Belinsky laughed. ‘Come on, kraut. Don’t get a hot throat about it. I just meant that it would be nice if we could be sure that Muller will be there. Be reasonable. We still don’t know for sure that he’s part of the Org’s set-up in Vienna.’
‘Sure we do,’ I lied. ‘This morning I went to the police prison and showed Emil Becker one of Muller’s snapshots. He identified him immediately as the man who was with Konig when he asked Becker to try and find Captain Linden. Unless Muller is just sweet on Konig, that means he must be part of the Org’s Vienna section.’
‘Shit,’ said Belinsky, ‘why didn’t I think of doing that? It’s so simple. He’s certain it was Muller?’
‘No doubt whatsoever.’ I strung him along like that for a while until I was sure of him. ‘All right, slow your blood down. As a matter of fact, Becker didn’t identify him at all. But he had seen the photograph before. Traudl Braunsteiner showed it to him. I just wanted to make sure it wasn’t you who gave it to her.’
‘You still don’t trust me yet, do you, kraut?’
‘If I’m going to walk into the lion’s den for you, I’m entitled to give you an eye-test beforehand.’
‘Yes, well that still leaves us with the problem of where Traudl Braunsteiner got hold of a picture of Gestapo Muller.’
‘From a Colonel Poroshin of MVD, I expect. He gave Becker a cigarette concession here in Vienna in return for information and the occasional bit of kidnapping. When Becker was approached by the Org he told Poroshin all about it and agreed to try and find out everything he could. After Becker was arrested, Traudl was their go- between. She just posed as his girlfriend.’
‘You know what this means, kraut?’
‘It means the Ivans are after Muller as well, right?’
‘But have you thought what would happen if they got him? Frankly there’s not much chance of him going on trial in the Soviet Union. Like I said before, Muller’s made a special study of Soviet police methods. No, the Russians want Muller because he can be very useful to them. He could, for instance, tell them who all the Gestapo’s agents in the NKVD were. Men who are probably still in place in the MVD.’
‘Let’s hope he’s there tomorrow then.’
‘You’d better tell me how to find this place.’
I gave him clear directions, and told him not to be late. ‘These bastards scare me,’ I explained.
‘Hey, you want to know something? All you krauts scare me. But not as much as the Russians.’ He chuckled in a way that I had almost started to like. ‘Goodbye, kraut,’ he said, ‘and good luck.’
Then he hung up, leaving me staring at the purring receiver with the curious sensation that the disembodied voice to which I had been speaking belonged nowhere outside my own imagination.
32
Smoke drifted up to the vaulted ceiling of the nightclub like the thickest underworld fog. It wreathed the solitary figure of Belinsky like Bela Lugosi emerged from a churchyard as he strode up to the table where I sat. The band I had been listening to could hold a beat about as well as a one-legged tap-dancer, but somehow he managed to walk to the rhythm it was generating. I knew he was still angry with me for doubting him, and that he was well aware of how, even now, I was trying to fathom why it was that he hadn’t thought to show Muller’s photograph to Becker. So I wasn’t very surprised when he took hold of my hair and banged my head twice on the table, telling me that I was just a suspicious kraut. I got up and staggered away from him towards the door, but found my exit blocked by Arthur Nebe. His presence there was so unexpected that I was momentarily unable to resist Nebe grasping me by both ears and banging my skull once against the door, and then once again for good luck, saying that if I hadn’t killed Traudl Braunsteiner then perhaps I ought to find out who had. I twisted my head free of his hands and said that I might as soon have guessed that Rumpelstiltskin’s name was Rumpelstiltskin.
I shook my head again, unwillingly, and blinked hard at the dark. There was another knock at the door, and I heard a half-whispered voice.
‘Who is it?’ I said, reaching for the bedside light, and then my watch. The name made no impression on me as I swung my legs out of bed and went into the sitting-room.
I was still swearing as I opened the door a little wider than was safe. Lotte Hartmann stood in the corridor, in the glistening black evening dress and astrakhan jacket I remembered her wearing from our last evening together. She had a questioning, impertinent sort of look in her eye.
‘Yes?’ I said. ‘What is it? What do you want?’
She sniffed with cool contempt and pushed the door lightly with her gloved hand, so I stepped back into the room. She came in, closed the door behind her and, leaning on it, looked around while my nostrils got a little exercise thanks to the smell of smoke, alcohol and perfume she carried on her venal body. ‘I’m sorry if I woke you up,’ she said. She didn’t look at me so much as the room.
‘No you’re not,’ I said.
Now she took a little trip around the floor, peering into the bedroom and then the bathroom. She moved with an easy grace and as confidently as any woman who is used to the constant sensation of having a man’s eyes fixed on her behind.
‘You’re right,’ she grinned, ‘I’m not sorry at all. You know, this place isn’t as bad as I thought it would be.’
‘Do you know what time it is?’
‘Very late.’ She giggled. ‘Your landlady wasn’t impressed with me at all. So I had to tell her I was your sister and that I had come all the way from Berlin to give you some bad news.’ She giggled again.
‘And you’re it?’
She pouted for a moment. But it was just an act. She was still too amused with herself to take much umbrage. ‘When she asked me if I had any luggage I said that the Russians had stolen it on the train. She was extremely sympathetic, and really rather sweet. I hope you’re not going to be different.’
‘Oh? I thought that’s why you were here. Or are the vice squad giving you problems again?’
She ignored the insult, always supposing she had even bothered to notice it. ‘Well, I was just on my way home from the Flottenbar – that’s on Mariahilferstrasse, do you know it?’
I didn’t say anything. I lit a cigarette and fixed it in a corner of my mouth to stop me snarling something at her.
‘Anyway, it’s not far from here. And I thought that I’d just drop by. You know -’ her tone grew softer and more seductive ‘ – I haven’t had a chance to thank you properly,’ she let that one hang in the air for a second, and I suddenly wished that I was wearing a dressing-gown, ‘for getting me out of that little spot of bother with the Ivans.’ She untied the ribbon of her jacket and let it slip to the floor. ‘Aren’t you even going to offer me a drink?’
‘I’d say you’ve had enough.’ But I went ahead and found a couple of glasses anyway.
‘Don’t you think you’d like to find that out for yourself?’ She laughed easily and sat down without any hint of unsteadiness. She looked like the type who could take the stuff through the vein and still walk a chalk line without so much as a hiccup.
‘Do you want anything in it?’ I held a glass of vodka up as I asked the question.
‘Perhaps,’ she said ruminatively, ‘after I’ve had my drink.’
I handed her the drink and put one quickly down into the pit of my stomach to hold the fort. I took another drag on my cigarette and hoped that it might fill me up enough to kick her out.
‘What’s the matter?’ she said, almost triumphantly. ‘Do I make you nervous or something?’
I guessed it was probably the something. ‘Not me,’ I said, ‘just my pyjamas. They’re not used to mixed company.’
‘From the look of them I’d say they were more used to mixing concrete.’ She helped herself to one of my cigarettes and blew a cord of smoke straight at my groin.
‘I could get rid of them if they bothered you,’ I said, stupidly. My lips were dry when they sucked at my cigarette again. Did I want her to leave or not? I wasn’t making a very good job of throwing her out on her perfect little ear.
‘Let’s talk a little first. Why don’t you sit down?’
