'A man who sacrificed himself? Is Stinnes that sort of man?' said Werner. 'I'd marked him down as a hard-nosed and ambitious opportunist. I'd say Stinnes is the sort of man who sends others off to sacrifice themselves while he stays behind and gets the promotions.'
Werner had hit upon the thing that I found most difficult to reconcile with the facts. Right from the time when Stinnes started talking about coming over to the West I'd found it difficult to believe in his sincerity. The Stinnes of the KGB didn't come West — not as defectors, not as agents, and especially not as solitaries who'd spend the rest of their days unrewarded, unloved, and uninvolved with the job, acting out a role in which they had no belief. As Werner said, Stinnes was the sort who dispatched others to that kind of fate.
'When Moscow wants him back, they'll find a way to get him,' I said.
'I'll go along with your theory,' said Werner grudgingly. 'But you won't convince many others. They like it the way it is. You tell me London Central have practically written Bret off. The Stinnes committee are just getting into their stride. If what you say about Stinnes is correct they're all going to wind up with egg on their faces, a lot of egg on their faces. You'll need some solid evidence before going back there and trying to convince them that Stinnes is a plant. That's a combined-services committee, and they're telling each other that Stinnes is the greatest break they've had in years. You'll have a lot of trouble convincing them that they've fallen for a KGB misinformation stunt.'
'More than just a stunt, Werner,' I said. 'If Stinnes blows a big hole in London Central, forces the Department to compromise with Five, spatters a little blood over me, and has Bret facing a departmental enquiry, I'd call that a KGB triumph of the first order.'
'I've been in front of that committee,' said Werner. They'll believe what they want to believe. Rock that boat and you'll be the one who falls into the water and drowns. I'd advise you to keep your theories to yourself. Keep right out of it, Bernie.'
There was more thunder, fainter now as the storm abated, and trickles of sunlight dribbled through the cloud.
'I am keeping out of it,' I said. 'I told Dicky I wouldn't go to the committee without detailed written instructions.'
Werner looked at me wondering, if it was a joke. When he realized it wasn't he said, 'That was silly, Bernie. You should have done what I did. You should have gone through the motions: smiled at their greetings, laughed at their little jokes, accepted one of their cigarettes, and listened to their idiot comments while trying to look enthralled. You refused? They'll regard you as hostile after that. What are they going to think if you go to them now and say that Stinnes is a phoney?'
'What are they going to think?' I said.
'They're going to resurrect all their darkest suspicions of you,' said Werner. 'Someone on that committee is sure to say that you might be a KGB agent trying to rescue Bret and trying to wreck the wonderful job that the Stinnes debriefing is doing.'
'I brought Stinnes in,' I said.
'Because you had no alternative. Don't you remember the way certain people said you were dragging your feet?' He looked at his watch, a stainless-steel one, not his usual gold model. 'I really must be going.'
He had plenty of time, but he was nervous. Werner made a lot of money from his completely legitimate banking deals, but he was always nervous before going East. Sometimes I wondered if it was worth it. 'Where's your car?'
'It's just a quick one. Some signatures to show that goods have arrived over there. The quicker I get the receipts, the quicker I get paid, and with bank charges the way they are . . . I'll go over on the S-Bahn. Once I arrive at Friedrichstrasse, it's only five minutes.'
'I'll walk down to Zoo station and see you onto the train,' I said. I still hadn't told him about Fiona and the children.
'Stay here, Bernie. You'll get wet.'
When we went downstairs, Lisl Hennig was sitting in the dining room. It was a large airy room overlooking the gloomy courtyard. The panelling had been painted cream and so had some of the cupboards. There was an old Oriental rug to cover worn lino just inside the doorway, and there were framed prints on the walls — scenes of German rural life — and one tiny picture that was different from the rest. It was a George Grosz drawing, a picture of a deformed soldier, a war veteran made grotesque by his injuries. It was full of rage and spite and despair so that the artist's lines attacked the paper. Lisl was sitting near the drawing, at a table by the window. She was always there about noon. On the table there was the usual pile of newspapers. She couldn't live without newspapers — she was obsessed by them, and woe betide anyone who interrupted her reading. Her mornings were always spent in going through them all, column by column: news, adverts, gossip, theatre, concert reviews, share prices, and even the classified adverts. Now she had finished her papers; now she was sociable again.
'Werner, darling. Thank you for the beautiful flowers,
Liebchen
. Come and give your Lisl a kiss.' He did so. She looked him up and down. 'It's freezing cold outside. You won't be warm enough in that raincoat, darling. It's terrible weather.' Did she recognize Werner's clothes as those he wore when visiting the East? 'You should be wearing your heavy coat.'
She was a big woman and the old-fashioned black silk dress with a lacy front did nothing to disguise her bulk. Her hair was lacquered, her once-pretty face was heavily but carefully painted, and there was too much mascara on her eyelashes. Backstage in a theatre her appearance would have gone unremarked but in the cold hard light of noon she looked rather grotesque. 'Sit down and have coffee,' she commanded with a regal movement of her hand.
Werner looked at his watch, but he sat down as he was told. Lisl Hennig had protected his Jewish parents, and after Werner was orphaned she brought him up as if he was her one and only son. Although neither of them displayed much sign of deep affection, there was a bond between them that was unbreakable. Lisl commanded; Werner obeyed,
'Coffee, Klara!' she called. '
Zweimal!
' There was a response from some distant part of the kitchen as her 'girl' Klara — only marginally younger than Lisl — acknowledged the imperious command. Lisl was eating her regular lunch: a small piece of cheese, two wholemeal wafers, an apple, and a glass of milk. Except for her, the dining room was empty. There were about a dozen tables, each set with cutlery and wineglasses and a plastic rose, but only one table had linen napkins and this was the only one likely to be used that lunch time. Not many of Lisl's guests ate lunch; some of them were semipermanent residents, out at work all day, and the rest were the kind of salesmen who couldn't afford lunch at Lisl's or anywhere else. 'Did you bring me what I asked you to bring me?' Lisl asked Werner.
'I forgot, Lisl. I am very sorry.' Werner was embarrassed.
'You have more important things to do,' said Lisl, with that smile of martyrdom that was calculated to twist the knife in poor Werner's wound.
'I'll get it now,' said Werner, rising to his feet.
'What is it?' I said. 'I'll get it for you, Lisl. Werner has an important appointment. I'm walking up to the Zoo station. What can I bring back for you?' In fact, I guessed what it was; it was an eyebrow pencil. Whatever other elements of her makeup Lisl found necessary, none compared with the eyebrow pencil. Ever since her arthritis made shopping difficult for her, Werner had been entrusted with buying her makeup from the KaDeWe department store. But it was a secret, a secret with which even I was not officially entrusted; I knew only because Werner told me.
'Werner will get it for me. It is not important,' said Lisl.
Klara brought a tray with a jug of coffee and the best cups and saucers, the ones with the sunflower pattern, and some
Kipfel
on a silver platter. Klara knew that the little crescent shaped shortcakes were Werner's favourite.
A man in a smart brown-leather jacket and grey slacks came into the dining room and deposited his shoulder bag on a chair. It was at the table where the linen napkins had been arranged. He smiled at Lisl and left without speaking.
'Westies,' explained Lisl, using the Berlin word for tourists from West Germany. 'They eat lunch here every day.'
The family with the grown-up sons; I saw them in the lobby,' said Werner. Even without hearing an accent, Berliners were always able to recognize such visitors, and yet it was hard to say in what way they were any different from Berliners. The faces were more or less the same, the clothing equally so, but there was something in the manner that distinguished them from 'Islanders', as the West Berliners referred to themselves.
'They hate us,' said Lisl, who was always prone to exaggerate.
'Westies hate us? Don't be silly,' said Werner. He looked at his watch again and drank some coffee.
'They hate us. They blame us for everything bad that happens.'
'They blame you for their high taxes,' I said. 'A lot of West Germans begrudge the subsidies needed to keep Berlin solvent. But all over the world big cities are funded from central government.'
'There is more to it than that,' said Lisl. 'Even the word "Berlin" is disliked and avoided in the Bundesrepublik. If they want a name for a soap or a scent or a radio or a motorcar, they might name such things "New York" or "Rio" or "Paris", but the word "Berlin" is the universal turnoff, the name that no one wants.'
'They don't hate us,' said Werner. 'But they blame us for everything that happens in the cold war. No matter that Bonn and Moscow are making the decisions — Berlin takes the blame.' Werner was diplomat enough to take Lisl's side.
'I don't know about that,' I said. 'Bonn gets more than its fair share of knocks and pays out more than its fair share of money.'
'Does it?' said Lisl. She was unconvinced. She hated to pay her taxes.
I said, 'Conveniently for the DDR, there is only one Germany when someone wants German money. Reparations to Israel didn't come from both halves of Germany — only from the West half. After the war the debts incurred by Hitler's Third Reich were not shared — only the West half settled them. And now, whenever the DDR offers to set free political prisoners in exchange for money, it's the West half that pays the ransoms to the East half. But when anyone anywhere in the world wants to express their prejudice about Germans, they don't tell you how much they hate those Germans in the East — who suffer enough already — all anti-German feeling is directed against the overtaxed, overworked Westies who prop up the overpaid, incompetent bureaucrats of the Common Market and finance its ever-increasing surplus so it can sell more and more bargain-priced wine and butter to the Russians.'
'Bernard has become a Westie,' said Lisl. It was a joke, but there was not much humour there. Werner gobbled the last
Kipfel
and got up and said goodbye to her. Lisl didn't respond to our arguments or to our kisses. She didn't like Westies even when they had lunch every day.
With Werner, I walked along Kantstrasse to Zoo station. The rain had stopped, but the trees dripped disconsolately. There was more rain in the air. The station was busy as usual, the forecourt crowded, a group of Japanese tourists taking photos of each other, a man and woman — both in ankle-length fur coats — buying picture postcards, a boy and girl with stiff dyed hair and shiny leather trousers singing tunelessly to the strumming of a guitar, French soldiers loaded with equipment climbing into a truck, two arty-looking girls selling pictures made from beads, an old man with a pony collecting money for animal welfare, a young bearded man asleep in a doorway, an expensively dressed mother holding a small child at arm's length while it vomited in the gutter, and two young policemen not noticing anything. It was the usual mix for Zoo station. This was the middle of the Old World. Here were Berlin's commuter trains and here too were trains that had come direct from Paris and went on to Warsaw and Moscow.
I went inside with Werner and bought a ticket so that I could accompany him up to the platform. The S-Bahn is Berlin's ancient elevated railway network and the simplest way to get from the centre of West Berlin (Zoo) to the heart of East Berlin (Friedrichstrasse). It was chilly up there on the platform; the trains rattled through, bringing a swirl of damp air and a stirring of wastepaper. The stations are like huge glass aircraft hangars, and like the tracks themselves they are propped up above street level on ornate cast-iron supports.
'Don't worry about Lisl's eyebrow pencil,' I told Werner. 'I'll get that for her on the way back.'
'Do you know the colour she wants?'
'Of course I do. You're always forgetting to get them.'
'I hope you're wrong about Stinnes,' said Werner.
'You forget about all that,' I said. 'You get over there and get your papers signed and get back. Forget about me and the Department. Forget all that stuff until you get back.'