The Unquiet heart

FIFTEEN

Vic was smirking as we left Toby’s den. The mission obviously agreed with him.

We hopped into his jeep and he whizzed me round to the Tiergarten Mess, a block of flats requisitioned by the British Army, and left me to sort myself out.

Luxury. I had two small rooms to myself. The sitting room had a wireless and a couple of sagging chairs, with a little fold-up table by the dirty window. The walls were in a heavy patterned wallpaper with vivid rectangles where the previous occupants had hung their framed photos of Kaiser Bill or Goebbels.

A tiny scullery ran off it, with a sink, a gas cooker and a wall cupboard. With a fine sense of British priorities the cupboard held a little caddy of tea and some sugar, along with a kettle, two cups and saucers and a couple of plates. In the bedroom I found a single bed and a wardrobe. The floor had worn but clean carpets over the lino. I took my shoes off, lay down on the bed and lit up. All hunky-dory.

Vic called again at six pm in civvies, hair glistening, and looking like he was born to wear silk ties and white socks. He was chewing a large wad of gum. I felt like a bank manager alongside him.

“Got cash?” he asked.

“I’ve got these.” I showed him a handful of dollars, surprising gifts from Cassells. You’re sort of on the payroll, Daniel. “And these.” I pulled out a packet of cigarettes and patted my pockets to show the rest of my supply.

“What about one of these?” He slid his hand round the back of his trousers and pulled out a gun. It was a 9mm Belgian Browning High Power automatic. Used 9mm bullets. Thirteen to the cartridge and one up the spout. A nice weapon and a good crowd stopper.

“Do we need them?”

“Where do you think you are? Finchley? We’re averaging two hundred robberies and five murders a day. And that’s just the official numbers.”

I walked over to the wardrobe where I’d hung my coat and few belongings. I lifted my socks and pants and retrieved the heavy Luger I’d purloined from my altercation with Gambatti’s boys. God knows how the Navy version had turned up in the East End. The extra length gave it greater accuracy over Vic’s Browning, but it needed to be kept spotless and oiled if it wasn’t to foul up.

“This do?”

Vic whistled. I made sure the safety was on and tucked it into my waistband in the small of my back. I hoped there were no real cowboys out there. By the time I withdrew the long barrel from my trousers, flipped the safety and aimed the thing, I could have been outdrawn by a girl guide.

“Any idea where to look, Danny?”

I thought about the tangled words in Eve’s notebook. I’d found some references to Berlin but nothing that made sense. Not without some context.

“What’s the layout? I mean how’s this place set up?”

“Simple. Draw a line north to south, splitting the city in two. The Ruskies have everything east of the line. We share the west with the Yanks and the Froggies.

We’re in the middle, the French above us and the Americans in the south.”

“Where would you go if you wanted to lie low?”

Vic laughed. “This whole sodding place is an escape hole.”

“Toby said old Nazis hang out in the Russian sector. Make sense?”

“Maybe. Let’s take a look.”

I saw the expression on his face. He knew this was hopeless. But I had to try.

We left the flat, pockets bulging with fags, cash and guns, and headed for the wild side of town. Vic left his British-marked jeep in the safety of the courtyard behind the HQ. We strolled along the edge of Tiergarten. It had probably once been a great green landscape like Hyde Park, full of trees and pleasant walks. Now the trees had been scalped by shrapnel, and the open grassy areas were gouged and pitted by bombs. Expired tanks and smashed small aircraft littered the park. It would take a very long time to turn it into a lovers’ haunt again.

My stomach flipped; ahead of us loomed the very symbol of the Third Reich: the great outline of the Brandenburg Gate, looking remarkably unscathed. Vic nudged me and pointed to our left, at a series of new arches standing apart from the rubble.

“What’s that?” I asked, staring.

“It’s the Russian Monument to their dead. Opened last week. Bags of big hats and red flags.”

“Didn’t take them long. Why here? Why in our sector?”

“They didn’t expect to give up any of Berlin.”

We walked on towards the Gate. Now I could see the damage: great lumps chewed out of the stonework and one side demolished. But it still dominated the central crossroads, and framed the Unter den Linden beyond. We walked through the central arch and found ourselves gaping at a massive picture of Joe Stalin guarded by some bored Russians sweating in greatcoats. They glanced at our cards and we walked on down the avenue. They would have to change the street name or find themselves some new Linden; all that remained was stumps amid the rubble.

Vic pointed us down some side streets and we began to sink into old Berlin. The smell of bad drains increased.

We started in the few bars that were open. I had a couple of Eve’s newspaper photos pasted on to card and wherever we went, I discreetly showed it to the barman and some of his regulars. Sometimes I bought their interest with a cigarette. We had to be careful; there were usually some Russian NCOs or officers having a drink. No squaddies – they were kept leashed in their barracks. There were also quiet men sitting alone, supping coffee and watching the room over the top of a paper.

We entered one bar down a set of steps and through a leather curtain. We left the daylight outside. Inside was all gloom and dank with only dim light from some paper lanterns illuminating the dark corners. It reeked of stale beer and fags, and a faint residue of vomit. The clientele fitted in well; shabby and grey, with lifeless eyes that tracked us to the bar. My neck hairs rose.

Vic ordered me a beer. It tasted of stale water. We surveyed the room and its handful of drinkers. They looked sorry that Hitler hadn’t conquered the world.

Maybe next time.

The murmured conversations were restarting at the tables around us. I was just about to walk Vic out of this rat hole when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I whirled. He was thin and intense, wearing a coat and hat despite the warm evening. “Papers, please,” he asked in German.

The bar had quietened. The barman moved into the shadows.

“Who might you be?” I answered in English, knowing full well who he was.

His face tightened, but he stuck to German. “English? Show me your papers.”

“I say again, pal. What do you want?”

I felt Vic squeeze my arm. “Don’t, Danny. Just show him our papers.”

The man slid his hand into his coat, and I waited for the gun. I could feel the weight of the Luger against my spine but not even Roy Rogers could draw in time.

He pulled out a folded card. He opened it and I could see Cyrillic script and his ugly mug. It looked important. I assumed he was NKVD, the Russian security boys.

Vic interrupted. “Of course, sir. Danny, show him your papers.” Vic handed his over and I followed suit.

“What are you doing here?” He wanted a fight and I was tempted. Jumped-up little bureaucrats have that effect on me. Vic must have seen my look. He interceded again in German.

“We’re just having a quiet drink, sir. No trouble. This is my friend’s first time in Berlin. I’m showing him how well the reconstruction is going, especially in the eastern sector.” He smiled. The little prick didn’t return the smile.

“Perhaps it is better to continue drinking in your own sector.” It wasn’t a question. We finished our beers and left. But we didn’t head back, not immediately. We went from bar to bar, cafй to club down the darkening streets.

None of them lived down to my expectations of Berlin as the fun capital of Europe. There were one or two lamps working but not enough to join up the pools of light. I became conscious that the number of Russian two-man patrols was increasing. Sometimes they stopped us and asked for papers. Vic’s papers and his fractured German seemed to satisfy them. They reminded us of curfew at ten pm and left us with a shrug.

I tried to picture Eve in one of these dives but couldn’t. I no longer felt I knew her, far less where I might find her. Some of the bars were little more than knocking shops that Mama Mary would have been embarrassed to be seen in.

The atmosphere was a cloying mix of stale booze, fags and gallons of cheap perfume to drown out the smell of unwashed females. It wasn’t through choice I’m sure; shampoo and bath salts were as hard to find as a virgin over twelve anywhere in the Russian-occupied zone.

By nine-thirty my feet were killing me, and I’d drunk too much watered-down beer. Vic was ready for more but I needed some shuteye. I planned to strike out on my own tomorrow during daylight to see what I could see. The underground had stopped running for the night. Rather than face another walk past a line of good-time girls all hoping to pass as Marlene Dietrich in the moonlight, we found a taxi. I crawled to my room, slumped into bed and was out like a candle.

I woke with a bad head and a weak stomach. I dealt with both over a massive fry-up in the mess. We seemed to be looking after our boys out here. The locals might be starving in the street, but in here we could eat all the bacon and eggs we could manage. I noticed some of the blokes filling their pockets with hunks of bread and pats of butter, even wrapping the odd sausage in newspaper. I asked one of the other diners what was going on: saving something for a mid-morning snack? He laughed. They were feeding their girlfriends on the sly. Food and fags, and a roof over your head could buy the plainest British squaddie the most bewitching product of Hitler’s selective breeding programme.

I’d been thinking about how to find her. It didn’t seem likely that she frequented the dumps we visited last night, unless she hoped to find who she was looking for there. Maybe if I could imagine her target I could get on her wave length? Let’s assume she was a spy and let’s assume she’s looking for her spymaster, where would a senior spy locate after the spying stopped? There were several possible answers.

He – let’s call him Fritz – could go straight, get a job in civvy street and forget his past dark arts. Unlikely; there were no jobs, and spies don’t change their spots.

He could switch sides and work for one of the Allied security services. Much more likely. I replayed my conversation with Toby Anstruther. The Russians had been here longest and had already sewn up a number of senior positions. It was just the sort of rats’ nest that would suit an out- of-work spy with flexible morals. But I doubted I would get very far with that line of questioning.

The other profession that Fritz could easily turn his hand to was the black market. He’d be used to shady deals and working on the margins of society. He’d know how to run a network and would already have good contacts. He was naturally ruthless and deceitful, and could work both sides of the law. That’s where I’d start. All I had to do was find the black market.

The lovely lady who served me tea in Toby’s office gave me instructions and a short moral lecture before I fled her beautiful eyes and walked towards Potsdamer Platz. She told me that markets continually sprang up and died around the city depending on demand and the leniency of the authorities.

The nearest one tended to materialise in the wide open space on the line between the British and American zones. It could hardly be missed. With exquisite irony the black market operated in full view of the burnt out shell of the world’s largest department store. When I arrived, there was already a great crowd. A few armed MPs wandered around but didn’t interfere. The authorities recognised that when currency becomes useless, bartering is the natural order.

As I merged with the crowd it became clear what was important here among the ruins. Cigarettes were the common currency, but anything could be swapped for anything else if there was a demand for it. Soap was a luxury and required a full pack of American cigarettes per bar. But there were stalls, wheelbarrows and squares of cloth on the ground, holding candles and cakes, second-hand clothes and shoes, weapons and kettles, pots and scratched 78s, dirty postcards and poetry books. Men with big pockets and Hessian sacks showed off their finds: a few decaying potatoes, a lump of coal. It was the fag-end of a society, and in its way brought home to me how close we were. And how stupid it had all been.

This was Petticoat Strasse, with its spivs and shysters, fishwives and conmen, mugs and fraudsters. The smells were much the same: tobacco everywhere, a pungent tang from a stall selling coffee made from acorns, the great unwashed wearing the same clothes day in day out, nostril-twitching perfumes and hair-cream made from cooking oil. And as I watched and listened and tuned into the language, I began to feel strangely at home. If a camp with barbed wire and gun towers could fairly be called home.

I stopped at lunchtime for a beer and a black bread sandwich of some strong cheese. Re-fuelled, I pressed on through the afternoon. I repeated the process in two other spots, one to the south in the American sector and one to the north in the French. I followed the same pattern in each: threading my way through the crowds, stopping here and there to ask, in growing self-confidence, if they had seen the woman in the photo. I chose the ones who stood back a little, or who flitted between groups and who whispered in others’ ears. I got shakes of the head and curt neins. From one I got a long cool glance. He reached inside his jacket and brought out his identity card. He was American, security services.

“Watch who you’re talking to, buddy.” I guess my accent wasn’t fooling anybody.

I was doing something, but the heat was oppressive and my feet were killing me.

I was beginning to lose heart, and thinking about calling it a day, when I heard a phrase that made my ears twitch like a pony’s. A phrase I’d found twice in Eva’s notes. Hellish door. Two middle-aged women in headscarves were gossiping while they rummaged through a pile of third-hand clothes.

“Excuse me, Fraulein. Hellish door? What is that?”

The fat one eyed me up like I’d just pinched her huge bum. “Hallesches Tor, you fool. Everyone knows that.”

“It is a place, then?”

The slimmer one sighed. “Hildie, he’s from Hamburg. Hear him. Yes, Hallesches Tor is a place. Old Berlin. In Kreuzberg. It’s caught between the Reds and the Americans. Don’t go there if you want to come back with both balls!”

The women roared at their humour. I laughed with them and pressed them into giving me a better picture of this segment of the city. The way they described it, my pronunciation wasn’t far wrong. Even before the war it was a slum, they said. Rats as big as the children, and full of cutthroats, gypsies and Jews. I asked of black markets in the area. They told me of a very black market off Wassertorstrasse, where you could buy fresh meat, if you weren’t fussy if it came from a rat or a Jew. They laughed some more, but I sensed they weren’t entirely joking.

I limped off, my leg and feet aching but my head throbbing with excitement. I went back to my room and had a wash and a cup of tea. I had time to grab a bite at the canteen and then I set off again.

Dusk was already gripping the Leipziger Strasse as I passed the giant portrait of Stalin and slipped into the Russian zone. I began to notice the difference in the sectors. Here, there were fewer working gas lamps, and – maybe it was my imagination – something in the attitude of the people, something more closed and wary, that distinguished them from their cousins in the west.

I recognised Wassertorstrasse by the cobbled paving and the old stone gate that must have marked the city boundary centuries before. Here the streets were even narrower and darker. Hardly a lamp remained, and the rubble from ruined tenements lay where they’d toppled. Thin paths led through the mounds of stones, and the smell of raw sewage hung in the air like a curtain. Old posters of Brown Shirt rallies stained the walls. Swastikas were carved in the stones. Scrawled denunciations of Jews still held sway.

The tenements themselves were three and four storeys tall, with narrow closes and broken windows. Washing hung from poles stuck outside some of the open windows. Rubbish lay in the streets, wrapped round the piles of bricks and slates from bombed buildings. Though it was already too dark to see properly, thin and dirty kids still ran in and out of the entries screaming and laughing, oblivious to their bare feet and hollowed cheeks. I stopped and looked around me, and wondered if I’d taken a wrong turning in time and place, and wound up back in the Gorbals.

I was aware of eyes on me from windows and doorways, and for comfort I shifted the gun, tucked into my waistband at the back, round to the front. Shooting my own balls off suddenly seemed like a lesser risk.

I pressed on and emerged on to a small enclosed square with one entrance and one exit on the far side. It was like a ghoul’s convention. The scene was lit by a central bonfire and the pale glow from the windows of a bar. Clumps of people stood round talking and haggling. Here and there people had thrown rugs down on the cobbles to present their shoddy wares in the best light. Crockery and food lay in dark piles. I’d found the black market.

Some of the groups shunned the firelight. They were in complete darkness except for the red glow of a cigarette or a struck match. I felt an intruder. I had no wish to approach anyone and show them Eve’s photo. I stood back in the shadows, watching, thinking through my next steps.

I’d all but decided to beat a retreat when I saw her. A fleeting glimpse. A profile, a cast of the shoulder. But it was enough. My heart stopped. I drew back further into the shadows to watch her go from one group to another, always checking around her. She didn’t see me. She wore a knee-length frock of some dark material. On her head was a familiar beret, less bulky than before. She carried a shopping bag, its straps over her shoulder. At last she broke free and walked off into the night, heading away from Wassertorstrasse and deeper into the Russian zone. Hardly breathing, I began to follow her.