Free The Pathfinder by Margaret Mayhew Page B

materials, no nothing coming into the western sectors. That means nothing for our German civilians either. Less than nothing. No work, no pay, no hope of survival let alone recovery . . . back to square one. The Berliners are probably going to end up begging us on their bended knees to get the hell out.’
    â€˜I think they have more guts than that. Look what they’ve already survived.’
    â€˜First time I’ve heard you say anything nice about them, Michael.’ Tubby sighed deeply. ‘Of course we have to stay – that’s the bore of it. We’ve got to get the Jerries back on their feet again somehow and make sense out of the whole damned mess.’
    Harrison had tried, unsuccessfully, to get his watch mended and found himself thinking again about the Luftwaffe pilot’s chronograph. Three hundred and fifty Player’s was a reasonable deal and he had actually liked the look of it rather a lot. The Nazi emblem on the back was an added attraction. It amused him – in the same way, he supposed, that a naval friend of his was tickled at possessing a U-boat captain’s Zeiss binoculars. A trophy of war. He debated what to do. If he called on the Leichts again he could take the boy something. He’d seemed a decent kid and he must have had a pretty rough time of it. Maybe he should take some chocolate, too. The street had been Albrecht Strasse. There were few signs in Berlin and one ruined street looked much like another, but he could get the taxi driver to find it for him.
    Another week passed before he made the trip into the city in the late afternoon. The driver dropped him at the bottom of the cobbled street and he walked down it in the direction of the old flak tower. He could see it clearly now: a massive square block of reinforced concrete, fifty or sixty feet high with a flat roof where the anti-aircraft guns would have been mounted, and rows of slit windows in its walls like some medieval castle. It looked almost unmarked – impervious to the shells and bombs that had destroyed practically everything around it – and would probably be standing there for hundreds of years to come.
    He found the door in the wall that led into the courtyard and the double door in the corner with the snarling wolves’ heads. It was the boy, Rudi, who answered his tug on the bell pull and his face instantly lit up in a smile.
    â€˜I do not think we see you again, sir. Please to come in.’ He followed him into the big room. As before, the grandfather was fast asleep in the armchair, chin on his chest. There was a buzzing from a cluster of large flies on one of the window sills. ‘Lili is at work, but she comes back very soon. Please to sit.’
    He refused the offer of one of the wonky chairs at the table and took out the pictures of various RAF planes that he had cut out of a magazine. They were nothing special but the kid seemed thrilled to bits.
    â€˜Thank you very much, sir. Wellington, Halifax, Lysander . . . I have not these. They will be new for my collection.’
    He handed over the two bars of Fry’s chocolate. ‘It’s English, I’m afraid. You probably won’t find it as good as German or Swiss.’
    â€˜I do not know. I cannot remember how that was. But I have tried American once and it was very nice. Thank you, sir. I give these to my sister. We . . . I forget the word in English. To each take some.’
    â€˜Share.’
    â€˜ Ya , share. We all share. Always we share with everything.’
    The grandfather stirred and woke up, muttering. The boy showed him the pictures and the chocolate bars, speaking to him excitedly in German. The old man nodded vaguely and glanced in his direction without recognition or interest. Just as well, Harrison thought. He might not share his grandson’s misplaced enthusiasm for the RAF. There seemed no point in waiting around and he was about to take his leave when the