Rebecca was tempted to be unfaithful to Bernd. But she could not lie to him. So she told him everything in a convulsion of repentance. “I’ve met someone I really like,” she said. “And I’ve kissed him. Twice. I’m so sorry. I’ll never do it again.”
She was scared of what he would say next. He might immediately ask for a divorce. Most men would. Bernd was better than most men, though. But it would break her heart if he were not angry but simply humiliated. She would have hurt the person she loved most in the world.
However, Bernd’s response to her confession was shockingly different from anything she had expected. “You should go ahead,” he said. “Have an affair with the guy.”
They were in bed, last thing at night, and she turned over and stared at him. “How can you say that?”
“This is 1968, the age of free love. Everyone is having sex with everyone else. Why should you miss out?”
“You don’t mean that.”
“I didn’t mean it to sound so trivial.”
“What did you mean?”
“I know you love me,” he said, “and I know you like having sex with me, but you mustn’t go through the rest of your life without experiencing the real thing.”
“I don’t believe in the real thing,” she said. “It’s different for everyone. It’s much better with you than it was with Hans.”
“It will always be good, because we love each other. But I think you need a really good fuck.”
And he was right, she thought. She loved Bernd and she liked the peculiar sex they had, but when she thought about Claus lying on top of her, kissing her and moving inside her, and how she would lift her hips to meet his thrusts, she immediately got wet. She was ashamed of this feeling. Was she an animal? Perhaps she was, but Bernd was right about what she needed.
“I think I’m weird,” she said. “Maybe it’s because of what happened to me in the war.” She had told Bernd—but no one else, ever—how Red Army soldiers had been about to rape her when Carla had offered herself instead. German women rarely spoke of that time, even to one another. But Rebecca would never forget the sight of Carla going up that staircase, head held high, with the Soviet soldiers following her like eager dogs. Rebecca, thirteen years old, had known what they were going to do, and she had wept with relief that it was not happening to her.
Bernd asked perceptively: “Do you also feel guilty that you escaped while Carla suffered?”
“Yes, isn’t that strange?” she said. “I was a child, and a victim, but I feel as if I did something shameful.”
“It’s not unusual,” Bernd said. “Men who survive battles feel remorse because others died and not them.” Bernd had got the scar on his forehead during the battle of Seelow Heights.
“I felt better after Carla and Werner adopted me,” Rebecca said. “Somehow that made it all right. Parents make sacrifices for their children, don’t they? Women suffer to bring children into the world. Perhaps it doesn’t make much sense, but once I became Carla’s daughter I felt entitled.”
“It makes sense.”
“Do you really want me to go to bed with another man?”
“Yes.”
“But why?”
“Because the alternative is worse. If you don’t do it, you’ll always feel, in your heart, that you missed out on something because of me, that you made a sacrifice for my sake. I’d rather you went ahead and tried it. You don’t have to reveal the details: just come home and tell me you love me.”
“I don’t know,” Rebecca said, and she slept uneasily that night.
On the evening of the next day she was sitting next to the man who wanted to become her lover, Claus Krohn, in a meeting room in Hamburg’s enormous green-roofed neo-Renaissance town hall. Rebecca was a member of the parliament that ran the Hamburg city-state. The committee was discussing a proposal to demolish a slum and build a new shopping center. But all she could think about was Claus.
She was sure that after tonight’s meeting Claus would invite her to a bar for a drink. This would be the third time. After the first he had kissed her good night. The second had ended with a passionate clinch in a car park, when they had kissed with mouths open and he had touched her breasts. Tonight, she felt sure, he would ask her to go to his apartment.
She did not know what to do. She could not concentrate on the debate. She doodled on her agenda. She was both bored and anxious: the meeting was tedious but she did not want it to end because she was scared of what would happen next.
Claus was an attractive man: intelligent, kind, charming, and exactly her age, thirty-seven. His wife had died in a car crash two years ago, and he had no children. He was not good-looking in the movie-star sense, but he had a warm smile. Tonight he was wearing a politician’s blue suit, but he was the only man in the room with a shirt open at the neck. Rebecca wanted to make love to him, wanted it badly. And at the same time she dreaded it.
The meeting came to an end and, as she expected, Claus asked her if she would like to meet him at the Yacht Bar, a quiet place well away from city hall. They drove there in their separate cars.
The bar was small and dark, busiest in the daytime, when it was used by people who had sailboats, quiet and almost deserted now. Claus ordered a beer, Rebecca asked for a glass of Sekt. As soon as they were settled she said: “I told my husband about us.”
Claus was startled. “Why?” he said. Then he added: “Not that there’s much to tell.” All the same he looked guilty.
“I can’t lie to Bernd,” she said. “I love him.”
“And you obviously can’t lie to me, either,” Claus said.
“I’m sorry.”
“It isn’t something to apologize for—just the opposite. Thank you for being honest. I appreciate it.” Claus looked crestfallen, and amid all her other emotions Rebecca felt pleased that he liked her enough to be so disappointed. He said ruefully: “If you’ve confessed to your husband, why are you here with me now?”
“Bernd told me to go ahead,” she said.
“Your husband wants you to kiss me?”
“He wants me to become your lover.”
“That’s creepy. Is it to do with his paralysis?”
“No,” she lied. “Bernd’s condition makes no difference to our sex life.” This was the story she had told her mother and a few other women whom she was really close to. She deceived them for Bernd’s sake: she felt it would be humiliating for him if people knew the truth.
“Well,” said Claus, “if this is my lucky day, shall we go straight to my apartment?”
“Let’s not rush, if you don’t mind.”
He put his hand over hers. “It’s okay to be nervous.”
“I haven’t done this often.”
He smiled. “That’s not a bad thing, you know, even if we are living in the age of free love.”
“I slept with two boys at university. Then I married Hans, who turned out to be a police spy. Then I fell in love with Bernd and we escaped together. There, that’s my entire love life.”
“Let’s talk about something else for a while,” he said. “Are your parents still in the East?”
“Yes, they’ll never get permission to leave. Once you make an enemy of someone like Hans Hoffmann—my first husband—he never forgets.”
“You must miss them.”
She could not express how much she missed her family. The Communists had blocked calls to the West the day they built the Wall, so she could not even speak to her parents on the phone. All she had was letters—opened and read by the Stasi, usually delayed, often censored, any enclosure of value stolen by the police. A few photos had got through, and Rebecca had them next to her bed: her father turning gray, her mother getting heavier, Lili growing into a beautiful woman.
Instead of trying to explain her grief she said: “Tell me about yourself. What happened to you in the war?”
“Nothing much, except that I starved, like most kids,” he said. “The house next door was destroyed and everyone in it killed, but we were all right. My father is a surveyor: he spent much of the war assessing bomb damage and making buildings safe.”
“Do you have brothers and sisters?”
“One of each. You?”
“My sister, Lili, is still in East Berlin. My brother, Walli, escaped soon after I did. He’s a guitar player in a group called Plum Nellie.”
“That Walli? He’s your brother?”
“Yes. I was there when he was born, on the floor of our kitchen, which was the only warm room in the house. Quite an experience for a fourteen-year-old girl.”
“So he escaped.”
“And came to live with me, here in Hamburg. He joined the group when they were playing some grimy club on the Reeperbahn.”
“And now he’s a pop star. Do you see him?”
“Of course. Every time Plum Nellie play in West Germany.”
“What a thrill!” Claus looked at her glass and saw that it was empty. “Would you like another Sekt?”
Rebecca felt a tightness in her chest. “No, thanks, I don’t think so.”
“Listen,” he said. “Something I want you to understand. I’m desperate to make love to you, but I know you’re torn. Just remember that you can change your mind at any moment. There’s no such thing as the point of no return. If you feel uncomfortable, just say so. I won’t be angry or insistent, I promise. I would hate to feel I’d pushed you into something you weren’t ready for.”
It was exactly the right thing for him to say. The tightness eased. Rebecca had been afraid of getting in too deep, realizing she had made the wrong decision, and feeling unable to back out. Claus’s promise set her mind at rest. “Let’s go,” she said.
They got into their cars and Rebecca followed Claus. Driving along she felt a wild exhilaration. She was about to give herself to Claus. She pictured his face as she took off her blouse: she was wearing a new bra, black with lace trimming. She thought of how they would kiss—frantically before, lovingly after. She imagined his sigh as she took his penis in her mouth. She felt she had never wanted anything so badly, and she had to clamp her teeth together to prevent herself crying out.
Claus had a small apartment in a modern building. Going up in the elevator, Rebecca was assailed by doubts again. What if he didn’t like what he saw when she took off her clothes? She was thirty-seven: she no longer had the firm breasts and perfect skin of her teenage years. What if he had a hidden dark side? He might produce handcuffs and a whip, then lock the door—
She told herself not to be silly. She had the normal woman’s ability to know when she was with a weirdo, and Claus was delightfully normal. All the same, she felt apprehensive as he opened the apartment door and ushered her in.
It was a typical man’s home, a bit bare of ornament, with utilitarian furniture except for a large television and an expensive record player. Rebecca said: “How long have you lived here?”
“A year.”
As she had guessed, it was not the home he had shared with his late wife.
He had undoubtedly planned what to do next. Moving quickly, he ignited the gas fire, put a Mozart string quartet on the record deck, and assembled a tray with a bottle of schnapps, two glasses, and a bowl of salted nuts.
They sat side by side on the couch.
She wanted to ask him how many other girls he had seduced on this couch. It would have struck a wrong note, but all the same she wondered. Was he enjoying being single, or did he long to marry again? Another question she was not going to ask.
He poured drinks and she took a sip just for something to do.
He said: “If we kiss now, we’ll taste the liquor on each other’s tongues.”
She grinned. “All right.”
He leaned toward her. “I don’t like to waste money,” he murmured.
She said: “I’m so glad you’re frugal.”
For a moment they could not kiss because they were giggling too much.
Then they did.
• • •
People thought Cameron Dewar was mad when he invited Richard Nixon to speak at Berkeley. It was the most famously radical campus in the country. Nixon would be crucified, they said. There would be a riot. Cam did not care.
Cam thought Nixon was the only hope for America. Nixon was strong and determined. People said he was unscrupulous and sly: so what? America needed such a leader. God forbid that the president should be a man such as Bobby Kennedy who could not stop asking himself what was right and what was wrong. The next president had to destroy the rioters in the ghettos and the Vietcong in the jungle, not search his own conscience.
In his letter to Nixon, Cam said that the liberals and the crypto-Communists on campus got all the attention in the left-leaning media, but in truth most students were conservative and law-abiding, and there would be a huge turnout for Nixon.
Cam’s family were furious. His grandfather and his great-grandfather had both been Democratic senators. His parents had always voted Democrat. His sister was so outraged she could barely speak. “How can you campaign for injustice and dishonesty and war?” Beep said.
“There’s no justice without order on the streets, and there’s no peace while we’re threatened by international Communism.”
“Where have you been the last few years? When the blacks were nonviolent they just got attacked with nightsticks and dogs! Governor Reagan praises the police for beating up student demonstrators!”
“You’re so against the police.”
“No, I’m not. I’m against criminals. Cops who beat up demonstrators are criminals, and they should go to jail.”
“There, that’s why I support such men as Nixon and Reagan: because their opponents want to put cops in jail instead of troublemakers.”
Cam was pleased when Vice President Hubert Humphrey declared that he would seek the Democratic nomination. Humphrey had been Johnson’s yes-man for four years, and no one would trust him either to win the war or to negotiate peace, so he was unlikely to be elected, but he might spoil things for the more dangerous Bobby Kennedy.
Cam’s letter to Nixon got a reply from one of the campaign team, John Ehrlichman, suggesting a meeting. Cam was thrilled. He wanted to work in politics: maybe this was the beginning!
Ehrlichman was Nixon’s advance man. He was intimidatingly tall, six foot two, with black eyebrows and receding hair. “Dick loved your letter,” he said.
They met at a fragrant coffee shop on Telegraph Avenue and sat outside under a tree in new leaf, watching students go by on bicycles in the sunshine. “A nice place to study,” Ehrlichman said. “I went to UCLA.”
He asked Cam a lot of questions. He was intrigued by Cam’s Democratic forebears. “My grandmother was editor of a newspaper called the Buffalo Anarchist,” Cam admitted.
“It’s a sign of how America is becoming more conservative,” Ehrlichman said.
Cam was relieved to learn that his family would not be an obstruction to a career in the Republican Party.
“Dick won’t speak on the Berkeley campus,” Ehrlichman said. “It’s too risky.”
Cam was disappointed. He thought Ehrlichman was wrong: the event could be a big success.
He was about to argue when Ehrlichman said: “But he wants you to start a group called Berkeley Students for Nixon. It will show that not all young people are fooled by Gene McCarthy or in love with Bobby Kennedy.”
Cam was flattered to be taken so seriously by a presidential campaigner, and he quickly agreed to do what Ehrlichman asked.
His closest friend on campus was Jamie Mulgrove, who like Cam was majoring in Russian and a member of the Young Republicans. They announced the formation of the group, and got some publicity in The Daily Californian, the student newspaper, but only ten people joined.
Cam and Jamie organized a lunchtime meeting to attract members. With Ehrlichman’s help, Cam got three prominent California Republicans to speak. He booked a hall that would hold two hundred fifty.
He sent out a press release and this time got a wider response from local newspapers and radio stations intrigued by the counterintuitive idea of Berkeley students supporting Nixon. Several ran stories about the meeting and promised to send reporters.
Sharon McIsaac from the San Francisco Examiner called Cam. “How many members do you have so far?” she asked.
Cam took an instinctive dislike to her pushy tone. “I can’t tell you that,” he said. “It’s like a military secret. Before a battle, you don’t let the enemy know how many guns you’ve got.”
“Not many, then,” she said sarcastically.
The meeting was shaping up to be a minor media event.
Unfortunately, they could not sell the tickets.
They could have given them away, but that was risky: it could attract left-wing students who would heckle.
Cam still believed that thousands of students were conservative, but he realized they were unwilling to admit it in today’s atmosphere. That was cowardly, but politics did not matter much to most people, he knew.
But what was he going to do?
The day before the meeting he had more than two hundred tickets left—and Ehrlichman called. “Just checking, Cam,” he said. “How’s it shaping up?”
“It’s going to be terrific, John,” Cam lied.
“Any press interest?”
“Some. I’m expecting a few reporters.”
“Sold many tickets?” It was almost as if Ehrlichman could read Cam’s mind over the phone.
Cam was caught in his deception and could not backtrack. “A few more to go and we’ll be sold out.” With luck, Ehrlichman would never know.
Then Ehrlichman dropped his bombshell. “I’ll be in San Francisco tomorrow, so I’ll come along.”
“Great!” said Cam, his heart sinking.
“See you then.”
That afternoon, after a class on Dostoevsky, Cam and Jamie stayed in the lecture theater and scratched their heads. Where could they find two hundred Republican students?
“They don’t have to be real students,” Cam said.
“We don’t want the press saying the meeting was packed with stooges,” Jamie said anxiously.
“Not stooges. Just Republicans who don’t happen to be students.”
“I still think it’s risky.”
“I know. But better than a flop.”
“Where are we going to get the bodies?”
“Do you have a number for the Oakland Young Republicans?”
“I do.”
They went to a pay phone and Cam called. “I need two hundred people just to make the event look like a success,” he confessed.
“I’ll see what I can do,” the man said.
“Tell them not to speak to reporters, though. We don’t want the press finding out that Berkeley Students for Nixon consists mainly of people who aren’t students.”
After Cam hung up, Jamie said: “Isn’t this kind of dishonest?”
“What do you mean?” Cam knew exactly what he meant, but he was not going to admit it. He was not willing to jeopardize his big chance with Ehrlichman just for the sake of a petty lie.
Jamie said: “Well, we’re telling people that Berkeley students support Nixon, but we’re faking it.”
“But we can’t back out now!” Cameron was scared that Jamie would want to cancel the whole thing.
“I guess not,” Jamie said dubiously.
Cam was in suspense all the next morning. At half past twelve there were only seven people in the hall. When the speakers arrived Cam took them to a side room and offered them coffee and cookies baked by Jamie’s mother. At a quarter to one the place was still almost deserted. But then at ten to one, people started to trickle in. By one the room was almost full, and Cam breathed a little easier.
He invited Ehrlichman to chair the meeting. “No,” said Ehrlichman. “It looks better if a student does it.”
Cam introduced the speakers but hardly heard what they said. His meeting was a success, and Ehrlichman was impressed—but it could still go wrong.
At the end he summed up and said that the popularity of the meeting was a sign of a student backlash against demonstrations, liberalism, and drugs. He got an enthusiastic round of applause.
When it was over he could hardly wait to get them all out the door.
The reporter Sharon McIsaac was there. She had a crusading look, reminding him of Evie Williams, who had spurned his adolescent love. Sharon was approaching students. A couple declined to speak to her; then, to Cam’s relief, she buttonholed one of the few genuine Berkeley Republicans. By the time the interview was over, everyone else had left.
At two thirty Cam and Ehrlichman stood in an empty room. “Well done,” said Ehrlichman. “Are you sure all those people were students?”
Cam hesitated. “Are we on the record?”
Ehrlichman laughed. “Listen,” he said. “When the semester ends, do you want to come and work on Dick’s presidential election campaign? We could use a guy like you.”
Cam’s heart leaped. “I’d love to,” he said.
• • •
Dave was in London, staying with his parents in Great Peter Street, when Fitz knocked on the door.
The family were in the kitchen: Lloyd, Daisy, and Dave—Evie was in Los Angeles. It was six, the hour at which the children had used to eat their evening meal, which they called “tea,” when they were small. In those days the parents would sit with them for a while and talk about the day, before going out for the evening, usually to some political meeting. Daisy would smoke and Lloyd would sometimes make cocktails. The habit of meeting in the kitchen to chat at that hour had persisted long after the children grew too old to have “tea.”
Dave was talking to his parents about his breakup with Beep when the maid came in and said: “It’s Earl Fitzherbert.”
Dave saw his father tense up.
Daisy put her hand on Lloyd’s arm and said: “It will be all right.”
Dave was consumed with curiosity. He knew, now, that the earl had seduced Ethel when she was his housekeeper, and that Lloyd was the illegitimate child of their affair. He knew, too, that Fitz had angrily refused to acknowledge Lloyd as his son for more than half a century. So what was the earl doing here tonight?
Fitz walked into the room using two canes and said: “My sister, Maud, has died.”
Daisy sprang up. “I’m so sorry to hear that, Fitz,” she said. “Come and sit down.” She took his arm.
But Fitz hesitated and looked at Lloyd. “I have no right to sit down in this house,” he said.
Dave could tell that humility did not come naturally to Fitz.
Lloyd was controlling intense emotion. This was the father who had rejected him all his life. “Please sit down,” Lloyd said stiffly.
Dave pulled out a kitchen chair and Fitz sat at the table. “I’m going to her funeral,” he said. “It’s in two days’ time.”
Lloyd said: “She was living in East Germany, wasn’t she? How did you hear that she had died?”
“Maud has a daughter, Carla. She telephoned the British embassy in East Berlin. They were so kind as to phone me and give me the news. I was a minister in the Foreign Office until 1945, and that still counts for something, I’m glad to say.”
Without being asked, Daisy took a bottle of Scotch from a cupboard, poured an inch into a glass, and put it in front of Fitz with a small jug of tap water. Fitz poured a little water into the whisky and took a sip. “How kind of you to remember, Daisy,” he said. Dave recalled that Daisy had lived with Fitz for a while, when she was married to his son, Boy Fitzherbert. That was why she knew how he liked his whisky.
Lloyd said: “Lady Maud was my late mother’s best friend.” He sounded a little less uptight. “I last saw her when Mam took me to Berlin in 1933. At that time Maud was a journalist, writing articles that annoyed Hitler.”
Fitz said: “I haven’t seen my sister or spoken to her since 1919. I was angry with her for marrying without my permission, and marrying a German, too; and I stayed angry for almost fifty years.” His discolored old face showed profound sadness. “Now it’s too late for me to forgive her. What a fool I was.” He looked directly at Lloyd. “A fool about that, and other things.”
Lloyd gave a brief, silent nod of acknowledgment.
Dave caught his mother’s eye. He felt that something important had just happened, and her expression confirmed it. Fitz’s regret was so deep it could hardly be spoken, but he had come as near as he could to apologizing.
It was hard to imagine that this feeble old man had once been swept by tidal waves of passion. But Fitz had loved Ethel, and Dave knew that Ethel had felt the same, for he had heard her say it. Fitz had rejected their child and now, after a lifetime of denial, he was looking back and comprehending how much he had lost. It was unbearably sad.
“I’ll go with you,” Dave said impulsively.
“What?”
“To the funeral. I’ll go to Berlin with you.” Dave was not sure why he wanted to do this, except he sensed it might have a healing effect.
“You’re very kind, young Dave,” said Fitz.
Daisy said: “That would be a wonderful thing to do, Dave.”
Dave glanced at his father, nervous that Lloyd would disapprove; but there were surprising tears in Lloyd’s eyes.
Next day Dave and Fitz flew to Berlin. They stayed overnight at a hotel on the west side.
“Do you mind if I call you Fitz?” Dave said over dinner. “We always called Bernie Leckwith ‘Grandpa,’ even though we knew he was my father’s stepfather. And as a child I never met you. So it feels, like, too late to change.”
“I’m in no position to dictate to you,” said Fitz. “And anyway, I really don’t mind.”
They talked about politics. “We Conservatives were right about Communism,” said Fitz. “We said it wouldn’t work, and it doesn’t. But we were wrong about social democracy. When Ethel said we should give everyone free education and free health care and unemployment insurance, I told her she was living in a dream world. But now look: everything she campaigned for has come to pass, and yet England is still England.”
Fitz had a charming ability to admit his mistakes, Dave thought. Clearly the earl had not always been this way: his quarrels with his family had lasted decades. Perhaps it was a quality that came with old age.
The following morning a black Mercedes with a driver, ordered by Dave’s secretary, Jenny Pritchard, was waiting to take them across the border and into the East.
They drove to Checkpoint Charlie.
They went through a barrier and into a long shed where they had to hand over their passports. Then they were asked to wait.
The border guard who had taken their passports went away. After a while a tall, stooped man in a civilian suit ordered them to get out of their Mercedes and follow him.
The man strode ahead, then looked around, irritated at Fitz’s slowness. “Please hurry,” he said in English.
Dave remembered the German he had learned in school and improved in Hamburg. “My grandfather is old,” he said indignantly.
Fitz spoke in a low voice. “Don’t argue,” he said to Dave. “This arrogant bastard is with the Stasi.” Dave raised an eyebrow: he had not previously heard Fitz use bad language. “They’re like the KGB, only not so softhearted,” Fitz added.
They were taken to a bare office with a metal table and hard wooden chairs. They were not asked to sit, but Dave held a chair for Fitz, who sank into it gratefully.
The tall man spoke German to an interpreter, who smoked cigarettes as he translated the questions. “Why do you wish to enter East Germany?”
“To attend the funeral of a close relative at eleven this morning,” Fitz answered. He looked at his wristwatch, a gold Omega. “It’s ten now. I hope this won’t take long.”
“It will take as long as necessary. What is your sister’s name?”
“Why do you ask that?”
“You say you wish to attend the funeral of your sister. What is her name?”
“I said I wanted to attend the funeral of a close relative. I did not say it was my sister. You obviously know all about it already.”
This secret policeman had been waiting for them, Dave realized. It was hard to imagine why.
“Answer the question. What is your sister’s name?”
“She was Frau Maud von Ulrich, as your spies have obviously informed you.”
Dave noticed that Fitz was getting annoyed, and breaking his own injunction to say as little as possible.
The man said: “How is it that Lord Fitzherbert has a German sister?”
“She married a friend of mine called Walter von Ulrich, who was a German diplomat in London. He was killed by the Gestapo during the Second World War. What did you do in the war?”
Dave saw, from the look of fury on the tall man’s face, that he had understood; but he did not answer the question. Instead he turned to Dave. “Where is Walli Franck?”
Dave was astonished. “I don’t know.”
“Of course you know. He is in your music group.”
“The group has split. I haven’t seen Walli for months. I don’t know where he is.”
“This is not believable. You are partners.”
“Partners fall out.”
“What is the reason for your quarrel?”
“Personal and musical differences.” In truth the differences were purely personal. Dave and Walli had never had any musical differences.
“Yet now you wish to attend the funeral of his grandmother.”
“She was my great-aunt.”
“Where did you last see Walli Franck?”
“In San Francisco.”
“The address, please.”
Dave hesitated. This was getting nasty.
“Answer, please. Walli Franck is wanted for murder.”
“I last saw him in Buena Vista Park. That’s on Haight Street. I don’t know where he lives.”
“Do you realize that it is a crime to obstruct the police in the course of their duty?”
“Of course.”
“And that if you commit such a crime in East Germany, you may be arrested and tried and put in jail here?”
Dave was suddenly frightened, but he tried to remain calm. “And then millions of fans all over the world would demand my release.”
“They will not be allowed to interfere with justice.”
Fitz put in: “Are you sure your comrades in Moscow would be pleased with you for creating a major international diplomatic incident over this?”
The tall man laughed scornfully, but he was not convincing.
Dave had a flash of insight. “You’re Hans Hoffmann, aren’t you?”
The interpreter did not translate this, but instead said quickly: “His name is of no concern to you.”
But Dave could tell by the tall man’s face that his guess had been right. He said: “Walli told me about you. His sister threw you out, and you’ve been taking revenge on her family ever since.”
“Just answer the question.”
“Is this part of your revenge? Harassing two innocent men on their way to a funeral? Is that the kind of people you Communists are?”
“Wait here, please.” Hans and his interpreter left the room, and Dave heard from the other side of the door the sound of a bolt being shot.
“I’m sorry,” Dave said. “This seems to be about Walli. You would have been better off on your own.”
“Not your fault. I just hope we don’t miss the funeral.” Fitz took out his cigar case. “You don’t smoke, Dave, do you?”
Dave shook his head. “Not tobacco, anyhow.”
“Marijuana is bad for you.”
“And I suppose cigars are healthy?”
Fitz smiled. “Touché.”
“I’ve had this argument with my father. He drinks Scotch. You parliamentarians have a clear policy: all dangerous drugs are illegal, except the ones you like. And then you complain that young people won’t listen.”
“You’re right, of course.”
It was a big cigar, and Fitz smoked it all and dropped the stub in a stamped-tin ashtray. Eleven o’clock came and went. They had missed the funeral for which they had flown from London.
At half past eleven the door opened again. Hans Hoffmann stood there. With a little smile he said: “You may enter East Germany.” Then he walked away.
Dave and Fitz found their car. “We’d better go straight to the house, now,” said Fitz. He gave the driver the address.
They drove along Friedrich Strasse to Unter den Linden. The old government buildings were fine but the sidewalks were deserted. “My God,” said Fitz. “This used to be one of the busiest shopping streets in Europe. Look at it now. Merthyr Tydfil on a Monday.”
The car pulled up outside a town house in better condition than the other homes. “Maud’s daughter seems to be more affluent than her neighbors,” Fitz remarked.
Dave explained. “Walli’s father owns a television factory in West Berlin. Somehow he manages to run it from here. I guess it still makes money.”
They went into the house. The family introduced themselves. Walli’s parents were Werner and Carla, a handsome man and a plain woman with strong features. Walli’s sister, Lili, was nineteen and attractive, and did not look like Walli at all. Dave was intrigued to meet Karolin, who had long fair hair parted in the center and forming curtains either side of her face. With her was Alice, the inspiration for the song, a shy four-year-old with a black ribbon in her hair for mourning. Karolin’s husband, Odo, was a little older, about thirty. He had fashionably long hair but wore a clerical collar.
Dave explained why they had missed the funeral. They mixed languages, though the Germans spoke English better than the English spoke German. Dave sensed that the family’s attitude to Fitz was equivocal. It was understandable: he had after all been harsh to Maud, and her daughter might think it was too late to make amends. However, it was also too late to remonstrate, and no one spoke of the fifty-year estrangement.
A dozen friends and neighbors who had attended the funeral were having coffee and snacks served by Carla and Lili. Dave talked to Karolin about guitars. It turned out she and Lili were underground stars. They were not allowed to make records, because their songs were about freedom, but people made tape recordings of their performances and loaned them to one another. It was a bit like samizdat publishing in the Soviet Union. They discussed cassette tapes, a new format, more convenient though with poor sound quality. Dave offered to send Karolin some cassettes and a deck, but she said they would only be stolen by the secret police.
Dave had assumed Karolin must be a hard-hearted woman, to break off her relationship with Walli and marry Odo, but to his surprise he liked her. She seemed kind and smart. She spoke of Walli with great affection and wanted to know all about his life.
Dave told her how he and Walli had quarreled. She was distressed by the story. “It’s not like him,” she said. “Walli was never the type to fool around. Girls used to fall for him all the time, and he could have had a different one every weekend, but he never did.”
Dave shrugged. “He’s changed.”
“What about your former fiancée? What’s her name?”
“Ursula, but everyone calls her Beep. To be honest, it’s not surprising that she should be unfaithful. She’s kind of wild. It’s part of what makes her so attractive.”
“I think you still have feelings for her.”
“I was crazy about her.” Dave gave an evasive answer because he did not know how he felt now. He was angry with Beep, enraged by her betrayal, but if she wanted to come back to him he was not sure what he would do.
Fitz came over to where the two of them were sitting. “Dave,” he said, “I’d like to see the grave before we return to West Berlin. Would you mind?”
“Of course not.” Dave stood up. “We should probably go soon.”
Karolin said to Dave: “If you do speak to Walli, please give him my love. Tell him I long for the day when he can meet Alice. I will tell her all about him when she’s old enough.”
They all had messages for Walli: Werner, Carla, and Lili. Dave guessed he would have to speak to Walli just to pass them on.
As they were leaving, Carla said to Fitz: “You should have something of Maud’s.”
“I’d like that.”
“I know just the thing.” She disappeared for a minute and came back with an old leather-bound photograph album. Fitz opened it. The pictures were all monochrome, some sepia, many faded. They had captions in large loopy handwriting, presumably Maud’s. The oldest had been taken in a grand country house. Dave read: “Ty Gwyn, 1905.” That was the Fitzherbert country residence, now Aberowen College of Further Education.
Seeing photos of himself and Maud as young people made Fitz cry. Tears rolled down the papery old skin of his wrinkled face and soaked into the collar of his immaculate white shirt. He spoke with difficulty. “Good times never come back,” he said.
They took their leave. The chauffeur drove them to a large and charmless municipal cemetery, and they found Maud’s grave. The earth had already been returned to the pit, forming a small mound that was, pathetically, the size and approximate shape of a human being. They stood side by side for a few minutes, saying nothing. The only sound was birdsong.
Fitz wiped his face with a large white handkerchief. “Let’s go,” he said.
At the checkpoint they were again detained. Hans Hoffmann watched, smiling, while they and their cars were thoroughly searched.
“What are you looking for?” Dave asked. “Why would we smuggle something out of East Germany? You don’t have anything here that anyone wants!” No one answered him.
A uniformed officer seized on the photograph album and handed it to Hoffmann.
Hoffmann looked through it casually and said: “This will have to be examined by our forensic department.”
“Of course,” Fitz said sadly.
They had to leave without it.
As they drove away, Dave looked back and saw Hans drop the album into a rubbish bin.
• • •
George Jakes flew from Portland to Los Angeles to meet Verena with a diamond ring in his pocket.
He had been on the road with Bobby Kennedy, and had not seen Verena since the funeral of Martin Luther King in Atlanta seven weeks earlier.
George was devastated by the assassination. Dr. King had been the bright burning hope of black Americans, and now he was gone, murdered by a white racist with a hunting rifle. President Kennedy had given hope to blacks and he, too, had been killed by a white man with a gun. What was the point of politics if great men could be so easily wiped out? But, George thought, at least we still have Bobby.
Verena was even harder hit. At the funeral she had been bewildered, angry, and lost. The man she had admired, cherished, and served for seven years was gone.
To George’s consternation she had not wanted him to console her. He was hurt deeply by this. They lived six hundred miles apart, but he was the man in her life. He figured that her rejection was part of her grief, and would pass.
There was nothing for her in Atlanta—she did not want to work for King’s successor, Ralph Abernathy—so she had resigned. George had thought she might move into his apartment in Washington. However, without explanation she had gone back to her parents’ home in Los Angeles. Perhaps she needed time alone to grieve.
Or perhaps she wanted something more than just an invitation to move into his place.
Hence the ring.
The next primary was California, which gave George a chance to visit Verena.
At LAX he rented a white Plymouth Valiant, a cheap compact—the campaign was paying—and drove to North Roxbury Drive in Beverly Hills.
He passed through tall gates and parked in front of a Tudor-style brick house that he guessed was the size of five genuine Tudor houses. Verena’s parents, Percy Marquand and Babe Lee, lived like the stars they were.
A maid let him in and showed him into a living room that had nothing Tudor about it: a white carpet, air-conditioning, and a floor-to-ceiling window that looked out onto a swimming pool. The maid asked if he would like a drink. “A soda, please,” he said. “Any kind.”
When Verena came in he suffered a shock.
She had cut off her wonderful Afro, and her hair was now cropped close to her head, as short as his. She wore black pants, a blue shirt, a leather blazer, and a black beret. It was the uniform of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense.
George suppressed his outrage in order to kiss her. She gave him her lips, but only briefly, and he knew right away that she had not moved on from her mood at the funeral. He hoped his proposal would bring her out of it.
They sat on a couch covered in a swirly pattern of burnt orange, primrose yellow, and chocolate brown. The maid brought George a Coke with ice in a tall glass on a silver tray. When she had gone he took Verena’s hand. Holding in his anger, he said as gently as he could: “Why are you wearing that uniform?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“Not to me.”
“Martin Luther King led a nonviolent campaign, and they shot him.”
George was disappointed in her. He had expected a better argument that that. He said: “Abraham Lincoln fought a civil war, and they shot him, too.”
“Blacks have a right to defend themselves. No one else will—especially not the police.”
George could barely conceal his contempt for these ideas. “You just want to scare whitey. Nothing has ever been achieved by this kind of grandstanding.”
“What has nonviolence achieved? Hundreds of black people lynched and murdered, thousands beaten and jailed.”
George did not want to fight with her—on the contrary, he wanted to bring her back to normal—but he could not help raising his voice. “Plus the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and six black congressmen and a senator!”
“And now white people are saying it’s gone far enough. No one has been able to pass a law against housing discrimination.”
“Maybe the whites are afraid they’ll have Panthers in Gestapo outfits walking around their nice suburbs carrying guns.”
“The police have guns. We need them too.”
George realized that this argument, which seemed to be about politics, was really about their relationship. And he was losing her. If he could not talk her out of the Black Panthers, he could not bring her back into his life. “Look, I know that police forces all over America are full of violent racists. But the solution to that problem is to improve the police, not shoot them. We have to get rid of politicians such as Ronald Reagan who encourage police brutality.”
“I refuse to accept a situation where the whites have guns and we don’t.”
“Then campaign for gun control and more black cops in senior positions.”
“Martin believed in that and he’s dead.” Verena’s words were defiant, but she could not keep it up, and she began to cry.
George tried to embrace her, but she pushed him away. Nevertheless he strove to make her see reason. “If you want to protect black people, come and work on our campaign,” he said. “Bobby is going to be president.”
“Even if he wins, Congress won’t let him do anything.”
“They’ll try to stop him, and we’ll have a political battle, and one side will win and the other will lose. It’s how we change things in America. It’s a lousy system, but all the others are worse. And shooting each other is the worst of all.”
“We’re not going to agree.”
“Okay.” He lowered his voice. “We’ve disagreed before, but always kept on loving each other, haven’t we?”
“This is different.”
“Don’t say that.”
“My whole life has changed.”
George looked hard at her face, and saw there a mixture of defiance and guilt that gave him a clue to what was going on. “You’re sleeping with one of the Panthers, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
George had a heavy feeling in his guts, as if he had drunk a tankard of cold ale. “You should have told me.”
“I’m telling you now.”
“My God.” George was sad. He fingered the ring in his pocket. Was it going to stay there? “Do you realize it’s seven years since we graduated from Harvard?” He fought back tears.
“I know.”
“Police dogs in Birmingham, ‘I have a dream’ in Washington, President Johnson backing civil rights, two assassinations . . .”
“And blacks are still the poorest Americans, living in the lousiest houses, getting the most perfunctory health care—and doing more than their share of the fighting in Vietnam.”
“Bobby’s going to change all that.”
“No, he’s not.”
“Yes, he is. And I’m going to invite you to the White House to admit that you were wrong.”
Verena went to the door. “Good-bye, George.”
“I can’t believe it ends like this.”
“The maid will see you out.”
George found it difficult to think straight. He had loved Verena for years, and had assumed they would marry sooner or later. Now she had ditched him for a Black Panther. He felt lost. Although they had lived apart, he had always been able to think about what he would say to her and how he would caress her next time they were together. Now he was alone.
The maid came in and said: “This way, Mr. Jakes, if you please.”
Automatically he followed her to the hall. She opened the front door. “Thank you,” he said.
“Good-bye, Mr. Jakes.”
George got into his rented car and drove away.
• • •
On voting day in the California primary, George was with Bobby Kennedy at the Malibu beach home of John Frankenheimer, the movie director. The weather was overcast that morning, but nevertheless Bobby swam in the ocean with his twelve-year-old son, David. They both got caught in the undertow and emerged with scratches and scrapes from being dragged over the pebbles. After lunch Bobby fell asleep beside the pool, stretched out across two chairs, his mouth open. Looking through the glass patio doors, George noticed an angry mark on Bobby’s forehead from the swimming incident.
He had not told Bobby that he had broken up with Verena. He had told only his mother. He barely had time to think on the campaign trail, and California had been nonstop: airport mob scenes, motorcades, hysterical crowds, and packed meetings. George was glad to be so busy. He had the luxury of feeling sad only for a few minutes every night before falling asleep. Even then he found himself imagining conversations with Verena in which he persuaded her to return to legitimate politics and campaign for Bobby. Perhaps their different approaches had always been a manifestation of fundamental incompatibility. He had never wanted to believe that.
At three o’clock the results of the first exit poll were broadcast on TV. Bobby led Gene McCarthy 49 percentage points to 41. George was elated. I can’t win my girl, but I can win elections, he thought.
Bobby showered and shaved and put on a blue pin-striped suit and a white shirt. Either the suit, or perhaps his increased confidence, made him seem more presidential than ever before, George thought.
The bruise on Bobby’s forehead was unsightly, but John Frankenheimer found some professional movie makeup in the house and covered up the mark.
At half past six the Kennedy entourage got into cars and drove into Los Angeles. They went to the Ambassador Hotel, where the victory celebration was already getting under way in the ballroom. George went with Bobby to the Royal Suite on the fifth floor. There in a large living room a hundred or more friends, advisers, and privileged journalists were downing cocktails and congratulating one another. Every TV set in the suite was on.
George and the closest advisers followed Bobby through the living room and into one of the bedrooms. As always, Bobby mixed partying with hard political talk. Today, as well as California, he had won a low-profile primary in South Dakota, birthplace of Hubert Humphrey. After California he felt confident of winning New York, where he had the advantage of being one of the state’s senators. “We’re beating McCarthy, damn it,” he said exultantly, sitting on the floor in a corner of the room, keeping an eye on the TV.
George was beginning to worry about the convention. How could he make sure that Bobby’s popularity was reflected in the votes of delegates from states where there were no primaries? “Humphrey is working hard on states such as Illinois, where Mayor Daley controls the delegate votes.”
“Yeah,” said Bobby. “But in the end men like Daley can’t ignore popular feeling. They want to win. Hubert can’t beat Dick Nixon, and I can.”
“It’s true, but do the Democratic power brokers know that?”
“They will by August.”
George shared Bobby’s sense that they were riding a wave, but he saw the dangers ahead all too clearly. “We need McCarthy to withdraw so that we can concentrate on beating Humphrey. We have to make a deal with McCarthy.”
Bobby shook his head. “I can’t offer him the vice presidency. He’s a Catholic. Protestants might vote for one Catholic, but not two.”
“You could offer him the top job in cabinet.”
“Secretary of state?”
“If he pulls out now.”
Bobby frowned. “It’s hard to imagine working with him in the White House.”
“If you don’t win, you won’t be in the White House. Should I put out feelers?”
“Let me think about it some more.”
“Of course.”
“You know something else, George?” Bobby said. “For the first time I don’t feel I’m here as Jack’s brother.”
George smiled. That was a big step.
George went into the main room to talk to reporters, but he did not get a drink. When he was with Bobby he preferred to stay sharp. Bobby himself liked bourbon. But incompetence on his team infuriated him, and he could lacerate someone who let him down. George felt comfortable drinking alcohol only when Bobby was far away.
He was still stone-cold sober a few minutes before midnight when he accompanied Bobby down to the ballroom to give his victory speech. Bobby’s wife, Ethel, looked groovy in an orange-and-white minidress with white tights, despite being pregnant with their eleventh child.
The crowd went wild, as always. The boys all wore Kennedy straw hats. The girls had a uniform: blue skirt, white blouse, and red Kennedy sash. A band blared a campaign song. Powerful television lights added to the heat in the room. Led by bodyguard Bill Barry, Bobby and Ethel pushed through the crowd, their young supporters reaching out to touch them and pull their clothes, until they reached a small platform. Jostling photographers added to the chaos.
The crowd hysteria was a problem for George and others, but it was Bobby’s strength. His ability to get this emotional reaction from people was going to take him to the White House.
Bobby stood behind a bouquet of microphones. He had not asked for a written speech, just some notes. His performance was lackluster, but no one cared. “We are a great country, an unselfish country, and a compassionate country,” he said. “I intend to make that my basis for running.” These were not inspiring words, but the crowd adored him too much to care.
George decided he would not go with Bobby to the Factory discotheque afterward. Seeing couples dance would only remind him that he was alone. He would get a good night’s sleep before flying to New York in the morning to launch the campaign there. Work was the cure for his heartache.
“I thank all of you who made this possible this evening,” Bobby said. He flashed the Churchillian V-for-victory sign, and around the room hundreds of young people repeated the gesture. He reached down from the platform to shake some of the outstretched hands.
Then there was a glitch. His next appointment was with the press in a nearby room. The plan was for him to pass through the crowd as he left, but George could see that Bill Barry was unable to clear a path between the hysterical teenage girls shouting: “We want Bobby! We want Bobby!”
A hotel employee in the uniform of a maître d’hôtel solved the problem, pointing Bobby to a pair of swinging doors that evidently led through staff quarters to the press room. Bobby and Ethel followed the man into a dim corridor, and George and Bill Barry and the rest of the entourage hurried after them.
George was wondering how soon he could again raise with Bobby the need to make a deal with Gene McCarthy. It was the strategic priority, in George’s opinion. But personal relationships were so important to the Kennedys. If Bobby could have made a friend of Lyndon Johnson everything would have been different.
The corridor led to a brightly lit pantry zone with gleaming stainless-steel steam tables and a huge ice maker. A radio reporter was interviewing Bobby as they walked, saying: “Senator, how are you going to counter Mr. Humphrey?” Bobby shook hands with smiling staff on his way through. A young kitchen worker turned from a tray stacker as if to greet Bobby.
Then, in a lightning flash of terror, George saw a gun in the young man’s hand.
It was a small black revolver with a short barrel.
The man pointed the gun at Bobby’s head.
George opened his mouth to yell but the shot came first.
The little weapon made a noise that was more of a pop than a bang.
Bobby threw his hands up to his face, staggered back, then fell to the concrete floor.
George roared: “No! No!” It could not be happening—it could not be happening again!
A moment later came a volley of shots like a Chinese firecracker. Something stung George’s arm, but he ignored it.
Bobby lay on his back beside the ice machine, hands above his head, feet apart. His eyes were open.
People were yelling and screaming. The radio reporter was babbling into his microphone: “Senator Kennedy has been shot! Senator Kennedy has been shot! Is that possible? Is that possible?”
Several men jumped on the gunman. Someone was shouting: “Get the gun! Get the gun!” George saw Bill Barry punch the shooter in the face.
George knelt by Bobby. He was alive, but bleeding from a wound just behind his ear. He looked bad. George loosened his tie to help him breathe. Someone else put a folded coat under Bobby’s head.
A man’s voice was moaning: “God, no . . . Christ, no . . .”
Ethel pushed through the crowd, knelt beside George, and spoke to her husband. There was a flicker of recognition in Bobby’s face, and he tried to speak. George thought he said: “Is everyone else all right?” Ethel stroked his face.
George looked around. He could not tell whether anyone else had been hit by the volley of bullets. Then he noticed his own forearm. The sleeve of his suit was ripped and blood was seeping from a wound. He had been hit. Now that he noticed, it hurt like hell.
The far door opened, and reporters and photographers from the press room burst through. The cameramen mobbed the group around Bobby, shoving each other and climbing on the stoves and sinks to get better shots of the bleeding victim and his stricken wife. Ethel pleaded: “Give him some air, please! Let him breathe!”
An ambulance crew arrived with a stretcher. They took Bobby by the shoulders and feet. Bobby cried weakly: “Oh, no, don’t . . .”
“Gently!” Ethel begged the crew. “Gently.”
They lifted him onto the stretcher and strapped him in.
Bobby’s eyes closed.
He never opened them again.