“Who is Müller?” Jack asked as they wandered down the extravagant street.
The lavish amount of glass and polished brass hurt Bill’s eyes, which were more used to boarded-up windows, rubble and dust.
“Chief of police for the French sector, so presumably a communist or at least pretending to be.”
“I like him already,” Jack said with a smirk. “Those blank IDs are genuine ones, aren’t they?”
“I think so, yes. Misselwitz must be lifting them from somewhere for the priest.”
“From the cops?”
“No. Not even the Russians are stupid enough to let the police department handle identification and record keeping. That’s handled by government offices of each district, separate from the bulls.”
They made their way back up the hill towards the church and the cars. Along the way, they encountered an old man, hunched over, shuffling towards them. He looked like he would over-balance and roll down the hill at any moment. He carried a little net bag with a couple of anorexic carrots and a half-mouldy potato. He shuffled past them as they parted and carried on down the hill.
“I almost feel sorry for them,” Jack commented. “More than twelve years under the fascists, and now this.” He gesticulated his arms around for added emphasis.
“They made their bed,” Bill said unsympathetically.
“There wasn’t much they could do once the big ugly Hitler-ball started rolling. The Weimar government wasn’t great, but anything was better than what came next.”
“I suppose they should have let the Bolsheviks take charge?”
“Maybe. I think they would have been almost as bad. I might joke about it, but I’m no communist, Bill.”
“I know, brother, you just like to sound like one. Head home and get a good sleep tonight, then swap your car and find a better spot for a lookout for tomorrow. Keep an eye on that church, and if you see our friend with the scarf and moustache, follow him. It would appear he is the latest customer of many.”
“Where are you going?”
“I need to catch up with the girl with dirty blonde hair and big tits. I’ve just remembered where I have seen her before. She’s one of Anna’s girls.”
“Well, don’t have too much fun.”
Bill pulled up to his building at around seventeen hundred hours. The darkness was drawing in. The ghostly apparitions from the building site opposite were packing away their equipment and smoking and gossiping in huddles here and there. Bill tipped his hat at one of the women, who nodded politely back.
Entering his building, he tossed the car key to the concierge and headed upstairs. Bill never trusted lifts. He walked down the red-carpeted hallway and opened the door to his apartment. He filled the kettle, placed it on the stove, and then washed his china cup and teapot. He sat down with an audible groan in his wingback chair. It wasn’t worth lighting the fire, as he would soon be leaving again. In any case, with all the carpet and the other apartments around, it never got overly cold.
He placed the pipe from his pocket onto the table near the kitchen window and opened the top drawer. Selecting a brand-new tin of tobacco, he prised it open and packed his spare pipe. He didn’t have the time or inclination for cleaning right now. Instead, he went to the bathroom and started to draw a bath, then went back to the lounge, took off his trench coat and hung it on the back of the chair.
Gathering up the telephone, he dialled Irene’s building and then gave the extension to the operator.
“Hello?”
“Irene, it’s me.”
“Ah, hello me. Are you still coming over?”
“I’m afraid something has come up. I’ll have to cancel, sorry. Duty calls, and it’s going to be a long night.”
“Nothing dangerous, I hope?”
“It’s always dangerous, sweetcheeks,” Bill joked.
“You really are a creep, Bill. See you soon, I hope.”
“Definitely.” Bill put down the receiver.
As the kettle boiled, Bill pulled out the notepad page he had taken from the fat priest’s pad. Holding it up to the light to check the words hadn’t miraculously changed in his pocket, he studied the indented path caused by the pen on the page above, with the slight ink bleed, one final time:
Anna’s place, Alexanderstrasse. Ask for Dorothy.
Bill parked his car a block away from the notorious house in the Russian sector. As he locked the door, two local policemen eyed him warily. He waved at them and gave his best go fuck yourselves grin, then swaggered off in the direction of Anna’s Place.
The once-grand facades along the river Spree were now barely standing. Many buildings had succumbed to the Russian onslaught in ’45 and simply slumped haphazardly to the ground. Many hiding civilians had been killed. Bill paused to think about it as he looked across the river back towards the destroyed Reichstag. They were the lucky ones, he concluded.
Bill checked over his shoulder to see that the two cops had decided he wasn’t worth the effort and hadn’t bothered to follow him. He paused in the doorway of a half-destroyed house and waited several minutes, just in case. Besides, they weren’t likely to follow him all the way. He was heading to the one place in Berlin the cops never ventured.
Emerging from the darkness, he carried on his way past one of the many bars that had sprung up in the past year. This one played some awful Russian noise and seemed to be half-packed with Russian soldiers. Despite what had happened in the weeks following the fall of the city, this long after Yalta, the Russians generally behaved as if they were at least pretending to be human. Another Berlin cop kept a watchful eye on the place and ignored Bill as he passed by, the smell of cheap cigarettes clouding the way ahead.
He passed by several destroyed buildings and two more beer halls, finally arriving at the pristine building, complete with a new sign which proudly displayed, in Germanic gothic font, Anna’s Place.
He greeted the two giant brutes on either side of the entrance. The uglier one of the two suddenly lit up as he recognised him.
“Bill! We haven’t not seen you for, in ages! How you are, my friend?” he asked, gleefully, in broken German, with his thick Polish accent, taking Bill’s hand to shake it in a rough, vice-like grip.
Igor’s slightly less ugly friend just glared at him cautiously. He wore a tight suit jacket over an open-necked shirt, which looked like a pyjama top. The whole ensemble was too small for him, showing off his well-defined biceps, which were approximately the size of Belgium. Igor said something to him in Polish, but Bill had little idea what, only that his name was Fabian and that he now seemed slightly more accepting of Bill’s presence.
“I’m fine, Igor, just been very busy with work. Plenty is happening in Berlin right now.”
“Yes, is always,” he replied.
“I’m going to be busy this evening, so if I don’t notice you on your breaks, please get yourselves a drink on me,” Bill said as he handed each of the doormen a fistful of marks.
Fabian’s face finally cracked into a grin as he gratefully accepted the money. In Bill’s experience, it was always good to get people on your side early on, particularly if they happen to be the biggest couple of bouncers in the neighbourhood, well known to the local law, and look as though they could burst your head like it was a grapefruit without so much as breaking a sweat.
He removed his hat and entered the large open doorway, descending the semi-lit stairs to the welcoming glow of the jazz club. The sweet smell of rich cigar smoke hit him in the face as he entered. This was one of Bill’s favourite haunts. He had discovered it while doing his rounds of the city in the first couple of weeks of his arrival. If you were looking for someone in a city like Berlin, it was good to have as many telephone operators, journalists, doormen and concierges as possible in your pocket. If you were looking for someone like Misselwitz, you’d better add many of the criminals and whores of the Berlin underworld to that list too.
Anna was neither. She ran one of the most up-market dives in the whole Russian sector. She had acquired this building during the final days of the Battle of Berlin. Her years of service with some Polish partisan group had earned her a lot of respect among the Polish officers. They had secured her this place to ensure they had a place to relax away from the hoi polloi of the ranks, particularly the Russians and local peasantry.
Whilst some Russian officers were often down here, the lower ranks were forbidden. Civilians, civil servants and Polish soldiers were welcome, though. These days, the Poles were thin on the ground on account of most heading home or being secretly sent away to one of Uncle Joe’s gulags. The Soviets hated dissidents even more than the Nazis did. The disproportionally high prices kept most people out anyway, regardless of who they were. Aside from a good supply of quality vodka and good cigars, Anna often bragged that she offered up the best tail this side of the Spree.
The numerous luxury apartments upstairs were payable by the hour, with appropriate company supplied. Bill wasn’t into that, but they had the best jazz in the city here every night. It was strictly recorded music only, as not many touring bands fancied playing in the brothels of occupied Berlin, least of all black ones.
Bill sat at a vacant table near the bar. The lights were low, and the music was good. Bill caught the attention of the waitress. She must be new. She had dark, bobbed hair, green eyes, and a smile that could stop hearts at thirty yards. She shimmied seductively towards him and leaned over just a little as she stopped at Bill’s table, her ample cleavage visible above the mock-Bavarian maid’s blouse. Her short red gingham skirt made the most of her shapely, black stockinged legs.
“What can I get you, handsome?” she asked in perfect German, with just a hint of an accent that Bill couldn’t quite place.
“I’ll take anything you have to offer, gorgeous, but a Scotch will have to do for now.”
“Sorry, kid, I’m not for sale, only vodka or beer tonight.”
Bill laughed. She was about twenty-five, seven or so years younger than Bill.
“I wasn’t offering to pay. I just thought you might fall lovingly into my arms.”
“Not until you at least buy me dinner.” She winked and grinned at him.
“I might hold you to that. Vodka it is then, for now, and one of your fine cigars.”
“Coming right up, kid.”
Bill surveyed the room. Louis Armstrong’s “Jeepers Creepers” played in the background. The loud, melodic trumpet washed through the bar like some tuneful cleansing tsunami. Then Armstrong’s mellifluous baritone warble pierced the muted chatter of the room. Bill tapped his foot and, among the unknown faces, noticed an elderly Russian officer sitting with Anna. He had large, red, felt patches on his lapels. Bill didn’t understand Russian uniforms but assumed he must be a high-ranking officer.
The tall, shapely waitress brought over Bill’s vodka and set it carefully down, along with a clean cut-glass ashtray, upon which she carefully balanced a sublime-looking Corona-sized, hand-rolled cigar. The band had already been removed, the end pre-cut with a clean V-shape. She then placed a little paper book of matches on the table, along with a handwritten check for an eye-watering amount of money. She smiled seductively, then turned and walked back to the bar, with a little bounce in her step that made her skirt rise at the back, intentionally almost too high.
Finally noticing Bill’s presence, Anna raised her small glass at Bill from the Ivan’s table and nodded his way. The Russian officer, seeing this, copied her. Bill returned the double gesture in kind.
Anna was a little older than Bill, perhaps forty. She was short and plain but attractive enough. She had blonde, short hair and, unlike the other women in the bar working their way around the tables, wore very little makeup, choosing only a peculiar shade of pink lipstick. Bill knew enough of her recent history to understand her slightly world-weary appearance. However, she made up for what she lacked in glamour in intelligence and the deeply protective love she had for her girls.
Igor and Fabian may have been the ugly faces on the door, but Anna and her Russian-made Nagant revolver were the real danger to anyone who misbehaved in her place. She carried it around on her hip, in a holster, like a feminine version of Buffalo Bill.
Bill picked up the cigar and smelled the wonderful, fermented aroma. He then struck one of the little matches on the plain, white book and charred the tip of his cigar to the point he almost burned his fingertips. He inspected it, then lit a second, and drew through the stogie to get the fine long filler tobacco glowing.
The jazz music played on from the gramophone in the corner, the records occasionally swapped by one of the waitresses. There were, quite noticeably, never any men working in the bar, apart from Bill’s large acquaintances up on the street.
One of the girls across the way got up and led a young, uniformed Polish officer by the hand out through the door to the far side of the bar. His night just got very expensive, Bill thought.
Bill sipped his cold vodka and then closed his eyes and drew on his cigar. His mind drifted back to the war and those no longer with him to enjoy such simple pleasures. He wished he could just stay here for all eternity. His perverse enjoyment of occupied Berlin was due, in no small part, to his reacquaintance with Irene, and the various other pleasures of the grain and leaf, courtesy of the British government who, thankfully, never seemed to require receipts.
Anna rose from her seat with the Russian, then, as she made her way towards Bill’s table, said something inaudible to the waitress. She greeted Bill with a warm smile, and as Bill rose from his chair, she hugged him and kissed his cheek.
“Good to see you again, Bill. How are you enjoying the winter now it’s finally here?”
“Too cold for me, Anna. How’s business?”
“Very good. These Reds miss home more and more each month, so business is brisk. How’s life at the BBC?” she asked, putting a sarcastic emphasis on BBC.
“Fine, fine.” Bill shrugged off the implication.
“And how’s that fine drink of water of yours. Jack, was it?”
“He’s very well too.”
“Tell him Apolonia misses him and would very much like to see him again.” She chuckled.
“I’ll do that.”
The waitress brought over two glasses of vodka and placed them down, taking away Bill’s empty glass. Bill, again, silently admired her shapely rear as she waltzed away.
“So, you like the new help?” Anna teased.
“Very much so. Where did you find such a fine specimen?”
“She came to me looking for work from the American sector after her release from custody. The Yanks had arrested her in Saltzberg, who had sent her to their so-called de-Nazification training. But, really, they just wanted intelligence. She worked as a secretary for some Nazi officials in Austria in the last year of the war. She told them she had been helping the resistance there, feeding them information about the planned attack of Castle Itter near the end of the war.”
“You certainly have a good eye for staff, Anna. But, look, I need a little help.” Bill pulled out the two photographs he had brought with him. The least obscene image of the girl and one of his man with the Hindenburg moustache.
“And this would be, what? Research for a story?” she asked knowingly.
“Of course. This girl, I’ve seen her in here before. Does she still work with you?”
“Yes, that’s Katya. She is in tonight but not working. To be honest, she is not very popular among our clientele. Too dour. Hardly surprising with what she’s been through. What most of them have been through. I don’t know how long I can keep her on. Where did you get that photo? It was taken here, wasn’t it?”
“I was hoping you’d be able to tell me that.”
“Yes, that looks like her room. I recognise the bed and velvet walls. Each of the girls has an apartment. Nothing fancy, just a bedroom, a little kitchen and seating area, and another room for their dates. It helps them to keep things separate and clean. We have cleaners that change the linen and deal with fluids or breakages. Anything they can’t fix, the boys usually help out with.” She gestured towards the main entrance. “Photography is allowed, as long as the girls agree. I can check her entries in the book to see what was agreed if you can estimate when it might have been?”
“I’ve no idea. Perhaps she’ll remember?”
“I’ll ask.”
“I believe the photos were taken by a tall, thin beanpole of a man, German, around fifty.”
“We don’t get many Germans coming here, and I’m not here every night, but the description rings a bell. Shifty looking man, greying hair.”
“Sounds like our John,” Bill confirmed.
“Feel free to come and see her when she’s working, but you can’t see her tonight.”
“I can’t just speak to her?”
“Not unless you are a cop, but they know better than to come down here anyway. You wait to see her when she is working and pay like everyone else.” Anna started to get up to leave.
“Please, Anna, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to push it. Just one last thing.”
She nodded graciously and settled back into her seat, pulling out a pack of cigarettes and tapping one out. Bill took a match from his book and lit it. She eyed him as she pursed her lips and coaxed the cigarette to life.
She had these piercing eyes. She was pretty in her own way, but her eyes could look into the darkest corners of your mind. It reminded Bill of the thousand-yard stare the Americans talked about among their infantry troops. Bill had once met a man from the US Airborne, who had been rescued at the Battle of the Bulge, with this permanent vacant look. Anna’s was different, though. She seemed to see all your secrets like a hawk circling its prey. Bill suddenly felt like a mouse waiting for the inevitable strike from on high.
Bill swallowed, then continued, “Who’s Dorothy?”
“What?”
“Someone told me to ask for Dorothy.”
Anna broke character and threw her head back into a raucous belly laugh. She could hardly contain herself. Bill just sat, confused, watching as she gathered her emotions and wiped a tear away. Everyone in the bar had turned to look at her, then Bill, wondering what he could have said that was so funny. Bill wondered the same.
“Something I said?”
“Oh, ha ha, sorry, Bill, it’s just I never took you for a fairy!”
“A f …? No, I’m not! Is that what this means?”
“Of course! Have you never heard of a friend of Dorothy? Like in the Wizard of Oz?”
“Clearly not. Look, it’s not really for me. I’m following a lead. Someone was sent here to ask for Dorothy.”
“Alright, sure, I believe you,” she teased. “We do cater for that sort of thing too. Well, not here, you understand, but there’s a building a few doors down where we send them, down a little alleyway to a red door. Of course, the Russians don’t really approve but leave them well enough alone.” She reduced her voice to a whisper, leaned in and then continued, “Between you and me, some of the fairies are Russian officers.”
“That’s really useful information, thanks, Anna.”
“Any time, Bill.”
Bill came to his feet as she stood to go, and she hugged him tightly. Then, with her arms around him, she reached down and felt the snub-nosed Colt revolver he had tucked in the waistband at the small of his back.
“Ah, standard BBC issue,” she joked. “Your secret’s safe with me, Bill.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about. I have a permit for that. You can never be too careful as a British journalist in Berlin.”
“Of course, of course. Stay safe, and don’t even think about touching that while you’re in here, or you’ll be dead before you hit the ground.”
“I would expect nothing less. One last thing, I forgot. Do you recognise this man?”
He pushed the other photo of the man with the moustache across the table towards her. She didn’t even look at it. She had obviously spotted it earlier and made the connections Bill hadn’t.
Without even breaking eye contact, she waited, smiled, and then said, “He was here earlier today. That’s your fairy.”