The Berlin Connection (26 page)

She looked at me, then shrugged her shoulders. "You'U never tell me the truth," she said in a low voice. "I know that now. You are in a precarious situation. Poor Peter."

"Shirley, I swear—" I began. But I did not explain. There was no time. The box. Kathe. A lawyer. I needed Schauberg. What would I do without him?

"What do you mean, Mr. Jordan, you have to leave?" Albrecht, furious, glared at me. The skinny production manager limped around his desk. He obviously hated me but I did not know why. "How much time would you like?"

"An hour. An hour and a half. At most."

"You're supposed to be ready for shooting at ten. It's eight now. Or will all of us have to wait for you?"

I forced a smile. "Mr. Albrecht, you could do the takes without me. The ones with Hoffmann."

"And change everything again for you? No, no! Besides, Hoffmann is still at the radio station until twelve o'clock."

Kostasch entered. He beamed when he saw Shirley and me.

"How nice to see you!" He kissed her. Kostasch noticed something wa"s wrong. Albrecht explained. Kostasch decided the takes would be rescheduled. Albrecht was furious, slammed the door behind him. We heard him yelling for his assistant.

"Whatever is the matter with him?" I asked.

"Don't be upset. It's nothing personal. He just doesn't like Americans."

"Why not?"

"He was in an American POW camp."

"That breaks my heart. How could we attack Nazi Germany!"

Kostasch laughed. "There is more to it than that! Albrecht is an old communist. The Nazis first put him in a concentration camp and then into a penal fighting imit for probation. He was taken by the Americans in Normandy. On one of those Liberty ships he reached the USA and

was stuck into some POW camp. His best friend was with him. They had been in the same camp at Mauthausen."

"Well, and?"

"Well, as was common in those POW camps, the Nazis were in command again. Complete with officer's administration, ^kangaroo' courts, and strangUng anti-fascists at night. You know what went on in your country."

I was silent. I had heard about it.

"I bet it must have impressed the Americans how these blond, blue-eyed heroes sorted out the camp! One two three. One of those reds taken care of. Quite a few antifascists died. After Albrecht's friend had been strangled and-he had been beaten and severely injured, a senator instituted an inquiry. Albrecht and other anti-fascists were then transferred to another camp. The food there, so he said, was not as good. Ah, well." Kostasch laughed. "You see, Shirley, such are the ways by which a man acquires prejudices!"

He had told the story while we were walking to the cutting rooms.

"Okay, Peter. Take off." He winked at Shirley. "Since yesterday I can't refuse him anything." He took her arm. "Come with me, I'll introduce you to the other cutters."

"I'll see you at lunch," I said to Shirley.

She did not reply. Kostasch and Shirley were already climbing the stairs leading to the cutting rooms.

The sun appeared a pale jdisc among the dirty gray clouds. Trees, bushes, paths, flowers, and grass were gUt-tering with the past night's frost.

Kathe, still sniffling, was showing me the shortest route to Reinbeck, all the while lamenting her and Schauberg's

fate. I drove fast, hoping not to attract the attention of a police patrol car.

"Mr. Jordan, you are the only person I can rely on. Now, that they've arrested Schauberg .. ."

"I must know exactly what happened if I am to help him. You imderstand?"

"Yes."

"For instance, did he really say he broke into that factory because of me? Did he reaUy say that?"

"Yes, Mr. Jordan, he did."

We had reached the wall of the cemetery with its crooked gravestones. Here I had waited for Schauberg that first time.

Had he lost his mind? In my wallet was a check for eight thousand marks for him. He knew he was to get it this morning. Then why would he burgle a cough syrup factory? Why? Little by little I was losing the certainty, normal to a healthy person, that everything that happened was really happening. Day by day, not to mention the nights, my feehng increased: I am insane. What I seemed to experience were already phantasmagoria of a sick mind.

Kathe said, "Sometimes I thmk I'm crazy and I'm just dreaming."

"You too?"

"Excuse me?"

"Nothing. Tell me about Schauberg."

"He came to see me three days ago. You know what he did?"

"What?"

"He cried."

"No!" Schauberg and tears. Devil and halo. General and peace. "Why did he cry?"

"He had just seen you."

"Yes, that's right. So?"

"He was at his wit's end. He told me you had said your movie is not going to be finished. And he is not going to

get any more money from you. He still has money to come from you, hasn't he? He never said what for and naturally I've never asked him. But he did say the movie was not going to be finished. So I guessed it had something to do with that. . ."

There it was. My premonition had been right. I ought not to have told him about the conversation in the empty projection room I had overheard between Kostasch and Seaton. But I had told him. And this was the result.

"He said then he had to accept this job."

"This job was the burglary?"

"Must have been. He said there was money in that too. Not as much. But still. He said he was going to do this job and then he would leave Germany. He was going to do it with a friend, he told me."

"Friend Charley."

"Yes. Probably. Didn't you read about it in the papers?"

"What did it say?"

"In yesterday's paper it said, *A truckload of cough medicine was stolen from a pharmaceutical plant.' "

A truckload!

That was the reason why Schauberg had laughed so heartily when I complained about my throat and asked him for some cough medicine.

Now did it make sense? No. None at aU.

I stepped on the brake. We had arrived at the camp with its barbed-wire fences; the dilapidated barracks without doors or roofs.

"Get out. Kathe. Hurry up."

Barracks. Graves. Little lake, frozen. Dynamited shelters.

"Quickly! Hurry up!"

"I can't. My high heels . . . and I'm afraid. What if there are people here . . . policemen . .."

"Only the dead are here," I said.

We pulled the heavy olive-green box from the rubble of the third shelter and dragged it back to the car. I felt better once it was locked into the trunk of the car and we were driving back toward Hamburg.

Nine-forty-five.

I thought fleetingly of Albrecht but more pressing things were on my mind and the film seemed almost unimportant.

"I'll let you off in Hamburg," I said to Kathe. "T can find my v/ay from here. I have to hurry. I'll call Madam Misere. I'll see you tonight. By then we'll know more about Schauberg."

"You will help him, won't you?"

"Ill do everything possible. But you'll have to be smart now, Kathe. If the pohce question you, you tell them that you are lovers. You can tell them that you are going to be married."

"Yes, Mr. Jordan."

"You must not mention me or this box. They can't know that Schauberg and I worked together."

"I understand. I'll do everything you say."

"I must not become involved in this. The cough medicine job has nothing to do with me. Really. If they should ask you about me—it is most unlikely—or if they should show you a photograph of me, or supposing I arrive when they are there, you know me only as a customer."

"Only as a customer. Yes. Of course."

"You could say that I come to see you."

"Because you like my dialect, right?"

"Now, get out here. Don't cry. We'll get your Walter released. You'll see."

"I believe that, I really do," said Kathe.

Ten-fifteen.

I stopped at a park with a deserted playground where I opened the trunk and then the padlock of the green box. Schauberg had already given me a duplicate key the second time I saw him. "One never knows. Should something happen to me you'll take care of this box." I opened the lid and took out the sealed envelope. Carefully I locked box and trunk and entered a bar opposite the park. An unshaven but well-dressed man was the only other customer at this early hour.

I ordered a beer.

"And a cognac. The gentleman is my guest," said the unshaven man. I noticed a little package wrapped in newspaper on the bar near him.

"Thank you, but I don't care for cognac." I went to a table near a window.

"You don't want to drink with me, eh?"

"It's not that. But at this early hour—"

"Please, Doctor." The bartender appeared embarrassed and winked at me as if asking me to make allowance.

The unshaven one said to him, "You keep out of this." And to me, "You could tell right away, couldn't you?"

"Tell what?"

The bartender standing behind the man touched one finger to his forehead, still smiling. At the same time the other one pushed up his sleeve. On the inside of his wrist I saw several numbers preceded by an A. I had seen such tattoos in American magazines. The man had been in a concentration camp.

"Excuse me. I didn't know—^"

"Then you are going to have a drink with me?"

"Yes. Yes. Of course." The bartender placed a drink

before me. We drank. The man had a very prominent forehead, almost no hair, and large melancholy eyes. His complexion was yellow. His hands shook. A 2 456 954. "Really. I did not mean to hurt your feehngs!" "You didn't. It was only a test." He spoke with a cultivated and low voice. His dark searching eyes, seemingly filled with six thousand years of sadness, dominated his face. "I don't want to disturb you any further." I offered him my hand. He shook it and said, "Thank you."

I ordered the same again for the man, went to the table near the window. From there I could keep an eye on my car.

I broke the seal of the envelope and read the message written in single letters in Schauberg's small script. Dear Friend,

When you read this letter I might have had an accident, escaped, be very ill, in jail, or dead. Most likely dead,

I am as ill as you are and just as afraid of death as you are. Since we are both men who have no faith in anything our fear is understandable.

Christian doctrine teaches us that our life in this miserable vale is merely the step toward something perfect, wonderful — to paradise, if only one had lived in accordance with God's commandments.

And yet!

In the many years of my profession I have observed that very often even men of the cloth and devout nuns, whose salvation was — so to speak — practically guaranteed, did not want to go to the land of bliss. One would have expected them to have rejoiced that the time had finally come. Elucidate for me the mysteries of Christian faith!

Being proper delinquents and heathens we won't rely on such people or even God's impenetrable ways. But I must do all I can to help you toward yoW goal in the event I should not be around.

You are no medical man.

Following is a precise hill of fare for your treatment using the medications in this box . ..

Schauberg' was a conscientious man. He explained symptoms and drugs for treatment. He gave names, times, dosages. Instructions about how to inject myself and cautionary advice.

While I was reading, a workman entered the bar and the unshaven man again tried his test. The workman reacted as I had.

"The only difficulty would arise if you should ever again feel the way you did on that first evening at the camp and on the evening of your first day of shooting. You will probably remember that I then gave you an intravenous injection."

Yes, I remembered: The wonderful transition from paralyzing fear to peace, warmth, security.

"Should such an attack reoccur, another intravenous injection would be imperative. For that you would need a doctor or at least a trained nurse. I would advise you to try and find somebody you could trust since your survival would depend on him. The medication is in the yellow box which I have marked with a green circle.

"Hoping (for you and for me) that you will never receive this letter I remain your blasphemous associate.*'

I called the bartender to pay for my beer and the cognac I had not touched and the drinks for the unshaven man who was still talking to the workman.

"He's a poor, unfortunate man," said the bartender.

"Have you known him for a long time?"

"He's a regular here. He's been around the bars in Hamburg for years. Used to be a successful lawyer. Lost everything."

"What is he doing now?"

"He's drinking himself to death, as you can see. He still has some money."

"This *test' is a crazy idea, isn't it? Even the most fa-

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natic Nazi would not refuse to drink with him if he shows him the tattoo."

"That's what I keep telling him!"

"And?"

The bartender shrugged his shoulders.

The unshaven poor man had opened his little package. He showed the workman a pair of children's shoes.

The bartender said quietly, "He always shows these shoes once he's found someone who wlQ listen to him. He was in Auschwitz. After the Russians came he returned once more and found a huge pile of children's shoes behind some barrack. The poor man had had a wife and a small child. They both died at Auschwitz. So he took a pair of those shoes. It's hardly likely they belonged to his little Monika. Still he has been carrying them around for the last fifteen years. He shows them to everybody."

"What about the people? Do they beUeve the story about the shoes?"

"Maybe one or two. They just drink his beer and cognac. He's well-known around here. They say he's crazy."

I rose and nodded to the man from Auschwitz. He bowed and I left the bar. I never thought I would see him again. But soon this man would figure in the most terrible episode of my life.

I returned to my car and opened the trunk and the green box. I searched a little, then I found it. If the worst should come to pass this was my only hope of survival— the yellow box with the green circle.