The Unquiet heart

FOURTEEN

Cassells offered me a choice. I could follow Eve by ferry and overnight military train into Charlottenburg station, the rail terminal in the British Sector. But it was faster by air, if they had a spare seat. They were running a shuttle service out of RAF Northolt to Berlin. A brace of Avro Yorks was plying the route. The York was a fairly new passenger plane using the trusty Lancaster’s wings, engines, tail and wheel assembly wrapped round a wider fuselage. There were no nose or tail gun blisters on this craft, just a line of portholes running the length of the plane under each wing. The planes ferried forces mail and senior officers into Germany’s heart.

I spoke to the pilot before we took off. His RAF tunic was plastered with medal ribbons from bombing trips that had stopped only eighteen months ago. He said he still tensed his buttocks as he flew over cities, waiting for flak to erupt through the thin skin of the Lancaster and mess up his bowels. He’d only recently stopped putting an upturned tin hat under his seat. But it was nicer doing the trip in daylight under your own steam, instead of trying to hold position in an armada of two hundred bombers. Nice too, to land and get a cuppa at the other end instead of dropping your stick of incendiaries into the inferno below and going straight back.

The only problem was the Russians, he explained. “The Reds won’t let us fly over their turf. The route we take is an air tunnel. Everything outside the city and for about seventy miles to the west of us is under Russian jurisdiction. Pain in the arse. You wouldn’t think we’d fought on the same side. Thank god the Americans got the south west. At least we have Templehof.”

Besides the pilot, navigator and radio man, there were eight Army brass and two big sacks of mail for our garrison. The racket from the four Merlin engines at take-off was deafening, but dropped to a steady comforting drone after we were airborne. The Army types had documents to read, or kip to catch up on, and left me to it. I had a front seat just behind and below the raised deck where the pilot sat.

As the plane rumbled through the air, I thought of the landfall ahead. My dream back in ’42 – and that of most of the blokes I’d fought with – was to march into Berlin after giving the Germans a bloody good hiding. But weeks before D-Day, my war had been rudely interrupted. As a reluctant guest of the Gestapo I had indeed ended up in Germany, far to the south, the soft south, among the rolling hills of Bavaria. Not that I saw much of the pretty countryside, or rosy-cheeked frauleins and thigh-slapping men in lederhosen. I was tucked away on the outskirts of a dozing village outside Munich, a village that had survived eight hundred years without anything more important happening than a failed cabbage harvest. Until the Nazi master bakers arrived with barbed wire and an unusually large set of ovens.

I was finally going to see Berlin, the pre-war capital of louche, but it left me curiously flat. I’d seen pictures of the city in Pathй News at the Odeon. The streets full of flag-waving loonies saluting a funny-looking bloke with a bad shave. The buildings built to last: heavy stone, four and five storeys high, with balconies sprouting haphazardly. Lots of trees down wide boulevards sprinkled with outdoor cafйs, and an overhead railway. A solid respectable place that just happened to be home to the world’s biggest megalomaniac.

Hitler knew his Berliners. He knew that underneath the stuffy demeanour lay suppressed passions. I’d read Isherwood of course. He’d made Berlin sound racy and degenerate beneath the decorous surface. All those private bars and streets lined with smiling prostitutes, female and male. I wondered how much of it was left after the Russians arrived with vengeance in their heart and lust in their loins.

I whiled away the three hours with a German dictionary and notepad and pencil, trying to fill the many gaps in my language. From time to time I broke off to do further translations of Eve’s notebook – I still couldn’t think of her as Ava – using a teach-yourself guide to Gabelsberger’s shorthand. One phrase cropped up twice in her most recent stuff. She mentioned Berlin and something called a hellish door. Code words? The entrance to somewhere fearful? Or just my bad translation.

The captain announced we were beginning our descent. I peered out of the Perspex window just as we broke through the last of the summer clouds. The city sprawled out below and we could see the destruction on all sides. The RAF had done us proud. It made the Blitz look half-hearted. For a second I almost felt sorry for the poor bastards, then I remembered that it was the same poor bastards who’d set up a thousand concentration camps across Europe. This wasn’t a handful of psychopaths in black uniforms keeping a peaceful citizenry in their thrall; this whole nation had got right behind their Fuehrer with unbounded enthusiasm for getting rid of the untermensch. And their unter women and kids. Still…

I couldn’t see a complete block of buildings intact. There were odd patches of green where the city parks had been, but they were pockmarked and treeless. Only stumps and felled trunks remained to remind Berliners of their shady walks. The roads seemed clear though. The rubble had been bulldozed into neat piles ready for rebuilding. It would keep a few brickies in work for the foreseeable.

We made a last bank over the city and straightened up. Ahead was Templehof airport, a great semi-circle of Doric columns and portals. Very Albert Speer.

Just the thing for those torchlight parades. In front of it, embraced by the arms of the airport buildings, was the runway itself, with parked planes littering the central area.

Templehof was right in the heart of the city. It seemed too small to take our plane. As if we would run out of runway and plough into the streets all round it. I could see some tanks and ack-ack guns along the southern perimeter. What were we defending against – a German insurrection or a Russian take-over? We dropped lower and I felt the wheels shudder and drop. Our speed fell and we bounced once, twice, then bumped to a halt. We eased ourselves out of our seats and climbed down on to the tarmac. It was hot. The air shimmered and trembled.

A bus came scurrying out from a long flat building with more than a hint of the Parthenon about it. An American flag fluttered on top of the colonnades. The bus picked up the Army blokes, the crew and the mail. I stood like a lemon for a while. Then a jeep headed my way from one of the caverns under the terminal. As it drew up I could see it was driven by a corporal wearing signaller’s badges.

“Captain McRae, sir?” he called out.

Captain again. Is that how Cassells had set it up? I walked over to the jeep and the soldier leapt out, saluted smartly and threw my battered case in the back.

He was a good looking lad – lad! I must have been all of five years older than him. Smartly turned out in battledress with his black beret at a rakish angle. I imagined he had no trouble pulling the frauleins. I got in beside him.

“You can drop the Captain stuff, Corp. And the saluting. Civvy Street now. The name’s Danny.”

He looked at me to make sure I wasn’t taking the piss. “Fine by me, Danny. I’m Vic.” He tossed his beret under the dashboard, slammed the jeep in gear and we shot off. Now I could see that the dozen or so planes stacked off the runway were American B-47s.

“Where are we going, Vic?”

“Don’t you know, sir? Danny?”

“This was all arranged in a bit of a hurry.”

“I’m to take you to Colonel Toby. Toby Anstruther. Mil Int.”

Military Intelligence. Seemed a good place to start.

“It’s not far. We’re on Kurfurstenstrasse. In the Brit sector.”

Despite the warmth of the day, I felt a curious chill. The German street names were bringing it all back to me. There is a harshness about the language which makes it peculiarly suited to giving orders. I found my hard-won vocabulary rushing through my head like water in a mill-wheel.

“You all right, Danny?”

I shook my head. “Fine. Just a bit queasy. Bumpy ride. How long have you been here, Vic?”

“Six months. I’m on a two-year stretch.”

“What’s it like?”

A smile lit his face. “Did you bring any fags?”

“A carton. Why?”

“That makes you a millionaire. You can buy anything with a pack of fags. Booze.

Women. Anything. I’ve got my own gaff, here. A two-bed flat just round the corner from the office. In Kantstrasse. That’s Kant, not…”

“I get the picture,” I laughed.

“But it might as well be. The women drop their drawers for a cup of real coffee.

If you want anything while you’re here, just say the word.” He rubbed his nose with his finger and gave me a wink.

Spivs in uniform. Human nature will out in any conditions. “Your own flat? Is there anywhere still standing?”

“Sure. Take a close look.”

We drove through the barbed wire gate at the airport perimeter and out on to the Templehoffer Damm that seemed to run towards the city centre. If there was a centre any more. Rudimentary street signs had been set up at junctions: poles bearing bashed original plates retrieved from the shattered buildings, or wooden signs with white writing. They seemed more like markers for an archaeological dig.

But my view of the city from the air had been too fatalistic. Sure, whole buildings had been razed or turned into black stumps, and there were more piles of bricks than habitable structures; but there were functioning parts. Kids played at soldiers on the bomb sites, clambering on burnt-out tanks and trucks.

Here and there little groups of women in headscarves tugged at the mounds of stones.

“What are they doing?”

Vic laughed. “That’s the Trummerfrauen, the rubble-women. They’re reclaiming the bricks. Paid by the number. It’s either that or whoring.”

Some of the women had hammers and were chipping away at the mortar. Others stacked the cleaned bricks in neat piles by the roadside. Riding in the livery of the victor, I felt embarrassed at witnessing their puny efforts. I shouldn’t have; here was a spark of hope that hadn’t been extinguished. One or two straightened their stiff backs and looked at us as we swept past. I turned my face away.

Maybe it was the heat of the day that made me conscious of the smell: a pong of drains and brick dust, especially when we rolled to a halt at intersections to let a convoy go by.

Vic laughed. “You’ll get used to it.” He must have seen my nose twitch.

“Hardly surprising. Do the sewers work?”

“Everything works. Sort of. We’ve got the street lamps on again, the underground, some trams and of course the bars. They all work. All rationed, mind. Unless you know where to get it.” His nose got another rub.

“See over there.” Vic pointed to his right. A big, bashed building stood adrift in a sea of flattened rubble. I could make out giant columns supporting the faзade. I’d seen it on a hundred newsreels.

“The Reichstag. What’s left of it. In the Russian sector now.”

I stared at it, trying to visualise the little madman at work there, planning to rule the world but in fact wrecking his own country and redrawing Europe. One man. How was it possible?

It was a short drive. There was little traffic, mostly military. Old men pulled prams piled high with wood – broken floorboards for cooking-fires. Gaunt men in Wehrmacht greatcoats, faces dirty and eyes hollow, hovered at crossroads like the spirits of hanged men. I felt like a tourist gawping at the ruins of an ancient civilisation. Berlin was in worse shape than London, but there was a horrible symmetry of suffering. Maybe this was the war to end wars. Then I thought of the Red Army spread like a rash across East Europe. But surely the Soviets had had enough of war? Hadn’t they lost enough men?

We dodged and dipped our way round and through potholes caused by our bombs and filled with shattered house bricks. We pulled up outside a three-storey stone building: 233 Kurfurstenstrasse. It looked like an office, insurance or the like. There were no guards or barbed wire to put the spotlight on its new occupants. Vic straightened his tie and pulled down his tunic. He dug out his beret, dusted it down and jammed it on his head.

“After you, sir.” His eyes met mine. Time to put on our ranks.

We pushed through the main door and climbed two flights of stairs. Through open doors we could see secretaries and office staff. But it would be wrong to describe the scene as bustling. In fact there was a distinct air of lethargy. A secretary filing her nails here, two others nattering there, and one bloke chatting up another girl. I realised I was hearing German spoken, and understanding most of it. Something stopped me from mentioning my shaky skills.

We came to a closed door. Stencilled on the glass were the words OIC MIB. Vic knocked. A voice said, “Come!” and he pushed open the door. Vic stood to one side.

“Captain McRae, sir!”

“Thanks, Corporal,” I said, and walked in trying to keep my right arm down by my side.

“Come in! Come in, McRae. I’m Toby Anstruther.”

He was bald and bouncy, and his uniform belt hung loose to give his well-fed midriff some lebensraum. I guessed his age at late forties. The pips of a half-colonel sat proud on the uniform of the Lancashire Fusiliers. Probably saw active service in the Great War and was seconded by his regiment to Intelligence for this one. I thought I saw a Military Medal ribbon among a decent collection.

I was beginning to feel underdressed.

We shook hands and he pulled up a couple of easy chairs over a coffee table. I’d barely sat down when the door swung open and a very pretty girl came in bearing a tea tray. Toby caught my eye as it travelled admiringly over her tight pencil skirt.

Her dark blue eyes smiled at me. “Do you have everything, sir? Can I get you something to eat? A sandwich?” She pushed back her pitch-dark hair and I only just bit my tongue from making a smart-arse reply. I smiled at her. Who wouldn’t? “Thank you. I have everything.”

When she had sashayed out the door, Toby grinned at me. “A perk of the job. All the girls here are bilingual of course. Some of the units have German lassies but it’s a tad early for that in Mil Int, don’t you agree?” He poured the tea and continued.

“You’re one of Gerry Cassells’ old team, then? Did good work. Hardest job of them all. Behind the lines, no one to talk to, and if caught…” He mimicked a noose tightening.

“Something like that. I have to say, I felt a lot safer being shelled by Rommel than interrogated by the Gestapo.”

“Quite.” Anstruther looked me up and down. Behind his piggy little eyes was a shrewdness; not your born leader but nothing much would get past him. “So, you’re out here looking for a girl, I’m told. A German agent. Copeland or Kaplan, take your pick. Funny, I used to read her column. Hardly seems likely.”

“No, it doesn’t. That’s why I’m here. It doesn’t add up.”

There was the same long look from him, as though he was drilling into my head.

“Cassells seemed quite clear.” He reached out to his tray and pulled the slim folder off the pile. He opened it and scanned the papers. He knew every line.

And could read between them.

“Says they caught her in flagrante? Transmitter under bed, code book, the lot.

Seems fairly conclusive…”

“Two men looking at a piece of metal sticking out of the ground. One sees the fin of a bomb, the other an old cooker.”

“But a transmitter, Danny?”

“Ham wireless operator?”

He put on a wry smile. “Whoever she is, you both want the girl. I’m here to help.”

“I appreciate that, Toby. But where to start? This isn’t my patch.”

“It would help to know why she was here.”

“If we knew that…”

“Quite. But let’s assume she is a German spy. She could be trying to make contact with her old team. The man or woman who was running her. Agreed?”

I nodded. He went on. “If that’s the case, what I can say is she’s probably not in our sector. We keep a pretty close eye on who’s seeing who round here. So do the Yanks. The French? Well… the French do their own thing, but we’re on pretty good terms with them.” He tapped the file. “When I got wind of this I put some calls out. We asked them to keep an eye out for ripples. Anyone asking questions.”

“And?”

“Nothing so far. But that was only a couple of days ago. My hunch is that she’d go where the climate is a little warmer for ex-Nazis. The Russians got here two months before us and had the run of the place. After raping every woman over ten and under ninety they installed their own tame Krauts in charge of each district, running them along the same lines as the old SS. We’re beginning to push things back in our own sectors but the Germans seem more comfortable under… how shall we put it?… strong leaders. The Russians are happier to make use of the former Nazi top men than we are. If I were her, looking for my old playmates, that’s where I’d look first.”

“Can I travel into the Russian sector?”

“Ye-e-s. They have plenty of patrols, but that’s mainly to keep their own soldiers out of trouble. It’s not as if there’s a fence or anything. Yet.”

“Do I need a pass?”

“We’ll fix that. But for god’s sake be careful. The place is a thieves’ kitchen.

Roaming in gangs. They’d murder their grandmother for a packet of fags. All nationalities. Poles, Czechs, Russians… the flotsam of war, Danny.”

“Can I get a map? Can you show me where to start?”

“I can do better than that. I’ll lend you Corporal Vic for a few days. He speaks the lingo and knows his way around, particularly the shadier spots, I’m afraid.

Don’t let him corrupt you.”