‘That’s what she told me.’
‘She can’t have been happy living here with the Nazis?’
‘No. I don’t think many British people were then. Apart from the ambassador at the time. He liked them, apparently.’
‘You know, my grandfather was killed by the Nazis? In Dachau in 1938.’
‘I didn’t realize you were Jewish?’ Phil said.
‘It wasn’t only the Jews who died in the concentration camps,’ said Heike. ‘My grandfather was a member of the KPD, the German Communist Party. The Nazis locked him up. He was only forty when he died. They said he fell over and hit his head, but of course nobody believes that.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘He was a very brave man; I would have liked to have met him.’ Heike sighed. ‘I wonder if I had been alive then whether I would have looked to the Soviet Union for support against Hitler. Like your grandmother did. I like to think I would. I can’t believe I wouldn’t have seen through him.’
Phil was severely tempted to tell Heike all about Emma’s flirtation with communism, and he couldn’t for the life of him see what harm it would do. But he had promised.
‘I think she thought Russia was just as bad,’ he said. ‘She saw through Stalin.’ Eventually.
‘I liked her,’ Heike said. ‘She is really smart, isn’t she? You can almost see her brain fizzing.’
‘I know.’ Phil laughed. ‘She certainly keeps me on my toes.’
‘Are you going to East Berlin?’
‘She is. I’m going home tomorrow.’
‘That’s a shame.’ Heike’s eyes betrayed disappointment. But also something else.
Desire.
‘Yes,’ said Phil. ‘That is a shame.’
Heike was staying in a friend’s squat close by. Apparently Kreuzberg was full of squats. Phil had never seen a squat before, and yes, he would like to see Heike’s friend’s place.
It was the ground floor of what had once been a workshop of some kind, perhaps even a print shop. The walls were covered in graffiti, the windows draped with makeshift curtains of blankets and even newspaper.
The interior design was open-plan: sleeping bags on the floor. After briefly introducing Phil to a couple of long-haired guys sharing a joint, Heike took him through to a small room at the back of the space in which lay two mattresses. On one of them, a pretty dark-haired girl was reading a book by the light of an Anglepoise lamp resting on the floor.
‘Hi,’ she said, giving Phil a friendly smile, and without another word, she gathered up her book and left them.
‘That was nice of her,’ said Phil.
‘She’s a nice girl,’ said Heike.
Then she reached up and kissed him.
Two hours later, Heike flicked the edge of the blanket that acted as a curtain and watched the English boy’s silhouette as it disappeared down the pavement. She couldn’t help smiling to herself when she saw him take a little skip.
Naked, she lit a cigarette and sat on the mattress.
She never liked doing this kind of stuff. In many ways this had been so much better than the last time she had slept with an Englishman — a forty-five-year-old married RAF officer who turned out to have a well-suppressed fetish for blonde German women, the SS and whips. That had been deeply unpleasant.
Yet in some ways this had been harder. In her job, it was better not to become emotionally involved. That had been dead easy with the RAF officer. But it was difficult to seduce someone like Phil without opening up something of yourself, without becoming emotionally involved. She had known it would be his first time, and it was. He was overenthusiastic, but he had a certain natural talent. Heike grinned to herself.
He hadn’t told her very much, at least not at first. Nothing about Annecy at all. It wasn’t even clear whether Phil and his grandmother had come across the dead bodies of Marko and Kurt Lohmüller. The KGB didn’t know what had happened. They assumed that there had been some kind of shootout between Lohmüller and Marko, although how Marko had managed to get himself into that situation with a target in his seventies was beyond Heike. That guy really had been incompetent.
His replacement as Heike’s boss, Rozhkov, was older and tougher. Heike was happier with that; she knew where she was with men like him. She knew she shouldn’t care, but she hoped that Phil wouldn’t end up dead like Marko. She had no doubt that Rozhkov would order his killing if necessary; she just hoped it wouldn’t be necessary.
And she liked the sound of Phil’s grandmother. A woman who had understood that, with capitalism broken and Fascism on the rampage in Europe, communism was the only way to go. Heike had been telling the truth about her grandfather dying in Dachau; she had hoped to tempt Phil into opening up about his grandmother. It had nearly worked, she was sure.
Her grandfather was really why she was doing all this, lying on her back for the cause. Her father had clung to his own father’s beliefs during the war, and afterwards, in the Russian sector of Berlin. Her mother was convinced that the West had rejected solidarity with the poor and the working classes, and that that would eventually destroy them. Heike was seeing a lot more of the West than her parents had ever done, and although she found some of the wealth and the good things seductive, she knew those were only available for the rich. She was glad she lived on the right side of the Walclass="underline" the side where the people took priority over the rich and powerful.
It was her cause, her family’s cause, her country’s cause, and she would continue to do what was necessary for it.
She had a report to make, and it couldn’t wait. She made a quick phone calclass="underline" unlike a real squat, this building still had a phone line. She pulled on some clothes and let herself out into the dark street, searching for a passing cab to take her to Rozhkov’s apartment.
She had something to report. Finally, she had broken down Phil’s defences. After the sex, she had playfully talked about Phil’s grandmother spying again, and whether she was going to East Berlin to meet an agent, but Phil had steadfastly refused to rise to the bait. He had explained that he had promised Emma that he wouldn’t repeat any of what she had told him about her time as a spy to Heike. He was feeling bad about what he had already said.
Heike had withdrawn, offended, muttering something about how ridiculous that was. Phil had touched her thigh, but she had stiffened and he had removed his hand.
Then she had made her breakthrough.
‘Of course, she didn’t say anything about not telling you things she knows nothing about,’ he had said.
Heike turned to face him. ‘Like what?’
‘Like a strange man in a pub back in England asking me to look out for a mole.’
‘What’s a mole?’ Phil had used the German word, Maulwurf.
‘It’s spy slang for an agent who burrows into an enemy country’s intelligence agency or government. Kim Philby was a famous one, but there were others in Britain. I don’t know about West Germany.’
‘That’s exciting!’ said Heike, touching him. ‘Have you found this mole?’
‘No. I was told not to ask Grams directly. I hoped that it would become clear through her stories.’
‘And has it?’
‘Not really. Maybe Grams will find something out tomorrow, in East Berlin.’
‘But you won’t be there.’
Phil hadn’t answered her. Just before he had walked off into the night, she had asked him if there was any way he could stay in Berlin instead of flying back to London. She wanted to see him again.
He had smiled. ‘Maybe. Do you have a phone here?’
She had given him the number, resolving to ensure someone stayed at the squat for the next couple of days to be there to take a message if he called.