Absolute Friends (31 page)

_Your brother-in-Christ, Sasha__

Sasha has lost weight, though he had little enough to lose. The Western superspy is folded like a starved child into the corner of a winged chair big enough for three of him.

"It was force of nature," Mundy insists, wishing he didn't sound so apologetic. "It was all there, banked up, ready to happen. Once the Wall was down, there was no stopping the process. You can't blame anyone."

"I blame them, thank you, Teddy. I blame Kohl, Reagan, Thatcher and your duplicitous Mr. Arnold, who gave me false promises."

"He gave you nothing of the kind. He told you the truth as he found it."

"Then in his profession, he should know that the truth as he finds it is always a lie."

They fall quiet again, but the Rhine is never quiet. Though it is nighttime, chains of barges charge ceaselessly past the windows, and by their din they could as well be passing through the room. Mundy and Sasha are sitting in darkness, but the Rhine is never dark. The sodium lamps that line the towpath shine upward onto the oval ceiling. The lights of the pleasure boats flit at will across the pilastered walls. On Mundy's arrival, Sasha led him to the window and gave him the tour: Across the river from us, Teddy, you will see the mountaintop hotel where your revered prime minister Neville Chamberlain resided while he was giving half of Czechoslovakia to Hitler. In this hotel where we are sitting--I dare think these very rooms--Our Dear Führer and his retinue consented to receive Mr. Chamberlain's generous gift. How the Führer would have adored to be with us here tonight, Teddy! East Germany annexed, Grossdeutschland reunited, the Red Peril put to rest. And tomorrow the world.

"I have messages for you from Mr. Arnold," Mundy says. "Shall I convey them to you?"

"Please do."

"Within reason, it's whatever you want. Resettlement, a new identity, you've only to say. Apparently you told them at the beginning that you didn't want money. They're not expecting to hold you to that."

"They are the soul of generosity."

"They'd like to meet you and talk your future through with you. I've got a passport for you in my pocket and a couple of tickets for tomorrow morning's flight to London. If you don't want to go to them, they'll come to wherever you're prepared to meet them."

"I am overwhelmed. But why are they so anxious for my welfare when I am a spent force?"

"Maybe they have a sense of honor. Maybe they don't like to think of you wandering round like a zombie after all you've done for them. Or maybe they don't want to read your memoirs."

Another long silence, another infuriating new direction. Sasha has set down his whiskey and picked up a mint chocolate. He is fastidiously peeling the silver paper from it with his fingertips. "I was in Paris, that much is certain," he recalls, in the practical tones of someone attempting to reconstruct an accident. "I have a label from Paris attached to my suitcase." He selects an edge of chocolate and nibbles at it. "And in Rome I was undoubtedly a night porter. Now _that's__ a profession for retired spies. To watch over the world while it's asleep. To sleep while it goes to the devil."

"I think we can do better than night porter for you."

"And from Rome, I must have taken a train to Paris and from Paris to Hamburg, and from Hamburg to Husum where, despite my ragged appearance, I persuaded a taxi driver to take me to the house of the late Herr Pastor. The front door was opened by my mother. She had a cold chicken waiting for me in the refrigerator and a bed warmed for me upstairs. We may therefore deduce that I had telephoned her in the course of my travels and advised her of my intention to visit her."

"Sounds a reasonable enough thing to have done."

"I have read that there are primitive tribes who believe that someone must die in order for someone else to be born. My mother's renaissance confirms this theory. She nursed me day and night with considerable skill for four weeks. I was impressed." An anchor chain shrieks and drowns. A ship's horn laments its passing. "But what will become of _you,__ Teddy? Is Mr. Arnold equally openhanded with his countrymen? How about footman to the Queen?"

"They're talking of buying me a partnership in a language school. We're discussing it."

"Here in Germany?"

"Probably."

"Teaching German to the Germans? It's high time. One half speaks Amideutsch, the other Stasideutsch. Please begin your work as soon as possible."

"English actually."

"Ah, of course. The language of our masters. Very wise. Has your marriage failed?"

"Why should it have done?"

"Because otherwise you would have retreated to the bosom of your family."

If Sasha is hoping to goad Mundy, he has succeeded.

"So we're bereft," he snaps. "Great. Washed up. Two Cold War bums on the skids. Is that who we are, Sasha? Is it? So let's have a bloody good cry about it. Let's go all passive and self-pitying and agree there's no hope for anyone. Is that what we're here to do?"

"It is my mother's wish that I escort her back to Neubrandenburg, where she was born. There is an establishment for the elderly with which she has been in correspondence. Mr. Arnold will please pay the fees until her death, which cannot be far off." He takes a card from his pocket and lays it on the table. _The Ursuline Convent of St. Julia,__ Mundy reads. "Mr. Arnold's money may be tainted, but the Herr Pastor's is untouchable and will be given to the wretched of the earth. I wish you to come with me, Teddy."

The river traffic is so loud at this moment that Mundy does not immediately catch Sasha's last words. Then he sees that he has sprung to his feet and is standing before him.

"What the hell are you talking about, Sasha?"

"Your luggage is still packed. So is mine. We have only to pay the bill and go. First we take my mother to Neubrandenburg. She's a nice woman. Good manners. You want to share her with me, I won't be jealous. Then we go."

"Where to?"

"Away from the Fourth Reich. Somewhere there's hope at last."

"Where would that be?"

"Wherever hope's the only thing they can afford. You think the war's over because a bunch of old Nazis in East Germany have traded Lenin for Coca-Cola? Do you really believe that American capitalism will make the world a sweet safe place? It will pick it dry."

"So what are you proposing to do about it?"

"Resist it, Teddy. What else is there to do?"

Mundy doesn't answer. Sasha is holding up his suitcase. In the darkness it looks larger than he is, but Mundy doesn't move to help or stop him. He remains seated while he runs through a list of extraneous bits and pieces that all of a sudden are very important to him. Jake wants to go glacier skiing in May. Kate wants Estelle Road back. She's proposing to base in London and commute to her constituency so that Philip can be closer to the seat of power. Maybe I should find a crash course somewhere, get myself a degree in something. Amid all the honking and hooting from the river, he doesn't even hear the door close.

And still Mundy remains there, slumped in his armchair, methodically working his way through a glass of nearly neat Scotch, listening to the clatter of a world he is no longer part of, savoring the emptiness of his existence, wondering what's left of him now that his past has walked out on him, and how much of him is usable, if any of him is, or is it better to write off the whole mess and start again?

Wondering also who he was when he did all that stuff he'll never do again. The deceiving and pretending--in the name of what? The Steel Coffin and the army greatcoat on the autobahn--for whom?

Wondering whether what he did was worth a busted marriage and a busted career and a child I daren't look in the eye.

Would you do it all again tomorrow, Daddy, if the bugle sounded? Irrelevant. There isn't a tomorrow. Not one like yesterday.

He refills his glass and drinks to himself. Better to be a salamander and live in the flames. Very funny. So what happens when the fire goes out?

Sasha will come back. He always does. Sasha's the boomerang you can't throw away. A couple more minutes and he'll be banging on the door, telling me I'm an arsehole and kindly pour him another Scotch, and I'll pour myself another while I'm about it.

And Mundy does just that, not bothering to add water.

And when we've had a belt or two, as dear old Jay Rourke would say, we'll get down to the real business of celebrating our achievement: Cold War's over, communism's dead, and we were the boys who made it happen. There'll be no more spies ever, and all the frightened people in the world can sleep peacefully in their beds at night because Sasha and Teddy made the world safe for them at last, so cheers, old boy, well done both of us and here's to the salamander, and Mrs. Salamander, and all the little salamanders to come.

And in the morning we'll wake up with a god-awful hangover and think: What the fuck's all this singing and rejoicing and clapping and honking, up and down the riverbank? And we'll throw open those double windows and step onto the balcony and the cruise boats and barges will be covered in flags and sounding their sirens at us and the crowds will be waving and yelling, "Oh _thank__ you, Sasha! _Thank__ you, Teddy! That's the first good sleep we've had since Our Dear Führer went to his reward and we owe it all to you two boys. Three cheers for Teddy and Sasha. Hip hip!"

And cheers to you too.

Mundy stands up a little too quickly for his head, but makes it to the door and hauls it open, but the corridor is empty. He goes to the top of the stairs and yells, _"Sasha you arsehole, come back!"__ But instead of Sasha it's an elderly night porter who appears, and guides him respectfully back to his suite. The door in the meantime has locked itself, but the night porter has a master key. Another retired spy, no doubt, thinks Mundy, handing him fifty marks. Watching over the world while it sleeps. Sleeping while it goes to the devil.

11

BELOW THEM at the Bavarian lakeside the merry-go-round is still belching out its honky-tonk and the Silesian matador is still crooning about _amor.__ Now and then a surface-to-air rocket bursts ineffectually among the stars, and the surrounding mountains tremble to its red and gold. But there is no answering fire, no plume of black smoke as an enemy plane comes plunging to earth. Whoever they are shooting at has air supremacy. _A terrorist for Karen is someone who has a bomb but no airplane,__ Mundy hears Judith say in his ear. It's been a long time since he has let Judith into his life, but with a whiskey in his hand and an attic ceiling over his head and Sasha's crooked back not ten feet from him, it's hard to control the memories swirling around.

It's Christmas evening in Berlin, he decides, except that no carols play, no church candles flicker on piles of stolen books. And Sasha is cooking, instead of a chunk of bullet-hard venison, Mundy's favourite Wiener schnitzel from the shopping bag that he nursed so carefully up the spiral staircase. The attic apartment has rafters and bare brick walls and skylights, but that's as far as the similarity goes. A modern kitchen of ceramic tile and brushed steel fills one corner of the room. An arched window looks onto the mountains.

"Do you own this place, Sasha?"

When did Sasha ever own anything? But as with any two friends reunited after more than a decade, their conversation has yet to rise above small talk.

"No, Teddy. It has been obtained for us by certain friends of mine."

For _us,__ Mundy notes.

"That was considerate of them."

"They are considerate people."

"And rich."

"You are correct, actually. They are capitalists who are on the side of the oppressed."

"Are they the same people who own that smart Audi?"

"It is a car they have provided."

"Well, hang on to them. We need them."

"Thank you, Teddy, I intend to."

"Are they also the people who told you where to find me?"

"It is possible."

Mundy is hearing Sasha's words, but what he is listening to is his voice. It is as intense as it ever was and as vigorous. But what it can never conceal is its excitement, which is what Mundy is hearing in it now. It's the voice that bounced back from whichever genius he had been talking to last, to announce that they are about to reveal the social genesis of human knowledge. It's Banquo's voice when he stepped out of the shadows of a Weimar cellar and ordered me to pay close attention and keep my comments to a minimum.

"So you are a contented man, Teddy," he is saying briskly, while he busies himself at the stove. "You have a family, a car, and you are selling bullshit to the masses. Have you as usual married the lady of your choice?"

"I'm working on it."

"And you are not homesick for Heidelberg?"

"Why should I be?"

"You ran an English-language school there until six months ago, I believe."

"It was the last of a long line." How the hell does he know this stuff?

"What went wrong?"

"What always went wrong. Grand opening. Flyers mailed to all the big firms. Full-page ads. Send us your tired and weary executives. Only problem was, the more students we had, the more money we lost. Didn't somebody tell you?"

"You had a dishonest partner, I believe. Egon."

"That's right. Egon. Well done. Let's hear about you, Sasha. Where are you living? Who've you got? What are you doing and who to? And why the hell have you and your friends been spying on me? I thought we'd given all that up."

A lift of the eyebrows and a pursing of the lips as Sasha selects one half of the question and pretends he hasn't heard the other. "Thank you, Teddy, I am fully extended, I would say. My luck appears to have changed for the better."

"About time then. Itinerant radical lecturer in the hellholes of the world can't have been a laugh a minute. What's extending you?"

Another no-answer.

The table is laid for two. Fancy paper napkins. A bottle of burgundy on an arty wooden coaster. Sasha lights the candles. His hand is shaking the way he says it shook when it carried Mundy's visa application to the Professor more than twenty years ago. The sight triggers a rush of protective tenderness in Mundy that he has sworn not to feel. He has sworn it in his mind to Zara, to Mustafa and to himself, and to the better life all three of them are leading. In a minute he will tell Sasha exactly that. _If this is another of your great visions that we're about to share, Sasha, the answer is no, no and no, in that order,__ he will say. After that they can have a natter about old times, shake hands and go their separate ways.