eight-twenty-five when eventually he showed up. And he was sweating and nervous. Not at all the smooth-as-silk type he’d been when we were in here the previous night. We talked for a while but he wasn’t listening. And when I asked him why he seemed so out of sorts, he came to the point. He had asked me along to the cafe because he had a job for me. An easy job, he said, but it was going to pay me a hundred marks. A hundred. By now I was shaking my head and telling him I wasn’t on the sledge just yet, but no, he said, it wasn’t anything like that, and what did I take him for? All I had to do was wait under the station at Nolli at nine-fifteen and give an envelope to a man who would be humming a tune.’
‘That’s nice. What was the tune?’
‘“Don’t say Goodbye, only say Adieu”.’
‘Zarah Leander. I like that one.’
‘He even hummed it for me to make sure I knew it. I had to ask the man for a light and then his name and if he said it was Paul I was to give him the envelope and walk away. Well, I could tell there was something peculiar about all this, so I asked him what was in the envelope and he said it was best I didn’t know, which didn’t make me feel any better about doing it. But then he put five pictures of Albrecht Durer on the table and assured me that it would be the easiest hundred marks I’d ever earned. Especially in the blackout. Anyway I agreed. A hundred marks is a hundred marks.’
‘Mmm-hmm.’
‘So I rode the S-Bahn one stop east to Nolli and waited under the station just like Gustav had told me to do. I was early. And I was scared, but the five Alberts felt good inside my stocking top. I had time to think. Too much time, perhaps, because I got greedy. That’s a bad habit of mine.’
‘You and the Austrian corporal.’
‘I kept on thinking that if I had been given a hundred from Gustav for showing up with an envelope then I might make at least another ten or twenty from Paul for handing it over. And when eventually he turned up that’s what I suggested. But Paul didn’t like that and started to get rough with me. He searched my coat pockets for the envelope. And my bag. He even searched my underwear. Took my hundred marks. And that’s when you showed up, Parsifal. You see he wasn’t trying to rape me. He was only trying to find his damned envelope.’
‘Where was it? The envelope?’
‘I didn’t have it on me when I tried to brolly him. Well, that would have been foolish. I’d already hidden it in some bushes near the taxi rank.’
‘That was clever.’
‘I thought so, too. Right up until the moment he punched me.’
‘Where is it now?’
‘The envelope? When I went back the next day to look for it, the envelope was gone.’
‘Hmm.’
She shrugged. ‘Now I really don’t know what to do. I’m scared to go to the cops and tell them. Naturally I’m worried about what was in that envelope. I’m worried that I’ve landed myself in the middle of something dangerous.’ She closed her eyes. ‘It seemed so easy when we were in the Romanisches Cafe. Just hand it over in the blackout and walk away. If only I’d done that.’
‘This Gustav. Have you seen him in here since?’
‘No.’
‘Does anyone else know him?’
‘No. It turns out that Magda thought his name was Josef, and that’s all she remembers. Am I in trouble, Parsifal?’
‘You might be. If you went to the police and told them about this, yes, I think you would be.’
‘So you don’t think I should tell them.’
‘With a story like yours, Arianne, the police — the real police — are the least of your worries. There’s the Gestapo to consider.’
She sighed. ‘I thought as much.’
‘Have you told your story to anyone else?’
‘God, no.’
‘Then don’t. It simply never happened. You never met anyone called Gustav or Josef in this place. And no one ever asked you to be a cut-out for them at the S-Bahn on Nollendorf Platz.’
‘A cut-out?’
‘That’s what you call it when someone wants to give something to someone else without actually meeting them. But that’s all right, too, because there was no something. No envelope. You don’t even have a hundred marks to show for it, right?’
She nodded.
I sipped the beer and wondered how it and the cigarette could taste so good and how much truth there was in what Arianne Tauber had told me. It was just about possible that Franz Koci had taken a hundred marks out of her underwear, although he’d been carrying only half as much when the cops had found him in Kleist Park. Of course, they could easily have helped themselves to half his cash. And it was just about possible that some Foreign Office type who had an envelope for a Three Kings agent might have been spooked off a meeting and subcontracted the job to a money-hungry girl from the Jockey Bar. Stranger things had happened.
‘But I have a question for you, angel. Why are you telling me all this?’
‘In case you didn’t know, Parsifal’s not exactly a common name around here.’ She bit her thumbnail. ‘Look, in spite of what I told you, about getting all that perfume, I’m not the most popular girl around town. There are a lot of people who don’t like me very much.’
‘Sounds like we have a lot in common, angel.’
She let that one go. She was too busy talking about herself. That was good, too. To me she looked like a more interesting subject than I was.
‘Oh, sure, I’m attractive to look at. I know that. And there are a lot of men who want me to give them what men usually want women to give them but, beyond a cigarette and a drink and a tip, and maybe the odd present or two, I don’t want anything from anyone. You should know that about me. Maybe you’ve worked that out already. You seem bright enough. But what I’m trying to say is that I don’t have many friends and certainly none that are possessed of what you might call wisdom and maturity. Otto — Otto Schulze — the Fritz who runs this place, I couldn’t tell him. I can’t tell him anything. He’d tell the Gestapo, for sure. Otto likes to keep in with the Gestapo. I’m almost certain he pays them off with information: Magda, too, I think. And you’ve met Frau Lippert. So there’s no one else, see? My mother is old and lives in Dresden. My brother is on active service. But frankly he wouldn’t know what to say or do. He’s my younger brother and he looks to me for advice. But you, Parsifal. You strike me as the type who always knows what to say or do. So, if you’re interested, there’s a part-time job going as my special counsel. It doesn’t pay very much but maybe you can think of me as someone who is in your debt.’
‘Suddenly I feel every one of my forty-three years,’ I said.
‘That’s not so old. Not these days. Just look around, Parsifal. Where are the young men? There aren’t any. Not in Berlin. I can’t remember the last time I spoke to someone less than thirty. Anyone my age is on active service or in a concentration camp. Youth is no longer wasted on the young because it’s wasted on the war instead.’ She winced. ‘Forget I said that. I shouldn’t have said that. They’re fighting for their country, aren’t they?’
‘They’re fighting for someone else’s country,’ I said. ‘That’s the problem.’
Arianne looked sly for a moment, as if she’d outsmarted me in a game of cards. ‘It’s not healthy putting your head under a falling axe, Parsifal. You could get into trouble.’
‘I don’t mind a little trouble, when it looks like you, angel.’
‘That’s what you say now. But you haven’t seen me throwing crockery.’
‘Volatile, huh?’
‘Like my boiling point was on the moon.’
‘Smart, too. I’m not sure I’m qualified to be your special counsel, Fraulein Tauber. I don’t know the boiling point on the moon from my own shoe-size.’
She glanced down at my feet. ‘I’ll bet you’re a forty-six, right?’
‘Mmm-hmm.’
‘Then, for a lot of liquids with higher vapour pressures, the boiling point and your shoe-size are probably the
