The Unquiet heart

SEVENTEEN

It was too late to try to get back to the British zone. The curfew was in force.

Eve tossed me a blanket and I lay down as best I could on the bare floorboards.

My head hurt no matter how I lay, and I wasn’t ready for sleep. Maybe it was the bad coffee. I listened to the sound of the others’ breathing, easily distinguishing Eve’s in the dark. I wondered what was going through her mind.

Was she wishing we were lying together back at my place? Or had I simply become a nuisance, someone getting in the way of her plans to murder Heinrich Mulder?

Frankly, I wasn’t opposed to his removal. I just didn’t think it would change things. But the repercussions for her could be immense. On the other hand he hadn’t arranged for the death of my parents.

It was a bad night, and a grim morning. I had the world’s worst hangover without any of the pleasure. We made our plans over stale bread and bitter coffee. They gave me back my gun and papers, then Joseph escorted me to the British sector.

The streets were quiet, but it wasn’t the quiet of peace. Mist was clearing from the broken buildings and a wind was stirring the dust and debris. The reek of decay made me gag. There was a feeling that we were only in the lull of battle and that war could break out again at any time.

Vic was waiting for me outside the Tiergarten mess, pacing up and down, smoking like an expectant father. He saw me and came charging over.

“Where the fuck have you been, Danny?” Gone was any pretence at ‘sir’.

I must have looked a sight. My suit was crumpled like a tramp’s, my shirt had blood on it and my tie was in my pocket.

“I had a bit of a run-in with some thugs last night. I’m OK, but that’ll teach me to go out looking for action.”

Vic looked a little mollified. “Looking for a bint, were you? All you had to do was ask old Vic, you know. Any size, any shape. Where did you end up, then? The state of you.”

I tried to look suitably chastened. “Two of them. I got away when a patrol came by. I begged a bed for the night somewhere in the Red zone. An old biddy let me in. Cost me five bucks. I need some breakfast and a wash.”

“The Colonel is waiting for you. But you’d better get cleaned up and fed first.

C’mon.”

Colonel Toby was keen to know what progress I’d made. I expressed disappointment and frustration but vowed to go on trying at least for a few more days. Toby was encouragement personified and urged me to keep my pecker up. I vowed to do so, and left his office wondering how I was going to keep the pretence up and for how long.

“Vic, I need to do this my way. Thanks for your help. I can get around myself now.”

“Sure, Danny. It’s just that I was ordered to look after you. Look what happened when I wasn’t around.”

“My fault. I’ll sign something to get you off the hook if you like. I just want some space. That’s how I work.”

“Tell you what, let’s meet for a drink at the end of each day. That way I can check you’re OK, and maybe I can help too.”

We split up and I went straight back to my room and fell into a coma till early afternoon. I woke a little dazed, but human again. Even the bumps were going down. I dressed and walked out into the hot July sun, feeling amazingly cheerful for someone getting himself involved in an assassination. I was beginning to know my way about, and headed for the entrance to the U-Bahn on Kurfurstendamm.

By the time I found it I was regretting not wearing a hat; my head was frying.

The station gave welcoming shade, but the respite was brief. Beyond expectation, Berlin’s underground was operating again. But because it was one of the few cheap modes of transport left, other than bikes and the rare tram, the station was heaving with sweaty humanity. Strike that; this wasn’t humanity, it was a mob. When the train got in they surged forward and besieged the doors, so that people wanting to get off couldn’t. It was chaos, and every man for himself. I called on my training on the Northern Line and plunged in with elbows and feet.

We shot off into the tunnels, heading east. By the time I fought my way out of the carriage six stops down the line, I was nearly asphyxiated with the stench and heat.

The warm afternoon air was a blessing; I gulped it in hungrily and lit up to get the taste of the journey out of my mouth. I gave uncle Joe a big smile as I left the U- Bahn station and headed towards my rendezvous with Eve in Holzmarktstrasse. I was close to the main station and the river Spree now. The area had taken a lot of hits, but as she promised I found the little cake-house open at the corner of Warschauerstrasse. She was sitting in the cracked window wearing her beret and looking just like the girl I’d left a hundred years ago in the Strand. She even raised a smile for me when I joined her at the table, and we kissed on both cheeks. Berlin suddenly seemed the most welcoming place on earth. All I had to do was talk her out of this mad idea.

“You really speak the language?” she asked in German.

I replied in kind. “Camp Deutsch. I don’t know how it sounds compared to the real stuff.”

She giggled. “You’ve got a northern accent.”

“Two of my bunk mates were from Hamburg.”

“Keep it up. It’s fine. And better than English around here. How’s your head?”

“Healing.” I looked round. There were a few other customers supping from cups and nibbling at a flat grey slice of cake. “Just like old times.”

She got serious. “No, Danny. It isn’t.”

Message received. “So what are we here for?”

“Don’t look now. Across the road, to the left of the gutted building, there’s an intact one. Do you see it?”

I waited a second, sipped the tea – it tasted of nettles – and casually turned and looked through the net curtains. “A four-storey building with a Russian flag. Looks like a hotel. Two Russian soldiers on guard duty. A big car outside, with a driver.”

Eve smiled as though we were talking about the weather or the price of sauerkraut. “That’s the District Controller’s office.”

“You mean…?”

She nodded. “Mulder. That’s his office. That’s his car. Those are his bodyguards.”

“Same routine?”

“Clockwork. But we only found him four days ago. Around now – 14.30 – he comes out by himself. The guards salute and his chauffeur jumps out to greet him. He ignores them and walks off down the road and turns left.”

“Then?”

“He goes into a house halfway down the street. It’s a block of apartments. He comes back exactly one hour thirty minutes later. He goes to his office… he leaves at six.”

“Where does he live?”

“We don’t know. We’ve tried to follow him but all we had was a bike. We think it’s in one of the suburbs. They still have trees there.”

“Who’s in the apartment? A girl?”

“There are ten names. We watched but couldn’t see where he went inside.

Yesterday after he’d gone in, we saw a curtain close on the second floor. We can’t be sure.”

“But you’re not going to take him on the way in or out?”

“No. We need that hour and a half. You can get a long way in that time.”

“But not out of Berlin, Ava.”

“Don’t you call me that,” she hissed.

“Trying to stay in character. The point is, this bloody place is an island. It’s surrounded by red sharks. You can’t just drive off into the sunset.”

“So what do we do, mister smarty pants?”

“Let it go, Eve. It won’t bring them back. There’s been enough.”

Her eyes tightened with anger and her mouth thinned. “You don’t know what it’s like, Danny.”

“I’ve been on the receiving end.” I pointed at my head.

She shook hers. “You just got in their way. They tried to kill us all, Danny. Do you have any idea what that’s like? To be hated so much? It wasn’t just my mother and father. Not just my aunts and cousins. Though they’re all gone. It was my people. My race.” Her throat was flushed with anger.

“But this… won’t end it. Come back with me to London. We can work it out. We can put this behind us.”

She rubbed her eyes with her sleeve till they were red and sore. “You can. I can’t. Go, Danny. Go back and leave me to this.”

Customers were looking. I didn’t care. “Eve, I had to ask. Had to be sure. I’ll help.”

She peered at me to see if she could trust me. “How?”

“I’m not new to this business.”

She acknowledged it with a nod. “If you have any bright ideas about how to get in to the flats while he’s there, I’d welcome them.”

“That’s the easy bit. How are you going to get away? You need to plan an exit.

Let’s talk to your boyfriends.”

“They are not my boyfriends.”

“Four beds, one room? Very modern.” I wished sometimes I could shut up.

“Do you really see it like that?” she said with a piranha smile.

“When I can’t say what I feel I make a joke of it. You know that.”

“Danny, this isn’t the time or the place for feelings.” She swivelled her eyes round the handful of customers in the cafй.

“Or the language. I have big holes in my vocabulary. We didn’t get much practice chatting up girls in my language school.”

She looked exasperated. “Let’s go.” She picked up her bag and got to her feet.

“Tell me one thing first?”

“What?”

“Before. When we first met.” I didn’t know how to say it. Either in English or German. “Was it a set-up? Was it all a sham?” Like I said, I wished sometimes I could let things go.

She hovered, and I thought she was going to walk away. Then she sat down, clutching her bag. I tried to read her eyes. They were dark and serious.

“Let’s just say I hadn’t intended to get involved. But I did. And then I began to worry about what I was getting you into. That’s why I tried to get you to back off.” She smiled and touched the stubble of hair peeping out under her beret. I felt an iceberg melt inside.

She went on more forcefully, “You’re a bloody limpet, Danny McRae. But I’m glad you’re here. You can help with the plans. But I’m not letting you get involved in the job itself. Now, can we get out of here before I have to drink another cup of this stuff?”

I took her arm as we picked our way past the potholes and abandoned wrecks.

Inside I was feeling good. At another level I was more scared for her than ever.

It took us half an hour to walk back to her flat. We were about to turn into the alley when we heard the shouting. Then the shots. We ran to the corner and peered round. A military truck blocked the way. Some Russian soldiers stood on guard less than ten feet away with weapons at the ready. Eve made to go into the alley. I grabbed her arm and steered her on. We heard an order, someone was shouting in our direction. We stopped and turned. An officer and two soldiers walked towards us.

In bad German he demanded, “Papers. Papers! Where do you live?”

“How are your papers?” I whispered.

“Finest German forgeries. Let me do the talking.” She smiled and turned to the Russian.

“Of course, Colonel. What is the problem? We live down there, Staufenstrasse.”

She pointed back in the direction of the British zone, then dug in her bag and produced her documents. I did the same.

The officer was young and tough, a lieutenant who didn’t mind being called colonel by a pretty girl, but clearly took his job too zealously.

“This says you are British.” He peered at her suspiciously. I could see the dark stain of sweat round his serge green thick shirt collar. He wore one of their enormous hats as though he’d stolen it from someone much bigger. His two soldiers stood either side of him, weapons raised and pointing at us. They looked nervy.

“We are both British. I am a journalist accredited to the occupation forces.

This is my research assistant.” She pointed at me. I smiled and nodded.

“What are you snooping for here? This is the Russian-controlled sector.”

“It is not illegal?”

He agreed it was not, but his tone suggested it was only a matter of time. There was more shooting and shouts. The young man got more flustered. He didn’t know whether to run and see if he could join in the action or keep sightseers away.

“There is nothing to see here. Get on your way.” He stuffed the papers in Eve’s hand. I took her arm. She held her ground.

“But what is going on, Colonel? Is there a riot? Do you have a black market gang pinned down? There are so many criminals. It is so brave of you and your men.”

She gave him her most dazzling smile and I could see him almost bursting to tell her just how brave he was.

“It is nothing. Some Jewish agitators, we are told.” He stepped closer and lowered his voice. “Between you and me, the Germans were on the right track, you know. These Jews are still up to their old tricks.” He all but winked at her.

She screwed her face up sympathetically. He stood back, and saluted.

“Good day, Fraulein.” He nodded to me and turned and ran his men back to the side of the truck to see what was going on.

Eve’s cheeks were red points. Her eyes were ablaze. “You see?”

“All I see is we need to get the hell out of here and come back later. Let’s go.” I took her arm, this time without encountering resistance, and marched her off down the street, bitter tears coursing down her face.

We holed up in my room. The guard at the door barely lifted his head from his paper. He was used to afternoon dalliances. For a while she sat on one of the chairs in the sitting room. I made tea and we drank it in silence, looking out the net curtains as the day faded. For that little while I was almost at ease.

Just being able to turn my head and see her there. To make fresh tea and get her smile of thanks. I knew the world was revving up outside and was like enough to crash through the door at any time. But for an hour or two we were out of it.

As the light turned yellow she stood up and walked through to the bedroom. I sat still.

“Danny?” Her voice was soft. I stood up and walked to the door. It was dark and I waited till I could see. She’d drawn the curtains and was lying under the covers in the bed. Her clothes were piled neatly on the chair. It was a flashback.

I walked over to where her face lay on the pillow. “Is this what you want?”

“Silly man, get in.”

I took my clothes off slowly, not wanting to rush anything, and padded over to her, feeling the rough carpet and then the cool linoleum. Her face was away from me when I pulled up the cover and slid in behind her. Her body was hot and naked, and I buried my face in her soft neck. I stroked her shorn hair and realised how little I’d known of her ears. I ran my hand down to her breast. She turned to me and we lay looking into each other’s eyes. I wondered if she saw a stranger too?

Our lovemaking started slowly and finished in a flurry of limbs and tossed sheets, and we lay cradled in each other’s arms till the skin cooled. I got up, went through to the sitting room and brought back two lit fags. We lay smoking and wondering who was going to talk first. I wished no one would.

She said, “When it’s dark, we will go back and see, OK?”

“Why not stay here? I could sneak some food in and we could hole up for days.”

She pinched my nipple. “You know we can’t. They have been brothers to me. We must find out.”

“It might not have been them they were after.”

“Hah. We should have shot the Nazi swine we evicted from my parents’ home. They sold us out. Ariel was right.”

“What if they’re dead?”

She lay quiet for a while. “I hope they are dead. If the Russians took them alive, they will wish for death.”

“And then? Will you come back with me? To London. Or Glasgow. I could show you my home. It’s different up there. Quieter. Except Saturday nights. We could be away from all this.”

She rolled over and sat up. I watched her bare back, counted the knobs on her spine, reached out, touched her hip. She flinched.

“I can never go back. There are others here I need to contact. I promised.”

“Promised what?”

She twisted round so she could see my face. She shook her head. I studied the hollows and curves of her body, the velvet skin of her breasts and sheen of fine hair over her limbs like a sleek seal. I got up, and walked round to her side of the bed and held out my arms. She stood up into them and I held her body close to me as though for the last time, and we kissed. As we dressed we talked and I won the argument. I would go to her parents’ flat and find out what had happened. She would wait for me nearby.

It was a wonderful evening, soft and warm. We walked hand in hand, the picture of young love, she in her pretty frock and beret and me tie-less and jacket unbuttoned. I would have left it behind but I needed somewhere to carry my papers and to cover the handle of the Luger jutting from my waistband at the back. We separated at a bar just before the Russian sector. An enterprising barkeeper had rescued some tables and chairs from the rubble of a hotel and made a little pavement cafй among the ruins. I left her nursing a beer and holding a spare key to my room in case I wasn’t back before curfew.

The alley was deserted when I peered down it. No trucks, no soldiers. I could almost have imagined it. And yet, and yet… as my feet crunched through the rubbish and the debris, I noticed small things: a pool of glistening oil, empty shell cases, fresh half-truck caterpillar tracks. I saw no one. All the curtains were drawn and the windows closed, except one: it was Eve’s flat. A curtain flapped and the remnants of the window frame dangled from the remaining hinge.

The front door lay on its side, splintered and smashed. I peered into the dark stairwell and saw bullet holes on the wall. A long series of dark marks streaked the floor. I didn’t remember them. I bent down and studied them. They were dark brown. I put a finger out and touched. Dry.

The tang of spent ammunition and explosives hung in the air. I pressed on up the stairs. I noted the odd bullet hole and more of the smudge marks, as though something had been dragged down.

Ahead was Eve’s flat. The front door was still on its hinges but it was badly holed. I walked through. Straight ahead was the lower floor which had been used by local Germans. Up the stairs was the attic room where Eve and the men had taken me. I listened and thought I heard a sound ahead of me. Nothing. I took out my gun, undid the safety and cocked it. I began to climb the stairs. I got to the top and stepped over the threshold.

The room was torn to bits. The walls and ceiling were splattered with bullet and shrapnel holes. The window frame had been blown out. Shards of glass lay across the floor. The beds were wrecked and their covers shredded. The table and chairs were smashed against the wall. A bullet-riddled mattress lay across the debris.

I could see the three of them making their last stand behind the upturned table and mattress. Against machine guns and grenades, it wouldn’t have taken long.

A pair of crushed spectacles lay by the mattress. The dark smears here were thicker and led to two pools close to one another. This time so much had been spilled, it hadn’t completely set. I bent and touched. My finger came away red, and I smeared it on a corner of a curtain.

I started back downstairs, then heard it again. From the room below. I crept along the short corridor. My gun led the way. I got to the opened door. I jumped forward holding my pistol in both hands.

“Hande hoch!” I shouted. A familiar enough term to me, but never before used by me. It was the favourite sport of one of the camp sergeants. He would line up outside the hut and make us stretch our arms in the air. It was a way of testing how fit we were and whether it was worth feeding us. He would pace up and down the line of faces twisted in pain and fear. He was a master of the game. He would wait till our shoulders were burning and our arms trembling like branches in a gale, then he’d start to count down from fifty. Slowly. Anyone who couldn’t keep his arms above his head before the final nul was marched off, never to return. You could try to practise, but with too little food it might simply expend precious energy.

I heard the sob. It came from behind the couch. I called again and the sob became two, then three, then ran into a litany of weeping. A head appeared. An old face with a scarf holding grey hair in place.

“Don’t kill me. Don’t kill me.” She edged out on her hands and knees and got to her feet. She wore a shabby dress and a pinny. Her face was streaked with dirt and tears. I lowered my gun.

“What happened here?”

“Don’t kill me. Please don’t kill me.”

“Just tell me what happened. What happened to the men who lived upstairs?”

“The Russians came. Are you Russian?” The panic dissolved her face again. There were red-haired Cossacks, I’d heard.

“English.” It was simpler than Scottish.

Some of the lines left her brow. “The Russians. They came for the Jews. No one likes the Jews. They were hiding up there.”

“Are they dead?”

She shrugged her shoulders, and rubbed at her cheeks. “I suppose. Some of them.

There was a lot of shooting. Then a big bang. Then it was quiet. They took two bodies. Such a mess. Blood on the stairs. And look at my ceiling.” She pointed up. Large bits of plaster had fallen leaving the wooden laths on show.

“Two bodies. Only two? Are you sure?”

“I saw two. They asked me. After. If I’d seen the woman.”

“How did they know?”

A furtive look slid over her face. “It wasn’t me. I didn’t tell them.”

“Who did?”

“You’re not Jewish? You don’t look Jewish. People round here don’t like them.

They’re the cause of all this. Anyone could have told the Ruskies.”

“Haven’t you done enough to them?”

Her face of misery clammed up and she wiped it dry with the edge of her apron.

She patted her hair under her scarf; she wasn’t as old as I’d first thought, maybe in her fifties.

“Do you have a cigarette?” she asked.

I gave her one and lit it. She inhaled as though it was pure oxygen. She sat down on the arm of her couch. She pulled her skirt up to her knee and crossed her bare legs. They were white and blotched with broken veins, but still slim.

“There was a girl,” she said. “Probably their whore. But she wasn’t here when they came.” She dragged deep on her cigarette and blew the smoke in a long funnel.

“Were they looking for the girl?”

Again the shrug and then a lowering of her eyes so that she looked at me from under her eyelashes. “Do you want a girl?” She smoothed the skirt round her knees and pulled off her scarf. She shook her hair. The grey roots showed through the badly dyed dark hair. She ran her hands through it and sucked her lips to bring colour to them. I stared at her, disbelieving. But who was I to judge, in this place at this time? I turned and made for the door.

“Don’t go, liebchen. We could have fun. I could get us some food. Give me two dollars and we will eat like royalty. Ten, and you could spend the night with me.”

I turned and looked at her. She was standing hands on hips in what she must have thought was a provocative pose, but was more like a child playing than a middle-aged woman. Her attempt at a coquettish smile barely hid the terror of her daily fight for life. She might have been a respectable hausfrau once, nice clothes, greeted politely by shopkeepers and petty officials. There would have been a husband, now perhaps rotting in an unmarked mass grave outside Moscow.

She must have seen the pity in my look. Anger flushed her face and brought the tears again.

“Get out! Get out, you smug English swine! You did this! Your bombs! Look at what you’ve done to us!”

I took out my half-empty packet of fags and placed them on the floor and left her sobbing. Her curses followed me into the street.

Was I surprised to find Eve gone when I got back to the cafй? No. The barman – after a dollar tip – told me she’d left with a man. A big man. With a great black beard. She’d left a message for me. She said – and here he screwed up his face to recall the words – she knew what I’d find. She had business to do. And it seemed Gideon had found her.

I set off back to my digs. I knew the business she had to do. I prayed to whatever gods still had patience with this city and this people that I would be able to stop her before it was too late.