The Violent Century (28 page)

Fogg never got to the bottom of where Oblivion came from. His aristocratic air belying humbler origins. Sometimes his past slipped through. Or perhaps it’s a calculated act, just further obfuscation. Fogg never knows.

He lights up a cigarette. American GIs get them as part of their rations. Along with nylon stockings and chocolate, they serve as the post-war currency in Berlin. Fogg pays informers with cigarettes, bribes officials with chocolate, courts elusive contacts with nylons. The Bureau in post-war Berlin, hunting Übermenschen.

The Americans look over to their table. Tigerman frowns. The Green Gunman nods, neutrally. Oblivion raises his drink at Whirlwind, who looks at him with distaste and looks away.

– What’s with you and miss hurly-whirly over there? Spit says. Oblivion says, We had a thing.

Fogg looks at him sharply.

– You did not! Spit says.

– In Rome, in forty-four, Oblivion says. Smiles, a little ruefully. It didn’t last, he says. Spit, leaning over, interested: What happened? Oblivion shrugs. You know those Italian girls, he says, how grateful they were for liberation.

Spit laughs. So what happened, she says, Whirlwind caught you with one?

– Well, Oblivion says. Yes … only there were two of them.

– You’re disgusting, Spit says.

– That’s what she said, too, Oblivion says.

Fogg drinks his beer. Only half-listening. Not saying much. Smokes his cigarette. Checks his watch. A commotion at the door. Turns to see a small slight figure trying to get in, the waiters closing in on it like crows. The man slips through them, heads directly to the British table.

It’s Fogg’s informant.

It’s good old Franz.

A waiter follows, agitated. Fogg raises his hand. The waiter backs off. Franz stands there, looking at the table, the drinks, the well-fed GIs around the room. Something naked and hungry in his face. Fogg says, Outside. Now. Stands up. Drains the rest of his beer. Franz already walking away. He’s not allowed inside. The big band finishes on stage. It darkens. Everyone quietens down as a lone woman comes on stage. Dressed in a masculine suit. Wears a black top hat. A strong face, sharp cheekbones. A solitary spot of light engulfs her. The rest of the stage is in darkness. At the doors Franz stops, face turned to the stage, captivated. The woman on stage approaches the microphone. She starts to sing. At the sound of her voice, Franz gives a little shudder. The room, the whole of Der Zirkus, is silent. The woman sings. An American song. ‘My Dreams are Getting Better All the Time’. Fogg pushes Franz through the doors, outside.

115.
OUTSIDE DER ZIRKUS, BERLIN
1946

Into the hell that is Berlin. The exposed skeletons of buildings jut at odd angles. Rubble like temple offerings piled up everywhere. A beggar slinks in the shadows. Outside Der Zirkus there are always beggars, a woman in a shawl holds a baby under one arm, or it could be a bundle of cloth, you can’t tell. A blind man in dark glasses holds a tin cup and rattles it. Women wait outside, legs bare despite the cold, wear smiles like uniforms now, when they see Fogg. Try to get his attention. Can be had for a packet of cigarettes. Berlin. Fog in the air, he pulls it around him like a comforting cloak. As though hoping it will obscure the city, make it disappear, if only it could be unseen.

Berlin.

Franz’s glasses crooked, held by tape. Fogg walks away, and Franz follows. Down that dead street, the road uneven, an American jeep goes past, the GIs cheering at the sight of the waiting women. Around the corner, at last. The fog thickening. Hiding them both. They stop.

– What do you have for me, Franz? Fogg says.

– The man you were asking for, Herr Schleier! he says. His name for Fogg.

Says: I have received word of him.

Fogg’s heart, like a caged bird sensing freedom, beats faster in his chest. Bühler? he says; thinking of a man with blond-white hair; thinking of a snow storm.

Franz smiles. A sly smile. A calculating look. How much can he get off Herr Schleier, this time? Says, He no longer goes by that name.

Fogg doesn’t reply. Franz stamps his feet, rubs his hands. Blows cold breaths that condense like fog. Says, Please, Herr Schleier, you have a cigarette?

– What makes a man, Franz? Their old refrain. What makes a hero? Fogg says.

– Please, Herr Schleier. A cigarette?

Fogg takes out his cigarette case. Silver. Belonged to a Nazi colonel, sold to him by an American GI. Opens it. Takes out a cigarette. Franz watching. Closes the case, taps the cigarette against it, thoughtfully. Franz watches, his eyes are like grey seas.

–
Danke schön
, Herr Schleier.

Franz accepts the cigarette like an offering. Fogg pulls out a Zippo, flicks it into life. Lights up for Franz. Says,
Bitte, bitte
.

Franz takes a drag. Coughs. Takes another. Fogg says, Where is Herr Bühler?

– He is hiding in the Soviet zone, Herr Schleier.

– Shit, Fogg says.

– He has been very careful, has Herr Bühler.

Sudden hatred illuminates Franz’s face. Takes Fogg by surprise. Franz spits on the ground.

– I would give you him for free, he says. Herr Schneesturm. How you say? Snow Storm. I was on the
front
, Herr Schleier. I was on the Eastern Front and I saw the Übermensch and what he did.

Fogg regards him silently. Franz, frantically, smoking cigarette dangling in his mouth, reaches down, takes off his shoe. You see? he says. Fogg sees. Two of Franz’s toes are missing.

– This is the Schneesturm’s work, Franz says. To him we were like Jews.

Fogg lets him speak. Into the silence. His informer, bolstered by tobacco and hatred, has a need to fill it.

– I was a soldier, Herr Schleier. How you say Schleier? Fog?

Waiting for a response. Getting none.

– Mr Fog, Franz says, and laughs. Stops. Fogg looks at Franz’s foot. His missing toes.

– I was a soldier, Franz says. His voice is small. I served my country.

Fogg says, This God-damned war.

Franz nods his head, rapidly. Shrugs. Puts his shoe back on, takes a deep satisfied drag on his cigarette. Him I would give you for free, Herr Schleier, he says again. Looks at his nails, the hand holding the cigarette. Examines them thoughtfully. Says, But a man cannot live when a man has no food in his stomach.

Fogg sighs. Fogg reaches into his coat pocket. Fogg brings out a box of cigarettes and something else, something small and soft that flutters in the wind. Franz looks at it, transfixed. It is like a little green butterfly with dark spots.

– Ohhh …

It’s a twenty-dollar bill.

– So, Fogg says.

But Franz seems captivated by the sight. Lips form into an O of wonder. Fogg hands him the cigarettes and the money both. Reanimating him like some mad scientist in a cheap horror film.

– Thank you, Herr Schleier! Thank you—

– There will be double that if I find him—

Fogg stops to look at his informant. The Yanks better not get there first, he says.

– I talk to no one! Only you, Herr Schleier. I swear on my honour—

He’s made the money disappear.

– Now give it to me.

Fogg waits as Franz rummages through his own, dirty coat. Brings out a small piece of paper, folded over several times. Hands it to Fogg, who puts it away.

– Herr Schleier …

– Go away, Franz, Fogg says.

Franz looks at him, conflicting expressions crossing his face, as if he can’t settle on one. With what seems like wounded dignity he says, I was a soldier, Herr Schleier. Fogg only looks at him, and so Franz repeats himself. Perhaps, we think, he is caught in a loop from which there is no escape.

– I was a soldier.

– We were all soldiers, Franz, Fogg says. Now get the fuck out of here.

116.
THE OLD MAN’S OFFICE
the present

– He was just an informant, Fogg says.

– But he found Erich Bühler for you, didn’t he, Fogg? The Old Man says. He found Schneesturm?

– He said Schneesturm was hiding in the Soviet sector, Fogg says.

– So you do remember, Henry.

Fogg makes himself relax. Even offers a little half-smile. Says, As I recall, I submitted a full report at the time.

– Quite, quite, the Old Man says. His face softens. I want you to know I really do appreciate you coming in on such short notice, Henry, he says.

– Sir?

– You’ve been out in the cold for too long, Henry. Too many years, the Old Man says.

– It was such a long time ago, Fogg says. Does it really matter any more?

The Old Man seems to let that one go. Perhaps not, he agrees.

Waves his hand as if to say, none of this is of importance any more. Pulls towards him a different folder. Opens it. Looks at it thoughtfully.

– Let’s get back to Franz, the Old Man suggests. Franz Schröder. Your informant in Berlin in forty-six.

Fogg shifts in his chair. I really don’t see … he says.

– Humour me, Fogg.

Fogg stares at him. What do you want to know? he says. Resigned again. Knowing that the questioning is not at all over. That it has, in fact, just reached its crucial point. What the Old Man has been after all along.

– Tell me about Berlin, Fogg, the Old Man says. Tell me about Snow Storm.

And Fogg, resigned, does.

117.
BERLIN
1946

– Berlin. You have to understand what it was like, Fogg says. Berlin in forty-six was an insane asylum. It was a circus of the grotesque. There were all manner of freaks. And ghosts …

The snow falls over the grey broken-down streets, the shadows of the street-dwellers slink like rats along the walls, but there, in neon lights, a sign:
Der Zirkus
and, in only slightly smaller letters below:
Nachtklub
.

The cold permeates everywhere. Fogg’s fingers feel frozen, unresponsive. The fog rises around him like a shield: from the watching eyes of the Berliner lost, of the shadow men and shadow women, the post-war living ghosts.

– Every intelligence and acquisitions agency in the world was in Berlin that year, after the war, Old Man. We were looking for Übermenschen. We were looking for Vomacht. For the people who had worked with him in his labs. For the Nazi big shots who had so far managed to evade the Allies and stay free. We were looking for Nazi scientists. We were looking for rocket people.

How long has he been outside in the cold? He’d met with Franz and Franz had given him a piece of paper, with an address written on it. He was so cold.

– Christ, Fogg says. Most of the time, we couldn’t even find ourselves.

He walks to the club doors and pushes them open and goes back inside.

118.
DER ZIRKUS NIGHTCLUB, BERLIN
1946

He steps into an air of luxury. Of cigarette smoke and beer, laughter and music. It’s so warm inside after being in the cold. He stands still and savours the atmosphere. This little cocoon of life in the midst of all the death.

On stage the same lone woman as before stands, singing mournfully. He recognises her.

Machenstraum
, Fogg thinks.

She is tall, she wears a man’s black suit and a circus ringmaster’s black top hat. She is not conventionally pretty, though she could, if she wanted to, assume any shape she wants, Fogg knows. Machenstraum. Dream Maker. The spotlight engulfs her. The rest of the stage is dark, dark like an ocean. Fogg stands and listens to the music, ‘I Had the Craziest Dream’. She had been singing something else before.

Fogg nods his head in time to the music. Lights a cigarette. The smoke curls around his arm like a snake. He looks at the occupied tables. The silent waiters gliding along the floor. The moth-eaten velvet drapes. Looks at the Americans still sitting there, at their usual table.

And it is as if he is in two places at once, the past and the present, a time-traveller split in half, and in the Old Man’s office Fogg talks rapidly, like a younger man, the words just come and come and come. Suddenly he can’t stop talking. Like something’s been at last let loose.

– The Americans were crazy for rocket scientists, Fogg says. They grabbed von Braun as soon as they could. He ended up running their space programme for them. They were all over Berlin, spooks and super-men – like Tigerman and the Green Gunman and Whirlwind.

In the
then
, in Berlin after the war, Fogg looks at them, squinting his eyes against the smoke, listening to Machenstraum’s singing.

– The Americans were always so
showy,
Fogg says. They showed off their super powers like an English hostess shows off her best china. The entire nation was a super power and they wanted everyone to know it.

– As if everyone didn’t already know, the Old Man says. Fogg snorts.

– And they wanted what we wanted, he says. Vomacht, rogue Übermenschen
.
There was a market in the changed. They double-crossed us and we stabbed them in the back in return.

Fogg stares at the stage. The song is ending.
In Berlin, in forty-six? he says to the Old Man,
everybody
played the game.

119.
DER ZIRKUS, BERLIN
1946

Fogg rejoins the British table as the last notes of the song fade away. The lights return, and with them the ambient noise.

– Champagne? Oblivion says. He is glowing, Fogg sees, with some inner light, a happy drunkard stage which is rare for Oblivion. Fogg nods and Oblivion pours him the drink. The bottle, Fogg sees, sits in a bucket of ice on the table. He raises his eyebrows.

– Compliments of the competition, Oblivion says. He gestures at the American table. Fogg raises his glass in salute and the Americans, Tigerman and Whirlwind and the Green Gunman, respond in kind.

– How very civilised, Fogg says.

On stage, the singer bows to muted applause then walks off stage.

– When are we going to arrest her? Spit says.