Philip Kerr - Berlin Noir

‘Our own Mozart was particularly fond of this game,’ he said, lowering his eyes to the felt. ‘Doubtless he found it a very congenial facsimile of the very precise dynamism of his intellect.’ He fixed his eye on the cue-ball like a sniper taking aim, and after a long, painstaking moment, rifled the white on to one red and then the other. This second red coasted down the length of the table, teetered on the lip of the pocket and, enticing a small murmur of satisfaction from its translator – for there exists no more graceful manifestation of the laws of gravity and motion – slipped noiselessly out of sight.

‘I, on the other hand, enjoy the game for rather more sensuous reasons. I love the sound of the balls hitting each other, and the way they run so smoothly.’ He retrieved the red from the pocket and replaced it to his own satisfaction. ‘But most of all I love the colour green. Did you know that among Celtic peoples the colour green is considered unlucky? No? They believe green is followed by black. Probably because the English used to hang Irishmen for wearing green. Or was it the Scots?’ For a moment König stared almost insanely at the surface of the billiard table, as if he could have licked it with his tongue.

‘Just look at it,’ he breathed. ‘Green is the colour of ambition, and of youth. It’s the colour of life, and of eternal rest. Requiem aeternam dona eis’ Reluctantly he laid his cue down on the cloth, and conjuring a large cigar from one of his pockets, turned away from the table. The terrier stood up expectantly. ‘You said on the telephone that you had something for me. Something important.’

I handed him Belinsky’s envelope. ‘Sorry it’s not in green ink,’ I said, watching him take out the papers. ‘Do you read Cyrillic?’

König shook his head. ‘I’m afraid it might as well be in Gaelic.’ But he went ahead and spread the papers out on the billiard table and then lit his cigar. When the dog barked he ordered it to be quiet. ‘Perhaps you would be good enough to explain exactly what I am looking at?’

‘These are details of MVD dispositions and methods in Hungary and Lower Austria.’ I smiled coolly and sat down at an adjacent table where the waiter had just laid my coffee.

König nodded slowly, stared uncomprehendingly at the papers for another few seconds, then scooped them up, replaced them in their envelope and slipped the papers inside his jacket pocket.

‘Very interesting,’ he said, sitting down at my table. ‘Assuming for a moment that they’re genuine -’

‘Oh, they’re genuine all right,’ I said quickly.

He smiled patiently, as if I could have had no idea of the lengthy process whereby such information was properly verified. ‘Assuming they’re genuine,’ he repeated firmly, ‘how exactly did you come by them?’

A couple of men came over to the billiard table and started a game. König drew his chair away and jerked his head at me to follow him. ‘It’s all right,’ said one of the players. ‘There’s plenty of room to get by.’ But we moved our chairs anyway. And when we were at a more discreet distance from the table I started to give him the story I had rehearsed with Belinsky.

Only now König shook his head firmly and picked up his dog, which licked his ear playfully.

‘This isn’t the right time or place,’ he said. ‘But I’m impressed at how busy you have been.’ He raised his eyebrows and watched the two men at the billiard table with an air of distraction. ‘I learned this morning that you had been successful in procuring some petrol coupons for that medical friend of mine. The one at the General Hospital.’ I realized that he was talking about Traudl’s murder. ‘And so soon after we had discussed the matter too. It really was most efficient of you, I’m sure.’ He puffed smoke at the dog on his lap which sniffed and then sneezed. ‘It’s so difficult to obtain reliable supplies of anything in Vienna these days.’

I shrugged. ‘You just have to know the right people, that’s all.’

‘As you clearly do, my friend.’ He patted the breast pocket of his green tweed suit, where he had put Belinsky’s documents. ‘In these special circumstances I feel I ought to introduce you to someone in the company who will be better able than I to judge the quality of your source. Someone who, as it happens, is keen to meet you, and decide how best a man of your skills and resourcefulness may be used. We had thought to wait a few weeks before making the introduction, but this new information changes everything. However, first I must make a telephone call. I shall be a few minutes.’ He looked down the café and pointed to one of the other free billiard tables. ‘Why don’t you try a few shots while I’m away?’

‘I’ve not much use for games of skill,’ I said. ‘I distrust a game that relies on anything but luck. That way I needn’t blame myself if I lose. I have a tremendous capacity for self-recrimination.’

A twinkle came into König’s eye. ‘My dear fellow,’ he said standing up from the table, ‘that seems hardly German.’

I watched him as he walked into the back of the café to use the phone, the terrier trotting faithfully after him. I wondered who it was that he was calling: the one who was better able to judge the quality of my source might even be Müller. It seemed too much to hope for so soon.

When König returned a few minutes later, he seemed excited. ‘As I thought,’ he said, nodding enthusiastically, ‘there is someone who is keen to have immediate sight of this material, and to meet you. I have a car outside. Shall we go?’

König’s car was a black Mercedes, like Belinsky’s. And like Belinsky he drove too fast for safety on a road that had seen a heavy morning rain. I said that it would be better to arrive late than not to arrive at all, but he paid no attention. My feeling of discomfort was made worse by König’s dog, which sat on his master’s lap and barked excitedly at the road ahead for the whole of the journey, as if the brute had been giving directions on where we were going. I recognized the road as the one which led to Sievering Studios, but at that same moment the road forked and we turned north again on to Grinzinger Allee.

‘Do you know Grinzing?’ König shouted over the dog’s incessant barking. I said that I did not. ‘Then you really don’t know the Viennese,’ he opined. ‘Grinzing is famous for its wine production. In the summer everyone comes up here in the evening to go to one of the taverns selling the new vintage. They drink too much, listen to a Schrammel quartet and sing old songs.’

‘It sounds very cosy,’ I said, without much enthusiasm.

‘Yes, it is. I own a couple of vineyards up here myself. Just two small fields you understand. But it’s a start. A man must have some land, don’t you think? We’ll come back here in the summer and then you can taste the new wine yourself. The lifeblood of Vienna.’

Grinzing seemed hardly a suburb of Vienna at all, more a charming little village. But because of its proximity to the capital, its cosy country charm somehow appeared as false as one of the film sets they built over at Sievering. We drove up a hill on a narrow winding lane which led between old Heurige Inns and cottage gardens, with König declaring how pretty he thought it all was now that spring was here. But the sight of so much storybook provinciality merely served to stimulate my city-bred parts to contempt, and I restricted myself to a sullen grunt and a muttered sentence about tourists. To one more used to the perennial sight of rubble, Grinzing with its many trees and vineyards looked very green. However I made no mention of this impression for fear that it might set König off on one of his queer little monologues about that sickly colour.