Berlin Game

'And talking to Joseph Goebbels at the bar of the Kaiserhof,' I said. 'Yes, I've heard all those stories. I couldn't get enough of your dad's yarns when I was young. I saw a lot of him in those days when he was behind the bar at List's.' From the next apartment there came the incessant sound of police sirens, shooting and the joyful shouts of children watching TV. Axel went across to the wall and thumped on it with the flat of his hand. This had no effect other than to make some of the plastic flowers quiver.

Axel shrugged at the continuing noise. 'And working for your dad too. Suppose they find out that he used to do those jobs for your dad? They'd throw him straight into prison.'

'Don't baby him, Axel. Rolfs a tough old bastard. He can look after himself.'

Axel nodded. 'So I said, "If you think you'll recapture your youth by going across the city, Dad, you go. And, take Tante Lisl with you… " When my mother was alive, she wouldn't listen to all those stories of his. She'd just tell him to shut up.'

'Well, he found a ready audience at that bar.'

'He was always complaining about working for Tante Lisl, wasn't he? But he loved standing behind the bar talking about "the real Berlin ", in the days when there was a respect for Christian values – eine christliche Weltanschauung. And after a few customers had bought him drinks, he'd be talking about the Kaiserzeit as if he'd been a general in the first war instead of an artillery captain in the second.' Axel drank some beer. There's no fool like an old fool,' he said with unexpected vehemence, and looked at his beer so that I could not see his eyes. 'I'd hate anything to happen to him, Bernd.'

'I know,' I said. 'But don't worry about him. He's over sixty-five, so he is permitted to visit the West.'

'He sees Werner sometimes.' He looked at me. 'They're in some kind of racket together.'

It was more a question than a statement. 'Are they?'

'Are you still with the Army intelligence people?'

I nodded. It was my cover story for Berliners such as Axel who remembered my father and had seen me coming and going, and had given me the use of their sofas and their motorcars from time to time. It was not the sort of cover story that earned respect from Germans. Germany is the only country in the world where a job in any sort of intelligence-gathering organization is considered little better than pimping. It is a product of the postwar years when informers were everywhere.

'You're not after Dad?'

'Stop worrying about him, Axel,' I said. 'Rolf came right through the war, and then survived through the years that followed the war. I'm sure he's doing fine. In fact, I might be able to look him up next time I go into the East Sector. I'll take him something, if you like.'

'So what's it all about, Bernd?' said Axel. He got up and went to the window, staring eastwards to where the spike of the East German TV tower rose out of the Alexanderplatz. Once it was the heart of the city, where pedestrians dodged bikes, bikes dodged cars, and cars dodged the trams that came through a five-way intersection at frightening speeds. Now the traffic had vanished and the 'Alex' was just an orderly concrete expanse, with red flags, flower boxes and slogans. 'You might as well come out with it,' said Axel, still staring out the window.

'With what?'

'It's nice to see you again, Bernd. But you work out of London nowadays, you say. With only a couple of days in the city and lots of old friends to visit, you didn't come to my little place to talk about how well I did in my chemistry exams, and have a can of beer – which I notice you drink very very slowly, as policemen do when they are on duty – and be interrupted by the shouting of the kids next door, and sit close to the heating because I can't afford to turn it up any higher. You must have had a reason to come here, and I think you are going to ask me a favour.'

'Remember a couple of years ago when I was looking for that kid who'd stolen a briefcase from an office near the Zoo station?'

'You asked me to look up a post-office box number and tell you who rented it. But that was an official request. That came through the British Army.'

'This one is more delicate, Axel.' I took from my pocket the envelope that Frank Harrington had left in my street guide. Axel took it reluctantly; even then he didn't immediately look at it. 'It's urgent, I suppose? These things are always urgent.' He read the address.

'It is, Axel. Otherwise I could have gone through the post office.'

He laughed scornfully. 'Have you tried getting anything out of our wonderful post office lately? Last week it took them four days to deliver a letter from a postbox in Tiergarten, and then it was nearly torn in two. And the price for a letter now…'He read the numbers that were the address. 'One thousand is Berlin and twenty-eight is Lübars.'

'You said Polizeipräsidium kept copies of the forms the box renters sign. Could you get the name and address of the person who rents that box at Lubars post office? Could you get it even on a Saturday?'

'I'll phone from the bedroom.'

Thanks, Axel.'

'It depends who's on duty this morning. I can't order anyone to do it. It's strictly forbidden… it's a criminal offence.'

'If I could clear up the inquiry immediately, I could go home.'

'We all thought you'd grow up to become a gangster,' said Axel. 'Did I ever tell you that?'

'Yes, Axel. You've told me that many times.'

'We asked Herrn Storch, the mathematics teacher, but he said all the English were like you.'

'Some of them are worse, Axel,' I said.

He didn't laugh; he nodded. He wanted me to know how much he disliked it. He wanted me to think twice before I asked him more such favours. When he went into the bedroom to phone, he turned the key in the door. He wanted to be sure that I could not get close enough to hear him.

The call took only five minutes. I suppose the Polizeipräsidium have such records on a computer.

'The addressee, Mrs Harrington, is the renter of the box. She gave no an address in Lübars,' said Axel when he returned from the phone. 'I know exactly where it is. It's a street of beautiful houses with a view across open farmland. What wouldn't I give to live in such a place.'

'How difficult is it to get a postbox in a false name?' I asked.

'It depends who is on duty. But you don't have to provide much to get it in any name you wish. Many people have boxes under a nom de plume or a stage name, and so on.'

'I have not been to Lübars since we were kids. Is it still as pretty as it used to be?'

'Lübars village. We're quite close. If this window faced north, I could show you the street. They've preserved everything: the little eighteenth-century village church, the fire station and the village green with the fine chestnut trees. The farmhouses and the old inn. It's just a stone's throw away but it's like another world.'

'I'll get going, Axel,' I said. 'Thanks for the beer.'

'And what if on Monday they fire me? What then? You say how really sorry you are, and I spend the rest of my life trying to support a family on social welfare payments.'

I said nothing.

'You're irresponsible, Bernd. You always were.'

I would have expected Frank Harrington to have his mistress hidden away in a small anonymous apartment block somewhere in the French Sector of the city where no one notices what's happening. But the address Axel Mauser had provided was in the northernmost part of the Western Sector, a prong of land sandwiched between the Tegel Forest and the Wall. There were small farms here just a short way from the city centre, and tractors were parked on the narrow cobbled lanes among the shiny Porsches and four-litre Mercedes.