Red Square - Martin Cruz Smith [133]
Friedrichstrasse was different in the daylight. In the dark, Arkady hadn’t seen how many government offices were gutted. One was a wooden front with painted windows around the foundation of a Galeries Lafayette that was taking its place. Another was swaddled in five stories of heavy canvas. Though the street was relatively empty compared to the Ku’damm, from every direction came the sound of a hidden traffic of earthmovers, pile drivers, cranes.
Arkady asked, “Do you own the building we stayed in last night?”
Max laughed. “You’re too suspicious. I look for vision, you look for fingerprints.”
There were still Trabis under the lime trees, but they were outnumbered by VWs, Volvos, Maseratis. Out of open buildings floated the dust of Sheetrock and the whine of electric drills. Whitewashed windows bore announcements of future offices of Mitsubishi, Alitalia, IBM. Across the street at the Soviet embassy, the steps were empty and the windows were dark. On a side street, a café had set white chairs and tables on the sidewalk. They sat and ordered coffee.
Max checked his watch, a diver’s chronometer with gold links. “I have an appointment in an hour. I’m the agent for the building you slept in. For a former Soviet, real estate is almost the redemption of life. Do you have any investments?”
“Aside from books?” Arkady asked.
“Aside from books.”
“Aside from a radio?”
“Aside from a radio.”
“I inherited a gun.”
“In other words, no.” Max paused. “Something can be arranged. You’re intelligent, you speak English and a little German. With decent clothes you’d be presentable.”
A coffeepot came with poppy-seed rolls and strawberry jam. Max poured. “The problem is, I don’t think you appreciate how much the world has changed. You’re a specimen from the past. It’s as if you’d arrived from ancient Rome, chasing someone who offended Caesar. Your idea of a criminal is, to say the least, out of date. To stay, you’d have to let go of all that, to erase it from your mind.”
“Erase it?”
“Like the Germans. West Berlin was leveled, so they started fresh and built it into a showcase of capitalism. Our response? We built the Wall, which of course was a pedestal for West Berlin.”
“Why don’t you invest in West Berlin?”
“That’s thinking in the past. Frankly, West Berlin is nothing. It’s an island, a club for freethinkers and draft dodgers. But a united Berlin will be the capital of the world.”
“That does sound visionary.”
“It is. Forgive me for saying so, but the Wall was an even larger reality than your investigation. Now the Wall is gone and Berlin is finally free to bloom. Think of it: over two hundred kilometers of Wall erased, an extra thousand square kilometers in the center of Berlin to be developed. It’s the greatest real estate opportunity in the second half of the twentieth century.”
There was such conviction in Max’s eyes that Arkady realized he had encountered a salesman. Max was selling the idea of the future, and it was compelling. Evidence of the future lined the street. Urgent sounds of it echoed everywhere. The only silent building was the Soviet embassy hulking like a mausoleum above the trees.
Arkady said, “Does Michael share this vision of yours? For a man who is the radio station’s deputy director for security, he welcomed you back pretty quickly.”
“Michael is a little desperate. If the Americans drop the station, he’ll be left with a European life-style and no particular skills. He doesn’t have a graduate degree in business administration; he simply has a Porsche. If he can adapt to a new situation, so should you.”
“How would I?”
“Your investigation got you here. What you do from this point on is an entirely different question. Do you go forward