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

pummelled her, she slammed down the phone and ran out.
    Street noise wrapped around her like a blanket. She fell in with the crowd. Years ago, readying herself for this moment, she had practised a lecture, a bitter monologue. But now, with the opportunity there, she was dumbstruck, as if the intervening years had gagged her. As she walked, the shock subsiding, anger flooded in. The old monologue was coming back too. She couldn’t help rehearsing it. Stepping into the U-bahn, a pimply boy with a bike cut her off. Sabine bared her fangs. He snarled back. “
Halt die Klappe
,” “shut your trap”, he told her. “We all pay the same fare.” She almost wrung his neck.

ADDING CLASS
    In a Berlin hotel room, Hanbury on the end of a dead phone connection sat numbed. Sabine’s questions had come at him like a volley of punches. The parting words –
Go away!
– were a hard left hook that sent him to the canvas.
    He did his best – fresh off the plane, a few hours rest, a deep last breath before dialling – and hoped for a good conversation. He melted when she answered. “
Was dann?
” That tone of impatience! When they lived in the Savignyplatz apartment, when Sabine had sunk away inside a book, she’d sting back just like that if he broke her concentration. Sometimes he sought her attention solely for the pleasure of hearing that instinctive indignation.
This is a great piece of music, Sabine
, he’d say, taking off the earphones.
You sure you don’t want me to play it through the speakers?
The answer? A cold
Nein danke
. Though soon enough, as befits two lovers, it was followed by a pacifying smile.
    That was Hanbury’s purpose: reconciliation, offering her an olivebranch. He had planned to be enthusiastic, to tell Sabine her voice was
wonderful
, hoping similar words –
It’s marvellous to hear from you!
– would echo back. But the exchange didn’t get that far. The hostile rapid-fire questions gave it no chance. Her transition from
Sie
to
Du
, from formal to familiar address – when she seemed to want to know his location – it was momentarily encouraging.
I’m here. In a hotel
, he answered eagerly. But the Du must have been pure reflex, something from the past meaningless in the present, because when he passed her the news that he was planning to stay –
I’m in Berlin for good
– she became silent and the phone went dead. In those initial seconds, knowing he had miscalculated, Hanbury recoiled. A cold hand reached in. It squeezed his heart and soul until the hopes of the preceding weeks were crushed. The hand stirred some more and placed a dead weight in his gut. Disorientation, pessimism, failure. Feelings he knew from the other places.
    Earlier in the day at the airport – Sturm, the consulate driver, attending – the arrival had gone smoothly enough. Sturm didn’t know exactly what to look for, but the solitary figure marching through customs was easy to pick out. After introductions Sturm took the suitcase and asked politely about the flight. The new consul replied in German. He claimed the language had become rusty, but he looked forward to bringing it back. We’ll speak German, he proposed.
Wir sprechen Deutsch
. It came out sounding like a ground rule.
    Sturm deferred. “
Wie Sie wollen, Herr Konsul
.” As the consul wished. Sturm didn’t want to object to anything at the very start. All the same, he was a little piqued. Half his working life had been spent in England chauffeuring Lord Halcourt around, and Sturm’s mimic of anOxfordshire accent wasn’t all that bad. The regulars in Sturm’s local banged their glasses on the table and laughed until the tears flowed when he pronounced
tea time
, or
port, please
, with Lord Halcourt’s upper class, crusty intonation. Sturm liked to show his English off. Outside the terminal the new consul remarked that during the descent