In the Mouth of the Bear Read online

back to normal. Their periodic radio checks become flat, atonal, perfunctory. An air of anticlimax spreads to the listeners from the listened-to.

  Two more guys come in. In cricket whites, a beer or two to the good after the match. Sport is good for morale. They've heard the boss isn't in. They'll hide in the bogs at shift change and skip out of the building having cheated the Queen of the uniform for an evening. Little, little victories. They are the highest ranked people in the room.

  Hours later, I'm nodding off. Back in the 'Language Lab' again. Auditory fancies coming through the headphones; helicopters landing by elephants - or landed by them. My head jerks spastically, tape-recording whiplash injury imminent. Someone's shouting:

  'Hurry, downstairs! Come on, the telly.'

  Hauling myself from my seat, as if I can't bear to leave my vitally important work - it wouldn't do for anyone to know I've slept through most of a C60 cassette, after all - I follow the crowd down to the TV room?

  3. Kaleidoscope

  Where it was deathly quiet, except for the sound from the TV. In those pre-satellite days there was no rolling news; no buzz bars ticker-taped world events at the bottom of the screen. The nightly news was on ZDF, with the usual impossibly glamorous, slightly S & M, pastel-power-dresser linking the stories: we strained to follow the newscast German:

  '19 year old Mattias Rust landed his Cessna light aircraft in Red Square earlier today?'

  I looked round at the faces; Steve, Jock, Paul, the Cricketers: there must have been others - or were others, not these, actually there? Shift the tube and the patterns look different. A few months ago, in Fuengirola, a 50-something man told me he'd sat next to me on the back row of the 'Language Lab' for six months; I didn't even recognise his name.

  So, perhaps, Steve sniggered. Maybe Jock's face was unreadable. I know I felt sick. It was too near shift change to call in the stood-down personnel. And what good would it have done?

  'Rust departed Finland and crossed into Soviet controlled Airspace before entering Soviet Territory 160 kilometres west of Leningrad?'

  Jock shrugged:

  'We cannae hear that from here? It's no our responsibility.'

  In my head, I was translating his words into Russian.

  FROM THE REPORT: 'How Could Matthias Rust Get to Moscow?'

  BY: Douglas Clarke, Radio Free Europe

  DATE: 1987-6-21

  This dramatic incident has caused the dismissal of the head of

  the Soviet Air Defense Forces and the forced

  retirement of the Soviet Minister of Defense.

  Soviet embarrassment over Rust's choice of a

  landing spot--in Moscow's Red Square--might have

  been a factor in the severity of the official reaction.

  "Nobody really knows anything" Ewan Lawrie, October 1989.

  Denial

  Another cool, cypress-Cyprus night: nothing to hear but the dynamo hum of the insects; nothing to see but the indigo sky dominated by Orion overhead. We were sitting on the veranda, Jock and I. In two mismatched armchairs next to an industrial-sized water cooler. It was 2 a.m. - 0200 local, if you like. Jock's cerulean eyes were shiny with a tamazepam glaze.

  Years ago, Bomber Command crews took bennies to stay awake during night missions; we had taken tranks to get to sleep before an early start: progress.

  Jock had his nose in a book, his lips moving from time to time; maybe the words meant a lot to him, maybe they meant more if he did that.

  'This is a long way from the Ku'damm?' I wanted to talk.

  'Yep,' Jock didn't. At least not to me. Not nowadays.

  A Land Rover with RAF police markings rumbled past: doing a sweep of the storm drains for drunken airmen. They were too early by an hour or two.

  'D'you remember when Dave..?' I persisted, sick of the noise of the bugs.

  'Actually I dinnae.' He seemed annoyed. 'You oughtae remember that was aw 20 years ago, for me.'

  And he had a point, it was: I'd been there longer. I remembered his time there 'though, and, sure, the memory-film slipped in the sprockets, the monochrome was faded and scratched; but, you know, that happens to films when they're played too often.

  'Come on, Jock? you must remember something.' I was a bit annoyed myself.

  'It's aw a bit o' a blur tae be honest, ye know how it was? so no I dinnae.'

  How could he forget? I didn't know. The Mediterranean receded as my mind's eye zoomed out. A jump cut to the 94 bushaltestelle; nine on a late January morning: waiting for the bus to the city. Jock, me, Paddy: Dave was on restrictions, washing pint glasses in the Officers' Mess kitchen; Dave got caught for anything and everything. All of us were a little bleary, weary: first days-off in the shift cycle, we were up early, after a night in the NAAFI.

  'This is just the best, you know,' Paddy's cultured tones filled with enthusiasm. 'Gr?newoche, I mean.'

  Gr?newoche - one of the few words every Brit in Berlin managed to learn. Greenweek it meant.

  'I can't wait to see the fresians!' he went on.

  'Like you'll even see the livestock hall!' I jeered.

  And the truth was none of us would. Greenweek was Berlin's annual agricultural show. Produce from all over the world on show in the Messegelande: West Berlin's futuristic exhibition centre: Guinness, Elephant Beer, Tiger Beer, Fosters, Amstel, scotch and Irish whiskey, aquavit, vodka.

  Phil, long gone, had seen the fresians one year: demonstrating an alarming lack of skill in the art of rodeo - before being arrested by the Berlin Police, who handcuffed him to a lamppost out front, while they waited for the MPs.

  Jock stumbled as we got off the bus near the Funkturm, West Berlin's radio tower: a mini Eiffel dwarfed by its uglier East German version on the other side of the wall.

  'Steady,' said Paddy. 'We haven't started yet!'

  'Had a few swallies in the room, after the bar closed. I'm OK'. Jock gave a lopsided grin.

  I paid the entry fee for all of us: my round would be later, now. Jock wrote my name on the back of his hand.

  'Where first, gentlemen?' Paddy asked, one eyebrow raised ? la Roger Moore.

  'Ireland. Guinness, come awn!' Jock had perked up a bit.

  ' No, let's save it: go there later, let's do Weinstrasse.'

  I went with the flow: Paddy had wanted to go down Weinstrasse for a couple of years. Two phalanxes of stands dedicated to German vineyards, free samples at every one, if you played your cards right. The owl-like JB had donned a suit and tie one year, successfully posing as an Oddbins buyer. So well, in fact, that the following week he was summoned to the guardroom at the main gate to explain the arrival of 30 cases of hock with his name on them.

  They were more organised nowadays of course: we'd had no more than 5 free glasses each before we were politely advised to visit other parts of the exhibition.

  'This beer's pish.' Jock avowed.

  'It's French, what d'you expect?' Paddy seemed unbothered.

  'Better eat something, eh?' I showed off my schoolboy French to the stunner behind the counter, I just wanted to hear her speak.

  'Qu'est-ce tu veux. Il y a d'hu?tres, tres bien!'

  'Oui, bien s?r!' So suave.

  ' I love those French birds.' I announced: 'they have a certain Je ne sais pas.' As it turned out that was me: the oysters arrived.

  'Mmm, lovely.' I bluffed it out.

  'Wha' the fuck are thon?' Jock was horrified.

  'You mean you don't know?' An incredulous Paddy.

  'Really nice - gulp!' It was getting harder to keep it up, or the oysters down. 'Go on, have one.'

  Jock picked up the shell, carefully, finger-and-thumb, trying to reconcile keeping it arm's length with putting the oyster in his mouth.

  'That's it, just gulp it down!'

  'Arrrrrrrrrrrrrgh!' The oyster trampolined across the counter, Mam'selle ducked for cover behind it, a hair finally out of place.

  'It's fuckin' snotters, ye bastards!' Jock bellowed. We headed
for Denmark, for blondes and Elephant Beer, Ireland was next door.

  'More pish! When do we get shum deshent beer?'

  'Jock, it's decent enough by the sound of you!' Paddy grinned.

  'It is nearly six percent proof, Jock, is that not strong enough?'

  It patently was.

  'Aye, it's no that, just the taste, ye ken?, I'll see yez next door, awrigh'?'

  'OK, keep your eye on him Paddy.' I warned, suspecting Paddy's eye would rather be on Astrid. Ireland was the stand next door, one of the bigger ones naturally. He'd be alright.

  'Just two more Astrid, thanks.' Paddy smarmed. I raised my eyes at 5 feet 10 inches of Nordic clich?: got a smile back. Smarm isn't everything.. I liked Elephant beer, stronger than Carlsberg Special Export and probably named for the feeling you got after four; that of being run over by one. I remember daydreaming for a bit, probably fantasising about Astrid, while Paddy kept trying. Suddenly I heard shouting in an all-too-familiar accent.

  Ireland had round table tops on tall barrels; a country for standing in. France, of course, had had comfortable chairs. It was still relatively empty in Ireland: only Jock sprawled across a table with his hands locked around the throat of a soutaned priest.

  'Better go, Paddy', I said.

  I jerked my head over the border, threw 20 deutschmarks on the counter. Astrid stared open-mouthed toward the drama in the other bar.

  Paddy had Jock by the scruff of the neck: I asked the Priest:

  'What's that all about, Father? Can I get you a drink?'

  ' No, I am fine? I was in here just, well, it's the Irish stand? A Guinness, a chat, you know?'

  'Yeah, well we all get homesick, sometimes. So what was it?'

  'A conversation, only, about celibacy: it was fine, I told him what he wanted to know. Then he