One can escape from check by removing hostile pieces or interposing oneself.
Berlin, Saturday, October 12th
I gave the doorman at the Frühling my bags and stepped out in search of supper. It was late, the animals in the zoo had settled down but next door in the Hilton they were just becoming fully awake. Near by the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church bells clanged gently and around it came a white VW bus, its hoo-haw siren moaning and its blue light flashing a priority. Cars halted as the bus bearing the words ‘Military Police US Army’ roared past, its fan whining.
Maison de France is on the corner of Uhlandstrasse not far away. I was hungry. It was a good night for walking but the pressure was rising and rain was in the air. The neon signs gloated brightly across the beleaguered city. On the Ku-damm the pavement cafés had closed their glass sides tight and turned on the infra-red heating. In the glass cases diners moved like carnivorous insects. Here the well-dressed Insulaner1 ate, argued, bartered and sat over one coffee for hours until the waiters made their annoyance too evident. Outside, the glittering kiosks sold magazines and hot meat snacks to the strollers, while double-decker cream buses clattered up and down, and nippy VWs roared and whined around the corners past the open-topped Mercedes that drove lazily past, their drivers hailing and shouting to people they recognized and to quite a few that they didn’t.
Knots of pedestrians paraded at the traffic crossings and at the given signal marched obediently forward. Young men in dark woollen shirts parked and played jazz on their car radios and waited patiently while their white-haired girl friends adjusted their make-up and decided which club they would like to go to next.
Two men were eating Shashlik at a corner kiosk and listening to a football match over a transistor radio. I crossed half of the wide street; down the centre of it, brightly coloured cars were parked in a vast row that reached as far as the Grunewald. High above I could see the lights of the Maison de France restaurant.
I heard footsteps behind. It was one of the men from the kiosk. I was between two parked cars. I turned and let the weight of my back fall upon the nearest car, flattening the palms of my hands against the cold metal. He was a bald-headed man in a short overcoat. He was so close behind me that he almost collided with me when I stopped. I leaned well back and kicked at him as hard as I could. He screamed. I smelled the rich meaty Shashlik as he stumbled forward out of balance. I groped towards the scream and felt the wooden Shashlik skewer drive into the side of my left hand. The man’s bald head smashed against the window of the other car. The safety glass shattered into milky opacity and I read the words ‘Protected by Pinkertons – Chicago Motor Club’ on a bright paper transfer.
He held his head in his hand and began lowering it to the ground like a slow-motion film of a touchdown. He whimpered softly.
From the kiosk the second man came running, shouting a torrent of German in the ever-comical accent of Saxony. As he began to cross the roadway towards me there was another ‘hoo-haw’ of police sirens and a VW saloon with blue flasher and spotlight full on came roaring down the wide street. The Saxon stepped back on to the pavement, but when the police car had flashed past he ran towards me. I drew out the 9-mm FN automatic pistol2 that the War Office Armoury had made such a fuss about and used my left hand to slam the slide back and put a cartridge into the breech. An edge of pain travelled along my palm and I felt the sticky wetness of blood. I was crouched very low by the time the Saxon got to the rear of the car. Just inches to the left of my elbow, the whimpering man said, ‘But we have a message for you.’ He rocked gently with the pain and blood ran down the bald head like earphones.
‘Bist du verrückt, Engländer?’
I wasn’t mad I told him as long as he kept his distance. The Saxon called again from the rear of the Buick. They had a message for me ‘from the Colonel’. In that town I knew several colonels but it was easy to guess who they meant.
The man sitting on the ground whimpered and, as a car’s headlights rolled past, I saw his face was very white. The blood moved down the side of his head. It glued his fingers together and moved slowly to form new patterns like a kaleidoscope. Little puddles of it formed in the wrinkles of his shiny ears and splashed on his knitted tie like tomato soup.
I took the written address from the Saxon with apologies. These were no B-picture heavies, just two elderly messengers. I left them there in the middle of the Ku-damm, the Saxon and his half-conscious friend. They would never find a taxi on a Saturday night, especially now that rain had begun.