There was big band music on another station, Duke Ellington, and Emil tapped his foot, remembering the music he’d heard in Helsinki. It was fast music, good for dancing, but when he returned home there was none of that business anymore. Stravinski, Shostakovich, Tchaikovsky. No Ellington, no Mercer, no Basie. He’d almost forgotten the world could produce such fine music.
At the window, Emil hummed beneath his breath and looked out over the field of rubble that surrounded them. Red Army trucks navigated the crumbled hills, and Berliners waited at corners for busses he didn’t see. To the west he could just make out Allied planes descending through the haze.
“Quite a view,” said Konrad, dressed now in tan slacks and a red cravat folded inside his open collar.
“Janos Crowder came here in February, didn’t he?”
“All business.” Konrad sat down and took out a cigarette. “Just don’t start talking ill of the dead.”
Emil pulled up a small cushioned chair and opened his own cigarettes. Despite a fine covering of white powder, he could make out the thick black follicles on Konrads jaw line. Konrad lit both their cigarettes with a heavy glass lighter.
“Are you working for the Russians?”
Emil shook his head. “I’m just trying to find out why Janos was killed.”
“How’s that wife of his? Liza?” Konrad picked tobacco from his lip.
“Lena.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Someone’s after her.”
“Someone?”
“To kill her.”
Konrad bit the nail on his little finger, and thought. “Fair enough,” he said finally, as though something had been decided. He held Emil’s gaze. “Janos Crowder was a beautiful man, you know that? Intense eyes, statuesque. Did you ever see him?”
“Only in the morgue.”
Konrads mouth hung open a moment, then closed. “Janos Crowder was a genius. A real one. You’ve heard his songs?”
Emil nodded.
“Then you know. He wasn’t the kind of man who can keep track of the mundane side of life. Money, taxes, friendships. He kept losing it all. It wasn’t his fault. No one understood him. Do you follow?”
Emil said he did.
“But I understood him,” he said, settling back in the chair. “I think Janos knew that. We were what you would call very close.”
It was in the enunciation of “close”- intim. That, and the robe and all the dramatic sighs. Emil understood completely. He cleared his throat, and knew he was blushing.
Konrad smiled at his discomfort. “This is not so strange. Difficult to prance around in public, maybe, but always a large, unspoken clan. Before the Kristallnacht it was different. We ran Berlin. But like everyone, we learned to shut up. Or go join our Jewish friends.”
Emil nodded brusquely. “This is why he visited you? You were…”
“This is how we knew each other,” said Konrad. “We saw each other when we could, usually once a year or so. Keep the fire burning, and so forth. Does that surprise you?” He sculpted the edge of his cigarette ash, rotating it in the ashtray. “But this is not why Janos Crowder visited me in February.” He tapped his forehead and smiled. “This time he loved me for my mind.”
Emil waited. Duke Ellington had ended, and someone he didn’t know played a sappy waltz.
Konrad crossed his legs at the knee. “We’d been in contact for weeks before he came to Berlin. Telephone. A friend of his was in trouble. Was being blackmailed for a lot of money. And the incriminating evidence, it seemed, was here in Berlin. He didn’t know what the evidence was, or where. But, knowing of my extensive contacts, he asked for my help.” Konrad frowned. “I could never say no to him.”
Both their cigarettes had gone out, and each offered the other his own. Emil accepted the American tobacco, but Konrad shook his head. “No offense,” he said as he lit another one.
He described how he talked with Soviet colonels and lieutenants who frequented his nightclub. “Even the Slavic soul has room for liberal love,” he said, toying with Emil. “They come for the stage shows, and stay. All rather wonderful.”
Emil realized his arms were clenched uncomfortably, so he crossed them over his stomach. “Go on.”
In the mist of their blissful intoxication, the Soviet officers listened to Konrad s subtle inquiries and smiled, clapped their hands, and told him everything. “Janos’s friend, it turned out, was very well known to all of them.”
“Jerzy Michalec?” Emil tried.
Konrad s eyes swelled. “You really are exceptionally bright for a Slav. You should be proud.”
“I am,” he said.
“Well, the Russians had no real dirt on this Michalec character-some war hero, they said. But they didn’t call him Michalec. Something like-Smerrykov?”
“Smerdyakov. It’s from Dostoyevsky,” said Emil.
Konrad winked, ever more impressed. “Exactly. So I talked more to my friends-my German friends, of which I still have a considerable number. This Michalec-or Smerdyakov-apparently has even a third name. Do you know this one as well?”
Emil shook his head.
“Graz.”
“Like the city?”
“It’s where they first made contact with him.”
“The Russians?”
Konrad leaned so close that Emil could feel his warm, moist breath cross the distance between them. “The Gestapo.”
Emil blinked.
Konrad waved his surprise aside and leaned back again. “This is long before we marched on Stalingrad. Back when Uncle Josef was still a friend to the Reich. Jerzy Michalec was a Hungarian clerk or something-or-other working out of Vienna, and after we marched into that impeccably tidy country in ‘thirty-eight, his Jewish wife became a problem for him.” He raised an eyebrow, and stopped.
The dramatic pause was driving Emil crazy. “Well? What happened?”
“The details are hazy. One friend says he spied in Budapest before we marched in, another says he went as deep as Stalingrad, just before that debacle. The only agreed-upon story is that he was one of the Gestapo’s men in the East.”
“Do the Russians know this?”
Konrad stubbed out his cigarette. “If the Russians made him into your country’s war hero for the Great Red Cause, do you think they’ll want to hear the opposite is true?” He smiled and tapped Emil’s cheek with a hand, like a mother. “Not without evidence they won’t.”
Emil inhaled when he realized he hadn’t breathed for a while. It cleared his head. “Is this what Janos was looking for in Berlin? Evidence?”
Konrad looked very pleased with himself. He had Emil’s complete attention. He leaned back, glanced at a wall clock, and said, “I’ve got a job to see to. Why don’t you come along?”
The children had put considerable effort into brushing off the steps, so Emil dropped some change into the eldest one’s dirty hand and spoke loud enough for the others to hear. “Share, Comrade. You’re running your very own soviet.” This brought a look of nausea to Konrads face.
They walked back into the city in silence. Emil began to understand just how much Janos had betrayed his friend and sometime- lover. In order to collect blackmail material, he had sent Konrad into what could have been a fatal investigation. And Konrad, made stupid by love, couldn’t see any of it. He remembered Lena: Women get stupid for the men they’ve married, it’s a fact. Not only women.
Around them, a couple new buildings were ringed by shells of old homes and a few unscathed ones. They passed through many black markets, Konrad pausing long enough to consider some used shoes. “Makes me shiver
