The Berlin Assignment (9 page)

“One final point,” Gifford pushed on, “after the sit-down you may wish Sturm to take you to your domicile. It's normal to want to see it.”

Apart from Zella's interest, no one at headquarters had said anything about the residence. “Is it ready to move in?” Hanbury asked. “I hope it's got good acoustics.”

“A marvel, Tony. We constantly catch each other on the same wavelength. I would say, yes, the house is ready to move in, but at this stage I won't say more. The neighbourhood is quiet, no acoustical problems. After you've seen it, give me your views. Speak to me frankly. I am quite certain, if improvements are needed, we will find a way. I hope we can work productively on many things. Need I say more?”
The consul weighed the meaning of this. “I support change,” he said calmly. “Of course I support improvement.” “Thank you,” a smiling Gifford said. He unclasped his hands. “Perhaps we oughtn't to keep the family waiting.”

An alcove off a hallway, a holding area for visitors, served as meeting place. Some leather chairs were pushed against the walls and the largest and lowest of these, an oversized black throne, was the consul's. The ladies were on typing chairs rolled in from their desks. Sturm sat slung forward on a stool in a thinker's pose. The consul murmured excuses as he stepped over legs. The chair engulfed him when he sat down and gave way under his weight until he was nearly on the floor. From there he looked up at five expectant faces.

“
Ich bin begeistert, hier zu sein
.” I'm thrilled to be here, he started. He had rehearsed a short speech over breakfast. But his confidence as public speaker was never high and he was worried he would not remember the main points. “I've always wanted to serve in Berlin,” he said humbly. “It's like a dream come true.” He halted, struggling to generate the drift of his remarks. “It'll take me a few days to settle, naturally. I'll be asking some questions. Some could seem basic, but please bear with me.” His worry was becoming self-fulfilling. Before getting to the most important observations he'd planned to state – his admiration for the quality of the staff, their high reputation, his desire to work closely with them – Hanbury's mind went blank.

Like an actor on a stage whose brain refuses to come up with the next line, the consul waited for a prompt. As the silence thickened, Hanbury thought of Zella and how she'd bridge the moment.
I'm more than willing to answer your questions
,
Mr. Consul. Let's have 'em!
she'd probably be saying to dispel the silence. But these ladies were not Zellas. In the stillness, the women silently observing him, perspiration formed on unseen parts of Hanbury's body. He felt it trickling down inside
his shirt. Then a comment from Krauthilda jumped at him –
I'm sure the local staff will brief you
– and he seized on it. With fierce calm he said, “Perhaps you could now tell me some of the things I should know.” The quality, not the depth, of the silence transformed. It became brittle. The consul tried once more. “Herr Gifford,” he said, turning to the administrator, “why don't you start?”

Gifford remained immobile, wondering about his first impression. Had yet another master of inaction from overseas been dropped into his lap? He believed the agreed script for the sit-down was that announcements would be made about change and modernization. He tossed the ball right back. “We had hoped,
Herr Konsul
,” he said, coldly pleasant, “since you have come from headquarters, that you might bring us answers, not questions.” There was a soft rustling as the ladies shifted in their seats and crossed and re-crossed their legs. Sturm rose from his thinker's slouch.

The words bit. The damp spread from the inside of the consul's shirt into his jacket. He looked at Gifford who, with a rodent's ruthlessness, stared back. Hanbury felt transported back to the Priory days when Heywood was travelling, when the high priest called wanting immediate answers to complicated questions. His mind had raced then too, searching for a credible reply, a workable point of departure. In this defining moment he needed one fast. He blamed Krauthilda for not having given him a decent briefing, for not even having hinted at some useful questions. Yet, courtesy of Krauthilda, relief arrived. She was growing on a side track in Hanbury's mind, developing, transforming – going from nemesis to saviour. With a survivor's ingenuity he decided to repeat what she had said to him, except he'd turn the tables. Turn her negatives into positives, he thought. Krauthilda, bent through a hundred and eighty degrees, began giving him substance. Looking Gifford in the eye, the consul charged.

“You should know Berlin has a very high priority in headquarters,” he said. “A political redefinition is taking place in Europe at this moment and we – you, I, all of us here – we are expected to make sense of it. Germany is reunified, but at what cost? Spiritual
and
financial deficits are setting in. What are the social and security ramifications? What is the geo-political significance? I know this office isn't large, but much depends on our analysis of the issues.” The consul looked around at awed faces. “Geo-politics,” he repeated. “In Berlin, one feels it. It's in the air. The challenge for us is to think the new Germany through.”

On the outside the consul remained flat, unemotional, but inside his self-doubt was ebbing. He was edging close to believing what he had just said. The dynamics of the family sit-down were changed too. Meat had been put on the table and Sturm sunk his teeth in first.

“That's different from what we're used to doing,
Herr Konsul
,” he said bluntly. “Thinking Germany through? Where do you want us to start?”

“The world is changing,” Hanbury soothed. “We must move with the times. We have to acquire new skills.”

“With all respect,
Herr Konsul
,” Sturm continued, “that sounds woolly to me. I change the light bulbs, open the mail and stick stamps on letters for the post office. And I know my way around Berlin, even if the street names in the East keep changing. Then take Frau Koehler. She answers the telephone and monitors the papers. Frau von Ruppin does the passports and Frau Carstens is responsible for scheduling appointments. We provide a service. We've been doing it for a dozen years and no one's complained. Why not keep it up? Let others worry about Germany's future. I don't think we're up to it.” The three ladies, thorough women of the kind that once made Prussia great, nodded agreement.

The meeting was not yet clearly on the track Gifford wanted, but
with a few more switches thrown he believed it might just get there. “Herr Hanbury is right,” he said. “Berlin isn't static any longer. We
should
be moving with the times. The consul and I discussed this earlier. He shared his thoughts with me. Wise thoughts. We can change, and we will, but we need new tools for our work.” Gifford began to explain how offices everywhere were modernizing.

As the administrator was setting out his vision of the future, Hanbury had a sudden
déja-vu
. It had to do with the phrase
new tools
. It had been his father's favourite. As head of soil science at the research station in Indian Head, Dr. Hanbury was always advocating new tools. “I want to measure three things all at once,” Hanbury remembered him saying at the dinner table. There was something intense, almost vengeful in the way the great man held up his fork, like a weapon. Outside, a dry hot wind was blowing; the prairie sky was black with sucked up soil. Tony's mother, whose frilly white blouse had turned grey that day, quickly disappeared into the kitchen.
Je m'excuse
, she said to avoid having to listen to science. So Tony was the audience for a man whose sole interest in life was to stop topsoil from drifting. “I want to measure the rate of disappearance of soil moisture as a function of temperature and air movement,” the scientist continued. “At the same time I want to determine the adhesion loss between the drying soil particles as well as the lifting forces exerted by the wind.” The boy didn't understand a word. He was uncomfortable being alone with his father. He wanted to go to his mother. “If I could measure all that, simultaneously, at a defined point,” the sun-scorched, diagnostically-deprived head of research claimed, “we'd be taking a big step. New tools, that's what we need.” The son hadn't liked the father's use of the word
we
. He had no desire to be associated with the violence of soil science. He slipped away at the first opportunity and took cover at the piano by playing a Chopin
étude
.

Odd, Hanbury now thought, how the phrase jumped through the intervening decades. He eyed Gifford warily for a minute, but relaxed. The administrator wasn't ominous. He wasn't remotely like his father. When Gifford finished describing changes to the consulate, Hanbury supported what he said. “I'll be pushing hard to make change a reality. I do want to create a more efficient office. I look forward to advice from all of you on how to achieve it.”

“And what exactly do you mean with more efficiency?” a testy Frau Carstens asked. For her, efficiency was more than a way of life, it was a form of art about which she had little left to learn.

The consul wanted to answer, but the administrator cut him off. “Computers,” he said, “modems, laser printers, the works.” The consul's predecessor, frightened by technology and horrified at the costs, had kept Gifford bottled up. But Hanbury was different. Gifford smelled a chance to break loose. “Data banks at our fingertips,” he continued, “linked to a computerized phone system. Cyberspace sitting on our desks. That's what we'll have. In a modern office, typewriters are out.”

“But my typewriter is not so old.” Frau von Ruppin argued.

Frau Koehler, fidgeting with a handkerchief, agreed. “Computers seem very modern,” she said.

“I've heard it's easy to learn to use them,” said Sturm. “I'd try.” Frau von Ruppin looked at him with bewilderment. “My cousin in Cottbus uses one, and if he can, I can,” he told her.

“It could be exciting,” Frau Carstens speculated.

Gifford's dream was taking on momentum. With the staff nodding, the consul proclaimed the decision to modernize was unanimous.

As excitement sloshed around the alcove, an emboldened Hanbury rose above the murmur with another question. “Whom should I be meeting in the next few weeks? It's standard to make some introductory
calls.” This question, so practical, so different from the first, ignited fervour.

“Yes!” cried Frau Carstens. She saw her chance, as Gifford had seen his. She quickly recited a dozen names, well-known personalities with important public functions. The other women chimed in. The Chief of Protocol, editors of newspapers, ranking politicians, heads of financial institutions, cultural figures, leaders of think tanks, chairpersons of clubs, presidents of social science institutes, police contacts, senior officials in the departments of justice and the economy. As the list of the local elite grew, so did the staff's exhilaration. The Priory, Hanbury thought, had never been like this.

Gifford eventually declared the waterfront had been covered. “We've never gone at this so thoroughly.”

“Or systematically!” agreed Frau Carstens. It would be her job to stage the consul, feed him his lines, shape his part.

Gifford summed up. Between four and six appointments per week, Frau Carstens to arrange and keep the master list, Sturm to work out the logistics, closely consulting Frau Carstens. Arrivals to be punctual – between three and five minutes prior to the set time. He himself would take the debriefings, write up the notes and ensure a system for follow-up. “Once we have computers, all this will be child's play,” the administrator added, winking at Hanbury. From deep down on his dark throne, the consul, happy as a school boy, grinned back.

Hours later – the consul having visited the house he would live in and now returned to his hotel – Sturm came back to the office. The ladies had gone. Gifford was waiting in the hallway. “What's the verdict?” he asked quietly.

“It destroyed him.”

“He didn't like it?” The chauffeur shook his head. “Didn't think he would,” said Gifford indifferently. “He's had third world assignments, Sturm. Third-worlders have inflated housing expectations. Saw that in the British Council. Even so, the house isn't much, no matter what the standard. We admit it.” The administrator rubbed his neck with frustration and once more heaped scorn on the predecessor. “Why didn't he ask for innovation? Creative financing for real estate is child's play for a diplomatic mission.” He shrugged at the years of wasted opportunity. “A free hand and a few weeks, that's all I needed. I could have arranged a deal for villa in a fine neighbourhood, maybe even in Dahlem. But this one seems capable of enterprise. A curious chap all the same, Sturm. Can't make up my mind. Is he clever? Is he slow? Several sides to him. Makes you wonder. And his German, how did he come by it? He never said.”

“Maybe here.” Sturm said.

“You think? He said nothing about that to me.”

“He's been here before. He recognized Siemensstadt.”

“Did he say more?”

“He doesn't say much at all. Yesterday he slept. This morning he was like a corpse. Just two words came out. That's all. When I drove him to his house he was an extrovert. Said he wants me to take him to Spandau tomorrow. I asked why. He laughed. A long story, he said. Then he inspected the house. It shattered him. So he was back to playing corpse.”

“Tell me what happened. The details.”

“Nothing happened, not in the car, not at the house. He walks in, looks around, looks into a closet, the bedroom, the kitchen. Stands in the living room, spreads his hands and says,
I can't believe it!
He walks out. I drive him back to the hotel. Not a word said. When he got out
he said,
Tomorrow at eight
. That was it.”