by Philip Kerr
‘I decided that she might not be able to wait until the Americans showed up.’
‘You’re asking us to believe that you would have risked a whole operation for one —’ Müller’s nose wrinkled with disgust ‘— for one little chocolady?’ He shook his head. ‘I find that very hard to believe.’ He nodded at the man controlling the wine press. This man pushed a second button and the machine’s hydraulics cranked into gear. ‘Come now, Herr Gunther. If what you say is true, why didn’t the Americans come when you signalled to them?’
‘I don’t know,’ I shouted.
‘Then speculate,’ said Nebe.
‘They never meant to arrest you,’ I said, putting into words my own suspicions. ‘All they wanted to know was that you were alive and working for the Org. They used me, and after they found out what they wanted, they dumped me.’
I tried to wrestle free of the Latvian as the press began its slow descent. Veronika lay unconscious, her chest swelling gently as she continued breathing, oblivious to the descending plate. I shook my head. ‘Look, I honestly don’t know why they didn’t turn up.’
‘So,’ said Müller, ‘let’s get this clear. The only evidence that they have of my continued existence, apart from this rather tenuous piece of ballistic evidence you mentioned, is your own signal.’
‘Yes, I suppose so.’
‘One more question. Do you — do the Amis — know why Captain Linden was killed?’
‘No,’ I said, and then reasoning that negative answers were not what was wanted, added: ‘We figured that he was being supplied with information about war-criminals in the Org. That he came to Vienna to investigate you. At first we thought that König was supplying him with the information.’ I shook my head, trying to recall some of the theories I had come up with to explain Linden’s death. ‘Then we thought that he might somehow have been supplying the Org with information in order to help you to recruit new members. Switch that machine off, for God’s sake.’
Veronika disappeared from sight as the press closed over the edge of the vat. There were only two or three metres of life left to her.
‘We didn’t know why, damn you.’
Müller’s voice was slow and calm, like a surgeon’s. ‘We must be sure, Herr Gunther. Let me repeat the question —’
‘I don’t know —’
‘Why was it necessary for us to kill Linden?’
I shook my head desperately.
‘Just tell me the truth. What do you know? You’re not being fair to this young woman. Tell us what you found out.’
The shrill whine of the machine grew louder. It reminded me of the sound of the elevator in my old offices in Berlin. Where I should have stayed.
‘Herr Gunther,’ Müller’s voice contained a gramme of urgency, ‘for the sake of this poor girl, I beg you.’
‘For God’s sake …’
He glanced over at the thug by the control panel and shook his squarely-cropped head.
‘I can’t tell you anything,’ I shouted.
The press shuddered as it encountered its living obstacle. The mechanical whine briefly rose a couple of octaves as the resistance to the hydraulic force was dealt with, and then returned to its old pitch before finally the press came to the end of its cruel journey. The noise died away at another nod from Müller.
‘Can’t, or won’t, Herr Gunther?’
‘You bastard,’ I said, suddenly weak with disgust, ‘you vicious, cruel bastard.’
‘I don’t think she’ll have felt much,’ he said with studied indifference. ‘She was drugged. Which is more than you will be when we repeat this little exercise in say —’ he glanced at his wristwatch ‘— twelve hours. You have until then to think it over.’ He looked over the edge of the vat. ‘I can’t promise to kill you outright, of course. Not like this girl. I might want to squeeze you two or three times before we spread you on the fields. Just like the grapes.
‘On the other hand, if you tell me what I wish to know, I can promise you a rather less painful death. A pill would be so much less distressing for you, don’t you think?’
I felt my lip curl. Müller winced fastidiously as I started to swear, and then shook his head.
‘Rainis,’ he said, ‘you may hit Herr Gunther just once before returning him to his quarters.’
36
Back in my cell I massaged the floating rib above my liver which Nebe’s Latvian had selected for one stunningly painful punch. At the same time I tried to douse the lights on the memory of what had just happened to Veronika, but without success.
I had met men who had been tortured by the Russians during the war. I remembered them describing how the most awful part of it was the uncertainty — whether you would die, whether you could withstand the pain. That part was certainly true. One of them had described a way of reducing the pain. Breathing deeply and gulping could induce a light-headedness that was partly anaesthetic. The only trouble was that it had also left my friend prone to bouts of chronic hyperventilation which eventually caused him to suffer a fatal heart-attack.
I cursed myself for my selfishness. An innocent girl, already a victim of the Nazis, had been killed because of her association with me. Somewhere inside of me a voice replied that it was she who had asked for my help, and that they might well have tortured and killed her irrespective of my own involvement. But I was in no mood to go easy on myself. Wasn’t there anything else I could have told Müller about Linden’s death that might have satisfied him? And what would I tell him when it came to my own turn? Selfish again. But there was no avoiding my egotism’s snake’s eyes. I didn’t want to die. More importantly, I didn’t want to die on my knees begging for mercy like an Italian war-hero.
They say impending pain offers the mind the purest aid to concentration. Doubtless Müller would have known that. Thinking about the lethal pill he had promised me if I told him whatever it was he wanted to hear helped me to remember something vital. Twisting round my handcuffs, I reached down into my trouser pocket, and tugged out the lining with my little finger, allowing the two pills I had taken from Heim’s surgery to roll into my palm.
I wasn’t even sure why I had taken them at all. Curiosity perhaps. Or maybe it was some subconscious prompt which had told me I might have need of a painless exit myself. For a long time I just stared at the tiny cyanide capsules with a mixture of relief and horrific fascination. After a while I hid one pill in my trouser-turnup, which left the one I had decided I would keep in my mouth — the one that would in all probability kill me. With an appreciation of irony that was much exaggerated by my situation, I reflected that I had Arthur Nebe to thank for diverting these lethal pills from the secret agents for whom they had been created to the top brass in the SS, and from them to me. Perhaps the pill in my hand had been Nebe’s own. It is of such speculations, however improbable, that a man’s philosophy consists during his last remaining hours.
I slipped the pill into my mouth and held it gingerly between my back molars. When the time came, would I even have the guts to chew the thing? My tongue pushed the pill over the edge of my tooth and into the corner of my cheek. I rubbed my fingers over my face and could feel it through the flesh. Would anyone see it? The only light in the cell came from a bare bulb fixed to one of the wooden rafters seemingly with nothing but cobwebs. All the same I couldn’t help thinking that the outline of the pill in my mouth was very much visible.
When a key scraped in the mortice, I realized that I would soon find out.
The Latvian came through the door holding his big Colt in one hand and a small tray in the other.
‘Get away from the door,’ he said thickly.
‘What’s this?’ I said, sliding backwards on my backside. ‘A meal? Perhaps you could tell the management that what I’d like most is a cigarette.’
‘Lucky to get anything at all,’ he growled. Carefully he squatted down and laid the tray on the dusty floor. There was a jug of coffee and a large slice of strudel. ‘The coffee’s fresh. The stru
del is homemade.’
For a brief, stupid second I considered rushing him, before reminding myself that a man in my weakened condition could rush about as quickly as a frozen waterfall. And I would have had no more chance of overpowering the huge Latvian than I had of engaging him in Socratic dialogue. He seemed to sense some flicker of hope on my face however, even though the pill resting on my gum remained undetected. ‘Go ahead,’ he said, ‘try something. I wish you would; I’d like to blow your kneecap off.’ Laughing like a retarded grizzly bear he backed out of my cell and closed the door with a loud bang.
From the size of him, I judged Rainis to be the kind who enjoyed his food. When he wasn’t killing or hurting people it was probably his only real pleasure. Perhaps he was even something of a glutton. It occurred to me that if I were to leave the strudel untouched, Rainis might be unable to resist eating it himself. That if I were to put one of my cyanide capsules inside the filling then later on, perhaps long after I myself was dead, the dumb Latvian would eat my cake and die. It might, I reflected, be a comforting thought as I left the world, that he would be swiftly following me.
I decided to drink the coffee while I thought about it. Was a lethal pill hot-water-soluble? I didn’t know. So I popped the capsule out of my mouth, and thinking that it might as well be that pill which I used to put my pathetic plan into action, I pushed it into the fruit filling with my forefinger.
I could happily have eaten it myself, pill and all, I was so hungry. My watch told me that over fifteen hours had passed since my Viennese breakfast, and the coffee tasted good. I decided that it could only have been Arthur Nebe who had instructed the Latvian to bring me supper.
Another hour passed. There were eight to go before they would come to take me back upstairs. I would wait until there was no hope, no possibility of reprieve before I took my own life. I tried to sleep, but without much success. I was beginning to understand what Becker must have felt like, facing the gallows. At least I was better off than he was: I still had my lethal pill.
It was almost midnight when I heard the key in the lock again. Quickly I transferred my second pill from my trouserturnup to my cheek in case they decided to search my clothes. But it was not Rainis who came to fetch my tray but Arthur Nebe. He held an automatic in his hand.
‘Don’t force me to use this, Bernie,’ he said. ‘You know I won’t hesitate to shoot you if I have to. You’d best get back against that far wall.’
‘What’s this? A social call?’ I dragged myself back from the door. He tossed a packet of cigarettes and some matches after me.
‘You might say that.’
‘I hope you’re not here to talk about old times, Arthur. I’m not feeling very sentimental right now.’ I looked at the cigarettes. Winston. ‘Does Müller know you’re smoking American nails, Arthur? Be careful. You might get into trouble: he’s got some strange ideas about the Amis.’ I lit one and inhaled with slow satisfaction. ‘Still, bless you for this.’
Nebe drew a chair round the door and sat down. ‘Müller has his own ideas of where the Org is going,’ he said. ‘But there’s no doubting his patriotism or his determination. He’s quite ruthless.’
‘I can’t say I’d noticed.’
‘He has an unfortunate tendency to judge other people by his own insensitive standards, however. Which means that he really does believe you are capable of keeping your mouth shut and allowing that girl to die.’ He smiled. ‘I, of course, know you rather better than that. Gunther is a sentimental sort of man, I told him. Even a little bit of a fool. It would be just like him to risk his neck for someone he hardly knew. Even a chocolady. It was the same in Minsk, I said. He was perfectly prepared to go to the front line rather than kill innocent people. People to whom he owed nothing.’
‘That doesn’t make me a hero, Arthur. Just a human being.’
‘It makes you someone Müller is used to dealing with: a man with a principle. Müller knows what men will take and still stay silent. He’s seen lots of people sacrifice their friends and then themselves in order to keep silent. He’s a fanatic. Fanaticism is the only thing he understands. And as a result he thinks you’re a fanatic. He’s convinced there’s a possibility that you might be holding out on him. As I said, I know you rather better than that. If you had known why Linden was killed I think you would have said so.’
‘Well, it’s nice to know somebody believes me. It’ll make being turned into this year’s vintage all the more bearable. Look, Arthur, why are you telling me this? So I can tell you that you’re a better judge of character than Müller?’
‘I was thinking: if you were to tell Müller exactly what he wants to hear, then it might save you a lot of pain. I’d hate to see an old friend suffer. And believe me, he’ll make you suffer.’
‘I don’t doubt it. It’s not this coffee that’s helped to keep me awake, I can tell you. Come on, what is this? The old friend and foe routine? Like I said, I don’t know why Linden was canned.’
‘No, but I could tell you.’
I winced as the cigarette smoke stung my eyes. ‘Let me get this straight,’ I said uncertainly. ‘You’re going to tell me what happened to Linden, in order that I can spill it to Müller, and thereby save myself from a fate worse than death, right?’
‘That’s about the size of it.’
I shrugged, painfully. ‘I don’t see that I’ve got anything to lose.’ I grinned. ‘Of course, you could just let me escape, Arthur. For old times’ sake.’
‘We weren’t going to talk about old times, you said so yourself. Anyway, you know too much. You’ve seen Müller. You’ve seen me. I’m dead, remember?’
‘Nothing personal, Arthur, but I wish you were.’ I took another cigarette and lit myself with the butt of the first. ‘All right, unpack it. Why was Linden killed?’
‘Linden had a German-American background. He even read German at Cornell University. During the war he had some minor intelligence role, and afterwards worked as a denazification officer. He was a clever man, and soon had a nice racket going for himself, selling Persil certificates, clearances for Old Comrades, you know the sort of thing. Then he joined the CIC as a desk-investigator and Crowcass liaison officer at the Berlin Documents Centre. Naturally he kept up his old black-market contacts and by this time he had become known to us in the Org as someone sympathetic to our cause. We contacted him in Berlin and offered him a sum of money to perform a small service, on an occasional basis.
‘You remember I told you about how a number of us faked our deaths? Gave ourselves new identities? Well, that was Albers — the Max Abs you were interested in. His idea. But of course the fundamental weakness of any new identity, especially when it has to be done so quickly, is that one lacks a past. Think of it, Bernie: world war, every able-bodied German between the ages of twelve and sixty-five under arms, and no service record for me, Alfred Nolde. Where was I? What was I doing? We thought we were very clever in killing off our real identities, letting the records fall into the hands of the Amis, but instead it merely created new questions. We had no idea that the Documents Centre would prove to be quite so comprehensive. Its effect has been to make it possible to check every answer on a man’s denazification questionnaire.
‘Many of us were working for the Americans by this stage. Naturally it suits them now to turn a blind eye to the pasts of our Org members. But what about tomorrow? Politicians have a habit of changing policy. Right now we’re friends in the fight against Communism. But will the same hold true in five or ten years’ time?
‘So Albers came up with a new scheme. He created old documentation for our more senior personnel in their new identities, himself included. We were all of us given smaller, less culpable roles in the SS and Abwehr than were possessed by our real selves. As Alfred Nolde I was a sergeant in the SS Personnel Section. My file contains all my personal details: even dental records. I led a quiet, fairly blameless kind of war. It’s true I was a Nazi, but never a war-criminal. That was somebody else. The fact that I h
appen to resemble someone called Arthur Nebe is neither here nor there.
‘Security at the Centre is tight, however. It’s impossible to take files out. But it is comparatively easy to take files in. Nobody is searched when they go into the Centre, only when they leave. This was Linden’s job. Once a month Becker would deliver new files, forged by Albers, to Berlin. And Linden would file them in the archive. Naturally this was before we found out about Becker’s Russian friends.’
‘Why were the forgeries done here and not in Berlin?’ I asked. ‘That way you could have cut out the need for a courier.’
‘Because Albers refused to go anywhere near Berlin. He liked it here in Vienna, not least because Austria is the first step on the rat-line. It’s easy to get across the border into Italy, and then the Middle East, South America. There were lots of us who came south. Like birds in winter, eh?’
‘So what went wrong?’
‘Linden got greedy, that’s what went wrong. He knew the material he was getting was forged, but he couldn’t understand what it amounted to. At first I think it was mere curiosity. He started photographing the stuff we were giving him. And then he enlisted the help of a couple of Jewish lawyers — Nazihunters — to try and establish the nature of the new files, who these men were.’
‘The Drexlers.’
‘They were working with the Joint Army Group on war crimes. Probably the Drexlers had no idea that Linden’s motives for seeking their help were purely personal and for profit. And why should they have done? His credentials were unquestionable. Anyway, I think they noted something about all these new SS personnel and Party records: that we kept the same initials as our old identities; it’s an old trick with building a new legend. Makes you feel more comfortable with your new name. Something as instinctive as initialling a contract becomes safe. I think Drexler must have compared these new names with the names of comrades who were missing or presumed dead and suggested that Linden might like to compare the details of a file held on Alfred Nolde with the file on Arthur Nebe, Heinrich Müller with Heinrich Moltke, Max Abs with Martin Albers etc.’
