Текст книги "The Second Son"

Автор книги: Jonathan Rabb

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“Tell me what?”

Wilson crushed out his cigarette and then nodded to himself. “Fair enough.” He sat back. “We can play it that way. He’s too useful to us to care one way or the other.”

Hoffner watched the self-satisfied indifference across the desk.

Georg-an agent of British Intelligence. Hoffner was torn between a feeling of pride and terror.

“How long?” he said.

“How long what?”

“How long has Georg been with you?”

Wilson looked up. “What is it you want, Herr Inspe-” He caught himself. “Herr Hoffner?”

“He wouldn’t have told me. You know that.”

Wilson continued to stare. “No, I suppose he wouldn’t have.” He waited, then reached down to the bottom drawer. He returned with a bottle and two glasses and placed them on the desk: it seemed every office in Berlin was fitted with a set. “You really had no idea, did you?” Hoffner said nothing and Wilson poured. “Amazing how he fell into our laps. But then, everything got tossed around in ’thirty-three, didn’t it?” Wilson recorked the bottle, took his glass, and sat back.

“I’m sure it’s easy to see it that way, from a distance.”

“No, no, I know,” Wilson said blandly. “I’m sure Georg was devastated. Angry. Six years with Ufa and they throw him out.” Hoffner’s eyes remained empty. “Ufa-Tonwoche has always been a second-rate newsreel studio,” Wilson said. “Georg was too good a cameraman and director to be stuck there. He was lucky to move on.”

“So you made him your offer before they found his work too degenerate?” Hoffner took his glass. “Or was that later when you recognized his talents and his anger?” He drank.

Wilson took another cigarette from the box and lit it. “I think I’m going to continue calling you inspector, Inspector. It’ll make me feel so much better about all this.”

“Is that in some manual someplace?”

Wilson smiled as he exhaled. It was his first honest expression in the last ten minutes. “I’m sure it is.” He took another pull. “You’re expecting me to say that my father was some old beat cop, tough, hard-drinking, and this is my way of making him proud.”

“No,” Hoffner said. He finished his own cigarette and began to crush it out. “Your father was a banker-Harrow, Eton-the same places you went. The only moment of real disappointment came when you chose Oxford over Cambridge-or Cambridge over Oxford-whichever let him know you were your own man.” Hoffner let go of the cigarette. “He finds the whole newsreel business silly, but if he only knew what it was you were really doing … Closer?”

To his credit, Wilson had kept his smile. “It was Winchester, then Cambridge.”

“My mistake.” Hoffner brushed the ash from his hands. “Old beat cops don’t produce men like you, Herr Wilson. They produce the boys who go and die for your principles.”

Wilson’s eyes showed a moment of genuine regard. Both men knew it had no place here.

Hoffner said, “I’ve been thinking of taking a trip to Spain.”

“Have you? Bit dodgy there right now.”

“I’m going after him.”

“No, I don’t think you are.”

“And why is that?” Hoffner watched as Wilson took a drink. “Where was he filming, Herr Wilson?”

“The retired Kripoman decides to go and-”

“Yes,” said Hoffner. “I know. Get himself killed. I’ve been warned.”

“Oh, I don’t care if you get killed.” There was nothing malicious in the voice, not even a hint of that very brave English self-sacrifice. Wilson was simply trying to move them beyond the obvious. “I’m sure that would be tragic in some meaningless way-and isn’t that always the worst sort of tragedy-but I just don’t think you’d be much good. Do you even have Spanish or Catalan?” Hoffner said nothing, and Wilson continued. “Nothing better than seeing a nice little German in his climbing boots and short pants, sweating his way from one cafe to the next, asking about his boy gone missing: ‘Excuse me, senor, do you speak German?’ ”

“And I imagine Georg was fluent?”

Wilson gave nothing away. “Now if the boy happened to be some sad-sack Communist or socialist out to fight back the new fascists, I doubt anyone pays much attention. More troubling when the boy works for a British newsreel company-and a Jew to boot-and his daddy starts asking around. You see where I’m going with this?”

Hoffner looked at the bald pate across from him; even the shine seemed more credible now. “You really think the SS doesn’t know exactly what you are?”

“What the SS does or doesn’t know isn’t my concern. I just don’t like helping them along. And if they’re interested in Georg, so much the easier to let his sixty-year-old father lead them right to him.”

“I’m glad I inspire so much confidence.” Hoffner set his glass on the desk. “And why would the SS be so concerned with Georg?”

“The Spanish fascists haven’t a chance if they don’t get help from the outside; we both know that. And we both know where that help will be coming from. The trouble is, we’re all promising not to get involved in Spain-England, Russia, Italy, France. Even the Germans are willing to make that promise. Imagine if someone starts nosing around and finds out that the Nazis won’t be keeping their word. Especially when they’re the ones throwing the big international party out at their new stadium. Not so good for the image. Not so good for Georg.” He took a last pull and crushed out the cigarette in the ashtray.

“So what did you send Georg off to find?”

Wilson flicked something from his finger and sat back casually. “I didn’t send him off to find anything.”

Men like this were always so effortless with a lie, thought Hoffner. “I see-because of that promise you’ll all be making not to get involved.”

“We won’tbe getting involved.”

“Yes, I’m sure that’s true.”

Wilson was no less glib. “We do happen to be running a news organization, Inspector. On occasion that means having to film the news. Barcelona and its Olimpiada-that was news. So Georg went.”

“And he just happened to be in the right place at the right time.”

“Whatever the reason he went, there’s nothing I can do to stop you from going after him now. I’m just hoping you understand what’s at stake.”

“Georg’s life, I think.”

“Oh, is that what you think this is about-a single life?” Wilson set his glass on the desk. “If you’re that naive you won’t make it out of the Friedrichstrasse Banhof.”

“I’m not much on trains.”

“Then he’ll be dead by the time your boat docks.”

“I’ve always found flying much more efficient.”

For the first time Wilson hesitated. It was the silence that held him.

“You have a plane,” he finally said. “That’s good. That’s very good.” He took another cigarette and lit up. “Don’t tell me how or where. Unregistered planes are a rare thing to get hold of these days.”

Wilson stared at Hoffner for another few moments and then was on his feet. He pulled a set of keys from his pocket and stepped over to the floor safe. Kneeling down, he used two of the keys to open it. He retrieved a single sheet of paper and shut the door. He set the page in front of Hoffner. There were five words written on it:

HISMA: BERNHARDT, LANGENHEIM; HANSHEN: VOLLMAN

“His last wire,” said Wilson. “Five days ago from somewhere in Barcelona. It’s impossible to say where.”

Hoffner continued to stare at the sheet. “And you’ve decided I should have this now?”

Wilson sat. “We don’t have enough people in there to send someone looking for him. You know that. Not that sending someone in would be much good. But since you’re taking that trip…”

“These are German names. I’m a German.”

Wilson was now leaning back, his eyes fixed on Hoffner. “I’ll keep that in mind. We think these are the names of contacts he made or locations. The trouble is, we need to keep a low profile. As I said, not the time for us to be digging around. Hisma and Hanshen might be names. More likely they’re not. That’s where I’d start.”

“Very generous of you.”

“Yes-it is. Of course, you don’t have to go if you don’t want.”

It was Wilson’s strongest card: giving Hoffner a way out and knowing he would never take it.

Hoffner picked up the sheet. “From the look of it, Bernhardt and Langenheim are connected to Hisma. Vollman to Hanshen.”

“I agree. So that should make it easier.”

Hoffner had no idea why Wilson thought that. Nonetheless, he folded the paper and placed it in his coat pocket.

“And when I find him?”

“You’ll bring him back.”

Hoffner saw a drop of whiskey in his glass. He picked it up and tossed it down. He stood.

He was at the door when he turned and put on his hat. “By the way, I don’t own a pair of climbing boots.”

The amiable smile returned. “How very nice for you.”

His valise was already packed and waiting by the foyer door when Hoffner got home. There was no point in checking through it; Lotte would have thought of everything. He followed the sound of her piano-playing into the sitting room.

She was working through a rough passage of something. He dropped his hat onto a chair as she continued to play.

“Long meeting,” she said.

He moved a cushion on the sofa and sat. “Yes.”

“And he was helpful?”

“Enough.”

She was making a complete mess of the left hand. She tried a few more times and then stopped. She looked over. “You told him you were going?”

Hoffner nodded. He thought she might launch into something else, but she just sat there, staring at him. Finally she said, “Good.” She stood and stepped out from behind the piano. “Do you have time for an early dinner?”

“I think so, yes.”

“Mendy wouldn’t nap.” She was crossing toward the hallway. “You might want to go up.”

As she passed, Hoffner said, “Wilson seemed very confident.”

She was inside the archway when she stopped. She turned. Her eyes told him nothing. “You don’t mind leftover chicken, do you?”

Hoffner shook his head.

“Good. We’ll have that then.” She tried a smile before moving off down the hall.

Upstairs, Mendy was at his writing table, deep into a drawing.

“I hear we lost the nap again,” Hoffner said.

Mendy continued to draw.

“Maybe you’re getting too old for that.” Hoffner stepped over and cocked his head to see what the boy was drawing: blob and badge were front and center. “Not such a bad thing to be too old for a nap.”

The pencil continued to move, and Mendy said, “Does that mean I can go?”

“Go where?”

“With you and Papi?”

Hoffner pulled over another small chair. His knees were almost to his chin as he sat. “I don’t think so, Mendy.” He expected the little face to turn, but the boy was showing some resolve. Hoffner said, “Papi always brings you something nice. I can bring you something, too.”

“I don’t want anything.”

“How do you know when you don’t know what it is?”

Mendy finished his drawing, handed it to Hoffner, took another piece of paper, and started in again.

Hoffner watched as the little hand moved, the other pressed down on the page to keep it in place. He couldn’t see the face, not that it would have helped. It was nearly half a minute before Hoffner decided to look again at the drawing he was holding. He then stood.

When he reached the door he said, “Thank you for the picture.” Mendy kept to his drawing, and Hoffner said, “I’ll see you downstairs.”

Mendy never made it to dinner. In fact, he stayed in his room even after the cab arrived. The worst of it came during the walk down the front path. There was still enough sun in the sky to catch a little face and eyes in the window, but Hoffner refused to turn.

Even so, the thought of them stayed with him for the forty-minute ride. It would have been longer had the cabbie not been clever and taken them south from the start. Anything else and they would have hit traffic heading west to the games. Luckily Johannisthal was far enough south, and far enough east, to keep it immune. Tempelhof, where all the big aeroplanes had been landing, was a zoo now. Mueller had been smart to keep himself out here.

“My tires blow on this,” said the cabbie, “and you’ll be the one paying for the spares. Understood?”

The man had been grumbling for the past ten minutes. Most of the roads around Johannisthal were little more than stomped-down grass and ruts. The modern touches-tarmac and lighting-were reserved for the airstrips: this time of night, the cab’s headlights were no match for the sudden dips and turns.

When the cabbie finally reached his limit, he pulled up about fifty meters from the old air show bandstands and reached back to open the door. They were sitting in the middle of a deserted field, the beams from the headlights spilling out like two narrow pancakes. “You’re close enough,” he said.

The big hangars were beyond another field, but Hoffner was happy enough to let the man go. He stood and watched the taillights bounce along the grass-the engine’s grind a thinning echo-before he picked up the valise and headed across the mud. The smell of sewage and sulfur seemed to follow him. By the time Hoffner stepped into the last of the hangars, his shirt was damp through to the waist.

The place reeked of gasoline, even with the doors wide open. The cement floor was a trail of brown and black puddles, with tire marks crisscrossing the entire landscape. Twelve or so aeroplanes were parked along the walls-German, French, English-most of them stripped of parts in aid of the others. Elsewhere, pieces of engine were neatly laid out on sheets, while wheels and the like rested against walls and toolboxes. As far as Hoffner could tell, there were no signs of life.

Stepping farther in, he recognized a few antiques among the four or five untouched planes: a Sopwith Snipe in nice condition; better still was the single-seater Albatros fighter, 180-hp of liquid-cooled speed. Hoffner remembered how Georg had been able to recite the specifications from memory: little wooden models dragged off to a park or set in rows along a windowsill. Hoffner even recalled helping the boy with one of them. Or two. Or not.

“You’ve lost weight.”

The voice echoed, and Hoffner tried to locate its source. He set his valise down and said, “Hello, Toby.”

“I hope that doesn’t mean you’ve stopped drinking?”

Toby Mueller appeared from behind the tail of one of the pilfered planes. Mueller was of average build, but the limp in his right leg made him seem shorter. He had lost part of the foot, along with several fingers, during the war. Neither had stopped him from flying.

Hoffner said, “You’ve quite a collection.”

“Yah,” said Mueller, as he rubbed a bit of grease off his good hand: the fingers on the other held the rag like two pincers. “Didn’t think I’d actually be seeing you.”

“Sorry to disappoint.”

They had known each other for over twenty years, Mueller the gimp World War I ace and Hoffner the cop who made sure he never got caught for smuggling. They had met on a hillside in the Tyrol, toasting Victor Konig, Hoffner’s onetime partner and Mueller’s squadron leader. Two months later they had buried Konig. It was a bond impossible to break.

“No, it’s good for me,” said Mueller. “Eight-ten hours. Bit long on my own.”

“So you were going anyway?”

Mueller’s smirk held just the right mix of disbelief and mockery. “No, Nikolai, I’m doing all this for you. Here, let me get your bag.” Mueller remained where he was and nodded over to a single-propeller biplane. “We’re taking the Arado. You can put it in the bomb hold.”

Hoffner picked up the valise and made his way over. The plane was two seats in tandem set behind the twin wings, the whole thing maybe eight meters in length, two and a half meters in height. Hoffner had expected them to be taking the beauty next to it, a red single-wing affair, with room for at least four, and who knows what else in the undercarriage. If Mueller was planning on making this a business trip, the red one looked to have far more room for merchandise.

Mueller saw where Hoffner was looking. “She’s nice, isn’t she?”

Hoffner found the latch on the Arado and shoved his valise inside.

Mueller said, “They’ve clocked her at nearly three hundred kph. And that’s not even in a dive. It’s like riding cut glass.”

Hoffner had no idea what Mueller meant but nodded anyway as he started over.

Mueller said, “She’d have us there in six hours, maybe less.”

“But she’s not yours, is she?”

“Oh, she’s mine. Had her down in Marseilles last week for some very nice fishing.”

“I’m sure the catch was good.”

“The catch is always good, Nikolai.”

Whatever Mueller was smuggling, Hoffner knew not to get involved in the details. “She’s just not for us,” he said.

Mueller’s smirk reappeared. “It’s a night flight, Nikolai. The Lockheed might be quick, but she’s not so good after dark. Trust me. The little Arado is a much better bet.”

Hoffner was rarely impressed by Mueller’s acquisitions, but this was something even for him. “How the hell did you get your hands on an American plane?”

Mueller’s smirk became a broad smile. “Well, there might have been a girl or two, and some French Air Corps mechanics involved, but I can’t really say.”

“Or,” said Zenlo Radek, who was now standing at the hangar’s entrance, “he might just have walked in here one day and found the plane waiting for him.”

Both Hoffner and Mueller looked over to see Radek in a dinner jacket and bow tie, his hair slicked back: hard to imagine the skin on his forehead looking more strained than usual, but there it was. He was carrying a small satchel.

Hoffner turned back to Mueller, and Mueller’s smile reemerged. “Well, it might have been something like that, too.” Mueller patted a few fingers on Hoffner’s shoulder and began to limp off toward the Arado. “Evening, Herr Radek.”

Radek was now making his way over. “She’s all gassed, Toby?”

Mueller nodded and ducked under the propeller. “All gassed.”

Hoffner turned again to Radek and said, “Very nice. Casino night?”

“Big party out at Goring’s.”

“And you’re bringing the girls?”

Radek drew up and held the satchel out to Hoffner. “Here.”

Hoffner hesitated before taking it. He pulled back the flap and saw two or three thick rolls of Spanish pesetas, the same in German marks and English pounds. There were perhaps ten packs of cigarettes. Tucked in at the bottom was a Luger pistol and several boxes of ammunition.

Radek said, “No idea if the peseta is still worth anything, but the marks and pounds should do you all right. I was thinking of throwing in some francs, but no one ever wants francs, do they?”

Hoffner closed the flap. “Didn’t know Toby was on the payroll.”

“He likes it that way.”

“So what’s he taking to Spain?”

“You.”

“And bringing back?”

Radek laughed quietly. “Toby thinks he deserves a holiday-gimping around Spain with a few bandages on his shit hand and leg. He thinks it’ll have all those girls eager to soothe his pain.”

From somewhere Mueller’s voice rose up. “I’ll be a regular war hero. ?Viva la Revolucion!”

“It’s a civil war, idiot!” Radek shouted back. He looked at Hoffner. “He also heard you needed a lift.”

“And you couldn’t convince him otherwise?”

“I might not have tried all that hard.”

There was a chance Hoffner might give in to the sentiment. Instead, he said, “Then I’ll try not to get myself killed.”

Twenty minutes later, Hoffner felt his stomach lurch as the plane climbed over Berlin. He peered out at the lights and saw the brightest of them off in the west. They were circling the stadium in a ring of fire, Nazi spectacle at its best. He stared at the flames, as they wavered and pitched, and imagined them washing over the city whole. He then turned his eyes to the night and did what he could to forget them.

3

Fingers So Raw

It was like climbing through sifted dust. The heat smelled of the sea, but it was only a tease. Worse was the sand that kicked up from the path and clung to the skin like dying ants. Mueller seemed to be enjoying it.

“I’m not impressed,” Hoffner said, as Mueller continued to hum. “You’re baking in this the same way I am.”

Mueller placed his good hand on the rock face and ducked around a jutting stone. “How’s that valise holding up?”

Mueller had been kind enough to rig a few ropes around the thing, with the satchel tied on at the back. Hoffner was wearing them like a rucksack, although the valise was far too long for his back.

“Fine,” he said.

“I’m sure it is.”

They had left the plane fifteen minutes ago. Mueller had waited for first light before bringing them low into the coast. It was clear that this was the usual drill, a strip of beach south of the city, far enough removed to be of no practical use to anyone except the truly gifted. Hoffner had kept his eyes closed for the last two minutes of the flight, certain that the water or the rocks would be making quick work of them. Instead, Mueller had brought them down, with two short bumps and a quick turn. Even with his eyes opened, Hoffner had been unable to fathom the speed, drop, and length of the landing. He had been equally amazed to discover the sand-colored tarpaulin awaiting them in a nearby cave: five minutes to drape the Arado; another five to rig the valise. Now, from a vantage point high above the beach, Hoffner had no hope of finding the plane.

“It’s up here,” said Mueller, as they came to the top of the scarp. Something resembling a road lay a few meters off, with a thick copse of trees beyond it. Mueller started through the shrub grass. It was only then that Hoffner remembered the limp.

“You make that climb look easy, Toby.”

“Rocks are uneven,” said Mueller. “We balance each other out.”

There was no such luck under the trees: roots and branches were particularly rough on Mueller, but he said nothing. Twenty meters in they came to an opening and a second tarpaulin. Mueller pulled it off to reveal an old Hispano-Suiza: a four-seat, open-back saloon with two oversized front lights and an undercarriage that poked out beyond the grille like a giant tongue. The windscreen was folded down onto the bonnet and gave the entire thing the look of a long-faced priest caught in a state of permanent terror.

“ ’Twenty-two Torpedo,” said Mueller. “Not bad for fifteen years.”

“Bit stingy of Radek.”

“Why?” Mueller said, tossing the tarpaulin into the back and propping up the windscreen. “She runs better now than she did when I got her.” He slid behind the wheel while Hoffner disentangled himself from the valise; his shirt was a thin layer of perspiration. “We pass through a few towns; then it’s open road for about an hour. After that it’s walking again, just outside the city.”

He started the engine as Hoffner settled in.

“You might want to have your pistol on your lap,” Mueller said. “Up to you. I don’t mind if you sleep.” He put the car in gear and maneuvered them out through the trees.

Talk of the gun had been a joke. The coast road to Barcelona was empty, not that there was any safety in it. The thing snaked above the water like curled twine and clung to the shrubland and rock as if any sudden movement might spill it into the sea. The glare was no less daunting and made anything more than a few hundred meters ahead fade into the rust and sand-washed rise of the hills. There might have been a rifle-or two, or twelve-fixed on them from above; then again, there might have been nothing.

Mueller kept his good hand on the wheel, his other limp in his lap. Changing gears required a sudden explosion of energy, good foot and bad foot tangoing along the pedals, while the gap-filled hand struggled to find its grip on the gearshift. Hoffner was glad for the few stretches of straight road.

The first signs of life appeared around one of the curves. A line of ageless women walked in twos along the siding, each carrying a large straw basket, eyes locked on the plodding regularity of their feet: if there was a civil war some thirty kilometers up the road, they had yet to hear of it. Mueller took the car wide, and Hoffner stared back as two of the women glanced up. Their lips were parched and red and full with unknowable smiles. There was a heat to these women that seemed to mock the sun. One of them waved, and Hoffner brought an awkward hand up.

“You’ll have to do better than that,” Mueller said, his eyes fixed on the road.

Hoffner watched as the last of the faces slipped behind the curve. “What?”

“They were laughing at you. You know that, don’t you?”

Hoffner settled back in. “Were they?”

“The wave.” Mueller smiled. “That was precious, Nikolai.”

The car began to climb, and Hoffner realized how raw the scars would always be with Mueller: an unseen kindness taken for betrayal, a woman’s smile the prelude to humiliation. There was no escaping that kind of self-damning.

Hoffner peered into the haze of the sky. “It’s a different sun now.” Even the blue of the water seemed to pale under it.

“Is it?” Mueller snorted. “More of a punch here than on Droysenstrasse? Wait till you head inland.”

Mueller downshifted, and a village appeared in the distance around another turn. Hovering behind it was a wide surge of rock-Herr Wilson’s balding pate in limestone and brush-which rose some two hundred meters from the base of the hills and made the houses below look like tiny pieces of bone tumbling from a shattered skull.

“Not Berlin,” said Hoffner. “Here. Different from what it was. Different from the way a boy sees it.”

For the first time Mueller glanced over. He saw the sweat peeling down Hoffner’s cheek and neck. He turned back to the road. “Never pictured you as a boy.” Hoffner said nothing, and Mueller added, “Take a drink, Nikolai. You’re going red.”

The road began to dip, and Hoffner heard the waves over the churning of the engine. “We came in the summers,” he said. “A month at a time.” He found the canteen. “Calella. It’s about two hours north of here.”

“I know the place.”

“It was for my mother’s health, I think-or mine. I don’t remember anymore.” Hoffner took a swig. “The Kripo gave that kind of time back then. They didn’t pay, but they let my father go.”

Mueller took the canteen. “Long way to come for health.”

“Yah.” Hoffner was still staring out.

“He had a girl in Calella, your father? Waiting for him?” Mueller drank.

Hoffner nodded absently.

“You knew?”

Hoffner caught sight of a bird diving into the water. The wings and beak drew to a fine point and then were gone. An instant later the bird reappeared and flew off. “I suppose,” he said. “Not much need for discretion with an eight-year-old.” He took the canteen and drank deeply.

“And your mother?”

Hoffner screwed the cap on until it was tight. He remembered her standing in a doorway, her arm bloodied, the sun streaked across her face as she stared out through dry, unfeeling eyes. There was nothing else to it-no moment before or after to give it meaning-save perhaps a boy’s untried compassion. Even now Hoffner couldn’t tell if he was recalling or inventing it.

“I ate a lot of rice,” he said. “And fish. And I learned how to bend hooks for the fishing boats. You can’t imagine your fingers so raw.”

Hoffner was too late in realizing what he had said, and Mueller said, “No, I suppose I can’t.”

The sea disappeared behind a rise in the earth, and within a minute the road had narrowed to a single lane. The first hovels appeared on either side, with the smell of sour milk in the air. Hoffner recalled that, too, and wondered how he had ever managed to forget it.

“Jesus!”

Mueller jammed his foot on the brake as they took the next curve. A small barricade, made up of chairs, rugs, and whatever else had been scraped together, stretched across the road. A man with a rifle over his shoulder-his face pale from the heat-emerged from one of the crumbling houses, his hand raised in an unpolished authority. He pulled up to the car as a second figure stepped out from the doorway. Both were in shirtsleeves, with suspenders to draw the trousers high on the waist and red neckerchiefs tied loosely at the throat. The man kept his rifle on his back as he held out his hand.

“ Vale,” he said, as if this were a formality.

Hoffner expected a spray of broken Spanish from Mueller, the offer of a thick wad of bills. Instead, Mueller reached into his pocket and, no less casually, pulled out a crumpled piece of paper. Hoffner sat amazed.

Mueller handed the paper to the man and said in a perfect Spanish, “You’ve moved it up the hill. That’s a bit rough. I might have driven right into it.”

The man continued to glance at the page. He handed it back and nodded over at Hoffner. “Another German socialistacome to fight?”

“Something like that,” said Mueller. He reached under the seat and pulled out a bottle of brandy. He handed it to the man. “I’m guessing there’s still that ban on alcohol.”

The man said, “And it matters?” He turned and tossed the bottle to his friend, who caught it and pulled back part of the barricade-room enough for a car to drive through. The man then turned to Mueller. “The stamp on your pass comes due tomorrow. A cartload of brandy won’t help you then.”

“I’ll keep it in mind.”

The man stepped back. “They’ve moved the checkpoint on the other side as well.” He nodded for Mueller to drive on. “Don’t run into that one.”

Mueller put the car in gear, and Hoffner waited until they were out of earshot. “Old friend of yours?” he said.

Mueller remained silent as he continued to stare ahead. He took them down into the town square, where a pious if haggard-looking church stood at one end, immune to the filth and disarray of the skiffs and fishing nets lazing at the other. The sea and the docks opened up beyond them, but there seemed to be no sound coming from the waves. It was just the smell of salt and wet fur. Lines of drying sheets blew in the breeze, but the place was strangely empty. Mueller followed the street up to where the second barricade appeared, just beyond the last of the houses. Another bottle, and they were back on the coast road.

Hoffner said, “They’re not going to win this thing if all it takes is a few bottles of booze.”

Mueller reached for the canteen. “That’s a courtesy, Nikolai.” He had the spout to his lips. “You and I don’t have that piece of paper, we’re lying on the side of the road back there, a single bullet hole through the back of the skull for each of us.” He drank.

“Good that you had it, then.”

“Yes.”

“And they’re selling these pieces of paper in Marseilles?”

Mueller held the canteen out to him. “You haven’t met these boys, Nikolai. These are the true believers. Nothing’s for sale with them.”