Carter knew there was no point having a conversation about any of this. There wasn’t going to be a conversation. Neither did he doubt that this man could do, or not do, everything he said. ‘How’s it going to work?’ he asked.
Over the next few minutes, Wilby described how the press would receive notification of a crime at the Dornheim base, involving the theft of thousands of American cigarettes which had just arrived in the country and were due to be distributed to military bases all across Europe. A few days later, American occupation authorities would announce that they had arrested someone in connection with the robbery. That person, Wilby’s Agent of Opportunity, would be Nathan Carter. After a short trial, from which the press would be excluded, Carter would be sentenced to three years in the Allied military prison at Langsdorf. He would serve nine months of that sentence before being released, after which he would approach Hanno Dasch, a known criminal specialising in the distribution of black market goods. Once enough information had been gathered on Dasch and his accomplices they would be arrested, and Carter would return to the United States and the promises Wilby had made to him would be fulfilled.
As Carter listened to this his mind kept slipping, like a needle dragging across a damaged record. He had worked so hard to leave behind the person he had been and the things he had done that the idea of returning to that life, so suddenly and so completely, was hard for him to grasp.
‘Are you getting any of this?’ asked Wilby.
Carter realised he had been staring at the ground this whole time. The taste of the beans was sour in his mouth. He reached for his canteen, fumbling with the cap until at last it slipped to the side, rattling on its little chain. Then he drank, cold water splashing down inside him. ‘How long do you need?’ he asked.
‘Give me one year,’ replied Wilby, ‘starting from the day you get out of jail. After that we’ll cut you loose, no matter where we are.’
‘And nine months on top of that, locked up in a military prison?’ he asked.
‘It’s the only way this could ever work.’
‘Would you really be putting me on trial?’
‘No,’ said Wilby. ‘We’d just announce it, and in the three weeks that it’s supposed to be going on, we’ll give you a holiday. You name it. The south of France. Morocco. London. Whatever you want.’
‘I would like to visit my father,’ said Carter.
‘You mean go back to New Jersey, when I’m offering you Paris?’
‘That’s what I said.’
Wilby sighed. ‘Well, I’m afraid it is out of the question. You show up in New Jersey at a time when the rest of the world thinks you’re supposed to be on trial in Germany, and people are going to ask questions. The operation would be ruined before it had even got started.’
‘Think of all the things I could have asked for, which you would hand me on a platter if you really needed me the way you say you do. But all I’m asking for is this.’
Wilby glanced across at the man in the tweed jacket. Throughout this conversation he had not spoken, nor had he taken his eyes off Carter. He seemed to be studying Carter, appraising him according to some scale of checks and balances known only to himself. But now the man turned and, almost imperceptibly, he nodded at Wilby.
For a moment, Wilby looked surprised. Then he shrugged and turned back to Carter. ‘Consider it done,’ he said.
Those words reached Carter like the slamming of a door as he realised that, in the space of only a few minutes, the course of his life had changed forever. ‘What happens now?’ he asked.
Wilby looked at his watch. ‘In fifteen minutes,’ he said, ‘you are going to be arrested.’
…
The stranger was only a hundred paces from the fence when Dasch snapped out of his trance. He turned to the guard and whispered, ‘Let him in!’
The guard set off at a run towards the gate. There was a creak of metal and then more hurried footsteps as the guard set out towards the stranger.
Garlinsky stopped. He stood there waiting as the guard approached, his face still hidden in shadow. He appeared to be completely bald, almost as if there was no flesh at all but only a skull, softly reflecting the moonlight.
Carter felt an instinctive hostility towards the man, primitive and dark, rising from some nameless vortex of emotions deep inside him.
The guard came to a stop in front of Garlinsky and the two of them spoke in voices too faint for Carter to hear. Then they made their way towards the gate.
As Garlinsky passed in front of them, Carter caught a glimpse of the man’s narrow cheekbones, thin lips and sharply angled jaw. There was a drawn, pinched quality to his expression, which Carter likened to the faces of men he had known around the docks, who slept in the hulks of old ships and lived off greasy po’ boy sandwiches handed out of the back doors of diners and made up from the food left behind by paying customers. The harshness of the lives they lived was tattooed on the faces of these men, and they had no way to hide it.
Dasch rested his hand on Carter’s shoulder. ‘I’ll see to this,’ he said. ‘You go and find Teresa.’
‘Where is she?’
‘The last I saw of her, she was heading for the dining room.’
‘Are you sure?’ asked Carter, remembering what Wilby had said about doing whatever it took to find out who Garlinsky really was. ‘You might need some help.’
‘That time may come,’ said Dasch, ‘but it will not be tonight. Just make sure Teresa is doing all right.’
Before Carter could ask what he meant by that, Dasch began walking towards the office, where the guard had brought Garlinsky. Already the lights had been turned on, and there was the crunching sound of footsteps treading cautiously on broken glass.
Carter found his way to the dining room, a flimsily built structure connected to the office by a narrow corridor. The room was lit by bulbs in dusty metal shades, whose conical shapes threw spreading pools of light upon two long wooden tables at which the workers could sit and eat their lunches. A sink for washing dishes stood in the corner, with drawers on either side of it and, on a shelf above it, a stack of enamelled cups and plates, the rims all chipped and rusty.
On the walls hung tattered posters advertising tourism in the Rhineland. They all seemed to date from before the war. In one, taken from high ground far above the river, the Remagen bridge spanned the murky water, flanked at either end by grey stone towers. Nothing remained of it now but those two towers, the bridge itself having been wrecked by the Germans themselves in 1945 as they attempted, unsuccessfully, to stop American forces from crossing the river. In other posters, their colours faded like the ribbons on cemetery wreaths, girls in the feathered hats and white-aproned dresses of traditional Rhineland costume clutched bouquets of flowers and smiled into the sun.
At the end of one of the tables sat Teresa. With one hand, she held a bundled dish towel to the side of her head. With the other, she covered her eyes, shielding them from the light bulb glowing just above her head.
‘Too much champagne?’ asked Carter.
As soon as she heard his voice, Teresa straightened up and scowled at him. ‘What do you want?’ she demanded.