“My god, it’s Renate,” she said, pulling away. “They called her too? She’s crazy-it’s not safe for her.” He heard the platform noises again, the private second gone. When he turned, he saw Renate’s knowing sharp eyes, which had taken in Lena’s hand, the way they noticed everything. His best tipster, off the books because you couldn’t hire Jews. But she just smiled, pretending not to have seen.
“Hello, Joe, what do you know?” she said, American slang an endless joke.
“Hey, it’s Renate!” The boys back on the platform, surrounding them, Berlin closing in again. He tried to catch Lena’s eye, but she avoided him, hanging back with Emil, helping Hal pour champagne into cups. More drinks and jokes, Renate brazenly cadging a cigarette from a passing policeman with a flirtatious thank-you. Just to prove she could do it, while Hal looked on, appalled. With the train whistle, there was a final round of hugs, crushing the flowers. Emil shook Jake’s hand, looking relieved that the party was coming to an end.
“Any news on the visa?” Jake said to Renate, embracing her.
She shook her head. “Soon,” she said, not meaning it. Bright eyes, a head full of dark curls. The train attendant was closing doors.
“Jacob.” Lena’s voice, then her face next to his, a formal kiss on each side, light, leaving only the smell of her skin.
He looked at her, but there was nothing to say, not even her name, and the hands at his back were pushing him onto the train. He stood on the stairs as the train began to move, waving, hearing drunken auf wiedersehens, and when she took a step forward he thought for a second, wildly, that she would do it, run after the train and come with him, but it was only a step, a push from the crowd, so that the last thing he saw in Berlin was her standing still on the platform with Emil’s arm around her shoulder. ‹›The rubble women had stopped moving their pails, scrambling over the bricks to the middle of the building. One of them shouted down to the street, where another group picked up a stretcher from a cart and followed. Jake watched them lift a body out of the debris, turning their faces away from the smell, and swing it onto the stretcher as indifferently as if it were another load of bricks. The stretcher team plodded back, stumbling under the weight, then overturned it into a cart. A woman, her hair singed away. Where did they take the bodies? Some big potter’s field in the Brandenburg marshes? More likely a furnace to finish the burning. Renate would have died like that, her sharp eyes finally dulled. Unless she had somehow survived, become one of the living skeletons he’d seen in the camp, their eyes dull too, half alive. The crime so big that no one did it. But they’d kept records in the camps, the long roll calls. It was only here, under the bricks, that a numberless body could vanish without a trace.
He ran over to the cart and looked down. A stocky, faceless body; not Lena, not anybody. He turned away. This was as pointless as Frau Dzuris. The living didn’t vanish. Emil had been at the KWI-they’d know something. Army records, if he’d been in the war. POW lists. All it took was time. She’d be somewhere, not on a cart. Maybe even waiting for him in one of Bernie’s questionnaires.
Bernie, however, was out, called to an unexpected meeting, according to the message tacked on his office door, so Jake walked over to the press camp instead. Everyone was there, drinking beer and looking bored, the typing tables littered with Ron’s bland releases. Stalin had arrived. Churchill had called on Truman. The first plenary session would start at five. A reception had been arranged by the Russians.
“Not much, is it, boyo?” Brian Stanley said, a full whiskey glass in his hand.
“What are you doing here? Coming over to the other side?”
“Better booze,” he said, sipping. “I had hoped for a little information, but as you can see—” He let one of the releases fall to the bar.
“I saw you with Churchill. He say anything?”
“ ‘Course not. But at least he said it to me. Special to the Express. Very nice.”
“But not so nice for the others.”
Brian smiled. “Mad as hornets, they are. So I thought I’d poke around here for a bit. Stay out of harm’s way.” He took another sip. “There’s no story, you know. Can’t even get Eden. We ought to just pack it in, and instead there’s tomorrow to worry about. Want to see what our lot’s handing out?” He reached into his pocket and passed over another release.
“Three thousand linen sheets, five hundred ashtrays-what’s this?”
“Preparation for the conference. Last blowout of the war, by the size of it. Try getting a story out of that.”
“Three thousand rolls of toilet paper,” Jake said.
“All from London. Now, where’ve they been hiding it, you wonder Haven’t seen decent loo paper in years.” He took back the sheet, shaking his head. “Here’s the one, a hundred and fifty bottles of button polish. Broke, but still gleaming.”
“You’re not going to print this?”
He shrugged. “What about you? Anything?”
“Not today. I went into town. They’re still digging up bodies.”
Brian made a face. “I haven’t the stomach, I really haven’t.”
“You’re getting soft. It never bothered you in Africa.” ‹›“Well, that was the war. I don’t know what this is.” He took a sip from his glass, brooding. “Lovely to be back in Cairo, wouldn’t it? Sit on the terrace and watch the boats. Just the thing after this.” Drifting feluccas, white triangles waiting for a hint of a breeze, a million miles away.
“You’d be in London in a week.”
“I don’t think so, you know,” Brian said seriously. “It’s the boats for me now. ”
“That’s the whiskey talking. When a man’s tired of London—” Jake quoted.
Brian looked at the glass. “That’s when we were on the way up. I don’t want to see us go down. Bit by bit. It’s finished there too. Just the Russians now. There’s your story. And you’re welcome to it. I haven’t got the stomach anymore. Awful people.”
“And there’s us.”
Brian sighed. “The lucky Americans. You don’t need to count the loo paper, do you? Just streams out. What will you do, I wonder.”
“Go home.”
“No, you’ll stay. You’ll want to put things right. That’s your particular bit of foolishness. You’ll want to put things right.”
“Somebody has to.”
“Do they? Well, then, I anoint you, why not?” He put his hand on Jake’s head. “Good luck and God bless. I’m for the boats.”
“Don’t you guys ever work?” A voice coming up from behind.
“Liz, my darling,” Brian said, instantly hearty. “The lady with the lens. Come have a drink. I hear Miss Bourke-White’s on her way.”
“Up yours too.”
Brian laughed. “Ooo.” He got up from his stool. “Here, darling, have a seat. I’d better push off. Go polish my buttons. Probably the last time we get to sit at the high table, so we like to look our best.”
“What’s he talking about?” she said, watching him walk away.
“He’s just being Brian. Here.” Jake took out a match to light her cigarette.
“What have you been doing?” she said, inhaling. “Holding up the bar?”
“No, I went into town.”
“God, why?”
“Look at the message boards.” Charred bodies.
“Oh.” She glanced up at him. “Any luck?”
He shook his head and handed her a release. “The Russians are giving a banquet tonight.”
“I know. They’re also posing.” She looked at her watch. “In about an hour.”
“In Potsdam? Take me with you.”
“Can’t. They’d have my head. No press, remember?”
“I’ll carry your camera.”
“You’d never get through. Special pass,” she said, showing hers.
“Yes, I would. Just bat your baby blues. The Russians can’t read anyway. Come on, Liz.”
“She won’t be in Potsdam, Jake,” she said, looking at him.
