Secret Father (44 page)

I did, closing the door behind.

At the wheel, now without the false beard, was Hal Cummings. He wore the black suit and cap of Krone's chauffeur. He put the car in gear and slowly pulled into the brisk traffic of a Monday morning.

Healy, now facing away from me, was looking out the window through a crack in the curtain. He wore a tan windbreaker with the collar up and a golfer's cap. When he put his cigarette to his mouth, I sensed a faint tremble in his fingers.

My impulse was to say I was sorry.

But I checked it because I did not want him to misunderstand. I was sorry beyond words that Charlotte was dead. And I was sorry for his suffering and his loss—which I could imagine. But I was in no way sorry that Charlotte's last hours were with me, were what they were, were what Healy knew they were.

"What's the drill?" I asked, as if this were merely a pre-op briefing.

Healy firmly snuffed his cigarette in the armrest ashtray, a simple gesture with which he claimed his authority. "Pro forma. They know what's happened." Now he turned to me with a fierce, cold gaze. "They want nothing further to do with it. They are terrified it will become an incident, one they don't control. So they want the kids out, now."

"Because the film is destroyed," I said. "And they know it."

"Film, Mr. Montgomery? What film?" His eyes were ball bearings.

I saw the pointlessness of getting into it with him.

He resumed the briefing. "Therefore, at the hearing the case will be dismissed. There is no way to screw it up. You will be permitted to see the kids just before the hearing, so you can reassure them and emphasize that they should say nothing,
nothing.
Then you wait. Only the lawyer from JAG will actually be allowed in the courtroom. He will be the only one from our side, but he'll have been briefed. It's all worked out. As I said, pro forma."

"And I am there—"

"Because I can't be. If it were possible for me to handle this, believe me, Mr. Montgomery, you would be back at your hotel."

"And you can't 'handle it' because—?"

"You know damn well why."

"Not even now, General?"

"Especially not now. I don't suppose you can understand this, but the one thing that keeps this procedure pro forma is my distance from it."

"And my presence works because that is what they expect."

"Precisely. As was the case yesterday, you are there as your son's worried father. All three kids will be released into your custody. And facilitating your safe return to West Berlin will be Herr Krone, who is well known as your assistant and personal interpreter."

"As he was yesterday," I said. I faced forward. "Good morning, Hans."

Krone looked back at me, but he had the grace to say nothing.

"If it's pro forma," I asked, "why has Colonel Cummings drawn motor pool duty?"

"In case, Mr. Montgomery. In case."

"In case what?"

"In case of surprises. There have been surprises, wouldn't you say?"

"No one has been more surprised this weekend, General, than I have."

Again his stare. A restrained but efficient way of singeing me with the blast furnace of his rage.

The button controlling the glass partition was on my armrest, and I pushed it. Slowly the barrier rose from its slot. When Healy and I were sealed off, I faced him. "What does this have to do with Charlotte's dead husband?"

"My wife's history is none of your business, Montgomery."

"But if it's her late husband, General, that would be Ulrich's father, and for a time this morning Ulrich's history
is
my business, especially if it involves the possibility of surprise. What surprise do you have in mind?"

"If I had it in mind, it wouldn't be a surprise, now, would it?"

"I know that Wolf von Siedelheim was a Communist, and that he is honored as a martyr by the Stasi. And I know that someone killed his brother or cousin in Frankfurt last week." Healy registered my statement with an abrupt turn of his head, speaking of surprises. I pressed him. "Do they know that Ulrich is von Siedelheim's son?"

"No." Healy dropped his voice to a whisper. "And they must not know. Whatever you do, don't refer to it."

"Ulrich doesn't know?"

Healy shook his head.

"And how did this boy's family history become a matter of 'national security'? The spy caper, the microfilm, the border crisis, the fire at Schloss Pankow, the KGB—all this crap. How is it tied to Ulrich?"

Healy shook his head, suddenly at the mercy of what I recognized as grief. "A terrible coincidence," he said slowly. "Two worlds that should have had nothing to do with each other, and wouldn't have, except"—his hesitation was before a bitter self-reproach—"except for my fucking bag, left where Rick could take it. Rick's goddamn rebelliousness, all leading to 'flashpoint Berlin.' All a terrible accident."

A terrible accident. The exact phrase a New York state trooper had uttered to me on the phone that night at the lake. A terrible accident. A woman's fate. A man's epitaph. Mine.

Without my being aware of it, the car had stopped. Cummings rapped on the glass partition.

Healy peered through the curtain, then raised a hand to Cummings.
Right.

Through the curtain on my side, I saw that the car was in a narrow cobblestoned side street. I took in a row of warehouses. The street was deserted.

Healy grasped the handle of his door. "This is where I get out," he said, then added with his former chill, "This is not the Navy, Montgomery. But there
are
torpedoes."

Did he know? I found it possible to say, "Damn the torpedoes, General."

"Full ahead then."

"Right."

"One other thing," he said.

"What?"

"Don't tell Rick."

"About his father?"

Healy had the skill of showing only what he wanted seen. That he closed his eyes for a moment told me of his utter indifference to any impression I might take. He let his head fall slightly back, then inhaled sharply. "No. About his mother," he said, and then opened his eyes to look at me. "I want to tell the boy that Charlotte is dead. It is important that he hear it from me." And in that unadorned statement, I glimpsed the depth of Healy's love for Ulrich.
He brought the baby milk!
It was a completion of his love for Ulrich's mother, an extension of it. General Healy loved the boy, that was all.

"I understand, General," I said. "Of course."

Healy nodded. To my complete surprise, his eyes had filled. He put his sunglasses on again.

I said, after all, the words "I am sorry," but he had already opened the door and leapt out of the car. I had no reason to think he heard me, or if he had, that he cared.

 

Less than five minutes later, we were at the sector checkpoint. Cummings exchanged a few words in German with the
Vopo,
who handed back our documents and waved us through.

I had assumed that we would be returning to Schloss Pankow, but the hearing was a matter of a petty currency violation, not state security, and Cummings brought the car to a stop in front of an innocuous two-story building a few doors from the corner of a street that opened into the vast, nearly deserted Alexanderplatz, the site of Saturday's festivities. We were across from the
Rathaus,
in front of which the rough lumber reviewing stand was being dismantled. Litter blew in small, circular bursts here and there in the plaza, and men in blue smocks pushed brooms beside wheelbarrows.

The vista evoked nothing of the May Day spectacle, and as I got out of the car, nothing anchored my eye to keep it from floating to the top of the
Fernsehturm.
From that perch, Charlotte and I had taken in the grim panorama of the past.

Cummings stayed with the car. Krone took my elbow. "This way sir," he said, and I let him usher me into the building, past a sign with the Gothic lettering of German officialdom: "Die
Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung.
"

"What is this?" I asked Krone.

"Office of Border Security."

"I thought Berlin sector boundaries weren't borders. Isn't that the point?"

"They are prepared to yield the point, Paul. But first they want to
make
the point."

We passed an indifferent guard slouching in the vestibule and walked down a broad corridor with undulating uneven floorboards. At the corridor's end, through heavy double doors, we entered a bustling office. Behind a counter, perhaps a dozen people were at typewriters and adding machines.

A frumpish clerk approached from her side of the counter. Krone told her what we wanted. She nodded. She went through a side door and soon returned with a man in a shoddy blue uniform I did not recognize—People's Border Police or something. He looked like a passed-over train conductor. The Germans and their uniforms.

He led us back out through the doors, down the corridor once more, past the entrance we had come in by, to the opposite end of the building. The double doors there, apparently, opened into the hearing room to which, if Healy was right, we would not be admitted.

Indeed, the man stopped short of those doors to take us through another, smaller one. It led into a kind of waiting room lined with ten or twelve thick-legged wooden chairs. Where a window might have been was a stylized portrait of Walter Ulbricht—the spectacles, the chin beard, a double-breasted tan suit with a row of medals at the lapel. He wore the stern expression of a man wanting to be taken for Lenin.

Half a dozen people were seated in the room, separately. Our escort, at the door, spoke loudly—two sentences, three, and then the room's occupants sheepishly stood and filed past us, out into the hallway. At that point, the man gestured at the now vacated room—it was ours.

Departing, he closed the door behind himself, leaving me and Krone alone.

Several standup ashtrays were posted around the room. I took a chair near one, took out a cigarette, and lit up. Krone sat next to me. I offered the pack, but he shook his head.

"Paul, I—"

I raised my hand. "Don't say it, Hans. I have one question, only one question. I want the truth."

He nodded glumly.

"Was it Saturday or was it before? If you were working with them before, you're finished with Chase, and I'll finish you with every American bank."

"You threaten that and still expect the truth?"

"Yes."

"They gave me no choice. And we were still to be on the same side, you and I."

"Really?"

"It was Saturday. Colonel Cummings approached me after I left you."

"While Charlotte and I were in the restaurant in the tower?"

"He gave me no choice. He made it seem possible that Mrs. Healy had tricked you. It was you I was—"

"Never mind."

"But I never—"

"Enough, Hans. You've answered me."

"That is all?"

"Yes. Forget it."

"Paul, I am regretful—"

"Let's just do what we're doing, Hans. Let's get these kids home."

"In that case, I will have one of those cigarettes, if I may.
Dankeschön.
"

 

I was on my third cigarette when the door opened, the same German holding it.

An American Army major, the JAG attorney, walked in. His crisp tan uniform impressed, adorned as it was with a pale blue braid of rope at the shoulder, a ladder of ribbons on his chest, and unit patches on each sleeve. His shoes gleamed, but the overall effect of martial splendor was undercut somewhat by his crew-cut red hair, stiffened in front with goop, which made him seem far too young to trust.

His bright, eager expression as he approached us with hand extended reminded me of the uncomplicated, chipper boy I had always hoped to find in Michael. No more.

"Mr. Montgomery? Major Stahl. Glad to meet you, sir."

"Major, thanks for your help."

Krone and the major then shook hands, but the officer declined to sit, saying he had arranged for a prehearing session with the magistrate—"just to make sure we're all singing the same music." He winked and left the room, taking much of my confidence with him.

A few moments later, the door opened again and the young girl appeared, Katharine Carson, looking waif-like in her boyish black hair. The oversized field jacket made her seem even smaller than she was. She entered the room tentatively, her eyes darting, as if not convinced that Krone and I were the only ones there. She walked right over to me. "Mr. Montgomery, thank you for getting them to give me back my book." She held it up for me to see, a small accountant's ledger, the familiar green cloth cover.

"I'm glad they returned it to you, Kit," I said. "I hope you wrote some fabulous stuff."

"I did."

"I don't doubt it. How are you?"

"I'm okay."

"And the fellows?"

"Having a right good time." Her sarcasm was only friendly, and I laughed. I was relieved to have the signal that nothing terrible had happened here, at least.

Before I saw my son, I heard the faint click of his leg braces as he approached the door from its other side. My brain was keyed to that sound. When he appeared at the threshold, steadying himself in the doorframe, he grinned. "Hi, Dad."

I went to him with my arms open. He stepped free of the door into my embrace, which I made firm and lasting.

When I released him, he looked me in the eye with a clear, strong expression, which elicited from me an unplanned declaration. "I'm proud of you, Michael."

"You're not pissed? I thought yesterday you were pissed."

"I'm proud of you," I repeated.

Before he could respond, Rick came into the room, wide-eyed with expectation and, I saw, relief.

He glanced at me, but turned his gaze loose on the room itself. His eyes went from chair to chair, snagged briefly on the portrait of Walter Ulbricht, then came back to me. "Where is my mother?"

Michael stepped away from me as if he knew the secret I carried in my breast. He eased himself into a nearby chair.

"Your mother is not here, Rick," I said.

"I see that. Why not?"

It seemed that Rick had succeeded in stifling his nighttime agitation, but perhaps he had done so only by imagining the arrival of this moment, living for it. And it was wrong, essentially wrong, without her. Not waiting for me to answer, he glanced with hot suspicion at Krone.