A German Requiem

by Philip Kerr

  ‘I’m almost out of time with that. He goes to trial at the beginning of next week.’

  Belinsky looked thoughtful. ‘Maybe I could help you to cut a few corners with your new colleagues. If I were to provide you with some high-grade Soviet intelligence it could put you well in with the Org. Of course it would have to be stuff that my people had seen already, but the boys in the Org wouldn’t know that. If I dressed it up with the right kind of provenance, that would make you look like a pretty good spy. How does that sound?’

  ‘Good. While you’re in such an inspired mood you can help me out of another fix. After König had got through instructing me in the use of the dead-letter box, he gave me my first assignment.’

  ‘He did? Good. What was it?’

  ‘They want me to kill Becker’s girlfriend, Traudl.’

  ‘That pretty little nurse?’ He sounded quite outraged. ‘The one at the General Hospital? Did they say why?’

  ‘She came into the Casino Oriental to oversee me losing her boyfriend’s money. I warned her about it, but she wouldn’t listen. I guess it must have made them nervous or something.’

  But this wasn’t the reason that König had given me.

  ‘A bit of wet-work is often used as an early test of loyalty,’ Belinsky explained. ‘Did they say how to do it?’

  ‘I’m to make it look like an accident,’ I said. ‘So naturally I’ll need to get her out of Vienna as quickly as possible. And that’s where you come in. Can you organize a travel warrant and a rail ticket for her?’

  ‘Sure,’ he said, ‘but try and persuade her to leave as much behind as possible. We’ll drive her across the zone and get her on a train at Salzburg. That way we can make it look as if she’s disappeared, maybe dead. Which would help you, right?’

  ‘Let’s just make sure that she gets safely out of Vienna,’ I told him. ‘If anyone has to take risks I’d rather it was me than her.’

  ‘Leave it to me, kraut. It’ll take a few hours to arrange, but the little lady is as good as out of here. I suggest that you go back to your hotel and wait for me to bring her papers. Then we’ll go and pick her up. In which case, perhaps it would be better if you didn’t speak to her before then. She might not want to leave your friend Becker to face the music on his own. It would be better if we could just pick her up and drive out of here. That way if she decides to protest about it there won’t be much that she can do.’

  After Belinsky had left to make the necessary arrangements, I wondered if he would have been so willing to help get Traudl safely out of Vienna if he had seen the photograph which König had given to me. He had told me that Traudl Braunsteiner was an MVD agent. Knowing the girl as I did it seemed utterly absurd. But for anyone else — most of all a member of CIC — looking at the photograph that had been taken in a Vienna restaurant, in which Traudl was evidently enjoying the company of a Russian colonel of MVD, whose name was Poroshin, things might have seemed rather less than clear-cut.

  26

  There was a letter from my wife waiting for me when I returned to the Pension Caspian. Recognizing the tight, almost child-like writing on the cheap manilla envelope, crushed and grimy from a couple of weeks at the mercy of a haphazard postal service, I balanced it on the mantelpiece in my sitting-room and stared at it for a while, recollecting the letter to her that I had positioned similarly on our own mantelpiece at home in Berlin, and regretting its peremptory tone.

  Since then I had sent her only two telegrams: one to say that I had arrived safely in Vienna and giving my address; and the other telling her that the case might take a little longer than I had first anticipated.

  I dare say a graphologist could easily have analysed Kirsten’s hand and made a pretty good job of convincing me that it indicated the letter inside had been written by an adulterous woman who was in the frame of mind to tell her inattentive husband that despite his having left her $2,000 in gold she nevertheless intended divorcing him and using the money to emigrate to the United States with her handsome American schätzi.

  I was still looking at the unopened envelope with some trepidation when the telephone rang. It was Shields.

  ‘And how are we doing today?’ he asked in his over-precise German.

  ‘I am doing very well, thank you,’ I said, mocking his way of speaking, but he didn’t seem to notice. ‘Exactly how may I be of service to you, Herr Shields?’

  ‘Well, with your friend Becker about to go to trial, frankly I wondered what kind of detective you were. I was asking myself whether you had come up with anything pertinent to the case: if your client was going to get his $5,000 worth?’

  He paused, waiting for me to reply, and when I said nothing he continued, rather more impatiently.

  ‘So? What’s the answer? Have you found the vital piece of evidence that will save Becker from the hangman’s noose? Or does he take the drop?’

  ‘I’ve found Becker’s witness, if that’s what you mean, Shields. Only I haven’t got anything that connects him with Linden. Not yet anyway.’

  ‘Well, you had better work fast, Gunther. When trials commence in this city they’re apt to be a mite quick. I’d hate to see you get round to proving a dead man innocent. That looks bad all round, I’m sure you would agree. Bad for you, bad for us, but worst of all for the man on the rope.’

  ‘Suppose I could set this other fellow up for you to arrest him as a material witness.’ It was an almost desperate suggestion, but I thought it worth a try.

  ‘There’s no other way he’d show up in court?’

  ‘No. At least it would give Becker someone to point the finger at.’

  ‘You’re asking me to make a dirty mark on a shiny floor.’ Shields sighed. ‘I hate not to give the other side a chance, you know. So I tell you what I’m going to do. I’ll have a word with my Executive Officer, Major Wimberley, and see what he recommends. But I can’t promise anything. Chances are, the major will tell me to go balls out and get a conviction, and to hell with your man’s witness. There’s a lot of pressure on us to get a quick result here, you know. The Brig doesn’t like it when American officers are murdered in his city. That’s Brigadier-General Alexander O. Gorder, commanding the 796th. One tough son-of-a-bitch. I’ll be in touch.’

  ‘Thanks, Shields. I appreciate it.’

  ‘Don’t thank me yet, mister,’ he said.

  I replaced the receiver and picked up my letter. After I’d fanned myself with it, and used it to clean my fingernails, I tore it open.

  Kirsten was never much of a letter-writer. She was more one for a postcard, only a postcard from Berlin was no longer likely to inspire much in the way of wishful thinking. A view of the ruined Kaiser-Wilhelm church? Or one of the bombed-out Opera House? The execution shed at Plotzensee? I thought that it would be a good long while before there were any postcards sent from Berlin. I unfolded the paper and started to read:

  Dear Bernie,

  I hope this letter reaches you, but things are so difficult here that it may not, in which case I may also try to send you a telegram, if only to tell you that everything is all right. Sokolovsky has demanded that the Soviet military police should control all traffic from Berlin to the West, and this may mean that the mail does not get through.

  The real fear here is that this will all turn into a full-scale siege of the city in an effort to push the Americans, the British and the French out of Berlin — although I don’t suppose anyone would mind if we saw the back of the French. Nobody objects to the Amis and the Tommies bossing us around — at least they fought and beat us. But Franz? They are such hypocrites. The fiction of a victorious French army is almost too much for a German to bear.

  People say that the Amis and the Tommies won’t stand by and see Berlin fall to the Ivans. I’m not so sure about the British. They’ve got their hands full in Palestine right now (all books on Zionist Nationalism have been removed from Berlin bookshops and libraries, which seems only too familiar). But just when you think that the British have more important
things to do, one hears that they’ve been destroying more German shipping. The sea is full of fish for us to eat, and they’re blowing up boats! Do they want to save us from the Russians in order that they can starve us?

  One still hears rumours of cannibalism. There’s a story going around Berlin that the police were called to a house in Kreuzberg where downstairs neighbours had heard the sounds of a terrible commotion, and found blood seeping through their ceiling. They burst in and found an old couple dining off the raw flesh of a pony that they had dragged off the street and killed with rocks. It may or may not be true, but I have the terrible feeling that it is. What is certain is that morale has sunk to new depths. The skies are full of transport planes and troops of all four Powers are increasingly jumpy.

  You remember Frau Fersen’s son, Karl? He came back from a Russian POW camp last week, but in very poor health. Apparently the doctor says that his lungs are finished, poor boy. She was telling me what he’d said about his time in Russia. It sounds awful! Why ever didn’t you talk to me about it, Bernie? Perhaps I would have been more understanding. Perhaps I could have helped. I am conscious that I haven’t been much of a wife to you since the war. And now that you are no longer here, this seems harder to bear. So when you come back I thought that maybe we could use some of the money you left — so much money! did you rob a bank? — to go on holiday somewhere. To leave Berlin for a while, and spend time together.

  Meanwhile, I have used some of the money to repair the ceiling. Yes, I know you had planned on doing it yourself, but I know how you kept putting it off. Anyway, it’s done now, and it looks very nice.

  Come home and see it soon. I miss you.

  Your loving wife,

  Kirsten.

  So much for my imaginary graphologist, I reflected happily, and poured myself the last of Traudl’s vodka. This had the immediate effect of melting my nervousness of telephoning Liebl to report on my almost imperceptible progress. To hell with Belinsky, I said to myself, and resolved to solicit Liebl’s opinion as to whether Becker would or would not be best served by trying to obtain König’s immediate arrest in order that he be forced to give evidence.

  When Liebl finally came on the line he sounded like a man who had just come to the telephone after falling down a flight of stairs. His normally forthright and irascible manner was cowed and his voice was balanced precariously at the very edge of breakdown.

  ‘Herr Gunther,’ he said, and swallowed his way to a more decorous silence. Then I heard him take a deep breath as he took control of himself again. ‘There’s been the most terrible accident. Fräulein Braunsteiner has been killed.’

  ‘Killed?’ I repeated dumbly. ‘How?’

  ‘She was run over by a car,’ Liebl said quietly.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘It happened virtually on the doorstep of the hospital where she worked. Apparently it was instantaneous. There was nothing they could do for her.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘Just a couple of hours ago, when she was coming off duty. Unfortunately the driver did not stop.’

  That part I could have guessed for myself.

  ‘He was scared probably. Possibly he had been drinking. Who knows? Austrians are such bad drivers.’

  ‘Did anyone see the — the accident?’ The words sounded almost angry in my mouth.

  ‘There are no witnesses so far. But someone seems to recollect having seen a black Mercedes driving rather too fast much farther along Alser Strasse.’

  ‘Christ,’ I said weakly, ‘that’s just around the corner. To think I might even have heard the squeal of those car-tyres.’

  ‘Yes, indeed, quite so,’ Liebl murmured. ‘But there was no pain. It was so quick that she could not have suffered. The car struck her in the middle of her back. The doctor I spoke to said that her spine was completely shattered. Probably she was dead before she hit the ground.’

  ‘Where is she now?’

  ‘In the morgue at the General Hospital,’ Liebl sighed. I heard him light a cigarette and take a long drag of smoke. ‘Herr Gunther,’ he said, ‘we shall of course have to inform Herr Becker. Since you know him so much better than I —’

  ‘Oh no,’ I said quickly, ‘I get enough rotten jobs without contracting to do that one as well. Take her insurance policy and her will along if it makes it any easier for you.’

  ‘I can assure you that I’m every bit as upset about this as you are, Herr Gunther. There’s no need to be —’

  ‘Yes, you’re right. I’m sorry. Look, I hate to sound callous, but let’s see if we can’t use this to get an adjournment.’

  ‘I don’t know if this quite qualifies as compassionate,’ Liebl hummed. ‘It’s not as if they were married or anything.’

  ‘She was going to have his baby, for Christ’s sake.’

  There was a brief, shocked silence. Then Liebl spluttered, ‘I had no idea. Yes, you’re right, of course. I’ll see what I can do.’

  ‘Do that.’

  ‘But however am I going to tell Herr Becker?’

  ‘Tell him she was murdered,’ I said. He started to say something, but I was not in a mood to be contradicted. ‘It was no accident, believe me. Tell Becker it was his old comrades who did it. Tell him that precisely. He’ll understand. See if it doesn’t jog his memory a little. Perhaps now he’ll remember something he should have told me earlier. Tell him that if this doesn’t make him give us everything he knows then he deserves a crushed windpipe.’ There was a knock at the door. Belinsky with Traudl’s travel papers. ‘Tell him that,’ I snapped and banged the receiver back onto its cradle. Then I crossed the floor of the room and hauled the door open.

  Belinsky held Traudl’s redundant travel papers in front of him and gave them a jaunty wave as he came into the room, too pleased with himself to notice my mood.

  ‘It took a bit of doing, getting a pink as quickly as this,’ he said, ‘but old Belinsky managed it. Just don’t ask me how.’

  ‘She’s dead,’ I said flatly, and watched his big face fall.

  ‘Shit,’ he said, ‘that’s too bad. What the hell happened?’

  ‘A hit-and-run driver.’ I lit a cigarette and slumped into the armchair. ‘Killed her outright. I’ve just had Becker’s lawyer on the phone telling me. It happened not far from here, a couple of hours ago.’

  Belinsky nodded and sat down on the sofa opposite me. Although I avoided his eye I still felt it trying to look into my soul. He shook his head for a while and then produced his pipe which he set about filling with tobacco. When he had finished he started to light the thing and in between fire-sustaining sucks of air, he said, ‘Forgive me — for asking — but you didn’t — change your mind — did you?’

  ‘About what?’ I growled belligerently.

  He removed the pipe from his mouth and glanced into the bowl before replacing it between his big irregular teeth. ‘I mean, about killing her yourself.’

  Finding the answer on my rapidly colouring face he shook his head quickly. ‘No, of course not. What a stupid question. I’m sorry.’ He shrugged. ‘All the same, I had to ask. You must agree, it’s a bit of a coincidence, isn’t it? The Org asks you to arrange an accident for her, and then almost immediately she gets herself knocked down and killed.’

  ‘Maybe you did it,’ I heard myself say.

  ‘Maybe.’ Belinsky sat forward on the sofa. ‘Let’s see now: I waste all afternoon getting this unfortunate little fräulein a pink and a ticket out of Austria. Then I knock her down and kill her in cold blood on my way here to see you. Is that it?’

  ‘What kind of car do you drive?’

  ‘A Mercedes.’

  ‘What colour?’

  ‘Black.’

  ‘Someone saw a black Mercedes speeding further up the street from the scene of the accident.’

  ‘I dare say. I’ve yet to see the car which drives slowly in Vienna. And in case you hadn’t noticed, just about every other non-military vehicle in this city is a black Mercedes.’

/>   ‘All the same,’ I persisted, ‘maybe we should take a look at the front fenders, and check for dents.’

  He spread his hands innocently, as if he had been about to give the sermon on the mount. ‘Be my guest. Only you’ll find dents all over the car. There seems to be a law against careful driving here.’ He sucked some more of his pipe smoke. ‘Look, Bernie, if you don’t mind me saying so I think we’re in danger of throwing the handle after the axe-head here. It’s a real shame that Traudl’s dead, but there’s no sense in you and me falling out over it. Who knows? Maybe it was an accident. You know it’s true what I said about Viennese drivers. They’re worse than the Soviets, and they take some beating. Jesus, it’s like a chariot-race on these roads. Now I agree that it’s a hell of a coincidence, but it’s not an impossible one, by any stretch of the imagination. You must admit that, surely.’

  I nodded slowly. ‘All right. I admit it’s not impossible.’

  ‘On the other hand maybe the Org briefed more than one agent to kill her so that if you missed, somebody else was bound to get her. It’s not unusual for assassinations to be handled that way. Certainly not in my own experience, anyway.’ He paused, and then pointed his pipe at me. ‘You know what I think? I think that the next time you see König, you should simply keep quiet about it. If he mentions it then you can assume that it probably was an accident and feel confident of taking the credit for it.’ He searched in his jacket pocket and drew out a buff-coloured envelope which he threw into my lap. ‘It makes this a little less necessary, but that can’t be helped.’

  ‘What’s this?’

  ‘From an MVD station near Sopron, close to the Hungarian border. It’s the details of MVD personnel and methods throughout Hungary and Lower Austria.’