The Violent Century (25 page)

On the fourth night Oblivion is woken up to the stench of smoke and the crackle of fire. He makes his way through the trees cautiously to a rise, looking down. A short man, dressed in pressed khakis, stands before the wolf man’s camp, a wall of fire rising before him, spreading rapidly away from the camp. Oblivion curses. That must be the famous Mr Van, the Red Sickle says, materialising beside him. The fire roars below. No, Oblivion realises. Not the fire. Engines. Jeeps burst out of the camp, men with machine guns, he seems to recognise one of them, a tall blond Scandinavian, another Nazi Übermensch escaped from that other war. But no sign of the wolf man.

The jeeps split up. They’re hunting, the Red Sickle says. Laughs. Tiger hunting! he says. The fire rages below, spreading towards them. Oblivion looks to the Red Sickle. So what do we do now? he says.

– Now? the Red Sickle says. Now we go hunting back. And with that his giant sickle appears in his hand, and he grins, and the metal flashes. The Red Sickle takes to the air, the way Oblivion had seen him, all those years before, in the sky above Leningrad. He is left alone. He can hear the sigh of the fire, the crackling of trees, the hunting call of a tiger in the distance. Oblivion sighs. Cracks his knuckles. Then makes his way into the trees, into the oncoming fire, his hand outstretched before him, erasing fire, trees and earth as he goes.

101.
LAOS–VIETNAM BORDER
1967

Dawn spreads over the place late, the sun having to rise over the peaks to at last be seen. When it appears it casts its light over a scorched land of desolation. The air smells of burnt organic matter, of bark and leaf and human flesh and small animals caught in the fire. It had rained in the night and the ground is wet, it has a smell like an unwashed dog. An upturned jeep lies half buried in the mud. Mr Van, the Vietnamese fire starter, lies awkwardly next to it, his skull cleaved cleanly in half.

Oblivion stumbles into the clearing before the camp. He is covered in mud and blood, his heart beats fast in his chest, exhaustion rising inside him like damp.

– So you made it, he says, as a figure materialises by his side. The Red Sickle, left eye shut and bruised black, his costume ripped, a wound on his right arm clumsily tied with a hastily made tourniquet now soaked in blood.

The Red Sickle shrugs. Übermenschen are hard to kill, he says. To their left, lying in the mud, is the big Scandinavian, his body savagely torn, teeth marks on his chest and arms. Oblivion can’t, for the life of him, remember the man’s name. From Oblivion’s other side comes the sound of soft pattering feet and a tiger hovers into view. It stops and sniffs the air and sneezes. The prodigal returns, the Red Sickle says, drily. The tiger turns its head and blinks. Then it slowly shifts, sheds its fur, rises, and then Tigerman is standing beside them, looking grim and somewhat bedraggled.

– Hard night? Oblivion says.

– Just couldn’t sleep, Tigerman says.

The three of them stand, facing the silent camp. Oblivion, flanked by the Red Sickle and Tigerman.

They wait.

Silence creeps over the ruined forest. The sun rises over the mountains, slowly, already it is growing uncomfortably hot. They wait in silence, the weight of the sub-machine gun is comforting in Oblivion’s hands, beside him Tigerman checks his own weapon, only the Red Sickle is still. Their strange talents will be of no use against the wolf man, but a gun’s a gun.

Then he comes. Oblivion senses movement before he sees it. The man who approaches them is wearing plain khakis and his hair is grey like a wolf’s. He is a man of medium height. Not at all the monstrous figure of one’s imagination. Oblivion remembers Minsk, Paris, tries to think of Tank in the concentration camps. But the truth is he feels very little. To the Old Man he was the mind on the other side of a chessboard. Only to Fogg he was the bogeyman, a thing out of nightmare. Now, in the light of day, in the silent clearing, all Oblivion sees is another ageless, tired man.

The wolf man approaches the three of them in silence, then halts. They range before him in a semi-circle, guns at the ready. An execution squad. The wolf man smiles.

– Jury, judge and executioner, he says. But which of you is which?

– Hans von Wolkenstein, Tigerman says, solemnly, you are under arrest for the war crimes of—

The Red Sickle says, Nazi.

Oblivion says nothing.

Von Wolkenstein turns his gaze on the Red Sickle. Ah, the drunk, he says.

– I no longer drink.

– No? A shame.

There is a gun in a holster on the wolf man’s hip. An old gun, Oblivion notes: a German Luger. The wolf man’s hand is on the butt of the gun. Tigerman says, take the gun out slowly and throw it on the ground.

– Really, the wolf man says, this charade is unnecessary.

– Do it!

The wolf man’s eyes are cold and grey as the sea. It’s what Oblivion remembers later, that and his face without the smile, a tired face, and the silence in the trees. The wolf man slowly lifts the gun up. Then, before they can react, he calmly turns it on himself, puts the muzzle of the gun in his mouth like a pacifier and pulls the trigger.

TWELVE:

RED POPPIES

BERLIN–AFGHANISTAN–NEW YORK
1976–2001

MAN LANDS ON MOON

July 21, 1969

FLORIDA Mankind has made history today with the landing of the first manned mission on the moon. Mission Commander Neil Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface and into the pages of the history books. His first words on an alien world were, ‘That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.’

Armstrong was followed onto the lunar surface by astronaut Edwin ‘Buzz’ Aldrin.

The historic Apollo 11 mission, the pinnacle achievement of an American space programme, began with a military rocket programme that later became NASA – the civilian National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Apollo 11 was launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on July 16, using a Saturn V rocket. Director of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, Dr Wernher von Braun, who headed the team developing the Saturn V, was on hand to watch the launch. Originally from Germany, Dr von Braun is now a naturalised American citizen.

In a historic telephone call to the moon from the White House, President Nixon said, ‘Because of what you have done, the heavens have become a part of man’s world. And as you talk to us from the Sea of Tranquillity, it inspires us to redouble our efforts to bring peace and tranquillity to Earth.’

CONSTRUCTION BEGINS ON BERLIN WALL

August 13, 1961

BERLIN At midnight last night, Soviet authorities closed down the border between East and West Berlin. Over eight thousand East Germans had travelled to West Berlin in the immediate lead up to the closure, and are now unable to travel back. East German troops have begun to dig up streets on the boundary to prevent the passing of vehicles, and installed barbed-wire fences. Armed guards patrol the border. Unauthorised travel between East and West Berlin is no longer possible. Construction is set to begin on a massive, 140 kilometres-long separation wall.

102.
VIENNA, AUSTRIA
1976

The Brezhnev years.

We assemble this piecemeal, from broken transcripts, classified intel, old men’s recollections. Vienna, in seventy-six. A year that is important to us, for our own selfish reasons. But this is not our story.

Nineteen seventy-six:

Earlier in the year the Israelis swooped on Entebbe, in Uganda, where a hijacked plane with one hundred hostages was kept under guard by Idi Amin. We remember – we watched this – the Sabra, brought back from retirement, leading the troops, his thorns protruding, his feet shaking the ground with each massive jump and subsequent landing, he was wounded in the shooting, his blood ran green and red on that parched African earth. They say when he died, his last words were, It is good to die for one’s country. A legend, a myth, like the story about the wolf man not dying in Vietnam, there had been sightings of him later, elsewhere, in Argentina, in China and Tibet, in Mozambique.

How does it start? It begins, we think, in Vienna, a few months after Entebbe, nine years after Oblivion’s sojourn to Vietnam, and it concerns the Red Sickle, again.

Imagine an old woman. Not one of the changed. She would have been in her twenties during the war. Perhaps she’d been at Leningrad. We are not sure. Old now, stooped, the years have not been kind. Could be worse, though. She is alive. Her name is Galina Feldman and she is a mathematician, attending an international conference in this beautiful city.

A conference that Spit, for whatever reason, is attending.

Not as a mathematician, of course. Let us say, an interested observer.

For this is what they are, what they do, at the Bureau for Superannuated Affairs. They
observe
. Like sharks circling in the water around a juicy prize. And what’s juicier than Russian scientists let out to play outside? No matter the heavy escort, there to ensure they don’t misbehave. The scent alone is tantalising. It’s the scent of blood.

Go to Vienna, the Old Man had said. Looked Spit up and down. Didn’t approve of the miniskirt. Old-fashioned, the Old Man. Think of it as a holiday. Take in the sights. Spit had nodded. Report back on anything of interest, the Old Man had said.

The usual, Spit had thought.

Instead she had found Galina. And Galina, as it turned out, was eager to find
her,
in turn.

Spit sits in the audience as Galina delivers her paper. ‘A Statistical Analysis of Change Distribution, from 1932 to the Present Day’. At first Spit is bored, the mathematics are incomprehensible, Galina is uncomfortable speaking in front of an audience, she speaks in German, Spit has a problem following. And yet. At some point she sits up straighter, adjusts her miniskirt, the Sixties have not passed Spit by, she had loved the new era, though the Seventies, so far, are a bit of a drag.

On the podium Galina argues via mathematical symbols that the Vomacht wave had not been a single, observable occurrence. It emerges from a point of time and space, Galina explains, the audience of mostly older men and women avidly scribbling in their notebooks. But that point of space–time is a floating referent, Galina says, it is a sustained confluence, it did not happen and then pass. It is
still
happening,
has
happened,
will
happen – the audience burst out in shouts, a clamour, arguments and counter-arguments as Galina stands up there, alone, holding a piece of chalk like a weapon, tracing arcane symbols that seem to prove the wave is still happening, that minute mutations in the general populace prove it, but how? How, an ancient Hungarian mathematician says, banging his walking stick on the floor, and Galina says, apologetically, But I’m afraid
that
is something I simply don’t know.

A floating referent? Spit thinks, What does
that
mean?

And we think of Paris, we think of Klara, of one perfect summer’s day. Is this what this, all this, is about?

But wait. Now is not the time. And so—

Spit watches Professor Galina Feldman over the next two days. The professor has two escorts, a man and a woman who accompany her at all times. KGB, Spit thinks, following as the professor visits a variety of cafés, moving restlessly across the city as if searching for something, someone.

As if she is looking to make contact, Spit thinks.

Could be a trap.

Little lost Galina going all over Vienna, stopping, starting, the two Moscow goons trailing after her bored – it seems almost too obvious.

But Spit can’t resist.

Who can tell. Maybe she’s bored. In any case, Spit decides to make contact.

Spit trails Professor Feldman across the city, to a smoky bar off Rauhensteingasse. What the Professor may be seeking there is anyone’s guess, but her two shadows, who seem, over the past few days, to have grown quite attached to one another, are happy with the choice. Spit walks in, old stone walls and a roomful of smoke, dim lighting and nooks and crannies and she thinks, Good choice. Galina sits on her own, a glass of brandy before her. She sips from it slowly. Her two shadows sit in one corner, together, paying more attention to each other than to their charge. Spit scans the room. Mary had a little lamb, Spit murmurs, whose fleece was white as snow. And everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to go. She hawks phlegm and spit-fires, tiny hard pellets of gobby goo that hit the two shadows making out in the corner. Not to kill. Just enough to make them appear to softly doze, and to recover, later, with a hangover headache and matching bruises on their necks. Spit walks over to Professor Feldman’s table and sits down.

– Who are you, Galina says. Looks back, quickly, a motion of her eyes, hard to make out the shadows in the gloom. Spit says, They won’t be bothering you for a while.

– I … see. Galina smiles. Her eyes are bright and green. Let’s get out of here, she says. My thoughts exactly, Spit says. They go the back way, through old cobbled streets, and find shelter at last at the Café Drechsler, near the Naschmarkt, away from shadows, stalkers and prying eyes.

– You are Bureau? Galina says.

– Yes, Spit says.

Galina seems to relax, slightly. A waiter brings over two hot chocolates. Spit takes a sip. Galina says, Not CIA, not Mossad?

– No. Disappointed?

Galina shrugs. I wondered, she says.

– Jewish?

– As a matter of fact.

Spit shrugs. Israelis not interested in you, then?

– Look, Miss …

– Spit. Just Spit.

–
Spit
, then. I thought the subject of my lecture would arouse some interest in the circles you move in. The changed. I am not one myself and, I dare say, mathematicians are not in such huge demand on the secret service market.