Read Online The Good German by Joseph Kanon - Free Book Online Page B

bothered you in Africa.”
    <>“Well, that was the war. I don’t know what this is.” He took a sip from his glass, brooding. “Lovely to be back in Cairo, wouldn’t it? Sit on the terrace and watch the boats. Just the thing after this.” Drifting feluccas, white triangles waiting for a hint of a breeze, a million miles away.
    “You’d be in London in a week.”
    “I don’t think so, you know,” Brian said seriously. “It’s the boats for me now. ”
    “That’s the whiskey talking. When a man’s tired of London—” Jake quoted.
    Brian looked at the glass. “That’s when we were on the way up. I don’t want to see us go down. Bit by bit. It’s finished there too. Just the Russians now. There’s your story. And you’re welcome to it. I haven’t got the stomach anymore. Awful people.”
    “And there’s us.”
    Brian sighed. “The lucky Americans. You don’t need to count the loo paper, do you? Just streams out. What will you do, I wonder.”
    “Go home.”
    “No, you’ll stay. You’ll want to put things right. That’s your particular bit of foolishness. You’ll want to put things right.”
    “Somebody has to.”
    “Do they? Well, then, I anoint you, why not?” He put his hand on Jake’s head. “Good luck and God bless. I’m for the boats.”
    “Don’t you guys ever work?” A voice coming up from behind.
    “Liz, my darling,” Brian said, instantly hearty. “The lady with the lens. Come have a drink. I hear Miss Bourke-White’s on her way.”
    “Up yours too.”
    Brian laughed. “Ooo.” He got up from his stool. “Here, darling, have a seat. I’d better push off. Go polish my buttons. Probably the last time we get to sit at the high table, so we like to look our best.”
    “What’s he talking about?” she said, watching him walk away.
    “He’s just being Brian. Here.” Jake took out a match to light her cigarette.
    “What have you been doing?” she said, inhaling. “Holding up the bar?”
    “No, I went into town.”
    “God, why?”
    “Look at the message boards.” Charred bodies.
    “Oh.” She glanced up at him. “Any luck?”
    He shook his head and handed her a release. “The Russians are giving a banquet tonight.”
    “I know. They’re also posing.” She looked at her watch. “In about an hour.”
    “In Potsdam? Take me with you.”
    “Can’t. They’d have my head. No press, remember?”
    “I’ll carry your camera.”
    “You’d never get through. Special pass,” she said, showing hers.
    “Yes, I would. Just bat your baby blues. The Russians can’t read anyway. Come on, Liz.”
    “She won’t be in Potsdam, Jake,” she said, looking at him.
    “I can’t sit around here. It just makes it worse. Anyway, I still need to file something.”
    “We’re taking pictures, that’s all.”
    “But I’d be there. See it, at least. Anything’s better than this,” he said, picking up the release. “Come on. I’ll buy you that drink later.”
    “I’ve had better offers.”
    “How do you know?”
    She laughed and got up from the stool. “Meet me outside in five. If there’s any trouble, I don’t know you. Understood? I don’t know how you got in the jeep. Serve you right if they hauled you away.”
    “You’re a pal.”
    “Yeah.” She handed him a camera. “They’re brown, by the way, not blue. In case you haven’t noticed.”
    Another photographer was at the wheel, so Jake crammed in the back with the equipment, watching Liz’s hair flying in the wind next to the aerial flag. They drove south toward Babelsberg, the old route to the film studios, and met the first Russian sentry on the Lange Brücke. He looked at the driver’s pass, pretending to understand English, and waved them through with a machine gun.
    The entire town had been cordoned off, lines of Russian soldiers posted at regular intervals up to Wilhelmplatz, which seemed to have got the worst of the bomb damage. They swung behind the square and then out the designated route