ELEVEN O’CLOCK IN THE EVENING
Anwaldt woke up on the plush sofa. The girl had disappeared, along with her exquisite clothes. By the sofa sat the old man, clumsily holding a cup of steaming broth. Anwaldt leaned over and drank half a cup.
“Could you give me a cigarette, sir?” he asked in a strangely strong, resonant voice.
“Don’t call me ‘sir’, son,” the man extended a silver cigarette case towards Anwaldt. “We’ve been through too much together to play at such formalities.”
Anwaldt collapsed on to the pillow and inhaled deeply. Without looking at Mock, he said quietly:
“Why did you lie to me? You set me on the Baron but that didn’t stop the Yesidi’s revenge in any way! Why did you incite me against my own father?”
“It didn’t hold the Yesidis back, you say. And you’re right. But how was I to know that at the time?” Mock lit up yet another cigarette even though the previous one was still smoking in the ashtray. “Do you remember that muggy July night in Madame le Goef’s brothel? It’s a shame I didn’t stand you up in front of a mirror then. Do you know whom you’d have seen? Oedipus with his eyes gouged out. I didn’t believe you’d escape the Yesidis. There were two ways I could have saved you from them: either give you hope and isolate you — at least for a while — or kill you myself and in this way protect you from the Turkish scorpions. Which would you have preferred? You’re in such a state of mind at the moment that you’ll say: I’d have preferred to die … Am I right?”
Anwaldt closed his eyes and, squeezing them tight, tried to prevent the tears from falling.
“Interesting, my life … One hands me over to an orphanage, the other — to a madhouse. And claims it’s for my own good …”
“Herbert, sooner or later you’d have ended up with the lunatics. That’s what Doctor Bennert said. But to the point … I set you up to kill the Baron so as to isolate you,” Mock lied again. “I didn’t think you’d escape the Yesidis. But I knew that thanks to that you’d be relatively safe. I also knew what to do to make sure you didn’t get a long sentence. I thought: Anwaldt will be protected by the prison walls and I’ll have time to catch Erkin. After all, getting rid of Erkin was your only hope …”
“And what? Did you get rid of him?”
“Yes. Very effectively. He simply disappeared, and his holy dervish continued to believe that he was tracking you down. He believed it until recently when he sent another avenger who is now lying in your room in Bennert’s Dresden clinic. And you’ve won a bit of time again …”
“Very good, Mock. So you’ve protected me for the time being,” Anwaldt raised himself from the sofa and drank the rest of his broth. “But another Yesidi will come … And will get to Forstner or Maass …”
“He won’t get to Forstner. Our dear Max met with a terrible accident in Breslau — he was crushed by a lift …” Mock’s face turned even redder and the furrows paled. “What do you think? I’m protecting you as best I can, and you keep on thinking about the curse. If you don’t want to live, you’ve got a gun, kill yourself. But not here, because you’ll betray an apartment belonging to the Stasi … Why do you think I’m protecting you?”
Anwaldt did not know the answer to that question, while Mock wanted to drown it out by shouting.
“And what happened to you?” Anwaldt had never been afraid of shouting. “How did you get into the Stasi?”
“That institution gladly took on high-ranking officers from the Abwehr, where I had moved at the end of ’34. But I told you about that when I visited you in Dresden.”
“Scheisse, I was in that Dresden a long time.” Anwaldt smiled bitterly.
“Because there was no possibility in all that time to get you to a safe place … I knew from Bennert that you weren’t ill any more …”
Anwaldt got up suddenly, spilling the rest of his broth on the floor.
“I didn’t think of Bennert … He knows everything about me …”
“Calm down.” Stoic peace beamed from Mock’s scarred face. “Bennert won’t squeak a word to anyone. He has a debt of gratitude to repay me. I pulled his daughter out from under the ruins. This is a souvenir,” he touched his face. “A blind shell exploded and flaming tar paper from the roof seared my head.”
Anwaldt stretched and peered out of the window: he saw militia men dragging along a civilian drunk. He grew weak.
“Mock, now I’m going to be hunted down by the militia for the murder of that Turk who’s lying dead in my room at Bennert’s!”
“Not quite. Tomorrow, you and I are going to be in Amsterdam and in a week’s time in the United States,” Mock did not lose his self-control. He took a small piece of paper covered in masses of numbers from his pocket. “This is a coded cable from General John Fitzpatrick, a senior official in the C.I.A. The Abwehr was a way into the Stasi, and the Stasi into the C.I.A. You know what the cable says? ‘I give permission for Mr Eberhard Mock and his son to enter the U.S.A.’ ” Mock laughed out loud. “Since your papers give your name as being Anwaldt and we haven’t got time to make up new ones, let’s agree that you’re my illegitimate child …”
But the “illegitimate child” did not feel at all like laughing. He did feel joy, but it was marred by the gloomy, sad satisfaction experienced after finishing off a despised enemy.
“Now I know why you’ve been protecting me all your life. You wanted a son …”
“You know sod all,” Mock feigned indignation. “Amateur psychologist! I was deeply involved in the case myself and am afraid, first and foremost, for myself. I value my belly too much to make a home for scorpions of it.”
Neither of them believed it.
XVIII
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, MARCH 14TH, 1951
FOUR O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING
The Hotel Chelsea on 55th Street was, at this early hour, silent and sleepy. Most of the residents were permanent — travelling salesmen and insurance agents who went to bed early on weekdays so as to leave for work the next morning without sand in their eyes or their breath stale from alcohol.
The exception to this general rule was an inhabitant of a large, three-roomed apartment on the sixteenth floor. He was believed to be a writer. He worked at his desk by night, slept until noon, went out somewhere in the afternoons and frequently enjoyed female company in the evenings. This evening stretched to three in the morning — at which hour, a tired girl in a navy-blue dress with a large sailor’s collar left the “literary man’s” apartment. Closing the door, she sent a kiss into the depths of the apartment and walked to the lift. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of two men advancing down the long hotel corridor. She shuddered as they passed. One of them instilled fear with his monstrous face covered in scars, the other with his flaming eyes of a fanatic. The girl sighed with relief when she found herself in the company of the dozy lift-boy.
The men walked up to the door of 16F. Mock knocked softly. The door opened just a little. The face of an elderly man appeared in the gap. Anwaldt grabbed the handle and with all his strength pulled the door towards him. The old man’s head was caught between the door and the frame; the steel casing crushed his ear. He opened his mouth to cry out but was instantly gagged with a handkerchief. Anwaldt let go of the door. The old man stood in his hall and pulled the improvised gag out of his mouth. The swelling on the ear was already growing. Anwaldt dealt him a swift blow. His fist squashed the hot ear. The old man fell. Mock closed the door, dragged the assaulted man into the room and sat him in an armchair. Two silencers stared at the man unwavering.
“One move, one raised voice, and you’re dead,” Anwaldt tried to keep calm. Mock, in the meantime, went through the books on the desk. Then he turned and looked derisively at the defenceless man:
“Tell me, Maass, can you still get it up? You still like schoolgirls, I see …”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Maass rubbed his burning ear. “You’ve taken me for somebody else. I’m George Mason, Professor of Semitic Languages at Columbia University.”