Mexico set, p.2
Mexico Set, page 2
‘Gloria?’ I said.
‘Oh? Don’t say you’ve been there?’
‘Us workers stick together, Dicky,’ I said.
‘Very funny,’ said Dicky. ‘If Bret takes over my job, he’ll chase your arse. Working for me will seem like a holiday. I hope you realize that, old pal.’
I didn’t know that the brilliant career of Bret was taking a downturn to the point where Dicky was running scared. But Dicky had taken a PhD in office politics so I was prepared to believe him. ‘This is the Pink Zone,’ I said. ‘Why don’t you park in one of these hotels and get a cab?’
Dicky seemed relieved at the idea of letting a cab driver find Werner Volkmann’s apartment but, being Dicky, he had to argue against it for a couple of minutes. As he pulled into the slow lane the dirty child in the VW smiled and then made a terrible face at us. Dicky glanced at me and said, ‘Are you pulling faces at that child? For God’s sake, act your age, Bernard.’ Dicky was in a bad mood, and talking about his job had made him more touchy.
He turned off Insurgentes on to a side-street and cruised eastwards until we found a car-park under one of the big hotels. As we went down the ramp into the darkness he switched the headlights on. This was a different world. This was where the Mercedes, Cadillacs and Porsches lived in comfort, shiny with health, smelling of new leather and guarded by two armed security men. One of them pushed a ticket under a wiper and lifted the barrier so that we could drive through.
‘So your school chum Werner spots a KGB heavy here in town. Why did Controller (Europe) insist that I come out here at this stinking time of year?’ Dicky was cruising very slowly round the dark garage, looking for a place to park.
‘Werner didn’t spot Erich Stinnes,’ I said. ‘Werner’s wife spotted him. And there’s a departmental alert for him. There’s a space.’
‘Too small; this is a big car. Alert? You don’t have to tell me that, old boy. I signed the alert, Remember me? Controller of German Stations? But I’ve never seen Erich Stinnes. I wouldn’t know Erich Stinnes from the man in the moon. You’re the one who can identify him. Why do I have to come?’
‘You’re here to decide what we do. I’m not senior enough or reliable enough to make decisions. What about there, next to the white Mercedes?’
‘Ummmmm,’ said Dicky. He had trouble parking the car in the space marked out by the white lines. One of the security guards – a big poker-faced man in starched khakis and carefully polished high boots – came to watch us. He stood arms akimbo, staring, while Dicky went backwards and forwards trying to squeeze between the white convertible and a concrete stanchion that bore brightly coloured patches of enamel from other cars. ‘Did you really make out with that blonde in Bret’s office?’ said Dicky as he abandoned his task and reversed into another space marked ‘reserved’.
‘Gloria? I thought everyone knew about me and Gloria,’ I said. In fact I knew her no better than Dicky did but I couldn’t resist the chance to needle him. ‘My wife’s left me. I’m a free man again.’
‘Your wife defected,’ said Dicky spitefully. ‘Your wife is working for the bloody Russkies.’
‘That’s over and done with,’ I said. I didn’t want to talk about my wife or my children or any other problems. And if I did want to talk about them Dicky would be the last person I’d choose to confide in.
‘You and Fiona were very close,’ said Dicky accusingly.
‘It’s not a crime to be in love with your wife,’ I said.
‘Taboo subject, eh?’ It pleased Dicky to touch a nerve and get a reaction. I should have known better than to respond to his taunts. I was guilty by association. I’d become a probationer once more and I’d remain one until I proved my loyalty all over again. Nothing had been said to me officially, but Dicky’s little flash of temper was not the first indication of what the department really felt.
‘I didn’t come on this trip to discuss Fiona,’ I said.
‘Don’t keep bickering,’ said Dicky. ‘Let’s go and talk to your friend Werner and get it finished. I can’t wait to be out of this filthy hell-hole. January or February; that’s the time when people who know what’s what go to Mexico. Not in the middle of the rainy season.’
Dicky opened the door of the car and I slid across the seat to get out his side. ‘Prohibido aparcar,’ said the security guard, and with arms folded he planted himself in our path.
‘What’s that?’ said Dicky, and the man said it again. Dicky smiled and explained, in his schoolboy Spanish, that we were residents of the hotel, we would only be leaving the car there for half an hour, and we were engaged on very important business.
‘Prohibido aparcar,’ said the guard stolidly
‘Give him some money, Dicky,’ I said. ‘That’s all he wants.’
The security guard looked from Dicky to me and stroked his large black moustache with the ball of his thumb. He was a big man, as tall as Dicky and twice as wide.
‘I’m not going to give him anything,’ said Dicky. ‘I’m not going to pay twice.’
‘Let me do it,’ I said. ‘I’ve got small money here.’
‘Stay out of this,’ said Dicky. ‘You’ve got to know how to handle these people.’ He stared at the guard. ‘Nada! Nada! Nada! Entiende?’
The guard looked down at our Chevrolet and then plucked the wiper between finger and thumb and let it fall back against the glass with a thump. ‘He’ll wreck the car,’ I said. ‘This is not the time to get into a hassle you can’t win.’
‘I’m not frightened of him,’ said Dicky.
‘I know you’re not, but I am.’ I got in front of him before he took a swing at the guard. There was a hard, almost vicious, streak under Dicky’s superficial charm, and he was a keen member of the Foreign Office judo club. Dicky wasn’t frightened of anything; that’s why I didn’t like working with him. I folded some paper money into the guard’s ready hand and pushed Dicky towards the sign that said ‘Elevator to hotel lobby’. The guard watched us go, his face still without emotion. Dicky wasn’t pleased either. He thought I’d tried to protect him against the guard and he felt belittled by my interference.
The hotel lobby was that same ubiquitous combination of tinted mirror, plastic marble and spongy carpet underlay that international travellers are reputed to admire. We sat down under a huge display of plastic flowers and looked at the fountain.
‘Machismo,’ said Dicky sadly. We were waiting for the top-hatted hotel doorman to find a taxi driver who would take us to Werner’s apartment. ‘Machismo,’ he said again reflectively. ‘Every last one of them is obsessed by it. It’s why you can’t get anything done here. I’m going to report that bastard downstairs to the manager.’
‘Wait until after we’ve collected the car,’ I advised.
‘At least the embassy sent a Counsellor to meet us. That means that London has told them to give us full diplomatic back-up.’
‘Or it means Mexico City embassy staff – including your pal Tiptree – have a lot of time on their hands.’
Dicky looked up from counting his traveller’s cheques. ‘What do I have to do, Bernard, to make you remember it’s Mexico? Not Mexico City; Mexico.’
2
This was a new Werner Volkmann. This was not the introverted Jewish orphan I’d been at school with, nor the lugubrious teenager I’d grown up with in Berlin, nor the affluent, overweight banker who was welcome on both sides of the Wall. This new Werner was a tough, muscular figure in short-sleeved cotton shirt and well-fitting Madras trousers. His big droopy moustache had been trimmed and so had his bushy black hair. Being on holiday with his twenty-two-year-old wife had rejuvenated him.
He was standing on the sixth-floor balcony of a small block of luxury apartments in downtown Mexico City. From here was a view across this immense city, with the mountains a dark backdrop. The dying sun was turning the world pink, now that the stormclouds had passed over. Long ragged strips of orange and gold cloud were torn across the sky, like a poster advertising a smog-reddened sun ripped by a passing vandal.
The balcony was large enough to hold a lot of expensive white garden furniture as well as big pots of tropical flowers. Green leafy plants climbed overhead to provide shade, while a collection of cacti were arrayed on shelves like books. Werner poured a pink concoction from a glass jug. It was like a watery fruit salad, the sort of thing they pressed on you at parties where no one got drunk. It didn’t look tempting, but I was hot and I took one gratefully.
Dicky Cruyer was flushed; his cowboy shirt bore dark patches of sweat. He had his blue-denim jacket slung over his shoulder. He tossed it on to a chair and reached out to take a drink from Werner.
Werner’s wife Zena held out her glass for a refill. She was full-length on a reclining chair. She was wearing a sheer, rainbow-striped dress through which her suntanned limbs shone darkly. As she moved to sip her drink, German fashion magazines, balanced on her belly, slid to the ground and flapped open. Zena cursed softly. It was the strange, flat-accented speech of eastern lands that were no longer German. It was probably the only thing she’d inherited from her impoverished parents, and I had the feeling she would sometimes have been happier without it.
‘What’s in this drink?’ I said.
Werner recovered the magazines from the floor and gave them to his wife. In business he could be tough, in friendships outspoken, but to Zena he was always indulgent.
Werner raised money from Western banks to pay exporters to East Germany, and then eventually collected the money from the East German government, taking a tiny percentage on every deal. ‘Avalizing’ it was called. But it wasn’t a banker’s business; it was a free-for-all in which many got their fingers burned. Werner had to be tough to survive.
‘In the drink? Fruit juices,’ said Werner. ‘It’s too early for alcohol in this sort of climate.’
‘Not for me it isn’t,’ I said. Werner smiled but he didn’t go anywhere to get me a proper drink. He was my oldest and closest friend; the sort of close friend who gives you the excoriating criticism that new enemies hesitate about. Zena didn’t look up; she was still pretending to read her magazines.
Dicky had stepped into the jungle of flowers to get a clearer view of the city. I looked over his shoulder to see the traffic still moving sluggishly. In the street below there were flashing red lights and sirens as two police cars mounted the pavement to get around the traffic. In a city of fifteen million people there is said to be a crime committed every two minutes. The noise of the streets never ceased. As the flow of homegoing office workers ended, the influx of people to the Zona Rosa’s restaurants and cinemas began. ‘What a madhouse,’ said Dicky.
A malevolent-looking black cat awoke and jumped softly down from its position on the footstool. It went over to Dicky and sank a claw into his leg and looked up at him to see how he’d take it. ‘Hell!’ shouted Dicky. ‘Get away, you brute.’ Dicky aimed a blow at the cat but missed. The cat moved very fast as if it had done the same thing before to other gringos.
Wincing with pain and rubbing his leg, Dicky moved well away from the cat and went to the other end of the balcony to look inside the large lounge with its locally made tiles, old masks and Mexican textiles. It looked like an arts and crafts shop, but obviously a lot of money had been spent getting it that way. ‘Nice place you’ve got here,’ said Dicky. There was more than a hint of sarcasm in his remark. It was not Dicky’s style. Anything that departed much from Harrod’s furniture department was too foreign for him.
‘It belongs to Zena’s uncle and aunt,’ explained Werner. ‘We’re taking care of it while they’re in Europe.’ That explained the notebook I’d seen near the telephone. Zena had neatly entered ‘wine glass’, ‘tumbler’, ‘wine glass’, ‘small china bowl with blue flowers’. It was a list of breakages, an example of Zena’s sense of order and rectitude.
‘You chose a bad time of year,’ complained Dicky. ‘Or rather Zena’s uncle chose a good one.’ He drained the glass, tipping it up until the ice cubes, cucumber and pieces of lemon slid down the glass and rested against his lips.
‘Zena doesn’t mind it,’ said Werner, as if his own opinions were of no importance.
Zena, still concentrating on her magazine, said, ‘I love the sun.’ She said it twice and continued to read without losing her place.
‘If only it would rain,’ said Werner. ‘It’s this build-up to the storms that makes it so unbearable.’
‘So you saw this chap Stinnes?’ said Dicky very casually, as if that wasn’t the reason that the two of us had dragged ourselves four thousand miles to talk to them.
‘At the Kronprinz,’ said Werner.
‘What’s the Kronprinz?’ said Dicky. He put down his glass and used a paper napkin to dry his lips.
‘A club.’
‘What sort of club?’ Dicky stuck his thumbs into the back of his leather belt and looked down at the toes of his cowboy boots reflectively. The cat had followed Dicky and looked as if it was about to reach up above his boot to put a claw into his thin calf again. Dicky aimed a vicious little kick at it but the cat was too quick for him. ‘Get away,’ said Dicky, more loudly this time.
‘I’m sorry about the cat,’ said Werner. ‘But I think Zena’s aunt only let us use the place because we’d be company for Cherubino. It’s your jeans. Cats like to claw at denim.’
‘It bloody hurts,’ said Dicky, rubbing his leg. ‘You should get its claws clipped or something. In this part of the world cats carry all kinds of diseases.’
‘What’s it matter what sort of club?’ said Zena suddenly. She closed the magazine and pushed her hair back. She looked different with her hair loose; no longer the tough little career girl, more the lady of leisure. Her hair was long and jet black and held with a silver Mexican comb which she brandished before tossing her hair back and fixing it again.
‘A club for German businessmen. It’s been going since 1902,’ said Werner. ‘Zena likes the buffet and dance they have on Friday nights. There’s a big German colony here in the city. There always has been.’
‘Werner said there would be a cash payment for finding Stinnes,’ said Zena.
‘There usually is,’ said Dicky slyly, although he knew there would be no chance of a cash payment for such a routine report. It must have been Werner’s way of encouraging Zena to cooperate with us. I looked at Werner and he looked back at me without changing his expression.
‘How do you know it really is Stinnes?’ said Dicky.
‘It’s Stinnes all right,’ said Werner stoically. ‘His name is on his membership card and his credit at the bar is in that name.’
‘And his cheque book,’ said Zena. ‘His name is printed on his cheques.’
‘What bank?’ I asked.
‘Bank of America,’ said Zena. ‘A branch in San Diego, California.’
‘Names mean nothing,’ said Dicky. ‘How do you know this fellow is a KGB man? And, even if he is, what makes you so sure that this is the johnny who interrogated Bernard in East Berlin?’ A brief movement of the hand in my direction. ‘It might be someone using the same cover name. We’ve known KGB people do that. Right, Bernard?’
‘It has been known,’ I said, although I was damned if I could recall any examples of such sloppy tactics by the plodding but thorough bureaucrats of the KGB.
‘How much?’ said Zena. And, when Dicky looked at her and raised his eyebrows, she said, ‘How much are you going to give us for reporting Stinnes? Werner said you want him badly. Werner said he was very important.’
‘Steady on,’ said Dicky. ‘We don’t have him yet. We haven’t even positively identified him.’
‘Erich Stinnes,’ said Zena as if repeating a prepared lesson. ‘Fortyish, thinning hair, cheap specs, smokes like a chimney. Berlin accent.’
‘Beard?’
‘No beard,’ said Zena. Hastily she added, ‘He must have shaved it off.’ She did not readily abandon her claims.
‘So you’ve spoken with him,’ I said.
‘He’s there every Friday,’ said Werner. ‘He’s a regular. He works at the Soviet Embassy, he told Zena that. He says he’s just a driver.’
‘They’re always drivers,’ I said. ‘That’s how they account for their nice big cars and going wherever they want to go.’ I poured myself some more of Werner’s fruit punch. There was not much of it left, and the bottom of the jug was a tangle of greenery and soggy bits of lemon. ‘Did he talk about books or American films, Zena?’
She swung her legs out of the reclining chair with a display of tanned thigh. I saw the look in Dicky Cruyer’s face as she smoothed her dress. She had that sexy appeal that goes with youth and health and boundless energy. And now she knew she had the right Stinnes her pearly grey eyes sparkled. ‘That’s right. He loves old Hollywood musicals and English detective stories . . .’
‘Then that’s him,’ I said, without much enthusiasm. Secretly I’d hoped it would all come to nothing and I’d be able to go straight back to London and my home and my children. ‘Yes, that’s “Lenin”; that’s the one who took me down to Checkpoint Charlie when they released me.’
‘What will happen now?’ said Zena. She was short; she only came up to Dicky’s shoulder. Some say short people are aggressive to compensate for their small stature, but look at Zena Volkmann and you might start thinking that aggressive people are made short lest they take over the whole world. Either way Zena was short and the aggression inside her was always bubbling along the edges of the pan like milk before it boils over. ‘What will you do about him?’
‘Don’t ask,’ Werner told her.
But Dicky answered her, ‘We want to talk to him, Mrs Volkmann. No rough stuff, if that’s what you are afraid of.’
