The Violent Century (29 page)

– Machenstraum? Oblivion says, in evident surprise. She is too precious to waste.

Spit snorts. Dream Maker! What a stupid name. She’s a Nazi and she’s got the Vomacht touch. We should have collected her a long time ago.

Oblivion frowns. If the war had gone the other way, he says, we’d be the ones being
collected
.

Spit stares at him. What, are you going soft, Oblivion? Are you getting all
sympathetic
because some Nazi super-
bitch
turns you on?

Fogg has his doubts about that last one, but he keeps them to himself. Oh come on, Spit, Oblivion says. Everyone knows who she is. She’s hardly Adolf bloody
Eichmann
, is she.

– Isn’t she? Spit says, darkly.

– No. She isn’t, Oblivion says. If you must know, the Americans have already tagged her. She’s theirs. Got a free pass out of the country.

– Really? Fogg says, surprised.

Oblivion nods. Spit’s in that raging drunk stage. Like every other bloody Übermensch, she says, and Oblivion shrugs. Well, what did you think was going to happen to her? he says.

– I don’t know, Spit says. And, more quietly – This war …

Fogg just sits there, drinking his champagne. Enjoying the warmth. Spit and Oblivion’s bickering, as familiar as old leather. The band’s background music. Thinking all the while of the note in his pocket, the address Franz had given him. Thinking of Paris, in forty-three, of a man called Erich Bühler, called Snow Storm. Of Tank in a hospital bed in a military field hospital, somewhere in Scotland. Finishes his drink in one gulp and stands up.

Spit looks up at him. Where the hell are you going
now
? she says, slurring the words.

– I’m going to see a man about a storm, Fogg says.

120.
THE OLD MAN’S OFFICE
the present

– You went to the Soviet quarter that same night?

The Old Man turns the pages of Bühler’s dossier. Finger. Page corner. The whoosh of paper softly sliding against paper. No clocks in the room, Fogg notices, not for the first time. No way to tell the hour.

– I was restless, Fogg says. I didn’t tell them. Not even Oblivion.

– No, the Old Man says, but dubiously, it seems to Fogg. Dubiously. Not even Oblivion, you say.

– Schneesturm, Fogg says. I remembered him, Old Man. I couldn’t forget Paris. He was the reason we lost Tank. I couldn’t stop thinking about Tank. What had happened to him. Auschwitz. We’d all seen the images by then. I was there, after.

– I remember, the Old Man says, softly.

– I needed to be the one to find him, Fogg says, pleads. The Old Man doesn’t reply. Studies him with his head tilted. Blinks, once.

– Erich bleeding Bühler, Fogg says. Leans across to the Old Man’s desk. Stares at him. Snow Storm, he says.

The Old Man nods.

– Yes, Fogg says. Yes I went to the Soviet quarter that night.

121.
BERLIN
1946

Driving past the Tiergarten, Fogg and the driver he’d requisitioned outside Der Zirkus, the army jeep, cold night air on their faces, the fog trailing them like a pack of dogs.

– Been here long? says the driver. Something about him Fogg doesn’t like. Not an Übermensch, regular army, a corporal, but something about him. Black hair slicked back, a cigarette dangling from his lips – American, not a rollie and not cheap. Looks by far too well-fed. Cheeky, is what it is. That grin, those even white teeth.

– Long enough, Corporal, Fogg says shortly.

– You know, sir, the corporal says, if you ever need anything, you can tell me. It gets lonely on the cold nights here, in Berlin.

They head east. The corporal easily avoids the potholes and the bomb craters. Their headlights are the only source of illumination in the Berlin night. People draw deeper into the shadows when they pass.

– And some of the
Fraus
are incredibly obliging, sir.

– Excuse me?

Fogg stares at him. The corporal’s long fingers are steady on the wheel. The grin he turns to Fogg is white and cheery, positively American.

– Women, sir, the corporal says patiently. Girls.
Ladies
. Some of the Russians used them a bit rough, sir. When they took Berlin, you know. Some of them are a little used. Not my ones, sir. Each one’s a bleeding masterpiece.

Fogg looks away. Closes his eyes, for a moment. Feels the night around him. The wind on his face like a benediction. Opens his eyes, takes out his cigarette case, lights up.

– I’ll bear that in mind, Corporal, he says. Blows smoke. For just a moment it shapes itself into the shape of a stick man, waving its hands before evaporating into the air. If the corporal notices that, or the fog that follows the jeep, almost engulfing it, he doesn’t say. And perhaps, Fogg thinks, the young man is used to the strange ways of the army’s attached specialists from the BSA, from the so-called Bureau for Superannuated Affairs. Either way he flashes a grin again at Fogg.

– Or jewellery, sir? he says cheerfully. Maybe you have a girl back home, sir, who’d like some new jewellery? I can get you a very special price on gold, sir.

Fogg smiles. Blows smoke into the shape of a dove that flies away. A girl back home … he says. Yes, yes, I guess you could say that.

– Sir?

– Somewhere there’s a place where it’s always summer, Fogg says. Closes his eyes. Exhales smoke. A white stone house, surrounded by a meadow, he says. The grass is green, and bees hum lazily in the air. The light is soft, like music …

– Sir?

Fogg opens his eyes. The corporal has lost his grin. They’re on Wilhelmstrasse, passing the huge Reichsministerium, Hermann Göring’s Reich Air Ministry building. It is the only building left intact on that once-magnificent street. Everything else – the Reich Chancellery, built by Albert Speer for the Führer; and the grandiose former President’s Palace occupied by Ribbentrop during the war; and the Propaganda Ministry, and all the rest of them – all these symbols, this
centre
of Nazi power, now reduced to rubble, by Allied bombs dropped from Allied planes. All but Göring’s building: a lone survivor. It is eerily quiet, and the only light comes from farther ahead, where Fogg knows the Russians have their checkpoint.

– Stop here, Corporal, Fogg says.

The corporal seems glad to oblige. The sound of the engine dies, leaving them in silence. Fogg tries to remember the last time he’d heard a bird, and can’t. Whatever non-human life there has been in Berlin it is all gone, died off or eaten by the human survivors. The city reeks of death but it reeks even worse of life.

– What’s your name, Corporal? Fogg says.

The corporal swallows. King, sir, he says. Corporal King.

Fogg nods. Wait here until I get back, King, he says.

– Here, sir?

– Problem with your hearing, Corporal?

– No, sir.

– Good.

Fogg turns from him. As he walks away the fog gathers around him, rising from the ground until it covers him. In moments he disappears. Corporal King stares after him. Looks at the bombed-out buildings, the lights of the Soviets in the distance. Listens to that hush of post-war Berlin. Wraps himself tighter in his coat, pulls out a cigarette and lights it. He blows smoke into the darkness, stares at the rising fog.

– Rum old bird, he says, meditatively.

122.
THE OLD MAN’S OFFICE
the present

– Corporal King, eh? the Old Man says.

– Yes.

– What we used to call a useful chap.

– Quite, Fogg says.

Every military company has a man like Corporal King. A man who can get things done. A man who can get things, for the right price.

In Berlin it was chocolate and American cigarettes and nylons. It was women. It was drugs, or guns, or even identity papers. It was anything. Anything but peace. That was one luxury Berlin no longer had.

– Well, the Old Man says. Setting the matter of this King aside. He is not unknown to him. To us. So you went into the Soviet zone, the Old Man says. Not through … official channels.

– No.

– I take it that wasn’t difficult for you, Fogg.

– No, Fogg says. It wasn’t.

123.
BERLIN. THE SOVIET ZONE
1946

– I didn’t like going into the Soviet zone, Old Man, Fogg says. That split infinity: the present imposed on the past …
Walking through the night, this lunar landscape of Nazi architecture reduced to rubble, all but for Fat Boy Göring’s Ministry of the Air. Makes Fogg think, for just one moment, of the Eastern Front.

– No one did, he says. Too many scalp-hunters disappeared there. The Soviets were playing the endgame just as we were. They were hoarding up Übermenschen like a kid hoards candy and they didn’t like to share.

Hears, as if through underwater, the Old Man’s reply.
He walks through that dark, dead land and the fog crescendos around him, and he slips past the Soviet checkpoint, unseen and unheard, a shadow man in a shadow world.

The Soviet quarter. The Soviet zone.

Not much different to the rest of ruined Berlin. Snow on the ground, treacherous puddles underneath frozen surfaces. Dark, dirty water. Fogg curses when his foot lands in one, breaking the thin ice, the cold water would soak into him if it could. He hurries his steps. Aware of tiny sounds, of eyes in the dark.

– Everyone knew the end of the war was just the beginning, Fogg says. The Soviets and the Yanks had carved up Berlin as a prelude to carving up the rest of the world. We were no longer important to them. We just tried to hold on and carry away as many crumbs as we could.

– Rule Britannia … the Old Man says.

Fogg shakes his head, trying to clear it. Makes his way along the ruined streets, past dark figures huddled around a fire, past a patrol of Russian soldiers talking in lowered voices, past a rat scurrying along the wall: rats, he thinks. The only other animals to survive in Berlin that winter.

What could possess Snow Storm to hide in the Soviet zone? Fogg wonders. He could have gone to the Americans, been given a new life, papers, a ticket out. He knew he couldn’t come to the Brits. Not when they still had a personal score to settle.

And he wouldn’t go to the Soviets, Fogg knows. Not voluntarily. No one ever did.

He takes out the note Franz had given him. Checks the address again. It takes him some time, but by trial and error he finally finds it.

This street is relatively undamaged. The smell of boiled cabbage wafts weakly out of an open window. There is a working street lamp outside. A row of double-storey buildings. The sound of mute conversation from inside. A handwritten sign on grey cardboard: Pension.

Fogg approaches the Pension’s door. Waits for a moment, as if thinking. Then he raises his hand and knocks, with his fist, on the door.

124.
THE OLD MAN’S OFFICE
the present

– So far, the Old Man says, this tallies with your report.

He picks up another dossier. Opens it. Leafs through silently until he reaches a page where he stops, stabbing it with his finger.

– Let’s see, the Old Man says. Yes …

He reads aloud from the page.

– I was approached by an informant of mine named Franz Schröder, the Old Man reads out. I had been cultivating him for some time. He was a native Berliner and had fought on the Eastern Front. He had no love of the Nazis after that. He knew Berlin very well. He was a rat but he always brought me good information.

The Old Man raises his head. Looks at Fogg. Shakes his head.

– He was a rat but he always brought me good information?

Fogg shrugs, a little uncomfortably. What did you expect, he says, Shakespeare?

– I’d have settled for Marlowe, the Old Man says.

The Old Man picks up the report again and reads.

– Franz approached me at the Der Zirkus nightclub, a popular hangout –
the
Der Zirkus, Fogg?

The Old Man shakes his head again. He claimed to know the whereabouts of Erich Bühler, codenamed Schneesturm. Most concise, Fogg.

– Thank you?

The Old Man ignores him. Continues reading: The address was in the Soviet zone. I went there that same night. I found the address.

– Yes, Fogg says. Remembering. It was a boarding house.

125.
BERLIN. THE SOVIET ZONE
1946

Fogg knocks loudly on the door. The sound echoes in the quiet street.

There is no answer. He can feel them behind the door. Waiting for him to go away. Whoever he is. Whatever he wants. Knowing that he won’t. Knowing that a knock in the night will never lead to anything good. Fogg knocks again, louder. He bangs on the door. Saying, in effect, as clearly as he can – I am not going to go away.

Sounds behind the door. He stops banging. There’s the sound of a key turning, latches removed, then the door opens. An old woman stands in the door, two frightened children peering from behind her. The woman wears a faded yellow dress and a worn military coat over her shoulders. Her hair is white and thin. Her eyes are the eyes of a bird. She doesn’t speak. Looks at Fogg. Studies him.

– May I come in? Fogg says, in German. He doesn’t wait for an answer though. Walks in. The woman retreats from him, her and the two children. Fogg closes the door behind him and turns to face them. Looks at the room. Not much in it. A small Primus stove. A pot on it. He walks to it, lifts the lid. The smell of cooking cabbage hits him fully in the face. He replaces the lid on the top. Turns back. Gestures at the children. Your own? he asks.

The old woman looks at him as if weighing her options. Finally, reluctantly: My sister’s, she says. She is dead.

– I am sorry to hear it, Fogg says.

– The Russians killed her.

Fogg doesn’t – quite – shrug. This is war, he says. And this is Berlin.

The woman looks at him. Not afraid. You blame
us?
she says. You think we knew? Before the war I had Jewish neighbours. We never had problems with the Jews.