The Good Thief's Guide to Berlin (35 page)

I decided now really wasn’t the time to blab about how Freddy had let most of the information slip out in his telephone conversations with his brother.

“But that still doesn’t explain
why
I was hired.” I looked at Stirling. “Or why you stole Buster’s cage in the first place.”

“My name is Buster. Buster says hello.”

“Hey,” Victoria said, smiling wanly at Buster. “You’re talking again.”

“Buster says hello.”
He ruffled his bedraggled wings, showering himself in a watery haze.

“What a relief,” I mumbled.

“Wanna sing a song?”
Buster asked, bobbing his head up and down.

“NO! No bloody song. And no bloody counting!”

Buster uttered a fractured chirp and fell silent again.

The silence was really quite noticeable.

And for some reason, everyone appeared to be staring at me.

I coughed. I shifted my weight in my seat. I motioned for Stirling to continue. “You were going to tell us about the cage, I believe?”

Stirling looked quizzically between myself and Buster, as if he couldn’t quite understand my outburst. Then he finally picked up the thread again.

“I stole the cage because I was listening outside Donald’s office last week and I noticed that he was repeating a sequence of numbers over and over until the bird began to recite it. I’d already contacted a trusted colleague in London by then. Jane had been assigned to discreetly investigate my suspicions about the ambassador’s conduct and she’d been able to obtain the first pages of code from a locked drawer in Donald’s desk. But once she deciphered the code, she discovered that the pages were incomplete. She’d been unable to find the rest, even though she’d searched his office, his car, his home.”

Stirling paused, as if only just remembering that the woman he was talking about was now dead. He cleared his throat.

“After I heard him repeating the sequence, it aroused my suspicions,” he went on. “Jane had told me that she was thinking of confronting Donald, but I decided it was best to take matters into my own hands and claim Buster for myself until the picture became clearer.”

“Wait,” Victoria said. “Are you saying Jane was killed by the ambassador because she challenged him about the code?”

“In a word.”

“And you didn’t know any of this?” she asked Freddy.

“Well, you’ll remember I was suspicious of Andrew, here,” Freddy said, hurriedly. “That I’d seen him loitering around the ambassador’s office and that he’d been querying my role for the ambassador in a way that I felt was … troubling.”

“Truth was,” Stirling told him, “I feared you might be in on it, too.”

“Understandable,” Freddy replied, in something of a rush. “And so it’s no surprise that Andrew and Jane were keeping their suspicions to themselves. They couldn’t risk alerting the ambassador or any of his staff.”

“But I imagine he knew something was up,” I put in.

Freddy nodded. “He would have known the moment the first four pages of code went missing. As soon as Jane took them, he would have been alert to the idea that
someone
was on to him. But he’d been cautious enough to remove the final, crucial page of information, so it wasn’t altogether fatal for him. Plus, he’d made Buster memorize the numerical sequence that pinpointed the data drop. I’m not entirely sure that was intentional, by the way. Perhaps he was just reciting it to himself, so that he could remember it without a written prompt, and Buster happened to pick up on it. But either way, it became a problem for him when Buster went missing, too. Suddenly, someone might have free access to the data Donald had been trying to sell. And in hindsight, one can see why he was so keen on having me arrange quite such an unconventional solution by hiring you, Charlie.”

“Because he was the guy in the wrong. Not any of the supposed thieves you wanted me to finger.”

“Quite.”

“Huh.” I drummed my fingers on my chin. “So what brought you both to the listening station this morning? How did you know we were there?”

“We didn’t,” Stirling said. “We were following Donald. Once I got home last night to find that Buster had been stolen—along, I might add, with a broken lamp, a ruined bathroom door, and a bullet-riddled elevator carriage—I decided it was finally time for me to inform somebody else about what had been happening. I’d been unable to hail Jane—for obvious reasons, as we now know—so I took a chance on Freddy and we pooled information. We were both concerned by Jane’s disappearance and we determined to keep an eye on Donald together. This morning we watched him leave his home early and make his way to the listening station. He must have decided it was finally time to take a risk and retrieve the list before somebody beat him to it. We tracked him there.”

“Oh, you did, huh?”

“That’s right.”

“And now the list is gone,” I said. “And the ambassador is dead, along with Jane. And you have a nasty scandal on your hands.”

Stirling did his best to maintain an even tone. “Only if you wish to make it so.”

“You can’t excuse him from murder,” I said. “He killed in cold blood. He was a traitor to his country.”

“Technically, no.” Stirling shook his head. “He never passed on the list. It
might
even be argued that he arrived at the listening post to safeguard it. To deliver it into British hands.”

“And is that what’s going to be argued?”

“Well,” Freddy said, a little shamefaced, “that rather depends on you.”

I turned to Victoria. She was studying me intensely. I glanced away toward one of the silly airplane models on Freddy’s shelves. It was a Spitfire. A symbol of a different time. An age of honor and moral fortitude and courage. Not the world I was living in today.

“How would you deal with Jane’s murder?” I heard myself ask.

“Charlie, no,” Victoria hissed. She reached out and clenched my thigh, digging her nails into my flesh. “We mustn’t.”

I held up my hand. Fixed my gaze on Stirling.

“How?” I asked him.

“So far as the German police are concerned, it would be unexplained. An unsolved murder.”

“Did she have family?”

“Her parents. A sister.”

“What would they be told?”

“They’d know she died in the service of her country. I’d make sure of that personally.”

I let go of a long breath. I could feel myself shaking. Victoria’s nails were clamped to my thigh like talons.

“Don’t forget,” Stirling said, “you’ve drawn a great deal of attention to yourselves. You’ve aggravated powerful people. The Russians and the Americans, Freddy tells me.”

“The French, too,” Freddy said.

“These are not the type of people you want as enemies, young man. Least of all if you’re on your own.”

“Oh, I get it. Like that, is it?” I felt Victoria’s grip tighten one last fraction. I reached across and took her hand. I squeezed it, then returned it to her, abandoning myself to what I was about to do. “So I guess we can trade,” I said. “We’d need safe passage out of Berlin. We’d need assurances that we’d be protected from anyone with an interest in this list, and from anyone who might try to compel us to give evidence against the ambassador. And it goes without saying that I expect to be paid. The remainder of the fee I agreed with Freddy. Plus the bonus.”

“I won’t stand for this,” Victoria muttered.

I fixed on Stirling. “Fulfill your side of the bargain and you can rely on us.”

“Not me,” Victoria said, shaking her head.

But I knew otherwise. I knew that she would endure it if I asked her to. I knew I could convince her that our safety depended on it, that sometimes imperfect solutions were the best we could hope for.

But I also knew that it would cost me. Maybe more than I could stand.

FORTY-THREE

“I don’t know how you intend to live with yourself,” Victoria snapped, as we were driven away from the embassy gates. “I’m really not sure that I can.”

She was wearing a fresh set of clothes that one of Freddy’s assistants had run out to buy her—dark jeans, a fawn sweater, and a pair of flat shoes—and she was sitting about as far away from me as it was possible to get in the rear of an unwashed Volkswagen Golf. The Golf had been my request. I wanted something ordinary that would draw as little attention as possible. Plus, I’d just about had my fill of blacked-out town cars.

The man who was driving us didn’t appear to be interested in our conversation. I was pretty sure that was an act. He looked squared away and professional. He was wearing a cheap gray suit that bulged menacingly at the hip, and a flesh-colored wire that coiled out from beneath the collar of his shirt to connect with a radio earpiece. I only hoped he was a lot more competent than the men I’d managed to fool at the embassy entrance the previous morning.

“We didn’t have a choice,” I told Victoria. “Remember that.”

“Oh, we had a choice. It was a difficult one. No question. But we could have made it.”

“And what if we had? We’d have been on our own right now. I wasn’t prepared to risk anything happening to you.”

“It wasn’t
your
risk to take. We should have discussed it, at least. Think of that poor woman, Charlie. What does her death mean now?”

“I did it for you, Vic.”

She closed her eyes. Shook her head. “Don’t,” she said, in a hoarse whisper. “I can’t bear it.”

“And London? Do you still want me to come?”

“Do as you like,” she whispered. “Face it. You always have.”

I propped my head against the window glass and watched the wet, gray streets of Mitte glide by outside. This wasn’t how I’d imagined my time in Berlin would come to a close. This wasn’t how I wanted things to be with Victoria. In the past, I’d always escaped from my scrapes a winner. I’d emerged with a flourish and a joke. But sometimes, I guessed, things just weren’t destined to conclude that way, and perhaps this was the fate I’d always been doomed to accept.

Victoria had been sucked into my world, and now it had chewed her up and spit her back out again. Perhaps I’d been kidding myself all these years. Maybe it just wasn’t possible to be a friendly, harmless criminal. Maybe there was no such thing as a good thief. It could just be that I was as morally corrupt as the next crook, and chances were I was losing Victoria because of it.

My toe nudged Buster’s cage down in the foot well, but Buster didn’t stir. I’d covered his cage with the blanket Freddy had given me, and I guessed he was catching up on some sleep.

Our driver cleared his throat. “Approaching your first stop,” he said. “You sure your man will be here?”

I clutched tightly to the phone Gert had equipped me with. “No reason to think otherwise.”

“I’ll allow you five minutes. Then I expect you back inside this car. Or I’m coming to get you. Understand?”

I didn’t bother with a response. The driver pulled over to the curb, just along from a fancy hotel and a gaudy cocktail bar, and I lifted Buster’s cage onto my lap, blanket still in place.

“Say good-bye to him for me,” Victoria said, in a hollow voice.

I nodded. I wasn’t sure if she meant Buster or Gert, but I didn’t hang around to find out. I waited for a gap in the traffic, then turned up my collar against the steadily falling rain, cradled the cage against my chest, and hurried across the street toward the grand open space of the Gendarmenmarkt.

The vast grid of gray cobbles and flagstones were slick and greasy from the rain. Ahead of me was Schinkel’s grand Konzerthaus, flanked on either side by the domed churches of the Deutscher Dom and the Französischer Dom, both so similar in scale and design that I could have believed that a giant mirror was all that separated them.

I dodged pedestrians and tourists, heading for a lone tree that was half stripped of autumn leaves, its blackened limbs stiff as iron against the ashen sky. Like most trees in the city, it was branded with a numbered plaque. Bureaucracy gone mad, you might think. But this particular tree just happened to be number one, and it made for a meeting point that avoided confusion.

Gert was standing close by, sheltering beneath a large blue umbrella that featured the slogan of a major German bank. I ducked down and joined him, listening to the spit of rain on canvas, standing on a soft mulch of fallen leaves.

“You came,” I said, and clasped his spindly hand.

“
Ja.
You told me it was urgent.”

I slapped him on the back. I felt a great swell of affection for the guy. Sure, he was a kook. Yes, he would benefit from a decent haircut and a set of clothes that fit him properly. But staring up at his gaunt, bearded face and into his guileless eyes, I couldn’t help but grin.

“Gert, I’m leaving Berlin,” I told him. “Right away. But I wanted to thank you for all your help. And I need to ask you one last favor.”

I whipped the blanket away from Buster’s cage. Buster was still a little docile, but the moment he saw Gert, he got excited very fast. He spread his wings wide. He elongated his neck and hopped from one foot to the other, shuffling along his perch in a nifty little jig.

“Buster says hello. HeLLO! Buster says hello.”

Gert beamed with amusement and wiggled a finger through the bars of Buster’s cage.

“Hello, my friend.”

“Will you care for him?” I asked. “Permanently?”

Gert stared up at me. He blinked his fair lashes.

“The ambassador is dead,” I said. “He killed himself. And I’d rather Buster stayed with someone he likes. Someone who could maybe use a little company.”

Gert blinked some more. He lowered his face to the cage. He didn’t speak for a few moments. But then, he didn’t need to. Buster did it for him.

“Buster says hello. Wanna sing a song? Buster says hello.”

“For sure,” Gert said, nodding abruptly and taking the cage from me. “I can do this.”

“Great.” I reached a hand inside my coat and removed the padded white envelope stuffed with cash that Freddy had given me back in his office. It was the remainder of my fee. Every last euro of it. “He’ll need some things,” I said. “Toys. Treats. This should keep him in bird seed for quite a while.”