London Match

'A prisoner,' I said.

It was already getting dark. Daylight doesn't last long on clouded Berlin days like this in December. The warehouse lights made little puff balls in the mist. Around here there were only cranes, sheds, storage tanks, crates stacked as high as tenements, and rusty railway tracks. Facing us far across the water were more of the same. There was no movement except the sluggish current. The great city around us was almost silent and only the generator disturbed the peace. Looking south along the river I could see the island of Eiswerder. Beyond that, swallowed by the mist, was Spandau – world-famous now, not only for its machine guns but for the fortress prison inside which the soldiers of four nations guarded one aged and infirm prisoner: Hitler's deputy.

The police inspector followed my gaze. 'Not Hess,' he joked. 'Don't say the poor old fellow finally escaped?'

I smiled dutifully. 'Bad luck getting Christmas duty,' I said. 'Are you married?'

'I'm married. I live just round the corner from here. My parents lived in the same house. Do you know I've never been out of Berlin in all my life?'

'All through the war too?'

'Yes, all through the war I was living here. I was thinking of that just now when you gave me the drink.' He turned up the collar of his uniform greatcoat. 'You get old and suddenly you find yourself remembering things that you haven't recalled in about forty years. Tonight for instance, suddenly I'm remembering a time just before Christmas in 1944 when I was on duty very near here: the gasworks.'

'You were in the Army?' He didn't look old enough.

'No. Hitler Youth. I was fourteen and I'd only just got my uniform. They said I wasn't strong enough to join a gun crew, so they made me a messenger for the air defence post. I was the youngest kid there. They only let me do that job because Berlin hadn't had an air raid for months and it seemed so safe. There were rumours that Stalin had told the Western powers that Berlin mustn't be bombed so that the Red Army could capture it intact.' He gave a sardonic little smile. 'But the rumours were proved wrong, and on December fifth the Americans came over in daylight. People said they were trying to hit the Siemens factory, but I don't know. Siemensstadt was badly bombed, but bombs hit Spandau, and Pankow and Oranienburg and Weissensee. Our fighters attacked the Amis as they came in to bomb – it was a thick overcast but I could hear the machine guns – and I think they just dropped everything as soon as they could and headed home.'

'Why do you remember that particular air raid?'

'I was outside and I was blown off my bicycle by the bomb that dropped in Streitstrasse just along the back of here. The officer at the air-raid post found another bike for me and gave me a swig of schnapps from his flask, like you did just now. I felt very grown up. I'd never tasted schnapps before. Then he sent me off on my bike with a message for our headquarters at Spandau station. Our phones had been knocked out. Be careful, he said, and if another lot of bombers come, you take shelter. When I got back from delivering the message there was nothing left of them. The air defence post was just rubble. They were all dead. It was a delayed action bomb. It must have been right alongside us when he gave me the schnapps, but no one felt the shock of it because of all the racket.'

Suddenly his manner changed, as if he was embarrassed at having told me his war experiences. Perhaps he'd been chafed about his yarns by men who'd come back from the Eastern Front with stories that made his air-raid experiences seem no more than minor troubles.

He tugged at his greatcoat like a man about to go on parade. And then, looking down into the water at the submerged car again, he said, 'If the next go doesn't move it, we'll have to get a big crane. And that will mean waiting until after the holiday; the union man will make sure of that.'

'I'll hang on,' I said. I knew he was trying to provide me with an excuse to leave.

'The frogmen say the car is empty.'

'They wanted to go home,' I said flippantly.

The inspector was offended. 'Oh, no. They are good boys. They wouldn't tell me wrong just to avoid another dive.' He was right, of course. In Germany there was still a work ethic.

I said, 'They can't see much, with the car covered in all that oil and muck. I know what it's like in this sort of water; the underwater lamps just reflect in the car's window glass.'

'Here's your friend,' said the inspector. He strolled off towards the other end of the wharf to give us a chance to talk in private.

It was Werner Volkmann. He had his hat dumped on top of his head and was wearing his long heavy coat with the astrakhan collar. I called it his impresario's coat, but today the laugh was on me, freezing to death in my damp trench coat. 'What's happening?' he said.

'Nothing,' I said. 'Nothing at all.'

'Don't bite my head off,' said Werner. 'I'm not even getting paid.'

'I'm sorry, Werner, but I told you not to bother to drag out here.'

'The roads are empty, and to tell you the truth, being a Jew I feel a bit of a hypocrite celebrating Christmas.'

'You haven't left Zena alone?'

'Her sister's family are with us – four children and a husband who works in the VAT office.'

'I can see why you came.'

'I like it all up to a point,' said Werner. 'Zena likes to do the whole thing right. You know how it is in Germany. She spent all the afternoon decorating the tree and putting the presents out, and she has real candles on it.'

'You should be with them,' I said. In Germany the evening before Christmas Day – heiliger Abend – is the most important time of the holiday. 'Make sure she doesn't burn the house down.'

'I'll be back with them in time for the dinner. I told them you'd join us.'

'I wish I could, Werner. But I'll have to be here when it comes out of the water. Dicky put that in writing and you know what he's like.'

'Are you going to try again soon?'

'In about an hour. What did you find out at the hospital this morning?'

'Nothing very helpful. The people who took her away were dressed up to be a doctor and hospital staff. They had the Citroen waiting outside. From what the people in the reception office say, the ambulance was supposed to be taking her to a private clinic in Dahlem.'

'What about the cop guarding her?'

'For him they had a different story. They told him they were clinic staff. They said they were just taking her downstairs for another X-ray and would be back in about thirty minutes. She was very weak and complained bitterly about being moved. She probably didn't realize what was going to happen.'

'That she was going into the Havel, you mean?'

'No. That they were a KGB team, there to get her away from police custody.'

I said, 'Why didn't the clinic reception phone the police before releasing her?'

'I don't know, Bernie. One of them said that she was taken out using the papers of a patient who was due to be moved that day. Another one said there was a policeman outside with the ambulance, so it seemed to be all in order. We'll probably never find out exactly what happened. It's a hospital, not a prison; the staff don't worry too much about who's going in and out.'

'What do you make of it, Werner?'

'They knew she was talking, I suppose. Somehow what she was telling us got back to Moscow and they decided there was only one way of handling it.'

'Why not take her straight back into East Berlin?' I said.

'In an ambulance? Very conspicuous. Even the Russians are not too keen on that sort of publicity. Snatching a prisoner from police custody and taking her across the wire would not look good at a time when the East Germans are trying to show the world what good neighbours they can be.' He looked at me. I pulled a face. 'It's easier this way,' added Werner. 'They got rid of her. They were taking no chances. If she had talked to us already, they'd be making sure she couldn't give evidence.'