“Not for long. Don’t lose your nerve. Not now.”
“My nerve,” she said. “I survived Goebbels. Everything. Don’t worry about me.” Bravado with a quaver behind it, nervous.
“They have to think he’s still alive. So we have to think it too. Act as if.”
“Why?”
“Right now they’ve got a missing officer. Maybe a deserter. An embarrassment. If they have a body, they’ve got a homicide. A police case. And—” He stopped.
“And I’m the last one to see him alive.”
Fritsch met them for coffee in the commissary, preoccupied, the meeting with Janka evidently not an easy one.
“You know, in the Ufa days there was a hierarchy here, a special table for the bosses, the directors, the technicians. Now it’s democratic—sit wherever you like. And where do they sit? The directors’ table. The technicians’ table.” He attempted a smile. “It’s not so easy to change a society. Whatever Lenin might say. So, what did you think? The rebuilding, it’s impressive, no?”
“Irene says you’re back at full production.”
“Almost. The Russians gave us a priority, for building materials. Otherwise—” He stopped, his mind drifting elsewhere.
“It’s okay? The Staudte budget?” Irene said, reading him.
“The Staudte—?” he said, confused for a second. “Oh, that’s fine. Something else.” He hesitated, glancing quickly away from Alex. “You haven’t heard from Herschel, have you?”
Irene shook her head. “Why?”
“He didn’t turn up. A shooting day, the set’s already lit and no Herschel.”
“He’s sick, maybe.”
“Walter sent someone to his flat. You know he’s here, in Babelsberg, so it was easy to check. No one. And the landlady says she heard people in the night.”
Irene looked up at him.
“At his door. She’s one of those types, if you ask, I don’t know anything, but she listens.”
“Maybe some whore from the bars. He’s done that before.”
Fritsch ignored this. “You remember when they were looking for Nazis? Right after the war? Always at night.”
“Nazis?”
Fritsch shrugged. “Whatever it is this time. A message maybe to DEFA. Walter’s worried. Once it starts—”
“And maybe he’s drunk somewhere,” Irene said, her voice not believing it.
Fritsch looked at her. “A shooting day.”
Alex watched them, back and forth, a tennis volley of unfinished sentences and code words, the way people talked now. He had forgotten where he was, a city where people could be snatched in Lützowplatz and disappear. He looked over at Irene. Face drawn, talking in glances to Fritsch. Don’t worry about me. Now the inevitable suspect. How much time had her story really bought them? A man like Sasha couldn’t just disappear. They’d never allow that. They’d have to hunt him down. Question the last person to see him. Over and over until she broke. The way they did things. Unless they could be convinced Sasha wasn’t with her. He peeked at his watch. Was Campbell already here? When he looked up he felt Irene’s eyes, trying to read his thoughts. Keep Sasha alive. Somewhere else.
“Maybe he left. For the West,” Alex said, almost blurting it.
Fritsch sat back, a slight wince, as if the words themselves had made him uncomfortable.
“Herschel?” Irene said, dismissing this. “You remember how Tulpanov liked his work? He was a favorite of Tulpanov’s.”
“Yes,” Fritsch said, still uneasy, “a favorite. Well, maybe some misunderstanding. The landlady.” Eager now to move away from it. “So. What are you going to do for us? I know, I know, a book to write. But a film, it’s time for you. I was thinking—you don’t mind?—maybe something personal, from your own life? Would that interest you? Not the exile,” he said quickly. “That’s very difficult for film. But your parents, for instance. Your mother stayed with your father. Even to the camps.”
“She had no choice.”
“By then, no. But earlier. She wasn’t Jewish and yet she stays to the end.”
“She loved him,” Alex said simply, glancing over at Irene. What did it mean to love someone that much? Something from another time.
“Yes, of course, a love story, but also a heroic one. He was a Socialist, yes? So imagine—take one step—a young Communist couple, who have to go underground when the Nazis—”
He began using his hand for emphasis and suddenly Alex was back in California, a producer pointing at him with a cigar, rewriting the world.
Irene, watching his reaction, interrupted. “Or maybe an adaptation. We have a list of possibilities. We could meet to go over that. Discuss things,” she said, meeting his eyes.
“Good, good,” Fritsch said before Alex could answer. “A meeting. You know the food here is off ration. So that’s another thing. And now, you’ll excuse me again?” He stood up, shaking hands, then stopped, remembering something. “Irene,” he said, tentative, thinking out loud, “would you check with the gate? See if there’s anyone else who didn’t report today?”
* * *
Markus was waiting when he got back to Rykestrasse.
“You don’t mind I let myself in? It’s suspicious, waiting outside. People wonder.”
“Yes,” Alex said, thrown, not knowing what else to say. Had he already searched the flat? Poked through drawers?
“You’ve been ill?” Markus said, indicating the bedroom, a medicine vial left on the nightstand.
“I just felt a cold coming on. Better to catch things before they catch you. Would you like something to drink?” A quick scan of the room, the other medicines gone, no clothes left behind, just a rumpled bed.
“Where did you get it, may I ask? The medicine? Such a shortage just now.”
Alex looked at him. Thrust, parry. “Where does anyone get it?”
Markus took his time with this, then sighed. “Yes. But could I suggest, given our association, that in the future the black market—we must respect the law in these matters. Otherwise—”
“What association?”
“Well, our cooperation, let’s say. Our informal arrangement.”