'The best piece! My very words. Bradfield, you are the best piece! You have come to see the end of democracy? You have come for the debate? My God, you are
so damn efficient over there! And the Secret Service is still with you? Mr Turner, you are loyal, I hope? My God, what the devil's happened to your face?' Receiving no answer he continued in a lower voice, furtively. 'Bradfield, I must speak to you. Something damned urgent, look here. I tried to get you at the Embassy but for Saab you are always out.'
'We have an appointment.'
'How long? Tell me how long. Sam Allerton wishes also; we wish together to have a discussion.'
He had bent his black head to Bradfield's ear. His neck was still grimy; he had not shaved.
'It's impossible to say.' 'Listen, I will wait for you. A most important matter. I will tell Allerton: we will wait for Bradfield. Deadlines, our newspapers: small fish. We must talk with Bradfield.'
'There's no comment, you know that. We issued our statement last night. I thought you had a copy. We accept the Chancellor's explanation. We look forward to seeing the German team back in Brussels within a few days.'
They descended the steps to the restaurant.
'Here he is. I'll do the talking. You're to leave him entirely to me.'
'I'll try.'
'You'll do better than that. You'll keep your mouth shut. He's a very slippery customer.'
Before anything else, Turner saw the cigar. It was very small and lay in the corner of his mouth like a black thermometer; and he knew it was also Dutch, and that Leo had been providing them for nothing.
He looked as if he had been editing a newspaper half the night. He appeared from the door leading to the shopping arcade, and he walked with his hands in his pockets and his jacket pulled a way from his shirt, bumping in to the tales and apologising to no one. He was a big dirty man with grizzly hair cut short and a wide chest that spread to a wider stomach. His spectacles were tipped back over his brow like goggles. A girl followed him, carrying a briefcase. She was an expressionless, listless girl, either very bored or very chaste; her hair was black and abundant.
'Soup,' he shouted across the room, as he shook their hands. 'Bring some soup. And something for her.' The waiter was listening to the news on the wireless, but when he saw Praschko he switched it low and sauntered over, prepared to oblige. Praschko's braces had brass teeth which held doggedly to the grimy wiastband of his trousers.
'You been working too? She doesn't understand anything,' he explained to them. 'Not in any damn language. Nicht wahr, Schatz? You are as stupid as a sheep. What's the problem?' His English was fluent, and whatever accent he possessed was heavily camouflaged by the American intonation. 'You Ambassador these days?'
'I'm afraid not.'
'Who's this guy?'
'Visiting.'
Praschko looked at Turner very carefully and then at Bradfield, then at Turner again.
'Some girl get angry with you?'
Only his eyes moved. His shoulders had risen a little in to his neck, and there was a tautening, an instinctive alertness in his manner. His left hand settled on Bradfield's forearm.
'That's nice,' he said. 'That'sfine. I like a change. I like new people.' His voice was on a single plane; heavy by short; a conspirator's voice, held down by the experience of saying things which should not be overheard.
'What you guys come for? Praschko's personal opinion? The voice of the opposition?' He explained to Turner: 'When you got a coalitoin, the opposition's a damn exclusive club.' He laughed very loud, sharing the joke with Bradfield.
The waiter brought a goulash soup. Cautiously, with small, nervous movements of his butcher's hand, he began feeling for the meat.
'What you come for? Hey, may be you want to send a telegram to the Queen?' He grinned. 'Amessage from her old subject? OK So send her a telegram. What the hell does she care what Praschko says? What does anyone care? I'm an old whore' - this too for Turner - 'they tell you that? I been English, I been German, I been damn nearly American. I been in this bordello longer than all the other whores. That's why no one wants me any more. I been had all ways. Did they tell you that? Left, Right and Centre.'
'Which way have they got you now?' Turner asked.
His eyes still upon Turner's battered face, Praschko lifted his hand and rubbed the tip of his finger against his thumb. 'Know what counts in politics?
Cash. Selling. Everything else is a load of crap. Treaties, policies, alliances: crap... Maybe I should have stayed a Marxist. So now they've walked out of Brussels. That's sad. Sure, that's very sad. You haven't got anyone to talk to any more.'
He broke a roll in two and dipped one half in to the soup. 'You tell the Queen that Praschko says the English are lousy, lying hypocrites. Your wife okay?'
'Well, thank you.'
'It's a long time since I got to dinner up there. Still live in that ghetto, do you? Nice place.
Never mind. Nobody likes me for too long. That's why I change parties,' he explained to Turner. 'I used to think I was a Romantic, always looking for the blue flower. Now I think I just get bored. Same with friends, same with women, same with God. They're all true. They all cheat you. They're all bastards. Jesus. Know another thing: I like new friends better than old ones. Hey, I got a new wife: what do you think of her?' He held up the girl's chin and adjusted her face a little to show her to the best advantage and the girl smiled and patted his hand. 'I'm amazing. There was a time,' he continued before either of them could make an appropriate comment, 'there was a time when I would have laid down on my fat belly to get the lousy English in to Europe. Now you're crying on the doorstep and I don't care.' He shook his head. 'I'm truly amazing. Still, that's history I guess. Or may be that's just me. Maybe I'm only interested in power: may be I loved you because you were strong and now I hate you because you're nothing. They killed a boy last night, you hear? In Hagen. It's on the radio.'
He drank a Steinhager from the tray. The mat stuck to the stem of the glass. He tore it off. 'One boy. One old man. One crazy woman librarian. Okay, so it's a football team; but it isn't Armageddon.'
Through the window, the long grey columns waited on the esplanade. Praschko waved a hand round the room. 'Look at this crap. Paper. Paper democracy, paper politicians, paper eagles, paper soldiers, paper deputies. Doll's house democracy; every time Karfeld sneezes, we wet our pants. Know why? Because he comes so damn near the truth.'
'Are you in favour of him then? Is that it?' Turner asked, ignoring Bradfield's angry glance.
Praschko finished his soup, his eyes on Turner all the time. 'Theworld gets younger every day,' he said. 'Okay, so Karfeld's a load of crap. Okay. We've got rich, see, boy? We've eaten and drunk, built houses, bought cars, paid taxes, gone to church, made babies. Now we want something real. Know what this is, boy?'
His eyes had not left Turner's damaged face.
'Illusions. Kings and queens. The Kennedys, de Gaulle, Napoleon. The Wittelsbachs, Potsdam. Not just a damn village any more. Hey, so what's this about the students rioting in England? What does the Queen think about that?
Don't you give them enough cash? Youth. Want to know something about youth? I'll tell you.' Turner was his only audience now. "'German youth is blaming its parents for starting the war." That's what you hear. Every day some crazy clever guy writes it in another newspaper. Want to hear the true story? They're blaming their parents for losing the damn war, not for starting it! "Hey! Where the hell's ourEmpire?" Same as the English I guess. It's the same horseshit. The same kids. They want God back.' He leaned across the table until his face was quite close to Turner's. 'Here. Maybe we could do a deaclass="underline" we give you cash, you give us illusions. Trouble is, we tried that. We done that deal and you gave us a load of shit. You didn't deliver the illusions. That's what we don't like about the English any more. They don't know how to do a deal. The Fatherland wanted to marry the Motherland but you never showed up for the wedding.' He broke out in another peal of false laughter.
'Perhaps the time has now come tomake the union,' Bradfield suggested, smiling like a tired statesman.
Out of the corner of his eye, Turner saw two men, blond-faced, in dark suits and suede shoes, quietly take their places at an adjoining table. The waiter went to them quickly, sensing their profession. At the same moment a bevy of young journalists came in from the lobby. Some carried the day's newspapers; the headlines spoke of Brussels or Hagen. At their head Karl-Heinz Saab, father of them all, stared across at Bradfield in flatulent anxiety. Beyond the window, in a loveless patio, rows of empty plastic chairs were planted like artificial flowers in to the breaking concrete.
'Those are the real Nazis, that scum.' His voice pitched high enough for anyone to hear, Praschko indicated the journalists with a contemptuous wave of his fat hand. 'They put out their tongues and fart and think they've invented democracy. Where's that damn waiter: dead?'