She was just wrapping herself in her dressing gown when she heard a faint knocking. She tied the belt and took her torch from the wardrobe in the corridor. 'Franz?' Had he missed his train? Outside stood a figure in goggles and a leather cap. It held a clinking chain between two raised gauntlets. 'Here, what's the idea?' she said angrily.
She had no time to feel afraid. The figure forced her back into the apartment. Cold metal went around her throat and cut off her artery. The lack of oxygen to her brain set off euphoria.
A heavenly peace filled her, peace that no earthly pain could penetrate. She was floating weightlessly towards a sunny Riibenstrasse, full of bright houses and happy people, with a laughing Franz leading them all.
'Watch out, everyone, here comes Lene!' she cried happily.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE DISTRICT COUNCILLOR'S large, walnut-veneered Superhet radio had survived air raids, Russians, and Inge Dietrich's pressing requests to let her exchange it for food at Frau Molch's. Not even the prospect of a few packets of Yugoslav Drinas, more affordable than American cigarettes, could make Dr Hellbich change his mind. 'One has to know what's going on in the world,' he stated, and he listened to the news when the power was on.
There was a good deal going on in the world during that early autumn of 1945. Japan had surrendered in the face of America's atom bombs, and was allowed to keep its Emperor. A largely unknown British general had fired the equally unknown new mayor of Cologne, Konrad Adenauer, for incompetence. In Hollywood, Greta Garbo was making her fourteenth movie. The Scotsman Alexander Fleming won the Nobel Prize for discovering some kind of miracle medication.
'Made of mould, would you believe it?' commented Hellbich.
'Can we listen to AFN?' asked Ralf, when the news was over and the announcer was threatening to play merry operetta tunes.
'You can do that when I'm not home.' His grandfather hated the 'tuneless tootling' of the American Forces Network.
The radio had a graduated tuning scale which glowed a mysterious green and bore names like Tripoli, Hilversum and Brindisi. They appealed to Ben's dreams of distant places, not that he really wanted to go anywhere except perhaps America, where the longest cars and the sharpest gentlemen's fashions were to be found. A GI had left the latest issue of Esquire lying in the U-Bahn. Ben leafed through its sterile world of sexless glamour and deceptive glossy advertising, where a bottle of Johnnie Walker was praised to the skies as if it were holy water. At the back of the magazine he found a coloured ad for the Buick Eight. This quality limousine was still top of his list. Its driver was leaning casually against the radiator, wearing a doublebreasted suit. which presented Ben with a dilemma. Would it be better to opt for a button at pocket level, as shown here, which would mean he could have longer lapels, or was the waist-level button which he had hitherto favoured the only real thing? He'd have to discuss it with Rodel. After all, the master tailor was an authority in the field.
Above all, however, he must get twenty cartons of Yankee cigarettes out of Clarence C. Brubaker by playing on his hopes for the greatest journalistic scoop of modern times. Only then would the coveted suit and suede shoes be within his reach. The Fdhrer's right-hand man would be a help. Ben grinned happily to himself, because now he knew how to bring it off.
That afternoon he was trotting along the villa-lined streets behind US headquarters. Brubaker's car was in the drive. The aspirant to the Pulitzer Prize had had his Ford sent over from Hackensack at US government expense.
Ben did not press the doorbell as usual, but walked round the side of the house and tapped softly at a window pane. Brubaker was hunched over the sheet of paper in his Remington. With a conspiratorial air, Ben signalled for him to open the back door.
Brubaker opened it. 'What's happening?' he asked in surprise.
'I've been followed. But I managed to shake them off.' Ben injected a touch of Humphrey Bogart into the part he was playing. He had just seen The Maltese Falcon.
Hackensack's star reporter didn't understand. 'Who followed you?'
'Them, of course. They got wind of it. We must hurry. He's waiting for you. Do you have the cigarettes?'
'Fifteen cartons. I knew you'd do it.' Brubaker was obviously pleased.
'Chesterfields?' Ben checked, and wondered how he could raise the price to twenty. After all, this wasn't just some ordinary Nazi like friendly little Herr Adler, who crept round his own former premises with his head hung low, as if he were a war criminal. And all he'd done was run the National Socialist People's Welfare Office for the Onkel Tom area, giving the housewives who were always short of ration coupons a few extra on the sly. No, this was a top quality Nazi, and as such he had his price.
'Lucky Strikes,' said Brubaker apologetically. 'Chesterfields were sold out.'
Ben saw his chance. 'Well, I don't know. He usually only smokes Chesterfields. Perhaps he'll make an exception for you if you add another five cartons.'
'Five cartons of Philip Morris, my own stock,' agreed Clarence P That made sure of the crepe-soled suede shoes. 'Where do I meet him?'
'He's going to a secret meeting of the Werewolves today.'
Brubaker was delighted. 'Dick Draycott of United Press was saying recently — and rather condescendingly too — that the Werewolves were only the brainchild of small provincial reporters, mainly from Hackensack, New Jersey. This'll show him, the arrogant bastard! So the Hitler Youth is still alive and kicking?'
'You bet,' Ben assured him, squinting at the cartons of cigarettes piled high on the table.
'I suppose you don't happen to know just what they do in more detail?'
'They sing,' said Ben, drawing on personal experience.
'Nazi songs?'
'Sure.'
'Do you know any?'
'Hoch auf dern gelben Wagen,' remembered Ben, although he was not quite sure whether this ditty was tainted by the past like poor Herr Adler. 'High on the yellow car,' he translated to the best of his ability. Brubaker faithfully wrote it down. '. I sit in front with my brother-in-law,' Ben continued, and the man from the Hackensack Herald noted that the words were an expression of typical German family feeling. 'I can sing it if you like,' offered Ben, unfolding the potato sack he had brought with him to hold the cigarettes.
'Some other time. Let's go,' urged Brubaker.
'We must leave the cigarettes in his hideout first or he won't agree to talk to you.' Ben was anxious to make sure he had them. He hid his treasure in the shed behind his grandparents' house, under cartons full of empty preserving jars, and shrugged off any vague feelings of guilt. It wasn't his fault if the Yank was such a fool, was it?
'No one's following us,' he announced as they went on. Brubaker was driving the Ford in the happy expectation of his secret meeting. There was a journalistic sensation in the offing.
At Ben's command, he left the car in an unused driveway, and followed him by tortuous routes leading, as he failed to notice, several times around the same corners. After the third circuit Ben raised a hand to halt him and crept through a gap in the hedge, going ahead. From there they went on over six plots of land and twelve fences. They could easily have reached their destination from the road, but for twenty cartons of cigarettes the man had earned the right to a dramatic scene. Ben ducked down behind a laurel bush. Brubaker got into cover too. He considered giving an owl's hoot by way of camouflage — he had learned this trick years ago in the Hackensack Boy Scouts — but first, owls don't hoot in daylight, and second, Ben had laid a warning finger on his lips before wriggling the last few metres to the back of the Zehlendorf GYA Club on his stomach. Clarence the Boy Scout imitated him. He was tingling unbearably, although that had less to do with suspense than with the ants in the garden.