The Berlin Assignment (17 page)

The scene with Gifford ended. Hanbury on the wet bench, feeling optimistic, lifted himself out of the long reverie. Once there is a proper residence, he thought, I'll invite the Chief of Protocol for dinner. He planned a party for Müller too, a birthday party for his eighty-fifth. And if Günther Rauch ever surfaced, he would be a regular visitor, maybe stay for weekends. Imagine the creativity of the iconoclast's thinking in the opulence of a diplomatic setting.

Irrespective of that future ambience of comfort and magnificence, his current one, the soggy bench, was becoming uncomfortable. The drizzle hadn't stopped. Hanbury, wringing wet and getting cold, got up and made his way to the S-bahn to take a train back to Charlottenburg.

Sturm, frustrated, missed that train, but the next one came fast enough and he jumped on. As far as he was concerned, the consul could get mugged, abducted, taken hostage or sent out of the country in a chest. He had had enough, not of the weather, but of ghosts. Determined to have it out, the soaked chauffeur made his way back to the office.

It was after hours and quiet. Gifford, in near darkness, was still working. A table lamp lit up his desk. Photos and dossiers of fine houses were piled up in the area of light.

“I'm no good at this,” Sturm announced, sitting down opposite Gifford in the shadow. His hair was dripping. “I'm not cut out to play Stasi.”

“Did he see you?”

“No.”

“Quite sure?”

“He didn't come up to shake my hand if that's what you mean. Sorry, I'm not doing it again.”

“Security, Sturm. The Turkish consul has two bodyguards, the Israeli three.” Gifford, leaning back, removed his reading glasses and began chewing on the ends.

“Then he should have a real one,” Sturm replied. “I'm a driver. I'd break my arms just taking on a karate position. Anyhow, bodyguards don't sneak around.”

“I tried to get him to take you along. He refused. We're responsible for his well-being.”

Sturm shook his head. He didn't think the consul faced threats. “It was about as eventful out there as watching a pensioner in a park. He walks down Friedrichstrasse gawking at the cranes as if they're pigeons on the fly, trots up Leipziger Strasse infatuated by all those dog-eared socialist flats, then arrives at Alexanderplatz, which has disappeared in the rain and where he looks around as if he's seeing the eighth wonder of the world. I'm behind a tree trying to be inconspicuous. The rain keeps coming down. What does he do? He sits down on a bench, not twitching for an hour. Only his expression changes. First a grin, like he's taking a bath with a girlfriend. A silly look comes next, sort of satisfied, as if someone's massaging his behind. Then he hangs his head as if repenting for a crime. Why all that sitting in the rain? It scared me. It was spooky. It sent shivers up my back.” Sturm shook his head gravely. “It's like that all the time. Everyday I think I've got a ghost in the back seat. It's getting to me. It's not my cup of tea. I'm not doing it again. He doesn't need a body guard.”

Gifford rocked back and forth behind his desk. In the shadowy light of the desk lamp he lowered his eyelids. McEwen wanted reports, and for that he needed Sturm. “It's true,” Gifford said slowly to Sturm. “He changes appearances. Sometimes he looks harmless, then he's distant, then he manages to seem like…well…a simpleton. It doesn't mean he's spooky. Look upon it as a kind of charm.”

“Charm?” protested Sturm. “He's got all the charm of a worn-out running shoe.”

“It might look like that, but there's more to him than meets the eye. Let's not forget, you don't get to be consul without climbing over the backs of decent people. Do you get the impression he's done that? No. That proves he isn't what he seems.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. All I'm saying is, I'll do the driving.”

“You have to keep an eye on him, Sturm. We're small. It's family. We're responsible for each other. We have to work together.”

Sturm was obstinate. “He's not in danger. I am. I'm getting close to the edge. Also, I don't like walking. If I did, I'd be a postman.”

The administrator stopped rocking. “Very well,” he said harshly. “It can't be forced. Shouldn't be. But I'll need a log of the places you drive him.”

Sturm stiffened with indignation. Not in thirty years of chauffeuring Lord Halcourt had he been confronted with anything so humiliating. “I've got the feeling someone's walking on my tie,” he said. “I
already
keep a log. I submit it at the end of every month. What do you want, twice a month?”

“Give it to me weekly for a while.”

Sturm stood up, walked out and slammed a door at the far end of the corridor.

Gifford was irritated. Mostly with himself. He shouldn't have made the remark about the car log. It was the pressure. It was coming from all sides. He was having to move fast. The opportunity he had was narrow, but the land beyond vast. He had to give it all his time. Damn unwanted problems on the flanks. Damn Sturm for falling out, just as he was having to focus on the main game. Each day he was out, inspecting villas, making offers, seeking offers on the very properties he just made offers on.

The go-ahead from headquarters got things started. The message, more or less as he had proposed to McEwen, actually made the circuit
and wound its way back to Berlin. Handlers somewhere had done a good job of making it sound routine. The order was to the point and the acronym of authorization from someone senior more than convincing.
Acquisition of residence approved. Gifford to explore market and iron out details with headquarters directly
. With this, Gifford plunged in. It took a few weeks to develop momentum, but good villas were in demand. With the Wall down everyone was buying for the future. Soon he was riding the rising market. He bought and sold as fast as he could, with the diplomatic seal providing lubrication. Fifty thousand in profits here, a hundred there. The kitty grew. His share – he deemed a straight one-third was fair – he set aside. As the consul was propelled towards having an official residence, the administrator was amassing modest wealth.

But Sturm wasn't the only problem. There were complaints at home about the time he spent at the office. Frieda needed delicate handling, so Gifford told her it would soon be diamond time. “Oh, Giffy,” Frieda sighed. “Can I trust you? You've made so many promises.” Earl's close set eyes undressed her with ferocity. “After the diamonds there will be a Mercedes,” he said brutally and grabbed his wife.

And there was McEwen who was pressing all the time for information.

Feeding McEwen, satisfying Frieda, deploying Sturm, cultivating the confidence of the consul, acquiring computers for the office, flipping deals on houses – Gifford felt driven. Still, after years of soldiering without profit, it was gratifying that his time was finally worth money. He plunged back into the real estate bulletins piled up on his desk.

Damn Sturm for not playing and damn Frieda, for phoning every night, asking when he would be home.
I love you Frieda. I love each square inch of you. I've always told you: you'll live like a queen. But bear with me. Your Giffy needs a little more time to apply his talent.

Tony Hanbury's attempt to erase the Savignyplatz period from existence by filling a suitcase with some clothes, lugging it down four flights of stairs and dashing to the railway station, turned out to be a dismal failure. The experiment in homemaking had branded him, and like all brandings it would be with him forever. As for the impact of his act on Sabine, he never fully realized the extent of the devastation.

She comes home from a university lecture with a shopping bag of things for dinner. Inside the front door she yells,
Hallo, ich bin's! I'm home!
and is surprised there is no answer. The flat is orderly. She notices first that both pairs of his shoes are gone, then that the leather jacket isn't hanging where it ought to. Only in the bedroom, tidy as always, where she discovers the closet is half-empty, does shock begin to hit. She rushes into the living room. Everything normal. Breathing hard she bursts into the kitchen and finds a note:
I have to go back. I have no
choice. Please, please forgive me. The rent is paid. The stereo is yours.
Sabine reads it twice. Her heart ruptures. Whimpering she sinks to the floor.

Throughout the night and into the morning, her face streaked with tears, she feels despair. She searches for reasons, tries to find the grounds that tell her none of this is so. The sun coming up brings hatred. With a hammer she hacks at the stereo. The turntable is quickly smashed; the amplifier and speakers withstand repeated blows, but eventually they break too.

On the train and plane, Hanbury mostly stares out windows. He has difficulty ordering his thoughts. Were he a cynic, he'd be convincing himself Savignyplatz was one of life's pleasant interludes. But he is not a cynic. Were he a romantic, sensitive to others, he'd be detesting himself. But he's not a romantic either. Throughout the trip, he experiences something else – incertitude. Did he do the right thing? Could he have done it better? He isn't sure. He knows if he had stayed to talk it through, Sabine would have convinced him not to leave. That would have caused a huge mistake – of the kind he saw up close when he was being raised. But had he been told as he travelled that his stereo was being savagely dismembered, he wouldn't have known what to say. And if someone had whispered that Sabine was also breaking up into pieces, ones not easily reassembled, an empty look would have settled on his face. He had no inkling then, nor in the years that followed, that the Savignyplatz experiment, even after Werner Schwartz had come onto the scene, would continue to be Sabine's deep abomination.

What did Tony Hanbury do during that time, while Sabine hated?

After scampering back across the Atlantic he spent time looking for a job, wrote an exam, attended an interview and accepted an offer from the Service. The Service, Hanbury considered, had a reassuring feel – of
being a permanent hideaway. And it provided insurance against risks such as befell him in Berlin. After all, should things ever get sticky, as on Savignyplatz, an assignment to some distant place would never be far off. His first Service job was in the library – the Abbey – a quiet realm, not greatly different from what he thought such medieval hideaways might have been. In fact, what monks did and what he had to do was roughly comparable. Whereas they spent months hand-copying manuscripts, Hanbury took the overnight cables from the four corners of the world to retool them into a few tight paragraphs. This product served the high priest. Each morning, summaries of the world's great events had to be ready for him on his desk. For almost a year the novitiate laboured from two in the morning until just after the high priest's working day began, with the benefit of going home when everyone else was jostling to get in. His new stereo was a step down from the one in Berlin, the bedsit was less comfortable than the apartment he shared with Sabine, and Bronson Avenue didn't hold a candle to Savignyplatz as a place for observing interesting people, but in his monkish existence Hanbury was not unhappy. He had spare time, which he devoted to listening to music.

As Anthony Hanbury was being rewarded for his Abbey diligence – by being assigned as vice-consul to San Francisco – Sabine Müller was turning a new page too.

“You're quiet,” were the first words Werner directed at Sabine, but she ignored him. They were walking down a hallway after a history seminar. She suddenly took a side door which opened to the street. “Until next week,” he called after her. Sabine didn't say much in the seminars, whereas Werner Schwartz spoke up all the time. Outside the classroom she was glacial. He tried various topics, but Sabine would depart quickly, wordlessly. He became an expert at watching her walk
away. Delicate hair, fragile shoulders, a hint of a dancing movement in the hips. This didn't change until Schwartz had an off-day, when he didn't dominate the seminar discussion.

“Got the ‘flu?” Sabine asked at the end of a session that had dragged.

“I'm not too interested in the 1848 revolution,” Schwartz admitted.

“Well, Bismarck's next week. Maybe he'll make you feel better.”

“He makes all of us feel better.” Schwartz answered, watching Sabine waltz off.

Bismarck promoted the thaw, and by the time the French had been decisively defeated in 1871, when the Prussian King was crowned
Kaiser
and Berlin became
Hauptstadt des Deutschens Reiches
, Sabine had accepted an invitation to have lunch. She next met his friends. Werner Schwartz, she learned, was part of an intricate web of connections. He was planning a university career and, given the people he associated with, plus his intellect, she didn't doubt he'd be successful. The more she saw of him the more she entered into a dialogue – entirely with herself – about points in his favour: a Berliner, smart, decisive, orderly and punctual, an apartment full of antique furniture, many fine old books. Ballast, that's what he had. Everywhere she looked she saw ballast.

Points in favour continued to accumulate, so Sabine moved in with Werner. The apartment she now shared was different from Savignyplatz. It was full of all kinds of things.

In July ‘69, while moving to San Francisco, the new vice-consul stopped in Indian Head. The soil scientist was away in the fields advising farmers. His mother sat on the front porch talking to herself, mostly in French. She had shrunk since he last saw her. For several days he tried
to catch what she was saying, but it was hopeless. To escape, Hanbury spent evenings with Keystone, who showed a lively interest in his plans. After three days Hanbury stole out of Indian Head early in the morning, walking up to the Trans-Canada to catch a Greyhound bus. No one was up except Keystone. “Stay in touch, son,” Keystone said across his front gate. “Send us a postcard.”