‘My thoughts kept on coming back to Hugh, and what had happened to him. I didn’t want to die and him to be erased from history. I wanted to revisit the places I had lived just before the war, when I was trying to make sense of his death, and do something about it. And then Dick sent me that postcard from Crete.’
Emma sipped her coffee. ‘I realized I might have a chance of finding Lothar — if I could find Kurt and Kurt knew where Kay was. I hoped Kay would confirm what I suspected: that Lothar had killed Hugh.
‘Once I’d had that thought, it wouldn’t go away. I knew Dick was coming to Paris on business, and I thought I could perhaps meet him there. I wasn’t confident of finding Kay by myself, especially with the tumour, but I also wasn’t sure I could ask Dick to help me. I was dithering about what to do.
‘Then, at Sunday lunch at your house, you mentioned you had had to cancel your hitch-hiking holiday in Europe, and I realized I could go after all if you went with me. I liked the idea of passing on what had happened to Hugh and to me to the next generation. That is to you. So I asked you to join me.’
‘To help you find Lothar?’
‘To find Lothar.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me all this?’
‘I intended to tell you most of it. Bit by bit as we travelled around Europe. But then when Kurt was killed so horribly... well, I realized it was a lot more dangerous than I had thought, and I should keep you out of it.’
‘What do you think the KGB have to do with this?’
‘I’m not sure,’ said Emma. ‘Presumably Lothar has managed to evade them for decades, and they still want to find him.’
‘Why?’
‘He still has secrets. He may have been the one who recruited Burgess, or Philby, or any of the other Englishmen who spied for the Russians. Or if he didn’t recruit them directly, he might know about them.’
Like Swann’s mole, Phil thought. It seemed unfair that Emma didn’t have the knowledge that there was still another mole burrowing underneath the British establishment and that MI6 thought Lothar knew his identity. Phil considered telling her right then. But he wasn’t sure, yet. Swann had been adamant that he shouldn’t.
He would wait and see.
‘What are you planning to do if we find Lothar?’ Phil asked.
‘Look him in the eye and ask him whether he killed my brother.’ There was iron in Emma’s voice.
‘And when he denies it? He’ll deny it.’
‘I’ll know,’ said Emma.
She sounded certain. But...
‘Is that why you brought that gun with you, Grams?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘To shoot Lothar.’
Emma was about to deny it but then decided not to.
‘I don’t have the gun any more,’ she said. ‘You made me throw it away.’
Thank God for that, Phil thought. ‘So. Spain next?’
‘Tomorrow morning.’
‘Do you think they’ll follow us? The Stasi or the KGB or whoever they are?’
‘Let’s hope they don’t know what Kay told us. In which case they might not. But, yes, I think they probably will try to follow us. And we will try to lose them. We have a whole continent to do it in.’
‘As long as they don’t decide to stop messing about and just kill us.’
Emma frowned. ‘I know. You can still back out, Philip. In some ways, I wish you would.’
She lifted her eyes to Phil, her expression a mixture of fear, hope and pleading.
Phil grinned as reassuringly as he could. ‘No, Grams. I’m coming too.’
Emma gave a small smile of relief. ‘Philip?’
‘Yes?’
‘Promise me you won’t be in touch with Heike before we go?’
‘Why not?’
‘I’m sorry to say this, but I fear she might be working for the East Germans. For the Stasi.’
‘But she’s only twenty!’
‘She’s older than that, Philip. She’s twenty-five at least.’
‘No she’s not.’
‘And it was quite a coincidence she found you at the Hollow-Tooth Church yesterday.’
‘She said she was looking for me,’ Phil said. ‘She likes me.’
Emma raised her eyebrows. ‘I wonder why a gorgeous twenty-five-year-old German woman would travel across Europe to meet an eighteen-year-old schoolboy.’
That hurt. That hurt a lot. It was true that Heike was way out of Phil’s league, but he felt that he and she had had a real connection. She understood him. And she wasn’t twenty-five, she was twenty. And why did his grandmother have to be so bloody offensive, when Phil had done so much for her?
‘You just don’t understand, Grams,’ Phil muttered, getting to his feet. ‘I’ll see you at dinner.’
Fifty-Two
Phil was fuming as he went down to reception to get the key to his new room. He knew he had only met Heike a couple of times, but he really really liked her. They understood each other. Sure, she was a couple of years older than him, but she got him. It was nice to talk to a girl like that. And there was the sex. He wanted more of that. He just did.
There was a message waiting for him in an envelope. He opened it as soon as he got up to his room. Inside, there was a note, handwritten on the headed paper of another Berlin hotel, the Hotel Zoo.
Dear Philip,
I hope your trip to East Berlin was interesting. If you have something to report to Mr Swann, I would be happy to pass it on to him. Can you get away to meet me this evening? I am staying at the Hotel Zoo, address above. It’s very close. Please telephone the hotel number to let me know when you can come. It’s important.
And don’t let your grandmother know you are meeting me. I apologize for the necessity for secrecy, but I am sure you understand.
Yours sincerely,
So Freddie was in cahoots with Swann after all. No surprise there.
It did surprise him that Freddie knew he had joined Emma in the east. It turned out the Stasi were not the only people watching them.
But what to tell Freddie? Phil did have something to report, that Lothar was alive and living in a town in Spain. But to do that would be to betray his grandmother. Yet wasn’t he betraying his grandmother already by omitting to tell her about Swann’s interest in her?
Could he trust Freddie? Sure, Freddie had been a government minister, but he had also been a communist. As had Emma, for that matter.
Shouldn’t he, in fact, be telling Emma about Swann?
The truth was, Phil didn’t know whom he could trust.
He decided to see Freddie and play it by ear. If Freddie could convince him that he really did know Swann and would pass on Phil’s message to him, then Phil would tell him about Lothar. It would be useful to have British intelligence on their side in the next couple of days. But if Phil’s doubts remained, he would keep quiet for now.
So he rang the number of the Hotel Zoo, which he had noticed stood a little further up the Kurfürstendamm, and asked to be put through to Freddie. There was no reply from Freddie’s room, so Phil left a message that he would meet Freddie in the hotel bar at 6.30 p.m. He didn’t leave his own name.
He was sitting on his bed, staring at the phone, still wrestling with the problem of what to say, when it rang.
He picked it up. ‘Hello?’
‘Phil! You’re still here!’
Phil couldn’t help smiling at the sound of Heike’s voice.
‘I am.’