That line was well whitened or double-yellowed. It would not have been tolerated for a police undercover, for any SCD10 man or woman, to step so far out of legality. He had not carried a firearm since his army days, and the anniversary was coming up soon — next month — the fifth, since the improvised explosive device, the bastard IED, had been detonated alongside his wheels. But Johnny Carrick was crossing many lines, all the colours of the rainbow: he liked the man.
‘Maybe he will buy you, Johnny.’ It was said with a hint of humour, but that was bogus.
‘I didn’t know I’d been put up for sale, Mr Goldmann.’
Now sadness in the voice, as if something precious had been lost. ‘He can buy what he wants, Johnny, anything.’
‘Yes, Mr Goldmann.’
‘You know what is worst about being with him, Johnny?’
‘I don’t I’m afraid, Mr Goldmann.’
‘What is worst is that you get to sleep too often in motor-cars. I cannot abide to sleep in a car. Because of him I have to. A bed is nothing to him. Johnny, do I smell?’
He sniffed loudly. ‘Can’t smell anything, Mr Goldmann.’
There was a snort, disbelief. They had pulled off the main road, before the city of Lublin, and had gone on to the concrete track that led to a farm. That was the place for sleeping, and the car seats made the beds. The smell of three bodies, Reuven Weissberg’s, Mikhail’s and Carrick’s, had been foul, and his throat had been raw and … He had thought that if they were avoiding a hotel reception desk then the business must be close. They were parked in a side-street off the town’s main square. It sloped away, was newly cobbled, a picture-postcard view of the town of Chelm. The square had a sign up that announced a European cash grant for modernization and reconstruction, and boutique-type shops lined its sides. When Reuven Weissberg had walked out into the centre of the square, Carrick had gone to follow but there had been a sharp whistle from Mikhail. When he had turned he had been waved back. So, Reuven Weissberg who did business, who fought for his survival, who was the target of an operation mounted by the Secret Intelligence Service, had space and was alone.
Carrick stood with Josef Goldmann.
‘Do you know why we are here, Johnny, in this shit-hole of a town?’
‘I don’t, Mr Goldmann … but I don’t need to be told.’
‘This is Chelm. It is where his grandmother would have come as a girl, as a child. This square was here then. The Jews were one in three of the population. The town had their culture stamped over it. His grandmother, Anna, would have been brought by her parents to Chelm for special days, like a birthday. He tries to live his grandmother’s life, Johnny. Do you understand that, why he does it?’
He could have answered, ‘Because of the loneliness.’ He shook his head. In front of him, Reuven Weissberg walked towards a little wood-built shed, in which a hatch was open. Inside, past a woman’s shoulder, he could see shelves of sweets, chocolates, gum. The shed was on a wide plinth of neatly set cobbles.
‘There was a similar kiosk shop there when his grandmother was a child. When she was brought to Chelm, on any day of celebration, and wearing her best clothes, her father would have bought a newspaper there, printed in Yiddish or Polish, I don’t know, and some sweets for his children. There is little now that remains of the Jewish past in Chelm … this kiosk, a cemetery — the cemetery has been cleaned, but now it is a place for addicts. He had two fears, Johnny, and I do not know which is the greater. One fear is that he should die, be killed, gunned down on a street, and that his grandmother is left to live her last years, or months, solitary, forgotten and without a carer. The other fear is for the day when she passes on, now she is in her eighty-fifth year, and who then is left for him to love and talk with? There are great fears in his life.’
Carrick watched the man’s back, thought of the old woman marooned in the apartment in Berlin, high above the pulse of the streets, and he saw Reuven Weissberg go on across the square, leaving the kiosk behind him, then pause at the top of a side-street that ran down a steep hill. The man whose fears were now identified to Carrick gazed at a building. Carrick followed the eyeline and saw a big sign on it: McKenzee Saloon. It had once been, he thought, a fine building.
‘His grandmother would have been there on those celebration days, when she was a child. It was the synagogue, the holy place, the place of worship, learning and culture. She was there … For many years it was a bank. Now it is a bar. She is the past. Everything about him is controlled by the past, his grandmother’s. Be careful of him, Johnny. As his grandmother controls him, so he controls men. I tell you, be careful of him. I think, Johnny, you are too honest a person and would not welcome the contamination of poison. He has poison fed to him by his grandmother. Believe in me.’
Reuven Weissberg was still at the top of the narrow street. A window cleaner now worked at the first-floor windows of the McKenzee Saloon. Carrick had the picture in his mind, the woman who was young and held the baby, a weapon slung loosely on her shoulder, and had brilliant white hair.
‘Has he told you about fighting, Johnny, fighting against the world? He will. He can recite stories of suffering, agonies and fighting. He knows them, is perfect in each word of them. They were taught him by his grandmother, from the time he sat on her knee to today. She has fashioned him. He is her creature. He likes best the story of when she fought. Stay with him and you will hear it.’
I did not know where he was. All through the day I looked for Samuel, but I could not see him.
I had done what I had been told to. I had dressed as warmly as was possible in the clothes I owned. I had no shame, no guilt, but I took a jersey from a woman in our barracks who was sick. I stole it. I didn’t think she would need it because she wasn’t strong enough to go out of the camp. Later, as the days became shorter and the nights colder, she would have needed it, but I thought only of that day and the coming night. I was able to ‘borrow’ a pair of boots. I told another woman, who worked in the section that converted the clothes of the dead into clothes that could be sent to Germany for those put out in the streets by the bombing, that I wanted her boots for the day and would return them in the morning. They were good boots with strong soles, and I told her I would do a shift for her in return for what she ‘loaned’ me. At first light I was ready. I wore the jersey and the boots. At breakfast, I begged for a third slice of black bread and was given it.
All through the day I was ready, but I didn’t see Samuel.
The morning passed so slowly. Because I knew, had been trusted, I sensed an atmosphere. I wouldn’t have recognized the changed mood among a few of the men. Where was Samuel? I never saw him through all the hours of the morning, or when the detail came back from working in the forest. It doesn’t matter where he was, but it was agony to me that I hadn’t seen him. I didn’t know how it would happen, or when.
It rained that day.
The darkness came early.
The lights were on above the fences and the rain made jewels of the barbs in the wire. Above the fences and lights were the watchtowers. On each of the watchtowers, with the Ukrainians, were machine-guns. I saw everything … I saw the height of the fences, the brightness of the lights and the size of the machine-guns, I saw the guards and the swagger of the Germans. I couldn’t imagine how it was possible that we — starved, exhausted, weak — could defeat them. I think I was losing faith … Then I saw Samuel.