The Jewish Candidate by David Crossland

Author:David Crossland
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Charles Cumming, Karl Vadaszffy, Robert Harris, James Barlow, politcal thriller, Gerald Seymour, psychological thriller, Suspense, neo-nazism, Steig Larson, Girl with the Dragon Tatoo
ISBN: 9781780361734
Publisher: Peach Publishing
Published: 2013-04-09T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Four

Berlin, Friday, August 31

Carver didn’t know if it was Moscow rules or Hohenschönhausen rules, but it was pretty old-fashioned. The large brown stamped envelope in his letterbox had no sender marked on it. It was thick. At first he was reluctant to open it. Then he remembered Wischnewski. He took a knife, gingerly cut it open and peered inside. No wires. When he held it upside down, a copy of the previous day’s Neues Deutschland fell out. He unfolded it. A postcard showing the Reichstag was hidden inside. On the back was written in printed letters: “Tonight.”

Carver put the postcard in his kitchen sink and burnt it, as instructed.

Ludmilla walked in, wearing his dressing gown. “What’s that smoke? What are you doing?”

“Following the instructions of an old spy.”

Before Carver left Wischnewski’s flat, the Stasi man gave him the name and address of a place where he would provide him with information if and when he got any. The standard meeting time would always be 7.45 p.m. He would send him a note when he wanted to meet. Carver agreed, a little bemused. Wischnewski had a healthy distrust of phones.

“An old spy?” Ludmilla asked.

“After I got attacked, I asked a former Stasi officer I know to watch my back,” he explained. “He wants to meet me. In a bloody cemetery, would you believe it? Tonight. As if Starbucks wouldn’t do. Seems old habits die hard.”

“Is that safe? What cemetery?”

“The place where Bertolt Brecht is buried. Chausseestrasse. After dark.”

“Are you going alone?”

“You bet. If I show up with anyone else he will vanish into the bushes.”

She walked over him and embraced him. “Be very careful.” The feeling of her body against his made him hard again.

Carver left his flat and walked along the jeweller’s shops, fashion boutiques and cafes of Kurfürstendamm, western Berlin’s most famous boulevard, occasionally looking round. He didn’t notice anyone, but he wasn’t versed in the arts of detecting discreet surveillance. He turned left into a less salubrious area of sex shops and burger bars and reached Bahnhof Zoo. Once West Berlin’s main hub, it was now relegated to a local train station, and resented its decline. This grimy, half-deserted terminus used to be a gateway to liberty, via transit trains that hurtled through East German territory – without stopping, of course.

Bahnhof Zoo’s decline mirrored that of the western part of the city since unification. Neglected, out-of-date, uncool. Carver stepped on an S-Bahn local train. The doors slid shut. He looked around to check for Russian hitmen or neo-Nazis. When he had counted eight possibles, he gave up and smiled to himself. At Tiergarten station, a couple of Romani musicians got in and performed Sinatra’s “My Way” with an accordion and a trumpet. He gave them two euros. The sight of the entire carriage wincing was worth it. He got out at Friedrichstrasse station, ran down the steps and took a taxi to Alexanderplatz. From there, he took a tram to Oranienburger Strasse, where young Easyjet tourists were out in force, thronging bars and restaurants.

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