Engel regaled me with band names that meant nothing to me as we made our way, ever so slightly more drunk than was strictly professional, towards Grauber’s address. I think he was surprised at my enthusiasm for the music – I was English, in my forties and in the shadow of Battle (a man I imagined insisting that good music died alongside Vaughan Williams). I tried to explain I was also a Londoner who had relished diversity and change from the first moment his feet trod its ancient pavements.
The Wall loomed over us as we approached Grauber’s block, lit by its constant arc lights. The snow was getting heavier, settling on the pavements and the top of the wall, sharp white sparks coiling in the night sky.
Unlike the elaborate frescos for which the Wall itself would later be famous, the block’s pale grey skin was tattooed with rough graffiti. Great whorls of green and red spray paint, the signatures of those who ran through these streets trying to leave their mark in the only way they knew how.
Engel and I walked up the short ramp to the block entrance. Sat on the adjoining wall, her legs swinging, heels pounding out a bored rhythm against the bricks, was a young girl. She looked to be about eight or so, her blonde hair pulled into pigtails, her face a rebellious sneer as she watched the two of us approach.
‘Bit late for you to be out, isn’t it?’ asked Engel.
She smiled, the street lights only catching half of her exposed teeth.
‘Do what I want,’ she replied, rattling a box of matches at us as if to prove as much.
‘Where do you live?’ he asked.
She opened the box and plucked out a single match which she lit and stared at as it crackled in the half-light. ‘Wherever I want.’
She took the lit match and popped it into her mouth, the flame hissing out on her wet tongue.
Engel made to say something then thought better of it. What was there to say? Don’t do that? It was done, and besides, the girl had made it quite clear how uninterested she was in our opinions. He shook his head and we continued on our way to the entrance.
Engel pressed the buzzer for Grauber’s apartment. There was no answer. I pulled up the collar of my coat, but the chill of a Berlin winter cared little for my weak attempts to keep it from my bones. I looked to the young girl, meaning to block Engel from view as he forced the lock on the door, but she had jumped down from the wall and was dancing in the street, twirling around in the heavy snow.
Behind me, I heard the door open and Engel and I made our way inside and towards the building’s elevator.
‘Eighth floor,’ he said, consulting the sign next to the graffiti-scrawled metal doors. Apparently Klaus was going to burn the world, or so he had promised in bright yellow spray paint.
Engel pressed the button calling the elevator and we waited a few moments, doing our best to appear utterly at home in the damp, tatty foyer.
On the wall there was a poster warning tenants not to dump their rubbish in the communal areas; another advertised the services of an affordable plumber; yet another invited callers to express their desires to Claudia over the phone. Premium rates would be charged but Claudia insisted it would be worth the caller’s while. I wondered if Claudia was, in reality, a tired housewife doing her best to make ends meet. Did she moan her way through the tedium? Pouring impossible fantasies into the ears of the lonely as she dreamed of a burgeoning bank account?
The elevator arrived and Engel and I stepped inside. Engel pressed the button for the eighth floor and the elevator began to rise.
‘Reminds me of the building where I grew up,’ said Engel as the cables creaked above us. ‘I couldn’t wait to get out of it.’
‘It’s not so bad,’ I said. ‘We’re just seeing the shell. Home is what you make it.’
Engel shrugged but was clearly unconvinced. Having had the good fortune not to grow up in a divided city, I shut my mouth on the subject.
The elevator doors opened and we walked out into the cold once more. Up here, a wind forced a tunnel of snowflakes along the balcony before us. Looking down I saw the young girl was still dancing in the road, now striking matches and flinging them into the air around her where they glowed orange for a second before winking out.
Arriving at number 114, I hung back as Engel knocked on the door. We had no idea about Grauber, he might be friendly enough, but an intelligence officer always stacks the odds the best he can. People can react badly to strangers on the doorstep. They can react twice as badly when there are two of them. Guilty people might be tempted to run or fight (and in either case, the second man then comes into his own). In this case, it hardly mattered as nobody came to the door.
Engel knocked again. This time there was a noise from inside as someone sent something spilling with the shattering of glass.
‘You think we’re making Mr Grauber panic?’ asked Engel.
‘Always possible,’ I agreed, ‘or he’s in terrible trouble and would very much like our assistance.’
Engel smiled. ‘Either way…’
He once again took the opportunity to prove his skill with a locked door.
‘You’re worryingly good at that,’ I said.
‘A man needs a varied selection of skills in this business,’ he agreed.
The door gave in and we stepped inside. We were immediately hit by the smell. Body odour and rot, food gone bad. Underneath that was another, more worrying smell: petrol.
Ahead of us, a hallway extended to the rear of the apartment, doors leading off from it. All was dark, the faint light from the open door behind us revealing the tatty state of the hallway wallpaper but little else.
‘Mr Grauber?’ I called, ‘are you all right? We just want to talk to you if that’s OK?’
From further into the apartment came a wet, slapping sound, like someone stepping out of the bath.
‘Please don’t tell me he was just in the shower,’ moaned Engel.
‘Better that than the possible alternative,’ I said. ‘Can’t you smell it? The petrol fumes?’
‘Stay back!’ came a voice from one of the far rooms. ‘You have to stay back. I can’t… It won’t let me…’
‘Mr Grauber,’ I said, ‘please, there’s no reason to be concerned. We just want to talk to you for a minute.’
‘You don’t understand,’ he was crying. ‘It won’t allow it…’
‘What won’t allow it?’ I asked but there was to be no answer. There was deep, pounding sound and an arc of orange light cut across the hallway.
‘Oh God…’ said Engel.
Grauber walked into the hallway – he didn’t run, he walked – his entire body ablaze.
I looked around for something I could use to try and put him out. I ran into the closest room, hoping it would be a bedroom – it wasn’t. From the light of the burning Mr Grauber, I could see a ratty sofa, a television and a stack of discarded takeaway boxes. Then I noticed the window. In place of curtains, Grauber had hung a blanket. I snatched at it. Behind me, Engel screamed. I tore the blanket down, bringing the heavy pole it had been draped over along with it.
Entering the hallway, I was faced with the unbelievable sight of Engel being pinned against the wall, Grauber’s flaming hands gripping him by the lapels of his jacket.
I lifted the blanket, meaning to throw it over both of them. Engel’s shirt was already alight, the flames from Grauber’s arms licking upwards towards the young man’s face, singeing his hair and searing his cheeks. Grauber had other ideas. He threw Engel towards me and continued on his way out of the door.
I beat at Engel’s chest with the blanket. The young man hadn’t suffered any major injury, though he’d be sore for a while.
‘Go!’ Engel shouted. ‘Get after him!’
I did as I was told, stepping out onto the balcony where Grauber was stood looking out into the snow-filled night. How could he still be moving? Surely the shock of the flames should have killed him by now? I could smell his meat burning, hear his skin and muscle crackle and pop as it constricted around his bones.
I raised the blanket but there was no time. Grauber climbed onto the edge of the balcony and jumped out into the Berlin night.
I watched as his flaming body toppled towards the snow-covered ground below, the flames whipping behind him in the updraft. Then, he hit the ground with a dull crack, splayed out on the ground. He looked uncomfortably like a flaming swastika, the snow hissing around him.
‘You expect me to believe that?’ Ryska asked, tapping at the table in irritation. ‘That a man can set himself on fire and then just walk around?’
Shining watched her fingers, the short nails striking out an irregular rhythm on the surface of the table. He tried to decide if she was just angry or whether the irritation was covering something deeper. He realised he was overthinking matters, always a failing of his. Ryska was simply expressing the incredulity everyone always did when faced with the business of Section 37. No doubt she was conflicted, on one hand relishing the fact that she might be on the front line against a possible rogue agent, on the other cursing the fact that said agent was clearly mad.
‘You’ve read my file, yes?’ he said.
She looked at it and snorted.
He did his best to remain calm. ‘A common reaction,’ he admitted, ‘though, forgive me, a stupid one. Do you really think someone like me gets to exist if everything he files is fantasy? Does that sound possible to you? That our masters would continue to fund – however poorly – my department, provide me with staff, a level of authority… Do you really think they would do that if I was just wasting everyone’s time?’
Her derision possessed a little less conviction. ‘It’s absurd.’
‘Of course it is. Deeply absurd. That anyone with half a mind could look at the evidence, and there’s plenty of it, and still scoff. Whatever your logic tells you, whatever your preconceptions, once presented with contrary information you have no choice but to alter your world view. Nobody likes doing that. We like to cling to our beliefs, they’re our security. But once someone categorically proves you wrong you simply have to. To do otherwise would be idiotic. And, as I seem to need to remind you regularly, I don’t believe you’re an idiot. Please prove as much and think for a moment before you take the stupid way out again.’
Ryska stared at him. ‘But if all this was real, people would know, we’d all be discussing it.’
‘Remind yourself what it is we do for a living and then think again, you’re nearly there.’
‘Don’t patronise me…’
‘After a career of banging my head against a brick wall it’s either that or screaming. And considering the situation I currently find myself in, you will forgive me if I’m a little less easy-going on the subject than normal. Question my story all you like, that’s your job, I have faith that we’ll get to the end of it and we’ll all walk away satisfied. But don’t question my job – it’s no doubt saved your life in the past and probably will do again. Be clever, or this situation isn’t going to just be annoying, it’s going to be completely intolerable.’
‘Fine, I’ll suspend judgement.’
‘You’re too kind. So, where we? Grauber – or, more precisely, what was controlling him – had flung himself off the balcony of his apartment block. Young Engel wasn’t badly hurt, luckily, but we were left with a mess to clean up. Luckily, cleaning up messes is something the British secret service is used to. It causes enough of them after all. We finally called it a night and I returned to the questionable comforts of Frau Schwarz’s guesthouse…’
I woke up to a cricked neck from Frau Schwarz’s pillows. I’d discussed matters with them during the night, explaining the basic principles of softness balanced with support, but they’d remained dogged in their refusal to concur. I’d tried punching them but, like all forms of violent coercion, this had resulted in little but battered pillows and increased resentment.
I put on my dressing gown and made my way down the corridor to the bathroom, rolling my head all the way. If that didn’t help loosen my neck muscles then a hot shower surely would. I had no desire to stare at my second day in Berlin from a pained angle of forty-five degrees.
The bathroom had the sort of functional, aggressive air one expects from military establishments or expensive English boarding schools. It quite took me back.
The shower had the same personality as my pillows but was weaker-willed – within a few minutes it had agreed to pump out hot water and I took up a precarious position behind the glass partition and set to the soap with gusto.
I was, naturally, a blind mess of soap suds when I heard the door rattle.
‘Occupied!’ I shouted in the way of the Englishman abroad stating the obvious.
The door rattled again, a low scratching working its way beneath the rush of water as I worked faster to rinse my hair.
I alternated between swearing and washing away soap, straddling that middle line between someone who wants the situation to end and yet refuses to be altogether hurried in his simple business of washing.
There was silence and I relaxed, thankful to be able to go about my scrubbing in peace.
I was just considering another handful of shampoo (for fun rather than necessity) when an arm reached around my neck and pulled. My feet slipped immediately and my bodyweight collaborated with my attacker’s attempt to choke the life out of me. I kicked out, trying to get purchase enough to wrest myself free. Wet feet pounded against the wall and the glass partition, neither achieving anything. I shot my head back, trying to catch the attacker’s face but I’d slid down his body and all I was doing his banging my head against his chest. I decided to use my position better, throwing all my weight in the direction it had been going anyway: down.
He stooped slightly, struggling to keep his grip on my wet body. I planted my feet against the surface of the bath and kicked upwards. This time my head connected with his chin and I heard a satisfying, spluttered cry pre-empting the tip of his tongue falling into my wet hair. His grip loosened slightly, no doubt down to an involuntary desire to put his hands to his profusely bleeding mouth. This was the only opportunity I was likely to get, so I put all my strength into it, driving my elbows back into his belly and kicking back against the bath again to force myself free.