The Unquiet Heart Page 14

  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.

  SIXTEEN

  She walked fast, in that purposeful way I knew so well, going somewhere, doing something. There were one or two others around and I kept to the opposite side of the street. She turned down an alley and we were again
on cobbles. It made her heels click louder and I grew more conscious of my own footsteps. I daren’t lose her, but I couldn’t get too close. Once she glanced round but kept going. A patrol stopped her under a gas lamp. They joked with her until she showed her papers, then let her go and picked on me a hundred paces behind her. They seemed to take forever reading my documents, warned me about the curfew and finally let me go.

  I looked down the narrow street. It was deserted. Frantically I trotted after her. There was a crossroad ahead. She must have turned off. I had to get there before she disappeared completely. A much narrower alleyway ran at right angles to this one. I peered down the dark shaft to my left and listened for a footstep. She could have gone into any of a dozen tenements along here; the entries were black and forbidding. I darted over to the other side and stared and listened. All I could hear was the blood in my ears. Then faintly, I heard some steps, far down the alley. I plunged into the gloom. The walls crowded round me. I could almost touch both sides at once.

  I was deep into the wynd. My eyes began to adjust and I made out dustbins and a great pile of rubble. I skirted it as best I could, stumbling and clutching the wall for support. I clambered down on to the cobbles and straightened up. That’s when the world landed on my head. I fell forward, with a great weight crushing my skull and sending fireworks off inside my eyeballs. I thought part of the crumbling building had collapsed on me. I was dazed and on my hands and knees when the blow came again. This was no act of god, and this time it was final.

  “Bring me some water.”

  It was her voice from a distance, so I knew I was dreaming. But I stirred my head anyway and felt pain blasting through me. I heard a gasp and realised it came from me. I lay panting, moving my hands and legs trying to feel the rest of my body. I seemed to be on a bed, lying on my side.

  “Take it slow.” She was speaking again. This time she was closer.

  Another groan. I opened my eyes. Pain washed through my skull again. “Oh shit.” I managed.

  “Danny, if I lift your head can you take a drink?”

  Impossible. It would hurt too much. “Yes.”

  I felt her hand go under my neck and ease my head up a fraction. The pain clutched at my eyes. “Sick,” I got out. She eased me back down and rolled me further over so that my face was at the edge of the bed. She stood up fast, and came back with a bowl, just in time to catch my vomit. It brought great gasps from me and I felt myself sliding back into unconsciousness.

  Time passed and I heard voices: hers and a man’s, or two men. I couldn’t make out what they were saying. They saw me stirring again, for she came over. I felt a cold damp cloth on my head and its soothing effect seeped into my brain. I thought I might live. It was like coming round from one of my worst migraines. I inched myself up on to my elbow and my head didn’t drop off. I opened my eyes again and she was there, facing me, leaning forward on a wooden chair. Her eyes were full of worry. That made it a little better.

  “Nice haircut,” I said.

  She grimaced and ran her hand through the stubble of her once glorious mane. The worried look left her to be replaced with irritation. Which hardly seemed fair.

  “It’ll grow. What the hell are you doing here, Danny? How did you find me? Don’t you know you can get killed around here just for your shoes?”

  “It’s nice to see you too, Eve. Or is it Ava?”

  She sat back in her chair and eyed me closely. “Who sent you?”

  I didn’t answer. I wasn’t sure how to. I sat up by swinging my legs on to the floor and letting the weight pull my body up. For a moment I thought I’d pass out. I held my head in my hands till it passed. Gingerly I touched my scalp, checking the plate first. It seemed intact and may even have absorbed some of the blow. Alongside it were two lumps as though goose eggs had been pushed under the skin. One was bloody. Both hurt like hell. I raised my eyes. A small room with a sloping ceiling; an attic? A table. A sink. A heavy wardrobe. Curtains drawn across the window. Two beds and two mattresses on the floor. I was on one of the beds. Three men sat smoking and watching me. One was a bearded giant, one looked about fifteen with big sad eyes, the third bald and with glasses held together with tape. All three were scruffy with mistrustful eyes.

  “Was it you or these beauties who socked me?”

  Eve nodded behind her.

  “Did they know it was me?”

  “How could they?”

  “Just wondered. Some girls get huffy if a bloke can’t take a hint.”

  “Danny! Will you cut it out! Why are you here? How did you find me?”

  I dabbed at my head with the damp cloth. It was still coming away bloody.

  “Give me that.” She grabbed it and took it to the sink. She rinsed it and wrung it out. She handed it back to me, and raised an eyebrow.

  “I was looking for you. Why else would I come to this hell hole? And I found you by chance. Sheer bloody chance. What were you doing at the black market?”

  “Buying food. You don’t see any Co-ops around here, do you?”

  “Why are you so angry with me? I’m the one with the headache.”

  Her face softened. “Sorry. Look, we didn’t know it was you. I knew someone was following me. I walked in a circle. The boys here keep a lookout. I gave them the signal.” She shrugged.

  “Where did you pick them up?” I turned to them. “Do - you - speak - English?” They just gave me baleful looks.

  “Stop it, Danny. You still haven’t explained how you got here. How did you know I was here, for one thing? And where did you get the papers? Who are you working for, Danny?”

  “I need a fag.” She went to the table and retrieved my own packet and lighter. Only half the packet had survived. I looked over at the three smokers. “Cheers, fellas!” I saw my papers and the gun on the table.

  I lit up. Dizziness ran through me, and I thought I’d be sick again. I steadied, then I felt better.

  “OK, Eve or Ava or whatever your name is. Here’s my story…”

  I told her about my run-in with Gambatti and watched her face to see if I could elicit – what? sympathy? doubt? repentance? She gave nothing away. I told her of being waylaid by Wilson and the meeting in her flat next day with Cassells. Of seeing the transmitter and the revelation that she was a minor spy. That she’d fled England for Berlin to meet up with her old spymaster, else who had she been communicating with in Berlin in code? I explained how it was then the most natural thing in the world to agree to come looking for her, here at the end of the world. Maybe I shouldn’t have said I came because I loved her and didn’t care what she was; it was about what she and I could become. But I did. This time there was a reaction. Her lips pursed and she shook her head.

  “You idiot. You damned fool,” she said it softly. And idiot that I am, I read something into it that probably wasn’t there and smiled at her.

  “Maybe. But I’m on your side. Whose side are you on?”

  “Does anyone know you’re here? I mean, in the Soviet zone. Will anyone be looking out for you?”

  “There’s a guy called Vic. An army corporal. He’s my guide-dog. He may be waiting up for me. But the main problem is Colonel Toby. I’m supposed to report in to him each day. If they don’t hear from me by tomorrow morning they might get curious. I don’t know if I’m important enough for a search party, but there might be some heat.”

  “Can you make it to the table?”

  “Sink first.”

  I got up, holding on to the bed, and waited till the room had steadied before lurching over to the basin to be sick again. That made the head worse for a while. I ran cold water and splashed it over my head until the coolness numbed the aches. As I straightened up Eve threw a towel at me; I grabbed it, dabbed myself part dry and joined her at the table. She laid out mugs and plates and knives, and brought a pan over with steam rising from it.

  “Coffee?” she asked.

  “Acorns?”

  She smiled and shook her head. “Last drops of Camp. All t
he way from London.”

  She poured the coffee and the three men joined us. I studied them. The giant looked to be older than the others; his black beard was flecked with grey. The other two were in their mid- twenties, dark-eyed and dark-skinned. From somewhere in middle or southern Europe. They still hadn’t said a word.

  Eve placed a paper bag in the middle of the table. She opened it and revealed a sweating half-sausage. She placed a heavy black loaf by its side and cut off chunks. The men attacked the meat and the bread as though they expected it to be taken away from them at any minute. I cut off a slice and chewed some bread and waited. She looked paler and younger. The short hair did that. Made her big features more pronounced. Made her boyish and vulnerable. I could see her mulling over what to say to me, what to do with me. She kept my gun at her side, handy for her right hand. And I’d seen her use one. If she was who they said, then she’d be familiar with this weapon. Both made in Germany.

  Finally, she had eaten enough and sat supping her coffee. “OK, Danny. Here’s my story. You can believe it or not. I can’t prove any of it.” So she began…

  “They were right on one thing: my name is Ava Kaplan. I was born here and grew up here. My father was a doctor and a local official. My mother was a teacher. They could have lived in one of the smart areas of Berlin. But they chose to live here, in Hallesches Tor, because they were needed. They were good Germans, Danny. Germans. But they were also Jewish.”

  She let the word hang in the air and echo in my own memory. I wondered which camp they’d ended their days in, and whether they’d died together. Sometimes at the end, it’s the only important thing.

  Eve continued, “Father used to visit London before the war. He loved England and all it stood for. Especially the bookshops. He taught me to read English and to love its literature.” She smiled at me. “He sent me to school in London for two years when I was sixteen to perfect my English. Despite the rise of the Nazis Father saw no reason to worry about his position; he was an important member of the community. A valued doctor. My mother taught in a German school, not a Jewish one. Even the Brown Shirts would not be so stupid. After Kristallnacht he began to fear for me and my mother. He sent me back to London in 1938 for my safety. My mother wouldn’t leave him. She couldn’t believe it would come to… this.”