‘Glad you came?’ Vulkan said.
I wasn’t sure I was. Vulkan had changed almost as much as the city itself. Both found themselves in a permanent state of emergency and had discovered a way of living with it.
‘It’s great,’ I said.
Johnnie sniffed at his bourbon and downed it like it was medicine. ‘But you thought it would be different by now,’ he said. ‘You thought it would all be peacetime, eh?’
‘It’s too damn peacetime for my liking,’ I said. ‘It’s too damn “sundowners on the veranda” and “those infernal drums, Carruthers”. There are too many soldiers being Brahmins.’
‘And too many German civilians being untouchables.’
‘I was in the Lighthouse cinema in Calcutta once,’ I said. ‘They were showing Four Feathers. When the film came to that section when the beleaguered garrison could hold out no longer, across the horizon came a few dozen topees piping “Over the seas to Skye”, some short-muzzle Lee Enfields saying, “Cor blimey”, and some gay young sahibs with punkah wallahs in attendance.’
‘They put the tribesmen to flight,’ said Vulkan.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but in the cinema the Indian audience cheered as they did it.’
‘You think we are cheering on our Allied masters?’
‘You tell me,’ I said and I looked around and listened to English speech and drank the sherry that cost twice the price it would fetch anywhere else this side of the wall.
‘You English,’ said Vulkan. ‘You live out there in the middle of that cold sea surrounded by herring. How will we ever get you to understand? June the sixth, 1944, was D-Day; up till then you British had lost more people in wartime traffic accidents than you had lost in battle,1 while we Germans had already suffered six and half million casualties on the Eastern front alone. Germany was the only occupied country that failed to produce a resistance organization. It failed to produce one because there was nothing left; in 1945 we had thirteen-year-old kids standing where you are standing now, pointing a bazooka down the Ku-damm waiting for a Joseph Stalin tank to clank out of the Grunewald. So we fraternized and we collaborated. We saluted your private soldiers, gave our houses to your non-coms and our wives to your officers. We cleared the rubble with our bare hands and didn’t mind that empty lorries passed us coming back from your official brothels.’
Vulkan ordered two more drinks. A girl with too much make-up and a gold lamé dress tried to catch Vulkan’s eye, but when she saw me looking took a tiny mirror from a chainmail bag and gave her eyebrows a working over.
As Vulkan turned to me he spilled his bourbon over the back of his hand.
‘We Germans didn’t understand our role,’ he said. He licked the whisky from his hand. ‘As a defeated nation we were to be forever relegated to being customers – supplied by the Anglo-American factories – but we didn’t understand that. We began to build factories of our own, and we did it well because we are professionals, we Germans, we like to do everything well – even losing wars. We became prosperous and you English and Americans don’t like it. There has to be a reason that lets you keep your nice cosy feeling of superiority. It’s because we Germans are toadies, weaklings, automatons, masochists, collaborators or——lickers that we are doing so well.’
‘You are breaking my heart,’ I said.
‘Drink,’ said Vulkan and downed his most recent one with lightning speed. ‘You aren’t the one I should be shouting at. You understand better than most, even though you hardly understand at all.’
‘You are too kind,’ I said.
At about 10 P.M. a bright-eyed boy that I had seen at the Gehlen Bureau flashed his cuffs at the bartender and ordered a Beefeater martini. He sipped at it and turned slowly to survey the room. He caught a sight of us and gulped at his drink.
‘King,’ he said quietly. ‘Here’s a surprise.’
It was like finding a cherry in a sweet martini; a big surprise but you raise hell if it’s not there.
‘I’m Helmut,’ said the bright-eyed boy.
‘I’m Edmond Dorf,’ I said; two can play at that game.
‘Do you want to speak in private?’ Vulkan said.
‘No,’ said Helmut politely and offered his English cigarettes. ‘Our latest employee is, alas, in a traffic accident.’
Vulkan produced a gold lighter.
‘Fatal?’ asked Vulkan.
Helmut nodded.
‘When?’ said Vulkan.
‘Next week,’ said Helmut. ‘We bring him around the corner2 next week.’ I noticed Vulkan’s hand flinch as he lit the cigarette.
Helmut noticed it too, he smiled. To me he said, ‘The Russians are bringing your boy into the city in two weeks from next Saturday.’
‘My boy?’ I said.
‘The scientist from the Academy of Sciences Biology Division; he will probably stay at the Adlon. Isn’t that the man you want us to move?’
‘No comment,’ I said. It was very annoying and this boy was making the most of it. He flashed me a big smile before giving his teeth a rebore with the Beefeater martini.
‘We are arranging the pipeline now,’ he added. ‘It would help us if you supply these documents from your own sources. You will find all the data there.’ He handed me a folded slip of paper, shot his cuffs a couple of times to show me his cuff-links, then finished his martini and vanished.
Vulkan and I looked across the rubber-plants.
‘Gehlens Wunderkinder,’ said Vulkan. ‘They’re all like him.’
1 In the first four years of war British casualties (including POWs and missing) were 387,966. The number killed and injured in traffic accidents was 588,742.
2 Helmut used the expression ‘Um die Ecke bringen’, which in German means to kill.
In certain circumstances pawns can be converted into the most powerful unit on the board.
Tuesday, October 8th
I put the Gehlen request for documents on the teleprinter to London and marked it urgent.
The paper said:
Name: Louis Paul BROUM
National
