‘Yes,’ Viktor said.
‘What was done in the past, you understand that?’
‘Yes.’
‘Because of the past, I buy and sell … Will we hear from the old men again?’
‘We heard that they’d started out, and that’s enough. There’s something I wish to ask of you.’
Weissberg listened. He recalled what his grandmother had said, and heard the boasts of Josef Goldmann on the pedigree of a bodyguard. Reuven Weissberg accepted the advice offered him. Then he caught Viktor’s arm, held it vice-tight and whispered that it would be the last time Johnny Carrick was tested.
She recognized quality, and she thought the guy was good. First up, he didn’t mess with the puerile codenames, so she was no longer C for Charlie, and he was no longer D for Delta. All explained for her with a grin, and it had made her chuckle. G was not for Golf, the call sign, but was for the sour old fool’s insistence on the ‘Good Old Days’, and D was for Disciple: the poor creature trailing around after the lunatic.
They were at the door. He rang the bell.
Dinner was at the café on Hardenbergerstrasse, and Luke Davies had imitated Lawson ordering dinner the previous evening, not showing the menu but insisting he do it himself, speaking German with the English accent that destroyed it, and selecting the wine as if he alone knew his way round the list. She’d sat where Lawson had. Same chair that the man had used perhaps twenty or thirty years before. Luke Davies, she thought, had been good company, and fun, and she was short enough of that.
He pressed the bell three times, long rings.
He had taken her back to the little pension in the side-street, had booked himself again into the room he’d vacated in the evening, and her into what had been Lawson’s room. He’d ordered the nightcap in the bar downstairs, and talked of his work — not the classified stuff — and she’d warmed and told him about what little amusement came out of the Pimlico office. She’d sensed it was an age, if ever, since he’d talked of his work with an outsider to VBX: she’d known it was the first time she’d spoken as an insider of SCD10 to someone outside the loop. They’d gone up the stairs and paused by their doors. He’d smiled at her and she at him, he’d wished her a good night’s sleep and they’d parted. Maybe it was because of the wish, but she’d slept well, right through till he’d banged on her door … What they hadn’t talked about, because there’d have been no fun and no laughter, was N for November. Truth to tell, once he’d been called to the Audi and away from Target One, and Lawson had changed his bloody mind, given new instructions, she hadn’t thought of Johnny Carrick, which might have been selling him short.
A sharp, reedy voice answered the bell, distorted by the connection to the grilled speaker.
Katie had confirmation of the quality of Luke Davies. Damn good German, and what she thought was bloody good Russian. Not rushing an old woman high in the building above them.
She knew what he’d said because he had rehearsed it with her.
He was a student, Jewish. She was a student, not Jewish. He was involved in Holocaust studies and she was working on contemporary Russian history. Frau Weissberg had been recommended as a prime source for the era covered by the Second World War. How did they know the address? Because they had been given it by Esther Goldmann, wife of Josef. Had Josef Goldmann, who, his wife had said, was in Berlin, not told her of their visit? Esther Goldmann had said Frau Weissberg had a history of suffering, heroic courage. Students would be privileged to hear her speak of the past. A whistle of breath, then the click of the outer door unlocking.
When he had rehearsed it with her, Katie had said, ‘How do you know she’s affected by the Holocaust?’
‘In a forest, in fatigues, holding a baby. Photograph in the kitchen. Partisans in the forest. That’s “affected” … Next?’
‘What about “suffering” and “heroic courage”, are they guaranteed?’
‘In the forest with a baby, with partisans, her hair white at twenty, twenty-one. They fit.’
‘She calls Josef Goldmann, wherever he is, on a mobile. Checks you.’
‘Doesn’t. Knows mobiles are tracked. Basic security, mobile off.’
Katie had said, ‘So, she calls Esther Goldmann for verification.’
‘Then we blow out, but she won’t have done. I’d bet on it.’
She’d pulled a face. ‘On your head be it.’
He’d blinked. ‘Wrong. On Carrick’s head.’
And the lift rose smoothly and fast.
He said, ‘Don’t forget the old bathroom routine, and getting her to show you. Lead, and look harmless.’
She was undercover-trained. Had done the same courses as Johnny Carrick and heard the same lectures. Her major experience was as a girl trying to break into the gang doing a street opposite King’s Cross station, and having to leg it each time the pimps, Ukrainian and Albanian, came after her. She brought them out and was the bait for them to break cover. The camera in the parked van did the identification, and she’d played the part of the girlfriend on three different operations. She knew what she had to do, but seemed not to mind being told.
It was always bullshit.
Bullshit opened doors.
Katie could do that smile, the one about melting butter, and do it well, and Luke Davies was good. She didn’t know what he said in the shadowed gloom of the hall, as they were taken through to the kitchen. She was doing smiles and he was doing sincerity, and it was bluff and it was bullshit. A pot of tea was made, and poured before it had stood. It was thin and tasted stewed. Katie kept smiling, and Luke was nodding, as if what he was being told was a message from God. The old woman, Anna Weissberg, made short, staccato statements that were, Katie thought, bare of redundant explanation. Maybe it was five minutes before the tea was poured, and maybe five more before the mugs had been pushed towards them.
Katie understood. She saw the increasing agitation of the grandmother of Reuven Weissberg. Too right, my old girl, because it was a piss-poor decision to let in soft-talkers off the street, with an introduction that couldn’t be checked. Fidgeting and fretting, answers drifting to brevity, then to one word. She was at the door, and holding it open for them. Katie did her stuff. The toilet, please. Could she use the toilet? Always worked … and couldn’t find the switch for the light, and was shown it. She stood inside the toilet, heard the slippered feet shuffle away — wondered if Anna Weissberg had any clothes other than black or whether she mourned perpetually — counted to fifty, pulled the flush and came back into the hall.
In English, Luke said to her, ‘I am afraid that Esther Goldmann was presumptuous in offering us this introduction. Anna Weissberg was in a camp, was freed from it and lived in the forests with partisans. Her grandson’s father was born in the forests. It was a time of great strain that she doesn’t feel happy talking about. It would have been better if we’d waited till her grandson was at home. That’s what she’s saying.’
‘Please would you thank Mrs Weissberg for her kindness, Luke, and for the tea and for letting us into her home, and say we hope we haven’t disturbed her and woken bad memories. For that, if we did, we apologize.’
It was translated.
The welcome had been outstayed. Katie recognized the discomfort they had visited on the woman. The brilliant bullshit had wormed them in but couldn’t keep them there. She sensed a loneliness into which they had intruded, and an isolation that had been fractured, and thought the woman would regret, damn deep, permitting them to enter.
The door closed behind them. They heard a key turn in the lock and a bolt go across, but they had broken into a fortress and lies had done the Trojan Horse for them.