She was the only one to have enjoyed the game uninhibitedly and didn’t mask her admiration for her partner and her opponents. ‘I hardly recognized you, Peter. You’re enjoying yourself today, aren’t you?’
Mischkey tried to beam. He and I didn’t say much as we drank the champagne. The two women kept the conversation going.
Babs said, ‘Actually, that wasn’t really a game of doubles. If I weren’t so old, I’d hope you two men were battling for me. But as it is, you must be the one they’re wooing, Frau Buchendorff.’
And then the two women were on to age and youth, men and lovers, and whenever Frau Buchendorff made some frivolous remark, she gave the silent Mischkey a kiss.
In the changing rooms I was alone with Mischkey.
‘How does it go from here?’ he asked.
‘I’ll hand in my report to the RCW. What they’ll do with it, I don’t know.’
‘Can you leave Judith out of it?’
‘That’s not so easy. She was the bait to a certain extent. How else could I explain how I got on to you?’
‘Do you have to say how you got on to me? Isn’t it enough if I simply confess that I cracked the MBI system?’
I thought it over. I didn’t believe he wanted to make trouble for me, nor could I see how that would be possible. ‘I’ll try. But don’t pull any fast ones. Otherwise I’ll have to submit that other report.’
Back at the car park we joined the two ladies. Was I seeing Frau Buchendorff for the last time? I didn’t like the thought.
‘See you soon?’ was her goodbye. ‘How’s the case coming along by the way?’
21 You’re such a sweetheart
My report for Korten turned out to be short. Nonetheless, it took me five hours and a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon before my draft was finished at midnight. The whole case replayed in front of me, and it wasn’t easy to keep Frau Buchendorff out of it.
I saw the RCW-RCC link as the exposed flank of the MBI system that allowed not only people from the RCC but also other businesses connected to the RCC to access the RCW. I borrowed Mischkey’s characterization of the RCC as the turntable of industry espionage. I recommended disconnecting the emission data recording system from the central system.
Then I described, in a sanitized way, the course my investigation had taken, from my discussions and research in the Works to a fictive confrontation with Mischkey at which he had declared himself willing to repeat a confession and to reveal the technical details to the RCW.
With an empty, heavy head I went to bed. I dreamt of a tennis match in a railway carriage. The ticket inspector, in a gas mask and thick rubber gloves, kept trying to pull out the carpet I was playing on. When he succeeded we continued to play on the glass floor, while beneath us the sleepers raced by. My partner was a faceless woman with heavy, hanging breasts. Her movements were so powerful, I was constantly afraid she’d crash through the glass. As she did I woke up in horror and relief.
In the morning I went to the offices of two young lawyers in Tattersallstrasse whose under-burdened secretary sometimes typed for me. The lawyers were playing Amigo on their computers. The secretary promised me the report for eleven o’clock. Then, back in my office, I looked through the mail, mostly brochures for alarm and security systems, and called Frau Schlemihl.
She hemmed and hawed a great deal, but eventually I got my lunchtime meeting with Korten in the canteen. Before I collected the report, I booked a flight on the spot at the travel agent’s for that evening to Athens. Anna Bredakis, a friend from university days, had asked that I give her plenty of prior warning. She had to get the yacht she’d inherited from her parents sail-worthy and assemble a crew from amongst her nieces and nephews. But I’d prefer to be in Piraeus, haunting the harbour bars, than reading about Mischkey’s arrest in the Mannheimer Morgen and having Frau Buchendorff connect me to Firner, who’d congratulate me with his silver tongue.
I arrived half an hour late for lunch with Korten, but I couldn’t use that to make a point. ‘Are you Herr Self?’ asked a grey mouse at reception who’d caked on too much rouge. ‘Then I’ll call the general director straight away. If you’d be so kind as to wait.’
I waited in the reception hall. Korten came and greeted me rather curtly. ‘Things not advancing, my dear Self? You need my help?’
It was the tone of a rich uncle greeting his tiresome, debt-producing, and money-begging nephew. I looked at him in bewilderment. He might have a lot of work and be stressed and hassled, but I was hassled, too.
‘All I need is for you to pay the bill in this envelope. You could also listen to how I solved your case, but then again you could also let it be.’
‘Not so touchy, my dear friend, not so touchy. Why didn’t you tell Frau Schlemihl right away what this is about?’ He took my arm and led me into the Blue Salon once again. My eyes searched in vain for the redhead with the freckles.
‘So, you’ve solved the case?’
I briefly summarized my report. When, over the soup, I came onto the slip-ups of his team, he nodded earnestly. ‘Now you see why I can’t hand over the reins yet. Nothing but mediocrity.’ I didn’t comment. ‘And what sort of man is this Mischkey?’
‘How do you imagine someone who orders a hundred thousand rhesus monkeys for your plant and deletes all account numbers that begin with thirteen?’
Korten grinned.
‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘A colourful character, and a brilliant computer expert to boot. If you’d had him in your computer centre, these mess-ups wouldn’t have happened.’
‘And how did you get on to this brilliant chap?’
‘What I choose to say on that is contained in the report. I don’t have any wish to expand greatly on that now. Somehow I find Mischkey likeable and I don’t find it easy to turn him in. I’d appreciate it if you weren’t too severe, not too hard – you know what I mean, don’t you?’
‘Self, you’re such a sweetheart!’ Korten laughed. ‘You’ve never learned to do things thoroughly or not at all.’ And then, more reflectively, ‘But perhaps that’s your strength – your sensitivity lets you get inside things and people; it lets you cultivate your scruples, and at the end of the day you do actually function.’
He rendered me speechless. Why so aggressive and cynical? Korten’s observation had got me where it hurt, and he knew it and blinked with pleasure.
‘Don’t worry, my dear Self, we won’t cause any unnecessary trouble. And about what I said – I admire it in you very much, don’t get me wrong.’
He was making it even worse and looked me mildly in the face. Even if there was some truth in his words – doesn’t friendship mean treading carefully when it comes to the lies the other person builds into his life? But there wasn’t any truth in it. I felt a surge of fury.
I didn’t want dessert any more. And preferred to have my coffee in the Café Gmeiner. And Korten had a meeting at two.
At eight I drove to Frankfurt and flew to Athens.
Part Two
1 Luckily Turbo likes caviar
In August I was back in Mannheim.
I always enjoy going on vacation and the weeks in the Aegean were spent in a glow of brilliant blue. But now that I’m older I enjoy coming home more, as well. After Klara’s death I redecorated the apartment. During our marriage I hadn’t managed to assert myself against her taste and so, at fifty-six, I caught up on the pleasures of decorating that other people delight in when they’re young. I do like my two chunky leather sofas that cost a fortune and also hold their own with the tomcat, the old apothecary shelves where I keep my books and records, and the bunk-bed in my study I had built into the niche. Coming home I also always look forward to Turbo, whom I know is looked after well by the next-door neighbour but who does, in his quiet manner, suffer in my absence.