Berlin: A Novel (37 page)

'You're in a cheerful mood, ma'am.' A voice interrupted her memories. The blind man was standing in front of her. 'May I?' He sat down close to her. 'Captain Jurgen Brandenburg, as I said before. Twenty-eight victories in the air, until the rear gunner of a B-17 got me. A blow on the head. Everything suddenly blurred around me. I've no idea how I got my plane down. Everything was black after that. Until today.'

Dislike arose in her. She wanted nothing to do with this man. 'I'm very sorry, but I can't help you.'

Only a year ago I'd have invited you to Horcher's or the Adlon. The waiters bowed there, and all the pretty ladies couldn't say yes quick enough.'

She rose to her feet. 'Please don't try to meet me again.' She forced herself not to run but walk calmly. There was no reason to panic. The OMGUS entrance was barely a hundred metres away. Yet she still had that oppressive feeling, even when she had passed the guard.

Frau Mohr inspected Detta's simple black dress and her blonde hair, smoothed back and worn in a chignon. There were no hairdressers open yet. She pointed to her shoes. 'Those casuals won't do at all. Try my black pumps.' The smoky-grey nylons were a present from Anny Randolph, and set off Detta's long, slender legs to perfection. 'Quite a few gentlemen will be turning to look,' said her landlady happily.

'Thank you, Frau Mohr.' Detta put the pumps in her shoebag and got back into her old casuals. She had a half-hour's walk ahead, but that didn't bother her. It was a warm, dry evening.

The American city commandant's residence was a solid old villa in Pacelliallee, which had once belonged to a member of the Rothschild family. Two curving flights of steps led up to the veranda. A maid in a cap and starched apron let Detta in. An orderly in a white mess jacket appeared and led the visitor to the big salon. Lucy Abbot came to greet her in rustling blue organza. 'Henriette, my dear, how are you? It's almost a month since we saw each other - that mustn't happen again, you must promise me. Harry, introduce our guest.'

General Henry C. Abbot was wearing a claret-coloured dinner jacket and looked very handsome. He introduced them one by one: 'Brigadier and Mrs Anthony Thompson - Baroness Henriette von Aichborn.' Then came a French air force colonel with his wife and daughter; a Russian husband and wife, both in major's uniform; a German orchestral conductor with his wife; several administrative officials with their ladies; and a man in a grey suit. 'This is Andrew Hurst, your neighbour at table. We flew him in from Washington especially for you.' joked the host.

Are you the surprise, Mr Hurst?'

'Well, yes, you could say so.'

The orderly carried in a tray of drinks. Detta took a glass of white wine. And have you come straight from Washington?'

'The Department of Justice has asked me to prepare the case against a number of German war criminals who are to be tried at Nuremberg.'

Detta was about to say something, but Hurst, smiling, raised a hand. 'I know the problems of such an enterprise: many people will see it as the justice of the victors, but Stalin insists on it, and as his allies we have to go along with him. I wouldn't have broached the subject this evening if it wasn't connected with some good news that I have for you. We are calling Lieutenant-General Heinrich von Aichborn, formerly a head of department in the German Army High Command, to give evidence to the Allied tribunal. Our Soviet allies therefore had to release him from their camp and transfer him to us. He is a free man, and will be our guest until the end of the trials.'

Detta could have flung her arms around him, but she controlled herself. 'Oh, thank you, Mr Hurst, that's the best news I've heard in ages. I must go and tell my mother at once.'

After dinner, my dear,' Lucy Abbot intervened. 'Tell her that my husband has arranged a flight to Nuremberg for her. Your parents and the other witnesses will be staying in a comfortable guest house.'

There was game soup and chicken fricassee, cheese and dessert, and white and red wine to drink. Andrew Hurst was an amusing conversationalist with a dry, Anglo-Saxon wit. Detta forced herself to talk cheerfully too, hiding her impatience. After dinner, however, she couldn't bear it any more.

'Off you go, my dear. Give your mother our regards.' Lucy Abbot discreetly saw her out so as not to disturb the party.

The night air had cooled a little. The scent of flowers drifted from the gardens. Detta didn't notice it. She hurried on to the Thielplatz and then down Ihnestrasse. Hedges cast back the echo of her swift footsteps. Less than ten minutes now, and her mother would hear the wonderful news.

On the corner of Garystrasse her feet went on strike. The pumps were too tight. She had entirely forgotten the comfortable casuals in her shoebag. She leaned against a garbage bin on the pavement to change her shoes.

She became aware of her pursuer only when she felt his breath on the back of her neck. 'What's the idea?' she cried, reacting angrily, and tried to turn round. A chain was thrown around her neck. Panting, her attacker pulled at her dress. She fought back with hands and feet, but the metal cut deeper and deeper into her throat, until she was merely flailing her arms helplessly. A burning pain tore her vagina. She retched, struggled in vain for air, had no strength to fight any more, knew that this was the end.

Her last thought was: how banal.

CHAPTER FIVE

EARLY IN THE evening brakes screeched to a halt in Riemeister Strasse. Surprised, Inge Dietrich opened the front door. A Military Police corporal lifted a large carton off the back seat of his jeep and carried it past her into the living room, where he put it down on the table. 'From Captain Ashburner, with his best regards.' The corporal saluted caually and raced off again. Inge opened the carton and stared, speechless, at the treasures that spilled out.

'Wow, I don't believe it!' Ralf fished out one of the olive-green cans. 'Pineapple in syrup', the label read. 'OK. so I know what an apple is, syrup too,' he mused. The English and German words were similar enough. 'But what about this "pine", then?'

His mother took her father's old encyclopaedia out of the bookcase. 'Pine,' she read, finding the entry on pine trees. Apples on pine trees?'

A glimmer of enlightenment dawned on Ralf's angelic face. 'Sure. Pinecones in syrup. The things those Yanks will eat!'

Dr Hellbich appeared, and with delight picked a carton of Camels out of the cornucopia. Moments later a spicy cloud of Turkish tobacco hung in the living-room. 'SPAN,' his baffled wife read from a rectangular can. 'Is it something to eat, do you think?' The district councillor drew on his cigarette with pleasure, and did not reply.

'I'll fetch the can opener,' an unusually helpful Ralf told his grandmother.

'You don't need it for this one.' Ben had just come home. He broke off the little key that was welded to the lid of the can. Then he cleverly threaded the little flap on the side of the can into the slit in the tiny instrument and began turning the key. Before the astonished eyes of all present, a thin strip of metal unwound from the can. Ben rolled it around the key until he could lift the lid off. A solid pink mass of meat appeared. 'Spam,' he informed them casually. 'Short for spiced ham.' He knew about it from Mr Brubaker, who had made him a sandwich with this delicacy, adding pale yellow Heinz salad dressing, which oozed out of the sandwich to right and left at each bite.

Ralf stuck his finger in the can. His mother slapped his hand. 'Everyone will get a slice for supper.' She took the open carton, which now contained only nine packets of cigarettes, away from the disgruntled district councillor. 'I can get fifteen litres of cooking oil and two sides of bacon for this. It may even stretch to a few eggs too.'

Meanwhile, the others were puzzling over a can of peanut butter. Dr Hellbich translated 'pea' and 'nut' into German literally, marvelling. 'Heaven knows how they make butter out of peas and nuts. Must be some kind of substitute, like our chestnut coffee,' he said.

'Here comes Papa. Wow, will he ever be surprised!' Ralf said happily. His father propped his bicycle on the veranda and took off his cycle clips.

Inge was beaming. 'Darling, look at all these lovely things Mr Ashburner's sent us.'

'Pine-cones in syrup. Butter made from peas and nuts,' muttered Hellbich. 'These Americans really are barbarians.'

Klaus Dietrich just walked past his family in silence and climbed the stairs with a heavy tread. Inge anxiously watched his progress. 'Don't any of you dare open a can. We have to plan how best to use all these good things,' she warned them, before following her husband upstairs.

The inspector was lying on their bed, staring at the ceiling. Inge sat down beside him and took his hand. 'Klaus, what's the matter? Do you want to talk about it?'

'It just goes on and on,' he said softly.

She knew what he meant at once. 'Another murder? Oh, my God, poor woman.'

'Which poor woman?' he asked. 'The daughter he killed, or the mother when I had to tell her that her daughter had been murdered and dumped in a garbage bin?'

'I'm sure you broke the news as gently as possible.'

He laughed bitterly. 'Imagine she was concerned about me. It must be very hard on me too, she said, would I be all right?'

'It is hard on you, darling, I can see it is. Sleep for a little. I'll bring you up something to eat later. I saw a bottle of Mosel among Mr Ashburner's presents. We'll open that too.'

'I have to get him before he kills again,' muttered Dietrich. Then, exhausted, he fell asleep.

Herr Rodel's tailor's workshop was on the veranda of the house on Ithweg which he, his wife and Heidi shared with two other families. Only four window panes had survived the pressure waves of the bombing, the splinters raining down from anti-aircraft shelling and the Red Army's salvoes of machine-gun fire. The other fifty-six were covered with cardboard or celluloid that had originally been made for the windows of Wehrmacht military vehicles. Rodel had bartered several reels of sewing silk for this material; he needed plenty of light to work by.

'How I'm going to manage in winter is a mystery to me. You can't heat this place - no use sticking a hot stovepipe through the cardboard.'

'There's a piece of tin lying in our garden at home. You can have that,' Ben offered. If you cut a hole in it you could stick the stovepipe through.' Ben was dropping in more and more often. It gave him a sense of getting closer to his suit. He watched with interest as Rodel took apart a threadbare overcoat brought in by a customer to be turned.

'You wash the parts in cold water so the colour doesn't run. Then you iron them dry and put them together again inside out, and there's your new coat. Luckily I still have some horsehair and padding.'

'I hope you have some for my double-breasted suit too.' Ben could already see himself in that perfect suit, turn-ups of the trousers exactly five centimetres high, just brushing his suede shoes so that there was no more than the suggestion of a fold above them. He stroked the length of fabric in the cupboard, full of the pride of possession. It was the best pre-war wool, firm and soft, the classic, grey-brown pattern with a red thread woven into it. 'The English call it Prince of Wales check, don't they? I read that in a gentlemen's magazine.'

'Fingers off, young man. Business first.'

Ben took Mr Brubaker's carton of Camels out from under his shirt and put it on the tailor's table. 'That's three thousand Allimarks, right?'

'Two fifty.' Rodel noted it down with his tailor's chalk on the suiting, which already bore notes of previous instalments paid. 'You still need a lot of credit. Better hurry up, my boy. Herr Kraschinski next door is thinking of selling his watch to buy his son a suit for his wedding day.'

Ben was indignant. 'You can't do that, Herr Rodel. I've already paid you seven thousand, nine hundred marks.'

The tailor looked at him over the top of his glasses. 'I'll be happy to make you a top-quality suit, but I can't wait much longer. My wife needs shoes. And she's found a source of poultry and winter potatoes. That costs money. Yes, and we want a little real coffee for Christmas too.'

'Christmas is in December. This is August,' Ben reminded him. 'You'll get the rest really soon, I promise.'

But there was a long and arduous way to go between making that promise and keeping it. Although there were definite possibilities at the GYA in Bruckstrasse. Where there were Yanks, he knew from experience, there were good pickings to be had.

The ZehlendorfGYA Club was housed in a big villa. The Signal Corps colonel in charge had detailed a sergeant who knew a little German to be club leader. Sergeant Allen was a young sports teacher from Philadelphia who was able to arouse enthusiasm in his young charges, and he had immediately set up a baseball team. Ben hung around the club and kept his eyes open. You just had to have patience.

His patience was rewarded a few days later when an army delivery truck brought several cartons. Ben read the labels with growing interest. 'Mars Bars, 250' one of them said. Another, according to its label, contained 300 Sunshine Marshmallows, and a third 500 Hershey Bars, chocolate and hazelnut flavour.