Funeral in Berlin (21 page)

‘I have more in common with the Germans than with any other nation on the earth. I’ve lived among them, I understand them in ways I could never get to understand you, no matter if I was chained to you from now until the day I die. But I never go into a roomful of Germans without thinking to myself: is there a man here who tortured me? Is there a man here who killed my friends? Is there a man who just stood beyond the door while I screamed and believed that nothing outside of my torn body was real? Is there a woman
here who was the daughter of such a one, a sister or mother of such a man? And such is the power of mathematical reasoning that I am sure that often the answer has been “Yes” if only I had known.’ He spat again in some sort of cathartic endeavour.

Johnnie spoke suddenly. ‘They might pull some sort of trick,’ he said.

‘Could be,’ I agreed.

‘Do you have a pistol or a knife?’

‘I don’t think they are likely to try
that
sort of trick,’ I said.

‘Do you have a pistol or a knife or a persuader?’

‘I have a persuader,’ I said. ‘Two hundred dollars in singles.’

‘The Americans,’ said Johnnie. He walked over to the old engine. ‘You shouldn’t have told the Americans,’ he said.

‘How would we have got it past Checkpoint Charlie?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know,’ he said petulantly and kicked his collection of cigarette ends to the far corners of the building.

He turned his back to me and began to toy with the junk on the bench, setting up some monstrous chess game. He tapped the rusty sparking plugs and squeezed valve springs in the palm of his hand. At the side of the bench was a thick polished oval of wood. There were twelve different sizes of drill stuck into it like matches in a peg board. Johnnie amused himself throwing the
springs over the shiny drills. ‘Schmidt’s of Solingen,’ it said on a scroll around the wooden base. ‘Best drills in the world.’

He arrived right on time, the same Red Army driver in a black station wagon. He rapped at the ancient wooden doors, but the joins in the woodwork were so warped that we had both already seen the car arrive and back up to the doors. Johnnie moved quickly. The doors swung back smoothly, the car chugged back in as far as the bench. Then the gigantic coffin slid out of the back of the car with just the three of us pulling. Johnnie and I one on each side and the Russian at the front of the car, bracing himself on the dashboard and pushing the end of the coffin with the soles of his boots. It wasn’t very dignified but it was smooth and fast. As soon as the coffin was on to the bench the Russian stepped round to the driver’s seat and came back bearing the two gigantic wreaths that I had seen on top of the hearse. There were great sprays of lilies and chrysanthemums and a bright red ribbon with ‘Letzter Gruss’ printed on it in Gothic script. ‘Take those back,’ said Johnnie to the young Russian. The Russian said he couldn’t and there was a small argument.

The Russian said he had tried to leave them at the mortuary but they didn’t want them and he couldn’t take them back through Checkpoint Charlie or it would seem highly suspicious. Johnnie argued in fluent Russian but it didn’t do him any good: the boy wouldn’t take the wreaths away
with him. The more Johnnie swore, the more the Russian shrugged. Finally Johnnie turned away and the Russian jumped into the driver’s seat and slammed the door. I opened the doors and the boy gunned the motor and gave the car full lock as he sped out into the street and away towards the border.

Johnnie had climbed on the bench by the time I had turned round. He was using one of the big rusty screwdrivers to scratch the wood-filler from the sockets above the countersunk screws. He was so frantic in his haste that he had been working feverishly for five minutes or more before he noticed that I wasn’t helping.

‘Get the items out of my case,’ he said.

There were two small suitcases. One was a midwife’s set adapted to take an oxygen bottle. In the other case Johnnie had put a bottle of Glenlivet malt whisky, one of those sand hot-water bottles that keep hot for hours, a heavy sweater, sal volatile, smelling salts, a box containing a hypodermic needle and four small ampoules of megimide, four vials of aminophylline and a dark bottle that I guessed was nikethamide—a circulatory stimulant—a mirror to detect breathing, a short Piorry’s wooden stethoscope, a thermometer, a pen torch suitable for examining pupils, and a marking pencil.

‘It’s really complete,’ I said. ‘You take this pretty seriously, don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ said Vulkan. He hadn’t removed his coat
and he was sweating profusely. Sometimes in the exertion of the work his head would set the bare bulb swinging and all the shadows would dance crazily and his face glistened with sweat as I remembered it glistening with rain.

‘That’s the last one,’ he said.

‘Just like the last scene of
Romeo and Juliet,
’ I said and Vulkan said ‘Yes’ over his shoulder and started to chip at the seam where the lid and bottom joined, but I doubt if he even heard what I said.

‘Help me,’ he said. He began to strain at the heavy lid. It must have been inlaid with lead for it was so heavy to move that at first I felt sure that there were still some screws holding it—then it began to move.

‘Look out,’ shouted Vulkan and the bottom end of the lid fell on to the bench, missing our toes by only inches. The crash was ear-splitting and the vibration rocked the bench. At first the shadow of the coffin lid obscured the view, but, when it slid away, even Vulkan could cling to his hopes no more.

‘Six reasons why the Deutsche Demokratische Republik should be represented in the West.’ There were hundreds of them, stacks and stacks of leaflets stuffed into the huge coffin—Stok’s last joke. I climbed down to the floor.

‘It doesn’t look like you’ll need your hot-water bottle,’ I said to Vulkan, and for just one split second reflexes pulled his face into a smile, but
only for a second. ‘They can’t,’ he said. ‘They dare not, they promised—your Government must take action.’ I suppose I laughed again, for Vulkan became past all rational argument.

He held his splayed fingers before his face like he was studying an invisible hand of cards. ‘You and Stok,’ he said, over-salivating slightly. ‘You planned this.’

‘He doesn’t consult me,’ I said. Vulkan was still standing on the bench three feet higher than I was.

‘But you are not surprised,’ Vulkan shouted.

‘I’m not in even the slightest way surprised,’ I said. ‘That Red Army boy didn’t even hang around to get a signature. Let alone for forty thousand pounds. I’d never believed any part of the whole deal, but that really convinced me. It’s about time you came to grips with reality, Johnnie; there is no Santa Claus. People just don’t give away anything for nothing. What could Stok gain?’

‘Then why did he go to all this trouble?’ said Johnnie. He leaned down and moved some of the leaflets around in the coffin as though he thought he might find Semitsa in there if he dug deep enough.

‘He arrested four boys from the Gehlen set-up, didn’t he?’

‘Five,’ said Johnnie. ‘Another failed to report in this morning.’

‘Exactly,’ I said, ‘and you got a little extra pay and some expenses and London will read your report and say what a good boy you have been.’

‘And you, you slimy bastard. What’s
your
angle?’

‘I have my methods, Watson,’ I said. ‘I’ve been arranging the Berlin hit parade and you’ve slipped five notches to nowhere. You and that girl thought you had a nice deal, didn’t you? Well, your big mistake was trying to exploit me as a part of it. Papers,’ I said. I picked up a couple of the pamphlets from inside the coffin and let them flutter to the floor. ‘There are the only papers you’re getting, they aren’t made out in the name of Broum but on the other hand there are probably no spelling errors.’

‘You——’ said Vulkan and from his superior

position on the bench-top tried to kick my head in. I backed off.

‘I’ll tell you your trouble, Johnnie,’ I said from a safe distance. ‘You’ve become a professional phoney. You’ve become so good at pretending to be different that you have lost contact with your identity. You’ve learnt so much jargon that you don’t know which side you are on. Every time you move through the frontier of space you slip through the frontier of time. Perhaps you like that. OK. Be a Waldgänger,
¹
but don’t expect me to pay your expenses. Be a freelance, but don’t expect a salary. You would be playing along with me now if you were smart. Stok’s boys won’t have anything more to do with you, you are poison to Gehlen…’

‘Through you,’ Vulkan shouted. ‘
You
messed up Gehlen.’

‘You are poison to Gehlen,’ I continued. ‘And if you foul up with me there isn’t a place left in the whole world where they would let you get a sniff of a job. You are dead, Johnnie. Dead and you don’t know it. Dead and you can’t afford the funeral expenses. Get clever!’

There was a long silence broken only by Johnnie’s feet knocking against a valve.

‘I always return the things I am given,’ said Johnnie menacingly, ‘and that especially includes good advice.’ He reached into his jacket and I saw his fingers flicker as he eased them around his ugly little Mauser H SC. ‘I’ve planned this operation for fifteen years and I’ve worked out every conceivable contingency, including Semitsa’s nonarrival. That’s unfortunate but it won’t impede the remainder of the programme, whether you choose to stand in the way or not, because this time they are going to be building the barbed wire through
you.
’ He clicked the gun casing to show he meant business. Now we both knew the gun was ready loaded and cocked.

‘The girl and I did a deal,’ Vulkan went on. ‘Her interests and my interests complement each other: there is no conflict. Her side of the deal has gone on the rocks but that’s too bad. I’m going to cut my losses. I need four days without you sounding off your big mouth. It’s going to cost me eighty pounds per day to keep you on ice so you
can see that I’m prepared to be out of pocket—because I could have you knocked off for one hundred pounds.’

‘Listen, Johnnie,’ I said in an all-good-pals-together sort of voice, ‘cut me in. I can get back that photo of you in prison clothes with Mohr.’

‘You lying bastard,’ said Johnnie.

I said, ‘It’s the papers you want?’

Johnnie said softly, ‘If you don’t have them I’ll kill you. You know that, don’t you?’

What could he do in four days? Knowing Vulkan, I could risk a guess. ‘Can you get the money and be clear in four days?’ I asked.

‘I told you I’ve been planning this for fifteen years. I laid the claim ages ago. I have three lawyers and a witness standing by—I…’ he smiled ‘…talk too much,’ he finished. I began to see the pattern but I didn’t want that to be the last thing I ever saw.

‘Mohr is the witness,’ I said. ‘You met him in Hendaye and told him that Samantha was a Shinbet
²
agent after him for war crimes. You told him that you could call her off if he did as you told him over the next day or so. Mohr saw Broum die. He’s important to…’

‘Shut your crummy mouth,’ said Vulkan. ‘I’m a Waldgänger, just like you said.’ He walked along the bench, the light glistening on his face. He walked slowly, picking his way among the set of
drills, the mallets and rusty sparking plugs and little tin boxes of nuts and bolts, his shiny shoes moving, hesitating and placing themselves down like little flying saucers playing tag on a desolate landscape.

Every now and again he flexed his fingers before easing them back around the handle of the pistol. I had seen Vulkan use that gun on the range; I knew he could put the whole eight-shot magazine into a six-inch group before I could swing open even one door-bolt. It seemed as though an hour went by as he moved along the bench but it probably wasn’t more than forty-five seconds. That’s the theory of relativity, I thought.

‘Get them,’ said Vulkan.

I had the big manilla envelope in my raincoat pocket. It had the royal coat of arms on the outside and ‘Home Office’ printed in prim roman letters across the corner. On the front was a white label that said that to help the war effort one should use envelopes as many times as possible. I moved towards the bench and handed the envelope to Vulkan who reached down with his left hand to take the corner.

‘Careful,’ he said, in a genuinely solicitous voice. ‘I want no complications at all. Let alone shooting you.’ I nodded. ‘I
like
you,’ he added.

‘That puts a new complexion on the whole thing,’ I said.

The envelope had one of those little card circles that you wind string round. If you don’t know
what I mean, believe me you need two hands to open it, because that’s the important point. Vulkan kept his finger on the trigger but held the corner of the envelope with his gun hand, using his left hand to unravel the string. It’s the timing that was so important, because as soon as the string is unravelled you need two hands for only as long as it takes to get your hand inside and around the papers. Added to this factor was the risk that the longer I stayed there the more chance there was of Vulkan moving me back to a safe distance.

Vulkan’s knee was level with the top of my head. I judged my distance with care. There is a groove in the fibula just below the knee where the lateral popliteal nerve passes close against the bone. A sharp blow here paralyses the lower leg—‘dead man’s leg’ we called it in the school playground.

‘They are all falling out,’ I shouted suddenly in panic. ‘The papers.’ Johnny clutched the bottom of the envelope as I pushed it—and the gun—upwards away from my cranium. I jabbed at his knee. I hit but not accurately enough. My head sang like a massed-voice choir as the nasty sharp front edge of the magazine hit the side of my head. I had already begun to fall back. Again I punched out, scarcely able to see Vulkan’s leg for the bright crimson pain that sang its song in the empty echo chamber of my head.

I felt him go. He toppled like a felled redwood, the spilled papers spinning and drifting all around him. The crash of his body collapsing full-length
across the bench was followed by the clatter of dislodged junk. An insurance renewal slip fell like a sycamore seed into the open tin of grease. ‘I’ve hurt my back,’ he said urgently; but training won out and the Mauser stayed firmly in his fist. Its chamfered snout made a little circling motion like a clerk’s pencil just about to write. I waited for the bang.