Joseph Kanon - A Good German

“He won’t be out for hours. The Russians don’t start till late, then they go on all afternoon. Want to leave a name? I remember you-the reporter, right? How did you get in here?”

“Could you take a message in?”

“Not if I want to keep my job. No press on meeting days. He’d kill me.”

“Not him. One of the Russians. Sikorsky. He’s—”

“I know who he is. You want to see him? Why not ask the Russians?”

“I’d like to see him today,” he said, smiling. “You know what they’re like. If you could take in a note? It’s official business.”

“Whose official business?” she said dryly.

“One note?”

She sighed and handed him a piece of paper. “Make it quick. On my lunch hour, yet.” As if she were on her way to Schrafft’s.

“I appreciate it,” he said, writing. “Jeanie, right?”

“Corporal,” she said, but smiled back, pleased.

“By the way, you ever find that dispatcher?”

She put her hand on her hip. “Is that a line, or is it supposed to mean something?”

“Airport dispatcher in Frankfurt. Muller was going to find him for me. Ring a bell?”

He looked up at her face, still puzzled, then saw it clear.

“Oh, the transfer. Right,” she said. “We just got the paperwork. Was I supposed to let you know?”

“He was transferred? What name?”

“Who remembers? You know how much comes through here?” she said, cocking her head toward the filing cabinets. “Just another one going home. I only noticed because of Oakland.”

“Oakland?”

“Where he was from. Me too. I thought, well, at least one of us is going home. Who is he?”

“Friend of a friend. I said I’d look him up and then I forgot his name.”

“Well, he’s on his way now, so what’s the diff? Wait a minute, maybe it’s still in pending.” She opened a file drawer, a quick riffle through. “No, it’s filed,” she said, closing it, another dead end. “Oh well. Does it matter?”

“Not anymore.” A transport ship somewhere in the Atlantic. “I’ll ask Muller-maybe he remembers.”

“Him? Half the time he doesn’t know what comes in. It’s just paper to him. The army. And they said it would be a great way to meet people.”

“Did you?” Jake said, smiling.

“Hundreds. You writing a book there or what? It is my lunch hour.”

She led him down the corridor to the old court chamber, breezing past the guards by holding up the note. Through the open door Jake could see the four meeting tables pushed together to form a square, smoke rising from the ashtrays like steam escaping from vents. Muller was sitting next to General Clay, sharp-featured and grim, whose face had the tight forbearance of someone listening to a sermon. The Russian speaking seemed to be hectoring everyone, even those at his own table, who sat stonily, heads down, as if they too were waiting for the translation. Jake watched Jeanie walk over to the Russian side of the room, surprising Muller, then followed the pantomime of gestures as she leaned over to hand Sikorsky the note-a quick glance up, a finger pointing to the corridor, a nod, a careful sliding back of his chair as the Russian delegate droned on.

“Mr. Geismar,” he said in the hall, his eyebrows raised, intrigued.

“I’m sorry to interrupt.”

“No matter. Coal deliveries.” He nodded his head toward the closed door, then looked at Jake expectantly. “You wanted something?”

“A meeting.”

“A meeting. This is not perhaps the best time—”

“You pick. We need to talk. I have something for you.”

“And what is that?”

“Emil Brandt’s wife.”

Sikorsky said nothing, his hard eyes moving over Jake’s face.

“You surprise me,” he said finally.

“I don’t see why. You made a deal for Emil. Now you can make one for her.”

“You’re mistaken,” he said evenly. “Emil Brandt is in the west.”

“Is he? Try Burgstrasse. He’d probably appreciate hearing from you. Especially if you told him his wife was coming to visit. That ought to cheer him up.”

Sikorsky turned away, marking time by lighting a cigarette. “You know, it sometimes happens that people come to us. For political reasons. The Soviet future. They see things as we do. That would not, I take it, be the case with her?”

“That’s up to her. Maybe you can talk her into it-tell her how much everybody likes it on the collective farm. Maybe Emil can. He’s her husband.”

“And who exactly are you?”

“I’m an old friend of the family. Think of it as a kind of coal delivery. ”

“From such an unexpected source. May I ask what prompts you to make this offer? Not, I think, Allied cooperation.”

“Not quite. I said a deal.”

“Ah.”

“Don’t worry. I’m not as expensive as Tully.”

“You’re talking in riddles, Mr. Geismar.”

“No, I’m trying to solve one. I’ll deliver the wife, you deliver some information. Not so expensive, just some information.”

“Information,” Sikorsky repeated, noncommittal.

“Little things that have been on my mind. Why you met Tully at the airport. Where you took him. What you were doing in the Potsdam market. A few questions like that.”

“A press interview.”

“No, private. Just me and you. A good friend of mine got killed that day in Potsdam. Nice girl, no harm to anybody. I want to know why. It’s worth it to me.”

“Sometimes-it’s regrettable-there are accidents.”

“Sometimes. Tully wasn’t. I want to know who killed him. That’s my price.”

“And for that you would deliver Frau Brandt? For this family reunion.”

“I said I’d deliver her. I didn’t say you could keep her. There are conditions.”

“More negotiations,” Sikorsky said, glancing behind him at the door. “In my experience, these are never satisfactory. We don’t get what we want, you don’t get what you want. A tiresome process.”

“You’ll get her.”

“What makes you think I’m interested in Frau Brandt?”

“You’ve been looking for her. You had a man watching Emil’s father in case she showed up.”

“With you,” he said pointedly.

“And if I know Emil, he’s been mooning over her. Hard to debrief a man who wants to see his wife. Awkward.”

“You think that’s the case.”

“He did the same thing to us when we had him. Won’t go anywhere without her. Otherwise, you’d have shipped him east weeks ago.”

“If we had him.”

“Are you interested or not?”

Behind them the door opened, a summoning burst of Russian. Sikorsky turned and nodded to an aide.

“The British are responding. Now it’s grain. Our grain. Everybody, it seems, wants something.”

“Even you,” Jake said.

Sikorsky looked at him, then dropped his cigarette on the marble floor and ground it out with his boot, an unnervingly crude gesture, a peasant under the shellac of manners.

“Come to the Adlon. Around eight. We’ll talk. Privately,” he said, pointing to Jeanie’s pen, still in Jake’s hand. “Without notes. Perhaps something can be arranged.”

“I thought you’d say that.”

“Yes? Then let me surprise you. A riddle for you this time. I can’t meet your price. I want to know who killed Lieutenant Tully too.” He smiled at Jake’s expression, as if he had just won the round. “So, at eight.”

Jake backtracked down the hall, nervously turning Jeanie’s pen over in his hand. None of it would work, not Shaeffer with his borrowed Soviet cap, not even this meeting, another negotiation in which the pieces never moved. I can’t meet your price. Then why had he agreed? A sly Slavic smile, squashing a cigarette as easily as a bug.