West Berlin: November
They sat in the mayoral Mercedes-Benz at the corner of Hessische Straße, about a hundred and fifty yards east of the Invalidenstraße Crossing—East Berlin to the British Sector of West Berlin: Germans Only.
Nell had flown in from Bonn specially for the meeting—any chance to be at home again, to sleep in her own bed, eat in her favourite café, walk on what she saw as “her own streets.”
It had been a waste of time. A risk and a waste of time. A risk in that a clandestine meeting in the Adlon Hotel with the Soviet ambassador to the DDR would go down like a lead balloon in Bonn—when or if they found out. A waste of time in that Piotr Andreyevich Abrassimov had appeared to have only two replies to anything Brandt said: “No” and “We shall see.” Perhaps that was the secret to all diplomacy—never commit, never reveal, never agree, never disagree. Nell had spent over an hour in the same room as the ambassador, and while it was obvious that he liked Brandt as a man—there had been not a hint of personal animosity—what the ambassador thought about the policy suggestions Brandt had ventured was a mystery. She wondered if the mayor was any clearer about it than she was herself.
He wasn’t asleep, he just had his eyes closed. Rubbing at his forehead as though easing pain within.
“Keine Rose ohne Dornen. No rose without thorns,” Nell said.
“What?”
“He rolled out that phrase as though it were poetry. What does it mean?”
“I’ve no idea.”
“Is the rose meant to represent a unified Germany at some future date? And the thorns are what … every obstacle he’ll ever throw at us?”
“Nell, honestly, I didn’t give it a second thought. He was just showing off his knowledge of German idiom.”
The car jerked forward as the queue speeded up.
The East Berlin border guards were checking papers. Less than precise, more than random.
Nell wondered if they were doing this—late on a Sunday evening as hundreds of West Germans allowed east to visit “those left behind” made their way home—just to slow down the mayor. But there were no markings on the car, no flag—just an ordinary top-of-the-range Mercedes in a pleasing shade of black. At this distance there was no way they could know who was sitting in the back seat.
When at last the car rolled under the floodlights into the concrete corridor, and a border guard shone his torch on the documents the chauffeur held out to him, the inspection was cursory—he didn’t even glance at Nell and Brandt.