Len Deighton - Funeral in Berlin

‘King,’ he said quietly. ‘Here’s a surprise.’

It was like finding a cherry in a sweet martini; a big surprise but you raise hell if it’s not there.

‘I’m Helmut,’ said the bright-eyed boy.

‘I’m Edmond Dorf,’ I said; two can play at that game.

‘Do you want to speak in private?’ Vulkan said.

‘No,’ said Helmut politely and offered his English cigarettes. ‘Our latest employee is, alas, in a traffic accident.’

Vulkan produced a gold lighter.

‘Fatal?’ asked Vulkan.

Helmut nodded.

‘When?’ said Vulkan.

‘Next week,’ said Helmut. ‘We bring him around the corner 2 next week.’ I noticed Vulkan’s hand flinch as he lit the cigarette.

Helmut noticed it too, he smiled. To me he said, ‘The Russians are bringing your boy into the city in two weeks from next Saturday.’

‘My boy?’ I said.

‘The scientist from the Academy of Sciences Biology Division; he will probably stay at the Adlon. Isn’t that the man you want us to move?’

‘No comment,’ I said. It was very annoying and this boy was making the most of it. He flashed me a big smile before giving his teeth a rebore with the Beefeater martini.

‘We are arranging the pipeline now,’ he added. ‘It would help us if you supply these documents from your own sources. You will find all the data there.’ He handed me a folded slip of paper, shot his cuffs a couple of times to show me his cuff-links, then finished his martini and vanished.

Vulkan and I looked across the rubber-plants.

‘Gehlens Wunderkinder,’ said Vulkan. ‘They’re all like him.’

1 In the first four years of war British casualties (including POWs and missing) were 387,966. The number killed and injured in traffic accidents was 588,742.

2 Helmut used the expression ‘Um die Ecke bringen’, which in German means to kill.

In certain circumstances pawns can be converted into the most powerful unit on the board.

Tuesday, October 8th

I put the Gehlen request for documents on the teleprinter to London and marked it urgent.

The paper said:

Name: Louis Paul BROUM

National Status: British

Nationality of Father: French

Profession: Agricultural Biologist

Date of birth: August 3rd, 1920

Place of birth: Prague, Czechoslovakia

Residence: England

Height: 5 ft 9 ins Weight: 11 st 12 lb

Colour of eyes: brown Colour of hair: black

Scars: 4-inch scar inside of right ankle

Documents required.

1. British Passport issued not before beginning of current year.

2. British Driving Licence.

3. International Driving Permit.

4. Current Insurance Policy on a motor vehicle in British Isles.

5. Motor Vehicle Registration Book (for same vehicle).

6. Diners’ Club credit card (current).

JOHN AUGUST VULKAN

Wednesday, October 9th

‘Oh boy,’ thought Johnnie Vulkan Edelfresswelle – a great calorific abundance of everything but faith – and quite frankly it was great. There were times when he saw himself as an untidy recluse in some village in the Bavarian woods, with ash down his waistcoat and his head full of genius, but tonight he was glad he had become what he had become. Johnnie Vulkan, wealthy, attractive and a personification of Knallhärte – the tough, almost violent quality that post-war Germany rewarded with admiring glances. The health cures at Worishofen had tempered him to a supple resilience and that’s what you needed to stay on top in this town – this was no place for an intellectual today, whatever it may have been in the ’thirties.

He was glad the Englishman had gone. One could have too much of the English. They ate fish for breakfast and always wanted to know where they gave the best rate of exchange. The whole place was reflected in the coloured mirror. The women were dressed in sleek shiny gowns and the men were wearing 1,000-mark suits. It looked like those advertisements for bourbon that one saw in Life magazine. He sipped his whisky and eased his foot on to the foot-rail of the bar. Anyone coming in would take him for an American. Not one of those crummy stringers who hung around writing groundless rumours with ‘Our special correspondent in Berlin’ on the dateline, but one of the Embassy people or one of the businessmen like the one sitting against the wall with the blonde. Johnny looked at the blonde again. Boy, oh boy! he could see what type of suspender belt she was wearing. He flashed her a smile. She smiled back. A fifty-mark lay, he thought, and lost interest. He called the barman and ordered another bourbon. It was a new barman.

‘Bourbon,’ he said. He liked to hear himself saying that. ‘Plenty of ice this time,’ he said. The barman brought it and said, ‘The right money, please, I am short of change.’ The barman said it in German. It made Vulkan annoyed.

Vulkan tapped a Philip Morris on his thumbnail and noticed how brown his skin was against the white cigarette. He put the cigarette in his mouth and snapped his fingers. The bloody fool must have been half-asleep.

Along the bar, there were a couple of tourists and a newspaper writer named Poetsch from Ohio. One of the tourists asked if Poetsch went across to the ‘other side’ very much.

‘Not much,’ Poetsch said. ‘The Commies have me marked down on their black list.’ He laughed modestly. Johnnie Vulkan said an obscene word loud enough for the barman to look up. The barman grinned at Johnnie and said, ‘Mir kann keener.’ 1

Poetsch didn’t speak German so he didn’t notice.

There were lots of radio men here tonight: Americans with the blunt accents of their fathers who spoke strange Slav dialects over the jammed night air. One of them waved to Vulkan but didn’t beckon him across there. That was because they considered themselves the cultural set of the city. Really they were mental lightweights equipped with a few thousand items of cocktail-time small talk. They wouldn’t know a string quartet from a string vest.

The barman lit his cigarette for him.

‘Thanks,’ said Johnnie. He made a mental note to cultivate the barman in the near future, not for the purpose of getting information – he hadn’t sunk to that peanut circuit yet – but because it made life easier in a town like this. He sipped his bourbon and tried to think of a way to appease London. Vulkan felt glad that Dawlish’s boy was heading back to London. He was all right as the English go, but you never knew where you were with him. That’s because the English were amateurs – and proud of it. There were some days when Johnnie wished that he was working for the Americans. He had more in common with them, he felt.

All around there was a rumble of courteous conversation. The man with nose, moustache and spectacles that looked like a one-piece novelty was an English MP. He had the managerial voice that the English upper class used for hailing taxis and foreigners.

‘But here in the actual city of Berlin,’ the Englishman was saying, ‘taxes are twenty per cent below your West German taxes and what’s more your chaps at Bonn waive the four per cent on transactions. With a bit of wangling they will insure your freight free and if you bring in steel you have it carted virtually without charge. No businessman can afford to overlook it, old chap. What line of business you in?’ The Englishman brushed both ends of his moustache and sniffed loudly.

Vulkan smiled to a man from the Jewish Documentation Section. That was a job Vulkan would enjoy, but the pay was very small, he heard. The Jewish Documentation Section in Vienna collected material about war crimes to bring ex-SS men to trial. There was plenty of work about, Vulkan thought. He looked through the tobacco smoke; he could count at least five ex-SS officers in here at this moment.