My Little Armalite (29 page)

—Yes. And I surrender. Of my own free will. Please note that and take it down in evidence against me. Or rather, for me. For me the war is over, ha ha. Sorry, just a stupid English joke. God, I don't know why I said that. Now, about the gun …

They looked at me and laughed. The short fat man clapped me on the shoulder.

—Herr Panke told us to look out for a little man with a beard. He did not warn us about your English humour, ha ha!

—Herr Panke?

—Of course. Who else?

—Oh. Ah. Well, um, wow, that's so kind of him. Of course, we're good friends, and … well. Great!

Well, that was more like it. Good old Heiner. How pleasant to be greeted with respect like this. Herr Doktor Goode. Well, and why not? That was who I was. Thank God for a country where academics are still treated with a bit of awe.

—Herr Panke is glad that you are here, said the young man, stressing the surname and title.

—I look forward greatly to seeing Heiner again, I replied, stressing the Christian name.

—So. This way, Herr Doktor, he yielded. —You have only your pillow?

—The serious man travels lightly, I said.

—Nietzsche? asked the fat man.

—Panke, I said. —
The Ballad of the Dancer's Thighs
. I used to sing it with him. A most interesting poetic structure.

—Ah yes, nodded the young man, —You are true devotee, Herr Doktor. But the delay in your train, no doubt due to Czech incompetence, means that we must rush if you are to arrive in time for your speech.

—Sorry? I asked, certain that my German must be getting rusty.

—Herr Panke did not tell you? asked the young man

—No. He didn't say anything. Speech?

—Ah, sighed the fat man happily, —that is Herr Panke! A man who knows that people will say
yes
to him has no need to ask in advance, Herr Doktor, does he? We happily serve, when the leader of the pack calls. What were we doing before, but only waiting for his call? That is man, yes? That is our place. The Herr Doktor is too wise to feel absurd notions of individual pride. He knows that the leader is merely fulfilling our own wishes:
Leader, lead: we demand to obey!
That is true freedom.

—Right. So, what, Heiner wants me to give the VIP, I mean my paper, on him? Tonight? Where? The university? But it's not really quite ready yet, and actually I'm a bit, you know, tired, and …

—Not at the university, said the young man.

—Not?

—Herr Panke, he continued, and his specs lit with battle, —has, thanks to the latest opinion polls, attracted much attention, Herr Doktor.

—Yes, I know. He's even becoming known in

England, and we don't usually care about any politicians except our own and the Americans'.

—Excellent, Herr Doktor! Tell them this. We expect many new potential supporters at tonight's meeting.

—A political meeting?

—You are an Englishman, dear Doktor, said the fat man, folding his plump hands together across his belly. —A foreigner, in the strict sense, though of course the English are not truly foreigners. Not Americans, at least, not yet, ha ha! You still have some culture of your own. And yet one who has dedicated his life to spreading the word of Herr Panke.

—Well, I wouldn't exactly put it like that.

—Dear Doktor, Herr Panke asks merely that before his speech you introduce yourself to the audience with a few words and tell them how highly regarded he is in England.

—Me?

—You know our movement's programme, Herr Doktor? demanded the tall man.

—Naturally. I've just completed, virtually completed, a rather important paper on it. I know you stand against the evils of American-led globalisation and for the rights of the European working class. For greater European unity. For the preservation of European forests and wildlife. For affordable social housing for all Europeans. For state loans to help businesses that employ local people, and …

—Exactly, Herr Doktor! You understand us perfectly. Will you say so?

Would I? I felt a little somersault in my heart. Heiner wanted my support. He wanted me to stand shoulder to shoulder with him. And I would. I would stand there on whatever podium they put me on, and I would proudly talk of
my friend Heiner
. I would stoutly pronounce that lovely word:
we.
My God, and I might even be able to get him to come over in person to help me give the VIP next week. What a double act we would be, and how much better is every double act than a
mere solo performance! The Oxford conference would be a triumph. And that meant that all was well and would be better …

—You see, Marcus, Herr Panke said his good little Doktor would not let us down. I heard him saying so to his women.

—His women, grumbled the young man.

—Herr Panke has always had his women, has he not, dear Doktor?

—Good old Heiner! I laughed. —Women, eh? Well, of course, I shall be delighted to offer him whatever covering fire I can give, ha ha! So? Shall we go?

Within minutes, I was sat in the back of a big Mercedes taxi, ignoring the passing cityscape of Dresden and my two companions, gloating quietly in a pleasant and private world.

From within, I was lit by the small but potent furnace ignited by a double espresso and the large schnapps on which I had insisted before leaving the hotel and had flung down with rather superb abandon. Outwardly, I sniffed my tweed lapel and smelled again the memory of gunplay that lurked within that rough wool. I smiled. I felt somehow more real than I had for years.

Suddenly, I wanted to call Sarah.

But good sense prevailed.

I knew that I was, if I were honest with myself, now very slightly but nonetheless undoubtedly drunk. This might be rather hard to explain to Sarah, given that she had taken the kids away to let me work. Also, because I was very slightly but nonetheless undoubtedly drunk, if she indeed realised that I was very slightly but nonetheless undoubtedly drunk, as she certainly would, and I tried to explain myself, which I would then have to, I might well, being very slightly but nonetheless undoubtedly drunk, let slip accidentally that I was not only very slightly but nonetheless undoubtedly drunk but was also very slightly but nonetheless undoubtedly drunk in Dresden, Germany.

—Ridiculous, I snapped at myself.

There was no need to bother Sarah. I was merely going to see Heiner Panke, in whose work and doings
I, as his sole UK expert and gatekeeper, had a perfectly legitimate interest. Women, indeed!

—So, Herr Doktor.

—Sorry?

—We are here, dear Doktor!

—Ah, yes, of course. Um, excellent.

I looked out and for the first time in some minutes registered a world beyond my own mind and body.

We had stopped outside an eighties public sports complex, as squat and square and glassy as they are the world over. As far as I could tell from the posters on the doors, we had come to see the regional table-tennis championships. But then I saw that these were being hastily covered over by new posters showing the letters DEBB (meaning ‘German-European Citizens' Movement') and a symbolic fist smashing a dollar sign. The blocky shape of the fist itself seemed to be lifted straight from a Black Power poster of the sixties, or one of those stencilled efforts so common in the days of Troops Out and such-like, but its colours (creamy skin outlined in darkish red) were very like those from Soviet-era propaganda. It was announced that the topic of the evening was
Freedom from the Market
, and that it would be led by
the famous poet, singer and member of the regional parliament, Heiner Panke.

The mere sight of the last two words made my breath come shorter. They were in the title of my PhD, they occurred in almost all my (quite numerous) publications, they sat at the very heart of the VIP. Those two words had formed the keystone of my life for so long, had, coupled with the letters KGB, almost brought down my career and now, in six days' time, might save it.
Heiner Panke
. It seemed less the name of a person than the mysterious password to my fate.

More busy helpers, wearing DEBB WILKOMMEN!
sashes over Sunday-best leather blouson jackets and somewhat Heidi-like dresses, were waving into the darkness or conversing encouragingly with the drivers of cars and small, aged minibuses. There was a lot of frenetic, hard-smiling, low-church sort of effort going into things, and more white male socks than I had seen in many years. My younger escort surveyed this all with glittery-spectacled satisfaction. He exchanged vaguely salute-like waves with several of the helpers, who were clearly glad to have been noticed by him and redoubled their happy efforts. The fat man opened the door for me.

—Remember, dear Doktor, say nothing that the left-wing press could misinterpret, ha ha!

—Well, of course not, I replied. —I am a thoroughly liberal man myself.

—The left will do anything to discredit our movement. Because they know that it is we who speak for the workers now, while the so-called left-wingers today are merely the hired thugs of worldwide capitalism. Half of George Bush's advisors are ex-Trotskyists, of course, and they still want what Trotsky wanted: to impose their revolution, their so-called ‘freedom', their ‘next stage of history', upon the entire world, irrespective of any culture or nation, at gunpoint.

—Mmmm, I said, —at gunpoint, indeed. For a second I saw again the muzzle-flashes in the darkness of the Czech forest.

And then, in front of me, the crowds of milling people parted like a shoal of fish, and, preceded by his own bow-wave, up strode the man himself, Heiner Panke, right up to me and crushed me in his well-known but long-lost bear hug.

—Well, my little Doktor, there you are at last! Come to my arms!

It was still there, that quality that had always made Panke the bringer of fresh air into the bar, the appointer of places at the table, the chooser of what was going to happen next. The man who had made the drunken evenings mean something twenty-five years ago, who had been so undoubtedly the alpha male of the place that merely being acknowledged as a favoured acolyte could get you a shag. And even though I now knew that part of his mysterious ability, back then in the old days, to make things happen, open doors and so on had been due to his secret rank in the KGB, he still had it.

I saw and, even more clearly, felt the smiles of the people all around me as he almost spun me off my feet. A mighty feeling came over me, as it always had done in his powerful embrace. Here, there were no more decisions and duties, no choices and alternatives, no worry and guilt: all I had to do now was stick close to Panke, and nod, and bask in his sun.

In German the same word means ‘his' and ‘to be': I was his, and I was glad to be.

And yet, there was something different now.

As he bear-hugged me, I found myself thumping him manfully in the ribs. I saw, and was strangely delighted to see, that he was taken aback by this physical reply. So much so that for a fleeting moment he looked almost comically like an elderly aunt affronted by someone's lack of manners. But he was already halfway through introducing me to a circle of very well-turned-out
women, and I clearly felt him repress the shock as his arm glided off from my shoulders.

—How wonderful to meet you, Herr Universitäts-professor Doktor!

—Heiner has told us all about you!

—All the way from England!

—His oldest supporter!

—You used to sing with Herr Panke?

—The Herr Doktor has never wavered in his devotion!

—His great friend!

—A glass of beer before your speech, Herr Doktor?

A girl in a dirndl-like dress appeared between me and my little circle of smiling women, happily offering half-litre glasses of beer emblazoned with an eagle logo soaring over the outline of the former East Germany. Her jolly sash said ‘Brewed to the German Purity Laws among
us
!'

—Well, why not? I laughed, grabbed one, studied it for a moment and sipped it thoughtfully, as if beer were a rare treat to me. Then I pronounced —Ah,
real Saxon
beer!, downed it in one like any good Teutonic politician, and replaced the glass on the barmaid's tray with a tiny but definite formal bow of thanks.

The top-up hit me with grateful speed. I had reached that stage of drunkness that I had not felt for many years, not since the old days in the Irish pub, in fact: that level where the beer goes down like water so long as the music continues, when every serious conversation bores and befuddles you, but when you can still hold your harmonies (or at least firmly believe that you are doing so) as long as the drinks keep flowing.

And as long as the women keep smiling.

God, it was nice to be among women again. Not university women, but women made up and dressed for the night, women who wanted men to fancy them and be men and drink beer and be strong. Perfumed
women who hung on the words of men and smiled and nodded with carefully eye-lined eyes! Panke's women!

—You flew especially to support Herr Panke, Herr Doktor? How wonderful.

—I am delighted to support Heiner, I replied airily. Again I caught a tiny flicker of discomfort in his eye. A dark and inexplicable joy welled up in my heart, as I felt, for the first time ever, that I was no longer his safe little doctor but a man with an agenda of his own. A man worthy of negotiation. A man to sit down and cut a deal with.

—And the time is upon us, dear Doktor, said the fat man in my ear.

—Perhaps the Herr Doktor is not really prepared, said the tall young man, who seemed to have a super-natural ability to guess Panke's thoughts.

—This is no audience of students, little Doktor, nodded Panke, thoughtfully.

—Leave them to me, Heiner, I laughed. —My safety catch is off and I am live to fire!

—What?

—Excellent, said the fat man, utterly unaware of the tectonic shifts in male ego that were rumbling before his eyes. Panke was too off-balance to react decisively. By God, and I
was
ready. I had kept this man in grants and royalties for a decade. Now I would show him who it was exactly who needed whom, tonight!