SHE had gone to bed early on Saturday night. The weather had been foul — the start of that great bank of rain that had washed over the city for three days. She was not feeling sociable, had not for weeks. You know how it is. Berlin can get to you like that. Make you feel small and hopeless in the shade of those vast grey buildings; the endless uniforms; the unsmiling bureaucrats.
The phone went about eleven-thirty, just as she was drifting off to sleep. A man’s voice. Taut. Precise. There is a telephone booth opposite your apartment. Go to it. I shall call you there in five minutes. If the booth is occupied, please wait.”
She had not recognised who it was, but something in the man’s tone had told her it was not a joke. She had dressed, grabbed her coat, hobbled down the stairs, into the street, trying to pull on her shoes and walk at the same time. The rain had hit her like a slap across the face. Across the street, outside the station, was an old wooden telephone kiosk -empty, thank God.
It was while she was waiting for the call that she remembered where she had first heard the voice.
“Go back a bit,” said March. “Your first meeting with Stuckart. Describe it.”
That was before Christmas. She had called him cold. Explained who she was. He seemed reluctant, but she had persisted, so he had invited her over for tea. He had a shock of white curly hair and one of those orangey tans, as if he had spent a long time in the sun, or under an ultraviolet lamp. The woman, Maria, was also in the apartment, but behaved like a maid. She served some tea then left them to it. Usual chat: how is your mother? Very well, thank you.
Ha, that was a joke.
She flicked ash from the end of her cigarette.
“My mother’s career died when she left Berlin. My arrival buried it. As you can imagine, there wasn’t a great demand for German actresses in Hollywood during the war.”
And then he had asked about her father, in a gritted-teeth kind of a way. And she had been able to take great pleasure in saying: very well, thank you. He had retired in “sixty-one, when Kennedy took over. Deputy Under-Secretary of State Michael Maguire. God bless the United States of America. Stuckart had met him through Mom, had known him when he was at the Embassy here.
March interrupted: “When was that?”
“Thirty-seven to “thirty-nine.”
“Goon.”
Well, then he had wanted to know about the job and she had told him. World European Features: he had never heard of them. Not surprising, she said: nobody had. That sort of thing. Polite interest, you know. So when she left she gave him her card, and he had bent to kiss her hand, had lingered over it, made a meal of it, made her feel sick. He had patted her bottom on the way out. And that had been that, she was glad to say. Five months: nothing.
“Until Saturday night?”
Until Saturday night. She had been in the telephone kiosk no more than thirty seconds when he rang. Now all the arrogance was gone from his voice.
“Charlotte?” He had placed heavy, emphasis on the second syllable. Shar-lott-e. “Forgive this melodrama. Your telephone is tapped.”
They say every foreigner’s line is tapped.”
This is true. When I was in the Ministry, I used to see transcripts. But public boxes are safe. I am in a public box now. I came on Thursday and took the number of the one you are in. It is serious, you see. I need to contact the authorities in your country.”
“Why not talk to the Embassy?”
The Embassy is not safe.”
He had sounded terrified. And tight. Definitely, he had been drinking.
“Are you saying you want to defect?”
A long silence. Then there had been a noise behind her. A sound of metal tapping on glass. She had turned to discover, in the rain and the dark, a man, with his hands cupped round his eyes, peering into the kiosk, looking like a deep-sea diver. She must have let out a cry or something because Stuckart had got very frightened.
“What was that? What is it?”
“Nothing. Just someone wanting to use the phone.”
“We must be quick. I deal only with your father, not the Embassy.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Come to me tomorrow and I will tell you everything. Shar-lott-e, I will make you the most famous reporter in the world.”
“Where? What time?”
“My apartment. Noon.”
“Is that safe?”
“Nowhere is safe.”
And then he had rung off. Those were the last words she had heard Stuckart speak.
She finished her cigarette, ground it under her foot.
The rest he knew, more or less. She had found the bodies, called the police. They had taken her to the big city station in Alexander Plate, where she had sat in a blank-walled room for more than three hours, going crazy. Then she had been driven to another building, to give a statement to some creepy SS man in a cheap wig, whose office had been more like that of a pathologist than a detective.
March smiled at the description of Fiebes.
