The Night of the Generals

by Hans Hellmut Kirst

  “That’s bad,” Hartmann said bleakly.

  “There’s worse to come. You’ve been relieved of your duties and your marching orders are signed and sealed. But that’s only the half of it. Your girl-friend Ulrike isn’t just a general’s daughter—she’s likely to become a general’s wife soon, by all accounts. You would have to pick on Tanz’s girl-friend, wouldn’t you! If he gets his teeth into you even Kahlenberge won’t be able to do much. It won’t be just a question of a posting to the front and a hero’s death. You’ll probably wind up in front of a court martial.”

  “Don’t swig the lot,” said Hartmann dully, reaching for the bottle.

  “If I were you I’d beat it.”

  “But you’re not me, Otto.”

  “No, thank God. I’ll burn a couple of candles in Notre Dame the next chance I get. But what I wanted to say was—if you do a bunk, with or without a pass, you can rely on me to look after Raymonde properly for you.”

  “Get lost,” said Hartmann.

  “With pleasure. But just in case you put your foot in it again, forget you ever saw me. I haven’t said a word, understand?”

  “All right, as far as I’m concerned you don’t exist.”

  “Fine,” said Otto. “You’re a real pal. And talking about pals, could you slip me a franc or two?”

  Hartmann produced General Tanz’s wallet and took out two notes. Otto gave an appreciative whistle, clapped Hartmann on the shoulder and stuffed the money into his pocket.

  “One more question, old cock—man to man: did you really lay her?”

  “Push off!” Hartmann shouted furiously. “Or I’ll tell them everything you’ve said.”

  “I’m going,” said Otto, clambering into his Mercedes. “All the best, old cock. You’re going to need all the luck you can get!”

  “Abnormal situations,” Inspector Prévert declared suavely, as though he were offering someone a glass of vintage Meursault, “call for abnormal measures.”

  Having bearded Lieutenant-Colonel Grau in his office, Prévert now gazed about him with undisguised interest. He surveyed the naked and unassuming expanse of wood and cement, the almost monastic simplicity of the furniture, the charts and plans, standing orders and troop dispositions covering the walls—and, in the midst of it all, Grau, illumined by the harsh glare of an overhead light.

  “A room like this in the heart of Paris!” mused Prévert. “I’d scarcely have believed it. Even our suburban police stations look luxurious by comparison.”

  “I’m a symbol,” Grau said, “and this office is my shop-window. Believe me, creating this atmosphere of shabby insignificance was quite a work of art—but then I’m a stage designer manqué. However, knowing you as I do, monsieur, I realize that you didn’t come here to discuss office décor. What can I do for you?”

  “I’ve been busy since we last met. I couldn’t resist taking a closer look at General Kahlenberge.”

  Grau nodded without the least sign of surprise. He picked up a file lying on his desk, extracted a sheet of paper and passed it to Prévert. Headed “Visit of Prévert to Kahlenberge”, it gave the exact date, time, place and duration of the interview.

  “So you’re having me watched.” Prévert smiled wryly.

  “I’m only playing the new party game. It’s all the rage these days.”

  “Am I on your black list?”

  “But of course, Monsieur Prévert—though I have a number of black lists, as you can imagine. You don’t figure on all of them.”

  “Excellent,” said Prévert. “It all confirms my theory about you. If the conspiracy comes off you’ll support it indirectly, probably remaining under cover for the time being until the new line-up becomes clearer. However things turn out, all you’ll have to do is select the appropriate list and emerge on the right side. Am I right?”

  Grau gave a faint smile. “That’s your theory, is it? I expect you think I’m playing a pretty shabby game.”

  “I don’t pass moral judgements, Colonel. All I want to do is avoid burning my fingers on your belated display of patriotism. I’m a Frenchman and a policeman. I’ve no wish to die for the greater glory of the German Reich. I want to insure myself.”

  “Against all contingencies, if I understand you rightly.”

  “Perhaps you’ll understand me better if I put forward a concrete proposal. For instance, I assume that it’s impracticable for you to establish direct personal contact with the conspirators. I’ve already done that. Why not use me as a go-between? You’ll benefit whatever the outcome—and so will I, of course. If the conspirators succeed as we both earnestly hope, even if for different reasons, you’ll be on the right side. If they fail, nobody will be able to prove that you ever communicated with them.”

  “You’re wrong, Prévert. There’s one man who will.”

  “You mean me?” Prévert sadly shook his gourd-shaped head. “You’re overlooking the vital point. If any questions are asked you’ll be able to say that I was supplying you with information about the conspiracy and that in this sense we’ve always been working together.”

  Grau nodded. It was an arrangement after his own heart, the sort of game which only a past master in police technique could play. It enabled one to score off the mighty, combat criminality and protect the rights of the individual without entirely sacrificing one’s own personality.

  Seen from that aspect, Grau and Prévert were cast in the same mould—or at least their methods were similar. First they insured themselves. Then, phase by phase, they worked out their alternative plans. Version One, directed against the conspirators, envisaged the compilation of duplicate files containing material, ideas, suggestions and views, one copy to be held by each party. The material would be clear in its implications but so phrased that it would neither facilitate nor impede any subsequent action against the conspirators. Version Two, in favour of the conspirators, was discussed in similar detail. It entailed keeping in touch with developments but preserving enough independence to guarantee that if things went awry nothing would be lost.

  “Splendid,” said Prévert at the close. “I feel distinctly happier now.”

  “I only hope Kahlenberge’s people are equally painstaking.”

  “If everyone were like Kahlenberge our problems would be halved.”

  “What about the other three or four thousand generals?” Grau asked quietly.

  “Aren’t you sure of them?”

  “Shall we say—I’m distrustful. I know my fellow-countrymen. But I can tell you one thing: if they fall down on the job- again it will be for the last time. They’ll have proved, contrary to intention, that the German soldier has forfeited every last scrap of self-respect. That’s something no one will ever forgive them for, and I’ll be one of the first to say so aloud when the day comes—and act accordingly. I’ll spit in their faces, the cowardly, dim-witted swine.”

  “What a performance,” Prévert murmured to himself. “I’m not sure I want to be in at the kill.”

  “This is nothing to do with you!” Grau snapped. “It’s our business. But if you knew what some of these generals are capable of you’d lose your palate for burgundy.”

  Lance-Corporal Hartmann read on, fully resigned to hours of waiting. The Rue Drouot was almost deserted. On the opposite side of the street a man shuffled along in the shadow of the houses. A woman was leaning against the newspaper kiosk on the corner, haggling with her male companion in a low voice. Two cats spat at each other in the gutter, and there was a rumbling sound in the distance as of heavy freight trains on the move. All at once, whether spontaneously or in response to some external stimulus, Hartmann looked up from his book. Standing beneath the dim blue lamp outside L’Ecurie de Madeleine he saw a shadow, thin, elongated and sharply defined.

  The figure raised its hand as though signalling and moved towards the Bentley. Hartmann hurriedly switched off the light and the radio and put his Balzac away. Then he pocketed his packet of cigarettes, corked the almost empty flask of Calvados an
d started the car. The exhaust puttered softly.

  Tanz approached, silent as a shark circling a swimmer. He climbed in and slumped back on the cushions, breathing stertorously. Then he began to speak, enunciating his words with extreme care. “Move off, but keep your speed down.” His voice sounded as if it had been steeped in glycerine.

  Hartmann let in the clutch and the Bentley crept forward. Then he saw what he might have expected—a woman of uncertain age and medium height with blonde hair and a protuberant bust. She was standing in the entrance, watching the Bentley’s approach with an air of appraisal. Her eyes glittered hungrily.

  “Drive up to her, Hartmann.”

  Hartmann crawled the remaining thirty yards and then stopped. The Bentley stood there purring quietly. The General pushed open the off-side rear door and said: “Get in.”

  The woman’s ample mouth emitted a shrill giggle of pleasure. Agreeably surprised and flattered, she slid on to the seat beside Tanz and began to wriggle her bottom luxuriously. The venerable Bentley creaked indignantly, and waves of strong scent assailed Hartmann’s nostrils.

  “Where do you live?” asked Tanz, his voice suddenly hoarse.

  “Rue de Londres, just next to the Gare St. Lazare.”

  “I know it,” said Hartmann, and trod on the accelerator.

  He tried to ignore what was going on behind him, but the woman’s voice, strident with artificial gaiety, kept breaking through. She was going through the usual routine. Tanz could call her “tu” if he liked. He needn’t be shy with her—she was the broadminded type. Live and let live was her motto. Eat, drink and be merry—tomorrow might be too late. Would he like to know her name? Should she try and guess his? Or was he one of the strong, silent sort? Well, still waters run deep, etc., etc.

  “Later,” said Tanz. He sounded as if he were engaged in some form of violent physical exercise.

  Hartmann glanced in the driving-mirror. Tanz was sitting stiffly in the extreme right-hand corner of the car while the woman sprawled snugly and expectantly across the seat. She had a mottled, coarse-looking face with lips like slabs of moist red rubber and small porcine eyes. Even she seemed reluctant to force her attentions on Tanz unbidden.

  “You’re different,” she told him confidentially. “It’s a long time since I met someone with a chauffeur.”

  “Watch the road,” said Tanz. He might have been talking either to her or to Hartmann.

  The woman leant forward, and Hartmann smelt a thick animal stench of perfume, sweat and alcohol. He put his foot hard down in an instinctive attempt to leave it behind. The Bentley raced through the darkened streets of Paris, far exceeding the regulation speed limit.

  “Slower,” the woman said in his ear. He felt her fingers caressing the nape of his neck and bent forward to avoid them. “We’re nearly there. That’s it—the grey house on the corner.”

  Hartmann pulled into the kerb, jumped out and hurried round to open the door. The woman got out first, followed by Tanz. “Where, exactly?” he asked.

  “On the third floor. It’s really cosy. You’ll like it, no one’ll disturb us.”

  “Go on ahead,” he told her. He looked round him as though checking military dispositions. House fronts with blacked out windows like blind eyes, an unobstructed stretch of street and in the background a towering pile of steel, glass and concrete thickly coated with a layer of soot—the Gare St. Lazare —all veiled in the numbing inactivity of the night.

  “Wait here, Hartmann,” said Tanz. His eyes glowed phosphorescently and his face had become the same chiselled mask which he seemed to wear every hour of the day. “I may need you. Watch the windows on the third floor.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Hartmann heard the woman’s shrill laugh ring out once more before she disappeared into the house. Tanz followed her with the purposeful tread of an infantryman advancing to the attack. Then the front door closed behind him with a dull thud.

  Hartmann lit a cigarette. He saw a narrow chink of light appear at a third-floor window, then another in the window next to it. From this he deduced that they had reached her flat and gone into an inner room—presumably the bedroom.

  Strolling back to the car, he drank what was left of the Calvados and lit a second cigarette. Then he began to pace up and down, automatically, as though he was on guard duty and the Bentley was his sentry-box.

  Although he felt tempted to brood on Ulrike’s relationship with him and his relationship with Raymonde, he forced himself to banish distracting, titalating thoughts of that kind. Instead, he concentrated on Tanz. He tried to picture what was happening behind the darkened window on the third floor, but found it impossible. Grotesque images flitted erratically through his head.

  He gazed up at the third-floor windows as though they might provide the answer to a riddle. Then he saw the strip of light widen as a curtain was pushed to one side. A familiar silhouette appeared, a stark black shape not unlike the dummy figures painted on pistol or machine-gun targets.

  “Are you there?” Tanz inquired in a low but penetrating undertone.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Come up here.”

  Hartmann wasted no time. Taking a torch from the car, he walked over to the house, opened the door and started up the stairs. The beam of the torch shone on walls which looked as though they had been soiled by generations of grubby, sweaty hands.

  Then he saw the silhouette again, outlined against a rectangle of light. Tanz was waiting for him in the doorway of the woman’s flat.

  “Come in,” he said.

  Tanz appeared to be smiling. His face looked drained of tension, as it might have done at the successful conclusion of a hard-fought engagement. His eyes were filled with the self-absorbed, almost blissful languor of someone who has weathered a storm, and his gesture of invitation had the relaxed grace of a dancer who has just performed his pièce de rêsistance before an appreciative audience.

  “Take a look next door.”

  Hartmann obediently crossed the living-room, noting the old and shabby furniture with its thick powdering of dust and the flowered wallpaper hanging in shreds from the walls. The curtains were threadbare and the carpet so worn that only remnants of its original pattern survived.

  “Next door,” Tanz insisted.

  Hartmann had to fight his way through a wall of thick, viscous air. He was met by the same foetid aroma of cheap perfume and stale sweat which he had smelt in the car, only infinitely stronger. His eyes focussed on a large dishevelled bed lit by the rosy glow of a standard lamp. On the bed, like meat displayed on a butcher’s slab, lay a tumbled mound of flesh.

  It was as white as the belly of a fish but interspersed with thick streaks of crimson. Starting at the throat, the deep gashes progressed across the breasts and belly and merged into an oozing crimson mess between the thighs.

  “Have a good look,” said Tanz, “but don’t stand there too long. I’ve got to talk to you.”

  Hartmann backed away from the corpse and out of the bedroom with dragging feet, pursued by the stench of blood. Queasily, he tripped over a mat and staggered sideways, colliding with the door-post like a sack of flour. Feeling a dull throb of pain he clutched his head, and his hand came away covered in warm, sticky moisture. He had struck his temple and broken the skin. It was only a superficial cut, but the pain was enough to clear his head and jolt him out of an attack of anguished retching.

  “Sit down,” said Tanz. “You look like a drowned rat. But then you’re a sensitive lad. It doesn’t take much to turn your stomach.”

  General Tanz sat in the middle of the living-room, picked out with painful clarity by the centre light. He sat there as erect as ever, but there was something almost nonchalant about his contented smile. Nestling elegantly in his right hand was an automatic—a 7.65 mm. Walther.

  “You really ought to sit down,” he repeated, and this time it was an order. He indicated a chair with the hand that held the pistol, then pointed to a bottle and two glasses lying on the tab
le between them. “Have a drink, Hartmann. I can see you need a pick-me-up.”

  Hartmann groped for the bottle with a trembling hand. He filled one of the glasses and drained it. His stomach heaved, but he poured himself a second glass and swallowed its contents at a single gulp. Looking at Tanz, he saw that the General was noting his every movement with an attentive smile. A wave of indignation surged through him.

  “So now you know what’s happened, Hartmann. It’s obviously made a deep impression on you. Why, may I ask? Is your experience of death really so limited? I’ve seen a man staggering across a field of stubble with his entrails hanging out, trying desperately to escape from enemy rifle fire. He fell over, wriggled like a worm and tried to get up, over and over again, but he became entangled in his own guts. So he tore them out with his bare hands, screaming like a wounded horse. He was the only person I ever really loved. When I reached him he was past recognizing me. He died babbling a woman’s name—the name of a woman I regarded as a whore.”

  “What has that got to do with what happened here?”

  “It happened.”

  “But why, why?”

  “Must you have an explanation, Hartmann? It happened, that’s all. There were a number of reasons, I’ve no doubt, but it was war which activated them. That’s probably part of the price we have to pay for war. A lot of people have to pay one way or another, often with their lives. Human beings have no control over natural phenomena.”

  Tanz delivered this statement as though he were reading out an operational order. His voice preserved its cool, matter-of-fact timbre, but the frozen fixity of his smile had become tinged with melancholy.

  “That may be one explanation,” he said, delicately caressing the pistol in his right hand with the fingers of his left. “There must be others, but why should I bore myself and you with them? Let’s stick to facts and not waste time on unnecessary speculation. It has happened, and not for the first time. Months or years hence it may happen again, but there’s no point in thinking about that now. Pour yourself another glass, Hartmann. You may smoke too, if you like—it won’t disturb me. Nothing disturbs me any longer. I feel fresh as a daisy. Take a look at my hands.” He held them out. “Steady as a rock, aren’t they? You may also have noticed that I’m not drinking or smoking. I don’t need to any more, nor shall I for a long time to come, I hope.”