his eyes in greeting. She waved a small gold-mesh evening bag at him. She was still sexy, Vulkan thought, and in spite of all his resolution found himself sending the barman across to her with a champagne cocktail. He wrote a little note to go with it. He wrote the note with a small gold propelling pencil on the back of an engraved visiting card.
‘Take dinner with me,’ he wrote. He debated whether to add a query but decided that women hate indecision. Domination was the secret of success with women.
‘Will join you later,’ he added, before giving it to the barman.
Two more people had joined Poetsch down at the far end of the bar; a man and a girl. The man looked English. Poetsch said, ‘You saw it, did you? We call it the “wall of shame”, as you know. I’d like to show it to every living person in the world.’
A man called ‘Colonel Wilson’ winked at Vulkan. To do this, ‘Colonel Wilson’ had to remove a large pair of dark glasses. Around his left eye and upper cheek there was a mesh of scars. Wilson slid a cigar along the bar to Vulkan.
‘Thanks, Colonel,’ Vulkan called. Wilson was an ex-corporal cook who had got his scars from spluttering fat in a mess hall in Omaha. It was a good cigar. ‘Colonel’ wouldn’t be such a fool as to give him a cheap one. Vulkan smelled it, rolled it and then decapitated it scientifically with a small flat gold cigar-cutter that he kept in his top pocket. A gold guillotine. An amalgam of sharp steel and burnished gold. The barman lit the cigar for him.
‘Always with a match,’ Vulkan told him. ‘A match held a quarter of an inch away from the leaf. Gas lighters never.’ The barman nodded. Before Vulkan had the cigar properly alight, ‘Colonel’ had moved alongside him at the bar. ‘Colonel Wilson’ was six feet one-and-a-half inches of leathery skin encasing meaty sinew, packed dense like a well-made Bockwurst. His face was grey and lined: his hair trimmed to the skull. He could have made a living in Hollywood playing in the sort of film where the villains have thick lips. He ordered two bourbons.
Vulkan could hear Poetsch saying, ‘Truth – I’m fond of saying – is the most potent weapon in the arsenal of freedom.’ Poetsch was fond of saying that, Vulkan thought. He knew that ‘Colonel Wilson’ wanted something. He drank the bourbon quickly. ‘Colonel Wilson’ ordered two more. Vulkan looked at the barman and tipped his head a millimetre towards the girl from Wedding. The barman lowered his eyelids. It was one of the great things about this town, thought Vulkan, this sensitivity to signs and innuendo. He heard the English MP’s voice, ‘Good heavens, no. We have a few tricks left up our sleeve I can tell you.’ The English MP chortled.
The British were deadly, Vulkan decided. He remembered his last visit there. The big hotel in Cromwell Road, and the rain that never stopped for a week. A nation of inventive geniuses where there are forty different types of electrical plug, none of which works efficiently. Milk is safe on the street but young girls in danger, sex indecent but homosexuality acceptable, a land as far north as Labrador with unheated houses, where hospitality is so rare that ‘landlady’ is a pejorative word, where the most boastful natives in the world tell foreigners that the only British shortcoming is modesty.
Vulkan winked to the girl from Wedding. She smoothed her dress slowly and touched the nape of her neck. Vulkan turned to ‘Colonel Wilson’ and said, ‘OK, what’s on your mind?’
‘I want thirty-nine Praktika cameras; with the f/2 lens.’
Vulkan reached for a piece of ice from the canister on the bar. The piano-player did a fancy cadenza and stopped playing. Vulkan put his cigar in his mouth and clapped his hands. His face scowled at the ribbon of smoke. Several people joined in the applause. Vulkan said, ‘Do you?’ still looking at the piano-player.
‘Good price and in dollars,’ said Colonel Wilson. There was no reply from Vulkan.
Wilson said, ‘I know that you don’t do that kind of thing for a living; but this is a special favour for a friend of mine. It’s more of a memento – you know, a camera smuggled out of the East – these guys like that kind of thing.’
‘What guys?’ said Vulkan.
‘Trade delegation,’ said Wilson.
‘Thirty-nine,’ said Vulkan reflectively.
‘It would be no trouble to you,’ said Wilson. ‘Just bring them with you when you come back with a Russian. You are the only guy I know who ever rides through Checkpoint Charlie with a Russian.’ He laughed nervously.
‘Thirty-nine must be the delegation of American radio and TV producers. Poetsch is running that, isn’t he?’
‘Aw,’ said Wilson, ‘don’t go yelling it around. I told you in strict confidence. If you can deliver them before …’
‘You told me nothing,’ said Vulkan. ‘I told you. I’m not a camera dealer, tell Poetsch that.’
‘Leave P’s name out of this.’
Vulkan gently blew smoke at Wilson, saying nothing.
‘Don’t cross me, Vulkan,’ Colonel Wilson said. ‘You don’t want me spilling it to your British pal that I’m no longer a US Army major.’
‘No longer,’ said Vulkan gleefully, almost choking on his drink.
‘I can make plenty of trouble,’ said Wilson.
‘And you can make a one-way trip through the wire,’ said Vulkan quietly.
They stared at each other. Wilson swallowed to moisten his throat and turned back to his drink.
‘OK Johnnie,’ Wilson said over his shoulder. ‘No hard feelings, eh, pal?’
Johnnie pretended not to hear and moved along the bar calling for another bourbon.
‘Two?’ said the barman.
‘One will be enough,’ said Johnnie.
He could see Wilson’s face in the mirror; it was very pale. He could see the girl from Wedding too, touching the hair at the nape of her neck like she didn’t know she was straining her brassiere. She crossed her legs and smiled at his reflection.
‘Poetsch,’ Johnnie thought.
He had wanted to get something on Poetsch, if only to cut down his ranting at the bar. He could hear his voice now. Poetsch was saying, ‘The very same people who made the great little TV film about the tunnel. The whole thing was paid for by the TV company, NBC. And what I’m saying, folks, is that those fifty-nine people who escaped owe their very freedom to our American system of unshackled enterprise and bold corporate drive …’ There were a couple of favours Poetsch could do for Johnnie Vulkan. Johnnie relished the idea of telling Poetsch about them; even the girl from Wedding wasn’t a better prospect than that.
The lounge was beginning to fill up now. Vulkan leaned back against the bar, tensed his muscles and relaxed. It was good to feel he knew them all and that even Americans like ‘Colonel Wilson’ couldn’t take advantage of him. Johnnie Vulkan could pick out the tarts and the queens, the hustlers and the fairies. He knew all the heavies waiting assignment: from the nailers-up of notices to the nailers up of Christs. He saw the girl from Wedding trying to catch his eye. Poetsch’s crowd had grown too. There was that elderly English queer with the dyed hair, and a stupid little Dresdener who thought he was going
