But it wasn’t paint.
“What about it, then?” asked the smiler. “Does your visit to the Americans have a bearing on the course of world revolution?”
“None,” he said. “None that I know of.”
“Your face,” said the other through a cloud of smoke, blinking behind his glasses. “Those bruises.”
“I was mugged,” said Emil. “I took the wrong taxi.” He paused, but they did not help him. “The driver and his friends attacked me.
The wide smile faded, and a look of concern replaced it. “Yes, we know. Berlin is extremely dangerous.” He rested his elbows on the table. “Just this afternoon we found three dead men in one of the bombed areas. All three were shot. In their heads.” He shook his own head. “Very ugly.”
“Ugliest I’ve seen in a while,” said the other. He flicked ash on the floor and looked puzzled. “Wasn’t one of them a taxi driver?”
A nod. “I believe he was.” He turned to Emil. “I don’t suppose he was your taxi driver? No.” That wide head, shaking again. “The coincidence would be… unbelievablel”
Emil’s tired body tensed from head to toe.
Of course he was still alive, and of course they came to him. The Oberst had not shot him, because he knew the authorities would want a simple answer to three dead bodies in the rubble. He had gotten rid of witnesses to the prized photograph, but had learned in the Capital that leaving unexplained bodies around was not wise. So he had placed the murder weapon in Emil’s hand and walked away. So easy. Efficient. Herr Oberst gets his picture, and cleans up the mess.
And they all knew he was coming to Berlin-the MVD didn’t give out information without wondering who was asking for it, and why.
Emil’s mistakes were endless. He had fled the scene without informing the proper authorities. He had left the Walther with his prints all over it. He had driven the blood-soaked taxicab all the way to the club for the whole city to look into. Berlin, for him, had been an extended exercise in stupidity.
Their eyes were red, tired. These Russians had worked quickly, had tracked him down in no time. They would see through him. These intelligence agents were the kind of policemen he would never be. They were efficient and focused and always thinking. He knew this. They were also MVD: militant, brutal and all-knowing.
“Tell me what you want to know.”
The tall one put out his cigarette on the floor with his foot. “We want to know what you’re doing in Berlin, killing good Germans. It’s our responsibility to watch out not only for our Soviet citizens, but also for the defeated Fascist nation that has been entrusted to us.”
Emil took only a second to think it through. He told them everything in a straightforward tone. He was a homicide inspector. He had come to Berlin to look into the death of a well- connected songwriter. “ Proletarian songwriter.” He contacted Comrade Konrad Messer because of information received via their office here in Berlin. They nodded knowledgeably-this was not news. The deceased had apparently been interested in military records at the Tempelhof airbase. He tried not to pause before his one lie: “My search for what he was seeking was fruitless.”
He waited for them to ask questions. His body was about to collapse. If they tested him, he would not last any time. But he had to hold his position, if only to have something to give them in case it came to brutality. But they asked nothing. He filled the silence:
“When I returned to the Soviet sector, I was set upon by this taxi driver and his friends. Apparently, they thought I had money. When they discovered how poor I was, they did this to me.” He pointed at his face, then shrugged. He tried for casual sincerity, but didn’t know if it looked right. “I’m not sure what happened then. I was in and out. A fight, I guess. When I woke up, three of them were dead, and the fourth was gone.”
They seemed unmoved by the tragedy.
“I went to Comrade Messer for help, and I made an Aeroflot reservation. To return home. I can’t do anything else here.”
They nodded in unison. “And Tempelhof?” asked the one with glasses. “You searched the base?”
“I couldn’t get inside,” he said slowly, evenly. “They turned me away at the gate.”
The wide one asked if Emil could describe the fourth man.
He shook his head in an approximation of sadness. “I wish I could. It was dark. I only knew the driver’s face.”
The other looked down at the papers. “Your prints were on the pistol that killed these men.”
“I know.” Emil nodded. “I woke with it in my hand. But there was no way I could have done it. You should have seen me last night.”
“We see you now.” A wide smile. He looked at his partner, then back at Emil. “We’ll be right back.”
When they were gone, the nausea filled him, a delayed reaction, and he noticed again the speckled dried blood on the wall. It had come out of people who had thought they could outsmart the Soviet secret police.
His stomach seized up-partly nerves, partly the alcohol. He was so stupid.
They knew. They had to know-it was their job to know. He was a liar, and they would soon walk back in here with other, larger men whose job was to beat the truth out of the unfortunate. And when the truth was out, they would continue beating until he admitted to any crime they felt like solving, or inventing. He would admit to killing those three men. He would say he had killed Janos Crowder, that he had been hoping for a shot at Comrade Chairman Stalin. They would open their casebooks and tie him to all the unsolved deaths. Yes, he would admit to anything in the end, because that’s how human beings were.
It could have been an hour, or five. He closed his eyes and began, after a while, to drift off. But then the door opened, loudly, and the smiling Russian came rushing up to him. “You have a plane reservation?”
Emil nodded. “In the morning.”
“Now,” he said, cheeks fat and pink. “It’s morning now. I’ll give you a lift.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Emil expected the Russian to pull over to the side of the road, place a pistol to his temple and shoot. He wouldn’t have had the energy to fight it. But then Schonefeld Airfield rose out of the predawn gloom. “You may wonder,” the Russian said, smiling as he drove, “and be afraid to ask. Really, you shouldn’t be afraid. Just ask.”
Emil’s voice was hoarse: “Why?”
“Because,” he said, “this is not for us. This is for your people. If you want to make trouble with your men, your politicos, as you say, then the people’s representatives of the Soviet Union would not consider standing in your way. Each of our socialist brothers acts independently, and this is for the good of the whole. You follow?”
Emil nodded, then said that he did understand.
“Your own state security may take some issue with you, but we don’t. We are for freedom and international peace.”
Emil wanted to laugh, because it sounded like a joke, but didn’t. As they drove through the gates, the Russian showed an ID to a guard who waved them on.
“Anyway,” he added, “you certainly didn’t kill those lowlifes. They’re the kind of men you hire to do the kind of thing that was done to them.” He parked in a lot and ran around to open the door for Emil. They began walking to the terminal. “I’m Andrei,”he said. “From Tblisi, you know? Georgian Republic. Good luck finding your man.”
He shook hands with Emil outside the airplane, and held his forearm firmly. A wink and a smile. Ruddy cheeks. All the way up the steps to the plane, Emil waited for the bullet in the back of the head. But it never came.
He searched each face and ignored any taxi driver who approached him. He hobbled to the edge of their crowd and woke an elderly driver dozing beneath the morning’s Spark. More airplanes covered the front page, more exclamations.
It was Sunday-the Militia station wouldn’t be open until tomorrow-so he directed the driver home.
In the Third District they had to wait at an intersection for a parade to pass. Children with red flags held high.
