rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_708deee0-cc88-5206-9317-46bd86cccc10">18
It was dark when his train got back to Kiel. He bought a ticket to Berlin, then went to the station buffet and drank a bottle of wine while he chomped through a plateful of pig’s knuckles and sauerkraut. He got on the train. He could not afford a couchette and bumped his way down the corridors looking for a half-empty compartment. A large, glamorous blonde of about forty gave him the eye outside her empty couchette compartment, but he was too tired to try to get laid in German. He found an empty second-class compartment, spread his bag and jacket around to make the place look heavily occupied, and switched off the lights.
He awoke to his compartment door clashing back. He sat up groggily, in harsh electric light. A man was lying on the seat opposite him. At the door stood a fierce young man in green uniform. He snapped in German, ‘Your passport!’
‘But I’ve already shown my passport …’
The official barked, ‘Passport!’
McQuade pulled it out. The man snatched it. The other man murmured in English: ‘We are now passing through communist East Germany …’
The official glared at the passport as if McQuade had made it himself, compared him closely with the photograph, then, his lips tight, he stamped it and thrust it back. The door slammed after him.
McQuade sat back. ‘Nice guy.’
The young man waved a finger at the dawn outside the windows. ‘Soon we will see The Wall. And their dogs.’
There were farms and forests, a few small towns, all dead quiet. No cars. Then suddenly a high brick wall was running alongside the railway on both sides, and barbed wire, and beyond were twinkling houses with many cars parked in the street, and there were supermarkets and neon signs. ‘That is West Berlin other side the wall,’ the young man said.
The train eased to a halt. McQuade opened the window. Green-uniformed guards with straining Alsatian dogs were patrolling the platform.
In the freezing early morning the train pulled into Berlin. The Berlin of Checkpoint Charlie, the Berlin of Spandau, the Berlin where Hitler committed suicide.
Eichborndamm is a long tree-lined street, dominated by big red-brick buildings. The Deutsche Dienststelle, the pension office, which had window-boxes with flowers, looked like a pleasant apartment block. There was a uniformed guard at the door. McQuade said in halting German, ‘May I please speak to somebody about U-boat pensions?’
The guard took his passport and made a telephone call. After a few minutes, down the stairs came a flustered young woman. She wore a tweed skirt with black boots, and big spectacles: she looked well-bred and wholesome. She smiled uncertainly, ‘I speak not much English.’
McQuade put on his most charming smile. He pulled out Horst Kohler’s identification tag, and said carefully, ‘I would like to trace the family of this U-boat officer, who died during the war. I want to return this to his family. I have been to the U-Boot Archiv in Sylt and found out that his U-boat was number 1093.’
The girl looked surprised. ‘Please, follow me.’
They mounted some stairs to the first floor, which had rows of shelves holding thousands of files, and mounted the next flight of stairs. More shelves, more files. She led him into a spacious office with one government-looking desk with in-trays, out-trays and pending-trays, all empty. A middle-aged man in a cardigan got to his feet politely. ‘Herr Wagner,’ the girl introduced anxiously.
They shook hands. Herr Wagner indicated a chair. ‘Please.’
They all sat and the girl began to speak rapidly in German. Herr Wagner turned the tag over. Then he excused himself, and left the room with it.
McQuade and the girl waited in self-conscious silence, until Herr Wagner came back with a green file. He opened it on the desk. Some of the documents within were partly scorched. Wagner said something and the girl interpreted, ‘Bomb-damage. Fire.’
Herr Wagner flipped slowly through the file. Then spoke in German. The girl then said:
‘Yes, there is a widow. She draws a war pension.’
McQuade’s heart leapt. ‘Can I have her address?’
Herr Wagner shook his head, and spoke in German. The girl said: ‘That is forbidden. Only relatives can be told such things. Herr Wagner must write a letter to Frau Kohler. If she wishes to meet you, then we can inform you.’
‘How long will that take?’
‘Perhaps two weeks.’
‘But isn’t it possible to telephone her?’
The girl interpreted. Herr Wagner sighed. The girl reported: ‘It is not regular to telephone.’
‘But I’ve come all the way from England for this.’
‘We can post the tag to Frau Kohler.’
‘But it is … a sentimental matter to me to meet the lady who is a victim of the tragedy of war.’ He lied: ‘My father died in a submarine during the war, too, you see.’
‘I understand,’ the girl said. She interpreted it.
Herr Wagner hesitated, sighed, then gestured to McQuade to be patient. He left the room.
McQuade waited, his hopes up. ‘Thank you,’ he said to the girl.
‘Don’t mention it.’
Five minutes later Herr Wagner came back. He spoke in German. The girl smiled. ‘Frau Kohler agrees. But your visit should be short. Herr Wagner will write a letter to introduce you. She lives in Freiburg.’
The East German train from Berlin served no beer or wine, only Soviet whisky, pure firewater. And all the toilets were broken. In Hanover McQuade gratefully changed to a West German train to Freiburg.
It was early morning when he arrived, its tree-lined streets quiet. He sat in the station café and drank coffee restlessly, waiting for Freiburg and Frau Kohler to wake up.
It was ten o’clock when the taxi dropped him outside a small apartment block in a quiet suburb. The solid German houses were silent. Here and there smoke curled out of a chimney-pot. McQuade went through glass doors, into a warm passage, and stopped at apartment number 4. He pressed the bell.
There was a spy-hole in the door. He saw it darken. Then the door opened.
‘Guten Morgen,’ McQuade began, ‘Frau Kohler? …’
‘Are you Mr McQuade?’ she said in English.
The apartment was warm and solidly furnished. It overlooked small communal gardens. On a cabinet stood a number of framed photographs. A naval officer was in several of them. Frau Kohler was about sixty and wore her grey hair pulled back into a severe bun. She had obviously once been a handsome woman. She read Herr Wagner’s letter without using spectacles.
‘You are kind to take such trouble.’
McQuade felt like an impostor. He took the identification tag from his pocket and held it out. ‘I’m sure you’d like to have that.’
She looked at it in his hand a moment: then she took it carefully. She gently rubbed her fingers over it.
‘Thank you. I would like it very much,’ She looked up at him. ‘But I must pay you what you paid.’
‘No, I would not dream of that.’
She accepted that. ‘Then you must at least accept some coffee? Or the English prefer tea, perhaps?’
McQuade smiled. ‘Coffee please.’
‘And some scones? When Herr Wagner telephoned me yesterday I thought I must at