"I am not American," she retorted, now nearly in tears. "My name is Imogen Baastrup, I'm from South Africa, and I'm bringing Professor Minkel's briefcase to him. He lost it. Would you kindly give him this immediately, because I'm sure he's desperate for it. Please!"
The door opened wide enough to reveal the rest of him: a pudgy, mayoral-looking man of sixty or more in a black suit. He was very pale, and to Charlie's secret eye he was very frightened too.
"Sir. Do you speak English, please? Do you?"
Not only did he speak it, he had sworn oaths in it. For he said "I do" so solemnly that there would be no going back on it for the rest of his life.
"Then will you please give this to Professor Minkel with Imogen Baastrup's compliments and tell him she's sorry, the hotel made a stupid muddle, and I'm greatly looking forward to hearing him tonight-
She held out the briefcase but the mayoral man refused to take it. He looked at the policeman behind her, and seemed to receive some faint reassurance from him; he looked at the briefcase again, and then at Charlie.
"Come this way," he said, like a stage butler earning his ten quid a night, and stood aside to admit her.
She was appalled. This wasn't in the script. Not in Khalil's or Helga's or anybody else's. What happened if Minkel unlocked it under her very eyes?"
"Oh I can't do that. I have to take my place in the auditorium. I haven't got my ticket yet! Please!"
But the mayoral man had his orders too, and he had his fears, for as she shoved the briefcase at him he leapt away from it as if it were on fire.
The door closed, they were in a corridor with lagged pipes running along the ceiling. Briefly they reminded her of the overhead pipes at the Olympic Village. Her reluctant escort walked ahead of her. She smelled oil and heard the repressed thunder of a furnace; she felt a wave of heat across her face and considered fainting or being sick. The handle of the briefcase was drawing blood, she could feel the warm slime of it trickling between her fingers.
They had reached a door marked "Vorstand." The mayor man tapped and called, "Oberhauser! Schnelll" As he did so, she looked desperately back and saw two fair boys in leather jackets in the corridor behind her. They carried machine guns. Christ Almighty, what is this? The door opened, Oberhauser stepped in first and stood quickly aside as if disowning her. She was in a movie set for Journey's End. Wings and rear stage were sandbagged, great bales of wadding lined the ceiling, held in place by chicken wire. Sandbag barriers made a zigzag walkway from the door. Centre stage stood a low coffee table with a tray of drinks. Beside it, in a low armchair, sat Minkel like a waxwork staring straight through her. Opposite him his wife, and next to him a tubby German woman with a fur stole whom Charlie took to be Oberhauser's wife.
So much for the talent, and crammed into the wings among the sandbags was the rest of the unit, in two distinct groups, their spokesmen shoulder to shoulder at the centre. The home side was led by Kurtz; to his left stood a randy, middle-aged man with a weak face, which was Charlie's swift dismissal of Alexis. Next to Alexis stood his wolf-boys, their hostile faces turned towards her. Facing them stood bits of the family she already knew, with strangers added, and the darkness of their Jewish features in contrast to their German counterparts was one of those images that would remain a tableau in her memory for as long as she lived. Kurtz the ringmaster had his finger to his lips, and his left wrist lifted for him to study his watch.
She started to say "Where is he?" and then, with a rush of joy, and anger, she saw him, apart from everyone as usual, the fraught and lonely producer on his first night. Coming swiftly to her, he placed himself a little to one side, leaving her a path to Minkel.
"Say your piece to him, Charlie," he instructed her quietly. "Say what you would say and ignore everyone who is not at the table"-and all she needed was the clack of the clapperboard in her face.
His hand came near to her own, she could feel the hairs touching her skin. She wanted to say "I love you-how are you?" But there were other lines to say, so she took a deep breath and said them instead, because that was, after all, the name of their relationship.
"Professor, a most terrible thing has happened," she began in a rush. "The stupid hotel people sent your briefcase to my room with my luggage, they saw me talking to you, I suppose, and there was my luggage and there was your luggage and somehow that crazy boy just took it into his dumb head that it was my case-" She turned to Joseph to tell him she'd run dry.
"Give the briefcase to the Professor," he ordered.
Minkel was standing up, looking wooden and far away in his mind, like a man receiving a long prison sentence. Mrs. Minkel was making a show of smiling. Charlie's knees were paralysed, but with Joseph's hand on her elbow, she managed to topple forward, holding the case out to him while she said some more lines.
"Only I didn't see it till half an hour ago, they'd shoved it in the cupboard there, and my dresses were all hanging down over it, then when I did see it and I read the label, I nearly had a-blue fit-"
Minkel would have accepted the briefcase, but no sooner did she offer it than other hands spirited it to a large black box lying on the floor with heavy cables snaking from it. Suddenly everyone seemed scared of her and was cowering behind the sandbags. Joseph's strong arms gathered her after them; his hand shoved her head down until she was looking at her own waist. But not before she had seen a deep-sea diver muffled in a heavy bomb suit wade towards the box. He wore a helmet with a thick glass visor, and under it a surgical mask to stop it fogging from inside. A muffled order commanded silence.
Joseph had drawn her to him and was half smothering her with his own body. Another order signalled a general relief; heads rose again, but still he held her down. She heard the sounds of feet departing in orderly haste, and when at last he released her, she saw Litvak hastening forward with what was evidently a bomb of his own, a more obvious affair than Khalil's, with trailing wires not yet connected. Joseph meanwhile was leading her firmly back to the centre of the room.
"Continue your explanations," he ordered in her ear. "You were describing how you read the label. Go on from there. What did you do?"
Take a deep breath. Speech continues.
"Then when I asked at reception they said you were out for the evening, you had this lecture down at the university; so I just hopped a cab and-I mean I don't know how you can forgive me. Look, I must fly. Good luck, Professor, have a great speech."
On a nod from Kurtz, Minkel had taken a key chain from his pocket and was pretending to select a key, even though he had no briefcase to play with. But Charlie, under Joseph's urgent guidance, was already making for the door, half walking, half carried by his arm round her waist.
I won't do it, Jose, I can't. I've spent my courage like you said. Don't let me go, Jose, don't. Behind her she heard muffled orders and the sounds of hasty footsteps as everyone seemed to beat a retreat.
"Two minutes," Kurtz called after them in warning.
They were back in the corridor with the two fair boys and their machine guns.
"Where did you meet him?" Joseph asked, in a low fast voice.
"A Hotel Eden. A sort of brothel on the edge of town. Next to a chemist. He's got a red Coke van, FR stroke BT something something 5. And a clapped-out Ford saloon. I didn't get the number."