For such as the Foreign Secretary, for visiting royalty (not that royalty ever did), and for the Military Governor of the British Zone of Occupied Germany—General Sir Brian Robertson—the usual rough and ready staff car (often just an open top jeep) was replaced by a black and grey 1935 Rolls-Royce Phantom II, complete with a tiny flagpole and tiny Union Jack.
Eddie counted driving the car as a treat. It was worth polishing the damn thing just to be able to sit behind the outsize steering wheel on a calfskin seat, facing a rosewood dashboard and burl-walnut door panels. And when no one else was around he could sit in the back, open the cocktail cabinet, put his legs up on the pull-out footrest and dream of the life of Riley.
The July visit had been hectic, but tolerable. To call it “fun” would be a word too far. Bevin had been civil to him, only a touch shy of friendly, and had warmed a fraction of a degree when Eddie had found a moment to tell him that his dad had belonged to Bevin’s trades union. He was pleased at the prospect of Bevin’s unscheduled visit at the end of November, even though he’d been given only twenty-four hours’ notice. He polished the car again, told Frank and Wilderness that, for once, duty called and he would be unavailable until Bevin left. Telling Frank and Wilderness was a mistake.
§152
It was six o’clock of a November night, a month away from the longest night. Berlin felt sharp and cold. The kind of night when the warmth of the tunnel might seem almost welcome. The kind of night when Berliners retreated to their beds and piled on every layer of bedding and clothing they possessed—and then got up at three in the morning to iron or cook as the stop-go supply of electricity permitted. Wilderness had suggested to Nell that they move into Fasanenstraße—since the whole building was occupied by British soldiers the electricity was more reliable—but Nell saw this as betrayal. Solidarity with Berliners demanded they feel the cold.
“Besides,” she had said. “They’ll cut us all off sooner or later. Occupiers and occupied. And here we have the advantage of an iron stove. We can burn anything we can find. Anything we can bear to part with.”
On the coldest nights—twenty degrees of frost—they would drag their bedding down to Erno’s apartment and sleep in front of his stove. Erno always had something to burn. An archive to feed into the iron stove. A tightly bound pile of
Völkischer Beobachter
from the 1930s would smoulder a whole night long. Words into smoke. Fiery rhetoric into heat and light.
Frank and Wilderness had hit Paradies early. The waiters were still clearing up from last night, rearranging chairs and wiping tables. They all but had the place to themselves. One of the singers was at the piano going over the verses to a new song with her piano player, again and again and again.
Something was on Frank’s mind.
“Yuri came looking for us at lunchtime.”
“In uniform?”
“Nah. Anonymous. Civvies and a dirty old rain slicker. He’d come over on the U-bahn. Didn’t seem to have any problem with our guys. Even seemed to enjoy the sneaking in and out. I’d never take him for a Kraut with a face like that, but . . .”
“Aha.”
“Found me. Seemed pissed off not to find you.”
“Anything that won’t keep?”
“Yeah—that’s kind of his beef. He wants to up his order tonight.”
“’S’OK. I can handle a few pounds more.”
“Thing is. He wants to more than double it. In fact, I did the math . . . he wants to sextuple it.”
“What?”
“He has this big deal going down back in Moscow in a couple of days. He wants a thousand pounds of coffee. Tonight.”
“You didn’t tell him we’d do it?”
“Sure.”
“Frank, even if we had a thousand pounds of coffee . . .”
“We have. Took some doing but I rounded up another three hundred pounds this afternoon . . .”
“I couldn’t shift it. The biggest load we’ve ever done in a single run was that first load of sugar, and it was crippling. That was only two hundred and fifty pounds. Mostly I push about a hundred and eighty pounds.”
“Jeez, I was sitting right here when you said it . . . we could move a thousand pounds just like . . .”
“Figure of speech, Frank. A thousand pounds is a half a ton! Even if we could get a thousand pounds of coffee down the shaft, you’re looking at five or six runs. I’d be down there all night. Eight to ten hours. And loading all that onto the trolley would give Eddie a heart attack.”
“Somebody call?”
Eddie appeared, spick-and-span in his cleaned and pressed Royal Artillery uniform, fresh from his stint as a chauffeur.
“I thought you were driving Ernie Bevin?”
“I was. But he’s buggered off back to Blighty. If there’s one thing our Ernie hates more than Russians, I reckon it’s Germans. I did the usual rounds with him, we’d two more calls to make and he gets on the speaker tube and says, “Sod this for lark, tek me to Gatow.” Next thing I know he’s on a plane home and I’m sat there with an empty Roller. It’s parked outside now. We can all go out for a spin a bit later. Motor Pool aren’t expecting it back till midnight.”
Wilderness was staring at him now.
“Wossup? What’d I say?”
“Outside now?”
“O’ course. Who’s gonna have the nerve to nick a Rolls-Royce the size of the
Queen Mary
with a Union Jack flying off the roof?”
Wilderness switched his gaze to Frank.
“Ever seen a Phantom II, Frank? The boot is the size of the Albert Hall, the footwell in the back is longer than even my long legs will stretch.”
“I’m with you, kid.”
“I’m not,” Eddie said. “What the hell are you on about?”
“Rolls-Royce made armoured cars during the last war, the back axle’s as tough as any tank.”
“Just flippin’ tell me!”
“Frank’s brought us a big deal, too big to pass up. The grand slam. We have to get a thousand pounds of coffee to Yuri tonight.”
“So? What’s that got to do with me and me Roller?”
“We can’t shift a thousand pounds of anything by hand, but we could pack it all into the Rolls. In the boot, in the back, in the front footwell. We fill up every spare corner, and I reckon we’ll get it in.”
“Oh, bloody Norah. No. No. No. It’s too risky.”
Frank said, “Where’s the risk? You said yourself no one’s dumb enough to steal the car. On the same principle no one would be dumb enough to pull it over for a search with Ernie Bevin sitting in the back and the flag flying.”
“But Ernie Bevin won’t be sitting in the back. He’s gone. Flown. Buggered off. Scarpered.”
Then the penny dropped. As Wilderness continued to stare him down, the bad penny rattled around in his skull.
“But I don’t look anything like him.”
“Sorry Ed, but you do.”
“I’m forty years younger!”
“It’s dark. All anyone will see is a short, fat bloke in a homburg.”
“If I dress up as Ernie, we’ve no driver!”
“How do you fancy being driven to the other side by a lieutenant of the Welsh Guards?”
“Oh my God. Oh my God. Joe, you complete and utter bastard. You’ve got it all figured out haven’t you?”
“Yes. No one will dare stop us on our side and sure as eggs are eggs none of Yuri’s blokes will. We drive across the river, we go to Monbijou as usual, unload, drive back and the car gets returned to the pool by midnight. Pumpkin time. After all, who knows Bevin left early? Half a dozen people? Certainly none of the Russians know. They might be gobsmacked to see him, but stop him? It’d be like asking to start World War III. They simply wouldn’t do it.”
Across the room at table 13 Wilderness caught sight of Tosca. No one had been sitting there fifteen minutes ago. He hadn’t seen her come in. But she had her head down in a book. Almost her habitual manner when there was no company. He’d seen it once or twice. A big battered hardback, but he’d never seen the title. She stuffed it in her bag as soon as he approached. One day he’d ask her what it was.
§153
It might have been a mistake, to go to Schlüterstraße that day. He never wanted Rose Blair to think he was out of touch. And if Rose Blair thought he was in touch, so did Burne-Jones. If he didn’t log in with her in the morning, he’d find five minutes in the afternoon. Enough to let her know he was not the loose cannon she might think he was. Rarely had it been this late, gone seven, when he appeared at her door. The grubby, inky, once-transparent cover was on the typewriter. Her kid gloves were out on the desk. Her Liberty headscarf was tied. She was buttoning up her overcoat.
“God, you cut it fine. He’s been calling all afternoon. You’re on tonight with your tomcat act.”
“I can’t be.”
“You are.”
She tore the top page off her notepad.
“I suggest you call him.”
It was a Berlin number.
“He’s in town?”
“Yes.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That you’d done a couple of hours’ paperwork this morning and I was expecting you back any minute. I don’t think he realises that you haven’t so much as looked at a fucking Fraggy in months.”
He hadn’t. Once the Russians had stormed out they’d stopped reviewing
Fragebogen
, so his doing so was close to pointless. He’d rubber-stamped everything without reading a word, and his office hours could be measured in minutes.
“Thanks, Rose.”
“Miss Blair to you. I lied for you Corporal Holderness. First and last time.”
Wilderness pocketed the page from her notepad. He did not call Burne-Jones.
He’d think of something.
He always did.
§154
They loaded the car by the flak tower, hidden behind the giant molehills that Fat Stanley seemed to delight in making. Wilderness had scrounged a homburg, a black overcoat and a pair of bleary glasses off Erno. Eddie strained the front of the coat, the button-shanks taut as tightrope, but the hat fitted perfectly.
As Frank packed coffee into the last available corner, Wilderness donned his Guards uniform.
“You look the business,” Eddie said. “I just feel a prat. A fat prat in a daft hat.”
“Ed, you’ll be fine.”
“And . . . I get superstitious.”
“Of what?”
“That damn uniform. It’s a jinx.”
“Name me a single thing that’s gone wrong when I’ve been wearing it.”
Eddie whispered, “First time you wore it here, you came back with ’im!”
Wilderness said, “Stow it, Eddie. I’m not listening.”
Frank liked the sound of the boot closing so much he did it twice.
“Hear that. British perfection. Not a clunk or a click, more like a kiss. Listen. Swish . . . pop . . . kiss. One day soon I’m gonna own a Rolls.”
Wilderness heard a sotto voce “Bloody Norah,” from Eddie and said, “Are we ready, Frank?”
“Rolling,” said Frank. “Rolling.”
Wilderness followed the route he’d taken with Andreas von Jeltsch-Fugger. Direct and prominent. The route a car that flew the Union Jack might be expected to take, if anyone ever expected such. Along the Nazi fantasy that was the east–west highway called Charlottenburger Chausee to the Brandenburg Gate. Police and troops from both sides—British and Russian—were clustered around the Gate. Wilderness slowed down, assuming that any diplomatic driver would, hoping that he’d not have to stop entirely. The British stood to attention, saluted, pulled back a makeshift wire barrier without a word and let him cruise through at less than ten mph. The Russians just stood back and stared.
Halfway along Unter den Linden a raspy whistle, a dusty raspberry, sounded by his right ear. The speaking tube.
“Can yo’ smell coffee?”
“Of course I can smell coffee, what’s your point, Ed?”
“My point is it’s fuckin’ amazing
they
couldn’t smell coffee!”
Wilderness glanced in the mirror and smiled. But what he saw was a perturbed face not smiling back. This was not a happy little fat man.
On the Schloss Bridge the tube rasped again.
“Pull over, Joe.”
“Eh?”
“Pull over!”
“Not on the bridge, Eddie. Give me ten seconds.”
He stopped the car in the square in front of the remains of the Kaiser’s palace. Eddie was out before he’d even yanked on the handbrake, stuffing the overcoat and the homburg through the window to him.
“I can’t do this, Joe. I’m sorry. I really can’t do this. Impersonating an officer’s one thing. I’m impersonating a bloody cabinet minister. You’ll get me sent to the Tower!”
Wilderness got out. Looked around. A couple uniformed coppers on the far edge of the square, stamping their feet and hugging themselves in the cold. No matter. The damage was done now. But he was almost there, and unless the coppers came over and started shooting it was not enough to stop him.
Eddie just kept saying he was sorry. Wilderness saw the coppers touch heads to light up cigarettes and knew they didn’t give a toss. The night and the cold and the inherent cop-laziness weighed more than duty or curiosity.