We stayed in a villa farther down the street from the club. From my dormer window at the back you could see a small lake. The only sounds were the birds in the trees and the bicycle bells of students going to and from the Free University of Berlin like little couriers of hope for a city I was finding it hard to love again, in spite of the instant service that came with my room in the shape of an obsequious valet in a white mess jacket who offered to bring me coffee and a donut. I declined both and asked for a bottle of schnapps and some cigarettes. Worst of all was the music: hidden speakers playing some honey-voiced female singer who seemed to follow me from the dining room, through the hall, and into the library. It wasn’t particularly loud or obtrusive, but it was there when it didn’t need to be. I asked the valet about it. His name was George and he told me that the singer was Ella Fitzgerald, as if that made it okay.
The furniture looked like it was original to the house, so that was all right, although the water cooler in the library seemed somehow out of place, as did the periodic eructations of air that passed through the water like an enormous belch. It sounded like my own conscience.
The Am Steinplatz restaurant was at 197 Uhlandstrasse, southwest of the Tiergarten, and dated from before the war. The dilapidated exterior of the building belied a restaurant that was good enough to warrant inclusion in the U.S. Army’s Berlin booklet, which meant that the place was popular with American officers and their German girlfriends. There was a bar with a dining room serving a mixture of American and Berlin favorites. The four of us—me and the three Amis—occupied a table window in the dining room. The waitress wore glasses and wore her hair shorter than seemed right, as if it had yet to grow back after some personal disaster. She was German, but she spoke English first, as if she knew that there were few Berliners who could have afforded the prices on the extensive menu. We ordered wine and lunch. The place was still more or less empty, so we knew Erich Stellmacher wasn’t yet there. But it quickly filled up until there was only one table left.
“He probably won’t come,” said Frei. “Not this time. That’s always been my experience of stakeouts. The target never comes the first time.”
“Let’s hope you’re not wrong,” said Hamer. “The food in here’s so damn good I want to come back. Several times.”
Rain hit the steamed-up window of the restaurant. A cork popped from a bottle of wine. The officers at the next table laughed loudly, like men who were used to laughing in wide-open spaces, possibly on horseback, but never in small Berlin restaurants. They even clinked their glasses with more panache and noise than was properly required. In the kitchen someone shouted that an order was ready. I looked at Scheuer’s watch—my own was still in a paper bag back at Landsberg. It was one-thirty.
“Maybe I’ll check the bar,” I said.
“Good idea,” said Scheuer.
“Give me some money for cigarettes,” I told him. “For appearance’s sake.”
I went through to the bar, bought some English cigarettes from the barman, and glanced around while he found me a light. Some men were playing dominoes in a snug little alcove. A dog was lying on the floor beside them, its tail wagging periodically. An old man sat in a corner nursing a beer and reading the previous day’s edition of Die Zeit. I took a quick schnapps with the change, lit my cigarette, and went back into the restaurant as a coffee machine howled like an arctic wind. I sat down, stubbed out the cigarette, sawed off a corner of my uneaten schnitzel, and said:
“He’s in there.”
“My God,” said Frei. “I don’t believe it.”
“Are you sure?” asked Hamer.
“I never forget a man who’s punched me.”
“You don’t think he recognized you?” said Scheuer.
“No,” I said. “He’s wearing reading glasses. And there’s another pair in his top pocket. My guess is he’s long in one eye and short in the other.”
A Bavarian-looking wall clock struck the half hour. At the next table, one of the Americans pushed his chair away with the backs of his legs. On the hard wooden floor of the restaurant it sounded like a drumroll.
“So what happens now?” asked Hamer.
“We stick to the plan,” said Scheuer. “Gunther will follow him and we’ll follow Gunther. He knows this city better than any of us.”
“I’ll need more money,” I said. “For the U-Bahn or a tram. And if I lose you, I might have to get a taxi back to Ihnestrasse.”
“You won’t lose us.” Hamer smiled confidently.
“All the same,” said Scheuer. “He’s right.” He handed me some notes and some small change.
I stood up.
“Are you going to sit in the bar?” asked Frei.
“No. Not unless I want him to recognize me later. I’m going to stand outside and wait for him there.”
“In the rain?”
“That’s the general idea. You’d best stay out of the bar. We wouldn’t want him to feel like he was of any interest to anyone.”
“Here,” said Frei. “You can borrow my hat.”
I tried it on. The hat was too big, so I handed it back to him. “Keep it,” I said. “I’ll stand in a doorway on the opposite side of the road and watch from there.”
Scheuer cleaned a patch of condensation from the window. “And we’ll watch you from here.”
Hamer looked at my half-eaten food. “You Germans eat too much anyway,” he observed.
Ignoring him, I said, “I follow him. Not you. If you think I’ve lost him, don’t panic. Just keep your distance. And don’t try to find him again for me. I know what I’m doing. Try to remember that. I used to do this kind of thing for a living. If he goes in another building, then wait outside, don’t follow me in. He might have friends looking out of a window.”
“Good luck,” said Scheuer.
“Good luck to us all,” I said, and drained the contents of my wineglass. Then I went outside.
For the first time in a while, I felt a spring in my step. Things were starting to work out nicely. I didn’t mind the rain in the least. It felt good on my face. Refreshing. I took up a position in the doorway of the soot-blackened building opposite. A cold doorway. A policeman’s true station, and blowing on my fingernails for want of gloves, I settled in against the inside wall. Once, a long time ago, I’d lived not fifty or sixty meters from where I was standing, in an apartment on Fasanenstrasse. The long, hot summer of 1938, when the whole of Europe breathed a collective sigh of relief because the threat of war had been averted. So we had thought, anyway. When Henry Ford had finished saying history is bunk, he also said that most of us preferred to live in the present and not to think about the past. Or words to that effect. But in Berlin the past was rather harder to avoid.
A man came down the stairs of the building and asked me for a cigarette. I gave him one and for a moment or two we talked, but all the time I kept one eye on the two doors of the Am Steinplatz. At the opposite end of Uhlandstrasse, near the eponymous square, was a hotel called the Steinplatz. The two establishments were owned by the same people; to the confusion of all Americans, they even shared the same telephone number. The confusion of all Americans was just fine by me.
It stopped raining and the sun came out, and a few minutes later so did my quarry. He paused, looked up at the clearing sky, and lit a pipe, which was my chance to get another good look at him.