Then We Take Berlin (58 page)

If Oppitz had learnt to smile for the camera his photographs would have done him justice. He had a mischievous grin that would have alarmed any schoolmaster when he was twelve and attract any girl now he was twenty. He was far from the deadly serious Pol Sci student of his photograph.

“Let me introduce you, Herr Johnson. Georg Kies—physics.”

A big man, older than the others, his hair already receding, but still, Wilderness would guess, under thirty.

“Friedrich Bochum—chemistry.”

A skinny kid, topped out by the moptop haircut that was sweeping England in the wake of the Beatles, and now seemed to be invading the Continent as well. The sort of look that roused retired colonels to apoplexy and might even cause Burne-Jones to raise a disapproving eyebrow.

“Traudl Brahms.”

A blonde beauty, peering at him across the top of her spectacles.

Wilderness stared back.

“You are surprised to find a woman in the group, Herr Johnson?”

“Not at all.”

“I am the engineer. All these students of politics and science are just empty rhetoric without me.”

They all laughed at this, then Oppitz said, “It’s true. We’d never have dug so much as a metre of tunnel without Traudl to prevent it all falling in on us.”

“Well, I doubt this one will fall in on anyone. It’s been there more than a hundred and fifty years.”

“You have been down recently?”

“Yes. I walked the tunnel from the East this morning.”

Oppitz nodded, Traudl spoke up.

“If you have a tunnel why do you need us?”

“It’s been built over at this end. I need help, experienced help, to reopen it. It’s long, it runs from Monbijou Park to the zoo end of the Tiergarten . . .”

“Good God . . . that’s three kilometres.”

“Closer to four.”

“And we’d be digging at the zoo?”

“Yes. No more than three or four feet. Down to a steel plate. Lift the plate—it’s heavy, about an inch thick—and the shaft and tunnel below are intact.”

“We’d be digging in the open? That would require city permits.”

“Just leave that with me. You’ll get all the paperwork you need. What I want you to do is get hold of tools, the lifting gear and screening—the sort of hoarding builders would put up around a structure they’re restoring. Keeps dust in and peeping eyes out. You’ll be city workmen excavating something. Water, gas, whatever fits the story. And I’m sure Frank Spoleto explained . . . he needs your political skills as much as your tunnelling skills.”

Kies said, “Just one woman. A drop in the ocean. We brought out twenty-nine.”

“I know. Everybody knows. That’s why we want you. To ensure everybody knows.”

“Why not bring out more?”

Wilderness had anticipated this question. He wondered if Frank had. As far as they were concerned the “one woman” was Hannah Schneider. He’d give them Hannah Schneider. They’d find out later rather than sooner who she really was. And if that blew their chances of using the tunnel again, so be it. But if it didn’t? Well, they had ideals—something Frank wouldn’t care about even if he understood in the first place.

“There’ll be nothing to stop you once this job’s done. The tunnel will be yours. Be discreet about the location and you might get a few dozen out before the Russians shut it down.”

“A few dozen? Why not a hundred?”

“They will shut it down, believe me, they will.”

Oppitz asked, “Do we have a deadline?”

“We do. The evening of the twenty-sixth. Next Wednesday.”

All four heads turned, looked at each other, exchanged quizzical glances.

Oppitz said, “You know what day that is, don’t you?”

“Of course he does,” Traudl said, a broad smile, teetering on laughter. “Herr Johnson is stealing thunder. We’re all stealing thunder.”

§193

“You can take off the wig now, Dr. Mayerling.”

She frowned, turned her back on him, removed a couple of pins, tossed the wig onto the sofa and with one hand still ruffling her hair turned to face him.

Much more had altered. The transformation was dramatic. It made him realise that she’d put on a far better performance that he’d given her credit for. An elasticity seemed to return to her body, she seemed to stand taller, and a youthful light had gone on in her eyes—an angry light, aimed at him.

“You know my name? Do I know yours? Or do I go on calling you Mr. Johnson?”

“Johnson will be fine.”

“How very . . . how very unequal. Tell me, Mr. Johnson, will I ever be able to trust you?”

“You trust Frank Spoleto.”

“That might be because he is Frank Spoleto.”

“Of course. What you see is what you get with Frank.”

She weighed this one up, unsure of how sarcastic he was being, waited a moment to see if he would relent and tell her his name. When he didn’t she picked up the wig and said, “You know, I think I’ll hang on to this. Who knows when I might need to be Hannah Schneider again. Hannah Schneider trusted you Mr. Johnson. I do not.”

Wilderness thought—all this for a fucking wig? Who lied to whom?

He said, “Well, if you can contain your mistrust we have plans to discuss.”

“Do you know when? You will appreciate I need to be prepared.”

“Of course, all the packing you have to do.”

He could have bitten his tongue. He’d got her back up. That was inevitable once he’d seen through the charade she and Frank had cooked up, but some demon on his shoulder was knifing her. He had to stop. He didn’t like her, she didn’t like him, and they had to work together.

She was staring at him, as though she would not utter another word until he answered her properly.

“Wednesday next week. As soon as it’s dark enough.”

“Wednesday? The twenty-sixth?”

She got up and fetched a two-week-old copy of the
Berliner Morgenpost
off the sideboard. Slapped it down in front of him.

President Kennedy to Speak at

Rudolph-Wilde-Platz

on June 26

“Are you sure that’s the best day?”

“Quite sure. In fact it’s a godsend.”

“How so? The city will be crawling with secret policemen.”

“And none of them will be looking at us.”

§194

Wilderness had Erno forge Berlin city maintenance permits. Oppitz, Kies, Bochum, and Fraulein Brahms would be looking into the matter of a ruptured sewer.

He met them in the car park. Handed out Erno’s handiwork and watched as they shrouded the site in dirty white canvas. Admired her nerve as Traudl put her hair up under her cap and strutted about like a workingman.

“You surely didn’t think I would let them leave me out?”

“Of course not.”

It was a risk, but hardly worth the worry.

Oppitz walked thirty yards out from the hoarding and set down a couple of metal signs on folding legs instructing Berliners not to use the car park while “Public Works in Progress.”

“They’re real,” he said to Wilderness. “So handy to have had them these last two years. You wouldn’t believe the natural obedience of my fellow Berliners.”

“Believe it?” Wilderness replied. “I’m banking on it.”

§195

Wilderness could face no more of Erno’s scotch and took him a bottle of Burgundy—a Gevrey-Chambertin 1952.

“Not Grand Cru or anything.”

“When you’re rich Joe, when you’re rich?”

After the first glass.

“She’s taken against me, Erno.”

“What did you do?”

“I suppose I exposed her as a con. She doesn’t trust me. I think she’d prefer to deal with Frank. Ridiculous, as Frank was the one who set up the con, and she’s lost absolutely nothing by coming clean. Except that I rather think she wanted to do this in disguise, be somebody else. As though whatever it is she has to do was done more easily as Hannah Schneider. There was no relief about dropping the mask, she seemed happier with it. It doesn’t much matter of course . . . she doesn’t have to trust me, she just has to do what she’s told. But she trusts Frank.”

The wheezing noise he concluded was Erno laughing again. He hardly ever heard Erno laugh in the old days. When he’d stopped shaking, stopped spilling his wine, he said, “When I was at school we read Shakespeare, translated into German of course. I forget the play.
The Tempest
perhaps or
Julius Caesar
. There was a wonderful line . . . ‘
Ihr Götter, haltet fest auf der Party der Bastarde!
’ What would that be in the original?”

“They lost a bit in translation, Erno. The line was simplicity itself . . . ‘Now, gods stand up for bastards.’ And it’s from
King Lear
.”

“Well the gods are certainly standing up for that bastard Frank. She trusts Frank Spoleto? That’s got to be the funniest thing I’ve heard since Hermann Göring killed himself.”

It came over him in a ripple, the infectiousness of laughter.

After the third glass.

“I was thinking, Joe. When you used to put on your Guards uniform and that plummy voice and go down the officers mess or commandeer a staff car . . . who were you?”

“I’ve still got that uniform. Who was I? I was me, I was always me. That was the fun, being me and conning them I was someone else. Conning them I was one of them. I suppose I was tinkering with the English class system. You know, Bernard Shaw,
Pygmalion
. If you can get someone to look right and sound right you can pass them off anywhere.”

Erno shrugged, sipped at his wine.

“There are other directions. Other reasons.”

“Don’t quite get your drift here Erno.”

“You were a boy. Part of the pretence was that you were a man. Something you would grow into anyway. You were a working-class kid—in so far as coming from a family of thieves constitutes any form of work—and you might one day become what you pretended to be. An officer and a gentleman. You might say that in marrying Burne-Jones’s daughter you had turned the pretence into reality.”

“Not quite. Burne-Jones did that when he accepted me as a son-in-law. I couldn’t do that, make that last move. I could have married Judy and still got rejected. He could accept me, and he did. An officer? I never made it past sergeant. When I went into civvies for him the pay kept going up, the rank never did. Burne-Jones told me rank didn’t matter.”

“So . . . you are what? The cockney thief made good.”

“If becoming Military Intelligence’s resident burglar was making good.”

“Suppose the journey were the other way around. That you were the brightest of the bright. You streaked through the system. The great and the good in your chosen discipline fought over you.”

“I see where you’re headed, Erno, but add to the mix that she’s female and Jewish.”

“I was coming to that. You achieve great acclaim, the Nobel eludes you perhaps only because you are female . . . yet your greatest achievement is a bomb that annihilates a hundred thousand in a few seconds, and has the potential to exterminate millions. A bomb that goes on to become the cornerstone of the post-war world. The international criterion of power. The greatest threat the planet has ever known. Think of Nobel himself—desperate towards the end of his life to be remembered for something other than dynamite. Suppose, even for a few hours at a time, you can slip back to simplicity merely by donning an old frock and a wig. She spent the war in a university in California. The richest place on God’s earth. As far removed from Belsen or Auschwitz as one could imagine. If she’d been in one of the camps . . . Belsen . . . Auschwitz . . . would we have any difficulty understanding a lack of identity, a search for identity, or a rejection of identity? All three would be in play. Supposing Marte Mayerling, splitter of atoms, could become Hannah Schneider . . . somebody’s old Jewish maiden aunt. Maybe she chose the name herself? Schneider. How many Jewish women from Germany and Poland have earned a living as tailors and seamstresses? Joe, it’s not just any disguise. It is Freud’s own mask.”

“What if Frank chose it?”

“No matter . . . it is what she makes of it. He offers an alias. She makes it into a mask.”

“And if she’s desperate to be Hannah Schneider . . . why Israel . . . why another fucking bomb?”

“Well . . . we have only Frank’s word for that.”

Wilderness stared into the ashes. There was always something to be burned at Erno’s. The warmest night tinged by a few glowing embers. And it seemed to him that Erno’s fire was always a burning of deceptions, his Lenten bonfire of the vanities—this was where the old man got rid of all the evidence. The incriminating letters, the first drafts, the smudged failures. And it seemed that he was looking into the grey dust of months, probably years, of lies and deceit and that the few sparks that were glowing now were merely those he had added himself.