The Unquiet Heart Read online

  “So you weren’t a spy,” I said with relief.

  She gave me a wry smile. “Oh yes. Yes, I was. At the start. They tracked me down. I mean the SS. In London. Heinrich Mulder, one of their top agents. He told me that my parents’ lives were at stake unless I helped them with some research, he called it. He offered to protect them if I did this small thing.”

  “Was it small?”

  “To start with. I didn’t know what to do. I had been getting letters every week or two from my parents, but when war broke out they stopped. I don’t know if they were prevented from writing to me or whether MI5 intercepted them.”

  “Bastards.”

  “Yes. Bastards. By then my English teacher had helped me to get a job as a journalist. Mulder was back in Berlin now. We communicated by transmitter and the occasional dead letter drop. There were other agents in London. Mulder told me to use my job as a reporter to meet people and send back information. Mainly he wanted to know about morale. And defences in the city. Whether London could hold out much longer. Where the factories were.”

  “So you played along.” I guess there was a hint of reproof in my voice, though god knows I would have done the same thing for my folks.

  She placed her mug carefully down on the table and looked me in the eye. “Danny, I played along for all of five minutes. I contacted the British Secret Service and told them what was happening.” Her voice was low and steady. A vein jumped in her forehead.

  “You what? Cassells said you worked for the Nazis. You mean…”

  “I worked for both sides. That is, I worked for MI5 while pretending to work for Mulder. We were called the Double Cross team. A unit codenamed B1A within MI5. Most of the others were spies sent over by the Nazis. MI5 caught them before they’d had their first sip of English beer. We had their codes. Have you heard of Enigma? Bletchley Park?”

  I shook my head. She waved her hand as though it didn’t matter, or she couldn’t say any more. She went on. “We knew every time they sent an agent over and were waiting for them. Lots were happy to turn and work for Britain.” She paused. “The alternative was a firing squad. I was unusual. I came in under my own steam. We made up stories to send back to Germany. Disinformation. I was good at my job. The English gave me more money. The Germans promoted me to Major. Our biggest success was Normandy.”

  I sat back in my chair. My head pounded as I struggled to make sense of it. Who they hell was I to believe? Her of course.

  “Why would Cassells lie to me? Did he know all the details? Did he know you were working for us?”

  She shrugged and took a cigarette from my packet. Her sidekicks helped themselves too.

  “I don’t know. We were an autonomous unit. My English handler kept things pretty close. But I would have thought when I went missing…”

  I tried a different tack. “Why did you come back to Berlin? Who were you in contact with up to a couple of weeks ago?”

  She flicked her ash on the floor. “I came back for my parents. I had one or two letters from them through my German drops in London. That was part of the deal. My father didn’t say much; he wasn’t allowed to. But it was clear they were under pressure all the time. Threatened with… well, it was pretty vague… loss of privileges, he said. But I knew he meant the camps. But the letters stopped completely in January ’44. Maybe Mulder found out I was playing both sides. I came to find them.”

  “And…?”

  She shook her head. “I knew it was a waste of time. When the war ended I wrote to them. Every week. Nothing. Then I got a response.” Her eyes flicked to the men beside her. “My letters were being opened.”

  “The Nazis?”

  “No. Let me introduce my friends.” She pointed to the big bearded man. “This is Gideon. And these are Joseph and Ariel.”

  Gideon held out his huge paw to me and smiled. “Shalom, Danny.” Joseph the kid and Ariel the bald followed suit. Ariel tugged at his wire glasses. He said, “Sorry about the head, Danny,” in good English.

  “It’s OK. You’re Jewish?” I said unnecessarily.

  Gideon broke in. “Jewish Brigade. We got out of Berlin in ’39. Got to Lisbon and then London. Joined up in 1940. We fought with the British Army in Italy. We came back after the war to see if we could find our friends and relatives who stayed behind. There was no one.”

  Young Joseph cut in, suddenly animated, as though he’d been released from a spell.

  “Every one, gone! Wiped out! These murderers, these sadists destroyed us!”

  Ariel reached out and touched Joseph’s arm; he clearly kept the boy under his wing. He spoke tenderly to him. It sounded close to German. I recognised the throaty sounds of Yiddish from my camp days. The words formed in my mind. Joseph sat back and took a deep breath.

  “So we decided to do what we could,” went on Gideon. “Some Jews had survived. They’d lived secret lives here. Not all Germans were rotten. And others came back. This was the only home they knew. They were born here. We are helping them find each other. We have contacts who have lists… of the camps. We also help people to get to Israel.”

  “Past the British blockades,” Joseph added contemptuously.

  Eve cut in. “A second cousin of mine survived and knew Gideon. They went looking for others of the family. They found Germans living in my parents’ flat. But one of the neighbours had kindly intercepted my letters. All of them. Gideon wrote to me.”

  “And your parents?” I asked quietly.

  “They were taken away two years ago.”

  “But I thought you were getting letters…?”

  Eve suddenly looked weary. Her shoulders slumped. “They tricked me. Mulder tricked me. He forced my parents to write several letters at once and didn’t date them. It doesn’t take much to add a date later.”

  “I’m sorry. Have you been to their flat?” Then I realised.

  She looked at me funnily. “You’re sitting in it. This floor and the one below. Though we’ve only taken this floor.”

  “What happened to the Germans who…?”

  Joseph grinned at me and drew his finger across his throat. I looked round at them. They stared back at me defiantly.

  Eve glared at him. “We threw them out, Danny. A few bruises.”

  “We should have…” Joseph again sliced his throat. “It’s what they did to us! I am sick of Jews being slaughtered! Now we fight back, Danny.”

  “I understand all that you’re saying, Eve. And I believe everything you tell me. But why did you disappear? Britain must have been grateful to you. The risks you took. They would have helped. Surely? Why all the pretence?” I ran my hand over my hair and winced. The bumps seemed bigger.

  She got to her feet and began pacing. “It’s complicated. It was about six months ago I found out that my parents had vanished. I’ve been in radio touch with Gideon and my cousin several times since. There’s no doubt I’ll never see my parents again. I had only one thought: I wanted Mulder’s head. The British wouldn’t let me have it.”

  “You went to them?”

  “It seemed the natural thing. I wanted to know if Mulder was still alive and how to find him. At first my case officer in London was helpful. But then he closed down on me when he realised my intention. He indicated that Mulder might have survived, but wouldn’t tell me if he was in prison or on trial or taken by the Russians.”

  “But we know!” cut in Ariel. His glasses flashed at me.

  Eve stopped walking. “He’s here. Alive and prospering. He is one of the district controllers set up by the Russians. I demanded that London let me come here and settle things with this swine. They told me to drop it. It had got political, they said. What the hell is political about murder?”

  “Were they the watchers?”

  She shrugged. “That was my guess.”

  “So you faked your disappearance. Made it look like you’d been kidnapped or murdered, and came here? You’re here to get even?”

  “An eye for an eye…” said Ariel rubbing the
tape between his lenses.

  “Hasn’t there been enough killing?” I asked.

  She rounded on me, her eyes blazing. “Not nearly enough! Not nearly! Do you think this swine should get away with it? That he should get a nice job and everything is forgiven and forgotten? Is that your morality, Danny?”

  Ariel leaned across the table to me, his eyes gleaming through his specs. “Ava – Eve – said you were in Dachau. How can you not want to kill these scum?”

  “Because that’s how scum think! That’s what scum do. When does it stop, Ariel? When the last man’s left standing?”

  Eve sat down again. “Do you believe in evil, Danny?”

  “As an entity? As some amorphous opposite force to good? No. Do I think some men are evil and are incapable of remorse or contrition? Yes. I’ve seen it. Experienced it.” I bent my head and parted my hair. They could all see the livid scar that ran through my scalp.

  “But you’d let them go on living? Hoping they’ll change, see the light?” she asked.

  This was what I still wrestled with. I’d seen humanity at its worst and its best in the camp. Afterwards I’d watched in sickening incomprehension the Pathé News showing the other camps being liberated. My gut reaction was to find every one of the guards and follow up every link in the chain of command and string them up, personally. But in more rational moments, I found myself arguing that enough blood’s been spilt, and revenge leaves an emptiness in the heart. The rational moments were still pretty rare.

  I raised my hand to ward off her attack. “No, I don’t think the SS will turn into choir boys. But would shooting him let you sleep easier? I’ve lost my god. My country has gone to the dogs. And the woman I fell for turns out to be a double agent.” I tried a smile to soften the rhetoric. It came out a grimace. “The only thing I’m certain about is that there are no certainties. Look where it got Hitler. Eve, I don’t know what’s right and wrong any more. Did I tell you Gambatti offered me a job? I actually gave it serious thought. That’s how far I’ve slid.”

  She examined my face for a long time, as though she’d never seen it before, or would never see it again. “You said you were on my side,” she said.

  I nodded.

  “This is my side.” She put her hands out and touched the nearest shoulders of Joseph and Ariel.

  I walked over to the sink and rinsed the cloth. I pressed it on my head. It was beginning to feel easier. I still had questions. Why did Cassells lie to me about Eve? Who’d been following her in London? If it was MI5, were they concerned for Eve or Mulder? Who killed the man I went to meet in the bar? But my poor bashed brain had taken all the news it could absorb for one night. I returned to the table and sat down.

  “You know where Mulder is?” I asked. She nodded. “OK, what’s your plan?”

  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 custom
ers 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.”