Radka and George conversed in whispers so as not to wake Serge.
‘Why didn’t you tell me about this?’ Radka asked. ‘We could have been in danger, me and Serge. And your mother. Liebl was watching us.’
‘What would you have done?’
She didn’t reply and he already knew her answer. She would have taken the boy and left, he thought.
‘So what shall we do now?’ she whispered fiercely. ‘Wait until they kill you?’
‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘If my mother has no solutions, we leave soon. In England we’ll be safe.’
‘Until the next time Valentin comes along with some crazy idea.’
‘There’ll be no next time.’
He had a troubled and broken sleep, lying on the edge of the bed on the other side of Serge. In their own apartment the bed was large enough to accommodate them all comfortably, but here at Katya’s he had to take the rough with the smooth. In the early hours of the morning he woke up and realised that he couldn’t get back to sleep. He went into the kitchen, made himself some coffee and stood in the sitting room looking out at the sky. It had been a full moon, but in any case, here in Berlin, the moon and stars were hardly noticeable in a sky flushed pink and yellow with the city lights.
He heard a noise behind him and assumed that it was Katya. She used to come up behind him like this when he was a teenager and he got up in the night to stare out at the sky. ‘Is there something you want to talk about?’ she would ask in a soft voice.
When he turned round, however, it was Kofi who sat in the armchair, one leg dangling over the side like before, looking intently at him.
‘Hello,’ George greeted him. He raised his cup. ‘You want some coffee? Tea?’
Kofi shook his head.
‘Maybe,’ he said, ‘we can talk a little. I would like to know you better.’
George cast around in his mind for something to say. He had dreamt of this moment many times.
‘This must be very strange for you,’ he told Kofi.
‘For you too.’
George nodded in acknowledgement.
‘The strangest part of it,’ Kofi said, ‘is that you and Joseph look so much alike, but you are German and he is English.’
‘If I call myself a German,’ George said. ‘Other people are likely to say – yes, but what are you really?’ He laughed, then a question occurred to him. ‘What are you?’ He wanted to know the answer. As a boy he had wanted to be the same nationality as his father, and sometimes when someone asked where he came from he would say Ghana.
Kofi considered the question with care.
‘I was once a Ghanaian. Now I have a British passport. As for what I am in here,’ he tapped his heart, ‘I don’t know any more. You can say I’m like the singer, the artist formerly known as Prince. I am a man formerly known as a Ghanaian.’
George guessed he was expected to laugh.
‘What did you think when you heard about me?’
Kofi studied George, turning the question over with even more care.
‘I was very happy. If I’d known at the time I would have been very pleased. Not having been there while you grew up makes me very sad.’
‘I wish that I had.’
‘Are you glad to see her?’
Kofi smiled.
‘I didn’t think I would ever be so happy again.’
Hearing this George felt a peculiar little thrill inside him, and for a moment he couldn’t think what else to say. In another minute, he thought, his mind would be full of questions.
‘Tell me something about your life,’ Kofi asked. ‘Did you have a happy childhood?’
‘That is not how I would describe it,’ George replied. ‘It wasn’t her fault, but I felt alone, you know, most of the time. At school they used to think I was American, or that my father must be a Yank. That’s not so good. Sometimes they expected me to be able to sing the blues, or play jazz like I had some genetic heritage. When they knew my mother was Russian they said Schwarzer Russky, when they weren’t calling me nigger. It was easier when I went into the army.’
‘You should have gone to university,’ Kofi said. ‘It would have opened windows.’
He had the strange feeling that George was more like him than Joseph, and already he felt a kind of sympathy between them that was absent in his conversations with his younger son.
‘I should have,’ George said, ‘but I wouldn’t have known what to study.’ He grinned at Kofi, struck by a sudden thought. ‘What made you go to study in Russia? All the people there were trying to get out.’
‘In some ways I was just doing what I was told. It was strange, yes, but all these white man’s countries were strange, although not in the same way. Part of it was that we couldn’t take anything on trust, because everybody in the world lied to us about everything. They really did treat us like savage children who were only entitled to know what they thought was good for us. So everything was a kind of opposite. When the British and the Americans said freedom, they meant freedom for themselves, servitude for us. When they said the Russians were enslaved it was not hard to believe that it really meant freedom.’
‘It didn’t mean freedom.’
Kofi shrugged.
‘I still don’t know what it meant. For me going to a place where you weren’t supposed to go was a kind of freedom, like getting out of prison.’ He smiled at George. ‘Why did white men go to Africa? Europe was our dark continent.’
George watched him, searching for signs of resemblance. The eyes, he thought, were very similar.
‘When I was younger,’ he said, ‘I couldn’t understand why you would come to a place where you didn’t belong and have a child who didn’t belong either.’ He hurried on to prevent Kofi misunderstanding his intent. ‘Now I can see all this belonging is bullshit. You can belong where you choose to belong.’
‘What did your mother tell you about me?’
George grinned at him. ‘She said you were a kind of hero.’ It would have been better, he thought, if I had believed you were an ordinary person. All his life he had felt that his father would have done things he couldn’t.
‘I’m going to Prague today,’ Kofi said.
‘Prague?’
George wasn’t sure that he’d heard right.
‘I’m going to meet an old friend.’ Kofi hesitated, uncertain how much to tell him, then he described how he’d met Valery, and how they used to share a room in Cheryomushki. George was astonished. He’d heard the name on the radio and read it in the newspapers, but it had never occurred to him that the man had any connection with his parents.
‘You know that man?’
‘Didn’t your mother tell you about him?’
George shook his head, and Kofi guessed that Katya hadn’t told him, either, about the part his grandfather had played in their lives.
‘He can help us,’ he said.
Somehow the conversation calmed George’s nerves, and soothed the restlessness which had kept him awake. Kofi was talking about Valery, but his attention kept wandering, and in a few minutes he felt himself dozing off. When he opened his eyes again, there was a grey light gleaming through the window and Kofi had disappeared.
He went to bed, sliding in beside Radka who shifted to make room for him without waking. He woke again a couple of hours later, and walking into the kitchen interrupted Kofi and Katya who were sitting at the table conversing intently in quiet voices.
‘What’s up?’
‘Nothing really,’ Katya said. ‘We were talking about what to do in Prague.’
George shrugged. He had been too tired to argue during the night, in the face of Katya’s firmness, but in the cold light of day he found himself unable to believe in the idea that his elderly parents could resolve matters at a stroke. He was on the verge of opening his mouth to say so, but, looking at Katya’s determined expression he changed his mind. After all it would do no harm for Kofi to go to Prague and see his old friend, and it might keep them quiet while he worked out a way of getting out of the mess.
After breakfast, when the arrangements for his father’s trip had been made, and Kofi was waiting to be picked up, George telephoned Liebl’s office. The receptionist put him through at once.
‘I was waiting to hear from you,’ Liebl said. ‘Congratulations.’
‘You fat shit,’ George said. ‘Next time I’ll come looking for you.’
‘Don’t get so excited,’ Liebl wheezed. ‘It’s your brother’s fault. You should tell him to be more careful. I didn’t think anyone would be fooled by that old trick. I was so surprised I didn’t know what to do with him.’
‘He’s not accustomed to dealing with criminals,’ George said.
Liebl chuckled appreciatively.
‘I take it you’re ready to talk business.’
‘Yes,’ George told him.
He had discussed this with Katya and Valentin and they’d agreed that he should open negotiations with Liebl. That would give them a couple of days in which Kofi’s billionaire might step in. If that didn’t work at least they’d have a breathing space in which to make new plans. In any case, whatever they decided they would have to contact Victor and talk with him.
‘I’m not the only one involved,’ George continued. ‘This will take a few days.’
‘I’ll give you another day,’ Liebl said. He paused. ‘Don’t worry about the Georgians. If you take me as a partner I’ll take care of them.’