Spy Line (24 page)

Frank turned and looked at me now. His blunt-ended moustache was completely grey these days. Frank was too old to be involved with Operations. Too old, too squeamish, too weary, too good-hearted. Whatever it was, the strain on him showed in his face.

‘It’s all right, sir,’ said the ever-helpful Teacher. ‘We’ll do whatever has to be done.’

Teacher’s face was lined too, but Teacher was not old nor weary. Teacher was a tough little bastard in a way that I’d not recognized before. They’d chosen him well for this job.

Frank seemed not to hear Teacher. It was as if it were just me and Frank in the room. ‘Okay, Bernard?’ he said softly. I looked Frank in the eyes and I knew, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that it was Fiona who was going to be picked up on the Autobahn. It was Fiona who knew what might have to be done to prevent her being interrogated by the pro fessional torturers at Normannenstrasse. And Teacher was there in case I hesitated when it was time to pull the trigger.

‘Yes, Frank,’ I said. ‘It’s okay.’

On the Sunday evening there was a big party at Lisl’s. The printed invitations said it was to celebrate the opening of the newly refurbished premises. On this pretext Werner had obtained the support of a number of his suppliers, and the invitations, like the paper napkins and some of the other objects in evidence, bore the trademarks of breweries and distillers.

Now that it was almost summer, and the evenings had lengthened, Werner’s plan was to hold the party in a huge tent he’d had erected in the courtyard at the back of the hotel. But all afternoon the sky had darkened and by evening there was torrential rain falling from an endless overcast. Only the most intrepid guests ventured into the chilly tent, and the inauguration was celebrated indoors.

But it was something more than the official reopening of the hotel. And it was Frank’s presence at the party at Lisl’s on Sunday evening that told me that he felt the same way. Frank was past retirement, soon he would be gone. Looking back on it afterwards, I saw that he regarded it as his very own gala finale. Frank had never shared my love for Lisl, and despite all evidence to the contrary, he persisted in blaming Werner for that old ‘Baader Meinhof’ fiasco for which Frank had taken a share of criticism. But even Frank knew that Lisl’s was the only place in Berlin to celebrate, and having decided that, he was at his most ebullient and charming. He even wore fancy costume: the Duke of Wellington!

‘It’s the end of an era,’ said Lisl. We were sitting in her little study. This was the room in which Lisl spent so much of her life now that walking had become so painful for her. Here she had breakfast, and played bridge and looked at the account books and gave favoured residents a measured glass of sherry when they came to pay their bills. On the wall there was a picture of Kaiser Wilhelm, on the mantelpiece a hideous ormolu clock, and around the table where she took breakfast four carved Venetian-style figure-of-eight dining chairs, all that remained of her parents’ grand dining room.

Now she never sat in her beloved chairs; she was in a functional steel wheelchair that she could manoeuvre at such high speed that Werner had fixed a small bulb-horn to it.

The noise of the party came loudly through the tightly closed door. I don’t know whose idea it was to use Lisl’s wind-up gramophone and her collection of ancient 78s to provide the music, but it had been hailed as the ultimate in chic, and now Marlene was purring ‘Falling in Love Again’ against a honky-tonk piano for what must have been the fifth consecutive time. Werner had predicted that it wouldn’t be loud enough but it was loud enough.

Even Lisl had sought refuge from the dedicated and un relenting playfulness that Berliners bring to their parties. Open on the floor there was a very old suitcase that had belonged
to my father. It dated from the days before designer labels, when such things were properly made. The outside was pale green canvas with leather for the handle, the binding and the corners. The lining was calico. Inside it there were his papers: bills, accounts, newspaper clippings, a couple of diaries, a silk scarf, even the British army uniform tunic that he so seldom wore. I was rummaging through it while Lisl sat in her wheelchair, sipped her sherry and watched me. ‘Even his gun,’ she said. ‘Be careful with it, Bernd. I hate guns.’

‘I noticed it,’ I said. I took it from its leather holster. It was a Webley Mark VI, a gigantic revolver that weighed about two and a half pounds, the sort of weapon that the British Army had been hanging on its officers since the First World War. It was blue and perfect, I doubt if my father had ever fired it. There was a box of ammunition too. Nickel jacket .455 inch rounds ‘for service use’. The label was dated 1943 and the seal was unbroken.

‘That’s everything. Klara made sure that all your father’s things were packed in his case. So that’s all apart from the footstool, the mattress and the set of Dickens.’

‘Thank you, Lisl.’

‘The end of an era,’ she mused sadly. ‘Werner taking over the hotel. The changes to the rooms. You taking your father’s things. I’m a stranger here now, a stranger in my own home.’

‘Don’t be silly, Lisl. Werner loves you. He’s only done it all for you.’

‘He’s a good boy,’ she said sadly, not grudging him her affection but reluctant to abandon the self-pity she so relished.

There was a sudden increase in the noise of the party as Werner came in and shut the door behind him. Werner was dressed as a knight in full armour. Expediently the armour was fashioned entirely of fabric cunningly embroidered with gold and silver wire to reproduce the intricate decoration on etched and gilt metal. He looked magnificent, even Lisl thought so. Lisl looked equally splendid in a long brightly patterned dress that – according to the rental company’s label – was
that of a thirteenth-century noblewoman, and was based upon the stained glass figures of Augsburg Cathedral. It included diadem and wimple and a light but voluminous cloak. Whatever the integrity of the design she made a fine figure alongside Werner, the wheelchair providing her with an imposing throne. I thought he might have chosen his costume and hers with filial congruity in mind but he later confided that it was the only garment he could find in her size that was also bright crimson. Lisl loved vivid colours.

‘It’s a madhouse out there,’ said Werner as he stood against the door and caught his breath. His face was pink with excitement and exertion. ‘I brought you some more champagne.’ He had the bottle in his hand and he poured some for both of us. ‘Absolutely ghastly.’

‘It sounds ghastly,’ I said, although I had long grown used to the way in which Werner organized this sort of frenzied fancy dress party, and then went around all evening saying how much he hated it.

He looked at me. ‘I wish you’d put on your costume,’ he said. He’d selected an amazing mid-nineteenth-century costume for me that was called ‘the Biedermeier gentleman’ on the box. It came complete with a frock coat and high hat. I suspected that Werner had chosen it with a certain sardonic glee that I had no intention of sustaining.

‘I’m all right like this,’ I said. I was wearing a battered grey suit, my only concession to the party being one of Werner’s more colourful bow ties.

‘You’re so bloody English,’ said Werner, not unkindly.

‘Sometimes I am,’ I admitted.

‘There must be a hundred and fifty people out there,’ he told me. ‘Half of them gatecrashers. The word got around I suppose; they’re all in costume.’ It was typical of him that he should show a trace of pride that so many should want to gatecrash his party. ‘Do you want the Duchess to tell your fortune, Lisl?’

‘No, I don’t,’ said Lisl.

‘They say she’s a witch,’ said Werner as if that was a recommendation.

‘I don’t want to know the future,’ said Lisl. ‘When you get to my age the future holds nothing but heartbreak and pain.’

‘Don’t be a misery, Lisl,’ said Werner, who dared to go much further with her than I would ever do. ‘I’m going to make sure you meet people.’

‘Go away!’ said Lisl. ‘I’m talking to Bernd.’

Werner looked at me and gave a tiny grin. ‘I’ll be back,’ he promised and returned to the party which was getting louder every minute. He stood in the open doorway for long enough for me to see the crowded dance floor. There was a frenzied crowd of dancers all elaborately costumed – Germans take fancy dress parties as seriously as they take every other social activity from opera-going to getting drunk – and waving their arms in the air more or less in time with the music. Sequined chorus girls, a Roman Senator, Karl May’s Old Shatterhand and two squaws danced past wriggling and smiling. Jeremy Teacher – dressed as a thin elegant curly-haired gorilla – was dancing with Tessa, who was in a long diaphanous yellow dress with long antenna bobbing above her head. Teacher was holding her tight and talking: Tessa was wide-eyed and nodding energetically. It seemed an unlikely combination. The door closed.

‘What time will they go home?’ Lisl asked me.

‘It won’t go on very late, Lisl,’ I promised, knowing full well that it would go on very late indeed.

‘I hate parties,’ said Lisl.

‘Yes,’ I said, although I could see she had already decided to go and circulate. She preferred to be pushed round in her wheelchair. It gave her an added sense of majesty. I supposed I’d have to do it but I knew she’d find a way of making me look a bloody fool while doing so.

I locked up the suitcase. ‘Come on, Lisl,’ I said. ‘Let’s go and look round.’

‘Must we?’ she said, and was already looking in the mirror to inspect her make-up. Then the door opened again. There was a short smiling man standing there.

At first I thought he was in a specially elaborate costume that included face-black. Then I recognized Johnny the Tamil. He looked different; he was wearing gold-rimmed glasses. He laughed. ‘How wonderful!’ he said. ‘How wonderful!’ I thought he must be referring to the party but he seemed almost not to notice that the party was going on at all. Perhaps he was stoned. ‘Wonderful to find you, Bernard,’ he said. ‘I’ve looked all over town.’

‘I heard the cops got you,’ I said.

He looked at me over his glasses. ‘I was lucky. There was the cruise missiles demonstration. Three hundred arrests. They needed the space in the cells. They threw me out.’ His German had not improved but I’d got used to his accent.

‘I’ll get you a drink,’ I offered. Behind him, through the open door I spotted the Duke of Wellington holding tight to a rather gorgeous geisha. For a fleeting moment I thought it was Daphne Cruyer, but as she turned her head and smiled at Frank I knew it wasn’t.

‘No. I must go. I brought this for you.’ He gave me a large dog-eared envelope. I opened it. There was a plastic box that looked a bit like a small radio. ‘It’s Spengler’s…’ said Johnny. ‘He wanted you to have it. It’s his chess computer.’

‘Thanks.’

‘He always said that if anything happened to him I could have his glasses and you could have his computer. That’s all he had,’ Johnny added unnecessarily. ‘The cops took his passport.’

‘For me? Are you sure?’

‘I’m sure. Spengler liked you. I put new batteries in.’

‘Thanks, Johnny. Do the glasses suit you?’ He looked quite different in the glasses.

‘No, they make everything blurred. But they are stylish, aren’t they?’

‘Yes, they are,’ I said. ‘This is Tante Lisl. Have a drink?’

‘Hello, Tante Lisl.’ He seemed baffled at the idea that Lisl might really be my aunt but he didn’t question it. ‘No. I must go, Bernard.’

‘Did they find out who killed Spengler?’ I asked.

‘They haven’t even found out his real name or where he came from. No one cares about him, except us.’

He waved and was gone. Lisl had made no attempt to follow the conversation. ‘You should be careful who you mix with in this town,’ she said. ‘It’s not like London.’

Lisl, who, as far as I knew, had never been to London, had been saying that to me since I was six years old, and brought Axel Mauser back to see my Nazi medal collection.

Johnny’s visit was over so quickly that I forgot to give him some cash. With people like Johnny a few marks go a long way. Goodness knows what time and trouble he’d spent in tracking me down. He’d even stolen new batteries for me: long-life batteries, the very best. I suppose he got them from Wertheim. He liked stealing from Wertheim: he said it was a quality shop.

In the event it was Werner who trundled Lisl around the party as she bowed graciously, offered her hand to be kissed or gave a regal wave, according to the degree of approval she extended to these merry-making guests.

I took my father’s suitcase down to the cellar but when I got there I sat down for a few minutes. I was aware of the absurdity of hiding away from Werner’s party, aware too of the derision I’d face from Werner if he found me down here.

But I didn’t want to be upstairs with a hundred and fifty exhilarated people most of whom I didn’t know, in disguises I couldn’t penetrate, celebrating the end of something I didn’t want to say goodbye to.

I went and sat in the little hideaway next to the boiler room, a place I used to come to do my homework when I was a child. There was always a bright light and a tall pile of old newspapers and magazines in here. Reading them,
instead of doing my homework, was one of the reasons I’d become so good at German that I could often beat all the German kids in vocabulary tests and essay writing.

I did the same thing now. I took a newspaper from the top of the big pile and sat down on the bench to read it. There was a story about the discovery of buried nerve gas at Spandau. It had been there since the Second World War.

‘Bernard, darling! What are you doing here? Are you ill?’

‘No, Tessa. I just wanted to get away from it all.’

‘You really are the limit, Bernard. The limit. The limit.’ She repeated the words as if she found some pleasure in saying them. Her eyes were wide and moist. I realized that she was stoned. Not drunk on alcohol. She was on something more powerful than that. ‘Really the limit,’ she said again. She extended her arms. The almost transparent yellow cloth was attached to her wrists so that she became a butterfly. The bright light made her a whirling shadow on the whitewashed wall.