The Good Liar (31 page)

obtain exit visas. It will be for you to acquire an entry visa wherever you go, if you see sense. I would be prepared to do you this one last service, but only for the sake of Hans. I will be at the school by

six thirty in the morning. You may wish to consider your next

steps overnight and if you want my assistance please see me there.

Bring your papers. After that I will be prepared to help you no

more.’

There followed a brief final exchange before Wolff said loudly

and in apparent anger, ‘I hope you will understand the potential

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difficulties I am prepared to risk. For the sake of your son.

Goodnight.’

Hans heard the door slam. He went quickly to his bed and picked

up his book. But his door did not open until several minutes later.

His father knocked before coming in. He said quietly, ‘Hans, your

mother and I have something to discuss with you.’

5

Two evenings later at Frankfurt station, Hans and his father were

awaiting the departure of the overnight train to Paris. Konrad Taub was dressed soberly. His firebrand beard had been shaved off and his hair trimmed. He murmured occasionally to his son in his best

approximation of a reassuring tone.

They had taken the train from Berlin the previous morning, leav-

ing Renate to neaten the remnants of their existence there. Konrad

and Renate Taub were dutiful and orderly, and viewed it as their

civic responsibility to manage their affairs sensibly.

On the evening of Wolff ’s visit and after they had decided they

must leave Germany the three of them had sat at the kitchen table

and compiled a list. Konrad would see Wolff first thing the next

morning to ask for the exit visas. He would go from there to the

British Embassy, where he knew someone who, he was sure, could

arrange for visas for France and England. Neither he nor Renate

expressed concerns that Wolff ’s offers might be a ruse to incriminate them. In a sense, Hans found their instinctive trust almost

touching. But inside him the seed of doubt about Weber’s good

faith in this transaction was growing.

After Konrad had obtained the visas, he and Renate would go to

the bank and withdraw as much cash as possible. The rest they

would arrange to be transferred to the account of Renate’s sister.

They would need to buy train tickets. They would pack carefully,

and there would be letters to write to family and friends. It was

obvious that not everything could be achieved in a single day, so

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they agreed that Renate should remain in Berlin for an extra day to work through the other items on the list, ranging from settling their account at the grocer’s to informing her friends at the welfare centre where she worked that she and her husband were taking a break in

Bavaria for a few days.

Hans had argued that she should drop everything and simply

leave with them if they took seriously what Herr Professor Wolff

had said. Knowing they did not fully appreciate their situation, he challenged their logic, but in vain. ‘It’s me they’re interested in, Hans,’ his father said. ‘Your mother’s not in danger. We can’t leave just like that. We need to get everything in order.’ Hans felt desperate and irritated at the same time but had known that to insist

further would be both pointless and potentially perilous to him.

The plan had been for Renate to join them on the train, but

clearly this would not happen. The large clock on the platform had

just ticked past eleven p.m. Steam rose in grimy clouds to the

cathedral- like arches and the glass roof of the grand terminal station as the engine gathered its strength. Hisses and the sound of the announcement of the train’s imminent departure broke the night

silence. There was no movement on the platform, monochrome in

the artificial light. It seemed that the passengers had boarded and everything was now reduced to waiting. Four minutes to go. They

climbed aboard and slammed the door behind them.

‘She’ll catch us up later,’ whispered Konrad. ‘We’ll see her in

Paris.’

There were several emptier compartments on the train but Kon-

rad insisted on taking the last two available seats in this one, to silent glares. Their travelling companions were, it seemed, businessmen

but not particularly successful ones, travelling second class with no sleeping arrangements. There was a solitary woman, blonde, pretty

and in her thirties, thought Hans, who pouted defiantly at the men, daring them to look at her or talk to her, and signalling consequences if they did.

The train moved with a jolt and edged slowly through the sub-

urbs to the invisible black countryside, where it thundered through the winter night. They were on their way to England, that faraway

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country, distant if not in geography then in philosophy. The sway-

ing motion, the regular beat of the engine and the clack of the rails were comforting and after the rush of excitement Hans felt utterly

exhausted and found sleep.

He awoke suddenly. The train was silent and still and the com-

partment dark. His father leaned on his shoulder, his head lolling.

Carefully, Hans nudged him so that his head rocked to the window

of the corridor with a small thud. Konrad did not wake. There was

the sound of heavy breathing in the compartment and the foul

smell of eight bodies emitting their unguarded odours, leavened by

the sweet lavender of the woman’s scent. No one else was awake, it

seemed.

His eyes were coming to terms with the light. He glanced out of

the window. He could see lamps but no station signs. Opposite his

father sat the woman, pressed into her corner seat, avoiding contact with the thin moustached stranger next to her. She too was asleep,

her mouth open, and her skirt had ridden up. Hans could see clearly the suspenders that held her sheer stockings up, and a morsel of

thrilling porcelain flesh. He stared, then something made him look

up. She was looking into his eyes and smiled maliciously. She opened her legs further and Hans could see more white leg and the light

sheen of her underwear, soft silk and peach- coloured in his mind, though he could not in fact make out the detail. The woman closed

her eyes with a smile and, it seemed to Hans, leaned back further,

turning her legs minutely towards him. Perhaps he imagined this;

but the sight of her skin and that fabric was real enough.

He tried to concentrate on the pleasurable sensation this gener-

ated in his groin. For a while his arousal sustained wakefulness, but eventually sleep flooded him once more as the train resumed its

journey.

Hans woke again later. Everyone else in the compartment

was already moving, dishevelled but preparing to leave the train.

Ties were straightened, hair was combed, hats were clamped on

heads and fingers screwed sleep out of eyes. The woman calmly

applied her lipstick, glancing at him without expression. The beam

of a spotlight pierced the darkness in the compartment.

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‘What time is it?’ asked Hans more loudly than he had intended.

‘Three forty,’ his father replied. ‘We’re at Aachen. We have to disembark for passport checks.’

The train conductor walked down the corridor, rapping each

compartment window as he passed.

‘Everyone out,’ he shouted. ‘Quickly.’

The occupants of the compartment stood awkwardly, apologiz-

ing, jockeying politely for space. Hans’s father reached for his

suitcase.

‘No need to take that,’ said one of the men. ‘This is just papers.

They’re not interested in contraband. Just people. You’ll be back

soon enough.’

Konrad nodded and left the case on the rack.

They filed out of the compartment and off the train, the blonde

woman going first, and joined the orderly queue that snaked into

the customs hall. It was bitterly cold as they exited the carriage

and not much warmer on the station concourse. As he crossed

the platform Hans looked down the length of the train. They

were detaching the German locomotive and on the neighbour-

ing platform its French replacement snorted steam as if waiting

impatiently.

Once they were inside he could smell her perfume drifting

sweetly towards him. He looked down her elegant back and saw the

straight black seams of her stockings, and thought again of that

shiny, softly creased fabric and what it concealed. She smoked a cigarette in an ivory holder and he inhaled its aroma greedily, wanting everything of her.

His father was nervous, feeling inside his pockets for his papers.

The woman turned and said, ‘It’s such an inconvenience, isn’t it,

getting off the train and back on again? They only introduced these measures recently.’ She flashed a patronizing smile and inhaled on

her cigarette.

‘Yes,’ replied Konrad, flustered. ‘You travel to Paris often?’

‘Oh yes. I’m a fashion designer. I work with several studios.

And you?’

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‘Journalist. Preparing an article on Monsieur Cocteau. My first

trip to Paris for several years.’

‘And is this your personal assistant?’

‘Ah no. This is my son, Hans. I thought it was time he saw

Paris.’

‘I see,’ she said, turning to him. ‘A young man of his age. So much to see in Paris.’

Hans looked directly at her and held her eyes for a moment. He

thought he noticed a conspiratorial grin on her face that he found

delicious but at that instant the queue began to move.

Hans looked sideways. She was smirking at him, not apparently

making fun of him but amused at his excitement. He longed to

reach out to touch her, to feel the flesh under her skirt, or on her arm, just to know that she existed and that he did too. But the queue was speeding up and she had to regain her place.

Four trestle tables were set up, two on each side of the passengers as they processed through the dimly lit hall. It was easy to work out the routine. At each table were two uniformed men in field- grey

uniforms with SS flashes on the lapels. One sat and asked questions, while the other stood and looked sceptically at the subject, as if

with the intention to intimidate. In the shadows at the side of the hall stood four further men, overseeing everything.

Each person was called forward and processed moderately

quickly. It seemed that people were selected almost at random for

deeper questioning. Even that appeared desultory. But for most

people the ordeal consisted solely of a close examination of their

papers and a cursory, uninterested few questions.

They were getting closer. Konrad watched intently as the guards

went about their business, as if he could divine some answer to the problem of negotiating the next few minutes safely. Hans whispered

to him to stop behaving so nervously.

The woman in front of them was called. As she stepped confi-

dently forward she half turned to Hans and his father and smiled

again. His father, distracted, did not see her.

Hans watched as she strode to the table. She was doing this with

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panache, he thought. She smiled brightly at the two men in turn

and placed her papers neatly and decisively before them. They reciprocated with thin bureaucratic smiles. She joked, but Hans could

not hear what was said. It was possible, he thought, that she was

alerting them to his father’s agitation.

The seated man laughed and glanced at his partner, who picked

up one of the documents on the table, while the other leafed

through her passport. Hans attempted to feign a casual lack of interest as he focused intently on what was happening.

Hans and his father were now at the head of the queue but were

not, for the moment, called forward. All activity at the other tables had ceased and the only person being processed was the blonde

woman, apparently oblivious to the stillness, speaking animatedly

with the officials and smiling broadly. Of course. She was a marker.

That was why she had spoken to them. She was there to pick

them out.

Alternatively, thought Hans, she would be back on the train shortly and would ask herself what had become of that good- looking but

highly strung journalist and his handsome son. He wondered what

would happen to their luggage: whether some minor functionary

would be deputed to the train to find the bags of the traitors and

take them back for examination. He glanced around, expecting at

any moment the grip of a gloved hand on his arm.

He saw one of the officials make a discreet hand signal, unnoticed, it seemed, by the woman, and three of the men in the shadows

began to move. This, then, was it. Hans braced himself. But it was

not his arm that was grasped. The men moved towards their col-

leagues at the table. In a well- practised motion they took hold of the woman under her arms and ushered her swiftly and efficiently

towards a door at the back of the hall. She said nothing: it must have been the sheer shock, Hans thought. The commotion, such as it