Berlin: A Novel

Ashburner made a couple of notes. Inge Dietrich joined them. 'You're welcome to stay and eat with us, Mr Ashburner.'

'Potato soup a la Uncle Tom,' said Dr Hellbich sarcastically, appearing behind her. 'You grate a couple of raw potatoes into boiling water, add salt and a pinch of spice if available, and there you are. Guaranteed to be an entirely new experience for our overseas guest. Do you by any chance have a cigarette?'

Dietrich was embarrassed. 'My father-in-law — Captain Ashburner,' he introduced them.

'Pleased to meet you. I'm sorry, sir, I don't smoke. Thank you for the invitation, ma'am, but I have a dinner date.' Ashburner turned to Dietrich. 'With an acquaintance from the Soviet commandant's HQ, who may be able to help us.'

'I'll show you out.' Dietrich hopped to the door on one leg: it didn't seem to bother him at all. Ashburner stopped for a moment in the living room, looking at the framed photograph on the sideboard. It showed a laughing Klaus Dietrich with the epaulettes of a colonel. The Knight's Cross with oak leaves stood out brightly from the black uniform of the Panzer troops.

And I didn't know that either,' said Ashburner, impressed, as he swung himself up into his jeep.

Ashburner quickly fetched the statements and photographs relating to the two murder cases from his office and put them in the jeep. Major Berkov had surprised him by phoning. 'Do you know the "Seagull" in Luisenstrasse? Through the Brandenburg Gate, left into Neue Wilhelmstrasse and across the Spree.'

'I don't know it, but I'll find it,' Ashburner promised.

'Shall we say eight?'

'Eight it is.' Ashburner was pleased that Berkov had called. He liked the cultivated Russian, so different from his earlier assumptions about their Red allies. He drove from Uncle Tom through the Grunewald to Halensee and the Kurfiirstendamm, which was in the British sector. The tower of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church with its top broken off rose into the sky creating a bizarre spectacle. Tauentzienstrasse was full of rubble and ruins too. There were people clearing up everywhere. Women with grey faces under grey headscarves were knocking the remains of mortar off bricks. Elderly men passed them from hand to hand, conveying them to horsedrawn carts or trucks running on wood gas. It was amazing, what these half-starved Germans were doing.

He thought of the inspector and his family. Their life must be damn hard. On the other hand, hadn't the Germans brought it on themselves? Who had begun that crazy war, and who had lost it? Or were the Dietrichs just victims? Wouldn't it have been the same for him and Ethel and everyone else in Venice if Hitler had won the war? The idea of watching Ethel grating raw potatoes into boiling water at the stove amused him. He decided to tell her the story sometime, just to see her reaction. He braked sharply as he came to a shell crater overgrown with weeds in the middle of the street and drove around it.

He went along the overpass and then left towards Potsdamer Platz, where the Soviet-occupied sector of the city began, past the bustling black market in the square to the ruins of the German Reichstag, which he gathered had been a kind of parliament, and through the Brandenburg Gate. A red flag with the hammer and sickle was flying above it. Chunks of plaster crunched under his tyres as he stopped in Luisenstrasse.

The Berlin Artists' Club had been housed in what was once Prince Billow's town palace. Soviet cultural officers had named it after Chekhov's The Seagull, an image of which adorned the curtain of the Moscow artists' theatre. But Berlin's artists came less for the culture than because, thanks to the artistically minded Russians, there was plenty to eat here, and no disapproving waiter snipping bits off your ration cards.

Maxim Petrovich Berkov was waiting for his guest at a table half-hidden behind pot plants. 'Good evening, John. How are you?'

'I'm always feeling fine after working hours.'

And your beautiful girlfriend?'

Ashburner grinned. 'I'm not sure if it was the white BMW or its driver that impressed her most.'

'I'd be happy to take the lady for a drive.'

'I'd sooner you didn't. The glorious Red Army has made enough conquests. Maxim Petrovich, can we talk freely here?'

The major reached into the small bay tree behind him, and after a little groping about produced a small microphone from among the leaves. He broke the fine feed line with a jerk. A loose contact. Such sloppy work,' he remarked dryly.

The waiter brought the menu, and Berkov ordered a bottle of Crimean champagne. 'Yes, major,' said the waiter, and clicked his heels.

'Hasn't been properly re-educated yet,' remarked Berkov, amused. 'Usually the Germans adapt very quickly. Take Russian Eggs, for instance, that savoury little starter — they've renamed it Soviet Eggs. I can recommend it, by the way. And how about saddle of venison to follow? My boss's contribution to the cultural life of Berlin. General Bersarin doesn't just enjoy racing around the city on his looted Harley Davidson, he goes hunting in Goring's old preserves. He decides when the season ends. Oh, by the way, do you remember our first meeting?'

'You were looking for the grave of that man Kleist.'

'I've been reading up on the subject. She wasn't his mistress — Henriette was a romantic girl who made a suicide pact with the poet.'

Ashburner was glad to see the waiter bringing the champagne and their starters. It meant he didn't have to say anything on a subject where he was out of his depth. 'What's your sport?' he asked, changing the subject to be on the safe side.

'We played tennis at the Frunse military academy. Marshal Tukhachev- sky was keen to make his young officers gentlemen in the Western model. Stalin had him executed. An irreplaceable loss to the Red Army.'

'You're very outspoken, Maxim Petrovich.'

Ah, well, the microphone installed by our comrades from the Kommissariat just happens to be out of order.'

'What Kommissariat is that?'

'The Narodnyi Kommissariat Vnutrennikh Del, probably better known to you as the NKVD. The People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs.'

That brings me to my request. I need your help. My German colleague, Inspector Dietrich, is investigating the murders of two women. He wants to compare them with a similar pre-war murder case, which means questioning a former CID officer called Wilhelm Schluter, at present an inmate of the Brandenburg penitentiary. To do that he needs a visitor's permit from the NKVD.

'Two murders?'

'Of two pretty, blonde young women.' Ashburner handed him the records of the investigations and the photographs of the dead women. Berkov instantly recognized Karin. His face turned stony.

'Is something the matter?' asked John Ashburner. Berkov heard him as if from a great distance.

'No, no, it's nothing.' He hid his face behind the notes, but he wasn't reading them. He was thinking of those few weeks of passion with her, hearing her warm voice: 'Come here, Maxim Petrovich.' He felt her soft body again, breathed in her pleasantly sharp perfume. He would have liked to groan out loud, but he said only, 'I believe I can help your German colleague. I play chess with Colonel Nekrassov of the NKVD. I'll let the colonel win; that will put him in a good mood.'

Master Sergeant Washington Roberts was waiting behind the shops. A narrow access for delivery trucks led there from Wilskistrasse. This was also where the big, zinc garbage bins stood. Their lids refused to close, they were so full of garbage from the requisitioned shops and apartments. Chocolate bars that had just been broken into, half empty cans of baked beans, luncheon meat, condensed milk — the Americans threw away scraps that would have fed a hungry family for days. It all went to the American garbage dump and, by order of the chief army doctor, had quicklime tipped over it before the bulldozers ploughed it in. Even the rats couldn't dig for it.