The berlin exchange, p.9
The Berlin Exchange, page 9
“Can I have the Wiener schnitzel?” Peter said.
“Oh, and leave half of it on your plate like you always do. Eyes too big for the stomach.”
“I thought it was a celebration.”
“You know, when I first came back to Berlin, it was impossible, Wiener schnitzel,” Sabine said. “You couldn’t get it anywhere. Well, we couldn’t. Things are so different now. Still shortages sometimes, but better than before.”
“So can I have it?” Peter said.
Sabine rolled her eyes and nodded, a mock defeat. “But we should wait for Kurt to order. He always does this. He sees somebody and then he disappears.”
“It’s business,” Peter said. “He sees a lot of people in his business.”
“Business.”
“Anyway, you can talk to us,” Peter said.
She smiled, softened. “What could be nicer?”
“We have to take Martin to Köpenick.”
“Yes, all right. When it’s warmer. We can go on the lake.”
“You’ve done your hair differently,” Martin said, looking over at her.
“No,” she said, pleased. “Just a brush. I’m too lazy to change it.”
“It looks nice.”
“Mutti always looks pretty. She was an actress. I think she should come on the show. My aunt. Who comes to take care of us after the accident.”
“No, I don’t have the energy for that.”
“Mutti gets tired,” Peter said, confiding.
“That’s right,” Sabine said, a weak smile. “So no TV.” A glance to Martin. “What is it? Something wrong?”
“No, no, I just saw somebody.”
Hans Rieger at the door, handing his coat to a waiter and looking around the room, spotting them.
“Who?”
“Hans Rieger. Neues Deutschland. I met him at the hotel. I think he’s coming over. Careful,” he said to Peter. “He wants to interview you.” Where was Kurt?
Rieger looked around the room again, then started toward them, a broad smile.
“It seems I’m the first to arrive, so I can say hello.” Everyone exchanged nods. “A family dinner, all together, but where’s Papa?”
“In the men’s room,” Martin said, an instinctive answer.
“You mind if I sit?” Rieger said, taking a chair before anyone could object.
“He’s been a while. I’ll just go see if he’s all right,” Martin said, wanting Kurt there.
“It’s such a pleasure to meet you. I never miss Die Familie Schmidt. Well, who does? Such a success.” Hearty, settling in. “Did you think it would be like this when it started?”
“No interviews at dinner,” Martin said, but pleasantly, a wag of the finger.
“At dinner, no. But a conversation, that’s permitted?” Planted at the table. Where was Kurt?
“Of course,” Sabine said, taking over. “Such a long time since we’ve seen you.” Leaning forward, their heads close, so that Rieger didn’t even look up when Martin left.
Only one man at the urinal in the men’s room, not Kurt. Not in the bunch of waiting people at the door. Where else? Outside, some misty lights on the river, no one in the square, night coming on. But where else would he have gone? Maybe a companionable cigar. But the man’s look had been sharp, not an invitation. Surprised to see him. Come.
There were lamps along the front of the theater, but no one waiting. Too early. No one in the street either, which swung around the theater to form a service cul-de-sac. But in the quiet an odd thud. Martin followed the sound. At the corner, lighted by the theater, an alley of dumpsters and trash cans, a tarp flapping at a building site, where the sound must have come from. Sand and bricks, a scaffolding on the building opposite. Now a grunt, the sound of someone hurt. Martin turned the corner. The man in the overcoat holding Kurt up against the side of a rusty dumpster, hand at his neck, the thud again of a head hitting metal.
Martin ran toward them, unthinking, blood rushing through him. He grabbed at the man, turning his shoulder. “Stop it.” Barely seeing Kurt shake his head, eyes panicked, grabbing at his throat, suddenly free as the man let go to deal with Martin. “Fuck off.” A growl, not even a word, and Martin felt himself being slammed against the dumpster, head hitting the hard steel, a sharp pain. “Fuck off,” the man said again, his fingers on Martin’s throat now. A cough, Kurt gasping for air. “Leave him alone. He’s not in it.” “Fuck,” the man said, shoving Martin again, just to show he could, the violence more out of control, sparks shooting out of a fire. Kurt grabbed at the man’s coat, and now three of them were pulling at each other, a scrum, the man swatting them away, a brawler, no rules. Martin raised his arm and brought it down on the side of the man’s head, a quick smash, pure instinct, Cain’s jawbone. “Fuck.” The man staggered slightly, finding his balance, then roared, slamming Martin against the metal again, this time harder, going for the kill, arm up against Martin’s windpipe. “Stop it,” Kurt said, a harsh whisper, not wanting to be heard. Still no one in the street, no footsteps. The man pressed his arm harder, Martin’s chest heaving, desperate now for air. And then, no more distinct than a blur, he saw Kurt bend to the ground and bring up a brick, not hesitating, and smash it down on the man’s head. The man pitched forward, arm dropping, a kind of dazed, pointless movement, but still standing. Kurt swung the brick again against his temple and this time the body started to slump, away from Martin, and slid to the ground. Martin clutched his throat, gulping air, watching Kurt drop to his knee and bend over the body, fingers on the man’s neck, feeling it, lifting his head from a small pool of blood. And then, looking around the street, he lifted the brick and smashed it down again, this time on the man’s face, pulp.
“Jesus Christ,” Martin said, his stomach suddenly churning, dizzy with nausea.
Kurt looked around again. “Help me.”
“What?”
“Help me lift him.” He nodded to the dumpster.
“We can’t—”
“Quick. Before anyone comes. Grab his feet.” Already lifting him under his arms. “He’s too heavy for me.”
Sleepwalking, just moving, Martin bent down and grabbed the man’s feet. “It’s too high,” he said as they began to hoist the body up to the rim. “We can’t swing him over.”
“Get his head over first. Then push. We can do it.”
Martin switched his position, helping Kurt lift the torso, then pushing the legs up after.
“On three,” Kurt whispered.
They heaved together, feeling the body pull away from them as it went over, carried now by gravity. A loud thud as the body hit, muffled by garbage bags.
Martin leaned over, hands on his knees, taking deep breaths. An old woman by the river, not stopping, too far to see anything. Still no one in the square.
“Who was he?”
“Nobody. A crook. They won’t be surprised he ended up this way.” He looked around the cul-de-sac again, then pulled out a handkerchief. “Here. There’s some blood.” He started wiping the side of Martin’s head. “Just a little. There. No one will notice. What about me?”
Martin looked at his face, the moment eerily intimate and trancelike. He nodded an okay.
“Hans Rieger is at the table,” he said stupidly, the first thing that came into his mind.
“All right, hurry.” Another look at the street. “They won’t find him. Not today. We’re all right.”
“Kurt—” he said, feeling his fingers begin to tremble.
Kurt took him by the shoulders. “There was a line at the men’s room. So, a little time. But show nothing in your face, you understand? Rieger, he’s always looking.” He squeezed Martin’s shoulders again. “We can do it. We have the same interests.”
Inside, the noise and heat came at them in a rush.
“Let me go first,” Kurt said, beginning to cross the room, putting his hand out as he reached the table, playing host.
Martin ducked into the men’s room and splashed some cold water on his face. He looked up in the mirror. How you looked when you killed somebody, what showed in your face. But had he? Too late now for technicalities. The minute he grabbed the man’s legs and heaved, he’d become part of it, complicit. So now I’ve done this. Murder. Not the abstract killing that haunted him, the bomb and its chain of guilt. Not any of that, a brick in the face, pulp. He wiped himself, steadying his shaking hands on the washbasin. We can do it. Hadn’t he done it before? All the time at Harwell, the secret of who he was put away in some compartment, not connected to the rest of him, smiling at parties, dinner at someone’s house, betraying but not betraying because that part of him was somewhere else. But this was different. A real body, not a number.
“I’ve ordered some wine,” Kurt said at the able. “Hans is joining us.”
“For one glass only,” Rieger said, holding up a finger. “While I wait. But maybe he’s not coming.” He looked at his watch. “It’s not polite to be this late. And no message. But what can you expect? From such a person.”
“Who?” Peter said.
“My dinner companion. Herr Spitzer. Ah, I see your father knows him.”
A twitch in Kurt’s face, involuntary, so that Martin knew now too. Not late, not coming at all. He pressed his fingers on the tablecloth. Keep still.
“I know of him,” Kurt said. “Everybody does. The notorious Herr Spitzer.”
“Why is he notorious?”
“He does bad things,” Rieger said, talking down to a child. “What they call the black market. The boss, in fact. Or so they say. No friend of yours, I think,” he said to Kurt.
“I don’t know him.” A cool reply, returning a serve. Martin felt his head turn from one to the other, following the play.
“But he knows you. This plan I heard about. Money transactions. He won’t like that. Nothing to get his hands on if that happens. A loss of business for him.”
“He has plenty of other business. Anyway, what plan? Where did you hear that?”
“Not from you. Discreet as always. It’s lucky not everybody’s like that. Or I’d be out of business.” Smiling, with a nod to Peter, a joke.
“If he does bad things, why are you having dinner with him?” Peter said. The right question, stopping the ball in midair.
“Well, it looks like I’m not,” Rieger said, looking at his watch again, then back at Peter. “I have to talk to people in my job. Not always nice ones. That’s the way you find out things.”
“What are you trying to find out?”
“Peter—”
“No, it’s all right. Herr Spitzer knows a lot of things. But tonight I wanted to ask him about someone who used to work for him. You remember,” he said to Kurt. “The boy in the ambulance at Invalidenstrasse.”
“He worked for Spitzer?”
“Once. I’m not sure if now. That’s what I wanted to find out.”
“But he was going over to the West.”
“And maybe he had help.”
“And Spitzer’s in that business now?”
“Maybe an old favor.”
“What business?” Peter said.
“Republikflucht,” Rieger said.
“Oh, like Matty.”
“Yes, but he’s not on television. No one knows where he is, in fact. Or at least nobody tells me.”
“But I thought you said—” Martin started.
Rieger nodded. “Yes, Hohenschönhausen for questioning. But now somewhere else. It’s remarkable how that happens. People just… disappear.”
“But someone must know,” Kurt said.
“Yes, someone must. Maybe you would inquire for me.”
Kurt held up his hands. “You have better contacts than I do. I’m just the lawyer. For the exchanges. They give me a list, that’s all.”
“Maybe they’ll want to exchange him. That would make a story, yes? He finally gets to the West, the man who shot at you. And it’s you who gets him there.”
“Shot at him?” Peter said.
“Herr Rieger,” Sabine said.
“An incident at the wall,” Kurt said calmly. “No one was hurt.”
Martin looked at him. No one hurt, people dead only when you want them to be. Spitzer still walking around somewhere, not lying in a dumpster outside the Berliner Ensemble. Rieger sipping wine, toying with Kurt, unaware his source had vanished, end of story.
“Yes, but a family dinner, excuse me,” Rieger said now. “I must leave you to it. Good luck with the Wiener schnitzel,” he said to Peter, evidently something they’d discussed earlier. “Sabine? If I may? Very kind of you to share your family with me.” A bow, courtly, almost theatrical.
“I hope you find your friend,” Peter said.
“My friend. If he does turn up,” he said to Kurt, “tell him he should learn better manners.”
Kurt held up his hands again, a mock protest. “I don’t teach Spitzer.”
“No. What does he need with manners in that business?” Pleasant, a worldly shrug.
He started across the room, and Martin saw, his fingers no longer gripping the table, that they were going to get away with it. Rieger would even be their alibi, sharing a bottle of wine while Spitzer met his underworld fate. What criminals did, put bodies in dumpsters, cover for each other. A quick glance at Kurt, who had picked up his menu, ready to see the rest of the evening through. Martin heard the thud again, the body sliding out of their hands. But nobody else had heard it. Nobody knew. Except them. Nobody else could give them away. And he realized in that moment that it didn’t matter anymore who was guilty, who had actually done it. Something else had happened. Kurt’s life was in his hands now. And his in Kurt’s. Something only they knew. Like a marriage.
CHAPTER 4
It was a long drive to Herleshausen, first down to Leipzig, then west through the mountains to the border, the last stretch pitch-dark in the dense woods. There was no real reason for Martin to go, except that Kurt had asked, another trip he didn’t want to make alone. A chance to see the exchange at work, as if he were being brought into the business.
“Hindemith is usually there. Just to make sure.”
“Of what? How many?”
“And which ones. No substitutions at the last minute. He doesn’t trust us. They give us a list of people they want, we negotiate, we agree on the names. He wants to make sure they get who they paid for. This group tonight, I thought it would be interesting for you. Some of them are part of the exchange for you.”
Martin said nothing for a minute, watching the dark trees streak by.
“Have they found his body yet?” he said finally.
“I don’t know. The police haven’t said. You have to understand, this kind of criminal, it’s an embarrassment for them. They’re not supposed to exist. In the workers’ state.” He took a breath. “It’s all right. Don’t worry.”
“But they will find him. There. Where we were.”
“No, where he was going to meet Hans. Something happens to him on the way? Nothing to do with us. Men like Spitzer—it’s no surprise. This is how they live. Everything in the fists. Well, you saw.”
Martin nodded. “I can still see it.”
“There’s no good in that,” Kurt said quietly.
“I know.” He turned to face him. “Why did you kill him? He was out.”
“And then he wakes up and tracks you down like a dog. He has to. It’s his nature. At first, he’s sending a message, something in the alley. But then you surprise him and it’s something else. He can’t walk away—too late.”
Martin looked at him. The way it had happened now, Martin the trigger.
“What message?”
“Stay out of my business. He was stealing from the supplies. He thought I was trying to stop that. But he got—excited. You have to act at such a moment,” he said easily. “You or him.”
“And now where are we?”
“We’re here.” His eyes left the road for a minute. “No one knows,” he said, his voice calm, not a threat, a reminder. Martin looked away.
They drove without talking for a few minutes, Kurt turning the knob on the radio to find the weather report.
“We were having dinner at Ganymed. Everyone saw.”
“With Hans,” Martin said, as if he were practicing, committing it to memory.
“Yes, with Hans. Lucky for us, not so lucky for him. I think his story died with Spitzer, no? The interesting thing is that he doesn’t understand nobody wants such a story here. He’s still in the West. He took money from the Stasi, so now he’s here, but his head? Back there with Springer. Ah, here we go. Please, no rain.” Changing the station, moving on. A second of static, crackling, then a low, flat Saxon voice promising a cold evening. “It’s always cold in the mountains.”
Martin followed him, away from the alley. “Why go all this way? Why not Friedrichstrasse?” Not really caring, making conversation.
“There are people at Friedrichstrasse. But there’s nobody at Herleshausen. A castle and a village.” He looked at his watch. “Already asleep. The checkpoint’s not even in town. A few kilometers north. So, no one.”
“But it’s not a secret. Too many people—”
“Well, an open secret. Some people know, but not how many, how much is paid. If you’re the prisoner, you’re grateful to be out. You don’t ask questions. Or your family. The West German government? There is no such program. Nobody has to explain the money. They know but they don’t know. Germans are good at that. So, Herleshausen. In the woods. At night.” He was quiet for a minute. “I was born here, in the East. I know what this country is. But think what it can be. If we survive. So, what price?” He turned off the radio.
“You never wanted to go to the West?”
“Me? No. The Nazis killed my father. And who’s with Adenauer in Bonn? Nazis. You can make a life here too, without Nazis.”
“How did you meet Sabine? She was in the West.”
“With her mother. But in those days, people could go back and forth. Live in the East, work in the West. I was a lawyer here, but I had business in the West too. Like now. So we met.” A minute. “How does she seem to you?”
