Gavin Lyall - The Conduct of Major Maxim

'Sounds a good place to plant a few informers."

"It is not easy to be diguised without clothes, " Sims said dryly. "The Republic needs that place, places like that. It is a safety valve, you might say a brothel of the mind. But yes – there are some informers, too. There was one who was sitting beside Gustav Eismark, many years ago, just when he was about to be married the second time. He talked about getting married – of course he did not know the man recognised him, although it is not far from Rostock, where he lived then. Eismark said he felt guilty because his first marriage had never ended, he said it could never end -das wird nie vorüber sein-and it would always be a secret he must keep from his new wife.

"So of course the informer – he worked for himself, not the state – tried to find some proof of this. But all he could discover was that Gustav's roadname had-been Schickert, and the marriage certificate at Sangerhausen."

"It wasn't the marriage that was in question."

"No, but all the other proof was in West Germany so he could not do anything more. Then one time when he was doing some other business with the woman we called Mrs Howard, he sold her the story for a few marks. She did nothing much about it – Eismark was still just somebody in shipping, not a politician – and it was only when he came onto the Secretariat that she asked for money to do some more work about it."

"It doesn't seem much, just a few remarks made at a Freikulturcamptwenty years ago. "

Sims glanced a smile at him. "In our work we live on whispers. In your work perhaps you control a thousand tanks. In one way – please understand me – that is easy: they arethere. They can do many things, but they cannot destroy a man's reputation. One whisper may do that. Our work is to find that whisper, to control it."

Maxim had been long enough in Whitehall to know what Sims was talking about.

They cruised in silence for a while, then Sims asked abruptly: "Have you got a camera?"

"No."

"You should buy one at Paderborn, there may be something to photograph. And hire a car also; I must take the photographs for printing. We will meet late in the afternoon. " So in the end it would be Maxim's name on the pieces of paper, not whatever Sims was calling himself on this trip. And it must be a nice life to be able to decide /need a camera and buy a camera, just like that. He wished… Oh, come off it, Harry, he told himself. You've said 'Fire!' and seen the price of a dozen cameras blow away in a few seconds' worth of flash and bang, with nothing left at the end to stick in the family album. Every profession has its own little extravagances.

The village of Dornhausen lay about eight kilometres out of Bad Schwarzendorn itself, and the final road to it was a narrow concrete track that even in June was still covered in flaking mud and cow dung. It ran straight up a wide shallow valley, with tilled fields on both sides, to a huddle of buildings. Beyond, a slightly steeper slope of pasture rose to a low skyline with a toupee of trees. Maxim drove it slowly, enjoying the first real countryside he had been in since the hot weather began.

When he reached it, the village was little more than six huge farm buildings in the classic German style: each wall a grid of brown-painted timbers, filled in with rough-plastered brickwork. And each building could be a farm in itself, housing animals and machinery on the ground floor, humans above that, wine and vegetables in the cellar and hay in the loft under the steep-pitched tile roof. You could never believe just how big such places were until you got up close. Beside them, the modern tractor sheds and dairies looked ready to collapse in the first breeze.

And the villagers would have the same massive unity as their houses. Maxim had run into that before, on exercises, when he wanted to dig his troops in among the growing vegetables, and probably Hitler's soldiers had been no more welcome. A small farming community would be a good place to hide out a war.

The tap-room of the tiny inn was down a deep step and he nearly sprawled on the tiled floor, coming abruptly into the cool darkness. When he had got his balance back, a woman in adowdy black dress was looking at him with tired amusement. There was nobody else in the room.

"Are you open?" he asked.

"We are never closed. Did you want to eat?"

"No, thank you. Just a Pils. "

It came in a stone mug, deliciously cold and wiping out in one mouthful the heat of the morning and the traces of last night's headache (he wondered briefly how the Engineer regiment was getting on in its battle positions; by now they should be dug in and pausing for sips of lukewarm water or barely warmer tea. Even war games are hell).

He finished the beer and asked for another. The woman was probably in her middle forties, with a body that looked strong rather than fat under the shapeless clothes, ¿ind a long lined face that had already done all the ageing it was likely to.

"Were you here in the war?" Maxim asked; he'd never feel comfortable trying to start conversations like this.

"Yes."

"Can you help me? It's about somebody who was killed here. I think there was a bomb…"

"Yes. The Bomber. There's a memorial, up by the church. "

"The church?" He hadn't seen anything that could be a church.

"The old one. Up the road. " Her expression hadn't changed by a fraction throughout.

A little perplexed, he left the second mug of Pils on the table.

Not noticing the church hadn't been quite as crass as he'd feared, because whatever else the bomb had done, it had blown the church apart. Hardly any part of it stood more than waist high now, much was covered in grass or blackthorn bushes, and it could never have been more than a chapel anyway. The road ended just there, in a long concrete hard-stand where a cart and some rusting old farm machinery were parked. Beyond, the pastureland sloped up to the skyline.

Beside the ruin, the grass had been scythed to rough ankle-length around a handful of old gravestones and an incongruously clean slab of veined grey marble that lay glinting in 178 the sun. It was carved with very competent lettering, but all it said was 15 April 1945 and a list of names. There were seventeen in all, three recurring -Scholz, Leistritzand Brenner; probably the main families in the village. The Schickerts' address had been the Leistritz farmhouse.Brigitte Schickert'sname was there, too.

Maxim wrote down the names, then took out the new camera and fiddled with it; presumably the gravestone was evidence of a sort.

"Are you looking for something?" The old man must have moved very softly to get within twenty yards of him unheard, although the quiet afternoon was in fact a steady rumble and distant clatter of farm machinery.

"Er… I was interested in a name. "

"One of those?" The old man jabbed his stick towards the marble. He had a face like a leather potato, all bumps and creases, and wore a thick clothjacket over-shirt buttoned to the neck, all grey and brown and far too hot for the day. But he was well past seventy, when the blood runs thin even in June.

"Brigitte Schickert. "

"Oh, her. Did he send you?"

He? Whichhe? Of course, the presumably-still-alive Rainer Schickert. Now we find out if they really don't know what became of him. "No, not her husband. Just a London lawyer wanting to know where she's buried. They don't tell you what it's all about, but they pay you for it. " He took a second picture and pocketed the camera. "I have an unfinished beer at the Wirtshaus. Would you like to join me?"

The solid old barrel of a body moved stiffly but not very carefully, like a heavy vehicle in low gear. Seeing the village again, from a new angle, Maxim could see other scars of the blast and its debris. The great linden tree, the traditional place for a village parliament, was lopsided even now from missing branches, and the nearest farmhouse was patched with un-matching brickwork and some of the window frames were too square to be old. But the signs of prosperity far outweighed those of damage: the new BMWs and Mercedes, freshly painted woodwork and the constant noise of machinery from the outhouses.