Stahl waited, drank off the second brandy and stared at the phone. Then he looked at his watch, the second hand sweeping around the dial. Finally, the receiver was picked up and Orlova said, ‘Who is this?’ She sounded irritated but Stahl could hear that she was also frightened. In the background, a small dog was barking.
‘This is Fredric Stahl, Madame Orlova. I wonder if I might ask you for a favour?’ Stahl’s eyes were fixed on the baseboard, where the telephone wire was connected to a small box.
‘Oh, of course. Are you calling from, ah, the hotel?’
‘Yes, I am. I was wondering if you might be able to come over here.’
‘I suppose I could, is something wrong?’
‘I must speak to the audience tonight, at the banquet where I will announce the winners of the festival. And I’m having a woeful time of it, writing the speech. I don’t really know the film industry here, and I don’t want to sound ignorant.’
‘I’m not much good as a writer, Herr Stahl.’
‘Even so, some advice would be helpful. Is it possible you could come soon? Maybe even right away?’
Orlova sighed, the things I’m asked to do. ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can. Maybe some day you’ll return the favour.’
‘You need only ask, Madame Orlova.’
They hung up. Stahl settled down to wait. It was nearing four o’clock. Once she arrived, and Stahl told her what was going on, she would have to find the money and be back by six.
Orlova was almost frantic when she reached the room. When he opened the door of the Bismarck Suite she didn’t say hello, she said, ‘What’s happened?’ Stahl told her the story, her reaction a mixture of disbelief, fear, and anger. ‘ That little man? Rudi? Rudi the waiter?’ He dared? Then she got hold of herself and said, ‘I’d better leave now, you said ten thousand reichsmarks?’
She was back at 5.40. By that point, Stahl, unable to sit down, was pacing back and forth and smoking one cigarette after another. He’d left the door open and she came rushing in. ‘Christ, I couldn’t find a taxi.’ She sat on the edge of the couch. ‘Anyhow, I have it.’
‘From your bank?’
She looked up abruptly: are you crazy? ‘From an umbrella shop,’ she said. ‘There’s money in this city that will never see a bank; Jewish money, criminal money, Nazi money. All those bribes and thefts and…’
Stahl looked at his watch, then up at Orlova. For the meeting she’d changed outfits: under her open raincoat a revealing sweater and a tight skirt, made all the more provocative by the accessories of a prominent woman of the city — red silk scarf, tight black gloves, gold earrings, Chanel No. 5, and dark sunglasses. She was now the movie star of a waiter’s fantasies. At 6.00 p.m. precisely they left the room. Stahl could hear her breathing, and could sense in her a powerful tension, which seemed to grow as they walked along the silent, carpeted corridor. In a whisper, Stahl said, ‘Can you calm down a little?’
She didn’t answer. It was as though she was so intensely fixed on the meeting that she hadn’t heard him. Instead, she pursed her lips and expelled a short breath, then did it again.
In an attempt to distract her he said, ‘Do you know this room? Eight-oh-two?’
She started to answer then worked her mouth, as though it was so dry she couldn’t speak. ‘A small room, I’d guess. For a servant or a bodyguard.’
As they stood in front of the room, Stahl saw that her hands, holding her bag, were trembling. He patted her shoulder. ‘Just give me the money,’ he said. ‘Let me do it, he doesn’t need to see you.’
She shook her head, jerking it back and forth, brushing off his suggestion as though it were absurd and irritating.
Stahl knocked twice, then once.
From inside: ‘It’s not locked.’
Stahl opened the door. It was a small room, meagrely furnished. Rudi was sitting in a chair by the wall at the foot of the bed and was cleaning his nails with a clasp knife. He looked up at them and set the open knife on his lap. ‘Hello, Rudi,’ Orlova said. She was now quite amiable and relaxed.
‘You have the money?’
‘It’s right here.’ She took an envelope out of her raincoat pocket, walked over to Rudi and handed it to him, then waited while he counted the twenty reichsmark notes. ‘All is good?’ she said with a smile.
Rudi nodded, and started to get up. Orlova put a hand on his shoulder, which startled him. ‘I’ll just take another moment,’ she said. ‘Will you accept my apology?’
This was unexpected. ‘Maybe,’ he said, sulky and uncertain.
‘And that also goes for me,’ Stahl said. Rudi stared at him, not quite comfortable with his victory. ‘It was a long evening,’ Stahl explained, ‘and I was tired and I…’
At this point in the apology, Stahl was interrupted by a low sound, thuck, saw the automatic pistol and silencer in Orlova’s gloved hand and realized she’d shot Rudi in the temple. His head fell back against the chair, his eyes and mouth wide open, as though he were surprised to find himself dead. A bead of blood grew next to his ear, ran slowly down his cheek, then stopped.
Orlova started to twist the long tube of the silencer, unscrewing it from the pistol. ‘This was never going to end,’ she said. ‘So I ended it. Get his clothes off, everything but his underwear, and put that little knife in his pocket.’
Stahl was frozen, staring at Rudi.
‘Please,’ Orlova said.
He nodded and went to work untying Rudi’s shoes. Orlova took them and lined them up beneath the chair. Stahl handed her the socks, trousers — after trouble with Rudi’s belt buckle — jacket, tie, and shirt. When he was done, he saw that Orlova had folded everything into a neat pile. ‘This will go on the chair,’ she said. ‘You put him on the bed, I’ll write the note.’ She had brought with her a pencil and a sheet of cheap paper. Stahl took Rudi under the arms and pulled backwards, which tipped the chair over. ‘Shh!’ Orlova said. ‘Christ, be quiet.’
He dragged Rudi up onto the bed, raised his head and slipped the pillow beneath it. Orlova set the pile of clothes on the chair and put the note on the night table. Stahl read the note, written in unruly script: I can stand it no longer. ‘Will that do?’ Orlova said.
Stahl nodded. ‘Of course the police might wonder if it’s really suicide.’
‘They won’t pursue it. This is a certain kind of hotel, if a waiter killed himself, or if someone else killed him, doesn’t matter. Not these days it doesn’t. And there’s a good chance the hotel will get rid of the body themselves — who wants to talk to the police?’
Orlova stood at the door and looked critically at the scene in the room. Then she placed the automatic in Rudi’s hand, made a dent in the other pillow, as though a head had rested there, took a little bottle of perfume out of her bag and put a drop or two on the sheet below the dented pillow. ‘What do you think?’ she said.
‘It looks like his lover bid him goodbye, then he shot himself.’
She took one last look around, then remembered to leave the pencil by the note. She looked at Stahl and said, ‘It had to be done. In time, he would have denounced us, just as he said he would.’
Stahl nodded.
‘I’ll be going,’ Orlova said. ‘Enjoy the banquet.’
He got through it. As the grinning faces came to greet him, as medals caught the light of the chandeliers, as Goebbels’s deputy spoke at great length and flattered him and flashbulbs popped, as he read out the names of the winning films. Otto Raab was deeply moved when Stahl, after a dramatic pause, announced that Das Berg von Hedwig had won the grand prize, a gold Oscar-sized statuette of a mountain with a movie camera on top. Stahl delivered his speech — a tepid joke about the lion at the Berlin zoo drew a great roar of laughter. He ended with praise for the Reich National Festival of Mountain Cinema; it was only the beginning, many more festivals would follow, as German film-makers climbed to the summit of their craft. When he was done, Goebbels’s deputy presented him with a two-foot-high crystal sculpture of an eagle, a Nazi eagle, head and beak in profile, stiff wings outstretched, its claws holding a swastika in a wreath. The hideous thing was incredibly heavy, Stahl almost dropped it, but held on.
The morning flight from Tempelhof landed at Le Bourget at 2.30 p.m. There was a little bar in one corner of the terminal building where uniformed customs officers and airport workers in bleu de travail smocks took time off during the day. They stood at the zinc bar, drank red wine or coffee, smoked — there was always one with the stub of a Gauloise stuck to his lips — and talked in low voices. As the exhausted Stahl entered the terminal — carrying
