to think where they got those,” he muttered, then bought a carton of Lucky Strikes. He knew half the old men standing around, opening their trench coats like flashers. Russian soldiers stood on the sidelines, charging sellers for the right to sell, and pawning off their excess rations and ammunition. Emil used his cane to keep up.
“How long have you been in Berlin?” Konrad asked once they had left a square.
“Since last night.”
“It’s an amazing bit of fortune you came across me so quickly, don’t you think?”
Emil lowered his voice as they passed more soldiers. “There’s a file on Janos. The Russians watched him come to your house, then go into the American sector. Where did he go in the American sector?”
Konrads smile disappeared, and his lips formed a vague sneer. “They saw him?” he said finally. “Come to me?” He was wide-eyed as the implications became clear. “And that warranted afile?”
“Everything warrants a file,” Emil said and, perhaps for the first time, realized that Michalec had access to all the same files he did. All it took was the inclination, and he would know everything Emil knew.
Around another corner Germans stood in a loose crowd by a building with two hissing speakers blasting news at them. The Soviet sector was prospering despite all the westerners’ efforts. Next week in the Tiergarten, on the western side, the Socialist Unity Party would hold a rally against the opportunist mayor, Ernst Reuter. General Sokolovsky promised that the hugely successful Moscow dance troupes would return regularly for the Berliners’ enjoyment.
A motorcycle buzzed by, and when its noise faded it was replaced by far-off planes.
“Hurry up,” said Konrad. He grabbed Emil by the elbow.
Die Letze Katze was on a pockmarked block, and Konrad used one of ten keys on a ring to open the door to the basement level. Two more locks on the inner steel door. The club smelled of sour liquor. Konrad used a key to open his office-no more than a closet, a table covered with a telephone and slips of paper, photos taped to a mirror on the far wall that gave the illusion of space- and another key on the liquor cabinet behind the bar. Emil climbed onto a stool and grunted.
Konrad filled two glasses with tonic water and held his up. “Janos.”
Emil drank. It was sticky in his mouth.
Konrad nodded at the cane lying across the next stool. “So what happened to you?”
“Bullets.”
“The war?”
“At home. Recently.”
“Nothing to do with Janos?”
Emil shrugged.
The room was long and narrow and a lot like Helsinki cellar bars, where dingy workers chain-smoked and fought and broke bottles. At the far end was a small stage framed by cheap satin curtains tied up with yellow rope. Stale smoke was in everything-the carpet, the chairs, the walls-and only lighting a fresh cigarette helped dispel it. “Your place is nice.” He didn’t know what else to say.
“My place? I own nothing. Manage is the word.”
“The Russians think you own it.”
“Well, they do me an honor” he said, and raised his glass to toast again.
“Tell me,” said Emil.
Konrad set his glass down.
“Where did Janos go? Who did he see in the American sector?”
Konrad held up an index finger, then pointed at the front door. “Outside again? You mind?”
They walked the length of the block, slowly, as though they were in another Berlin, one where they could admire the flowers. In the middle of the street, two very clean children pushed a rusty, rattling baby carriage filled with coal. “I’m sure of my own apartment,” said Konrad. “But the bar? I don’t know. People I don’t know are in there all the time. A friend of mine says I’m paranoid, but he was arrested last week.”
“What about me?”
Konrad stuck his hands deep into his pockets. “I think we have some solidarity, you and I. Janos was beautiful, a poet, he understood solidarity. I think you do too. People from your country know about living under the boot of another nation. Am I wrong?”
Emil said he wasn’t.
Konrad cleared his throat and stroked his boxer’s nose. “On the telephone-on a friend’s secure line-I told Janos everything. Everything I’d learned. It seemed to me that this friend of his, this Michalec, as an employee of the Reich, would have had a file. The Gestapo kept files on everyone.” He thought about that a moment. “Times don’t change, do they?”
They didn’t.
“Around a year ago, the Americans found a storehouse of records. In Munich, I think. A lot of information- including, of course, files of the Gestapo. Crates and crates. They brought them here to Berlin, then decided to send it all back to Washington. They were going to fly the records out of Tempelhof.”
Emil stopped and looked at him. “The airport?”
Konrad nodded. “But nothing ever turns out as we expect, and there was this American lieutenant. Named Mazur. Harry Mazur, an historian. Harry, can you imagine?” Konrad laughed-a high, uncontrolled chuckle that he quickly silenced, as though embarrassed by its sound. “So, this American military historian Lieutenant Harry Mazur arrived in Berlin a week before the crates were scheduled to leave us. He found out about them, made some inquiries, and got permission to work on them himself, here in Berlin. Washington, he was convinced, would leave them to the dust.” He paused and, as an aside, cited five sources for this story: two Soviet officers (a captain and a colonel), one de-Nazified liquor vendor, one still fully Nazified policeman and a prostitute who had been a red since birth.
“These files,” said Emil. “Where are they now?”
“Still there. A basement room at Tempelhof. Apparently, our admirable Lieutenant Harry has been going at them ever since. Now that all this has started,” he said, waving his hand at the buzzing sound they once again noticed, “I’ll bet he’s had to go it alone. I’ll bet those are a lot of files for any one man.” Konrad stopped for an old woman to pass. She glanced enviously at Emil’s cane.
“This is where Janos went? To the airport?”
Konrad shrugged as they turned back toward the nightclub. The breeze shifted, and the sound of planes grew louder.
Emil stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. “How did he get there?”
“Just walk on over, dearest. Nobody will stop you. They might look at your papers, but no more. All they worry about is precious coal making it to the American sector.”
“No,” said Emil, shaking his head. “ Inside. Tempelhof Airport.”
Konrad shrugged theatrically, palms up. “Back then, you realize, it was a different world. None of these planes, we had plenty American cigarettes and they had their electricity. But now, who knows? Inside?” He reached for the door handle and showed his perfect false teeth as he smiled. “But maybe, dear Comrade Inspector, for the sake of a beloved genius, just maybe I can help you.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Small, shallow bullet holes peppered the Brandenburg Gate. Between chipped columns stood soldiers-Soviet on his side, American on the other-waving people through. A trickle of women stood on the American side with empty shopping bags. In another line, women with full shopping bags returned to the West. Emil stood behind them, looking down at a bag of salamis, wishing he’d eaten.
Janos had stood in this same spot eight months ago, February, single-mindedly focused on breaking free of his wife’s support. He had stood near these damaged classical columns, thinking of evidence and blackmail and money. He was already purchasing the apartment in his head, living his new, free life.
And behind Janos, maybe crouching among the blackened shards of the demolished Reichstag, MVD agents
