Leaving Berlin by Joseph Kanon

Fritsch said to Irene, “get him to come work for us.”
    “ Ouf, use my influence. What influence?” Then, looking up at Alex, “He doesn’t listen to me now. It’s too long ago.” Two conversations, one for the room.
    “He will. Everyone does what Irene says,” Fritsch said, party chat.
    “It’s better. In the end,” Markovsky said, the same easy tone.
    Alex looked at him. Fleshy, but not fat, blunt hands. A wife in Moscow. Trying to be pleasant, not an occupier, the horrors of ’45 someone else’s bad behavior. Holding Irene’s arm in his, her protector. What had it been like, at the mercy of the Russians? Frau, komme. Sometimes several in one night, gangs of them.
    “It’s not true,” Irene said. “No one does what I say.”
    “I will,” Brecht said, dipping his head.
    “Good. Then get me a ticket for Courage , yes? Opening night. Already people say it’s impossible.”
    “Ah, for that you have to ask Helene,” Brecht said.
    “You see?” Irene said. “No one.”
    “You work together?” Alex said to Fritsch.
    “Yes. Well, not so much anymore. But during the war—”
    “ Kolberg . We worked together on Kolberg . My God.”
    Alex waited.
    “Goebbels’s last big production,” Markus said, intending a barb, but instead prompting a survivor’s nostalgia.
    “How crazy was that time,” Fritsch said. “The Allies are advancing and we’re staging battles. Uniforms. Cannons. Heinrich George in the lead—his salary alone. And the bombing is going on round the clock then.”
    “And no film stock,” Irene said.
    “No. And what does she do? She tells the director to keep shooting anyway. So week after week we shot scenes but there’s nothing in the camera.”
    “Why?” Markovsky said.
    “The crew,” Irene said. “They would have been drafted. To defend Berlin. But as long as we’re shooting, they’re in an essential industry. Essential. Kolberg . Well, so at least it was good for that.”
    “You saved their lives,” Fritsch said.
    “Well, not me.”
    “It was a propaganda film?” Markus said.
    “They were all propaganda films,” Fritsch said. “It was wartime. Even Zarah Leander films—propaganda. The wife waiting at home? How many did? And Kolberg ? A German victory. Just around the corner. Except when it opened—January, that last January of the war—there were no theaters left, almost none. All bombed. So all that expense—”
    “You found the stock then to finish?” Markus said.
    “It was already finished. We just kept filming to save the crew. She might have been shot,” Fritsch said. “So it was a great thing, what she did.”
    “Oh—” Irene said, waving this off.
    “Your husband was in the crew, yes?” Markus said. “Makeup, someone told me.”
    “That’s right,” she said, looking at him.
    “Maybe that explains the lipstick,” he said. “So difficult to get now. But maybe you had a good supply. From the old days. Your husband.”
    “No,” she said, touching her lip. “This? A present.”
    “Yes, a present,” Markovsky repeated, aware finally of Markus’s tone.
    Markus took a step backward, as if someone were about to raise a hand to him, his body wound tight.
    “Of course,” he said. “Lipstick wouldn’t last so long, would it?” Not sure how to walk away from it.
    Brecht, who’d been quiet, said, “Thank God for the black market. Where would our women be without it?”
    “Bert,” Irene said quickly, darting her eyes toward Markovsky, “don’t be silly. Sasha doesn’t go on the black market. It’s from Russia.”
    But Markovsky missed most of this, focused now on Markus. “I’m sorry, you are—?”
    “Markus Engel.” A military response, erect, without the salute.
    “Ah, K-5. Under Mielke, yes?”
    “Yes, that’s right,” Markus said, both pleased and wary that Markovsky knew who he was.
    “What happened this morning?” Meant to be an aside, but loud enough for Alex to hear.
    “We’re investigating,” Markus said,