Read Online The Berlin Assignment by Adrian de Hoog - Free Book Online Page A

spent together since she was a girl and he was as playful as he used to be. It was because he was free, she thought, with her stepmother gone. Müller muttered complaints about each Wednesday afternoon that followed, whether they went walking in summer or visited museums in winter, but he was always on time.
    Sabine’s route from Einstein’s took her down Kurfürstenstrasse, past the Urania in the direction of Charlottenburg. At the end of the last war, this area consisted of bombed-out, black shells of buildings rising out of piles of rubble. Since most were not worth salvaging, they got levelled. The new hurried blocks of flats replacing them were square and grey, hardly better than bunkers. In a way it was the war’s destruction continuing. Sabine had long since ceased seeing the architectural dreariness. She preferred to focus on the old baroque Berlin that remained. A few of the apartment blocks had been faithfully restored. Their façades were decorated with sculptures of nymphs or other exotic figures, had balconies propped up by classical columns, and stood guarded by centaurs hewn from stone, one on each side of the great doorways. Sabine loved such buildings.
    Huddling under the umbrella, she hurried to just such a house, on Fasanenstrasse, where she and Werner and Nicholas lived in a spacious apartment. Wet leaves drifted around. A smell of organic decay rose from the gutter. Wind blasts tried to steal her scarf. She was late. In the apartment, she scribbled a note to Nicholas telling him to take somecookies and to be sweet to his papa. She called her father. She felt relief when he picked up the phone. “You’re fine?” she asked.
    â€œOf course not,” the bothered lawyer complained. “Work is piled up sky high.”
    â€œI’m leaving now,” she said. “The Pergamon?”
    â€œSabine!” the father replied wearily. “We were there last year. No more Greek vases. Please. The cracks in the glazing remind me of myself.” He sounded raspy, as if he had sand in his voice. A flu coming on? It worried Sabine.
    â€œThe Egyptian Museum then?”
    â€œWorse,” declared Müller. “Those mummies make me think I should have a cremation. And that bust of Nefertiti with the bad eye looks too sad. Would you like to be remembered for all eternity with an eye off like that?”
    â€œThe National Gallery? Casper David Friedrich is showing.”
    â€œHim? Pictures of departing ships? You sure we can cope with poetic painting?”
    â€œI’ll meet you there,” Sabine told her father. She looked forward to it. Casper David Friedrich was a favourite.
    As she balanced, first on one foot then the other, to pull on boots more suited to the weather, the phone rang. Annoyed, she hesitated, mentally running through a list of acquaintances who liked to talk. The ringing continued as she took her coat. It planted a seed of doubt. Geissler’s store was full of books with characters whose lives were changed forever by tiny twists of fortune. Maybe Nicholas had been in an accident in school. She gave in. “
Ja?
” she said brusquely. A voice said her name. It was not quite German and she couldn’t place it. She thought back to recent vacations, someone British? Or American? “
Wer ist da?
” she asked, impatience growing. She stiffened. “
Ich kenne Sie nicht
,” I don’t know you, but she did. More words of explanation cameat her. Walls, floor, furniture, the world began spinning. She experienced a stressful, split-second of absolute inactivity, the same as when Nicholas frightened her with a trick. Finally she said, “
Wo bist Du?
” Where are you? It was a reflex only; she didn’t want to know. Her mind, flung back through time, became disconnected from the present. Explanations kept arriving. She snapped, “
Was machst Du hier?
” What are you doing here? Then, as still more words