He straightened, feeling awkward. “Of course. The bar in Potsdamer Strasse.”
Neither man made a move towards the other. The American’s face was a mask.
March stared at Nightingale and said softly: “What’s going on here, Charlie?”
She stood on tiptoe and whispered in his ear. “Don’t say anything. Not here. Something’s happened.’Then, loudly: “Isn’t this interesting, the three of us?” She took March’s arm and guided him towards the bathroom. “I think you should come into my parlour.”
In the bathroom, Nightingale assumed a proprietorial air. He turned on the cold water taps above the basin and the bath, increased the volume of the radio. The programme had changed. Now the clapboard walls vibrated to the strains of “German jazz” — a watery syncopation, officially approved, from which all traces of “Negroid influences” had been erased. When he had arranged everything to his satisfaction, Nightingale perched on the edge of the bath. March sat next to him. Charlie squatted on the floor.
She opened the meeting: “I told Henry about my visitor the other morning. The one you had the fight with. He thinks the Gestapo may have planted a bug.”
Nightingale gave an amiable grin. “Afraid that’s the way your country works, Herr Sturmbannfuhrer.”
Your country…
“I’m sure — a wise precaution.”
Perhaps he isn’t younger than me, thought March. The American had thick blond hair, blond eyelashes, a ski-tan. His teeth were absurdly regular- strips of enamel, gleaming white. Not many one-pot meals in his childhood, no watery potato soups or sawdust sausages in that complexion. His boyish looks embraced all ages from twenty-five to fifty.
For a few moments nobody spoke. Euro-pap filled the silence. Charlie said to March: “I know you told me not to speak to anyone. But I had to. Now you have to trust Henry and Henry has to trust you. Believe me, there’s no other way.”
“And, naturally, we both have to trust you.”
“Oh come on…”
“All right.” He held up his hands in a gesture of surrender.
Next to her, balanced on top of the lavatory, was the latest in American portable tape recorders. Trailing from one of its sockets was a cable, at the end of which, instead of a microphone, was a small suction cup.
“Listen,” she said. “You’ll understand.” She leaned across and pressed a switch. The spools of tape began to revolve.
“Fraulein Maguire?”
“Yes?”
“The same procedure as before, Fraulein, if you please.”
There was a click, followed by a buzz.
She pressed another switch, stopping the tape. “That was the first call. You said he’d ring. I was waiting for him.” She was triumphant. “It’s Martin Luther.”
This was a crazy business, the craziest he had ever known, like picking your way through a haunted house in the Tiergarten fun fair. No sooner did you plant your feet on solid ground than the floorboards gave way beneath you. You rounded a corner and a madman rushed out. Then you stepped back and found that all the time you had been looking at yourself in a distorting mirror.
Luther.
March said: “What time was that?”
“Eleven forty-five.”
Eleven forty-five: forty minutes after the discovery of the body on the railway tracks. He thought of the exultant look on Globus’s face, and he smiled.
Nightingale said: “What’s so funny?”
“Nothing. I’ll explain. What happened next?”
“Exactly as before. I went over to the telephone box and five minutes later he rang again.”
March raised his hand to his brow. “Don’t tell me you dragged that machine all the way across the street?”
“Damn it, I needed some proof!” She glared at him. “I knew what I was doing. Look.” She stood to demonstrate. The deck hangs from this shoulder strap. The whole thing fits under my coat. The wire runs down my sleeve. I attach the suction cup to the receiver, like this. Easy. It was dark. Nobody could have seen a thing.”
Nightingale, the professional diplomat, cut in smoothly: “Never mind how you got the tape, Charlie, or whether you should have got it.” He said to March: “May I suggest we simply let her play it?”
Charlie pushed a button. There was a fumbling noise, greatly magnified — the sound of her attaching the microphone to the telephone — and then:
“We have not much time. I am a friend of Stuckart.”
An elderly voice, but not frail. A voice with the sarcastic, sing-song quality of the native Berliner. He spoke exactly as March had expected. Then Charlie’s voice, in her good German:
“Tell me what you want.”
“Stuckart is dead.”
“I know. I found him.”
A long pause. On the tape, in the background, March could hear a station announcement. Luther must have used the distraction caused by the discovery of the body to make a phone call from the Gotenland platform.
Charlie whispered: “He went so quiet, I thought I’d frightened him away.”
March shook his head. “I told you. You’re his only hope.”
The conversation on the tape resumed.
“You know who I am?”
“Yes.”
Wearily: “You say: What do I want? What do you think I want? Asylum in your country.”
“Tell me where you are.”
“I can pay.”
“That won’t—”
“I have information. Certain facts.”
“Tell me where you are. I’ll come and fetch you. We’ll go to the Embassy.”
“Too soon. Not yet.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow morning. Listen to me. Nine o’clock. The Great Hall. Central steps. Have you got that?”
“Right”
“Bring someone from the Embassy. But you must be there as well.”
“How do we recognise you?”
A laugh. “No. / shall recognise you, show myself when I am satisfied.” Pause. “Stuckart said you were young and pretty.” Pause. “That was Stuckart all over.” Pause. “Wear something that stands out.”
“I have a coat. Bright blue.”
“Pretty girl in blue. It is good. Until the morning, Fraulein.”
Click.
Purr.
The clatter of the tape machine being switched off.
“Play it again,” said March.
She rewound the tape, stopped it, pressed PLAY. March looked away, watched the rusty water swirling down the plughole, as Luther’s voice mingled with the reedy sound of a single clarinet. “Pretty girl in blue…” When they had heard it through for the second time, Charlie reached over and turned off the machine.
“After he hung up, I came over here and dropped off the tape. Then I went back to the telephone box and tried to call you. You weren’t there. So I called Henry. What else could I do? He says he wants someone from the Embassy.”
