Chapter 2: Something of the Night About Him

January 2012. Houston, Berlin and the Padmoscovnye

A Nocturne

The telephone rings.

It is dark in Manfred Randolf's bedroom but not completely. During the week he lives in the penthouse of the Randolf Corporation office tower and at night the lights of corporate Houston throw a constant dim glow into the room.

Randolf turns over, reluctant to be disturbed. In his mind, there is a vague idea that his PA can be left to answer the 'phone. But she does not answer and the ringing keeps up.

Suddenly, Randolf's sleeping brain computes. This is his private number. This is not anyone. This is important. Randolf has not been sleeping well for some time now. He's worried about the Corporation. A call at this time is bound to be bad news.

Now pitched wide awake, he snatches the receiver.

"Randolf!"

"Good morning, Manfred: it's Petra."

"Petra?" He looks at the watch on his bed side table. It's quarter to four in the morning. He's trying to work out the time in Germany where Petra is supposed to be. It should be getting close to eleven o'clock there, mid-morning. "Do you know what the time is here? Couldn't this have waited?"

"No Manfred. This is urgent."

"What's so urgent in Germany that Tracy can't deal with it?"

"It's Tracy that's the problem. That's why she can't deal with it. Manfred: Tracy has gone AWOL."

"AWOL? What the fuck is that bitch of a daughter of mine..."

"Manfred, we're worried here. Have you sent her on a private errand?"

"Of course not! You know I would give you a heads up first."

Petra knows no such thing but she can sense that Manfred is as confused by the situation as she is. "OK, so here is how things developed. I last saw Tracy at the Berlin office Tuesday. Tuesday night, she is going clubbing, she says."

"On her own?"

"She is over twenty one, Manfred. How would I know? So, Wednesday, she is not in the office but I am in Frankfurt. 3 pm I get a call from Albrecht to say Tracy has not come into the office, she is not scheduled to be out or travelling and she is not answering her phone and do I know where she is?"

"'Cell or apartment?"

"Both."

"Oh."

"So by 8pm, I am back in Berlin and go round to the apartment but it's empty. No sign of Tracy. No sign of forced entry. No sign of a struggle or anything like that. Nothing taken but no Tracy and no sign of her purse, cards or passport, so I called the local cops and also the Embassy, OK?"

"Yeah, yeah. OK and?"

"The cops have swept the apartment and found nothing – I think – well they don't want to say exactly but I didn't find anything to give me a steer on where Tracy was and I don't think they did either. The thing is, Manfred, they are going to want to know if there was any reason for Tracy to leave? Also, because of who Tracy is – your daughter – they will also be talking to the FBI Legation at the Embassy so you will have the Feds calling tomorrow like as not." (1)

"Jeez, Petra. I can't afford to have the FBI crawling all over the Corporation asking awkward questions! Not at the moment."

"No I thought not but is there anything you can give me, to head this off at the pass?"

"Er, look let me think this thing over. There might be some doors I can knock on ... Jeez, Petra ... Tracy..."

"Knows sensitive information..."

"And then some ... Fuck!"

"Yeah, thought so. Manfred, I don't think we should say too much more on this line. Do you want to call me back?"

"Yeah. Just lemme get my head around this and get some food 'n coffee into me. Coupla hours?"

"Time here is 11 am so that's 4am with you? Get yourself some warm bagels and call me 7am your time, huh? You will not get any 'visitors' much before afternoon, if they come today at all."

"Right Petra so expect me at 2pm your time?"

"Check!"

"Hey, Petra?"

"Hmmm?"

"Why don't I come over to you? I would rather be 'out' to visitors just at the moment 'till we get this thing in hand."

"That's good thinking Manfred. Why don't you do just that. I will get you a reservation at the Marriott, Potsdammer Platz. Steaks are good there." (2)

"They had better be! I am going to give the hide of that daughter of mine such a slap when I catch up with her..."

"Sure Manfred, but just keep it legal huh?"

The Boyfriend

Tracy had also suffered a disturbed night. Several, in fact, as she endured a repeated cocktail of fears for her immediate future and dreams about Hans-Peter, the man she met in a favourite café on the way home from work.

In her dreams she is revisiting the day when things started to unwind. She had been on her own, wearied by another day in the corporate jungle with her mind still occupied by the things she was doing to keep the Randolf Corporation financially solvent. He had just come into the cafe, ordered his drink and walked over to her table.

"Ist der Platz da noch frei?" He had said and smiled. The smile had brought Tracy properly back to the real world; the world where people get home with a clear conscience, where they laugh and enjoy the company of friends.

"Ja. Er ist nicht besetzt." she replied. (3)

"Hi", he switched to English, "you're American!"

"Texan", she corrected.

"Lone Star State!" he quipped

"Yeah that's it." Tracy was smiling broadly now.

He had offered his hand. "Hans-Peter. May I?"

"Sure: sit down. I'm Tracy. If you will excuse me, you don't look like a Hans-Peter to me?"

"Ah, Hans Peter is from my father who is German and the skin and hair are from my mom, who comes from Ghana. So, Tracy? Hmmm. I love your hair."

"My hair? What sort of a chat up line is that?"

"No sort of line but you see where my mother comes from, where I grew up until I was a teenager, everyone has the same hair and eyes. Black skin. Black curly hair. Deep brown eyes. When we came back to Germany – you were all so odd! So many different colours of hair and I am not talking colours out of a bottle and then the eyes! Brown, green, even blue. Blue was just so creepy!"

"Blue eyes were creepy?"

"Sure: it felt as if you look right inside people with blue eyes." (4)

Hans-Peter gave a little shudder at this ethnographic memory and Tracy laughed out loud.

"So I have blue eyes. What do you see in me?"

"I see someone who needs another coffee. Black? I mean you obviously look after yourself properly. Hans-Peter was standing now, looking down at her scanning her frame with his gentle laughing handsome eyes.

"Yes I'd like that and yes I do."

Tracy watched his walk to the counter and order. Water for him. Coffee for her. Who was he? Check clothes. Boots, clean and polished. Jeans, clean. Black leather biker jacket with a pale blue shirt underneath.

"There you are."

"Thanks. So what do you do? You must write advertising copy?"

"Close: I lecture in politics."

"Oh I get it! You teach your students how to soft soap their voters?"

"Ah, that's speech writing. I am interested in the responsibilities of the Unitary States. You?"

"I am interested in the corporate finance. I am an accountant. I work for an oil company.'

"Ha! The oil girl from Texas? I thought the oil business was the sort of place where a man has to do what a man has to do?"

"Yes-sir, there are plenty of them, believe me. My daddy for one. But these days you need more that a gang of roughnecks with large noisy machines."

"Roughnecks?"

"That's oil slang for the men who work on the oil rigs and platforms."

"You mean that's not you?"

"Very funny. Nope. I'm the accountant."

"Ah so that explains the leather briefcase and laptop. Why have I never seen you here before?"

"Yes, why? I often stop by after work for a coffee."

"OK, well I am normally here earlier. Tracy, you are going to have to excuse me. Got to go. Gym."

"Hmmm. Looks as if you look after yourself too."

"Bodies are meant to be used and they get soft if you spend every minute in the library of tutorial room."

Tracy was sorry to see Hans Peter leave the café. He moved like a dancer. He was tall and so well presented. And obviously bright. Her sort of Texas girl did not often hook up with black boys but this was not Texas and he was hot...

Insomnia

To Tracy's surprise and pleasure, Hans-Peter's schedule seemed to bring him into the café more often and after a week or so, she was receptive to being asked out.

"Tracy?"

"Mmmm?"

"There is this night club near the old Templehoff Airport."

"What sort of club?"

"A night club. A pretty wild night club. I 've never been and I was thinking about going. Are you brave enough to join a sort of academic expedition?"

"So long as there will be no slide rules involved!"

"I think the only slide rules will be used on each other's bottoms."

"Oh, it's that wild is it?"

"Well, I think it might be, in parts."

"So what is a girl going to wear in a place like that? I left my kinky leathers in the 'States."

"I don't think your daddy would allow kinky leathers in the house, Tracy."

"No, well that's for sure. Y'know, this might be important for my education. What are you wearing?"

"I am going in evening dress."

"So I will go in evening dress."

"And we will leave with our virtue intact?"

"You think? You know what they say in Texas?"

"No?"

"You just don't know what she might do next!"

"Ah. Am I in danger?"

'You betcha!"

The club was incongruously close to the Berlin Police Headquarters, which stood across the road in sober pre-war monolithic buildings but its serious gaze did nothing to dampen the goings on at Insomnia. (5)

Insomnia was every bit as wild as Hans-Peter had promised. On each of the four floors, patrons cruised in various states of dress and undress; they danced and spanked one another and drank and made love and swapped partners and bound one another to equipment, to be tormented or whipped or indulged and all in a miasma of music and lights and shadow. It was the most erotic and amusing and liberating evening's entertainment Tracy had ever enjoyed. She had been to nothing like it before, especially in Texas. Eventually, there came a point at which Tracy's rising sexual temperature reached 'critical'.

With her arms around Hans-Peter's sweet smelling body she whispered – actually shouted, to be heard above the festivities – "I have an apartment nearby and inside, there's a large bed and I need fucking! I want your cock, Hans-Peter! Now just do as you're told, like those nice obedient subs over there" - Tracy indicated two naked muscular hunks carefully licking the black shiny patent thigh highs of their mistress. They both wore collars and their mistress held the shiny chain leads attached to them.