The Berlin Assignment by Adrian de Hoog Page B

philosophically, and he was philosophic now. He asked where Hanbury’s last ten years were spent. “Your last letter was from some place on the edge of the known world. Kuala Lumpur I think. I assumed a snake got you, or a revolution, or that you fell into the clutches of an Asian woman.” He tipped his brandy glass convincingly, emptying it with one smooth gulp.
    â€œIt was tough going,” agreed the diplomatic adventurer, “I was lucky to survive. Sorry I stopped writing, Albert. No good reason for it.”
    â€œDon’t have a breakdown over it,” the prickly old man said. “I didn’t consider it a loss.”
    The letter writing to Berlin went on for fifteen years. Hanbury wrote his mentor more often than home. Müller’s replies were short and factual – a legal tone – except when he described his marathons. Details were always included on the last and the next race. Claiming he’d soon win, he’d write:
It’s in the bag. All I need to do is train.
A postscript in one letter informed Hanbury that Sabine had married. Hanbury recalled it gave him a shock, a sense of loss, a dull ache that lasted weeks. He had studied the postscript closely.
One never knows, he may turn out to be a stand-out as a son-in-law, but I won’t hold my breath.
    His own letters had been long. He wrote about being third, second and finally first secretary. He had interesting things to write about: other continents, pathetic countries, squalid cities. He reported visiting Inca shrines, sailing in a dhow on the Arabian Sea, walking in the Himalayas. He described music pouring out of stereo speakers into his tropical garden in Malaysia. When a Mahler symphony was playing and the kettle drums began, he wrote, all birds big and small took flight. A spectacle! Music and nature in a clinch.
    Hanbury was unable to write home in the same way. Letters there were short. His father’s only interest was to bring an end to prairie dust storms while his mother was slowly going insane. Writing Keystone, the family neighbour was easier. Keystone, a railroad engineer, liked to hear about trains. It didn’t matter where the trains were – Asia, Africa, Indochina – anywhere. Hanbury made trains the subject of those letters. In Japan he rode the Bullet Train.
I think we touched 200 miles an hour
, he wrote Keystone.
Was that baby moving!
Keystone wrote right back:
Imagine doing that here! There’s a dip just before Broadview and with that speed…on the way up…I sure would love to see a fast freight get airborne. Keep riding them bullet trains, son. We always knew you’d be a fast mover.
Keystone retired soon afterwards. The next time Hanbury was home he saw the railroader wasn’t adjusting well to doing nothing afterforty-eight years working for Canadian Pacific. During that visit Hanbury realized it was a toss-up who would be the first to go, his mad mother or the retired neighbour.
    â€œThere were advantages,” Müller was saying slowly, “not getting letters from you anymore. It saved time. Wading through them sometimes ruined my schedule. Uwe wondered what was keeping me. What was I supposed to tell him? That I was delayed on account of reading a letter? He would have barred me from
The Tankard
. Also it took pressure off my shelf space.” He gestured to the rows of legal files crammed up to the ceiling. Hanbury looked up and down and noticed two framed photographs on the far end of a middle shelf. He didn’t recall seeing photographs in the Müller household before. Two women in their prime. He recognized Müller’s second wife. In the picture she was staring into the distance at something, an intangible devastation, just as she did when he first met her. The troubled look dominated an otherwise pretty face. The second woman could have been Sabine – blond hair, high cheeks, moody eyes, a slight pursing of the mouth – an