The Good Thief's Guide to Berlin (13 page)

My cigarette was just about finished. So was my patience. I stabbed my smoke out, then went and took a fast shower and dressed in an old pair of jeans and a hooded top. By the time I entered my kitchen, Victoria was pouring boiling water from a kettle into a pair of mugs branded with the slogan
WORLD’S BEST BOSS.
There aren’t many perks to being self-employed, so you have to entertain yourself where you can.

“Coffee?” she asked.

“It looks to be.”

“Do you want some?”

“Sure. But make it black. And strong.”

She sucked air through her teeth. “I’m sorry, Charlie. Did you have a lot of trouble dropping off last night?”

“You might say.”

“Then I apologize. You were right. Those men didn’t come back. I was overreacting.”

Oh, if only you knew,
I thought.

Victoria added an extra spoonful of granules to my mug and passed it to me. She had on a navy V-neck sweater and gray cargo trousers. The pockets and pouches on her trousers were weighed down and bulging, and I dreaded to think what might be stashed in them. When she’d stayed with me in Venice, she’d taken the precaution of equipping herself with a worrisome collection of self-defense weapons in case I got us involved in yet another dangerous scrape. It wouldn’t have surprised me to learn that she’d upgraded her arsenal for Berlin.

“So,” she said, before I could voice my suspicions, “what do you want to do about Freddy?”

“I can tell you what I
don’t
want to do. I don’t want to meet him by those damn Ping-Pong tables.”

“Afraid he’ll humiliate you again?”

“No-o,” I said. “It’s not safe, is all. Too close to this apartment. Too much risk of being overheard or of people following us back here.”

“So what do you suggest?”

“Text him,” I said. “Tell him we’ll come to the embassy.”

Victoria reached a hand inside one of her many trouser pockets and removed her mobile. She thumbed the screen and slurped her coffee. “Done,” she said, after a short pause.

“Marvelous.”

I swallowed some coffee myself. It was strong, all right. And bitter. But I wasn’t convinced it would compensate for a sleepless night.

“You really do look awful,” Victoria told me.

“Thanks.”

“Completely exhausted. You have bags under your eyes and your skin is all blotchy.”

“Charming.”

“And your eyes have this crazy, unfocused look. It’s like you’re drunk and hungover all at the same time.”

“This is a big help, Vic. Truly.”

Her phone blipped. She shrugged and lowered her face to the screen. Then she shrugged some more.

“Freddy says he won’t meet us at the embassy. It has to be somewhere else.”

“Fine,” I told her. “I have just the place.”

*   *   *

The place was the Brandenburg Gate. It was located only a five-minute stroll from the British embassy, and it would have been hard to think of a more dramatic setting. The vast triumphal arch had been conceived as a monumental gateway to the city, but during the Cold War it had been situated just east of the Wall. Not so much a thoroughfare as a dead end. I hoped that wasn’t an omen.

Nowadays, the gate overlooked the glitzy public space of Pariser Platz, a generous square fashioned from polished flagstones, where street artists posed for photographs in a bizarre selection of costumes that included chicken suits and Darth Vader outfits. Famous buildings surrounded the space, from the Kennedy Museum and the glass-faced Academy of Arts, to the imposing U.S. Embassy and the exclusive Adlon Hotel, now infamous as the place where Michael Jackson had once dangled his baby out of a window to the baying fans below.

Looking beyond the square, I could see along the dramatic boulevard of Unter den Linden, with its boxed lime trees, to the Fernsehturm, the golf-ball-on-a-tee television tower that’s visible from most areas of Berlin. Over to my left was the sparkling glass cupola that topped the Reichstag, the dark-stoned German parliament building.

But really, I hadn’t chosen the spot for its location, its history, or its mesmerizing view. I’d selected it because of the number of spy novels and espionage movies that had featured the Brandenburg Gate as a backdrop to the action. The place spoke to me of daring adventure and double-dealing and intrigue. And hell, if I was going to be caught up in a world of gun-toting hoodlums and threatening phone calls, mysterious government assignments and barfly French agents, then, blow me, I was going to exploit the opportunity for all it was worth.

Mind you, the weak autumn sunshine and the colorful tourist crowds weren’t exactly what I’d had in mind when I’d visualized the scene. In my head, I’d rehearsed my meeting with Freddy in the flickering black-and-white of an old movie reel. We’d all been terribly English. I’d been dashed courageous and commendably stoic. Freddy had been a little world-weary and knocked about the edges. Victoria had been prim and skittish, with an admirable dose of pluck. Mighty odds had been against us, great misfortunes had beset us, but together we’d somehow pulled through and the fate of the world had been safe in our hands for just a few hours at least.

It was a pleasant little fantasy. Diverting, for sure. But as so often seems to be the case for me, reality had other ideas.

“We can’t talk here,” Freddy barked, as he paced through the colonnaded archway toward me. “Far too public.”

At least he was wearing a trench coat. It was tan in color and buttoned close to his chin, with a matching belt that struggled to contain his tubby waist. If only I could have got him to turn up the collar and invest in a trilby, he wouldn’t have been so far off the Freddy I’d imagined.

“Nobody’s listening,” I told him. “Everyone here is a tourist. We’ll be fine.”

He glowered at me, then flashed Victoria a conciliatory smile and reached across to stroke her arm.

“Hello, my dear. You look very well. The red of your coat really becomes you.” He checked over his shoulder and leaned toward me. “I may have been followed.”

I suppose I should have told him to get a grip, but I quite liked the way his behavior was getting toward the kind of thing I’d idly fantasized about.

“So what is it you suggest?”

Freddy’s eyes slid one way, then the other.

“Do you have the package?” he asked, from the corner of his mouth.

It was all I could do not to pull the guy close and plant a big sloppy kiss on his cheek. I can’t tell you how many years I’ve spent in this racket, waiting for someone to ask me that very question.

“We have the package,” I told him, in my best matinee drawl.

Victoria jabbed me with her elbow.

“Ouch!” I doubled up and clutched my stomach. She’d hit me smack where I’d been punched the previous night. Freddy didn’t know that, of course, and he looked at me as if I was a very poor excuse for a man.

“Tell Freddy the truth,” Victoria said, standing over me.

“Fine,” I managed, through gritted teeth. “The truth is we
sort
of have it.”

“I beg your pardon?” Freddy backed away from me. “What exactly does that mean?”

Victoria jabbed me in the stomach a second time. “That’s not the truth.”

“It is,” I groaned. “And if you’ll just stop hitting me for a moment, we can find somewhere safe for me to explain.”

SEVENTEEN

The somewhere safe was my idea. I’ll admit that Freddy wasn’t wholly convinced, and Victoria was downright skeptical, but I thought it was a masterstroke.

The bus was a green double-decker and it was a long way from new. There were patches of rust around the wheel arches, and the idling engine was gruff and clamorous. The side of the bus was branded with a colorful mural featuring Berlin’s landmark sites and the words
HOP-ON, HOP-OFF CITY TOUR
were plastered on every available surface. A clutch of bewildered tourists stared out from behind the scratched windows like a herd of sheep who’d been rounded up and penned inside without any real understanding of what they were doing there.

Freddy began to protest, but I ignored him and approached a ticket seller who was wearing a bulky green coat that matched the color of the bus exactly. He was chatting with a woman in a garish yellow parka and a man in a bright red fleece. The red and yellow tour buses hadn’t arrived just yet.

The guy in green offered me a bored rendition of some practiced spiel, but I cut him off by handing him enough cash for three tickets. Then I beckoned Freddy and Victoria to follow me on board and up the cramped, twisting staircase to the top deck.

Most of the tourists were seated near the front of the bus, so I ducked my head and shuffled toward the rear. There was a giant canvas roof above our heads that could be rolled back during the summer months. It smelled of damp and mildew, and it didn’t offer a great deal of insulation. To compensate, hot air was being pumped hard through perforated vents running along beneath the seats. The system was loud and the interior stuffy. It was just about the least pleasant way of touring a city that I could think of.

I took a cramped window seat and folded my knees up by my ears. Victoria settled alongside me, and Freddy collapsed on the bench in front. He turned around to face us, his forearm resting on the metal rail running along the top of his bench. I got the impression he was a bit miffed that Victoria wasn’t sitting next to him.

“I don’t like this,” he said. “We’re too enclosed.”

“What are you talking about? This couldn’t be better. If anyone follows us on here, they’ll find it impossible to blend in. I mean, look at this crowd.”

I pointed with my chin toward the front of the bus. Most of the tourists seemed to be expecting it to rain again. They were sporting waterproof coats and crinkled PAC-a-MACs. Several were consulting guide books. Many were holding cameras. None appeared to be German.

I could hear two lads talking in loud American accents and three girls conversing in rapid-fire French. There were a scattering of Japanese youngsters, a middle-aged couple eating sandwiches who couldn’t have looked more English if they’d wrapped themselves in Union Jacks, and one Asian man who was fast asleep.

“The
crowd
is what bothers me,” Freddy said. “What we’ll be discussing here is highly sensitive.”

“So we’ll keep our voices down. And besides, the real beauty of being on this thing is that nobody is going to be eavesdropping. They’ll be too busy listening to the commentary.”

All of the passengers were wearing earphones. We had some, too. They were hanging from the railings in front of our seats, connected by coiled wires to little black boxes that no doubt provided a tediously dull narrative in a variety of languages.

“I don’t know,” Freddy said. The vibrations from the idling bus engine made his voice waver, so that he sounded even more uncertain.

“Well, I do,” I told him. “Believe me, it’s a hell of a lot safer than your ruse with the Ping-Pong table.”

He looked confused. “How do you mean?”

“I’ll tell you,” I said.

And as I began to explain about the two Russians who’d been waiting for me in my apartment the night before, not to mention the French guy who’d visited me in the early hours of the morning, the bus pulled away with a throaty diesel roar and an unfortunate grinding of gears.

Before long, we passed in front of the main entrance to the Reichstag, and the heads of our fellow passengers swiveled to the right. Some of them raised cameras and took photographs. I focused on Freddy and gave him the rest of the story. The bus had pulled over outside the glass and steel structure of the Hauptbahnhof station by the time I was done.

He didn’t say anything for a long moment. I wasn’t sure why. I glanced at Victoria. Victoria glared at me.

“You didn’t tell me anything about a Frenchman,” she said.

I shrugged. “He knocked on the front door just before four
A.M.
and hauled me out into the corridor when I answered. You slept right through it, and I didn’t see the sense in waking you, or worrying you unnecessarily.”

She looked skeptical. I wasn’t surprised, but I wasn’t about to tell her about my late-night excursion if I could help it.

Freddy was still preoccupied. I gave his arm a shake, and he blinked and shook his head like he had a bug in his ear.

“These men, the Russians, they took the file, you say?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“And you found this file in Jane’s hotel room?”

“That’s right. But don’t worry. All is not lost.”

“It’s not?”

“Nope.” I winked at Victoria. “Be a sweetheart and pass me your phone, will you?”

She gave me a level stare. “Ever feel that you’re pushing your luck?”

“Chop-chop,” I said.

She sighed and reached inside one of the pockets on her cargo trousers, removing her mobile. Then she got cagey. “Who do you want to call?” she asked.

“Nobody,” I said, and made a
gimme
gesture.

Victoria rolled her eyes and dumped her phone into my palm as the bus pulled away again. We circled in front of a collection of modern government office buildings before crossing the river Spree and looping back toward the Reichstag. Just as I was beginning to think we’d been vastly overcharged for a seriously repetitive city tour, we swung right and headed out through the flat parkland of the Tiergarten, along John-Foster-Dulles-Allee.

I pressed a few buttons on Victoria’s phone and accessed her camera. Then I switched to her library of photos.

“There,” I said, and showed Freddy and Victoria the screen.

I cycled through the pictures I’d taken. They were all neatly focused and carefully composed. The first shot was of the buff-colored file with the words
TOP SECRET
printed on it. The file was resting on the plain white duvet on the bed in Jane Parker’s hotel room. I’d taken the pictures as insurance before I’d left. There were five images altogether. One for the cover, and another four for each of the pages of handwritten code I’d found inside.

I beamed at Victoria and Freddy. Then I raised my arthritic fingers and tapped my temple.

“Not too shabby, right?”