The Good German (51 page)

Jake looked away, disgusted. “Fuck you.”

“Try to get him moved,” Shaeffer said, ignoring him. “But either way, give me a day or two. I still have to lay my hands on some Russian uniforms.”

“What for?”

“Well, we can’t go in with American uniforms, can we? Might look

a little conspicuous in the Russian zone.“

Cowboy stuff. Improbable. “I don’t like this. Any of it.”

“Let’s just get it done, okay?” Shaeffer said. “You can grouse later.

Right now you just sweet-talk the Russian and get the door open.

We’ll do the rest.“ He grinned at Jake. ”I told you we’d make a good

team. Takes all kinds, doesn’t it?“

Guards had been posted at the driveway entrance to the Conrol Council building, but Muller’s name got him through. He swung around to the gravel forecourt facing the park, then had to find a place in the crowd of jeeps and official cars. The work party had done its job—the park had been cleaned up, everything neat and polished, like the white-scarved sentries. Officers with briefcases rushed through the heavy doors, late or just self-important, a blur of motion. Jake followed one group into the chandeliered hall without drawing a glance. The meeting room, off-limits to press, would be another matter, but Muller’s name had worked once and might work again, so he headed down the corridor to his office. His secretary, nails still bright red, was just on her way to lunch.

“He won’t be out for hours. The Russians don’t start till late, then they go on all afternoon. Want to leave a name? I remember you—the reporter, right? How did you get
in
here?”

“Could you take a message in?”

“Not if I want to keep my job. No press on meeting days. He’d kill me.”

“Not him. One of the Russians. Sikorsky. He’s—”

“I know who he is. You want to see him? Why not ask the Russians?”

“I’d like to see him today,” he said, smiling. “You know what they’re like. If you could take in a note? It’s official business.”

“Whose official business?” she said dryly.

“One note?”

She sighed and handed him a piece of paper. “Make it quick. On my lunch hour, yet.” As if she were on her way to Schrafft’s.

“I appreciate it,” he said, writing. “Jeanie, right?”

“Corporal,” she said, but smiled back, pleased.

“By the way, you ever find that dispatcher?”

She put her hand on her hip. “Is that a line, or is it supposed to mean something?”

“Airport dispatcher in Frankfurt. Muller was going to find him for me. Ring a bell?”

He looked up at her face, still puzzled, then saw it clear.

“Oh, the transfer. Right,” she said. “We just got the paperwork. Was I supposed to let you know?”

“He was transferred? What name?”

“Who remembers? You know how much comes through here?” she said, cocking her head toward the filing cabinets. “Just another one going home. I only noticed because of Oakland.”

“Oakland?”

“Where he was from. Me too. I thought, well, at least one of us is going home. Who is he?”

“Friend of a friend. I said I’d look him up and then I forgot his name.”

“Well, he’s on his way now, so what’s the diff? Wait a minute, maybe it’s still in pending.” She opened a file drawer, a quick riffle through. “No, it’s filed,” she said, closing it, another dead end. “Oh well. Does it matter?”

“Not anymore.” A transport ship somewhere in the Atlantic. “I’ll ask Muller—maybe he remembers.”

“Him? Half the time he doesn’t know what comes in. It’s just paper to him. The army. And they said it would be a great way to meet people.”

“Did you?” Jake said, smiling.

“Hundreds. You writing a book there or what? It
is
my lunch hour.”

She led him down the corridor to the old court chamber, breezing past the guards by holding up the note. Through the open door Jake could see the four meeting tables pushed together to form a square, smoke rising from the ashtrays like steam escaping from vents. Muller was sitting next to General Clay, sharp-featured and grim, whose face had the tight forbearance of someone listening to a sermon. The Russian speaking seemed to be hectoring everyone, even those at his own table, who sat stonily, heads down, as if they too were waiting for the translation. Jake watched Jeanie walk over to the Russian side of the room, surprising Muller, then followed the pantomime of gestures as she leaned over to hand Sikorsky the note—a quick glance up, a finger pointing to the corridor, a nod, a careful sliding back of his chair as the Russian delegate droned on.

“Mr. Geismar,” he said in the hall, his eyebrows raised, intrigued.

“I’m sorry to interrupt.”

“No matter. Coal deliveries.” He nodded his head toward the closed door, then looked at Jake expectantly. “You wanted something?”

“A meeting.”

“A meeting. This is not perhaps the best time—”

“You pick. We need to talk. I have something for you.”

“And what is that?”

“Emil Brandt’s wife.”

Sikorsky said nothing, his hard eyes moving over Jake’s face.

“You surprise me,” he said finally.

“I don’t see why. You made a deal for Emil. Now you can make one for her.”

“You’re mistaken,” he said evenly. “Emil Brandt is in the west.”

“Is he? Try Burgstrasse. He’d probably appreciate hearing from you. Especially if you told him his wife was coming to visit. That ought to cheer him up.”

Sikorsky turned away, marking time by lighting a cigarette. “You know, it sometimes happens that people come to us. For political reasons. The Soviet future. They see things as we do. That would not, I take it, be the case with her?”

“That’s up to her. Maybe you can talk her into it—tell her how much everybody likes it on the collective farm. Maybe Emil can. He’s her husband.”

“And who exactly are you?”

“I’m an old friend of the family. Think of it as a kind of coal delivery. ”

“From such an unexpected source. May I ask what prompts you to make this offer? Not, I think, Allied cooperation.”

“Not quite. I said a deal.”

“Ah.”

“Don’t worry. I’m not as expensive as Tully.”

“You’re talking in riddles, Mr. Geismar.”

“No, I’m trying to solve one. I’ll deliver the wife, you deliver some information. Not so expensive, just some information.”

“Information,” Sikorsky repeated, noncommittal.

“Little things that have been on my mind. Why you met Tully at the airport. Where you took him. What you were doing in the Potsdam market. A few questions like that.”

“A press interview.”

“No, private. Just me and you. A good friend of mine got killed that day in Potsdam. Nice girl, no harm to anybody. I want to know why. It’s worth it to me.”

“Sometimes—it’s regrettable—there are accidents.”

“Sometimes. Tully wasn’t. I want to know who killed him. That’s my price.”

“And for that you would deliver Frau Brandt? For this family reunion.”

“I said I’d deliver her. I didn’t say you could keep her. There are conditions.”

“More negotiations,” Sikorsky said, glancing behind him at the door. “In my experience, these are never satisfactory. We don’t get what we want, you don’t get what you want. A tiresome process.”

“You’ll get her.”

“What makes you think I’m interested in Frau Brandt?”

“You’ve been looking for her. You had a man watching Emil’s father in case she showed up.”

“With you,” he said pointedly.

“And if I know Emil, he’s been mooning over her. Hard to debrief a man who wants to see his wife. Awkward.”

“You think that’s the case.”

“He did the same thing to us when we had him. Won’t go anywhere without her. Otherwise, you’d have shipped him east weeks ago.”

“If we had him.”

“Are you interested or not?”

Behind them the door opened, a summoning burst of Russian. Sikorsky turned and nodded to an aide.

“The British are responding. Now it’s grain. Our grain. Everybody, it seems, wants something.”

“Even you,” Jake said.

Sikorsky looked at him, then dropped his cigarette on the marble floor and ground it out with his boot, an unnervingly crude gesture, a peasant under the shellac of manners.

“Come to the Adlon. Around eight. We’ll talk. Privately,” he said, pointing to Jeanie’s pen, still in Jake’s hand. “Without notes. Perhaps something can be arranged.”

“I thought you’d say that.”

“Yes? Then let me surprise you. A riddle for you this time. I can’t meet your price. I want to know who killed Lieutenant Tully too.” He smiled at Jake’s expression, as if he had just won the round. “So, at eight.”

Jake backtracked down the hall, nervously turning Jeanie’s pen over in his hand. None of it would work, not Shaeffer with his borrowed Soviet cap, not even this meeting, another negotiation in which the pieces never moved. I can’t meet your price. Then why had he agreed? A sly Slavic smile, squashing a cigarette as easily as a bug.

The office door was closed but not locked, the desk just as Jeanie had left it, tidied up for lunch. He put the pen back in its holder, then looked over at the files. Where did she eat lunch? A mess somewhere in the basement? He pulled open the drawer where the pending folder had been to find a thick wad of carbons, the rest a row of alphabetical tabs. Frankfurt to Oakland. Even without the name to help, it must be here somewhere. And then what? A message through channels, a cable to Hal Reidy to track him down? Weeks either way. Whoever he was sailed nameless on the Atlantic, another
t
uncrossed. Jake slid the drawer shut.

He put his hand on the next cabinet, where Jeanie had filed the police report weeks ago, and, curious, flicked the drawer open to see if it was still there. Tully had a thin folder to himself. The CID report, all of it, with ballistics; an official condolence letter to the mother; a shipping receipt for the coffin and special effects; nothing else, as if he really had been swallowed up in the Havel, out of sight. He looked at the report again, but it was the same one he’d seen, service record, previous assignments, promotions. Why is Sikorsky still interested in you? he wondered, flipping the pages and getting the usual blank reply.

He opened the drawer below, rummaging now. Something cross-referenced, perhaps, like the files at the Document Center. Kommandatura minutes, food supply estimates, all the real business of the

occupation, drawers of it. He worked his way back up to the transfer file and opened it again, automatically reaching for the T’s, idly thumbing through and then stopping, surprised, when the name leaped out at him. Maybe another Patrick Tully, luckier. But the serial number was the same.

He took the sheet out. Traveling orders, Bremen to Boston, a July 21 sail date. Home to Natick at the end of that week. A new wrinkle, but what kind? Why come to Berlin? Not to fly on to Bremen, with no luggage. The obvious answer was payday, to collect the traveling money for the trip home. Then why go to the Document Center? Jake stared at the flimsy. There hadn’t been any orders in his effects. Was it possible that Tully hadn’t known? Still up to business as usual while his ticket home floated through the paper channels that crisscrossed Germany?

“Find what you’re looking for?”

He turned to see Jeanie standing in the door with a sandwich and a Coke.

“You’ve got a nerve.”

“Sorry. It’s just that I did remember his name, after you left. So I thought I’d get the address. I didn’t think you’d mind—”

“Next time you want something, ask. Now how about getting out of here before I find out what you’re really up to.”

He shrugged, a schoolboy with his hand in the principal’s file. “Well, I said I was sorry,” he said, putting the paper back and closing the drawer. “It’s not exactly a state secret.”

“I mean it, blow. He finds you in here, he’ll have both our heads. You’re nice, but you’re not that nice.”

Jake held up his hands in defeat. “Okay, okay.” He went to the door, then stopped, his fingers on the knob. “Can you tell me something, though?”

“Such as?”

“How long does it usually take for orders to come through? Copies, I mean.”

“Why?” she said, suspicious, then put the Coke on the desk and leaned against the edge. “Look, things get here when they get here. Depends where they started. Your friend was in Frankfurt? Any time. Frankfurt’s a mess. Munich comes right away, but Frankfurt, who knows?”

“And if they were canceled?”

“Same answer. What is this, anyway?”

“I’m not sure,” he said, then smiled. “Just wondering. Thanks for the help. You’ve been a peach. Maybe we can have that drink sometime.”

“I’ll hold my breath,” she said.

He left the office and started down the sweep of opera house stairs. Any time from Frankfurt. But the dispatcher’s orders were already here—why not Tully’s cancellation, which must have been earlier? Unless no one had bothered, letting death cancel itself out, a no-show on the manifest, one less paper to send.

Outside he took in the line of jeeps stretched across the forecourt like one of the old taxi ranks at Zoo Station or the Kaiserhof. Now they parked here, or at headquarters in Dahlem, motor pool branches, waiting for different fares. If you wanted a ride, this would be the place to come. Unless you already had a Russian driver.

He got back to Savignyplatz to find Erich playing with some of the girls from down the hall, their new pet. More attention, Jake thought, than he’d probably had in his life. Rosen was there with his medical bag, drinking tea, the whole room oddly domestic. Lena followed him into the bedroom.

“What happened?”

“Nothing yet. Sikorsky wants to have dinner at the Adlon.”

“Well, the Adlon,” she said ironically, patting her hair. “Like old times.”

“Not for you. Dinner for two.”

“You’re going alone? What about Shaeffer?”

“First I have to set things up.”

“And then I go?”

“Let’s see what he has to say first.”

He took Liz’s gun from the bureau and opened the chamber, checking it.

“You mean he won’t do it?”

“Well, at the moment he says Emil’s in the west.”

“The west?”