Winter: A Berlin Family, 1899–1945. Len Deighton

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      A plot of land on the Obersalzberg

      It was dark by the time that Winter pushed through the revolving door of the Café Stoessl in the Gumpendorfer Strasse and looked around. The café was long and gloomy, lit by gaslights that hissed and popped. There were tables with pink marble tops and bentwood chairs and plants everywhere. He recognized some of the customers but gave no sign of it. They were not people that Winter would acknowledge: the usual crowd of would-be intellectuals, has-been politicians, and self-styled writers.

      Petzval was waiting. ‘A small Jew with a black beard,’ the bank manager had told Winter. Well, that was easy. Petzval sat at the very end table facing towards the door. He was a white-faced man in his late twenties, with bushy black hair and a full beard so that his small eyes and pointed nose were all you noticed of his face.

      Winter put his hat on a seat and then sat down opposite the man and ordered a coffee, and brandy to go with it. Then he apologized vaguely for being late.

      ‘I said you’d go back on your word,’ said Petzval.

      It wasn’t a good beginning, and Winter was about to deny any such intention, but then he realized that such an opening would leave him little or no room for discussion. ‘Why did you think that?’ asked Winter.

      ‘Count Kupka, is it?’ Petzval leaned forward and rested an elbow on the table.

      Winter hesitated but, after looking at Petzval, decided to admit it. Kupka had claimed Petzval as a relative and had not asked Winter to keep his name out of it. ‘Yes, Count Kupka.’

      ‘He wants to buy my debt?’

      ‘Something along those lines.’

      Petzval pushed his empty coffee cup aside so that he could lean both arms on the table. His face was close to Winter, closer than Winter welcomed, but he didn’t shrink away. ‘Secret police,’ said Petzval. ‘His spies are everywhere.’

      ‘Are you related to Kupka?’ said Winter.

      ‘Related? To Kupka?’ Petzval made a short throaty noise that might have been a laugh. ‘I’m a Jew, Herr Winter. Didn’t you know that when you made the loan to me?’

      ‘It would have made no difference one way or the other,’ said Winter. The coffee came, and Winter was glad of the chance to sit back away from the man’s glaring eyes. This was a man at the end of his tether, a desperate man. He studied the angry Jew as he sipped his coffee. Petzval was a ridiculous fellow with his frayed shirt and gravy-spattered suit, but Winter found him rather frightening. How could that be, when everyone knew that Winter wasn’t frightened of any living soul?

      ‘I’m a good risk, am I?’

      ‘The manager obviously thought so. What do you do, Herr Petzval?’

      ‘For a living, you mean? I’m a scientist. Ever heard of Ernst Mach?’

      He waited. It was not a rhetorical question; he wanted to know whether Winter was intelligent enough to understand.

      ‘Of course: Professor Mach is a physicist at the university.’

      ‘Mach is the greatest scientific genius of modern times.’ He paused to let that judgement sink in before adding, ‘A couple of years ago he suffered a stroke, and I’ve been privileged to work for him while pursuing my own special subject.’

      ‘And what is your subject?’ said Winter, realizing that this inquiry, or something like it, was expected of him.

      ‘Airflow. Mach did the most important early work in Prague before I was born. He pioneered techniques of photographing bullets in flight. It was Mach who discovered that a bullet exceeding the speed of sound creates two shock waves: a headwave of compressed gas at the front and a tailwave created by a vacuum at the back. My work has merit, but it’s only a continuation of what poor old Professor Mach has abandoned.’

      ‘Poor old Professor Mach?’

      ‘He’s too sick. He’ll have to resign from the university; his right side is paralysed. It’s terrible to see him trying to carry on.’

      ‘And what will you do when he resigns?’ He sipped some of the bitter black coffee flavoured with fig in the Viennese style. Then he tasted the brandy: it was rough but he needed it.

      Petzval stared at Winter pityingly. ‘You don’t understand any of it, do you?’

      ‘I’m not sure I do,’ admitted Winter. He dabbed brandy from his lips with the silk handkerchief he kept in his top pocket, and looked round. There was a noisy group playing cards in the corner, and two or three strange-looking fellows bent over their work. Perhaps they were poets or novelists, but perhaps they were Kupka’s men keeping an eye on things.

      ‘Don’t СКАЧАТЬ