“You can still walk back,” I said.
“Straight ahead,” Cooky directed. “You know how many of them were crossing over just before the wall went up?’
“About a thousand a day.”
“That’s thirty thousand a month. Working stiffs mostly, but also a boatload or two of engineers, doctors, scientists, technicians of all kinds. It was bad public relations on Bonn’s part.”
“How?”
“They talked it up too much. They rubbed it in until it stung. Ulbricht went off to Moscow and convinced Khruschchev that he had to seal it off: the GDR couldn’t stand the embarrassment. The West kept score, and every time they hit a thousand the newspapers carried it in ‘second-coming’ headlines. So one hot August day when Ulbricht got back from Moscow the word went out. First there was just the barbed wire. Then they started putting up the walclass="underline" concrete slabs a meter square. And when they found that that wasn’t enough they topped it off with a yard or so of cinder blocks. A guy I know from Lone Star Cement took a look at it and said it was a lousy job — from a professional viewpoint.”
“So what should Bonn have done?”
“Turn left here. They should have known it was going up. Their intelligence was lousy, but no worse than ours or the British. Maybe there wasn’t time, but the blocks had to be cast, the cement ordered. Somebody should have buttoned on. You don’t set out to build a twenty-seven-mile-long wall through the middle of a big town without a few leaks. If they had known, they could have turned their propaganda guns loose. RIAS could have knocked hell out of the Reds some more. The British and the Americans and the French could have sent what are called ‘tersely worded notes.’ There were sixty thousand East Berliners working in West Berlin. Some of them could have stayed. Hell, they could have done a lot of things.”
“All they needed was a good PR man.”
Cooky grinned. “Maybe. At least the East was all set for it with an outfit they called ‘The League of the German Democratic Republic for the Friendship Among the Peoples.’ The flacks for this outfit started pounding away on three points, all aimed at excusing the wall. First, they cried a lot about how the West was inducing doctors, engineers and others to cross over by the use of what they called ‘cunning and dishonorable methods.’ It comes out money in the translation.
“Second, those who lived in East Berlin and worked in West Berlin were getting four East German Marks for every Western D-Mark they earned. This meant that a guy could go over to West Berlin, sign on as a common laborer, and make as much as the specialist with a university education who worked in the East. That seemed to bother them some, too.
“And, third, they were all upset about the smuggling. Or maybe the Russians were unhappy. At any rate, the East’s flacks claimed that the wall went up to stop the ‘illegal export’ of such stuff as optical instruments, Dresden china, Plauen laces and the like. They claimed it cost them thirty-five thousand million marks a year — however much that is.”
“You may be right that the West bragged too much about the numbers of refugees,” I said.
“I’d have probably done the same.”
“It was just too good to ignore — especially if you’re screaming for unification. But it’s academic now — like calling that third-down play on Monday instead of Sunday. And if you want a McCorkle prediction, I’ll be happy to make one.”
“What?”
“That wall isn’t coming down — not in our lifetime.”
“You only bet cinches, Mac. We’re damn near there — wherever there is. Turn left.”
I turned left down a dark, mean street whose name I didn’t catch and didn’t even look for. We drove a block, and the Café Budapest was on a corner, the first floor of a three-story building with a small electric sign that had half of its bulbs burned out. It was a prewar building, and you could see where it had been patched up with plaster that was newer than the original. Parking was no problem. We got out and walked toward the entrance, which was recessed into the corner of the building, catawampus to the sidewalk.
Cooky pulled open the heavy wooden door and we went in. The room was about sixty feet long and thirty-five feet wide. It had a high ceiling, and at the far end there was a platform where a four-piece band gave out a weary version of “Happy Days Are Here Again.” A few couples moved around the twelve-by-twelve dance floor. Two girls danced together. There were some dark wooden booths along both sides of the room and the bar was at the front, next to the door. The place was a quarter full, and we seemed to have missed the happy hour. We didn’t take off our coats.
“Let’s try a table,” I said.
We sat down at one near the door.
“What time is it?” I asked Cooky.
“Five till ten.”
“Let’s stick to vodka. I understand it’s halfway decent.”
A waitress came over and I ordered two vodkas. We attracted about as much attention as a flea in a dog pound. The waitress came back with the drinks and waited to get paid. Cooky gave her some D-Marks and waved the change away. She didn’t smile. She didn’t say thank you. She walked off and stood tiredly by a booth and examined her fingernails. After a while she started to chew on one of them.
Cooky drank half his vodka and smiled. “Not bad.”
I sipped mine. I can’t tell the difference in vodka, except for the proof. This was high-octane.
“What do we do now?” he asked.
“We wait.”
“What if nothing happens?”
“We go back to the Hilton and I explain what a dead body is doing in my room. You can be thinking something up.”
We sat there and drank vodka and listened to the band give its version of “Deep Purple.” At exactly ten P.M. the door opened and a girl came in. She wore a belted dark-green leather coat and high-heeled black pumps. Her hair was dark and long and fell to her shoulders in what they used to call a page-boy bob. She moved to our table and sat down.
“Order me a glass of wine,” she said in German.
I signaled the waitress. She trudged over and I ordered the wine.
“Where’s Weatherby? The girl asked. She pronounced the “w” like a “v” and the “th” like a “z.”
“Dead. Shot.”
Persons register shock in many different ways. Some gasp and start saying “no” over and over as if, through denial, things can be changed back to the way they were. Others are more theatrical and they grow white and their eyes get big and they start chewing on their knuckles just before they yell or scream. And then there are those who just seem to die a little. The girl was like that. She grew perfectly still and seemed to stop breathing. She stayed that way for what seemed to be a long time and then closed her eyes and said: “Where?”
I foolishly started to say “in the back,” but I said, “In West Berlin, in the Hilton.”
The waitress was bearing down on us and the girl said nothing. Cooky found some more money and paid again, this time increasing the tip. There were still no thanks.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“Marta. He was to have a car.”
“Who?”
“Weatherby.”
“I have a car.”
“You’re McCorkle?”
I nodded. “This is Baker. This is Marta.” Since it was a girl, Cooky gave her his dazzling smile. His German hadn’t been sufficient to keep up with the conversation. I wasn’t sure that mine had been either.
“Padillo said nothing about another man.”
“He’s a friend.”
She glanced at her watch. “Did Weatherby — did he say anything before he died?” She got it out well enough.