Читаем A good German полностью

Shaeffer glared at him, then dropped his shoulders and began picking at the adhesive tape. “Look, we’re walking a fine line here. These guys are the best rocket team in the world-there’s nobody else near them. We have to have them. But they’re German. And some people are sensitive about that. It’s one thing if they just followed orders-who the hell didn’t? — but if there’s anything else, well, we can’t embarrass Breimer. We need his help. He can’t-”

“Give jobs to Nazis.”

“To bad ones, anyway.”

“And you thought there might be something embarrassing in the files.”

“No, I didn’t think that.” He looked away. “Anyway, there wasn’t. I don’t know what the hell Brandt meant, if he meant anything. The important thing is what wasn’t there. These guys are clean.”

“Teitel doesn’t think they’re so clean.”

“He’s a Jew. What do you expect?”

Jake looked over at him. “Maybe not to hear an American say that,” he said quietly.

“You know what I mean. The guy’s on a fucking crusade. Well, he’s not getting these guys. There’s nothing there.”

Jake stood up. “There must be. Something Tully figured he could sell to the Russians.”

“Well, not that they were Nazis. The Russians don’t care.”

“And neither do we.”

Shaeffer raised his head, poster-boy chin out. “Not these guys.”

Outside, the light had begun to fade, the lingering soft end of the day. In the billet they’d be getting ready for dinner, the old woman ladling soup. Jake left the jeep and walked down Gelferstrasse, thinking of that first evening when Liz had flirted with him in the bath. About the time Tully must have been reading files, waiting for someone. Or had he been surprised? Start the numbers over. Tully arriving at the airport. Somewhere in the blur of Liz’s pictures, unless they were just another empty file too.

The old man was setting the table as he passed by the dining room avoiding the drinks crowd in the lounge. Upstairs, his room had been dusted and aired, the pink chenille spread stretched tight. Maid service. Liz’s photographs were stacked neatly on the vanity table, just as he’d left them, in no particular order. The wrecked plane in the Tiergarten, some DPs off in the corner. Churchill. The boys from Missouri. Another, but not a duplicate, the pose slightly shifted. Liz was like all the photographers he’d known-snap lots of pictures and pretend the good one was the only one you’d taken, a random art. One he’d missed before, him looking at the rubble in Pariserstrasse, shoulders slumped, his face slack with disappointment. In a magazine, without a caption, he might have been a returning soldier. He glanced up at his real face in the mirror. Somebody else.

The airport. He pulled the glossy out of the pile and studied it, moving his eyes slowly over the picture as if he were developing it, trying to sharpen figures in the blur. The effect, oddly, was like looking at the shot in Pariserstrasse, a scene out of context. Had he really been there? A second of time he’d missed. Ron standing at the center with his cocky grin, the Tempelhof crowd swirling behind him. The back of a head that might be Brian Stanley’s, the bald spot catching the light. A French soldier with a pompom hat. Nothing. He picked up the next photograph, almost the same but angled, Liz having moved farther left. If you flipped from one to the other, the figures moved, like old posture pictures. Off to the right, a small gleam. Polished boots? He brought the photograph close to his face, fuzzier, then held it out again. Maybe boots, the right height, but the face was indistinct. He flipped them again, but the gleam didn’t move. If it had been Tully, he’d been standing still, his side to the camera, looking left.

The knock was no more than a polite tap, scarcely audible. Jake swiveled to see the old man’s head poking around the door.

“Excuse me, Herr Geismar. I don’t mean to disturb you.”

“What is it?”

For a second the old man just looked, blinking, and Jake wondered if he was seeing his daughter again in her usual seat, dusty with powder.

“Herr Erlich said to ask you about the basement room. The photographic equipment? It’s not to hurry you, but you understand, we need the room. When it’s convenient.”

“I’m sorry. I forgot. I’ll clean it out right away.”

“When it’s convenient,” he said, backing out.

Jake followed him down the stairs and was almost at the basement door when Ron came out of the lounge, glass in hand. “I thought I saw you slinking around. Dining in tonight?” The same grin, as if he were still in the photograph.

“Can’t. I’m just clearing out Liz’s things. Where should I send them?“

“I don’t know. Press camp, I guess. Listen, don’t run away, I’ve got something for you.” He took a folded paper from his pocket. “Don’t ask me why, but they okayed it. She requested it, they said. There something between you two I don’t know about? Anyway, you’re in. Just show them this.” He held out the paper. “Don’t forget, you don’t own this one. Everybody gets a piece of this.”

“A piece of what?”