The policeman grumbled. “So now I am to add chauffeur to my list of duties?” He switched on his radio and spoke to his partner. “Panic over. We’re going back to the Baur au Lac.”
Charlie had her notebook open on her lap and was writing. “Who are these people?”
March hesitated but then thought: what does it matter? “This officer and his partner are members of the Swiss Polizei, here to ensure I don’t attempt to defect while outside the borders of the Reich. And also to ensure I return in one piece.”
“Always a pleasure, assisting our German colleagues,” grunted a voice from the front.
Charlie said: “There’s a danger you might not?”
“Apparently.”
“Jesus.” She wrote something down. He looked away. Off to their left, a couple of kilometres across the See, the lights of Zurich formed a yellow ribbon on the dark water. His breath misted the window.
Zaugg must have been returning from his office. It was late, but the burghers of Zurich worked hard for their money — twelve or fourteen hours a day was common. The banker’s house could only be reached by travelling this road, which ruled out the most effective security precaution: varying his route each night. And See Strasse, bounded on one side by the lake, and with several dozen streets leading off the other, was a security man’s nightmare. That explained something.
“Did you notice his car?” he said to Charlie. “How heavy it was, the noise its tyres made? You see those often in Berlin. That Bentley was armour-plated.” He ran his hand through his hair. Two bodyguards, a pair of prison gates, remote cameras and a bomb-proof car. What kind of banker is that?”
He could not see her face properly in the shadows, but he could feel her excitement beside him. She said: “We’ve got the letter of authorisation, remember? Whatever kind of banker he is — he’s our banker now.”
They ate at a restaurant in the old town — a place with thick linen napkins and heavy silver cutlery, where the waiters lined up behind them and whipped the covers from their plates like a troupe of conjurers performing a trick. If the hotel had cost him half a month’s salary, this meal would cost him the other half, but March didn’t care.
She was unlike any other woman he had met. She was not one of the homebodies of the Party’s Women’s League, all “Kinder, Kirche und Kuche” — her husband’s supper always ready on the table, his uniform freshly pressed, five children asleep upstairs. And while a good National Socialist girl abhorred cosmetics, nicotine and alcohol, Charlie Maguire made liberal use of all three. Her dark eyes soft in the candlelight, she talked almost without pause of New York, foreign reporting, her father’s days in Berlin, the wickedness of Joseph Kennedy, politics, money, men, herself.
She had been born in Washington DC in the spring of 1939. (The last spring of peace, my parents called it — in all senses.’) Her father had recently returned from Berlin to work at the State Department. Her mother was trying to make a success as an actress, but after 1941 was lucky simply to escape internment. In the 1950s, after the war, Michael Maguire had gone to Omsk, capital of what was left of Russia, to serve in the US Embassy. It was considered too dangerous a place to take four children. Charlotte had been left behind to be educated at expensive schools in Virginia; Charlie had dropped out at seventeen — spitting arid swearing and rebelling against everything in sight.
“I went to New York. Tried to be an actress. That didn’t work. Tried to be a journalist. That suited me better. Enrolled at Columbia — to my father’s great relief. And then — what do you know? — I start an affair with Teacher.” She shook her head. “How stupid can you get?” She blew out a jet of cigarette smoke. “Is there any more wine in there?”
He poured out the last of the bottle, ordered another. It seemed to be his turn to say something. “Why Berlin?”
“A chance to get away from New York. My mother being German made it easier to get a visa. I have to admit: World European Features is not quite as grand as it sounds. Two men in an office on the wrong side of town with a telex machine. To be honest, they were happy to take anyone who could get a visa out of Berlin. Even me.” She looked at him with shining eyes. “I didn’t know he was married, you see. The teacher.” She snapped her fingers. “Basic failure of research there, wouldn’t you say?”
“When did it end?”
“Last year. I came to Europe to show them all I could do it. Him especially. That’s why I felt so sick about being expelled. God, the thought effacing them all again She sipped her wine. “Perhaps I’ve got a father-fixation. How old are you?”
“Forty-two.”
“Bang in my age range.” She smiled at him over the rim of her glass. “You’d better watch out. Are you married?”
“Divorced.”
“Divorced! That’s promising. Tell me about her.”
