43

HANNA STAHL alias SAMANTHA STEEL

Monday, November 4th

Snow already, Samantha Steel thought. What kind of winter was it likely to be? Whatever kind of winter, it would be good to be back in her flat in Haifa, where from the bedroom window umbrella pines framed the intense blue water of the bay, and the whitewashed walls reflected back a glare too bright to look at, even in December.

She watched the big snowflakes hitting the grimy streets as they passed through the Reinickendorf district of Berlin. The whisky had warmed her and she was quite capable of dropping off to sleep. She pressed her face about with her hands, stretching the cheeks and pummelling her eyes. What a relief that it was all over, there had been so many traps and pitfalls. Now she felt torn, shredded, used – sexually used almost. She combed her hair through her fingers. It was soft and young; fine silky hair. She let it fall against her neck like murmurs of love. She dragged it up again, her eyes closed; it was like taking a warm shower, combing her hair through her fingers. It would be nice to have it blonde again. She felt her whole body drift into relaxation.

She would like to see Johnnie Vulkan again before she got on the plane; not for any romantic reason, he was just the sort of tough self-sufficient character that had no attraction for her at all. Vulkan was a big phoney. He wasn’t even German, in spite of the way he always called Berlin his home town. He was a Sudeten German – you could hear it in his voice when he was angry. She didn’t like him but she had to admire him. He was a professional; by any standards he was a professional. Just to see him work was a pleasure.

The Englishman was the exact opposite. There were times when she could have ‘gone for’ the Englishman, nearly did in fact. Given other circumstances, where there was no element of business involved, it all might have been different. She wished she had known him many years ago when he was at his red-brick university, this provincial boy wandering through the big city of life. She envied him his simplicity and briefly wished she had been the girl next door in Burnley, Lancs – wherever that was! He was cuddly, kind and malleable, he would make the sort of husband who wouldn’t fight about her dress allowance all the time.

Why the English used men like that in Intelligence work was something she would never understand. Amateur. That basically was why the English would never be good at doing anything: they were amateurs. Such amateurs that finally someone standing by couldn’t watch their bungling any longer, and took over. That’s what America had done in two World Wars. Perhaps it was all part of a vast British conspiracy. She giggled. She didn’t think so.

The driver offered his cigarettes. She looked round and tapped the coffin to make sure it was still there. She never trusted things she couldn’t see and touch. Thank goodness Johnnie had supervised the morphia dosage and the details, the Englishman would forget or get it wrong. He had to be led, that Englishman. She had found exactly the same thing in her relationship with him. He has to have someone around like Johnnie Vulkan; or Samantha Steel, she added to herself. He would make a good father. Vulkan could perhaps be moulded into a good escort but the English guy would have been a good father to their children. She compared her memories of the two of them as though they were fighting some sort of tournament for her favours. She snuggled deeper in the seat and pulled her coat collar up to her eyebrows to think about that – to keep it more secret.

Vulkan was the worst sort of womanizer and had some idea that women were an inferior race; he had used that word – Männerbund – too; the bond that unites men, comradeship – her mother had told her that that was a dangerous sign. Men can get away with that sort of attitude in this country where there had been nearly two million surplus women in 1945. He would have got the shock of his life in Israel, where women were really gaining a place for themselves.

She lit the cigarette. Her hands shook. It was natural, it was the after-effect of all the work and worry, but there was still the airport to deal with. If she was still in this sort of condition when they got there she would let the driver handle it; he was unimaginative enough to be calm, thank goodness. ‘Where are we?’ she asked.

‘There’s the Siegessäule,’ said the driver and pointed to the tall monument to ancient victories that stabbed into the Tiergarten like a pin through a green butterfly. He detoured to avoid the police cars that always sat around at the base of it. ‘Not far now.’

‘Thank goodness,’ she shivered. ‘It’s damn cold in here,’ she said.

The driver said nothing but they both knew it wasn’t cold in there.

She went back to thinking about the Englishman; it was a nice warm pretence to indulge in and quite academic, now that she would never see him again. He smelled good; she thought smell was important. You could tell a lot about a man by his smell and the taste of his mouth. His smell wasn’t particularly masculine. Not like Vulkan – all tobacco and untanned-leather smells, which she knew came from a bottle, ever since she had looked for aspirins that night and found his hair-net. She laughed. The Englishman smelled of something softer; more like warm yeasty bread, and sometimes he tasted of cocoa.

She remembered that night, it was the night she decided she would never understand men. Vulkan had made love to her in his usual fashion, which was like a specialist performing major surgery. She had promised to buy him some rubber gloves and he had made some wisecrack about her acting like she was anaesthetized. It was about three o’clock in the morning when she had found not only the hair-net but the parts for the half-finished string quartet. Vulkan. King Vulkan. The way he delighted in his big, secret-agent, undercover life. She ought to have told him that the secretive attitude he had about his intellectual life was a guilt syndrome centred upon his parents. Vulkan preferred to think it was ‘the mental casualties of war’. Phoney.

Why was the car stopping? She looked out at the densely packed traffic jam. It was a miserable town full of men in ankle-length overcoats and big hats. As for the clothes the women wore, they were unbelievable, she had hardly seen a well dressed woman all the time she had been here.

She wasn’t worried about the traffic jam, there was ample time, she had worked out the schedule to allow for such things. The van crept forward a little then stopped again. It was as bad as New York. She wondered whether to visit her mother at Christmas. It was a lot of expense and she had only recently been there. Mothers, however, had some special metaphysical regard for Christmas. Perhaps she should ask her mother to come to Haifa. The traffic had begun to move again, there was a cream double-decker bus slewed across the road. An accident. The road was probably slippery with the snow. At first the big flakes had melted as they hit the ground but now they were beginning to build up a white pattern. People too were wearing lace shawls of snowflakes. The driver switched the windscreen wipers on. The motor whined in a monotonous rhythm.

There was a fire engine and a lot of people in the centre of the road. It could take ages at this rate. She leaned back to relax. The taste of the whisky recurred in her throat. She recounted the programme in her mind from the moment they had backed the truck through the doors of the Wittenau garage. Haifa had told her to let the money go only if she had to. It would make them suspicious, they had said. She wished she had bargained with the Englishman now: what had he said about ‘That’s what the Roman soldiers said to Judas’? It was a typical sour English remark. She should have just taken the coffin at gunpoint. It had been in her mind to do so at one time. It was Johnnie Vulkan who had forced her hand, by not being there. He was probably watching from a window across the road. You had to admire Vulkan. He was a real professional.

It was quite dark now, dark with the claustrophobic weight of the cloud from which dirty flakes of snow fell relentlessly. That’s better; they were edging forward again now. Great lights illuminated the foremen operating the jacks under the bus. One fireman was kneeling in a great pool of oil, so was a policeman. Now she could see what had happened. The fireman was talking to an old man whose legs were under the wheels of the bus. They were trying to take the banner he was holding away from him but the old man was gripping it tightly. The policeman waved them past. The old man wouldn’t let go. The snow covered his face. The banner said, ‘No man can serve two masters. Matthew vi. 24.’

‘This is Schöneberg,’ said the driver. Tempelhof must be just ahead.