Berlin Game

12

From the top of the brightly coloured apartment blocks of Märkisches Viertel, where sixty thousand West Berliners live in what the architects call 'a planned community' and its inhabitants call a 'concrete jungle', you can see across the nearby border, and well into the Eastern Sector.

'Some of them like it here,' said Axel Mauser. 'At least they say they do.' Axel had aged a lot over the last few years. He was three months younger than I was, but his pinched white face and large bald patch, and the way his years at desk and filing cabinet had bowed his head, made him look nearer to fifty than forty. 'They say they like having the shops and the church and the swimming pool and restaurants all built as part of the complex.'

I sipped a little beer and looked around the room. It was a barren place; no books, no pictures, no music, no carpet. Just a TV, a sofa, two armchairs and a coffee table with a vase of plastic flowers. In the corner, newspaper was laid out to protect the floor against oil. On it were the pieces of a dismantled racing bicycle that was being repaired to make a birthday present for his teenage son. 'But you don't?'

'Finish your beer and have another. No, I hate it. We've got twelve schools and fifteen kindergartens here in this complex. Twelve schools! It makes me feel like a damned termite. Some of these kids have never been downtown – they've never seen the Berlin we grew up in.'

'Maybe they are better off without it,' I said.

There was a snap and hiss as he opened a can of Export Pils. 'You're right, Bernd,' he said. 'What will kids find down there hi the middle of the city except crime and dope and misery?' He poured half the can for himself and the other half for me. Axel was like that; he was a sharer.

'Well, you've got a view to beat anything.'

'It's amazing how far you can see on a really clear day. But I'd happily trade the view to be back in that old slum my grandfather had. I keep hearing about the "German miracle", but I don't see any of it. My father gave me a new bicycle for my twelfth birthday. What can I afford to give my eldest son? That damned secondhand one.'

'Kids don't think like that, Axel,' I said. 'Even I can see it's a special racing model. He'll like it all the more because you've worked so hard to get it ready for him.'

Axel Mauser had been one of the brightest kids in the school: top of the class at chemistry and mathematics, and so keen at languages that he used to lend me his bicycle in exchange for English conversation practice. Now he was working in the Polizeipräsidium records office as a senior clerk, and living in this cramped apartment with three children and a wife, who – even on a Saturday – worked in the nearby AEG factory to keep their secondhand BMW running and give them their regular package holiday in Ibiza. 'But where can I afford to move to? Do you know what rents people are paying in Berlin nowadays?'

'Your dad went back to live in the East.'

Axel smiled grimly. 'All because of that bloody fool Binder – Max Binder, remember that Spieler?

Spieler: did he mean actor or gambler, I wondered. Max was a bit of both. 'I always liked Max,' I said.

Axel paused as if about to argue with me but then he went on: 'Max kept writing to Dad saying how much he was enjoying life over there. My dad believed it all. You know what Dad's like. He kept complaining about how it was over thirty years since he'd strolled down Unter den Linden. He'd wonder if he'd meet old friends on the Alexanderplatz – he was always on about that damned "Alex" – and he wanted to see the restoration job that's been done on the cathedral. And he'd get talking to Tante Lisl in that bar of hers when there were no customers in, and they'd be wallowing in nostalgia about seeing President Hindenburg in the Bristol and Lotte Lenya at the Wintergarten…'

'And talking to Joseph Goebbels at the bar of the Kaiserhof,' I said. 'Yes, I've heard all those stories. I couldn't get enough of your dad's yarns when I was young. I saw a lot of him in those days when he was behind the bar at List's.' From the next apartment there came the incessant sound of police sirens, shooting and the joyful shouts of children watching TV. Axel went across to the wall and thumped on it with the flat of his hand. This had no effect other than to make some of the plastic flowers quiver.

Axel shrugged at the continuing noise. 'And working for your dad too. Suppose they find out that he used to do those jobs for your dad? They'd throw him straight into prison.'

'Don't baby him, Axel. Rolfs a tough old bastard. He can look after himself.'

Axel nodded. 'So I said, "If you think you'll recapture your youth by going across the city, Dad, you go. And, take Tante Lisl with you… " When my mother was alive, she wouldn't listen to all those stories of his. She'd just tell him to shut up.'

'Well, he found a ready audience at that bar.'

'He was always complaining about working for Tante Lisl, wasn't he? But he loved standing behind the bar talking about "the real Berlin ", in the days when there was a respect for Christian values – eine christliche Weltanschauung. And after a few customers had bought him drinks, he'd be talking about the Kaiserzeit as if he'd been a general in the first war instead of an artillery captain in the second.' Axel drank some beer. There's no fool like an old fool,' he said with unexpected vehemence, and looked at his beer so that I could not see his eyes. 'I'd hate anything to happen to him, Bernd.'

'I know,' I said. 'But don't worry about him. He's over sixty-five, so he is permitted to visit the West.'

'He sees Werner sometimes.' He looked at me. 'They're in some kind of racket together.'

It was more a question than a statement. 'Are they?'

'Are you still with the Army intelligence people?'

I nodded. It was my cover story for Berliners such as Axel who remembered my father and had seen me coming and going, and had given me the use of their sofas and their motorcars from time to time. It was not the sort of cover story that earned respect from Germans. Germany is the only country in the world where a job in any sort of intelligence-gathering organization is considered little better than pimping. It is a product of the postwar years when informers were everywhere.

'You're not after Dad?'

'Stop worrying about him, Axel,' I said. 'Rolf came right through the war, and then survived through the years that followed the war. I'm sure he's doing fine. In fact, I might be able to look him up next time I go into the East Sector. I'll take him something, if you like.'

'So what's it all about, Bernd?' said Axel. He got up and went to the window, staring eastwards to where the spike of the East German TV tower rose out of the Alexanderplatz. Once it was the heart of the city, where pedestrians dodged bikes, bikes dodged cars, and cars dodged the trams that came through a five-way intersection at frightening speeds. Now the traffic had vanished and the 'Alex' was just an orderly concrete expanse, with red flags, flower boxes and slogans. 'You might as well come out with it,' said Axel, still staring out the window.

'With what?'

'It's nice to see you again, Bernd. But you work out of London nowadays, you say. With only a couple of days in the city and lots of old friends to visit, you didn't come to my little place to talk about how well I did in my chemistry exams, and have a can of beer – which I notice you drink very very slowly, as policemen do when they are on duty – and be interrupted by the shouting of the kids next door, and sit close to the heating because I can't afford to turn it up any higher. You must have had a reason to come here, and I think you are going to ask me a favour.'

'Remember a couple of years ago when I was looking for that kid who'd stolen a briefcase from an office near the Zoo station?'

'You asked me to look up a post-office box number and tell you who rented it. But that was an official request. That came through the British Army.'

'This one is more delicate, Axel.' I took from my pocket the envelope that Frank Harrington had left in my street guide. Axel took it reluctantly; even then he didn't immediately look at it. 'It's urgent, I suppose? These things are always urgent.' He read the address.

'It is, Axel. Otherwise I could have gone through the post office.'

He laughed scornfully. 'Have you tried getting anything out of our wonderful post office lately? Last week it took them four days to deliver a letter from a postbox in Tiergarten, and then it was nearly torn in two. And the price for a letter now…'He read the numbers that were the address. 'One thousand is Berlin and twenty-eight is Lübars.'

'You said Polizeipräsidium kept copies of the forms the box renters sign. Could you get the name and address of the person who rents that box at Lubars post office? Could you get it even on a Saturday?'

'I'll phone from the bedroom.'

Thanks, Axel.'

'It depends who's on duty this morning. I can't order anyone to do it. It's strictly forbidden… it's a criminal offence.'

'If I could clear up the inquiry immediately, I could go home.'

'We all thought you'd grow up to become a gangster,' said Axel. 'Did I ever tell you that?'

'Yes, Axel. You've told me that many times.'

'We asked Herrn Storch, the mathematics teacher, but he said all the English were like you.'

'Some of them are worse, Axel,' I said.

He didn't laugh; he nodded. He wanted me to know how much he disliked it. He wanted me to think twice before I asked him more such favours. When he went into the bedroom to phone, he turned the key in the door. He wanted to be sure that I could not get close enough to hear him.

The call took only five minutes. I suppose the Polizeipräsidium have such records on a computer.

'The addressee, Mrs Harrington, is the renter of the box. She gave no an address in Lübars,' said Axel when he returned from the phone. 'I know exactly where it is. It's a street of beautiful houses with a view across open farmland. What wouldn't I give to live in such a place.'

'How difficult is it to get a postbox in a false name?' I asked.

'It depends who is on duty. But you don't have to provide much to get it in any name you wish. Many people have boxes under a nom de plume or a stage name, and so on.'

'I have not been to Lübars since we were kids. Is it still as pretty as it used to be?'

'Lübars village. We're quite close. If this window faced north, I could show you the street. They've preserved everything: the little eighteenth-century village church, the fire station and the village green with the fine chestnut trees. The farmhouses and the old inn. It's just a stone's throw away but it's like another world.'

'I'll get going, Axel,' I said. 'Thanks for the beer.'

'And what if on Monday they fire me? What then? You say how really sorry you are, and I spend the rest of my life trying to support a family on social welfare payments.'

I said nothing.

'You're irresponsible, Bernd. You always were.'

I would have expected Frank Harrington to have his mistress hidden away in a small anonymous apartment block somewhere in the French Sector of the city where no one notices what's happening. But the address Axel Mauser had provided was in the northernmost part of the Western Sector, a prong of land sandwiched between the Tegel Forest and the Wall. There were small farms here just a short way from the city centre, and tractors were parked on the narrow cobbled lanes among the shiny Porsches and four-litre Mercedes.

The big family houses were designed to look as though they'd been here since Bismarck, but they were too flawless to be anything but reconstructions. I cruised slowly down an elegant tree-lined road following three children on well-groomed ponies. It was neat and tidy and characterless, like those Hollywood back lots designed to look like anywhere old and foreign.

Number 40 was a narrow two-storey house, with a front garden big enough for two large trees and with a lot of empty space behind it. There was a sign on the chain fence, bellevue kennels, and another that said beware of the dogs in three languages, including German. Even before I'd read it, the dogs began barking. They sounded like very big dogs.

Once through the inner gate, I could see a wired compound and a brick outbuilding where some dogs were crowding at the gate trying to get out. 'Good dog,' I said, but I don't think they heard me.

A young woman came from somewhere at the back of the house. She was about twenty-two years old, with soft grey eyes, a tanned sort of complexion, and jet-black hair drawn back into a bun. She was wearing khaki-coloured cotton pants, and a matching shirt with shoulder tabs and button-down pockets. It was all tailored to fit very tight. Over it she had a sleeveless sheepskin jacket – fleece inwards – with the sort of bright flower-patterned embroidery that used to be a status symbol for hippies.

She looked me up and down long enough to recognize my Burberry trench coat and Professor Higgins hat. 'Did you come to buy a dog?' she said in good English.

'Yes,' I said immediately.

'We only have German shepherds.'

'I like German shepherds.' A big specimen of this breed emerged from the house. It came within six feet of us, looked at the woman, before hunching its shoulders and growling menacingly at me.

'You didn't come to buy a dog,' she said, looking at my face. Whatever she saw there amused her, for she smiled to show perfect white teeth. So did the dog.

'I'm a friend of Frank's,' I said.

'Of my Frank?'

'There's only one Frank,' I said. She smiled as if that were a joke.

'Has anything -?'

'No, Frank is fine,' I said. 'In fact, he doesn't even know I've come to see you.'

She'd been peering at me with eyes half closed, and now suddenly she opened her mouth and gave a soft shout of surprise. 'You're Werner's English friend, aren't you?'

We looked at each other, momentarily silenced by our mutual surprise. 'Yes, I am, Mrs Volkmann,' I said. 'But I didn't come here to talk about Werner.'

She looked around to see if her neighbours were in their garden listening. But her neighbours were all safely behind their double-glazing. 'I can't remember your name but you are the Englishman who went to school with Werner… Your German is perfect,' she said, and changed into that language. 'No need for us to speak English. I'll put Rudolf in the run and then we'll go inside and have coffee. It's made already.' Rudolf growled. He did not want to go into the run unless he took me with him.

'During the week, I have a girl to help me,' said Mrs Zena Volkmann while Rudolf submitted meekly to being pushed into the wired compound. 'But at the weekend it is impossible to get anyone at any price. They say there is unemployment but people just don't want to work, that's the trouble.' Now her accent was more distinct. Ostelbisch: Germans from anywhere east of the River Elbe. Everyone agrees it is not pejorative, but I never heard anyone say it except people who came from west of the River Elbe.

We entered the house through a pantry. Arranged in rows upon a purring freezer were twelve coloured plastic bowls containing measured amounts of bread and chopped meat. There was a mop and bucket in the corner, a steel sink unit and shelves with tins of dog food, and choke chains and collars hanging from a row of hooks on the wall. 'I can't go out for more than an hour or two because the puppies have to be fed four times a day. Two litters. One lot are only four weeks old and they need constant attention. And I'm waiting for another litter any day now. I wouldn't have started it all if I'd known what it was like.'

She went up a step and opened the door into the kitchen. There was the wonderful smell of freshly made coffee. There was no sign of anything connected with the dogs. The kitchen was almost unnaturally clean and tidy, with gleaming racks of saucepans, and glassware sparkling inside a cabinet.

She snapped off the switch of the automatic coffee-maker, grabbed the jug from the hot plate, put an extra cup and saucer on the tray, and tipped some biscuits onto a matching plate. The cup was as big as a bowl and decorated with the inevitable large brightly coloured flowers. We went to sit in the back room. The rear part of the house had been altered at some time to incorporate a huge window. It gave a panoramic view of a piece of farmland beyond the dog enclosures. There was a tractor making its way slowly across the field, disturbing a flock of rooks searching for food in the brown tilled earth. Only the grey line of the Wall marred this pastoral scene. 'You get used to it,' said Mrs Volkmann, as if in reply to the question that every visitor asked.

'Not everyone does,' I said.

She took a packet of cigarettes from the table, lit one and inhaled before replying. 'My grandfather had a farm in East Prussia,' she said. 'He came here once and couldn't stop looking at the Wall. His farm was nearly eight hundred kilometres from here but that was still Germany. Do you know how far from here Poland is now? Less than sixty. That's what Hitler did for us. He made Germany into the sort of tiny second-rate little country that he so despised.'

'Shall I pour out the coffee?' I said. 'It smells good.'

'My father was a schoolteacher. He made us children learn history. He said it would prevent the same things happening again.' She smiled. There was no humour in it; it was a small, polite, modest smile, the sort of smile you see models wearing in advertisements for expensive watches.

'Let's hope so,' I said.

'It will not prevent the same things happening. Look at the world. Can't you see Hitlers all round us? There is no difference between Hitler Germany and Andropov Russia. A hammer and sickle can look very like a swastika, especially when it is flying over your head.' She picked up the coffee I'd poured for her. I watched her carefully; there was a lot of hostility in her, even if it was hidden under her smiles and hospitality. 'Werner wants me back,' she said.

'He knows nothing of my coming here,' I said.

'But he told you where to find me?'

'Are you frightened of him?' I said.

'I don't want to go back to him.'

'He thinks you are living in Munich. He thinks you ran away with a Coca-Cola truck driver.'

'That was just a boy I knew.'

'He doesn't know you're still here in Berlin,' I said. I was trying to reassure her.

'I never go downtown. Anything I need from the big department stores I have delivered. I'm frightened I'll bump into him in the food department of KaDeWe. Does he still go there and eat lunch?'

'Yes, he still goes there.'

'Then why did Frank tell you where I was?'

'Frank Harrington didn't tell me.'

'You just worked it out?' she said sarcastically.

'That's right,' I said. 'I worked it out. There's nothing very difficult about finding people these days. There are bank balances, credit cards, charge accounts, car licences, driving licences. If Werner had guessed you were living in the city, he would have found you much more quickly than I did. Werner is an expert at finding people.'

'I write postcards and have a friend of mine post them from Munich.'

I nodded. Could a professional like Werner really fall for such amateur tricks?

I looked round the room. There were a couple of Berliner Ensemble theatre posters framed on the wall and a Käthe Kollwitz lithograph. The fluffy carpet was cream and the soft furnishings were covered in natural-finish linen with orange-coloured silk cushions. It was flashy but very comfortable – no little plastic bowls or gnawed bones, no sign anywhere of the existence of the dogs. I suppose it would have to be like that for Frank Harrington. He was not the sort of man who would adapt readily to smelly austerity. Through the sliding doors I glimpsed a large mahogany dining table set with a cut-glass bowl and silver centrepiece. The largest room had been chosen for dining. I wondered who came along here and enjoyed discreet dinners with Frank and his young mistress.

'It's not a permanent arrangement,' said Mrs Volkmann. 'Frank and I – we are close, very close. But it's not permanent. When he goes back to London, it will be all over. We both knew that right from the start.' She took a biscuit and nibbled at it in a way that would show her perfect white teeth.

'Is Frank going back to London?' I said.

She'd been sitting well forward on the big soft sofa, but now she banged a fist into a silk cushion before putting it behind her and resting against it. 'His wife would like him to get promoted. She knows that a posting to London would break up his affair with me. She doesn't care about Frank's promotion except that it would get him away from Berlin and away from me.'

'Wives are like that,' I said.

'But I won't go back to Werner. Frank likes to think I'd go back to Werner if and when that happens. But I'll never go back.'

'Why does Frank like to think that? Frank hates Werner.'

'Frank feels guilty about taking me away from Werner. At first, he really worried about it. That sort of guilty feeling often turns into hatred. You know that.' She smiled and smoothed her sleeve with a sensuous gesture, trailing her fingertips down her arm. She was a very beautiful woman. 'I get so bored at weekends,' she said.

'Where's Frank?'

'He's in Cologne. He won't be back until tomorrow night.' She smiled suggestively. 'He leaves me alone too much.'

I don't know if that was the invitation to bed that it sounded like, but I was not in the mood to find out. I was getting to the age when feelings of rejection linger. So I drank coffee, smiled, and looked at the grey line of the Wall. It was still early afternoon but it was getting misty.

Then what have you come here for? I suppose London has sent you to buy me off. Do they want to give me money to leave Frank alone?'

'What kind of books do you read on those long lonely nights when Frank's not here, Mrs Volkmann? The days when people were paid money for not providing sexual favours went out with policemen in top hats.'

'Of course,' she said. A bigger smile this time. 'And that was fathers, not employers. What a shame. I was hoping you'd give me a chance to jump to my feet and say I'll never give him up, never, never, never.'

'Is that what you would have said?'

'Frank is a very attractive man, Mr -?'

'Samson. Bernard Samson.'

'Frank is an inconsiderate swine at times but he's attractive. Frank is a real man.'

'Isn't Werner a real man?'

'Oohh, yes, I know. Werner is your friend. I have heard Werner talk of you. You are a mutual admiration society, the two of you. Well, Werner may be a fine friend, but you live with him for a year and you'd find out what he's like. He can't make up his mind about anything at all. He always wanted me to decide things: how, when, what, why. A woman marries a man to get away from all that, doesn't she?'

'Of course,' I said, and tried to make it sound as if I knew what she was talking about. The truth was, I wished like hell that I had a few more people in my life wanting to take orders instead of giving them.

'Have some more coffee,' she said sweetly. 'But then I must insist that you tell me what this is all about. Mysterious strangers can outstay their welcome too, you know.'

'You've been very patient with me, Mrs Volkmann and I appreciate that. My purpose in seeking you out was to tell you, unofficially, that under the circumstances my masters in London feel that you must be positively vetted.'

'A security check?'

'Yes, Mrs Volkmann. There will have to be a security check. You will be positively vetted.'

'This has already been done when I first married Werner.'

'Ah, well, this will be quite different. As you know, Frank Harrington is an important British official. We will have to make this what we call a Category Double X clearance. We hope you will understand why this has to be done and cooperate with the people assigned to the job.'

'I don't understand. Can't Frank arrange it?'

'If you pause a moment, Mrs Volkmann, you'll see how important it is that Frank doesn't know about it.'

'Frank will not be told?'

'Let Frank keep his private life secret. Frank's gone to a lot of trouble to do all this…' I waved a hand vaguely in the air. 'How would he feel if young men from his own office had to compile reports on where you went, who you saw, how much you have in the bank? And how will he feel if he has to read reports about some old relationships that you have half forgotten and can only cause him pain?'

She inhaled on her cigarette, and looked at me through half-closed eyes. 'Are you telling me that this is the sort of thing that your investigators will pry into?'

'You're a woman of the world, Mrs Volkmann. You've obviously guessed that the investigation has already started. None of the agents assigned to you has actually reported to me yet, but you must have spotted my men following you during the past three or four weeks. We don't assign our most experienced people to these vetting jobs of course, and I'm not surprised that you realized what is in progress.'

I waited for her reaction, but she sat well back on the sofa and looked me in the eyes. She smoked but said nothing.

I said, 'I should have come to tell you about all this a month ago, but so much work piled up on my desk that I found it impossible to get away.'

'You bastard,' she said. There was no smile this time. I had the feeling that this was the real Zena Volkmann.

'I'm just carrying out my orders, Mrs Volkmann,' I said.

'So was Eichmann,' she said bitterly.

'Yes, well you know more about German history than I do, Mrs Volkmann, so I'll have to take your word for that.'

I gulped down the last of my coffee and got to my feet. She didn't move but she watched me all the time.

'I won't go out the back way if you don't mind,' I said. 'I don't want to disturb the dogs.'

'You're frightened that the dogs will tear you to pieces,' she said.

'Well, that's another reason,' I admitted. 'No need to show me to the door.'

'Frank will get you kicked out of the service for this,' she promised.

I stopped. 'I wouldn't mention any of this to Frank if I were you, Mrs Volkmann,' I said. 'This is a London decision, a decision made by Frank's friends. If it all became official, Frank would have to face a board of inquiry. He'd have a lot of explaining to do. The chances are he'd lose his job and his pension too. If that happened, Frank's friends might feel it was all your fault. And Frank has friends in Bonn as well as London – very loyal friends.'

'Get out!'

'Unless you've something to hide, they'll be no problem,' I said.

'Get out before I set the dogs on you.'

I went back to the car and waited. I decided to give it an hour and a half and see whether my hastily improvised story provoked any comings and goings. At that time on a Saturday afternoon there was not much traffic; something should happen soon, I told myself.

I could see the house from the driver's seat of the car. It was an hour and a quarter later that she came out carrying a big Gucci suitcase and an overnight bag. She was dressed in a leopard-skin coat with a matching hat. Real skin, of course. She was not the sort of lady who worried too much about leopards. The car arrived even before she closed the garden gate. She got into the front seat beside the driver and the car moved off immediately. I reached forward to turn the ignition key, but I had already recognized the car she climbed into. It was Werner's Audi and Werner was driving it. She was talking to him with much waving of the hands as the car passed mine. I ducked down out of sight but they were too involved in their discussion to notice me. So much for all her lies about Werner. And so much for all Werner's stories about her.

No point in chasing after them. Werner would be sure to see me if I tried to follow. In any case, Berlin is well covered. The security officers at the road checkpoints, the airport and the crossing places would be able to tell me where they went.

I went back to the house. I opened the pantry window with a wire coat hanger that I found in my car. She had left hurriedly. The coloured plastic bowls were piled up unwashed in the pantry sink. Frank wouldn't like that. In fact, he wouldn't like my putting his lady to flight if he found out what I'd done. There were lots of things he wouldn't like.

There was a note on the phone. It said simply that Zena had gone away for a few days because of a family crisis and she'd phone him at the office next week. It went on to say that a neighbour would feed the dogs, and would Frank leave one hundred marks on the hall table.

Whatever kind of racket Werner was in, it looked as if Zena was in it too. I wondered if it depended upon getting information from Frank, and what sort of information it was.