CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Praschko
There is a tarmac driveway at the back of the Embassy. It leads from the eastern part of the perimeter northwards through a settlement of new villas too costly for British habitation. Each has a small garden of great value in terms of real estate, each is distinguished from its neighbour by those cautious architectural deviations which are the mark of modern conformity. If one house has a brick-built barbecue and a patio of reconstituted stone, the next will match it with an external wall of blue slate, or quarried rock daringly exposed. In summer, young wives sun themselves beside minuscule swimming-pools. In winter black poodles burrow in the snow; and every midday from Monday to Friday, black Mercedes bring the masters home for meals. The air smells all the time, if distantly, of coffee.
It was a cold grey morning still, but the earth was lit with the clarity which follows rain. They drove very slowly, with the windows right down. Passing a hospital, they entered a more sombre road where the older suburb had survived; behind shaggy conifers and blue-black laurel bushes, leaden spires which once had painted donnish dreams of Weimar stood like lances in a mouldering forest. Ahead of them rose the Bundestag, naked, comfortless and uncomforted; a vast motel mourned by its own flags and painted in yellowing milk. At its back, straddled by Kennedy’s Bridge and bordered by Beethoven’s hall, the brown Rhine pursued its uncertain cultural course.
Police were everywhere: seldom could a seat of democracy have been so well protected from its democrats. At the main entrance, a line of schoolchildren waited in a restless queue, and the police guarded them as if they were their own. A television team was setting up its arclights. In front of the camera a young man in a suit of mulberry corduroy thoughtlessly pirouetted, hand on hip, while a colleague measured his complexion; the police watched dangerously, bewildered by his freedom. Along the kerb, scrubbed as jurymen, their banners straight as Roman standards, the grey crowd obediently waited. The slogans had changed: German Unity First European Unity Second: This is a Proud Nation Too: Give us Back our Country First! The police faced them in line abreast, controlling them as they controlled the children.
‘I’ll park down by the river,’ Bradfield said. ‘God knows what it will be like by the time we come out.’
‘What’s going on?’
‘A debate. Amendments to the Emergency Legislation.’
‘I thought they’d finished with that long ago.’
‘In this place, nothing is resolved.’
Along the embankment as far as they could see on either side, grey detachments waited passively like unarmed soldiers. Make-shift banners declared their provenance: Kaiserslautern, Hanover, Dortmund, Kassel. They stood in perfect silence, waiting for the order to protest. Someone had brought a transistor radio and it blared very loud. They craned their necks for a sight of the white Jaguar.
Side by side they walked slowly back, up the hill, away from the river. They passed a kiosk; it seemed to contain nothing but coloured photographs of Queen Soraya. Two columns of students made an avenue to the main entrance. Bradfield walked ahead, stiff backed. At the door the guard objected to Turner and Bradfield argued with him shortly. The lobby was dreadfully warm and smelt of cigar; it was filled with the ringside murmur of dispute. Journalists, some with cameras, looked at Bradfield curiously and he shook his head and looked away. In small groups, deputies talked quietly, vainly glancing all the time over one another’s shoulders in search of someone more interesting. A familiar figure rose at them.
‘The best piece! My very words. Bradfield, you are the best piece! You have come to see the end of democracy? You have come for the debate? My God, you are so damn efficient over there! And the Secret Service is still with you? Mr Turner, you are loyal, I hope? My God, what the devil’s happened to your face?’ Receiving no answer he continued in a lower voice, furtively. ‘Bradfield, I must speak to you. Something damned urgent, look here. I tried to get you at the Embassy but for Saab you are always out.’