“And what if you chose not to come back?” he said. “It’s very difficult bringing people out of Berlin across the Green Border. What’s to stop you from just staying there? She doesn’t even live in the French sector.”
“At least say you’ll think about it,” I said. “I mean, it would be a real shame if I allowed my own disappointment to cloud my eyes next Tuesday evening.”
“Meaning?”
“I want to help you find Edgard de Boudel, Émile. Really I do. But there has to be a little give-and-take, especially in a situation like this. If I’m to work for you, then surely it’s best that I’m completely in your debt, monsieur. That there’s nothing unpleasant between us.”
He smiled a nasty little smile and threw his cigarette over the wall and into the canal. Then he quickly gathered the lapels of my jacket in his fist and smacked me hard across both cheeks.
“Maybe you’ve forgotten La Santé,” he said. “Your boche friends, Oberg and Knochen, and their death sentences.” He slapped me again for good measure.
I took it as calmly as I was able and said: “That might work on your wife and your sister, Franzi, but not on me, see?” I caught the hand he was waving near my ear and twisted it hard. “No one gets to slap me unless I’ve got my hand in her panties. Now, take your paws off this cheap French suit before I teach you the Method on tough.”
I looked him in the eye and saw that he seemed to relax a little, so I let go his hand in order to prize his fingers off my coat, and that was when he punched me with a right hook that rocked my head like a balloon on a stick. Probably he’d have punched me again but for my own presence of mind, which is another way of saying that I banged its hard bony covering firmly against the bridge of his long hooked nose.
The Frenchman yelped with pain, and finally letting go of my coat, he pressed his fingers to the side of his nose and took several steps back until he reached the garden wall.
“Look,” I said, “stop trying to polish my chin and take it easy, Émile. I’m not asking for the return of Alsace-Lorraine, just one lousy Sunday afternoon with the woman I love. Some compassionate leave, that’s all. And none of that gets in the way of me helping you find your traitor. I help you, you help me. Unless you want me to enroll in a course at the university, it’s not like I have anything much to do before next Tuesday evening.”
“I think you broke my nose,” he said.
“No, I didn’t. There’s not nearly enough blood. Take it from someone who’s broken a few noses in his time. Although nothing on the scale of that Eiffel Tower on your face.” I shook my head. “Hey, I’m sorry I hit you, Émile, but for the last nine months a lot of people have been getting tough with me and I’ve had enough of it, see? I have to look at my face every morning, Frenchman. It’s not much of a face, but it’s the only one I’ve got. And it’s got to last me for a while yet. So I don’t like it when people think they can knock it around. I’m sensitive like that.”
He wiped his nose and nodded, but the incident hung strong in the air between us like the smell of burned hops from a brewery. And for a moment we both stood there stupidly, wondering how to proceed.
It could have been worse, I told myself. There had been a brief moment when I had actually contemplated tipping him over the wall and into the canal.
He lit a cigarette and smoked it as if he thought it might improve his humor and take his mind off his nose, which, now that he had wiped away the blood, was already looking better than he might have supposed.
“You’re right,” he said. “There’s no reason at all why this thing can’t be fixed. After all, it is, as you say, just one Sunday afternoon, yes?”
I nodded. “Just one Sunday afternoon.”
“Very well. We will fix it. Yes, I tell you, I would do anything to get de Boudel.”
Including lie to me, I thought. After I had served my purpose and identified de Boudel, there was no telling what the French might do with me: send me back to La Santé, to the Amis, even the Russians. France was, after all, cozying up to the Soviet Union in its foreign policy, and the return of an escaped prisoner was not beyond its perfidy.
“And a ring?” I asked, as if such a bauble really mattered to me or to Elisabeth.
“Yes,” he said. “I’m sure that can be arranged also.”
32
On Saturday, Grottsch and Wenger drove me back to Berlin, as agreed; and on Sunday, I returned to Motzstrasse, only this time my two companions insisted on accompanying me to Elisabeth’s door.
I let her kiss me chastely on the cheek, and then made the introductions.
“This is Herr Grottsch. And Herr Wenger. They’re responsible for my safety while I’m in Berlin, and they insist on looking around your apartment, just to make sure everything is kosher.”
Elisabeth frowned. “Are they policemen?”
“Yes. Kind of.”
“Are you in any trouble?”
“I can assure you it’s nothing to worry about,” I said smoothly. “It’s not much more than a formality. But they certainly won’t leave us alone until they’ve had a good look around.”
Elisabeth shrugged. “If you think it’s really necessary. But there’s no one else here. I can’t imagine what you think you’ll find, gentlemen. This isn’t Hohenschönhausen, you know.”
Grottsch stopped and frowned. “What do you know about Hohenschönhausen?” he asked suspiciously.
“I can see your friends aren’t from Berlin, Bernie,” said Elisabeth. “My dear man, everyone in Berlin knows about Hohenschönhausen.”
“Everyone except me,” I said truthfully.
“Well,” she said. “You remember the Heike factory?”
“The meat-processing factory? On the corner of Freienewelder Strasse.”
She nodded. “That whole area is now occupied by the State Security Service of the DDR.”
“I thought that was in Karlshorst,” I said.
“Not anymore,” she said.
“You seem to know a lot about it, Fräulein,” said Wenger.
“I’m a Berliner. The communists pretend the place doesn’t exist and the rest of us pretend not to see it. It’s an arrangement that suits us all very well, I think. A very Berlin kind of arrangement. It was the same with Gestapo headquarters on Prinz Albrechtstrasse. Remember?”
I nodded. “Of course. It was the building that no one saw.”
Elisabeth looked at Grottsch and Wenger and frowned. “So? Go ahead and search.”
The two men walked through the apartment and found nothing. When they were quite satisfied at finding nothing, Grottsch said, “We’ll be outside the door.” And then they left.
I moved her away from the door in case they were listening and into the kitchen, where we embraced fondly.
“What were you thinking of?” I said. “Mentioning the Stasi like that?”
“I don’t know. It just sort of came out.”
“Still, you recovered it pretty well, I thought. I’d forgotten about Heike’s meat. In the army, we lived on that stuff.”
“That’s probably why they shot him. Richard Heike.”
“Who? The Russians?”
She nodded. “Who are those two characters?”
“Just a couple of thugs who work for French intelligence.”
“But they were German, weren’t they?”
“I think the French rather enjoy making us do their dirty work.”
“So that’s what you’re doing.”
“Actually, I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“That’s a comforting thought.”
“I told the French I had to come here and ask you to marry me. That you’d given me an ultimatum.”