Jigsaw (36 page)

She shivered in the cold air. ‘And now you've succeeded in changing yourself, you're changing the world next. It's quite a step, Barron.'

‘Changing the world? I wouldn't go that far. I'm only helping certain people to get what they want,' he remarked. ‘I'm a provider. That's all.'

‘Oh? Like one of your charities? Is that it? Get real. Barron, you get your kicks out of the power bit. You get off on being the centre of your own little planet. See Tobias Barron pull the strings. Watch the puppets jump. How clever Toby is. That's how you get off, Barron.'

‘Is that what you think?'

‘Sometimes. Sometimes I don't think at all. My mind goes gloriously blank.'

He turned the woman's remarks around in his head.
How clever Toby is. Watch the puppets jump
. Perhaps she was close to the truth. He pulled strings and people danced. He made phone calls that had consequences in places he'd never been, places he'd never go. He sent ships and trains on journeys he'd never undertake himself.

‘The trouble with power,' she said, ‘is how it insulates you. You're all wrapped up in a big protective Band-aid. Nothing touches you.'

‘That's not strictly true,' he said. He looked out over the darkened water. The launch was heading toward the Porto di Lido. Clouds, blown in from the Gulf of Venice, obscured the stars.

‘Have you ever loved?' she asked.

A question characteristic of the woman, he thought. Out of nowhere. He smiled. ‘I have feelings for you.' He considered this statement, fumbled toward articulation, but he wasn't sure how to say what he truly felt.

‘I don't know anything about feelings,' she said. ‘What they are. Where they come from. How you identify them.'

He turned her face toward him, put his arms around her. She said
feelings
as though it were a word from a dead language. This saddened him; he experienced a tiny jab in his heart.

‘How do you define your feelings for me?' she asked.

He sidestepped the matter of clarification. ‘That's far too complex a question. I've had too many complicated things recently. I'd like more … simplicity. I can foresee a day when Tobias Barron will have to reinvent himself from scratch.'

‘Another incarnation.'

‘Why not?'

‘And do I figure in this scheme of things?'

‘I hope so. I want to think so.'

She wasn't sure she wanted to participate in Barron's future. Some days she did, others she didn't. Moods were trapdoors through which she kept falling. She'd managed on her own before Barron, she could do so again. She resented the control he thought he had over her; she didn't want to be just another string he pulled.

Barron put his hand in the inside pocket of his overcoat. He took out a small flat laminated card. ‘Here. I have something for you.'

‘A present?'

‘Of a kind.'

She held it under the pale light that burned on the stern. She saw an ID card issued by the Russian Intelligence Service, the successor to the KGB, in the name of a certain Alyssia Baranova, 37 years of age, height 1.71m, hair brown, distinguishing features none. The photograph inserted in the centre of the card was of herself.

Carlotta's identity had been reinvented yet again.

TWENTY-FOUR

BERLIN

K
ARL
-H
EINZ
B
UCHBODEN WATCHED THE FIRST DEMONSTRATION,
WHICH
began at ten o'clock in the evening outside the Palast der Republik on the Marx-Engels-Platz. It was an unexpectedly muted gathering of about five thousand people intent on expressing their frustration and disappointment and fear. Muffled in scarves and heavy overcoats, a few of them masked to avoid identification on account of the fear of some vague retribution – a hangover from their conditioned pasts, from the days of the STASI and the Wall – the demonstrators saw themselves as the victims of reunification. The point behind the march was evident from the placards and posters they carried. They'd lost their homes, their jobs, and the security once afforded them by the socialist State had dissipated. They were third-class citizens in a new Germany they'd at first embraced with enthusiasm, because it promised freedom and opportunity, but it had become a country in which they were misfits, a place they didn't understand and where they were misunderstood.

Lost souls, Karl-Heinz Buchboden thought. Their leader, Heinrich Gebhart, a fierce white-haired figure whose bearing suggested that of a prophet coming out of the wilderness, walked in front of the procession. Buchboden followed at some distance.

The marchers moved in a rather eerie silence along Unter den Linden. Some carried flashlights, others held candles aloft, flames fluttering in the chill breeze. A police helicopter, blades slicing the night, hovered above them. A motorcade of police cars followed the marchers warily: any form of demonstration had the potential to turn sour and violent. Buchboden noticed how some onlookers shook their fists in derision, how some jeered, while others watched warily, the oldest among them perhaps remembering different kinds of parade along Unter den Linden in the 1930s.

The Ossis, the former East Germans, paid no attention to their detractors. It was as if the five thousand or so individuals had a single will, a blind purpose they shared. Traffic snarled around them, horns blaring, headlights flashing angrily. Now and then the marchers broke ranks whenever a car or truck threatened to run them over, but for the most part they managed to maintain a semblance of order. They were dissatisfied, but Gebhart's key word was dignity. Dignity at all times.

Karl-Heinz Buchboden continued to follow. Every now and then he beat his gloved hands together against the cold. He passed the stand of a vendor selling frankfurters and a faint wave of heat embraced him momentarily.

The vendor, a man of Turkish extraction, remarked, ‘Lazy fuckers. Always looking for a handout from the State. That's all they've ever been used to, I suppose. But why should we support them? Why should we support the Ossis? Let them work.'

Buchboden gestured in agreement, but without any enthusiasm.

The vendor commented, ‘I never thought I'd hear myself saying this. But the Wall served a purpose. They should have left the damn thing in place.' He looked angrily at Buchboden, who merely nodded his head. All the euphoria of the
Wende
had long since evaporated, hot air rushing from a balloon. Now there was discontent and resentment; the initial joy of a united Germany had disintegrated in a series of grudges and raw resentment. Buchboden knew that when you had resentment, you had at least one of the ingredients for turmoil, because it had a way of festering, spreading bitterness.

He kept moving. The marchers reached the junction of Friedrichstrasse and headed towards the Brandenburg Gate, by which time traffic had become chaotic around them, and the number of spectators, many of them howling in a hostile way, a few amused, had grown along the pavements. Ossis would always be Ossis. Who needed these people and their problems? They'd lived under a different system all their lives, and that system had collapsed, and if they couldn't adapt, too bad.

The march came to a stop at the Brandenburg Gate. From somewhere a small platform was produced and Heinrich Gebhart clambered up on it, loudspeaker in hand. His message was lost in the sound of traffic horns from buses and taxicabs. Its gist was direct, though, for those close enough to hear him: Germany reunified was nothing more than a shoddy piece of political carpentry. Politicians had made wondrous promises, none of which had come to pass. Property had been seized from the East Germans by pre-war claimants from the West. There were no jobs. There was no future. The Ossis were as much misfits as any guestworkers, any
Gastarbeiter
. Gebhart had an orator's flair, an actor's presence.

Standing at the rear of the crowd, Buchboden looked at his watch. Gebhart was still ranting, waving his arms, even if his words weren't carrying far. Buchboden moved away from the crowd. He gazed up at the helicopter that hovered now directly over the Brandenburg Gate before it swung toward the Tiergarten and came back again, droning.

Buchboden stopped near a parked police car occupied by two grim-faced uniformed cops. Across the back seat lay assault rifles, riot visors, bullet-proof shields.

Nobody knew who fired the first bullet. Nobody knew from which direction it came. It struck Gebhart in the neck and he fell back from the small platform, still clutching his loudspeaker. The automatic gunfire that followed was short and intense and appeared to originate from a place beyond the Brandenburg Gate, perhaps from the edges of the Tiergarten.

‘Jesus Christ!' A young cop jumped out of the car and grabbed his rifle. With less speed his overweight partner, who was chewing gum, also got out. Buchboden watched the demonstrators spread in sudden chaos, throwing themselves to the ground, covering their heads with their hands. Police, pouring from their cars all over the place, had their passage toward the source of gunfire blocked by the mob.

Screaming, confusion, bewilderment; it was impossible to know how many had been struck by bullets, how many were dead. The gunfire stopped as abruptly as it had begun. The police who managed to make their way beyond the Gate were too late to apprehend the gunmen, who had vanished into darkness. The officers in the helicopter, scouring the sky over the Tiergarten, later reported that they'd seen nothing.

Karl-Heinz Buchboden walked away. He'd parked his car earlier in a street behind the Russian Embassy. He unlocked it, got in and drove in the direction of Kreuzberg, a district inhabited by Turkish immigrants where the air smelled of Eastern spices and the windows of small kebab restaurants were lit long into the night.

He listened to police bulletins as he drove. The coded messages were urgent, panicky. Every patrol car within a three-mile radius was being despatched to the Brandenburg Gate.

He tuned the radio to a local news station. Already there were reports of the night's events, most of them garbled, exaggerated, poorly informed. Broadcasters liked that heightened sense of reality, they enjoyed tragic immediacy, the speedy communication of unexpected occurrences. Reporters, cameramen, the whole jabbering squadron of media would be rushing toward the Brandenburg Gate.

He parked in a sidestreet off the Oranienstrasse, beyond Moritzplatz. He locked the car, then began to walk. He went inside a small Turkish café, drank two cups of sweet thick coffee, smoked a couple of cigarettes. He studied the waitress for a while, a girl whose mix of Turkish and Nordic appealed to him. She wore her dark hair plaited, and she bustled around the place, cleaning tables, emptying ashtrays. Buchboden looked at the clock on the wall. It was more than an hour since Gebhart had been shot. In another fifteen minutes he'd get up, leave the café and stroll slowly in the direction of the Kotbusser Tor.

From the kitchen somebody spoke in Turkish. The girl vanished for a while inside the kitchen. When she came back she propped her elbows on the counter of the bar and looked at Buchboden. ‘Have you heard?'

‘Heard?' he asked.

‘They say twenty-five people are dead at the Brandenburg Gate. There was gunfire. Nobody knows who did it. Nobody knows why.'

Buchboden shook his head. ‘I hadn't heard.'

‘They were marchers. Some kind of demonstration. I don't know. Then they started shooting. This city …' She shrugged, turned from the counter, poured herself a glass of orange juice.

Buchboden said, ‘What is the world coming to.'

He got up, left some coins on the table, said good night. He stepped into the street. He walked toward the Kotbusser Tor. This was an exotic, uneasy vicinity, filled with kebab vendors, nightclubs that had a certain seedy quality, gay bars, Yugoslavian restaurants, a few Greek joints. Buchboden had always been intrigued by this part of Kreuzberg because it had a nefarious quality, an air of criminality: you knew that drug deals were going down behind closed doors.

Clothing stores were open late, funky little places selling cut-price jeans, Doc Martens, punk gear. A scent of spices and roasting lamb floated from doorways. In spite of the bitter night the streets were thronged, people window-gazing, studying menus, hurrying to assignations. Buchboden enjoyed all this hustle, the life of the place, the swarm. He looked at his watch. He was all at once tense.

He heard them before he saw them, the sound of chanting, of boots clattering on concrete, the noise of glass being smashed, of baseball bats struck against walls and cars. He slipped into a narrow sidestreet. He heard angry voices raised, more chanting.

They came seemingly out of nowhere, three, maybe four hundred of them, as if brought together by a command only they could hear. They wore the insignia of their prejudices, swastika armbands on their leather jackets, swastika headbands across their brows. There were skinheads, tattoo freaks, black-booted, chain-carrying, knife-flashing, and they were compelled by rage beyond reason. They strutted down the street, breaking shop windows, tearing down signs, chanting as they moved.

Then somebody threw a Molotov cocktail into a kebab joint, which seemed to be the signal for the mob to step up their activities. More fiery bottles were thrown into restaurants, bars, through the windows of apartments or cars. Whenever they encountered resistance from store owners, who had armed themselves during the years of ethnic tensions, they responded with knives, chains, sharpened steel combs, spiked leather belts, baseball bats. Shotguns, revolvers, semi-automatic weapons. Buchboden, concealed in darkness, held his breath. He watched them work through the neighbourhood in their apocalyptic fashion, leaving behind a maze of flame and death. They worked thoroughly, too, as if whatever urge drove them was of no random nature. A few buildings began to burn in the night, rafters collapsing in flame, cars exploding; the neighbourhood might have been kindling. The air was rich with the stench of burning rubber, blackened meat, cinders. The whole business took maybe five or six minutes.