“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.
