The Third Shadow

Twenty-six

England were to find no equaliser and by ten o'clock of that same morning I was back on the road. Bonn, Koblenz, Manheim, Stuttgart. On into Switzerland, the endless curving  tunnels through the Alps. Things then slowed to a crawl round the Milan ring road. Down finally into the Padana Plain: Parma, Modena, Bologna. From there onto the adriatico motorway, the glimpses of sea away to my left mirroring the deepening sunset. The driver's window rolled down, feeling the breeze on my skin. Feeling like I was going home.

By Ancona, it was already dark; by Pescara, midnight had come and gone. There were still another four hundred and fifty kilometres to go. I knew my back wouldn't stand another night on the bed of the van, but neither would my wallet stand booking into yet another hotel. I stopped at a service station, swilled down a double espresso. Gritted my teeth as I once more turned the ignition key. The headlights bore through the night, the motorway virtually empty, all to myself. I turned the radio volume up much higher than normal, any station would do. The air blastng through the opened window was ever cooler to the point of positively chilled.

It was around four when I finally got home. Five thousand kilometres in eight days. I collapsed into bed, slept till late afternoon.

*

When I finally awoke, the first thing I did was put my phone on charge. It had been dead since halfway along the A1 more than forty-eight hours earlier. Upon vibrating back into life, it informed me that I'd missed no less than twelve calls. One from Diane, the others all from Ellie.

A wave of guilt swept through me. Her mother would have of course told her about my unexpected little visit, its bitter, premature end. I'd made her worry unnecessarily. She and Heather both.

I shot off a message assuring her that I was fine, that I was now back in Italy and that she could call me when she had chance if she liked.

I then scrolled through my contacts list. All the way to the letter N: Comandante Nuzzo.

"Ispettore! What a sur-"

"East Germany," I interrupted, almost breathless. "Bracewell. I think he's somewhere in the former East Germany."

*

An hour or so later the commander was seated beside me in the shade of the portico, our gazes angled off over the downward sweep of vines, out towards the breeze-tossed Ionian. I'd opened a bottle of my Negroamaro; though officially on duty,  he'd been eager to have a taste, said he could allow himself half a  glass. His verdict was one of nodded approval: "Not bad for an Englishman. Not bad at all."

As we sipped at our glasses, I filled him in on everything I'd learned over the previous few days, everything that could be construed as pertinent. A recount which culminated in the known details regarding the brothers' father, my impromptu detour through north-west Germany and the brief acquaintanceships I'd made in the Red Lion pub. Reg and his revelation of the couple's sudden disappearance, the baby which would soon arrive. Bill's experiences as a border soldier in the still divided nation...

East to west, that was a difficult trick to pull. If the grenztruppen snipers didn't get you then the death strip landmines probably would. Only one in twenty escape attempts were sucessful; those who didn't perish would face the wrath of the Stasi secret police, prison time, public ex-communication.

The other way though, west to east, that wasn't such a problem. Berlin's famous Checkpoint Charlie served as a kind of loophole in the thousand mile border stretching from the Baltic to Czechoslovakia. Day passes for westerners were easily obtained; sometimes, Bill had informed me, such daytrippers just never came back. Naive lefties drunk on the communist ideal, criminals escaping justice. A lot of allied military personnel too - most, as Bill had put it, 'following communist skirt'. These military defectors had it worse: initial Stasi interrogations which might last days followed by entire years or decades before suspicion of espionage would begin to fade. Even a civilian could expect to be closely watched, at least for a while.