted celebration. It only lasted until the car swung into the Colonel's driveway. The villa looked gloomy, like something out of a Gothic painting, magpies on the gables and a light burning in the study upstairs.

‘Here you go,' said the driver.