“Always a pleasure, assisting our German colleagues,” grunted a voice from the front.
Charlie said: “There’s a danger you might not?”
“Apparently.”
“Jesus.” She wrote something down. He looked away. Off to their left, a couple of kilometres across the See, the lights of Zurich formed a yellow ribbon on the dark water. His breath misted the window.
Zaugg must have been returning from his office. It was late, but the burghers of Zurich worked hard for their money — twelve or fourteen hours a day was common. The banker’s house could only be reached by travelling this road, which ruled out the most effective security precaution: varying his route each night. And See Strasse, bounded on one side by the lake, and with several dozen streets leading off the other, was a security man’s nightmare. That explained something.
“Did you notice his car?” he said to Charlie. “How heavy it was, the noise its tyres made? You see those often in Berlin. That Bentley was armour-plated.” He ran his hand through his hair. Two bodyguards, a pair of prison gates, remote cameras and a bomb-proof car. What kind of banker is that?”
He could not see her face properly in the shadows, but he could feel her excitement beside him. She said: “We’ve got the letter of authorisation, remember? Whatever kind of banker he is — he’s our banker now.”
SEVEN
They ate at a restaurant in the old town — a place with thick linen napkins and heavy silver cutlery, where the waiters lined up behind them and whipped the covers from their plates like a troupe of conjurers performing a trick. If the hotel had cost him half a month’s salary, this meal would cost him the other half, but March didn’t care.
She was unlike any other woman he had met. She was not one of the homebodies of the Party’s Women’s League, all “Kinder, Kirche und Kuche” — her husband’s supper always ready on the table, his uniform freshly pressed, five children asleep upstairs. And while a good National Socialist girl abhorred cosmetics, nicotine and alcohol, Charlie Maguire made liberal use of all three. Her dark eyes soft in the candlelight, she talked almost without pause of New York, foreign reporting, her father’s days in Berlin, the wickedness of Joseph Kennedy, politics, money, men, herself.
She had been born in Washington DC in the spring of 1939. (The last spring of peace, my parents called it — in all senses.’) Her father had recently returned from Berlin to work at the State Department. Her mother was trying to make a success as an actress, but after 1941 was lucky simply to escape internment. In the 1950s, after the war, Michael Maguire had gone to Omsk, capital of what was left of Russia, to serve in the US Embassy. It was considered too dangerous a place to take four children. Charlotte had been left behind to be educated at expensive schools in Virginia; Charlie had dropped out at seventeen — spitting arid swearing and rebelling against everything in sight.
“I went to New York. Tried to be an actress. That didn’t work. Tried to be a journalist. That suited me better. Enrolled at Columbia — to my father’s great relief. And then — what do you know? — I start an affair with Teacher.” She shook her head. “How stupid can you get?” She blew out a jet of cigarette smoke. “Is there any more wine in there?”
He poured out the last of the bottle, ordered another. It seemed to be his turn to say something. “Why Berlin?”
“A chance to get away from New York. My mother being German made it easier to get a visa. I have to admit: World European Features is not quite as grand as it sounds. Two men in an office on the wrong side of town with a telex machine. To be honest, they were happy to take anyone who could get a visa out of Berlin. Even me.” She looked at him with shining eyes. “I didn’t know he was married, you see. The teacher.” She snapped her fingers. “Basic failure of research there, wouldn’t you say?”
“When did it end?”
“Last year. I came to Europe to show them all I could do it. Him especially. That’s why I felt so sick about being expelled. God, the thought effacing them all again She sipped her wine. “Perhaps I’ve got a father-fixation. How old are you?”
“Forty-two.”
“Bang in my age range.” She smiled at him over the rim of her glass. “You’d better watch out. Are you married?”
“Divorced.”
“Divorced! That’s promising. Tell me about her.”
Her frankness kept catching him off-guard. “She was,” he began, and corrected himself. “She is…” He stopped. How did you summarise someone you were married to for nine years, divorced from for seven, who had just denounced you to the authorities? “She is not like you,” was all he could think to say.
“Meaning?”
“She does not have ideas of her own. She is concerned about what people think. She has no curiosity. She is bitter.”
“About you?”
“Naturally.”
“Is she seeing anyone else?”
“Yes. A Party bureaucrat. Much more suitable than me.”
“And you? Do you have anyone?”
A klaxon sounded in March’s mind. Dive, dive, dive. He had had two affairs since his divorce. A teacher who had lived in the apartment beneath his, and a young widow who taught history at the university — another friend of Rudi Halder’s: he sometimes suspected Rudi had made it his mission in life to find him a new wife. The liaisons had drifted on for a few months, until both women had tired of the last-minute calls from Werderscher Markt: “Something’s come up, I’m sorry…”
Instead of answering her, March said: “So many questions. You should have been a detective.”
She made a face at him. “So few answers. You should have been a reporter.”
THE waiter poured more wine. After he had moved away, she said: “You know, when I met you, I hated you on sight.”
“Ah. The uniform. It blots out the man.”
“That uniform does. When I looked for you on the plane this afternoon I barely recognised you.”
It occurred to March that here was another reason for his good mood: he had not caught a glimpse of his black silhouette in a mirror, had not seen people shrinking away at his approach.
Tell me,” he said, “what do they say of the SS in America?”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh come on, March. Please. Don’t let’s ruin a good evening.”
“I mean it. I’d like to know.” He had to coax her into answering.
“Well, murderers,” she said eventually. “Sadists. Evil personified. All that. You asked for it. Nothing personal intended, you understand? Any other questions?”
“A million. A lifetime’s worth.”
“A lifetime! Well go ahead. I have nothing planned.”
He was momentarily dumbfounded, paralysed by choice. Where to start?
The war in the East,” he said. “In Berlin we hear only of victories. Yet the Wehrmacht has to ship the coffins home from the Urals front at night, on special trains, so nobody sees how many dead there are.”
“I read somewhere that the Pentagon estimates a hundred thousand Germans killed since 1960. The Luftwaffe is bombing the Russian towns flat day after day and still they keep coming back at you. You can’t win because they’ve nowhere else to go. And you daren’t use nuclear weapons in case we retaliate and the world blows up.”
“What else?” He tried to think of recent headlines. “Goebbels says German space technology beats the Americans every time.”
“Actually, I think that’s true. Peenemunde had satellites in orbit years ahead of ours.”
“Is Winston Churchill still alive?”
“Yes. He’s an old man now. In Canada. He lives there. So does the Queen.” She noticed his puzzlement. “Elizabeth claims the English throne from her uncle.”
“And the Jews?” said March. “What do the Americans say we did to them?”