Red Square - Martin Cruz Smith [124]
“In other words, you collaborated,” Peter said.
“I served history. I survived. I was hardly the only one. When the Russians arrived in Berlin, where do you think they went? While the city burned, while Hitler was still alive, they were in the museums. Rubenses, Rembrandts, the gold of Troy disappeared, treasures that have never been seen again.”
“Were you there?” Arkady asked.
“No, I was still in Magdeburg. When we were done there, the Russians gave me a vodka. We’d been together for three years. I even wore a Red Army coat at that point. They took the coat off, marched me a few steps to an alley, shot me in the back and left me for dead. See, Peter, personal history.”
“What was Benz most interested in?” Arkady asked.
“Nothing in particular.” Schiller reconsidered. “Actually, I had the feeling he was checking his list against mine. At heart he was a crude man, a real barracks bastard. In the end, all we talked about was how to build crates. The SS enlisted carpenters from the Berlin firm of Knauer, the most expert art transporters of the time. I drew him diagrams. He was more interested in nails and woods and documentation than in art.”
“What do you mean, ‘barracks bastard’?”
Schiller said, “It’s commonplace. How many German girls have had babies by foreign soldiers stationed here?”
Arkady said, “Benz was born in Potsdam. You’re saying his father was Russian?”
“That’s what he sounded like,” Schiller said.
Peter said, “All the stories you told me about defending Germany. You were a thief, first on one side and then on the other. Why didn’t you tell me all this before? Why tell me now?”
The banker eased his feet into his slippers. He turned as completely to Peter as he could. He had that deadly combination of age: eggshell frailty and brutal honesty. “It didn’t concern you. The past was gone. Now it does. Everything has a price. If we can get our house and property back, if we can go home, Peter, this is the price for you.”
Peter dropped Arkady off at Stas’s apartment and tore off into the dark.
Arkady unlocked the door with the house key Stas had given him. Laika sniffed him quietly and let him in. He went to the kitchen and made a late dinner of hard biscuits for the dog, and tea, jam and cigarettes for himself.
Steps shambled up the hall. Stas leaned against the doorjamb in mismatched pajama top and bottom and regarded Laika and the biscuits. “Slut.”
“I woke you,” Arkady said.
“I’m not awake. If I were awake, I’d be asking where the devil you’ve been.” At a sleepwalker’s pace he staggered to the refrigerator and took out a beer. “Obviously you think of me as the hall porter, the concierge, the elf who polishes your shoes. So where have you been?”
“With my new German partner. He has become wildly enthusiastic. In return, I’ve misled him as best I can.”
Stas sat down. “You cannot mislead a German any more than you can lead a German.”
Nevertheless, Arkady had misled Peter by omission, by not mentioning Max because of Irina. By now Peter was convinced that his grandfather was the only connection between Tommy and Benz. “I traded on his sense of national guilt.”
“If you can find a German with guilt, you should trade on it. Generally I have found this to be a country of widespread amnesia, but if you have found a guilty German, I can guarantee that no one on earth has ever had a larger sense of guilt. Correct?”
“Close enough.”
Stas tipped the bottle back so that it seemed to balance on his lips, then set it down empty. “I was awake anyway. I was thinking that if I’d stayed in Russia, I probably would have died in a camp. Or maybe I only would have been pressed as flat as a blini.”
“You were right to get out.”
“As a result of which I’ve had enormous influence on world events. I make fun of the station, but Liberty’s budget is less than the cost of a single strategic bomber.”
“Is that so?”
“Not to mention this is a tax-free situation for me.”
“That sounds good.”
Stas stared at