Emerald Decision

focus behind the rubicund, smiling face. 'Working on the unit designations—' He sat down beside McBride, hand on the younger man's arm immediately in a conspiratorial gesture, voice lowered. For five per cent, Goessler was apparently only too willing to subordinate himself to McBride. McBride nodded, amused. 'I have so far traced one man living in Berlin here who was with XLV Division in France during the — critical time.'

'You're sure of this?' McBride smiled, saw a moment of calculation in Goessler's eyes, dismissed it, and added: 'Can I meet him?'

'That is being arranged — by my secretary. Possibly this afternoon. The records are very sketchy. I think we are lucky to find this one man. There may be others, of course.'

'If he knows enough, it may not matter—'

'Of course — your visa terminates tomorrow—'

'Shit, yes.'

'You can rely on me to continue — our work, Thomas.' Goessler smiled at the introduction of the Christian name. For him, it seemed to seal something.

'I'll get this stuff duplicated, Klaus.' McBride indicated the documents with a wave of his hand. 'Thank you.'

Goessler bowed his head in a bird-like eating movement towards McBride.

'It is exciting — and it will be remunerative, Thomas. Much more interesting than the early years of the German Communist Party, I assure you.'

Goessler's laughter — which caused the beavering team of students to look up in unfeigned surprise — seemed to bellow in the quiet of the Archives Department of the university library.

* * *

He was the janitor for A block of flats out on the Greifswalder Strasse, well into the north-east suburbs of East Berlin. A fifties built, unrelievedly grey area of workers' apartments in ugly, duplicated blocks. No trace of history prior to the war and the peace and the Communist Party of the DDR, as if the erasure of the past had been deliberate, final. He had been a Funkmeister — a Signals sergeant-major — with the Signals Abteilung of XLV Infantry Division, and his name was Richard Kohl and he was now an upstanding, clean-nosed member of the Communist Party — and undoubtedly an HVA 'unofficial' set to monitor the behaviour, visitors and domestic life of the occupants of his block of flats — having been an eager member of the Nazi Party since 1936. He'd transferred from the Wehrmacht to the Waffen-SS in 1942, and ended up at Leningrad for his pains. A short prison sentence after he was caught on the outskirts of Berlin by the Red Army, a process of 'reeducation', and he was fit for service in the new DDR.

He was thin, in his early sixties, and with a padded, complacent mind. As he talked of 1940, however — undoubtedly remembering forward through the remainder of the war — a gritty quality of survival seemed to emanate from him and McBride could no longer simply despise him.

'Yes, we were transferred to the Brest area late in October — if you say the twenty-sixth, sir, I won't argue. Near Plabennec, sir, that's correct.'

Goessler had insisted on accompanying McBride, but remained carefully silent during the interview. McBride and Kohl might have been alone in the simple, comfortable janitor's apartment. Kohl's wife had been sent shopping. Pictures of party leaders on the wall, a small TV set, patterned carpet which clashed with the flowered curtains, a solid, plain three-piece suite, a square-edged, dark dining-table, the flimsy chairs of which were covered with the material from the curtains. Flowered wallpaper. McBride allowed one part of his mind to indulge itself seeking an analogous room. He finally found it in British films of the 1940s — there was something old-fashioned about the room, as if the consumer-boom of the fifties and sixties simply hadn't happened. It hadn't here, he reminded himself.

'I remember those weeks — we were taking it turn and turn about in tents and billets, sir,' he added, smiling with the recollection. Then he shook his head. 'Officers had billets in the villages around — we had tents a lot of the time, or barns, or outhouses, sheds.'

'Why were you there, Herr Kohl? Wasn't such temporary billeting strange for France at that time?'

'Yes, it was. But we were just told — special assignment. And that meant you didn't ask questions, just did it.'

McBride restrained the temptation to glance in Goessler's direction. Kohl seemed unaware of the German academic in one corner, perched on a dining-room chair, occasionally making his own notes.

'What was that assignment — what did you do during those weeks?'

'Played around with radio-gear, ran signals exercises — as we always did.'

'Nothing — special'?' McBride's disappointment- was evident.

'No, sir. More intensive practice, a whole new range of codes to learn — though we didn't use them in practice — but not much more than that.'

'Your briefing — what was your briefing?'

'I — sir, I never had a briefing. I was in hospital, caught influenza sleeping in those tents. Hospital in Brest —'

'How long?'

'Late November — perhaps even early December when I rejoined my unit.'

'And where was your unit then?'

'Stood down, sir. Rest and recuperation, regrouped around the Rennes area. Proper billets—'

McBride's face screwed up in frustrated disappointment.

Then he said very slowly: 'And what happened while you were away?'

Kohl thought very carefully. 'XLV Division never moved — no, they did, sir. One of my pals told me they'd all been shipped down to Brest, by lorry. Now, when was that?' He screwed up his thin face with the effort of recollection, rubbed his pale forehead beneath the thin grey hair, tapped his pursed lips, then said: 'Sorry, sir — late in November, but I don't remember—'

'That's all right,' McBride said hollowly. 'Go on, what happened?'

'They waited in Brest for two days, then got shipped back to Plabennec, every man in the division.'

'No rumours, nothing like that?'

'Everyone thought it was England, sir. Our new codes were in English, I remember.'

'England, with two divisions and a Fallschirmjaeger Division's rifle regiments?' McBride laughed, concentrating his sudden absence of enthusiasm in the mocking sound.' The Isle of Wight, maybe, Herr Kohl—'

'I remember, the Fallschirmjaeger left a couple of days before the Division was shipped to Brest. Just weren't there in the morning, so the lads said. Never saw them again — and there was a lot of aircraft activity that previous night, heading for England.'

'They all disappeared?'

'Three rifle regiments, recce company, signals, the whole lot. There was even a Parachute Artillery Abteilung that came in at the beginning of November — with the ten-o-five recoilless guns — they'd gone as well.'

'Where, Herr Kohl — flown out or transferred?' McBride leaned towards the former Funkmeister. Goessler coughed, making Kohl shift slightly in his chair, aware of his fellow German again. He shook his head.

'And, as far as you're concerned, these units of parachute troops vanished — in England?'

Kohl nodded. 'Yes, sir. They couldn't be anywhere else — could they?'

McBride shook hands with Goessler once more, the German clasping both hands round McBride's hand, pumping vigorously as if to restore circulation.

'It is both more and less of a mystery, eh, Thomas?' he said, smiling like a cut melon. 'Do not worry — I will continue the work here. You must now go to England in pursuit of our mysterious parachutists — anything I learn will be sent to you. That part of it will be simple.'

McBride nodded.

'Klaus, thank you. I confess I was disappointed — but there was enough there to make me go on, track the whole story down. Maybe it's even better than before — the disappearing Fallschirmjaeger, uh? Everyone likes a mystery. Maybe the book will change its shape if I can get hold of more—' His lips compressed as he realized he was walking away from East Berlin, from papers he might not have seen, people he might have been able to interview. 'If I apply for another visa, you can smooth it, mm?' Goessler nodded. 'People is what we want, Klaus. Men who served in those units with Kohl — records of those night flights late in