“English.” It was simpler than Scottish.
Some of the lines left her brow. “The Russians. They came for the Jews. No one likes the Jews. They were hiding up there.”
“Are they dead?”
She shrugged her shoulders, and rubbed at her cheeks. “I suppose. Some of them.
There was a lot of shooting. Then a big bang. Then it was quiet. They took two bodies. Such a mess. Blood on the stairs. And look at my ceiling.” She pointed up. Large bits of plaster had fallen leaving the wooden laths on show.
“Two bodies. Only two? Are you sure?”
“I saw two. They asked me. After. If I’d seen the woman.”
“How did they know?”
A furtive look slid over her face. “It wasn’t me. I didn’t tell them.”
“Who did?”
“You’re not Jewish? You don’t look Jewish. People round here don’t like them.
They’re the cause of all this. Anyone could have told the Ruskies.”
“Haven’t you done enough to them?”
Her face of misery clammed up and she wiped it dry with the edge of her apron.
She patted her hair under her scarf; she wasn’t as old as I’d first thought, maybe in her fifties.
“Do you have a cigarette?” she asked.
I gave her one and lit it. She inhaled as though it was pure oxygen. She sat down on the arm of her couch. She pulled her skirt up to her knee and crossed her bare legs. They were white and blotched with broken veins, but still slim.
“There was a girl,” she said. “Probably their whore. But she wasn’t here when they came.” She dragged deep on her cigarette and blew the smoke in a long funnel.
“Were they looking for the girl?”
Again the shrug and then a lowering of her eyes so that she looked at me from under her eyelashes. “Do you want a girl?” She smoothed the skirt round her knees and pulled off her scarf. She shook her hair. The grey roots showed through the badly dyed dark hair. She ran her hands through it and sucked her lips to bring colour to them. I stared at her, disbelieving. But who was I to judge, in this place at this time? I turned and made for the door.
“Don’t go, liebchen. We could have fun. I could get us some food. Give me two dollars and we will eat like royalty. Ten, and you could spend the night with me.”
I turned and looked at her. She was standing hands on hips in what she must have thought was a provocative pose, but was more like a child playing than a middle-aged woman. Her attempt at a coquettish smile barely hid the terror of her daily fight for life. She might have been a respectable hausfrau once, nice clothes, greeted politely by shopkeepers and petty officials. There would have been a husband, now perhaps rotting in an unmarked mass grave outside Moscow.
She must have seen the pity in my look. Anger flushed her face and brought the tears again.
“Get out! Get out, you smug English swine! You did this! Your bombs! Look at what you’ve done to us!”
I took out my half-empty packet of fags and placed them on the floor and left her sobbing. Her curses followed me into the street.
Was I surprised to find Eve gone when I got back to the cafй? No. The barman – after a dollar tip – told me she’d left with a man. A big man. With a great black beard. She’d left a message for me. She said – and here he screwed up his face to recall the words – she knew what I’d find. She had business to do. And it seemed Gideon had found her.
I set off back to my digs. I knew the business she had to do. I prayed to whatever gods still had patience with this city and this people that I would be able to stop her before it was too late.
EIGHTEEN
All I knew was that Eve was with Gideon They were both safe – for the moment.
But Gideon’s size and intensity made him conspicuous. If she was going to make a play for Mulder and it involved a giant with a nose like a battering ram and a beard that could shelter a murder of crows, the chances were high they’d be caught. What were they planning? To go in with grenades and guns blazing? A suicide mission? Had our lovemaking yesterday been a way of saying goodbye?
At five in the morning I was sitting on my bed with my head in my hands, waiting for the dawn. A full ashtray sat at my feet. A thin tendril of smoke from my last fag rose into the dead air. The thought of venturing outside made me want to curl up in bed again. Berlin was getting me down. I felt I’d been washed up on the blackened beach of a remote island at the end of time: me and the other flotsam of a corrupt society. Rotting hulks littered our shoreline. The survivors were fighting among themselves, for food and water, for their very lives.
I gave myself a mental kick and dragged myself to the communal bathroom. I shaved and washed and scoffed a life-giving breakfast in the mess. By nine o’clock I was standing outside, hope set on a low flame, waiting for Vic. I’d met him last night and asked for his help. It was a tall order.
By nine-thirty I was thinking of abandoning my vigil when I heard a great toot.
Coming towards me was a massive German staff car, the three-pointed star on its radiator glowing with power. All it lacked was a brace of swastikas fluttering from the bumpers. Vic sat at the wheel, waving with one hand, steering and smoking with the other.
“Will this do?” he asked innocently as he drew up and wound down the window.
“I asked for a set of wheels, Vic, not the Kaiser’s personal runabout. Where the hell did you get this?”
He rubbed his nose. “Contacts. It was liberated from the garage of a big cheese in the ritzy part of town. Some say it was Goebbels’ personal transport, or his bit on the side.”
“It’s – how can I put this – a wee bit conspicuous. That’s all.”
He looked hurt. “Don’t you want it then?”
I suddenly saw the humour in all this. “Course I want it. Vic, you’re a bloody hero. Now show me how to drive this heap of tin. I don’t want to demolish the Brandenburg Gate. Not after all it’s been through.”
God knows how he found the petrol, far less the car itself. But driving this luxurious tank made me feel much better. It certainly drew glances. I left him, mid-morning, with his admonition not to bend the bleeding car, if you please, Danny-boy ringing in my ears. I lied when I told him what I was up to – impressing a bint, Vic, old pal – or he might not have handed over the keys so easily.
As I sailed through Checkpoint Charlie – trust the Army to come up with a truly forgettable name – I got saluted by the two Red Army soldiers. I drove down the Holzmarktstrasse and parked along from the little cafй where Eve and I had watched the District Controller come and go. With plenty of Russian soldiers wandering about it should be safe from petty thieves, unless they wore officer tabs.
I settled down with a pot of tea and the four-page German newspaper that claimed to be the Neu Berliner Zeitung. I was conscious of curious eyes from the grosse frau in charge of the cafй and some of her customers, but when I challenged them by returning their glances they went back to their soft susurrations of local gossip.
Lunchtime dragged on, and I was beginning to think nothing would happen. Which is when it did. Across the street there was a flurry of movement. Soldiers slapped their rifles in salute, and out stepped Heinrich Mulder. He glanced up and down the street and walked quickly off in the direction of his apartment. I paid my bill and left, coughed the big car into life and eased its nose into the street just as Mulder disappeared round the corner. I double-declutched, found second, and felt the V12 engine pull the car up to walking speed. At the turning I stopped so that I could see down the street. Mulder had already vanished. I left the engine running but rolled the window down so I could hear any ructions.
At first there was nothing to disturb the hot, quiet day: just a pair of old women shambling down the road with string bags distended by some nameless bloody parcels – leg of dog? fillet of cat? There were two cars parked – neither of the stature of mine – one to the left near the flats, the other on the far side.
Much of the street was intact, with only the odd toothless gap. Suddenly a shadow flitted from a gutted faзade. A figure darted across the street towards the flats. Another, larger, broke from the same cover and moved
