Then We Take Berlin (37 page)

A dozen scantily clad
Tanzgirls
slipped in and out of the lights, striking angular poses, thrusting pelvises, dangling arms, chanting in a sinister whisper:

Folgers . . . Hershey . . . Hellman’s . . . Heinz.

Folgers . . . Hershey . . . Hellman’s . . . Heinz.

Just when Wilderness was beginning to think it was a form of hypnotism, two lead singers took centre stage and alternated couplets in English.

In ’43 we won the war,

In ’45 we lost it.

We’ve no more room for Lebensraum.

What we want is Spam.

Hershey bars and Camel fags,

We’ll trade for blow jobs and for shags.

The Millennial Reich for coffee beans,

This is all our empire means.

We’ll sell you Prussia if you like

For fifty packs of Lucky Strike.

You can have the spires of Worms and Mainz

For 57 brands of Heinz.

And thank you for the Marshall Plan,

But we’d rather live in Michigan.”

And again . . .

“Folgers . . . Hershey . . . Hellman’s . . . Heinz.

Hissed out like snakes, the breathy h’s and sibilant s’s making it seem like a witch’s curse from some updated version of
Macbeth
.

Frank said, “If they’d seen Michigan . . . they wouldn’t want to live there.”

“I don’t think anything else rhymed with plan,” said Eddie.

“I guess not. But . . . if that’s their shopping list who are we not to give it to ’em?”

Wilderness said, “It’s as if they knew we were coming.”

“Kinda brings us to the point, doesn’t it?”

Wilderness could feel Eddie bristling with discontent. Pie Face and Spud simply slurped beer and waited for fate to take its course.

“To put it in a nutshell . . . you guys need me. I could be so good for you.”

Spud spoke first, “Joe told us. Just one thing. You’re an officer.”

Frank grinned the grin of startled innocence.

“So?”

“We’re not. We don’t like officers.”

“You mean you don’t trust ’em.”

“Yeah. That too.”

Frank turned to Wilderness.

“You have this problem too?”

“No . . . no, I don’t. Listen up all of you. Frank’s an officer, but he’s an American officer. Not the same thing at all. There’ll be no tugging on the forelock. I mean, look at him. Does he even look like any officer we’ve ever jumped for? Time to think big, lads. Time to think bigger.”

Frank was grinning now, chock-full of bonhomie.

But so was Spud.

He pushed his empty glass across the table to Frank.

“So, Frank, you’re one o’ the boys now. Get ’em in, why don’t you?”

Frank’s grin erupted into a hoot of laughter. He wheeled around in his chair, hand raised for the waiter’s attention.

Several beers and one lewd, suspender-belted, braless cabaret act later, Spud and Pie Face had headed for the Gents, Eddie was staring at the murals trying to separate one writhing female body from another, and Wilderness found himself the sole object of Frank’s gaze.

“Next time bring the Russian.”

§117

Yuri raised not a murmur.

“Why not?” was all he said.

Paradies Verlassen had its fair share of all the occupying powers. One more little Russian was hardly out of place, hardly remarkable.

Spud and Pie Face had copped out, leaving Eddie to speak for their interests. Frank had spent like a sailor and persuaded the club to raid its cellars for a Duhart-Milon Rothschild ’34. Not that he even knew the name, he’d just asked for “a bottle of the good stuff.” The waiter had held it up to him and in stage whisper informed him that it had been “liberated” from the cellars of the Adlon Hotel in 1945 and sold on to them by a Russian infantryman.

“Yeah, whatever,” was all this elicited from Frank. And to Wilderness, “The kind of guy who’d try and sell me Boadicea’s knickers on London Bridge.”

All the same, Frank never even asked the price. Generosity was a powerful weapon in his armoury. The soft sell in the hard shell. He’d had no difficulty winning over Spud and Pie Face. Wilderness had no doubts he’d click with Yuri either. Clicking seemed to be what Frank did.

He stood and shook Yuri by the hand.

Said, “What can we get you, Major?”

Yuri looked at the bottle, turned the label towards himself.

“Good good,” he said, as he always seemed to.

“Red’s OK with you?”

“Of course, red’s OK with me; 1934 was verrrry good year for claret.”

“Better red than dead, eh?”

If there’d been ice to break this shattered it into a thousand pieces. Frank was grinning, pleased at his own joke. Yuri was laughing his croaky laugh and gave Frank one of the spine-cracking slaps on the back that Wilderness reckoned to be his stamp of approval.

Frank poured. Yuri did the entire routine of sniff, taste, swirl, and swallow.

“Good good.”

Then.

“Better than your Coca-Cola. Рвотная масса в бутылке.”

Frank’s smile dropped a degree. He looked to Wilderness.

Wilderness said, “He says Coke is bottled vomit. And he’s right.”

The smile winched itself back into place.

“Am I gonna start World War Three over Coca-Cola? Am I fuck!”

And then they were laughing again, like old friends.

It would have been a relief to leave them to it. The negotiation was simple. The negotiation was non-existent. They merely had to see each other for what they were. Not trust each other—that would be asking too much—but to recognise the common interest. As Frank would have said, “just two businessmen.” As Wilderness did say, “two more buggers on the make.” But Yuri’s English faltered too often, and Frank’s Russian got no further than
Da
,
Niet
,
and Nemnozhko
. To leave it all to Eddie did not seem quite fair.

They’d reached a point where he could just duck out. Yuri had heard Frank’s pitch and had placed his shopping list—what was hot, what was not. Frank had enough savvy not to ask where half the contents of the PX eventually ended up.

Now they were on to the third bottle. And on to Joe Stalin. Wilderness was not entirely sure how they’d got to him, but they were all three of them, Frank, Eddie, and Yuri, the worse for the booze.

“In Russia we have saying. Lenin wore soft shoes, Stalin wears high boots.”

Eddie said, “Like jackboots?”

“Quite so, little fatty. Jackboots.”

Frank said, “You mean Lenin kinda soft-shoe shuffled his way through things—and Joe Stalin just tramples on everything?”

Wilderness said, “Stride, Frank. Stride would be a better word than trample.”

“Sure. Seven league boots—you can stride over everything. Like in the Brothers Grimm.”

“Enough with fuckin’ Krauts,” Yuri said. “We were talking Russia.”

Frank could not resist a joke, a little dig.

“I hear Joe Stalin smokes Edgeworth. How about a few tins of Edgeworth for the next time you see him?”

Yuri smiled, not enough for pleasure.

“Edgeworth is foul. Like smoking dried shit. I like Walnut Plug. Get me more Walnut Plug and let Stalin find his own tobacco.”

Wilderness was startled by what sounded like a rush of air above his head and looked up to see a brass cylinder land in the net of the
Rohrpoststation.
Frank reached up and got the cylinder. Inside was a folded sheet of paper.

“It’s for you.”

Wilderness looked at the scrawl on the page, “Table 21. RAF.”

He unfolded it, puzzled.

“I’m across the way at table 13. Buy a girl a drink. LT.”

He looked out across the deserted dance floor. The girl at table 13 wasn’t a girl. She was a woman in her thirties wearing the uniform of an NKVD major. Neater than Yuri’s. Looking as though she had it cleaned and pressed once in a while, but the same gold star upon the shoulders. Two NKVD majors in one night seemed like one too many. Pickup or setup? All the same, he made his excuses, leaving Eddie to interpret, all sense of fairness evaporating rapidly, and walked across the floor to her table.

She had her nose stuck in a book. Her eyes left the book and her hands closed it with pleasing thump when he was about six paces away.

With her right foot she pushed a chair out for him.

Wilderness sat down, glanced back at Frank and Yuri who scarcely seemed to notice he’d gone. Eddie glared at him.

He looked at the major. A good-looking blonde with big, brown eyes and a perpetual pout to her lips.

“Why are you sitting here on your own? You could join us.”

The big eyes opened wider.

“Why am I sitting here?”

An accent like Frank’s when he was expecting one like Yuri’s.

“Why am I sitting here? Because I don’t want to know what Yuri’s up to. He hardly ever comes West. Not since his
Schatzi
died. And I’ve certainly never seen him in here before. Yuri’s a nice guy, but he’s . . . how to put this . . . bound by the limitations of his origins, and I say that regardless of how far he’s come.”

“Meaning?”

“He’s still a peasant. He knows what he knows and so far, and while he has imagination, it leads to a pretty low horizon. He distrusts what he doesn’t know. Makes him a good intelligence officer. Everyone’s an enemy. He still has peasant barter as his model for any exchange. He’s just switched from chickens and beets to cigarettes and whisky. Makes him good at whatever racket it is you guys are running.”

“Why are you so sure it’s a racket?”

“’Cos you’re sitting over there with Frank Spoleto, that’s why.”

“And Frank’s a wrong ’un?”

“Of course he is. A charming, beguiling rogue. Mr. Personality. Another New York smart-ass.”

“You know New York?”

“You think I picked up this accent at Berlitz? Gimme a break, kid. New York, London . . .”

“London? Then you probably have a take on me too.”

“Indeed I do.”

“I’m all ears.”

“Well . . . your Russian’s not bad, but the accent’s atrocious, so I figure you’ve been trained up by the British. A crash course in Russian and German, and you speak both with the accent of a cockney wide boy. You should work on that, by the way.”

“Funny. I had prided myself on being a good mimic.”

“Oh, so you can do London posh, can you? The arf arfs and the tally-hos? You just haven’t mastered the Russian version? Look, when it comes down to it you’re not that different from Yuri. Bound by your origins. But you’re a city kid. Gives you an edge. Gives you more imagination and more chances. You have a bigger horizon. Yuri will always be a peasant. You may not always be an East End gutter rat. But, whatever they promised, whatever the British told you, you’re still a low-grade NCO. Intelligence hasn’t made you Bulldog Drummond. You interpret, you eavesdrop and that’s about it. And you’re bored. And when you’re bored you look for a new game. And the black market is the only game in town.”

Wilderness aimed for motionlessness. Not a muscular flicker to tell her how well she’d hit home. How the hell did she know all this?

“I’m impressed. Brains and beauty.”

“Stop trying to flirt with me. I’m thirty-six years old and an officer. You’re a corporal and you’re what twenty-two, twenty-three?”

“Nineteen. Twenty next month.”

“Sheeeit. Green as cabbage. Kid, stop flirting and start looking out. Guys like Frank and Yuri land on their feet. An’ speaking of feet. You ever notice the size of their hands?”

“Yes, I had as it happens. Frank’s are in proportion . . . Yuri’s . . .”

“Portion shmortion. They both have hands like shovels. All the better to grab with. They land on their feet with their hands full. Guys like you . . . touch and go. But guys like Swift Eddie. They fall on their faces. They’re life’s victims. Don’t make him one. Don’t put a guy who’s worth two of you and a dozen of Frank or Yuri at risk.”

“Ah, you know Eddie?”

“Everybody in Berlin knows Swift Eddie. And right now he’s out of his depth. He just doesn’t know it. Tell me, kid. Did you just introduce Yuri to Frank?”

“Yes.”

“Dynamite, match . . . match, dynamite.”

Wilderness let this sink in, wanting to give her the impression that he understood regardless of whether he agreed with her or not.