by Philip Kerr
‘Oh, don’t worry about him, he’s taken care of. You won’t have any more problems there.’
‘I’m glad to hear it.’
I gambled my last chip, lost it and then stood up from the table saying that maybe I was going to be grateful for König’s offer of a job after all. Smiling ruefully, I walked back to the bar where I ordered a drink and for a while watched a topless girl dancing in a parody of a Latin American step on the floor to the tinny, jerking sound of the Oriental’s jazz band.
I didn’t see Lotte leave the table to make a telephone call but after a while König came down the stairs into the club. He was accompanied by a small terrier, which stayed close to his heels, and a taller, more distinguished-looking man who was wearing a Schiller jacket and a club-tie. This second man disappeared through a bead curtain at the back of the club while König made a pantomime of catching my eye.
He walked over to the bar, nodding to Lotte and producing a fresh cigar from the top pocket of his green tweed suit as he came.
‘Herr Gunther,’ he said, smiling, ‘how nice to meet you again.’
‘Hello, König,’ I said. ‘How are your teeth?’
‘My teeth?’ His smile vanished as if I had asked him how his chancre was.
‘Don’t you remember?’ I explained. ‘You were telling me about your plates.’
His face relaxed. ‘So I was. They’re much better, thank you.’ Tipping in a smile again, he added, ‘I hear you’ve had some bad luck at the tables.’
‘Not according to Fräulein Hartmann. She told me that luck has nothing at all to do with the way I play cards.’
König finished lighting his four-schilling corona and chuckled. ‘Then you must allow me to buy you a drink.’ He waved the barman over, ordered a scotch for himself and whatever I was drinking. ‘Did you lose much?’
‘More than I could afford,’ I said unhappily. ‘About 4,000 schillings.’ I drained my glass and pushed it across the bartop for a refill. ‘Stupid, really. I shouldn’t play at all. I have no real aptitude for cards. So I’m cleaned out now.’ I toasted König silently and swallowed some more vodka. ‘Thank God I had the good sense to pay my hotel bill well in advance. Apart from that, there’s very little to feel happy about.’
‘Then you must allow me to show you something,’ he said, and puffed at his cigar vigorously. He blew a large smoke ring into the air above his terrier’s head and said, ‘Time for a smoke, Lingo,’ whereupon, and much to its owner’s amusement, the brute leaped up and down, sniffing excitedly at the tobacco-enriched air like the most craven nicotine addict.
‘That’s a neat trick,’ I smiled.
‘Oh, it’s no trick,’ said König. ‘Lingo loves a good cigar almost as much as I do.’ He bent down and patted the dog’s head. ‘Don’t you, boy?’ The dog barked by way of reply.
‘Well, whatever you call it, it’s money, not laughs I need right now. At least until I can get back to Berlin. You know it’s fortunate you happened to come along. I was sitting here wondering how I might manage to broach the subject of that job with you again.’
‘My dear fellow, all in good time. There’s someone I want you to meet first. He is the Baron von Bolschwing and he runs a branch of the Austrian League for the United Nations here in Vienna. It’s a publishing house called Österreichischer Verlag. He’s an old comrade too, and I know he would be interested to meet a man like yourself.’
I knew König was referring to the SS.
‘He wouldn’t be associated with this research company of yours, would he?’
‘Associated? Yes, associated,’ he allowed. ‘Accurate information is essential to a man like the Baron.’
I smiled and shook my head wryly. ‘What a town this is for saying “going-away party” when what you really mean is “a requiem mass”. Your “research” sounds rather like my “imports and exports”, Herr König: a fancy ribbon round a rather plain cake.’
‘I can’t believe that a man who served with the Abwehr could be much of a stranger to these necessary euphemisms, Herr Gunther. However, if you wish me to do so, I will, as the saying goes, uncover my batteries for you. But let us first move away from the bar.’ He led me to a quiet table and we sat down.
‘The organization of which I am a member is fundamentally an association of German officers, the primary aim and purpose of which is the collection of research — excuse me, intelligence — as to the threat that the Red Army poses to a free Europe. Although military ranks are seldom used, nevertheless we exist under military discipline and we remain officers and gentlemen. The fight against Communism is a desperate one, and there are times when we must do things we may find unpleasant. But for many old comrades struggling to adjust to civilian life, the satisfaction of continuing to serve in the creation of a new free Germany outweighs such considerations. And there are of course generous rewards.’
It sounded as if König had said these words or their equivalent on a number of other occasions. I was beginning to think that there were more old comrades whose struggle to adjust to civilian life was remedied by the simple expedient of continuing under a form of military discipline than I could guess at. He spoke a lot more, most of which went in one ear and out of the other, and after a while he drained the remainder of his drink and said that if I were interested in his proposition then I should meet the Baron. When I told him that I was very much interested, he nodded satisfiedly and steered me towards the bead curtain. We came along a corridor and then went up two flights of stairs.
‘These are the premises of the hat shop next door,’ explained König. ‘The owner is a member of our Org, and allows us to use them for recruiting.’
He stopped outside a door and knocked gently. Hearing a shout, he ushered me into a room which was lit only by a lamppost outside. But it was enough to make out the face of the man seated at a desk by the window. TAll, thin, clean-shaven, dark-haired and balding, I judged him to be about forty.
‘Sit down, Herr Gunther,’ he said and pointed at a chair on the other side of the desk.
I removed the stack of hat-boxes that lay on it while König went over to the window behind the Baron and sat on the deep sill.
‘Herr König believes you might make a suitable representative for our company,’ said the Baron.
‘You mean an agent, don’t you?’ I said and lit a cigarette.
‘If you like,’ I saw him smile. ‘But before that can happen it’s up to me to learn something of your personality and circumstances. To question you in order that we might determine how best to use you.’
‘Like a Fragebogen? Yes, I understand.’
‘Let’s start with your joining the SS,’ said the Baron.
I told him all about my service with Kripo and the RSHA, and how I had automatically become an officer in the SS. I explained that I had gone to Minsk as a member of Arthur Nebe’s Action Group, but, having no stomach for the murder of women and children, I had asked for a transfer to the front and how instead I had been sent to the Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau. The Baron questioned me closely but politely, and he seemed the perfect Austrian gentleman. Except that there was also about him an air of false modesty, a surreptitious aspect to his gestures and a way of speaking that seemed to indicate something of which any true gentleman might have felt less than proud.
‘Tell me about your service with the War Crimes Bureau.’
‘This was between January 1942 and February 1944,’ I explained. ‘I had the rank of Oberleutnant conducting investigations into both Russian and German atrocities.’
‘And where was this, exactly?’
‘I was based in Berlin, in Blumeshof, across from the War Ministry. From time to time I was required to work in the field. Specifically in the Crimea and the Ukraine. Later on, in August 1943, the OKW moved its offices to Torgau because of the bombing.’
The Baron smiled a supercilious smile and shook his head. ‘Forgive me,’ he said, ‘it’s just that I had no idea that such an institution had existed
within the Wehrmacht.’
‘It was no different to what happened within the Prussian Army during the Great War,’ I told him. ‘There have to be some accepted humanitarian values, even in wartime.’
‘I suppose there do,’ sighed the Baron, but he did not sound convinced of this. ‘All right. Then what happened?’
‘With the escalation of the war it became necessary to send all the able-bodied men to the Russian front. I joined General Schorner’s northern army in White Russia in February 1944, promoted Hauptmann. I was an Intelligence officer.’
‘In the Abwehr?’
‘Yes. I spoke a fair bit of Russian by then. Some Polish too. The work was mostly interpreting.’
‘And you were finally captured where?’
‘Königsberg, in East Prussia. April 1945. I was sent to the copper mines in the Urals.’
‘Where exactly in the Urals, if you don’t mind?’
‘Outside Sverdlovsk. That’s where I perfected my Russian.’
‘Were you questioned by the NKVD?’
‘Of course. Many times. They were very interested in anyone who had been an Intelligence officer.’
‘And what did you tell them?’
‘Frankly, I told them everything I knew. The war was over by that stage and so it didn’t seem to matter much. Naturally I left out my previous service with the SS, and my work with the OKW. The SS were taken to a separate camp where they were either shot or persuaded to work for the Soviets in the Free Germany Committee. That seems to be how most of the German People’s Police were recruited. And I dare say the Staatspolizei here in Vienna.’
‘Quite so.’ His tone was testy. ‘Do carry on, Herr Gunther.’
‘One day a group of us were told that we were to be transferred to Frankfurt an der Oder. This would be in December 1946. They said they were sending us to a rest camp there. As you can imagine we thought that was pretty funny. Well, on the transport train I overheard a couple of the guards say that we were bound for a uranium mine in Saxony. I don’t suppose either of them realized I could speak Russian.’
‘Can you remember the name of this place?’
‘Johannesgeorgenstadt, in the Erzebirge, on the Czech border.’
‘Thank you,’ the Baron said crisply, ‘I know where it is.’
‘I jumped the train as soon as I saw a chance, not long after we crossed the German-Polish border, and then I made my way back to Berlin.’
‘Were you at one of the camps for returning POWs?’
‘Yes. Staaken. I wasn’t there for very long, thank God. The nurses there didn’t think much of us plennys. All they were interested in was American soldiers. Fortunately the Social Welfare Office of the Municipal Council found my wife at my old address almost immediately.’
‘You’ve been very lucky, Herr Gunther,’ said the Baron. ‘In several respects. Wouldn’t you say so, Helmut?’
‘As I told you Baron, Herr Gunther is a most resourceful man,’ said König, stroking his dog absently.
‘Indeed he is. But tell me, Herr Gunther, did no one debrief you about your experiences in the Soviet Union?’
‘Like who, for instance?’
It was König who answered. ‘Members of our Organization have interrogated a great many returning plennys,’ he said. ‘Our people present themselves as social workers, historical researchers, that kind of thing.’
I shook my head. ‘Perhaps if I had been officially released, instead of escaping …’
‘Yes,’ said the Baron. ‘That must be the reason. In which case you must count yourself as doubly fortunate, Herr Gunther. Because if you had been officially released we should now almost certainly have been obliged to take the precaution of having you shot, in order to protect the security of our group. You see, what you said about the Germans who were persuaded to work for the Free Germany Committee was absolutely right. It is these traitors who were usually released first of all. Sent to a uranium mine in Erzebirge as you were, eight weeks is as long as you could have been expected to have lived. Being shot by the Russians would have been easier. So you see we can now be confident of you, knowing that the Russians were happy for you to die.’
The Baron stood up now, the interrogation evidently over. I saw that he was taller than I had supposed. König slid off his window sill and stood beside him.
I pushed myself off my chair and silently shook the Baron’s outstretched hand, and then König’s. Then König smiled and handed me one of his cigars. ‘My friend,’ he said, ‘welcome to the Org.’
25
During the next couple of days König met me at the hat shop next to the Oriental on several occasions in order to school me in the many elaborate and secret working methods of the Org. But first I had to sign a solemn declaration agreeing, on my honour as a German officer, not to disclose anything of the Org’s covert activities. The declaration also stipulated that any breach of secrecy would be severely punished, and König said that I would be well-advised to conceal my new employment not only from any friends and relatives but ‘even’ — and these were his precise words — ‘even from our American colleagues’. This, and one or two other remarks he made, led me to believe that the Org was in fact fully funded by American Intelligence. So when my training — considerably shortened in view of my experience with the Abwehr — was complete I irately demanded of Belinsky that we should talk as quickly as possible.
‘What’s eating you, kraut?’ he said when we met at a table I had reserved for us in a quiet corner at the Café Schwarzenberg.
‘If I’m not in my plate, it’s only because you’ve been showing me the wrong map.’
‘Oh? And how’s that?’ He set to work with one of his clove-scented toothpicks.
‘You know damned well. König’s part of a German intelligence organization set up by your own people, Belinsky. I know because they’ve just finished recruiting me. So either you put me in the picture or I go to the Stiftskaserne and explain how I now believe that Linden was murdered by an American-sponsored organization of German spies.’
Belinsky looked around for a moment and then leaned purposefully across the table, his big arms framing it as if he was planning to pick it up and drop it on my head.
‘I don’t think that would be a very good idea,’ he said quietly.
‘No? Perhaps you think you can stop me. Like the way you stopped that Russian soldier. I might just mention that as well.’
‘Perhaps I will kill you, kraut,’ he said. ‘It shouldn’t be too difficult. I have a gun with a silencer. I could probably shoot you in here and nobody would notice. That’s one of the nice things about the Viennese. With someone’s brains spattered in their coffee cups, they’d still try and mind their own fucking business.’ He chuckled at the idea and then shook his head, talking over me when I tried to reply.
‘But what are we talking about?’ he said. ‘There’s no need for us to fall out. No need at all. You’re right. Maybe I should have explained before now, but if you have been recruited by the Org then you’ve undoubtedly been obliged to sign a secrecy declaration. Am I right?’
I nodded.
‘Maybe you don’t take it very seriously, but at least you can understand when I tell you that my government required me to sign a similar declaration, and that I take it very seriously indeed. It’s only now that I can take you into my complete confidence, which is ironic: I’m investigating the very same organization which your membership of now enables me to treat you as someone who no longer poses a security risk. How’s that for a bit of cock-eyed logic?’
‘All right,’ I said. ‘You’ve given me your excuse. Now how about telling me the whole story.’
‘I mentioned Crowcass before now, right?’
‘The War Crimes Commission? Yes.’
‘Well, how shall I put it? The pursuit of Nazis and the employment of German intelligence personnel are not exactly separate considerations. For a long time the United States has been recruiting former members of the Abwehr to spy on
the Soviets. An independent organization was set up at Pullach, headed by a senior German officer, to gather intelligence on behalf of CIC.’
‘The South German Industrial Utilization Company?’
‘The same. When the Org was set up they had explicit instructions about exactly who they might recruit. This is supposed to be a clean operation, you understand. But for some time now we’ve had the suspicion that the Org is also recruiting SS, SD and Gestapo personnel in violation of its original mandate. We wanted intelligence people, for God’s sake, not war-criminals. My job is to find out the level of penetration that these outlawed classes of personnel have achieved within the Org. You with me?’
I nodded. ‘But where did Captain Linden fit into this?’
‘As I explained before, Linden worked in records. It’s possible that his position at the US Documents Centre enabled him to act as a consultant to members of the Org with regard to recruitment. Checking out people to see if their stories matched what could be discovered from their service records, that kind of thing. I am sure I don’t have to tell you that the Org is keen to avoid any possible penetration by Germans who may have already been recruited by the Soviets in their prison camps.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I’ve already had that explained to me in no uncertain terms.’
‘Maybe Linden even advised them on who might have been worth recruiting. But that’s the bit we’re not sure about. That and what this stuff your friend Becker was playing courier with.’
‘Maybe he lent them some files when they were interrogating potential recruits who might have been under some suspicion,’ I suggested.
‘No, that simply couldn’t have happened. Security at the Centre is tighter than a clam’s ass. You see, after the war the army was scared your people might try to take the contents of the centre back. That or destroy them. You just don’t walk out of that place with an armful of files. All documentary examinations are on-site and must be accounted for.’
‘Then perhaps Linden altered some of the files.’
Belinsky shook his head. ‘No, we’ve already thought of that and checked back from the original log to every single one of the files which Linden had sight of. There’s no sign of anything having been removed or destroyed. It seems our best chance of finding out what the hell he was up to depends on your membership of the Org, kraut. Not to mention your best chance of finding something that will put your friend Becker in the clear.’
