The Good Thief's Guide to Berlin (36 page)

I tried to slip the envelope inside the heavy woolen jacket Gert had on, but he backed away from me, as if offended.

“Take it,” I told him. “You might not have noticed just yet, but I’m not in a position to return your car. I could tell you where it is, but I’d advise you not to try and reclaim it. There are a bunch of people who might be watching. And this will help you and Buster to find some new wheels.”

“But I did not buy this car, Charlie.”

“Oh, I know,” I said. “You collected it. But I can’t keep this money. It wouldn’t be right, for reasons I don’t have time to go into just now. And I’d very much like you to have it. Please.”

I turned the envelope on its side and fed it in through the bars in Buster’s cage, like I was posting a note through a letterbox. Then I slapped Gert on the arm and backed away from the cover of his umbrella, saluting him as I left.

“Good luck,” he called after me. “And please tell Victoria,
auf Wiedersehen
.”

“Buster says goodbye! Buster says goodbye!”

I laughed. “So long, Buster,” I yelled. “It was good meeting you both.”

My five minutes were almost up, but I wasn’t surprised to see that our chauffeur hadn’t left the warmth of the Volkswagen to come and fetch me. I dropped inside and was still closing my door as he shifted gears and accelerated away along the street.

“Gert sends his regards,” I told Victoria, as I settled into my seat. “Buster, too.”

She nodded and stared out her window, turning her back on me. We didn’t talk during the rest of the journey. I opened my mouth to start a new conversation a bunch of times, but nothing I could think to say seemed capable of healing the rift that had developed between us. We were so far apart in the back of that car we might as well have been sitting on opposite sides of the Berlin Wall.

Ten minutes later, our driver cleared his throat again. “We’re getting close,” he announced, and I gazed out through the windscreen to see that we were approaching the Kollwitzplatz. “It doesn’t look good. We have company. I see one guy already.”

I saw him, too. It was Henri. He was sitting on a bench behind the park railings, sheltering beneath a drooping tree, close to the table-tennis tables. He held a folded newspaper in one hand and a steaming takeaway cup in the other. A large wadded bandage covered his nose.

“Looks like the Americans are here, too,” Victoria said, her voice quickening. “Do you see their car?”

I saw it. It was parked off to the left, close to a sidewalk café and within sight of the front door of my building. There was no way to see inside through the tinted windows, but I was pretty confident the car was occupied.

“Then I think it’s safe to assume the Russians are also here.”

“We should abort,” the driver said, eyeing me in the rearview mirror.

But there was no way I was going to give up. I had some things I needed to collect. Belongings I couldn’t possibly leave behind.

“Turn here,” I said, pointing to a side road that headed off to the right. “Keep going.” He did as I instructed. Once we were a half mile or so away, I had him turn left and park. “Wait here for me,” I said, and cracked my door.

“This is a bad idea,” he told me. “I should take you to the airport.”

“Relax. Sneaking in places is what I do best. And breaking into my own home is about as easy as it gets.”

I stepped out onto the street. I had the car door in my hand and I was poised to swing it closed when I heard Victoria call my name. I ducked my head and looked in at her.

Her face was drawn, skin pinched. Her eyes were damp and fidgety. We’d known each other for years, but right now I didn’t have the faintest idea what she was thinking.

“Be careful,” she said, finally.

“Always.”

And then I did something that surprised us both. I dived inside and kissed her softly on the lips. I pulled away, raising my hand to her hair and cupping her neck. Then I backed out of the car, closed the door behind me, dug my hands in my coat pockets, and slinked off down the street, not daring to glance over my shoulder.

I didn’t think I was being followed. I didn’t think any of the people who were waiting for me to show up could be that fast to react. But I threw in a couple of wrong turns and loitered behind a few obstacles until I was certain I didn’t have anyone on my heels. Then I headed around to the narrow, abandoned alley that ran along the back of my building.

The ladder was still there, lying on the ground amid wet foliage and puddles and litter. I lifted it up and swung it around and propped it very gently below the ledge of my broken window. Then I started to climb, my movements slow and deliberate, the metal rungs slippery with muck and rain.

The ladder was unsteady. It was braced precariously on the slimy tarmac below. I could have done with somebody holding it for me, but I wasn’t about to return to the car and ask Victoria to volunteer.

I clung tight and climbed on, and eventually made it to my window. It was locked. I’d left it that way. I reached in through the broken pane and undid the catch and heaved up the bottom sash. Then I grabbed a handful of window ledge and squirmed my way inside, tumbling onto my bedroom floor headfirst.

My bedroom was in much more of a mess than I remembered. My bed had been stripped and pulled away from the wall. My drawers had been yanked out and their contents upended on the floor. My wardrobe had spewed clothes and shoes and suitcases onto the carpet.

It was the same in the hallway. The same in Victoria’s bedroom. The same in the bathroom.

Oh, and it was even worse in the kitchen. All my cupboards and drawers had been checked. All my food and household goods had been scooped out and opened up and emptied. The counters and the floor were a chaos of liquids and powders, packaging and stinking organic mush.

The entire apartment had been ransacked. The perpetrators had been in a frenzy and they hadn’t cared about being subtle or delicate. It seemed to me they had some rules of their own, and they were a lot more crass than the rules I tended to abide by.

I asked myself who the likeliest culprits were and I honestly couldn’t decide. It could have been any one of the people who’d been following me and searching for the final clue to the cash box full of data. It could have been other foreign agents who’d joined the hunt for the same thing. Hell, maybe they’d all trooped in one after the other, taking turns to wreak more havoc. It really didn’t matter. The oafish, stinking outcome wouldn’t change in the slightest.

I made my way toward my front door. It was listing badly to one side, hanging loosely from a single hinge. A splintered hole had been smashed right into the center of it. My three locks had been torn from the frame. It looked like the work of a battering ram or just possibly a badly scarred Russian.

The living room was just as sorry as everywhere else. The sofa had been toppled over. The cushions had been sliced and the stuffing removed. My desk had been ripped apart and left in broken pieces. My laptop appeared to have been swiped, along with my stalled novel. My writing notes had been flung across the room. My books had been riffled through and dropped haphazardly here and there.

I waded inside, keeping my distance from the windows, and it took me a good twenty minutes to find the first item I was looking for. It was sheltering beneath the upended sofa like a frightened animal. I went down on my hands and knees and scooped it out carefully.

It was my precious copy of
The Maltese Falcon
. The singed jacket had been bent backward along the middle, imprinting a crease that would be impossible to flatten out. The bottom corners of a number of pages had curled in on themselves and the spine was starting to split. A few flakes of burned paper adhered themselves to my greasy hands, like the book was slowly disintegrating.

It pained me to see it suffer even more damage, but the important thing was that I still had it. I flipped to the first full page and traced my fingertips over the scrawl of Dashiell Hammett’s signature. I clutched the book to my chest. I pushed up from my knees.

Then I went hunting for item number two. I kicked over books and sofa cushions with my feet. I rooted through the remains of my desk. I stood on a chair and turned in a circle, scanning the mess surrounding me. Finally, I spotted it, nestled in a far corner, glinting in the dreary gloom.

Victoria’s watch. The gift from her father. I climbed down and gripped it tight, checking that the face was still intact. It was unblemished. Not even a scratch. I flipped it over and read the inscription on the back.
To Sugar Plum, Love, Daddy.

Perfect.

I slipped the watch into my pocket. There was nothing else I required. Nothing urgent, in any case. So I turned on my heel, intending to return to my bedroom and the handily located ladder, only to find that my exit was blocked.

It wasn’t the Russians or the Americans or the French guy.

It was the German police. There were two of them, a man and a woman, stepping in through my busted front door and looking about them in surprise and bemusement. They were wearing blue uniforms with nametags on their chests and peaked caps on their heads.

I’d never seen the man before, but this wasn’t the first time I’d seen his companion. Officer Fuchs was the policewoman who’d stayed behind to follow up on my emergency call in the Tiergarten.

She started when she saw me, then reached instinctively for her belt. There were a lot of pouches and a bunch of equipment at her disposal. She looked to have a gun or a spray of some description. She also had a pair of handcuffs.

“Herr Howard?” she asked.

I thought about sprinting for my bedroom. I pictured myself barging my way past them and trying to escape. But the hallway was too confined. And there were two of them, and the guy was very large.

“Herr Howard?” she asked again. “Herr Charles Howard?”

I nodded. My mouth had gone dry. I was finding it tough to speak.

“We would like to talk with you, please.”

“About my break-in?” I asked, and gestured fitfully at the destruction that surrounded me.

“No,” she said, unclipping the buckle that held her handcuffs in place. “We wish to talk with you about some burglaries here in Berlin. You are a writer, yes? The people who were robbed work with books, too. They are publishers.”

Editors, she meant. And I knew just who she was talking about. Victoria had been right from the very start. I really had been an idiot.

I could hear a whistling in my ears. A buzz and a click when I swallowed.

“This is not a good time,” I said. “You can see that, right?”

Fuchs freed her handcuffs from her belt. She edged toward me, her burly colleague monitoring me closely from over her shoulder.

“We can arrange for somebody to come,” she said. “They will secure your home.”

“Look, I really don’t know what this has to do with me. You’ve made a mistake. Maybe the person who broke in here is also responsible for these burglaries you mention.”

She took another step forward. “It is no mistake. We are here to arrest you. There was a witness. We have a description. And footage from a security camera. One of the publishers recognized you.”

I took a step back. My heels became entangled in something. I was in danger of falling, but she grabbed my hand by the wrist and slipped a cuff onto me. Then she twirled me around, yanked both arms behind me, and secured my second wrist.

She freed Hammett’s book from my grip. Went to toss it onto the floor.

“Wait,” I said. “Not that. I need it. It’s important to me.”

She shrugged and dropped it onto the floor regardless, grabbing a fistful of my collar and jolting me toward her colleague.

Her partner seized me by the elbow and manhandled me out through my broken door and down the stairs. The Russians were lurking in the entrance to my building. Vladislav was sitting on a radiator, smoothing his fingers over his scarred face and stubbled cheek. Pavel was leaning against the tiled wall, his hands behind his back, as if mimicking my predicament. Vladislav smirked as I passed him. His boss offered no reaction at all.

The marked police car was parked right outside the front steps. Officer Fuchs opened the rear door and her colleague placed his hand on my head and forced me inside. They climbed in the front and engaged all the locks.

Henri tossed his coffee cup into a litter bin. He stared hard at me over the park railings and his battered nose as we sped away from the curb. We accelerated past the town car belonging to the Americans. I turned and glanced back through the rear window at them. Nancy Symons and Duane had stepped out onto the street and were watching after me, their hands shielding their eyes from the falling rain.

There was a scuffed plastic screen in front of me. No visible handles or locks on the rear doors. My cuffed hands were crossed behind my back.

I considered my reflection in the driver’s rearview mirror and I smiled a silly, dazed smile at myself.

I was thinking of Victoria. I was thinking of her waiting for me in the back of the Golf, growing impatient and frustrated and wondering where I was, asking herself what my kiss might mean, where we might go from here. I didn’t imagine she’d be altogether surprised when she eventually heard the news. Would she come and visit me? I didn’t know. I honestly couldn’t tell. But I sincerely hoped that she would. I needed to return her watch, after all. I could feel its weight in my pocket.

But meantime, I had a choice to make. A decision about the type of person I really was. Because resting inside another pocket in my damp raincoat was a crumpled bundle of paper. It was the collection of handwritten pages that had been inside the cash box up at the Devil’s Mountain listening post. I’d taken the pages out, you see. I’d swiped them from under Freddy’s and Stirling’s noses before shoving the grenade in the box and creating the most explosive of all diversions. And right now, I needed to decide what to do with the information I’d acquired.

It sounded as if the German police had some pretty solid evidence against me. It seemed more than likely that they’d prosecute me for my thefts, and if they built their case halfway competently (which I had no doubt they would), then in all likelihood I’d be found guilty and I’d be imprisoned for a period of time ranging from somewhere between inconvenient and uncomfortable.