The Unquiet heart

TWENTY

Next morning I ventured out. We were starving and I had a couple of dollars left for food. I also wanted information. I assumed the manhunt for us was well underway. Four Russian soldiers had seen the three of us hightail it from the scene of the crime. Mulder’s lover boy – if he survived – would corroborate. And a dozen terrified sharpshooters at the sector checkpoint had seen three ashen faces bearing down at them in a two-ton Merc. The Brandenburg Gate was a congregating point right smack in the middle of the city. We could hardly have got more publicity out of the front page of the Daily Trumpet. The question was who would be coming after us? The Brits? Russians? The military? Police? Or the lot of them?

Much depended on how Gideon’s death and glory mission had climaxed. Had he got far enough away to divert them from us? Had he died in a fireball so violent that they couldn’t tell if there were three bodies in the car or one? Or had he ground to a halt, still alive, and been tortured till he’d disclosed who we were and where we were hiding? My guess was Gideon had died fighting or in the explosion we heard. If they had taken him alive and made him confess in his dying minutes, we would have had a reveille from Russian storm-troopers.

It was a glorious day and the sunshine gave me unwarranted hope. I no longer had a gun to hide so I went without my jacket. I was in grubby rolled-up shirt-sleeves and open neck. But I’d borrowed Eve’s beret to hide my red hair.

It was tight but not much different from my old army version. I decided to wander back up the road to see what I could see at the Gate. A clichй of my own making: the criminal returning to the scene of the crime. Stupid if there was anyone around who could recognise me.

I tried to walk nonchalantly, hands in pocket, as I came to the corner of the last building before the roads opened up and led to the Gate. I stood with my back against the wall and lit up, as though I hadn’t a care. The Gate was about four hundred yards away in open ground. The sun was behind me so I got a good view. There was a cordon round one part of the Gate and if I screwed my eyes up I could make out the burnt wreckage of the car. Gideon hadn’t fooled around.

He’d gone straight for it like Jimmy Cagney charging the Feds, both guns blazing and roaring like a stag in heat. There were plenty of guards round the wreck, some in Russian uniform and some from our own side. There were also plenty of gawpers, so I didn’t feel too conspicuous wandering over.

I feared seeing the charred body of Gideon in the heap of twisted metal, but the car was mercifully clear of burnt remains. The front was stoved in and fire had swept through the rest, but it was recognisably my Merc. Vic’s Merc. Where Gideon had hit the wall was blackened in smoke. Guards were shoving people away.

I asked one of my fellow ghouls what had happened.

“A madman killed himself in protest at the rationing.”

“No, no,” another guy interrupted. “It was one of Hitler’s generals. He had been hiding but became insane and made a last assault on the Russians. A brave man,” he whispered.

I would get no sense here and turned and walked away. A voice behind me called out, “McRae? That you, McRae?”

I walked faster, trying to put people between me and him. I broke clear of the crowds around the gate and began to trot. It was never a good idea to run in a place so brimful of guilt. But the guy behind me wasn’t to be shaken off.

“McRae! Stop, Danny! Stop or I’ll shoot, so help me god!”

I stopped and turned round and waited for him to catch me up. He was breathless but he was also in uniform and holding his service pistol.

“Hello, Vic.”

“You stupid sod! I nearly shot you.”

“In the back? Vic, how could you?”

“Because of what you did to my car, you bastard!” He was right in my face and angry, but at least he’d lowered his gun.

We locked gazes till he laughed. “What the fuck is going on, Danny? Have you any idea the shit I’m in? This car isn’t – wasn’t! – exactly inconspicuous. I got hauled out of bed at five this morning by a bunch of pissed-off Redcaps wanting to know why I’d tried to demolish the fucking Brandenburg Gate, and mow down half the fucking Russian army in the process? Not to mention – not to fucking mention! – shooting District Controller Heinrich fucking Mulder himself!”

“Vic, I can understand you’re a wee bit upset…”

“A wee bit fucking upset!”

“Vic, don’t shout. You’ll draw attention to us. Let me buy you a beer and explain.” I took his arm and led him like a recalcitrant child back to the shelter of the shattered buildings. We found a bar, and though it was barely nine o’clock they found us a beer each. I made him pay.

“I’m sorry about the car,” I started.

“You’re sorry!”

“You’re shouting again.”

He sat back and folded his arms. “I’m waiting.”

I checked the room. The barman was listening to the radio, a mix of news and music from Voice of America. The only other customer was three tables away and staring into his cup – reading his tea leaves maybe. I leaned forward to Vic and told him everything that happened, more or less. In fact, rather less than more.

I didn’t tell him the Jewish resistance stuff, and I was at pains to make him believe that Eve hadn’t pulled the trigger on Mulder. But a British court might not see the difference between doing the murder and helping at it. Come to that, I might have some serious explaining to do in the dock as well.

Vic interrupted me at the start but as I got to the last twenty-four hours he listened to me in silence with his arms folded. When I stopped, he lit another fag and shook his head.

“I have to hand it to you, Danny. You’ve been in this town less than a week and you’ve managed to cause an international incident. That takes talent. I saw old Toby this morning. Scraped him off the bleeding ceiling I did. He was mental.

Would have wrung your neck with his bare hands if you’d walked in the door.”

“That’s comforting.”

“But he’s calmed down. A bit. Now his current mission in life is to get you off his patch as fast as your little legs can pedal.”

“What about Eve?”

“Her too, I imagine. They want her back in Blighty, so I guess they’ll take the pair of you back. Then you can sort it out from there. And we can get on with turning Berlin back into the cabaret capital of Europe. If that’s all right by you…”

I didn’t tell him where we were hiding. I agreed to meet him, same place, same time tomorrow to hear how Toby wanted to handle it. The bar could be approached from a number of angles and though it had more board than glass in its windows, I would be able to check if there was a platoon of Redcaps waiting to pounce. On my way back I did some hard bartering in one of the open markets and carried my treasure to the flat. It didn’t look so tasty set out on the table.

“You should have sent me,” she said prodding the blackening spuds and cabbage and the dark red sliver of fatty meat.

“If you’re going to complain about it…”

“Joking, joking. You did well, Danny. I can make a meal out of this. But we won’t bark too loudly in case the meat twitches, eh?”

She’d evidently got over the shock of yesterday. Her face had some colour in it again, and she’d managed to wash her hair in the sink. It was damp and combed flat against her head like a Twenties flapper. While she rinsed and cut up the food I told her about my run-in with Vic.

“Are you sure you weren’t followed?” she asked.

“I’m trained in this stuff.”

“Can you trust him?” She put a pan on to boil. She threw the meat into the little frying pan and it sizzled and filled the room with saliva-inducing smells. I chose not to sniff too deeply in case I could identify its provenance.

Meat was meat.

“I don’t know. He might set me up tomorrow. Haul me off in a paddy wagon. But it’s a risk we need to take.”

“Is it? We could lie low. Stay here till it went quiet. Try to make contact with some of my other friends?”

“Irgun? Haven’t they got you in enough bother?”

She turned to me, her face red – maybe it was the heat of the stove.

“It was my decision, Danny. Nobody forced me. This time.”

I held my hands up. “Sorry. I still find it hard to see you as a double-agent.”

“Me too, Danny. Me too.”

“What about this big scoop? This propaganda event Gideon was talking about? You know what it is, don’t you? When is it?”

She was suddenly back at the cooker, meddling with the food. I let the silence grow. Finally she turned to look at me. There were beads of sweat on her brow.

“I don’t know exactly. It’s in Jerusalem.”

“A raid? A bomb? A street riot? What?”

“I can’t tell you! No one will get hurt.”

“When? “Soon. Very soon.”

“Where are we? This is July…” I realised I had lost track of the days.

Eve clearly had her finger on the pulse. She took a deep breath. “Today’s the twentieth. It could happen any time, he said.”

“Today? Tomorrow? Next month?”

She shrugged.

I pressed her. She was finally coming clean. “What were you to do?”

“I drafted a few words.”

“Like a press release?”

She nodded. “I suppose.”

“Then what?”

“Gideon was to send it out on the wires. Telegraph a man in Reuters in New York.

He was going to spread the text. I was to phone in my report to my news desk. A scoop, as you call it. Then I was to get exclusive interviews with the heads of the Jewish Defence Agency.”

“Would the Trumpet print it? It’s not your normal headline.”

“This is big enough to be different. We would have the edge on everybody else.

Old Hutcheson would make it happen. This would be news.”

I looked at her, wondering again if I knew anything about her. I whispered, “Christ, Eve. What is it? What’s so big that it would make such news?”

She shook her head. “Enough. I’ve said enough. Just leave it.”

“One last question. How will you know about it, now? How will you hear? You’ve lost your contacts.”

She turned and walked over to the sideboard. She reached out to the wireless and switched it on. The screen glowed faint then a steady yellow. The set began to hum. She turned the knob and began to switch through the stations. Ghost accents and languages whistled past until we heard the distinctive voice of the BBC Overseas broadcast. I’d heard those clear, comforting tones many times sitting in a tent in the desert in North Africa or at dead of night in France crouched over an illicit radio, listening for coded messages.

“Good old Auntie,” I said. “Leave it on a bit, there’s a girl.”

And for a while, we listened to the everyday rhythms of Music While you Work, then Educating Archie, wondering at the barminess of a ventriloquist act on the wireless. We ate our food and felt like we were living on an island of domestic bliss. Bing Crosby crooned at us and I nearly asked her to dance. But I was scared she’d think me daft, and the moment would sour. So we had another fag.

The fried cat wasn’t bad either.