The tea was unsweetened and bitter. “What?”
“You want to get into the Tempelhof basement tonight?”
“Oh God, yes,” he said automatically.
She frowned at his invocation of the deity, but slowly told him what he needed to know.
Tempelhof Airport was shaped like a parenthesis, the planes collecting on the inside of the curve. She drew it on a piece of butcher s paper. It was a vast complex, she said, much larger than the Americans needed for their airlift, and many sections, particularly in the seven-level basement, remained unused. At the end of the war, German soldiers-boys, probably, the only ones left- laid bombs that destroyed the lowest two layers, but the remaining five were still too vast for the Americans. “This is to your advantage,” she pointed out, hovering over the pencil drawing he was barely able to make out in the candlelight. She drew five Xs for planes, then an angular line around the whole thing. “The fence. Here,” she said, marking, “is the main gate, simple enough. But your concern is the basement, the third floor down. Right here.” She drew another X at the bottom of the parenthesis, on the outside of the curve.
Tempelhof had its own generators, so he would not be left in the dark, not like the rest of the city. “I can get you an ID and a ration card, and that will put you inside. Unlike the little boys, you’ll have to go in the front gate.” She used her chubby finger like a teacher’s pointer. “This is where you will enter the gates. With the other workers. This is where you will separate from the workers. This is where you will enter the building. Here is your storeroom. What are you looking for?”
After all the commands, the question was unexpected. He stalled.
“Why are you sneaking into this place?”
“I’m looking for something,” he said finally. “A file.”
She nodded. “You won’t tell me what.”
“Ijust did.”
She looked as if she didn’t believe him, and moved her teacup away from herself.
“Did Janos Crowder go through this as well?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Comrade Crowder came before the blockade. Any fool could get onto Tempelhof. It was just a matter of waiting in a bathroom until the lights were turned off in the evening. Now…” She shook her head sadly.
He looked at the sketch in the wavering light. This was all quite crazy. But nothing he had done in the last month had any sanity to it. He would see it through, though, because seeing it through was the only dignity left to him. He looked at her. “How did you learn all this?”
“Nothing’s all that secret,” she confided, and smiled a second and final time. “And anyway, prostitutes know everything, haven’t you ever heard that?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
At the busy, dark street, he boarded an overcrowded tram marked tempelhof. Simple enough. Her directions had been specific and concise, with little possibility for deviation. Emil had one foot inside the car; the other hung out. His bare hands and face froze in the night breeze, and the strain of holding himself up was wrenching his guts. An old man packed inside looked down at Emil’s foot, then shrugged helplessly.
They went through all of Berlin, it seemed. In some areas there was solely rubble, while in others the only damage consisted of chipped facades. But most of the bits of Berlin he could see through the darkness were a mix of the two. Jagged walls rose into the air, surrounded by hills of broken stone and intact homes. Occasionally, men in suits rode bicycles alongside the tram, and their car stopped a few times to let convoys of American jeeps pass.
Finally, at the end of a long, bomb-riddled square, beside a gated subway stop, he saw the sign: an arrow beside the words air port tempelhof. Everyone got off with him.
The whine was continuous here, and deafening.
Workers collected at the high chain-link fence. A few American soldiers stood on either side of the gates and took a look at each man’s ration card and ID. Beyond them, the black wall of the airport rose. There were maybe a hundred men here, stuffed tight, and Emil was in the midst of them, their hard jackets scraping his chapped fingers, their stench filling his nose. He wondered if bathing was a luxury here. The old man from the tram noticed him, his white-furred chin shifting as he spoke: “So you held on, did you?”
Emil nodded and smiled.
The old man moved closer, eyes glimmering from the electric lights on poles along the fence. “Usually, I’m the afternoon, but they took me off. How do you get used to these hours?”
Emil shrugged and rubbed his arms for warmth.
The old man nodded with lips pressed tight, and looked around. They all moved up a few feet, then stopped.
Emil’s stomach began to act up again. His accent was a badge here.
They moved a few more feet. A plane roared off from the other side of the terminal, and another plane’s tires screeched against the runway. The electric lights lit the men from above, casting their faces in long shadow. The old man looked like death. “My daughter-in-law says they’re flying in their own prostitutes for the GIs. Direct from Paris.” He winked. “I hope we can unload some of that”
Some other men growled their agreement, and a short, wiry worker took off his cap. “ Madame, pourrais-je vous aider a descendre de cette echelle?” He held up a hand and squeezed, as though supporting a woman’s ass. The laughter rippled through the crowd, and the little man, pleased, put his cap back on.
They were almost at the front. Three American soldiers, looking very stern in the shadows of their caps, examined each ID closely, twisting it in the light, and then stared deeply into each face. Back to the photo, then the face, again.
Emil would not get through. He knew this as soon as he looked again at his ID card with Schlieger, Dado beneath the picture: dark hair, dark eyes, double chin. Even accounting for weight loss, this could never be him. What was Birgit thinking? What was he thinking, letting her talk him into this?
He put away the papers and turned around. The old man put a hand on his shoulder. “We’re almost there.”
Emil shook it off and didn’t look back, but said, “I forgot something.”
As soon as the words came out he went numb, but pressed on. There were eyes on him, white eyes against dirty cheeks. Their faces were slack in their momentary surprise, then, when he was nearly out of their mass, shoulders began bumping into his. “ Russian came whispered German voices, hot breath in his ear. White teeth flashed. He pushed forward, just breaking free. Warm spittle hit the side of his neck. He didn’t wipe it off. They were yelling at him, hoarse voices in the cold. He walked faster, the cane helping him gallop further into the darkness. He didn’t look back until he had crossed the street, and the screaming airplanes obscured their shouting. They raised fists, a cloud of hot words hovered above their heads, and occasionally one broke from the crowd a few paces and spat, but they did not follow. They remained beside the gate, waiting to work for their ration cards. The promise of food held them right where they were.
A cold, black drizzle fell as he hobbled along the outside of the fence. He was cold all the way through. His jacket was thin- worker materials, the Uzbek would say-and when a wind came along, his battered hat blew off, and he had to stumble after it. He reached the other side of the Tempelhof complex, where he could see the activity inside the parenthesis. There were some children up ahead watching a plane touch down-a black silhouette marked by lights and sparks behind the propellers. Trucks burdened with food and coal rolled across the wet runway. From the shadows tiny workers jogged toward a parked truck. A burst of voices shot out-hooting-and the children clung to the chain- links, shouting with pleasure. Little blond boys dressed as poor adults, or in family lederhosen. They trembled like eager puppies. The plane taxied, disappearing on the other side of the airport, and another immediately touched down. There were lights in the sky, more planes lining up for the descent. On the ground, figures loaded trucks with the feverish single-mindedness of the hungry. The children whistled. Emil stood at the fence beside them, hands in his pockets fingering the useless ID.
“What kind of plane is that?” he said, and they looked at him. The plane was empty now, moving to the line
