The Stars’ Tennis Balls

‘This is Hamburg!’ said Cosima. ‘Nothing closes.’

‘Good. Perhaps we can go shopping together. After I have concluded business with you father, naturally.’

Cosima smiled happily. ‘My favourite occupation. Hugo Boss, I think. Something dark and elegant.’

The platinum American Express card that Gunther had found for Ned was in the name of Paul Kretschmer, and the blonde woman in black at the desk scarcely glanced at it as she slid it through the side of a machine she kept under the desk and passed it back to him with his room key. Ned supposed it was some kind of cash register, but it was unlike any he had seen before.

‘Oh, by the way,’ he said. ‘I need to fly to Geneva on Monday morning.’ He gave her a folded hundred mark note and his best smile. ‘Be good enough to arrange it for me would you?’

‘Certainly, Herr Kretschmer,’ she beamed at him. ‘With pleasure. Do you prefer Swiss Air or Lufthansa?’

‘I tell you what,’ said Ned, ‘you choose. First Class.’

‘First Class?’ she frowned slightly. ‘I am not sure they have First Class on such a short flight.’

‘Whatever…’ Ned waved a hand airily. ‘I’m sure you’ll find me the best seat.'

‘Of course, Herr Kretschmer. And may I help you with anything else this evening?’

‘It’s been a long day,’ Ned replied. ‘Nothing but a shower and bed. No calls please.’

He crossed over to the lifts, trying not to look impressed by the profusion of late nineteenth-century marble, mahogany and oak panelling all around him. No calls! He smiled at his own impudence.

The receptionist watched his firm athletic stride as he walked to the lifts and turned to the manager.

‘Oh, my God,’ she said with a sigh. ‘I think I’m in love.’

‘Me too,’ said the manager.

Ned spent Saturday morning playing with the television remote control and reading the magazines in his suite. Gunther called him up at lunchtime and invited him to dinner at his flat, just around the corner from the hotel.

‘I should be honoured and delighted,’ Ned replied. ‘I’m going to do some shopping this afternoon, I don’t suppose your charming daughter would be kind enough to escort me around the town? I assure you my intentions are strictly honourable.’

Gunther chuckled down the telephone. ‘That would disappoint her terribly,’ he said. ‘She was hoping they were anything but!’

With Cosima’s help Ned bought a laptop, a printer and a large number of books on computing and the internet. The magazines in his room had seemed to be full of articles on this and he wanted to understand everything he could about a world that appeared to be so important. He had asked Cosima shyly what the internet was and she had given an explanation that had left him more confused than before.

The shop that sold the computer had seemed to be nothing more nor less than an Aladdin’s cave of incomprehensible magic. Ned had tried not to look astonished at the pictures on the screens, at the colour photographs printed out, at the scanners, video cameras, global positioning devices and hand-held electronic diaries that were shown to him. Compact discs reminded him of an episode of Star Trek he had seen as a boy and the mobile phone he bought, which flipped out when he wanted to speak, put him even more firmly in mind of the Starship Enterprise. When he discovered that these telephones were more than walkie- talkies, but could actually be used to talk to any phone, mobile or otherwise in any country, he frankly gaped and Cosima and the shop assistant found it hard to suppress their giggles. He was Rip Van Winkle, awaking from a hundred-year sleep.

At the railway station overlooking the Alster, he sat in a photo-booth and had six passport photographs taken.

As he waited for the photographs to appear he murmured under his breath. ‘Thank God not everything has changed. These machines, I remember well.’

It took the hotel porter two journeys to transfer all Ned’s purchases from the taxi to his suite and he stood looking at the pile of shopping in the drawing-room with a look of such comical bewilderment on his face that Cosima reached up and kissed him.

‘Where have you come from, Karl?’

‘You mustn’t call me Karl,’ said Ned. ‘Here I am Paul Kretschmer.’

‘You have come from another planet. From heaven, perhaps?’

‘From heaven?’ Ned smiled. ‘No, I don’t think you could call it that.’

‘Where then? You have never seen a computer, a mobile phone, a CD, a Palm Pilot, a video camera…, where have you come from?’

She pulled him towards the bedroom, but he braced his legs like a mule.

‘Cosima…'

‘So. It follows that you are also probably a virgin. Don’t be frightened.’

Frightened.

It struck Ned, given all that he had done in the last twenty-four hours, and the strange universe he had emerged into after eighteen years that he should be frightened. He should be scared by this baffling world of infra-red, satellite positioning and microwaves, scared by its gadgets and buttons and bleeps. He should be scared too by his friendless isolation in this world, scared by Gunther and, most of all, he should be terrified out of his wits by the very fearless ease with which he had been able to achieve everything he had thus far. He knew, however, that he had become someone who would never feel fear again. In the past he had been afraid because of what had happened to him. Now and in the future, he would never be a passive victim of events. Nothing would ever happen to him. He would make things happen to others and fear would have no place in him.

‘All right,’ he said following Cosima into the bedroom. ‘Teach me, then. I’m a fast learner.’

The following afternoon Gunther paid a visit to the Vier Jahreszeiten and with a ta-da of triumph, produced from his jacket a gleaming German passport. Ned took it greedily, but before he had so much as turned the first page to look at his photograph, he had betrayed his ignorance once more.

‘Germany? But it doesn’t say which one…’

Gunther turned to his daughter with a look of astonishment. ‘Which one?’

‘There is only one Germany,’ said Cosima. ‘Since eighty-nine. Don’t tell me you didn’t know that?’

‘Ah, yes… of course.’ Ned smiled. ‘I… er… I forgot for a moment.'

‘Forgot?’ Gunther stared at him in disbelief.

‘And my last explanation of you,’ sighed Cosima, ‘was that you might be a lost Berliner from the East, tortured by the Stasi and only just returned to society. Now I am completely mystified.’

‘Who are you?’ Gunther asked. ‘Who the hell are you? You’re a German but you know nothing of Germany.’

‘Let’s just say I’ve been away. Does it matter? We have done business and we have helped each other. I am grateful to you both for everything.’ Ned picked up a bottle of champagne. ‘Tomorrow morning early, I fly to Switzerland, so let us drink to each other and part friends.’

‘Here,’ said Cosima, taking the bottle, ‘it helps if you twist the cork, like so. When will you be back?’

‘My plans are uncertain. ‘Tell me, Gunther. Do you happen to have any contacts in Geneva who might be useful to me?’

‘You have more to sell? If you do, believe me I would be happy to take any surplus off your hands.’

‘No, no. I may need another passport, that’s all.’

‘You should see my friend Nikki,’ said Gunther, scribbling a number on a card. ‘He’s a Russian, but nothing happens in Geneva without his permission.’

‘Thank you.’ Ned took the card and handed Gunther a glass. ‘Prosit.’

‘Prosit.’

Cosima was inclined to be tearful as she left with her father. ‘I will never see you again,’ she sniffed, clinging to Ned’s jacket.

‘Nonsense. You have been a wonderful friend to me, of course we shall see each other again. I do not forget friends. I will call for you one day.’

‘Come, my dear,’ said Gunther from the doorway. ‘Goodbye, Karl, Paul, whatever your name is. If you do happen across another consignment – ‘

‘You will be the first to know,’ Ned assured him.

He closed the door and leaned against it.

Outside in the corridor he heard Gunther hiss to his daughter. ‘A mental patient, you mark my words.’

‘Daddy, he’s the sanest man either of us has ever met and you know it.’

‘He can’t even open a champagne bottle!’

‘And what proof of lunacy is that? You can’t open a pickle jar.’

‘Who else could get hold of medical grade stuff like that? It all fits, I tell you.’

They continued arguing as they went around the corner towards the lifts.

Ned smiled and looked at the room and the parcels around it. He had a great deal of packing to do.

Ned walked into the hall of the Banque Cotter Cantonaise and smiled at the expensively pearled female cashier.

‘I wonder if I might see the manager about my account?’ It was all very well for Babe to write down numbers and passwords, but how did one actually go about the business of withdrawing money from a Swiss bank? Ned was entirely prepared to be disappointed. He imagined a smooth-faced bank official staring at him with supercilious contempt.

‘This account was opened thirty years ago, sir. It cannot be yours.’

‘I … it was my father’s.’

‘We have no instructions from him. Do you have papers, sir? Accreditation of any kind?’

In his mind, the striped-trousered official would press a bell under his desk and Ned would be tossed onto the pavement or even sent to gaol for attempted fraud. Or perhaps the British had got there first and left word with the bank.

‘Sir, this account was closed down many years ago. Our security officer will now escort you to the British Consulate.’

Maybe the whole thing had all been a figment of Babe’s imagination.

In the event things proved much simpler.

The cashier passed him a form and he filled in the account number. There was no space for passwords. She took the form, looked briefly down at it and, with