Field Gray

by Philip Kerr

  “You’re right,” he said. “There’s no reason at all why this thing can’t be fixed. After all, it is, as you say, just one Sunday afternoon, yes?”

  I nodded. “Just one Sunday afternoon.”

  “Very well. We will fix it. Yes, I tell you, I would do anything to get de Boudel.”

  Including lie to me, I thought. After I had served my purpose and identified de Boudel, there was no telling what the French might do with me: send me back to La Santé, to the Amis, even the Russians. France was, after all, cozying up to the Soviet Union in its foreign policy, and the return of an escaped prisoner was not beyond its perfidy.

  “And a ring?” I asked, as if such a bauble really mattered to me or to Elisabeth.

  “Yes,” he said. “I’m sure that can be arranged also.”

  32

  GERMANY, 1954

  On Saturday, Grottsch and Wenger drove me back to Berlin, as agreed; and on Sunday, I returned to Motzstrasse, only this time my two companions insisted on accompanying me to Elisabeth’s door.

  I let her kiss me chastely on the cheek, and then made the introductions.

  “This is Herr Grottsch. And Herr Wenger. They’re responsible for my safety while I’m in Berlin, and they insist on looking around your apartment, just to make sure everything is kosher.”

  Elisabeth frowned. “Are they policemen?”

  “Yes. Kind of.”

  “Are you in any trouble?”

  “I can assure you it’s nothing to worry about,” I said smoothly. “It’s not much more than a formality. But they certainly won’t leave us alone until they’ve had a good look around.”

  Elisabeth shrugged. “If you think it’s really necessary. But there’s no one else here. I can’t imagine what you think you’ll find, gentlemen. This isn’t Hohenschönhausen, you know.”

  Grottsch stopped and frowned. “What do you know about Hohenschönhausen?” he asked suspiciously.

  “I can see your friends aren’t from Berlin, Bernie,” said Elisabeth. “My dear man, everyone in Berlin knows about Hohenschönhausen.”

  “Everyone except me,” I said truthfully.

  “Well,” she said. “You remember the Heike factory?”

  “The meat-processing factory? On the corner of Freienewelder Strasse.”

  She nodded. “That whole area is now occupied by the State Security Service of the DDR.”

  “I thought that was in Karlshorst,” I said.

  “Not anymore,” she said.

  “You seem to know a lot about it, Fräulein,” said Wenger.

  “I’m a Berliner. The communists pretend the place doesn’t exist and the rest of us pretend not to see it. It’s an arrangement that suits us all very well, I think. A very Berlin kind of arrangement. It was the same with Gestapo headquarters on Prinz Albrechtstrasse. Remember?”

  I nodded. “Of course. It was the building that no one saw.”

  Elisabeth looked at Grottsch and Wenger and frowned. “So? Go ahead and search.”

  The two men walked through the apartment and found nothing. When they were quite satisfied at finding nothing, Grottsch said, “We’ll be outside the door.” And then they left.

  I moved her away from the door in case they were listening and into the kitchen, where we embraced fondly.

  “What were you thinking of?” I said. “Mentioning the Stasi like that?”

  “I don’t know. It just sort of came out.”

  “Still, you recovered it pretty well, I thought. I’d forgotten about Heike’s meat. In the army, we lived on that stuff.”

  “That’s probably why they shot him. Richard Heike.”

  “Who? The Russians?”

  She nodded. “Who are those two characters?”

  “Just a couple of thugs who work for French intelligence.”

  “But they were German, weren’t they?”

  “I think the French rather enjoy making us do their dirty work.”

  “So that’s what you’re doing.”

  “Actually, I don’t know what I’m doing.”

  “That’s a comforting thought.”

  “I told the French I had to come here and ask you to marry me. That you’d given me an ultimatum.”

  “Not a bad idea at that, Gunther.” She pulled away from my embrace and started to make us coffee. “I don’t much like living on my own. To be alone in Berlin is not like being alone anywhere else. Even the trees here look isolated.”

  “You mean you really would like to be married?”

  “Why not? You were kind to me, Gunther. Once in 1931. Again in 1940. A third time in 1946. And then a fourth time last year. That makes four times in twenty-three years. My father left home when I was ten. My husband—well, you remember what he was like. Very free with his fists was my Ulrich. I have a brother who I haven’t seen in years.” Elisabeth took out a handkerchief and dabbed her eyes. “God, I hadn’t realized it until now, but you’ve been one of the only constant figures in my life, Bernie Gunther. Perhaps the only one.” She sniffed loudly. “Shit.”

  “What about your Americans?”

  “What about them? Are they here, drinking coffee in my kitchen? Are they? Do they send me money from America? No, they don’t. They fucked me while they were here, the way Amis do, and then they went home to Wichita and Phoenix. Oh, yes, there was another one I didn’t tell you about. Major Winthrop. Now, he did give me money, only it wasn’t like I asked for it or wanted it, if you know what I mean. He used to leave it on the dresser, so that when he went back to his wife in Boston, it meant he went with a clear conscience because we’d never had a proper relationship. At least, not according to him. I was just some little choco-lady he saw when he wanted someone to suck his pipe.” She blew her nose, but the tears kept on coming. “And you ask me why I want to get married, Gunther. It’s not just Berlin that’s an enclave, it’s me, too. And if I don’t do something about it, soon, then I don’t know what’s to become of me. You want an ultimatum? Well, there it is. You want to me to help you? Then help me. That’s my price.”

  I nodded. “Then it’s lucky I came prepared.” I handed her the ring box Vigée had given me. Bought, he said, from a secondhand shop in Göttingen, but for all I knew, he might have stolen it from the dwarf, Alberich.

  Elisabeth opened the box. The ring was not Rhinegold, but it did at least look like something valuable, although in truth I’d seen better diamonds on a playing card. Not that it seemed to matter to her. In my experience, women like the idea of jewelry no matter what it looks like. If they like you, then they’re almost always pleased to see a ring of any size and color.

  She gasped and snatched it out of the box.

  “If it doesn’t fit,” I said lamely, “then I suppose there’s a way of fixing that.”

  But the ring was already on her finger and seemed to fit well enough, which was her cue to start crying again. There could be no doubt about it. I had a real talent for making women happy.

  “Just so you know,” I said. “My wife died, twice. The first one after the first war and the second one soon after the second. That’s not a record you can be proud of as a husband. If there’s another war, you should probably take the precaution of divorcing me quickly. But frankly, I’ve always been better at finding other people’s husbands or sleeping with their wives. What else? Oh yes, I’m a born loser. That’s important for you to know, I think. This, at least, explains my current situation, which is not without its hazards, angel. I daresay you’ve gathered that. A man doesn’t work for his enemies unless he has little choice in the matter. Or no choice at all. I’m just a cheap paper knife. People pick me up when they need to open an envelope, and then they put me down again. I don’t have any say in the matter. As far back as I can remember, that’s all I’ve been when I thought I was more than that. The truth is that we’re just what we’ve done and what we do, and not what we ever want to be.”

  “You’re wrong,” she said. “It doesn’t matter what we’ve done or what we do
. What matters is what others think we are. If you’re looking for meaning, then here it is. Let me supply that for you. To me you’ll always be a good man, Gunther. In my brown eyes, you’ll always be the man who was there for me when I needed someone to be there. Maybe that’s all any of us need. You want a plan or a purpose, then look no further than me, mister.”

  I grinned, liking her resilience. You could tell she was a Berliner, all right. Probably she’d been one of those women with a bucket who’d cleared the city of rubble in 1945. Raped one day, rebuilding it the next, like some Trojan princess in a play by some marble-headed Greek. Made of the same stuff as that German aviatrix who used to fly missiles for Hitler. You could say that’s why I kissed her—properly this time—but it might just as easily have been because she was as sexy as black stocking tops. Especially when her eyes were fixed on me. Besides, most German men prefer a woman who looks like she has a healthy appetite. Which is not to say Elisabeth was fat, or even large, just well-endowed.

  “I expect you’re wondering if there was a reply to your letter,” she said.

  “It was beginning to itch a little.”

  “Good. At the very least, I want to see some scratch marks for what you put me through to get this. I’ve never been so scared.”

  She opened a kitchen drawer and took out a letter, which she now handed to me. “I’ll finish making that coffee while you read it.”

  33

  GERMANY, 1954

  To the west there was the town; to the east there were just green open fields; and in the middle was the railway line. The station, immediately south of the refugee camp, was—like every other building in Friedland—unremarkable. It was made of red bricks and had two red roofs—three if you counted the wizard’s-hat roof on top of the square corner tower that was the stationmaster’s house. A neat little flower garden was laid out by the front door of the house, and at the two upper-floor arched windows a neat set of flowery curtains hung. There was also a clock, a notice board with a timetable, and a bus stop. Everything was neat and orderly and just as sleepy as it should have been. Except today. Today was different. The capital of West Germany might have been the unlikely town of Bonn, but today—and no less unlikely than that—all German eyes were focused on Friedland in Lower Saxony. For today saw the homecoming of one thousand German prisoners of war from Soviet captivity, aboard a train that had left its remote destination more than twenty-four hours earlier.

  The late-evening mood was one of high expectation, even celebration. A brass band was assembled in front of the station, and it was already playing a selection of patriotic music that was at the same time politically acceptable to the ears of the British, whose zone of occupation this was. Of the train there was as yet no sign, but that autumn evening several hundred people were assembled on the platform and around the station to greet the returnees. You would have thought we were expecting to see West Germany’s FIFA World Cup team arriving home, victorious, from the “miracle of Bern” and not a train carrying SS and Wehrmacht, none of whom had expected ever to be released from Russia and who were all of them entirely ignorant of the fact that Germany had won the World Cup or even that Konrad Adenauer, the former mayor of Cologne, to whom they owed their freedom, was now chancellor of another German republic—this time the Federal Republic of Germany. But some local men, keen to remind the returnees of the chancellor’s crucial role in their delivery from captivity, were carrying a sign that read “We Thank You, Doctor Adenauer.” I wouldn’t have argued with that, although it sometimes seemed to me that the Herr Doktor was intent on becoming another uncrowned king of Germany.

  Other signs were much more personal, even pathetic. Between ten and twenty men and women were carrying signs on which were written details of a missing loved one, and of these, that of an old bespectacled lady who reminded me of my own late mother, seemed typical:

  Do you know him? Untersturmführer Rudolf (Rolf) Knabe. Second 9th SS Panzer Division “Hohenstaufen” (1942) & Second SS Panzerkorps (1943). Last heard of at Kursk, July 1943.

  I wondered how much she knew about what had happened at Kursk—that this place had been the scene of the largest and bloodiest tank battle in history and had probably marked the beginning of the end for the German army.

  Others, perhaps less optimistic, were holding little candles or what looked like miners’ lamps, which I took to be memorials for those who weren’t ever coming back.

  On the actual platform of the station were those, like myself, Grottsch, Vigée, and Wenger, whose role was more official. VdH and others veterans’ organizations, policemen, churchmen, Red Cross volunteers, British army soldiers, and a large contingent of nurses, several of whom caught my bored eye. All were facing south, down the track toward Reckershausen and beyond, to the DDR.

  “Now, now,” said Vigée, noticing my interest in the nurses. “You’re almost a married man.”

  “There’s something about nurses that always attracts me. I used to think it was the uniform, but now I don’t know. Maybe it’s just sympathy for anyone who has to do someone else’s dirty work.”

  “Is it so dirty? To help someone who needs it?”

  I glanced at the German policeman whom Vigée had brought along, so that if I did identify de Boudel, he might be arrested immediately and then extradited to France.

  “Forget it,” I growled. “I just never had to blow the whistle on anyone before, that’s all. I guess there’s something about it I don’t like. Who knows?” I started on a new stick of gum. “If I see this fellow, what do you want me to do, anyway? Kiss him on the cheek?”

  “Just point him out to us,” Vigée said patiently. “The police inspector will do the rest.”

  “Why so squeamish, Gunther?” asked Grottsch. “I thought you used to be a policeman.”

  “I was a cop, it’s true,” I said. “Several thousand midnights ago. But it was one thing arresting some old lag. It’s something else when it’s an old comrade.”

  “A nice distinction,” said the Frenchman. “But hardly correct. It’s not much of an old comrade who sells his soul to the other side.”

  There was a loud cheer along the platform as, in the distance, we heard the whistle of an approaching steam locomotive.

  Vigée made a fist and pumped his biceps excitedly.

  “Who gave you this tip, anyway?” I asked. “That de Boudel would be on this train?”

  “The English Secret Service.”

  “And how did they find out?”

  The train was now in sight, a shiny black locomotive wreathed in gray smoke and white steam, as if a kitchen door in hell had been flung open. It was hauling not cattle wagons, as would have been more typical of a Russian POW train, but passenger carriages; and it was immediately plain to me that upon entering Germany, the prisoners had been transferred onto a German train. Men were already leaning out of open windows, waving to the people running alongside the track or catching bunches of flowers thrown up into their arms.

  The train whistled again and halted in the station, and men in patched and threadbare uniforms stretched out to touch those on the platform amid shouts and cheers. The Russians had not provided names of the POWS on the train, and before anyone was allowed to get off they had to wait patiently while officials from the Red Cross entered each carriage and collected a list of names for the benefit of the police, the commander of the refugee camp, and the VdH. Only when, after almost half an hour, this task was completed were the men finally allowed to step down from the train. A trumpet sounded, and for a moment it seemed as though the hour had truly arrived when those who had been in their graves were truly resurrected. And when they came forth from the train in their battered field gray they did indeed resemble recently interred corpses—so thin were their bodies, so gap-toothed were their smiles, so white their hair, and so old their weather-beaten faces. Some were filthy and shoeless. Others appeared stunned to be in a place that was not filled with cruelty or surrounded with barbed wire and empty steppe. Quite a
few had to be carried from the train on stretchers. A great stink of unwashed bodies filled the clean air of Friedland, but no one seemed to mind. Everyone was smiling. Even a few of the POWs were, but mostly they were crying like stolen children now returned to their aged parents after many years in a dark forest.

  D. W. Griffith or Cecil B. DeMille could not have directed a more moving crowd scene than that which was taking place on a railway platform at a small town in Germany. Even Vigée appeared moved to the verge of tears. Meanwhile, the brass band started to play the “Deutschlandlied”—a few of the crazier-looking prisoners started to sing the forbidden words—and, across the fields, a couple of kilometers to the north in Gros Schneen, the local church bells rang out.

  I heard one of the POWs tell someone on the platform that it was only the day before that they’d learned they were to be released.

  “These men,” said Vigée. “They look like they’re back from hell.”

  “No,” I told him. “In hell they tell you what’s happening to you.”

  I had my eyes peeled, but I knew there was little real chance of seeing de Boudel in the crowds of people at the station. Vigée knew this, too. He was expecting us to have better luck when the POWs paraded back at the camp the next morning; it seemed that I was going to have to repeat my Le Vernet experience and inspect the men at close quarters. I was not looking forward to this and was hoping against hope that we might get lucky and spy de Boudel at the station—that I might see him before one of my old comrades saw me. To this improbable end, I went into the station and climbed the stairs to lean out of an upper-floor window in order to gain a better view of this mass of jubilant German soldiery. Vigée followed, then Grottsch, Wenger, and the detective.

  I had not seen so many uniforms since the labor camp at Johannesgeorgenstadt. They swept across the platform like a sea of gray. Wearing his chain of office and dispensing schnapps from a double-sized earthenware bottle, the mayor of Friedland moved among the returnees like some Hamelin burgomaster surrounded by a plague of rats and mice. I could hear him shouting, “Your health!” and “To your freedom!” and “Welcome home!” at the top of his voice. Next to him a large Wehrmacht sergeant stood enfolding an old woman in his arms; both were weeping uncontrollably. His wife? His mother? It was hard to tell, the sergeant looked so old himself. They all did. It was hard to believe that these old men had once been the proud storm troopers who had carried Hitler’s mad Operation Barbarossa into Russia.