The Berlin Assignment
tell now where the Wall was. And there’s big plans to rebuild Potsdamer Platz. It’s exciting. Except the traffic. The mayor should do something about it. We don’t want to be normal like Paris.”
    â€œThe excitement seems to be a secret,” Hanbury said, laying his head back. “Where I come from people don’t know much about it.”
    â€œA good thing, too,” the chauffeur argued. “We don’t want anyone to know what’s going on. We don’t want the story out. The traffic’s bad enough as it is.”
    Hanbury couldn’t help thinking of Krauthilda and being told that where he was going nothing much would be important. His question –
What’s expected of me in Berlin?
– had gone unanswered. Sturm’s chatter forced the question back and on impulse he repeated it. The answer was quick and practical. “
Zuerst sollten Sie schlafen, Herr Konsul
.” First you should get some sleep.
    Hanbury nodded; he knew he needed sleep. Yet, stubbornly, he pursued the bigger question. “And then?” he asked.
    â€œToday nothing. Don’t bother with the office. No one is expecting you, not today. Herr Gifford asked me to tell you that.”
    â€œAnd then?” the consul persisted.
    Sturm’s correctness faltered. He raised an eyebrow. “Tomorrow? That’s when you meet the staff.” Sturm didn’t like being asked to prophesy the future.
    Hanbury began to think of what he might say to the staff, but his eyes fell shut. When the Opel stopped at the hotel Sturm nudged the consul’s elbow to wake him up.
    Somewhere during that first, jet-lagged and mostly sleepless night with Sabine’s clipped phrases reverberating in his head, Hanbury regrouped. He had gambled; he had lost. In retrospect it wasn’t that surprising. Giving in to an insomnia, he left the hotel before dawn and walked to Savignyplatz. The neighbourhood was the same, a little shabbier maybe – though it could have been the light, or his imagination. He stood before the building where they’d lived. He sauntered through their haunts. With a fatalistic resolution he then blanked everything out. Allowing Savignyplatz to live on, to stay with him through the intervening years, had been a bad mistake.
    Sturm pulled up to the hotel some hours later. Hanbury, no livelier than the day before, gave a muffled answer when the chauffeur inquired how the night had been. “So, so,” he said from the rear seat, staring blankly out the window.
    The office was located behind doors draped with security devices. Hanbury’s first impression was of the three smiling women. “
Guten Morgen, Herr Konsul!
” they sang with warm, friendly, almost expectant voices. Sturm marched him past them into the consulate’s inner chambers. A figure as wide as it was tall and with a fleshy paw extended, scurried forward from behind a desk. Words spilled off an impeccable British tongue. “Honoured to meet you, Sir. Have a good flight? Still a bit under the weather, I should think. Beastly they are, nights on airplanes. I know. Welcome to the Canadian Consulate. We’re so pleased you’re here to take the rudder.”
    Hanbury would forever remember the moment he first met Earl Gifford.
    Jovially they shook hands. The new consul announced he was pleased to have arrived, made a small joke about transatlantic passages, linked it to seafarers and managed to end up with the importance of a steady hand on the rudder. He didn’t think it came off well, butGifford giggled and Sturm beamed. Gifford had a triangular head, narrow at the top, widening to broad cheeks with a massive hanging chin and eyes standing close above his nose. A caricaturist would have drawn him as a squirrel.
    Hanbury knew Gifford’s record. He’d read it in the Zealot files. Top administrator, hired years ago, first came to Berlin as a clerk in the local British Council

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