Then We Take Berlin (44 page)

It followed the route of the S-bahn under the Spree and the island as far as Friedrichsstraße, then curved south directly under Pariser Platz, and then ran parallel to the Charlottenburger Chaussee as it sliced under the avenues that radiated out from the central circle like the strands on a spider’s web to end just north and slightly west of the Zoo Flak Tower.

Wilderness said, “It passes under an awful lot of lakes in the Tiergarten.”

“All of them artificial and quite shallow. Max walked the length of the tunnel in ’39. Nothing would stop him—not even his club foot. It was as though he had been given the key to Pandora’s box. And he assured me it was dry. But, of course the flak tower didn’t go up until ’41. If anything was likely to affect the tunnel it’s the tower. I’ve no idea how deep it goes. I’ve never been in it. When your people blew it up this summer all they blew up only was what was visible. The damn thing could be like an iceberg. For all I know it goes down all the way to hell. But . . . I am alarming you unnecessarily. The tunnel and the tower are at least a hundred metres apart and the tunnel, as you can see, curves in from the north.”

“Can I keep the map?”

“Can I keep the
Persilschein
?”

“Why are you doing this?”

The abrupt change of subject did not dent von Jelscht-Fugger’s sangfroid.

“Do you think I can write off a son, Herr Holderness?”

“I think many a German has written off the family Nazi.”

“The family Nazi. Like the idiot son sent into the church, or the importuning uncle hourly expecting a cheque in the post? The skeletons in all our dynastic cupboards. And I cannot. I cannot write off my family Nazi. Why I accept my son—note I do not say forgive—is none of your concern. Let us merely agree that I do. You should concentrate on what does concern you.”

“And that is?”

“Nell Burkhardt, Herr Holderness. She should concern you more than the internal strife of my family. Give no more thought to my sons. Think of Nell. You are all she has.”

§145

The Zoo Flak Tower was formidable—at a height of one hundred and twenty feet, and with walls thirty feet thick, quite possibly the densest concrete structure on earth. With its own internal reservoir and diesel generators, it had resisted a Russian siege in the April of 1945 somewhat in the manner of a Norman keep, and had been taken only by a negotiated surrender.

Built to prevent the RAF from dominating the skies over Berlin, it had become a hospital, a repository for Berlin’s art treasures and the looted gold of Troy, and finally a shelter. It was thought that up to thirty thousand people had taken refuge there in the last weeks of the war. Meanwhile, the antiaircraft guns mounted on the upper storeys lowered their sights and continued to harass the Soviet forces as far away as the Reichstag.

It was too significant to leave standing, visible above the treetops for miles around. The smaller tower to the north had succumbed to dynamite in the June of 1947. Later that summer attempts to blow up the main tower had failed. At last, at the end of July 1948, after drilling and packing more than thirty tons of dynamite the British had managed to blow it up. And down.

It could not be worse, thought Wilderness, but he did not say it.

Eddie did.

“Oh, bloody Norah. How the effin’ ell are we going to shift that lot.”

Wilderness looked at the detritus of the flak tower. Countless tons of shapeless concrete and twisted steel. A small mountain of rubble bulldozed up at the spot von Jeltsch-Fugger had indicated for the tunnel entrance, a far corner of the Tiergarten, tucked away between the Landwehr canal and the S-bahn, mud-caked and rain-spattered. Another hundred yards and his tunnel would have achieved perfect symmetry with both ends under the elevated railway tracks.

Frank said, “Do you think Jelly-Fucker got it wrong?”

Wilderness looked at the map, at the small red x that marked the spot like pirate treasure, looked from the map to the small army of British sappers clearing, carting off the remains of this vast symbol of Hitler’s power, dumping it here there and everywhere.

“No. I don’t think he did. I think the entrance is under there and I think he didn’t know all this had been dumped. He hasn’t been back to look. He just knew we’d finally blown up the flak tower. And how many times have we tried to blow it up and failed?”

He led off in the direction of the tower, across ridged tracks of mud that sucked at his shoes, through a sparse, balding forest of blasted, leafless trees—everything the Berliners had not fed into their stoves last winter, but would chop down at the next turn in the seasons.

Frank keeping up, Eddie slouching behind.

“You got a plan, kid?”

“Frank, when do I not have a plan?”

The tower lay on its side, looking to Wilderness like a ship run aground, tilted on its keel—or a giant top hat that had been sat upon, its five storeys of solid concrete concertinaed and crumpled as though made of something far less substantial.

As they reached the site, a Royal Engineers sergeant had his back to them, barking orders at the unfortunate bunch of erks who’d drawn this particular short straw.

“Sergeant?”

The man turned. A little, red-faced bloke, his gut straining his belt, his arms bulging with muscle, all but bursting out of the leather, sleeveless jacket that, it seemed, only the sappers got to wear.

He looked at Wilderness with irritation, and just about saluted when he recognised rank on Frank.

“Sir,” he said, without a hint of deference. “An international delegation, p’raps?”

“Nope,” said Frank. “We’re what you might call private enterprise.”

“His kind of enterprise?”

He was pointing past them. They turned. Eddie had caught up.

“Hello, Stanley.”

“Eddie. These blokes with you?”

“Yes, Stanley. My business partners.”

“I don’t need any coffee today, mate.”

“It’s not about coffee,” Wilderness said, hoping to get them to the point before they started on news from home or the price of sausages. “We want you to tip your rubble somewhere else, and clear a way through that lot for us.”

“Mind telling me why?”

“Yes. I do mind. We’ll make it worth your while. You can be sure of that.”

“Like I said. I don’t need no coffee.”

“Then tell me what you want.”

“To open up that lot?”

“To clear a way to the middle. You can leave a circle of rubble for cover. Somewhere in the middle is a . . .”

For a moment Wilderness could not think what to call it. The last word he wanted to utter was tunnel. And pissoir might be meaningless to the man.

“Hole. We need access to a hole.”

“Nole? You gotta nole?”

“How much?”

Stanley feigned thought, then said far too readily, “Soap. I wants a hundred bars of Lux, the good stuff with a nice niff to it, and twenty apiece for my three lads wot drives the diggers and dumpers. Take it or leave it.”

Stanley, clearly, saw himself as a wheeler-dealer. Wilderness hoped he was not smiling. The man had named an astonishingly low price. He asked for a minute, stepped back with Frank and pretended to confer.

“The man’s a clown.”

“Sure. What we do now just mumble till it looks kosher? Like we’ve actually discussed it?”

They went back, Stanley and Eddie were indeed discussing news from home and the price of sausages.

Frank said, “Soap’s OK. I can get soap. S-O-D.”

“S-O-D?”

“Soap on delivery. I need to know you guys can do what you promise.”

“Do what we fuckin’ promise? We’re British sappers not some nancy American outfit in pressed trousers and shiny shoes! We’re muck and boots we are. We built Pentonville nick. We built the Albert fuckin’ Hall! An’ if yer believe Rudyard Kipling, Noah used our blueprints for his fuckin’ ark!”

“So you can do it?”

“’Course we can fuckin’ do it!”

§146

It took less than a day. The following morning Wilderness, Frank, and Eddie stood in a ten-foot-high circle of rubble, Hitler’s Stonehenge, staring at their “hole.” Once there’d been a cast-iron kiosk on top, just like the one still standing in Monbijou. There were fragments of it scattered everywhere. The pickelhaube aslant in the mud as poignant as the feet of Ozymandias.

“Bloody rotten luck,” Eddie said. “We should have got here six weeks ago.”

“Six weeks ago we didn’t need it,” Wilderness replied. “Spilt milk, Eddie.”

He looked down the shaft. The spiral staircase seemed to be intact, but really, there was only one way to find out. He flicked on his torch.

“OK, follow me.”

They both shook their heads.

“Nah,” said Frank. “Not me. This isn’t me.”

“What do you mean, it isn’t you?”

Eddie said, “Small dark spaces. Never could abide them. Like being locked in the cupboard under the stairs. Me grandad used to do that to me when I’d been naughty.”

“Sure,” said Frank. “Small dark spaces. Give me the creeps. Hell, I don’t even ride the New York subway.”

“You mean you’re leaving it all to me? I’m on me tod? You pair of bastards.”

All the same he set off.

“It’s going to take me about two hours to get to the other end and back. I reckon it’s about two miles each way. If you aren’t coming then you’re on guard duty. You watch my arse, right? You don’t leave this spot till I get back.”

“’S’OK,” Eddie said. “I brought sandwiches and a thermos.”

It was surprisingly dry. Everything about it was a tribute to German engineering, a hundred or more years before the phrase was famous. He could stand up in it at the centre, right between what seemed to be the stone version of railway lines cut into the floor. The tunnel was pretty well the same shape as the tunnels on the London Underground, but smaller, and arched in dressed stone rather than steel panels. It was easy to imagine that whatever the original purpose of this tunnel, some sort of wagon or carriage had run along here, hauled by donkeys or pit ponies—if, that is, it had ever been used. It was old, but it was pristine, no signs of wear. As von Jeltsch-Fugger had said, who knows who or what it was meant to convey and where? Ending at the zoo looked like error or abandonment.

The tunnel curved without any sharp bends. Nothing had collapsed, despite everything the RAF had dropped on the city above, despite the Nazis last-ditch attempts at scorched and flooded earth. The worst he had to contend with was the occasional puddle, lots of dust and countless cobwebs. He felt much the same about rats as Eddie did about the cupboard under the stairs, but he saw no rats. The spiders had the place to themselves.

It took about forty-five minutes to reach the other end, to stand a hundred and fifty feet below the kiosk von Jeltsch-Fugger had shown him. The ascent was tiring, and the reward was the light cutting through the iron mosaic of the kiosk, the dappling pattern it made on his uniform and the smooth click of satisfaction as the key von Jeltsch-Fugger had given him turned in the lock.

This was going to work. The adrenaline surge of certainty carried him back to the zoo end in half an hour, to catch Frank and Eddie each trying to fleece Stanley at pontoon.

“Find what you was after?” Stanley said.

“More or less,” Wilderness equivocated. “I need one more favour.”

“It’ll cost yer.”

“You don’t know what it is yet.”

“It’ll cost yer whatever it is.”

“Can you rig up a pulley, something like a block and tackle down the shaft, and another one at the far end?”

“Dunno. Where is the far end?”

“Monbijou.”

“Russian sector?”

“Yes.”

“Russkis is extra. It’ll cost you another fifty bars.”

Frank slapped down his hand of cards and feigned exasperation.

“Jeez, do you think I’m made of soap?”

Wilderness said, “If that’s your price. But I want a trolley, something like a small railway maintenance wagon. You can throw that in for the price.”

“Wot? Like a push-me-pull-you? Suppose I can. What gauge? Did you measure it?”

“I did. Nought point seven of a metre.”

“Nought point bleedin’ seven of a soddin’ metre? That’s wot I hate about
Le fuckin’ Continent
. Everything’s fuckin’ metric. What’s wrong with an honest-to-God gauge like four foot eight and a half?”

There being nothing to say to this, Wilderness said nothing.

He took a pencil from his pocket, scrounged an old envelope off Eddie, and drew what he wanted.

“Flat bed, optional sides, right? Something that can be left off if needs be. Between the wheels, so the centre of gravity stays low, I want a motorbike battery. Light enough to haul up the shaft for recharging. Big enough to do the job. At either end I want a pair of brackets on the uprights, I want headlamps on the brackets that can be swapped over front to back for the return journey. Across the uprights at both ends I want a bar at this height.”