by Philip Kerr
“McNair?”
“McNair Barracks. Just about everything to do with the U.S. Army in Berlin takes place at McNair.”
“Thanks,” I said, “but if you don’t mind, I’d rather not have a proper job at this moment. I’ve spent the last eighteen months working harder than a donkey with three masters. If I never see another pick and shovel again, it will be too soon.”
“Rough, huh?”
“Only by the standards of a Russian serf. Now that I’ve lived and almost died in the Soviet Union, it’s easy to see where they learn their manners. And where they find their sunny outlook on life. There’s not an Ivan I met who could ever be mistaken for an optimist.” I shrugged. “Still, our mutual friend seems to be well in with them.” I nodded at the envelope she was still holding. “Erich.”
“You have no idea how much I need this money.”
“Presumably he did, though. I wonder why he didn’t give it to you himself.”
“He has his reasons, I suppose. Erich doesn’t forget his friends.”
“I couldn’t argue with that, Elisabeth.”
“Did he really try to have you killed?”
“Only a bit.”
She shook her head. “He was a hothead when he was younger, it’s true. But he never struck me as a cold-blooded killer. Those two cops. I never believed he did that, you know. And I can’t believe he ordered someone to murder you.”
“The two Germans I was traveling with aren’t here to tell you you’re wrong, Elisabeth. They weren’t as lucky as me.”
“You mean they’re dead.”
“Right now that’s my working definition of unlucky.” I shrugged. “I don’t know. Probably it always was.”
30
GERMANY, 1954
On Monday morning, we drove out of East Germany and back to Hannover, where I spent another night in the safe house. And early the next day we drove south to Göttingen and checked into an old pension overlooking the canal on Reitstallstrasse. The pension was damp, with hard wooden floors, even harder furniture, high ceilings, and dusty brass chandeliers; and about as homely as Cologne Cathedral. But from there it was only a short walk to the VdH office in a half-timbered building on Judenstrasse that looked like it was home to a family of three bears. Everywhere in Göttingen was a bit like that, and quite a few of the people, too. The director of the local VdH, Herr Dr. Winkel, was a mild, bespectacled type who might once have been the court librarian to some ancient king of Saxony. And he informed me what we already knew, that a train carrying a thousand German plenis was due in Friedland the following week. For form’s sake we decided—I, Grottsch, and Wenger—to pay a visit to the refugee camp at Friedland.
Previously a research farm owned by Göttingen University, the Friedland Camp was in the British zone and composed of a series of what were called Nissen huts. If Nissen was a synonym of “grim and inhospitable,” then these half-cylindrical corrugated-iron structures were well named. The camp was a miserable-looking place, especially in the rain, an impression that was underscored by the muddy roads and the goose-shit green that everything was painted. And it was all too easy to give credence to the rumor that the Friedland Refugee Camp had been the location for anthrax experiments conducted by Nazi scientists during the war. As a reintroduction to homeland, freedom, and all things wholesomely German, the camp left a great deal to be desired and, in my expert opinion, was almost as bad as any of the labor camps that these German POWs had left behind. I might have succeeded in feeling sorry for these men had it not been for the fact that I was rather more concerned for my own welfare, as the prospect of mixing with a large number of plenis was not without its hazards. Even after an interval of six or seven years, it was possible I might be recognized and denounced as some sort of “comrade-killer,” a renegade or a collaborator. After all, as far as anyone back at the camp in Johannesgeorgenstadt was concerned, I had sold out to the Reds and gone to Russia for anti-fascist training at Krasnogorsk. And I was reminded of the precariousness of my position when I asked one of the Friedland camp police why they were needed at all.
“Surely,” I said, “Germans who have come back home know how to behave themselves.”
“That’s just the point,” said the policeman. “They’re not back home, are they? At least not at home. Some of them get a bit pissed off when they find out they’re going to be here, sometimes for as long as six to eight weeks. But it can take that long to get them sorted out with everything they’re going to need for life in the new republic. Then there are the prisoners intent on settling old scores with each other. Men who have denounced other men to the Ivans. Informers. That kind of thing. Deprivation of liberty, we call that kind of behavior if it leads to someone getting more ill-treatment from the Ivans, and we charge them under section 239 of the German Criminal Code. At the present moment, there are over two hundred pending cases involving ex-POWs. Of course, that’s just the ones we find out about, and just as often someone in the camp turns up dead, his throat cut, and no one saw or heard a thing. That’s not at all uncommon, sir. In this camp, we reckon on as many as one murder a week.”
Of course, I hardly wanted to inform the French Intelligence Service of my own fears. I had no appetite for an early return to La Santé, or indeed any other of the five prisons I’d been in since leaving Havana. And I was resigned to hoping that, come what may, the Franzis would protect me just as long as they thought I was their best chance of identifying and arresting Edgard de Boudel.
The fact that I had never seen or even heard of someone called Edgard de Boudel was neither here nor there. I was doing what I had been told to do by the Americans in Landsberg. And when I returned to my room at the Pension Esebeck in Göttingen, I wrote a note to my CIA handlers describing the full extent of my progress: how the French had listened to me paint a picture of de Boudel at the same time I had also been painting another picture, of Erich Mielke; and that they appeared to accept everything I had told them about Mielke—all of which was false—because of everything I had told them about Edgard de Boudel, which was true. This operation was what Scheuer called “the beautiful twin.” The French—and, more important, the Soviet agent whom the Americans knew to be at the heart of the SDECE in Paris—would, it was supposed, be more inclined to believe my lies and misrepresentations about Mielke if everything they were told about de Boudel coincided with what they knew about him, or strongly suspected. And the icing on this rich cake was a tip-off (supplied to them by the British, who, of course, had received it from the Americans) that Edgard de Boudel was arriving back in Germany as a returning POW, having served out his usefulness to the Russians in Indochina, where, as a political commissar, he had assisted the Viet Minh in the interrogation and torture of many captured French soldiers, most of whom still remained, until the Geneva negotiations were complete, prisoners of war in Indochina. All I had to do was identify de Boudel and the French would, it was supposed, treat me and my information about Mielke as gold-plated; and to this end, before my “deportation” from Landsberg to Paris, I had carefully studied the only known photographs of de Boudel. It was hoped that these two pictures, along with my own familiarity with the life of a German POW—not to mention my background as a Kripo detective—would help me spot him for the French, who forever thereafter would be in thrall to me as an intelligence source. Because Edgard de Boudel was one of the most wanted men in France.
Naturally, I was a little concerned about what might happen to me if I failed to identify de Boudel, so I wrote about that, too, mentioning my continuing concern that he might have changed more than just his name and identity if, as the Americans believed, the Russians were intent on infiltrating him back into West German society in the hope of reactivating him as their agent at some later date. I had little or no chance of success if de Boudel had undergone plastic surgery. I also mentioned what by then would have been obvious: that I was being watched closely.
When I finished writing, I went into the sitting room to speak to Vigé
e, who was the French officer in charge of the SDECE’s Göttingen operation.
“If you please,” I said, “I’d like to go to church.”
“You didn’t say you were religious,” he said.
“Did I need to?” I shrugged. “Look, it’s not mass, or even confession. I just want to go and sit in church for a while and pray.”
“What are you? Catholic? Protestant? What?”
“Lutheran Protestant,” I said. “Oh yes, and I’d like to buy some chewing gum. To stop me from smoking so much.”
“Here,” he said, and handed me a packet of Hollywood. “I have the same problem.”
I put one of the green chlorophyllic sticks in my mouth.
“Is there a Lutheran church near here?” he asked.
“This is Göttingen,” I said. “There are churches everywhere.”
St. Jacobi was a strange-looking church. Eccentric, even. The body of the building was ordinary enough, made of a handsome pinkish stone with darker pink perpendiculars. But the steeple, the tallest in Göttingen, was anything but ordinary. It was as if the lid of a pink toy box had burst open to permit the egress of a green object on top of a giant gray spring. As if some lazy Jack had tossed a handful of magic beans onto the floor of the church and these had grown so quickly that the stalk had forced its way through the simple church roof. As a metaphor of Nazism, it was perhaps unsurpassed in the whole of Germany.
The candy-striped interior was no less like a fairy tale. As soon as you saw the pillars you wanted to lick them, or to break off a piece of the medieval altar triptych and eat it, like sugarloaf.
I sat down in the front pew and bowed my head to the amnesiac gods of Germany and pretended to pray, because I’d prayed before and knew exactly what to expect of it.
After a while I glanced around, and observing that Vigée was occupied in the admiration of the church, I fixed the note for my CIA handlers underneath the pew with my Hollywood gum. Then I stood up and walked slowly to the door. I waited patiently for Vigée to follow, and then we went outside into the Rumpelstiltskin streets.
31
GERMANY, 1954
Things were quiet at the Pension Esebeck, and there was little to do except eat and read the newspapers. But Die Welt was the only paper I was keen to read. I was especially interested in the small ads at the back, and on my second morning in Göttingen I found the message for Field Gray that I had been waiting for. It was some verses from the Gospel according to Saint Luke, 1:44, 49; 2:3; 6:1; 1:40; 1:37; and 1:74.
I took the Bible from the shelf in the sitting room, and went to my own room to reconstruct the message. It read as follows:
For lo, as soon as the voice of Thy salutation sounded in my ears, the babe leaped in my womb for joy.
For He that is mighty hath done to me great things; and holy is His name.
And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city.
And it came to pass on the second Sabbath after the first, that he went through the cornfields; and His disciples plucked the ears of corn, rubbing them in their hands, and did eat.
And entered into the house of Zacharias, and saluted Elisabeth.
For with God nothing shall be impossible.
That He would grant unto us, that we being delivered out of the hand of our enemies might serve Him without fear.
Having burned the note I’d made of the message, I went to look for Vigée and found the Frenchman in a little walled garden overlooking the canal. As usual, he looked as if he hadn’t slept; his eyes were half closed against the smoke from his cigarette, and there was a little cup of coffee in the palm of his hand, like a coin. He regarded me with his usual indifferent expression, but, as before, when he spoke it was frequently with the added emphasis of a firm nod or a quick shake of the head.
“You made your peace with God, yes?” His German was halting but grammatical.
“I needed some time to reflect,” I said. “On something that happened in Berlin. On Sunday.”
“With Elisabeth, yes?”
“She wants to get married,” I said. “To me.”
He shrugged. “Congratulations, Sébastien.”
“Soon.”
“How soon?”
“She’s waited five years for me, Émile. And now that I’ve seen her again…well, she doesn’t propose to wait any longer. In short, she gave me an ultimatum. That she would forget all about me unless I married her before the weekend.”
“Impossible,” said Vigée.
“That’s what I said, Émile. However, she means it. I’m certain of it. I never knew this woman to say anything she didn’t mean.” I took one of his offered cigarettes.
“That’s hardly civilized,” he said.
“That’s women,” I said. “And it’s me, too. Up until now, everything in the world I ever wanted was never quite as good as I thought it would be. But I’ve a strong feeling that Elisabeth’s different. In fact, I know she is.”
Vigée picked a piece of tobacco off his tongue and for a moment regarded it critically, as if it might have been the answer to all our problems.
“I was thinking, Émile. The POW train won’t be here until next Tuesday night. If I could spend Sunday with Elisabeth, in Berlin…Just a few hours.”
Vigée put down his coffee cup and started to shake his head.
“No, please listen,” I said. “If I could spend a few hours with her, I’m sure I could persuade her to wait. Especially if I arrived with a few presents. A ring, perhaps. Nothing expensive. Just a token of my feelings for her.”
He was still shaking his head.
“Oh, come on, Émile, you know what women are like. Look, there’s a shop full of inexpensive jewelry on the corner of Speckstrasse. If you could advance me a few marks—enough to buy a ring—then I’m sure I could persuade her to wait for me. If this wasn’t my last chance, I wouldn’t ask. We could be back here by Monday evening. A full twenty-four hours before the train is even due in Friedland.”
“And what if you chose not to come back?” he said. “It’s very difficult bringing people out of Berlin across the Green Border. What’s to stop you from just staying there? She doesn’t even live in the French sector.”
“At least say you’ll think about it,” I said. “I mean, it would be a real shame if I allowed my own disappointment to cloud my eyes next Tuesday evening.”
“Meaning?”
“I want to help you find Edgard de Boudel, Émile. Really I do. But there has to be a little give-and-take, especially in a situation like this. If I’m to work for you, then surely it’s best that I’m completely in your debt, monsieur. That there’s nothing unpleasant between us.”
He smiled a nasty little smile and threw his cigarette over the wall and into the canal. Then he quickly gathered the lapels of my jacket in his fist and smacked me hard across both cheeks.
“Maybe you’ve forgotten La Santé,” he said. “Your boche friends, Oberg and Knochen, and their death sentences.” He slapped me again for good measure.
I took it as calmly as I was able and said: “That might work on your wife and your sister, Franzi, but not on me, see?” I caught the hand he was waving near my ear and twisted it hard. “No one gets to slap me unless I’ve got my hand in her panties. Now, take your paws off this cheap French suit before I teach you the Method on tough.”
I looked him in the eye and saw that he seemed to relax a little, so I let go his hand in order to prize his fingers off my coat, and that was when he punched me with a right hook that rocked my head like a balloon on a stick. Probably he’d have punched me again but for my own presence of mind, which is another way of saying that I banged its hard bony covering firmly against the bridge of his long hooked nose.
The Frenchman yelped with pain, and finally letting go of my coat, he pressed his fingers to the side of his nose and took several steps back until he reached the garden wall.
“Look,” I said, “stop trying to polish my chin and take it easy, Émile. I’m not
asking for the return of Alsace-Lorraine, just one lousy Sunday afternoon with the woman I love. Some compassionate leave, that’s all. And none of that gets in the way of me helping you find your traitor. I help you, you help me. Unless you want me to enroll in a course at the university, it’s not like I have anything much to do before next Tuesday evening.”
“I think you broke my nose,” he said.
“No, I didn’t. There’s not nearly enough blood. Take it from someone who’s broken a few noses in his time. Although nothing on the scale of that Eiffel Tower on your face.” I shook my head. “Hey, I’m sorry I hit you, Émile, but for the last nine months a lot of people have been getting tough with me and I’ve had enough of it, see? I have to look at my face every morning, Frenchman. It’s not much of a face, but it’s the only one I’ve got. And it’s got to last me for a while yet. So I don’t like it when people think they can knock it around. I’m sensitive like that.”
He wiped his nose and nodded, but the incident hung strong in the air between us like the smell of burned hops from a brewery. And for a moment we both stood there stupidly, wondering how to proceed.
It could have been worse, I told myself. There had been a brief moment when I had actually contemplated tipping him over the wall and into the canal.
He lit a cigarette and smoked it as if he thought it might improve his humor and take his mind off his nose, which, now that he had wiped away the blood, was already looking better than he might have supposed.
