“Aunt Betty’s birthday party!” Ulanov said, with a grin, and ordered another beer. He and Sergeant Wolper were having dinner at the Panorama restaurant on the thirty-seventh floor of the Stadt Berlin Hotel. Below them, spread out on both sides of a barbed-wire-topped wall that fortunately was hidden in the night, the lights of the city spread to the horizon. The sergeant had informed the barman at Colonel Müeller’s club that any call from the colonel should be relayed here. In the meantime the two men were enjoying a pleasant meal, with the sergeant making up for his forced abstinence during the day.
The sergeant put down his stein of beer and wiped foam from his lips. “Aunt Betty’s birthday party?” he asked, mystified.
“To advise his control he stepped into dung,” Ulanov said. “We use Uncle Vanya’s fiftieth wedding anniversary, ourselves.” For a moment he thought of asking the sergeant what the East German security forces used, but felt it would be better to ask the question of Colonel Müeller, if the question had to be asked at all. He also felt that German beer was stronger than Russian beer, and yawned at the very thought.
The reply did not seem to satisfy the sergeant’s curiosity, but before he could delve into the question more deeply, the head waiter was at his elbow with a telephone. The sergeant verified the source of the call and handed the instrument across the table. Ulanov took it, watching the waiter place their meal upon the table as he did so.
“Ulanov here.”
“Major? Colonel Müeller. We’re in Rostock, up near the Baltic. Kovpak and the girl are staying at the Warnow Hotel. So am I. I’m fairly certain they’re settled here for the night. They put their car in the hotel garage, and I have my driver in my car in the same garage, so they won’t go anywhere without my knowing it.”
The effects of the beer, of the beers, instantly disappeared. “They went directly to Rostock?”
“No. As you surmised, they went to Bad Freienwalde, but they didn’t even get out of the car. They sat across the street from the railroad station for about five minutes, consulting a road map, then they turned around and started back the way they had come. They went back on Route 167, across E-74 to E-6, took E-6 north to Neubrandenburg, and then took the road directly to Rostock.”
“One second.” Ulanov cupped the receiver and looked at Sergeant Wolper. “How far is Rostock from here?”
“About a three-hour drive.” The sergeant consulted his watch and looked at the lovely meal on the table with regret. He had a feeling he would never get to enjoy it. “If we leave now, we could be there by midnight.”
“Thanks.” Ulanov went back to the telephone. “Book me a room at the same hotel, and get me the room numbers of both Kovpak and the girl. If they have separate rooms, that is—”
“They do.”
So at least nothing had been consummated as yet, Ulanov thought with a wry smile. Poor Gregor! He wiped the smile from his face. “We’ll be there by one.” He disregarded the gleam of joy that suddenly lit Wolper’s eye; he also was hungry. “Sergeant Wolper and your driver can spell each other keeping an eye on Kovpak’s car.”
“Right,” Müeller said. “But I wasn’t finished.”
Ulanov looked at his meal, getting cold while he spoke on the telephone, while his beer got warm. He shrugged fatalistically. “You weren’t? Then go on.” He leaned back and lit a cigarette. If he couldn’t eat at least he could smoke.
“When the two of them got to Rostock,” the colonel said in his best reportorial manner, “they stopped at the hotel and checked in. Then they got back in their car and drove off. I was wondering where they might possibly be going in Rostock on a Sunday evening — believe me, if you think Berlin is dead on a Sunday, you should see Rostock! Not even a beer hall—” He seemed to realize he was wandering and came back to his story. “Anyway, they drove to Warnemünde—”
“How far is that?”
“Not very far. Maybe eight miles, along the estuary, to the Baltic.”
“I see. And exactly what did they do when they got there?”
Colonel Franz Müeller’s voice became slightly hesitant, as if he was not quite sure how to explain the strange actions of the two.
“Well, Major,” he said slowly, “that is what is so curious. They drove along the docks, slowly, nothing special, and then stopped and got out of the car and just stood there, facing the sea and staring about them. They actually seemed to be just two more tourists, enjoying the view of the water. And then—”
“Then?”
“Then,” the colonel said, and it was obvious from his tone that he did not understand it, “then what they did was to burst into laughter. Yes, they laughed like idiots. And there wasn’t anything I could see to laugh at, at least not to my eye.”
“And then?”
“Then they got back into the car, still laughing, and drove back to the hotel where they are at the moment, eating dinner in the restaurant.”
Which is what he wished he were doing, Ulanov thought. “You say they laughed? Just that?” Ulanov asked, now as perplexed as the colonel.
“Just that. Like maniacs,” Müeller said, happy not to be alone in his mystification. “Like loons...”
And what was so comical in Warnemünde? Ulanov asked himself as he put down the telephone, crushed out his cigarette, and attacked his meal. He thought about it a moment and then desisted. That would be for tomorrow. Tonight was to enjoy a meal, even if slightly cold.
Chapter Eighteen
Rostock — July
Across the street from the Warnow Hotel a circus was playing on the small dock that fronted the estuary. It was the only activity that seemed to be open that Sunday, and its colorful banners and cheerfully painted charabancs were a lure to the Russian in Gregor. He thought it might be fun to see, to compare with the circuses he had been raised on in Russia. Ruth McVeigh did not. While it pleased her that her Gregor — for she had come to think of him as “her” Gregor, at least for as long as she could keep him with her — while being a noted scientist could still retain traits of childishness, which gave her a slight feeling of control which was welcome, at the same time she had the feeling that if she didn’t come up with at least something in some way related to the Schliemann treasure and their search for it, that her Gregor might decide that enough was enough and return to Leningrad and the Hermitage. It was a frightening, almost a sickening thought, and one that added a slight touch of emergency to her voice.
“We didn’t come here to see circuses,” she said, and tried not to sound like a mother lecturing a child. “It stays light until ten at night here this time of year, and Warnemünde is only a few miles away. Let’s go.”
“If that’s what you want,” Gregor said, and shrugged. He had parked the car before the Warnow while they had registered, turned over their passports, and carried their own bags to their respective rooms in the standard procedure of East Germany. Now, reassembled in the hotel lobby, they had been discussing their plans. Gregor didn’t really care whether they went to the circus or not, as long as Ruth was with him. His fear was simply that the sooner they got to Warnemünde the sooner Ruth would realize her quest was not only quixotic but futile, and the sooner she would go back to New York and the Metropolitan. It was a disturbing thought, as disturbing as the realization that she wanted to end their trip as soon as possible. He had thought she was enjoying herself with him.
They got back into the car and started off along the road that curved through the town over tram tracks set in cobblestones to come out on a macadamed road along the south side of the estuary leading to Warnemünde and the Baltic Sea. Ruth McVeigh leaned back and closed her eyes, trying to picture exactly the kind of dock they would have to look for, a small dock with small fishing boats, the sort of dock Petterssen and his unknown accomplice would have had to sail from. In her mind the picture became a sort of Winslow Homer scene, with weather-beaten wrinkled sailors sitting around a dilapidated dock in sou’westers, scratching their chin whiskers, and puffing on their pipes, with nets drying against the weathered shacks and a few small boats rising and falling slowly at dockside, their sails furled, awaiting Monday and the time to go back to the sea and to their fishing. Warnemünde had to have several docks like that, she told herself. It was a small town and would be sure to have more than one. And she knew she would recognize the right one when she saw it. And those ancient mariners sitting around and smoking, possibly — no, surely — one of them would remember something that would be useful to her in her search, even though it had all happened so many years before. Sailors were known for their long memories...