The Silesian was talking about the suitcase. Cheap and nasty, of a type favoured by such unpersons as guest workers and Turks. And Socialists, he might have added. Those interested could read about it in their folders or study the surviving fragments of its steel frame on the buffet table. Or they could decide, as Alexis had decided long ago, that both bomb and suitcase were a blind alley. But they could not escape listening to the Silesian, because it was the Silesian's day and this speech was his victory-roll over the deposed libertarian enemy, Alexis.
From the suitcase itself, he passed to its contents. The device was wedged in place with two sorts of wadding, gentlemen, he said. Wadding type no.1was old newspaper, shown by tests to have come from the Bonn editions of the Springer press over the last six months--and very suitable too, thought Alexis. Type 2 was a sliced-up army-surplus blanket similar to the one now demonstrated by my colleague Mr. somebody from the state analytical laboratories. While the scared assistant held up a large grey blanket for their inspection, the Silesian proudly reeled off his other brilliant clues. Alexis listened wearily to the familiar recitation: the crimped end of a detonator... minuscule particles of undetonated explosive, confirmed as standard Russian plastic, known to the Americans asC4 and to the British as PE and to the Israelis as whatever it was known as... the winder of an inexpensive wristwatch... the charred but still identifiable-spring of a domestic clothespeg. In a word, thought Alexis, a classic set-up, straight out of bomb school. No compromising materials, no touches of vanity, no frills, beyond a kiddy-kit booby trap built into the inside angle of the lid. Except that with the stuff the kids were getting together these days, thought Alexis, a set-up like this one made you quite nostalgic for the good old-fashioned terrorists of the seventies.
The Silesian seemed to think so too, but he was making a dreadful joke about it: "We are calling this the bikini bomb!" he boomed proudly. "The minimum! No extras!"
"And no arrests!" Alexis called out recklessly, and was rewarded with an admiring and strangely knowing smile from Schulmann.
Brusquely bypassing his assistant, the Silesian now reached an arm into the suitcase and with a flourish extracted from it a piece of softwood on which the mock-up had been assembled, a thing like a toy racing-car circuit of thin, coated wire, ending in ten sticks of greyish plastic. As the uninitiated crowded round to take a closer look, Alexis was surprised to see Schulmann,hands in pockets, leave his place and amble over to join them. But why? Alexis asked of him mentally, his gaze fixed shamelessly upon him. Why so leisurely suddenly, when yesterday you had hardly the time to look at your battered watch? Abandoning his efforts at indifference, Alexis slipped quickly to his side. This is the way you make a bomb, the Silesian was suggesting, if you are cast in the conventional mould and want to blow up Jews. You buy a cheap watch like this one--don't steal it, buy it at a big store at their peak shopping time and buy a couple of things either side of it to confuse the assistant's memory. Remove the hour hand. Drill a hole in the glass, put a drawing-pin in the hole, solder your electric circuit to the head of the drawing-pin with heavy glue. Now the battery. Now set the hand as close to the drawing-pin, or as far from it, as you wish. But allow, as a general rule, the shortest possible delay, in order that the bomb shall not be discovered and disarmed. Wind up the watch. Make sure the minute hand is still working. It is. Offer prayers to whoever you imagine made you, poke the detonator into the plastic. As the minute hand touches the shank of the pin, so the contact completes the electrical circuit and if the Lord is good, the bomb goes off.
To demonstrate this marvel, the Silesian removed the disarmed detonator and the ten sticks of demonstration plastic explosive and replaced them with a small light-bulb suitable for a hand-torch.
"Now I prove to you how the circuit works!" he shouted.
Nobody doubted that it worked, most knew the thing by heart, but for a moment, all the same, it seemed to Alexis that the bystanders shared an involuntary shudder as the bulb cheerily winked its signal. Only Schulmann appeared immune. Perhaps he really has seen too much, thought Alexis, and the pity has finally died in him. For Schulmann was ignoring the bulb completely. He remained stooping over the mock-up, smiling broadly and contemplating it with the critical attention of a connoisseur.
A parliamentarian, wishing to display his excellence, enquired why the bomb did not go off on time. "This bomb was fourteen hours in the house," he objected, in silky English. "A minute hand turns for one hour at most. An hour hand for twelve. How do we account, please, for fourteen hours in a bomb that can only wait twelve maximum?"
For every question, the Silesian had a lecture ready. He gave one now, while Schulmann,still with his indulgent smile, started to probe gently around the edges of the mock-up with his thick fingers, as if he had lost something in the wadding below. Possibly the watch had failed, said the Silesian. Possibly the car journey to the Drosselstrasse had upset the mechanism. Possibly the Labour Attaché, in laying the suitcase on Elke's bed, had jolted the circuit, said the Silesian. Possibly the watch, being cheap, had stopped and restarted. Possibly anything, thought Alexis, unable to contain his irritation.
But Schulmann had a different suggestion, and a more ingenious one: "Or possibly this bomber did not scrape enough paint off the watch hand," he said, in a kind of distracted aside as he turned his attention to the hinges of the facsimile suitcase. Hauling an old service penknife from his pocket, he selected from its attachments a plump spike and began probing behind the head of the hinge-pin, confirming to himself the ease with which it could be removed. "Your laboratory people, they scraped off all the paint. But maybe this bomber is not so scientific as your laboratory people," he said as he snapped his knife shut with a loud clunk. "Not so able. Not so neat in his constructions."
But it was a girl, Alexis urgently objected in his mind; why does Schulmann say he suddenly, when we are supposed to be thinking of a pretty girl in a blue dress? Unaware apparently of how--for the moment, at least--he had upstaged the Silesian in the full flight of his performance,Schulmann transferred his attention to the home-made booby trap inside the lid, gently tugging at the stretch of wire that was stitched into the lining and joined to a dowel in the mouth of the clothespeg.
"There is something interesting,Herr Schulmann?"the Silesian enquired, with angelic self-restraint. "You have found a clue, perhaps? Tell us, please. We shall be interested."
Schulmann pondered this generous offer.
"Too little wire," he announced as he returned to the buffet table and hunted among its grisly exhibits. "Over here you have the remains of seventy-seven centimetres of wire." He was brandishing a charred skein. It was wound on itself like a woollen dummy, with a loop round its waist holding it together. "In your reconstruction, you have twenty-five centimetres maximum. Why are we missing half a metre of wire from your reconstruction?"
There was a moment's puzzled silence before the Silesian gave a loud, indulgent laugh.
"But,Herr Schulmann--this was spare wire," he explained, as if reasoning with a child. "For the circuitry. Just common wire. When the bomber had made the device, there was evidently wire over, so he--or she--they threw it into the suitcase. This is for tidiness, this is normal. It was spare wire," he repeated."übrig. Without technical significance. Sagihm doch übrig."