A German Requiem

by Philip Kerr

  ‘The Werewolf Underground.’

  I found myself laughing out loud. ‘That old Nazi fifth-column story? The stay-behind fanatics who were going to continue a guerrilla war against our conquerors? You have to be joking, Shields.’

  ‘Something wrong with that, you think?’

  ‘Well, they’re a bit late for a start. The war’s been over for nearly three years. Surely you Americans have screwed enough of our women by now to realize that we never planned to cut your throats in bed. The Werewolves …’ I shook my head pityingly. ‘I thought they were something that your own intelligence people had dreamed up. But I must say I certainly never thought there was anyone who actually believed that shit. Look, maybe Linden did find out something about a couple of war-criminals, and maybe they wanted him out of the way. But not the Werewolf Underground. Let’s try and find something a little more original, can we?’ I started another cigarette and watched Shields nod and think his way through what I had said.

  ‘What does the Berlin Documents Centre have to stay about Linden’s work?’ I said.

  ‘Officially, he was no more than the Crowcass liaison officer — the Central Registry of War Crimes and Security Suspects of the United States Army. They insist that Linden was simply an administrator and not a field agent. But then, if he were working in intelligence, those boys wouldn’t tell us anyway. They’ve got more secrets than the surface of Mars.’

  He got up from behind the desk and went to the window.

  ‘You know, the other day I had eyes of a report that said as many as two out of every thousand Austrians were spying for the Soviets. Now there are over 1.8 million people in this city, Gunther. Which means that if Uncle Sam has as many spies as Uncle Joe there are over 7,000 spies right on my doorstep. To say nothing of what the British and the French are doing. Or what the Vienna state police get up to — that’s the Commie-run political police, not the ordinary Vienna police, although they’re a bunch of Communists as well of course. And then only a few months ago we had a whole bunch of Hungarian state police infiltrated into Vienna in order to kidnap or murder a few of their own dissident nationals.’

  He turned away from the window and came back to the seat in front of me. Grasping the back of it as if he were planning to pick it up and crash it over my head, he sighed and said: ‘What I’m trying to say, Gunther, is that this is a rotten town. I believe Hitler called it a pearl. Well, he must have meant one that was as yellow and worn as the last tooth in a dead dog. Frankly, I look out of that window and I see about as much that’s precious about this place as I can see blue when I’m pissing in the Danube.’

  Shields straightened up. Then he leaned across and took hold of my jacket lapels, pulling me up to my feet.

  ‘Vienna disappoints me, Gunther, and that makes me feel bad. Don’t you do the same, old fellow. If you turn up something I think I should know about and you don’t come and tell me, I’ll get real sore. I can think of a hundred good reasons to haul your ass out of this town even when I’m in a good mood, like I am now. Am I making myself clear?’

  ‘Like you were made of crystal.’ I brushed his hands off my jacket and straightened it on my shoulders. Halfway to the door I stopped and said: ‘Does this new cooperation with the American Military Police extend as far as removing the tail you put on me?’

  ‘Someone’s following you?’

  ‘He was until I took a poke at him last night.’

  ‘This is a weird city, Gunther. Maybe he’s queer for you.’

  ‘That must be why I presumed he was working for you. The man’s an American named John Belinsky.’

  Shields shook his head, his eyes innocently wide. ‘I never heard of him. Honest to God, I never ordered anyone to tail you. If someone’s following you it has nothing to do with this office. You know what you should do?’

  ‘Surprise me.’

  ‘Go home to Berlin. There’s nothing here for you.’

  ‘Maybe I would, except that I’m not sure that there’s anything there either. That’s one of the reasons I came, remember?’

  16

  It was late by the time I got to the Casanova Club. The place was full of Frenchmen and they were full of whatever it is that Frenchmen drink when they want to get good and stiff. Veronika had been right after all: I did prefer the Casanova when it was quiet. Failing to spot her in the crowd I asked the waiter I had tipped so generously the previous night if she had been in the place.

  ‘She was here only ten, fifteen minutes ago,’ he said. ‘I think she went to the Koralle, sir.’ He lowered his voice, and dipped his head towards me. ‘She doesn’t much care for Frenchmen. And to tell the truth, neither do I. The British, the Americans, even the Russians, one can at least respect armies that took a hand in our defeat. But the French? They are bastards. Believe me, sir, I know. I live in the 15th Bezirk, in the French sector.’ He straightened the tablecloth. ‘And what will the gentleman have to drink?’

  ‘I think I might take a look at the Koralle myself. Where is it, do you know?’

  ‘It’s in the 9th Bezirk sir. Porzellangasse, just off Berggasse, and close to the police prison. Do you know where that is?’

  I laughed. ‘I’m beginning to.’

  ‘Veronika is a nice girl,’ the waiter added. ‘For a chocolady.’

  Rain blew into the Inner City from the east and the Russian sector. It turned to hail in the cold night air and stung the four faces of the International Patrol as they pulled up outside the Casanova. Nodding curtly to the doorman, and without a word, they passed me by and went inside to look for soldierly vice, that compromising manifestation of lust exacerbated by a combination of a foreign country, hungry women and a never-ending supply of cigarettes and chocolate.

  At the now-familiar Schottenring I crossed on to Währinger Strasse and headed north across Rooseveltplatz in the moonlit shadow of the twin towers of the Votivkirche which, despite its enormous, sky-piercing height, had somehow survived all the bombs. I was turning into Berggasse for the second time that day when, from a large ruined building on the opposite side of the road, I heard a cry for help. Telling myself that it was none of my business I stopped for only a brief moment, intending to keep to my route. But then I heard it again: an almost recognizably contralto voice.

  I felt fear crawl across my skin as I walked quickly in the direction of the sound. A high bank of rubble was piled against the building’s curved wall and, having climbed to the top of it, I stared through an empty arched window into a semi-circular room that was of the proportions of a small-sized theatre.

  There were three of them struggling in a little spot of moonlight against a straight wall that faced the windows. Two were Russian soldiers, filthy and ragged and laughing uproariously as they attempted forcibly to strip the clothes from the third figure, which was a woman. I knew it was Veronika even before she lifted her face to the light. She screamed and was slapped hard by the Russian who held her arms and the two flap sides of her dress that his comrade, kneeling on her toes, had torn open.

  ‘Pakazhitye, dushka (show me, darling),’ he guffawed, wrenching Veronika’s underwear down over her knocking knees. He sat back on his haunches to admire her nakedness. ‘Pryekrasnaya (beautiful),’ he said, as if he had been looking at a painting, and then pushed his face into her pubic hair. ‘Vkoosnaya, tozhe (tasty, too),’ he growled.

  The Russian looked round from between her legs as he heard my footfall on the debris that littered the floor, and seeing the length of lead pipe in my hand he stood up beside his friend, who now pushed Veronika aside.

  ‘Get out of here, Veronika,’ I shouted.

  Needing little encouragement, she grabbed her coat and ran towards one of the windows. But the Russian who had licked her seemed to have other ideas, and snatched at her mane of hair. In the same moment I swung the pipe, which hit the side of his lousy-looking head with an audible clang, numbing my hand with the vibration from the blow. The thought was just crossing my mind that I had hit him much too
hard when I felt a sharp kick in the ribs, and then a knee thudded into my groin. The pipe fell on to the brick-strewn floor and there was a taste of blood in my mouth as I slowly followed it. I drew my legs up to my chest and tensed myself as I waited for the man’s great boot to smash into my body again and finish me. Instead I heard a short, mechanical punch of a sound, like the sound of a rivet-gun, and when the boot swung again it was well over my head. With one leg still in the air, the man staggered for a second like a drunken ballet-dancer and then fell dead beside me, his forehead neatly trepanned with a well-aimed bullet. I groaned and for a moment shut my eyes. When I opened them again and raised myself on to my forearm, there was a third man squatting in front of me, and for a chilling moment he pointed the silenced barrel of his Luger at the centre of my face.

  ‘Fuck you, kraut,’ he said, and then, grinning broadly, helped me to my feet. ‘I was going to belt you myself, but it looks like those two Ivans have saved me the trouble.’

  ‘Belinsky,’ I wheezed, holding my ribs. ‘What are you, my guardian angel?’

  ‘Yeah. It’s a wonderful life. You all right, kraut?’

  ‘Maybe my chest would feel better if I quit smoking. Yes, I’m all right. Where the hell did you come from?’

  ‘You didn’t see me? Great. After what you said about tailing someone I read a book about it. I disguised myself as a Nazi so as you wouldn’t notice me.’

  I looked around. ‘Did you see where Veronika went?’

  ‘You mean you know that lady?’ He meandered over to the soldier I had felled with the pipe, and who lay senseless on the floor. ‘I thought you were just the Don Quixote type.’

  ‘I only met her last night.’

  ‘Before you met me, I guess. Belinsky stared down at the soldier for a moment, then levelled the Luger at the back of the man’s head and pulled the trigger. ‘She’s outside,’ he said with no more emotion than if he had shot at a beer-bottle.

  ‘Shit,’ I breathed, appalled at this display of callousness. ‘They could certainly have used you in an Action Group.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said I hope I didn’t make you miss your tram last night. Did you have to kill him?’

  He shrugged and started to unscrew the Luger’s silencer. ‘Two dead is better than one left alive to testify in court. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about.’ He kicked the man’s head with the toe of his shoe. ‘Anyway, these Ivans won’t be missed. They’re deserters.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  Belinsky pointed out two bundles of clothes and equipment that lay near the doorway, and next to them the remains of a fire and a meal.

  ‘It looks like they’ve been hiding here for a couple of days. I guess they got bored and fancied some —’ he searched for the right word in German and then, shaking his head, completed the sentence in English ‘— cunt.’ He holstered the Luger and dropped the silencer into his coat pocket. ‘If they’re found before the rats eat them up, the local boys will just figure that the MVD did it. But my bet is on the rats. Vienna’s got the biggest rats you ever saw. They come straight up out of the sewers. Come to think of it, from the smell of these two, I’d say they’d been down there themselves. The main sewer comes out in the Stadt Park, just by the Soviet Kommendatura and the Russian sector.’ He started towards the window. ‘Come on, kraut, let’s find this girl of yours.’

  Veronika was standing a short way back down Währinger Strasse and looked ready to make a run for it if it had been the two Russians who came out of the building. ‘When I saw your friend go in,’ she explained, ‘I waited to see what would happen.’

  She had buttoned her coat to the neck, and, but for a slight bruise on her cheek and the tears in her eyes, I wouldn’t have said she looked like a girl who had narrowly missed being raped. She glanced nervously back at the building with a question in her eyes.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Belinsky. ‘They won’t bother us no more.’ When Veronika had finished thanking me for saving her, and Belinsky for saving me, he and I walked her home to the halfruin in Rotenturmstrasse where she had her room. There she thanked us some more and invited us both to come up, an offer which we declined, and only after I had promised to visit her in the morning could she be persuaded to close the door and go to bed.

  ‘From the look of you I’d say that you could use a drink,’ Belinsky said. ‘Let me buy you one. The Renaissance Bar is just around the corner. It’s quiet there, and we can talk.’

  Close by St Stephen’s Cathedral, which was now being restored, the Renaissance in Singerstrasse was an imitation Hungarian tavern with gypsy music. The kind of place you see depicted on a jigsaw-puzzle, it was no doubt popular with the tourists, but just a concertina-squeeze too premeditated for my simple, gloomy taste. There was one significant compensation, as Belinsky explained. They served Csereszne, a clear Hungarian spirit made from cherries. And for one who had recently been subjected to a kicking, it tasted even better than Belinsky had promised.

  ‘That’s a nice girl,’ he said, ‘but she ought to be a bit more careful in Vienna. So should you for that matter. If you’re going to go around playing Errol-fucking-Flynn you should have more than just a bit of hair under your arm.’

  ‘I guess you’re right.’ I sipped at my second glass. ‘But it seems strange you telling me that, you being a bull and all. Carrying a gun’s not strictly legal for anyone but Allied personnel.’

  ‘Who said I was a bull?’ He shook his head. ‘I’m CIC. The Counter-Intelligence Corps. The MPs don’t know shit about what we get up to.’

  ‘You’re a spy?’

  ‘No, we’re more like Uncle Sam’s hotel detectives. We don’t run spies, we catch them. Spies and war-criminals.’ He poured some more of the Csereszne.

  ‘So why are you following me?’

  ‘It’s hard to say, really.’

  ‘I’m sure I could find you a German dictionary.’

  Belinsky withdrew a ready-filled pipe from his pocket and while he explained what he meant he suck-started the thing into yielding a steady smoke.

  ‘I’m investigating the murder of Captain Linden,’ he said.

  ‘What a coincidence. So am I.’

  ‘We want to try and find out what it was that brought him to Vienna in the first place. He liked to keep things pretty close to his chest. Worked on his own a lot.’

  ‘Was he in the CIC too?’

  ‘Yes, the 970th, stationed in Germany. I’m 430th. We’re stationed in Austria. Really he should have let us know he was coming on to our patch.’

  ‘And he didn’t send so much as a postcard, eh?’

  ‘Not a word. Probably because there was no earthly reason why he should have come. If he was working on anything that affected this country he should have told us.’ Belinsky let out a balloon of smoke and waved it away from his face. ‘He was what you might call a desk-investigator. An intellectual. The sort of fellow you could let loose on a wall full of files with instructions to find Himmler’s optical prescription. The only problem is that because he was such a bright guy, he kept no case notes.’ Belinsky tapped his forehead with the stem of his pipe. ‘He kept everything up here. Which makes it a nuisance to find out what he was investigating that got him a lead lunch.’

  ‘Your MPs think that the Werewolf Underground might have had something to do with it.’

  ‘So I heard.’ He inspected the smouldering contents of his cherrywood pipe bowl, and added: ‘Frankly, we’re all scraping around in the dark a bit on this one. Anyway, that’s where you walk into my life. We thought maybe you’d turn up something that we couldn’t manage ourselves, you being a native, comparatively speaking. And if you did, I’d be there for the cause of free democracy.’

  ‘Criminal investigation by proxy, eh? It wouldn’t be the first time that it’s happened. I hate to disappoint you, only I’m kind of in the dark myself.’

  ‘Maybe not. After all, you already got the stonemason killed. In my book that rates as a result. I
t means you got someone upset, Kraut.’

  I smiled. ‘You can call me Bernie.’

  ‘The way I figure it, Becker wouldn’t bring you into the game without dealing you a few cards. Pichler’s name was probably one of them.’

  ‘You might be right,’ I conceded. ‘But all the same it’s not a hand I’d care to put my shirt on.’

  ‘Want to let me take a peek?’

  ‘Why should I?’

  ‘I saved your life, kraut,’ he growled.

  ‘Too sentimental. Be a little more practical.’

  ‘All right then, maybe I can help.’

  ‘Better. Much better.’

  ‘What do you need?’

  ‘Pichler was more than likely murdered by a man named Abs, Max Abs. According to the MPs he used to be SS, but small-time. Anyway, he boarded a train to Munich this afternoon and they were going to have someone meet him: I expect that they’ll tell me what happens. But I need to find out more about Abs. For instance, who this fellow was.’ I took out Pichler’s drawing of Martin Albers’ gravestone and spread it on the table in front of Belinsky. ‘If I can find out who Martin Albers was and why Max Abs was willing to pay for his headstone I might be on my way to establishing why Abs thought it necessary to kill Pichler before he spoke to me.’

  ‘Who is this Abs guy? What’s his connection?’

  ‘He used to work for an advertising firm here in Vienna. The same place that König managed. König’s the man that briefed Becker to run files across the Green Frontier. Files that went to Linden.’

  Belinsky nodded.

  ‘All right then,’ I said. ‘Here’s my next card. König had a girlfriend called Lotte who hung around the Casanova. It could be that she sparkled there a bit, nibbled a little chocolate, I don’t know yet. Some of Becker’s friends crashed around there and a few other places and didn’t come home for tea. My idea is to put the girl on to it. I thought I’d have to get to know her a bit first of all. But of course now that she’s seen me on my white horse and wearing my Sunday suit of armour I can hurry that along.’