These accounts — they still exist?”
The Swiss Government banned them at the end of the war, under pressure from Berlin, and no new ones have been allowed since. But the old ones — they still exist, because the terms of the original agreement have to be honoured. They’ve become valuable in their own right. People sell them on to one another. According to Henry, Zaugg developed quite a speciality in them. God knows what he’s got locked in those boxes.”
“Did you mention Stuckart’s name to this Nightingale?”
“Of course not. I told him I was writing a piece for Fortune about 'the lost legacies of the war'.”
“Just as you told me you were going to interview Stuckart for an article about 'the Fuhrer’s early years'?”
She hesitated, and said quietly: “What’s that supposed to mean?”
His head was throbbing, his ribs still ached. What did he mean? He lit a cigarette to give himself time to think.
“People who encounter violent death — they try to forget it, run away. Not you. Last night your eagerness to go back to Stuckart’s apartment, the way you opened his letters. This morning: turning up information about Swiss banks…”
He stopped speaking. An elderly couple passed on the footpath, staring at them. He realised they must look an odd pair: an SS Sturmbannfuhrer, unshaven and slightly bashed around, and a woman who was clearly a foreigner. Her accent might be perfect, but there was something about her, in her expression, her clothes, her stance — something which betrayed that she was not German.
“Let’s walk this way.” He led her off the path, towards the trees.
“Can I have one of those?”
In the shadows, as he lit her a cigarette, she cupped the flame. Reflections of the fire danced in her eyes.
“All right.” She took a pace back, hugging herself as if she were cold. “It’s true my parents knew Stuckart before the war. It’s true I went to see him before Christmas. But I didn’t call him. He called me.”
“When?”
“On Saturday. Late.”
“What did he say?”
She laughed. “Oh no, Sturmbannfuhrer. In my business information is a commodity, exchangeable on the open market. But I’m willing to trade.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Everything. Why you had to break into that apartment last night. Why you are keeping secrets from your own people. Why the Gestapo almost killed you an hour ago.”
“Oh that…’He smiled. He felt weary. He leaned his back against the rough bark of the tree and stared across the park. It seemed to him he had nothing to lose.
Two days ago” he began, “I fished a body out of the Havel.”
He told her everything. He told her about Buhler’s death and Luther’s disappearance. He told her what Jost had seen, and what had happened to him. He told her about Nebe and Globus, about the art treasures and the Gestapo file. He even told her about Pili’s statement. And -something he had noticed about criminals confessing, even those who knew that their confessions would one day hang them — when he finished, he felt better.
She was silent a long time. That’s fair,” she said. “I don’t know how this helps, but this is what happened to me.”
She had gone to bed early on Saturday night. The weather had been foul — the start of that great bank of rain that had washed over the city for three days. She was not feeling sociable, had not for weeks. You know how it is. Berlin can get to you like that. Make you feel small and hopeless in the shade of those vast grey buildings; the endless uniforms; the unsmiling bureaucrats.
The phone went about eleven-thirty, just as she was drifting off to sleep. A man’s voice. Taut. Precise. There is a telephone booth opposite your apartment. Go to it. I shall call you there in five minutes. If the booth is occupied, please wait.”
She had not recognised who it was, but something in the man’s tone had told her it was not a joke. She had dressed, grabbed her coat, hobbled down the stairs, into the street, trying to pull on her shoes and walk at the same time. The rain had hit her like a slap across the face. Across the street, outside the station, was an old wooden telephone kiosk -empty, thank God.
It was while she was waiting for the call that she remembered where she had first heard the voice.
“Go back a bit,” said March. “Your first meeting with Stuckart. Describe it.”
That was before Christmas. She had called him cold. Explained who she was. He seemed reluctant, but she had persisted, so he had invited her over for tea. He had a shock of white curly hair and one of those orangey tans, as if he had spent a long time in the sun, or under an ultraviolet lamp. The woman, Maria, was also in the apartment, but behaved like a maid. She served some tea then left them to it. Usual chat: how is your mother? Very well, thank you.
Ha, that was a joke.
She flicked ash from the end of her cigarette.
“My mother’s career died when she left Berlin. My arrival buried it. As you can imagine, there wasn’t a great demand for German actresses in Hollywood during the war.”
And then he had asked about her father, in a gritted-teeth kind of a way. And she had been able to take great pleasure in saying: very well, thank you. He had retired in “sixty-one, when Kennedy took over. Deputy Under-Secretary of State Michael Maguire. God bless the United States of America. Stuckart had met him through Mom, had known him when he was at the Embassy here.
March interrupted: “When was that?”
“Thirty-seven to “thirty-nine.”
“Goon.”
Well, then he had wanted to know about the job and she had told him. World European Features: he had never heard of them. Not surprising, she said: nobody had. That sort of thing. Polite interest, you know. So when she left she gave him her card, and he had bent to kiss her hand, had lingered over it, made a meal of it, made her feel sick. He had patted her bottom on the way out. And that had been that, she was glad to say. Five months: nothing.
“Until Saturday night?”
Until Saturday night. She had been in the telephone kiosk no more than thirty seconds when he rang. Now all the arrogance was gone from his voice.
“Charlotte?” He had placed heavy, emphasis on the second syllable. Shar-lott-e. “Forgive this melodrama. Your telephone is tapped.”
They say every foreigner’s line is tapped.”
This is true. When I was in the Ministry, I used to see transcripts. But public boxes are safe. I am in a public box now. I came on Thursday and took the number of the one you are in. It is serious, you see. I need to contact the authorities in your country.”
“Why not talk to the Embassy?”
The Embassy is not safe.”
He had sounded terrified. And tight. Definitely, he had been drinking.
“Are you saying you want to defect?”
A long silence. Then there had been a noise behind her. A sound of metal tapping on glass. She had turned to discover, in the rain and the dark, a man, with his hands cupped round his eyes, peering into the kiosk, looking like a deep-sea diver. She must have let out a cry or something because Stuckart had got very frightened.
“What was that? What is it?”
“Nothing. Just someone wanting to use the phone.”
“We must be quick. I deal only with your father, not the Embassy.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Come to me tomorrow and I will tell you everything. Shar-lott-e, I will make you the most famous reporter in the world.”
