The Other Side of Silence

by Philip Kerr

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  There were two bottles of twenty-year-old Schinkenhäger I’d been saving for a special occasion, and as soon as I got home I knew instinctively that this was it. The special occasion. Deep pain creates its own singularity. I opened one of the bottles and stared at the first brimming glass, feeling nothing less than a categorical imperative to get drunk: an absolute, unconditional requirement that had to be obeyed and was justified as an end in itself. There’s a central philosophical concept for you. I drank one whole bottle before I went to sleep, and the other almost as soon as I woke up again. And somewhere in the middle I called the hotel to say I was sick. Not that I really was sick. Nobody calls that being sick except the poor nurse who has to pump the alcohol out of your stomach and even then her pity for your illness is alloyed, rightly, with a strong sense of disgust. Well, I was almost as sick as that. I hadn’t drunk like that—with real malice aforethought—since the day I learned the Wilhelm Gustloff was lying at the bottom of the cold Baltic Sea.

  A while after I made the call to the Grand Hôtel, I awoke with the vague idea that the doorbell rang. A stupid, drunkenly deluded, childishly eager part of me thought it might be Anne French come to apologize and say she’d made a dreadful mistake, and thinking that I might just find it within myself to forgive her, I persuaded myself to pick myself off the floor. Of course I would forgive her. I was drunk.

  With two bottles of good schnapps inside me it was all I could do to crawl across the tiny bedroom in my lobster pot and stumble downstairs to open the door. I have no idea what time it was but it must have been the late afternoon or early evening of the next day. I opened the door to brilliant sunshine, which dazzled me painfully, or at least that’s what I thought. Instead it was a fist on the end of a very strong, red-faced Englishman’s arm and it hit me more quickly than the schnapps, squarely under the chin, dumping me on my backside like a puppet that was suddenly and stupidly without any strings. I sat on the stairs, legs splayed in front of me, with my ears singing a very loud tune, and thought hard about puking. I was still thinking about it when the same Englishman picked me up, bounced me off the wall a couple of times, and then punched me again.

  “If there’s one thing I’ve always liked,” he said—I think it was probably the last thing I remembered hearing for a while—“it’s hitting fucking Germans in the face.” He laughed. “And to think I get paid for this. Fuck me, I’d do it for free.”

  For a moment or two I felt light-headed. I was back up on the roof of the Villa Mauresque, eavesdropping on the two spymasters. The next I was falling backward down the chimney with all sense of self-awareness left behind alongside the gene-deep certainty that life was actually worth the struggle. It wasn’t. That much was obvious. The light at the end of the tunnel that was the sun framed by the chimney grew smaller by the second until it was no bigger than a dim and distant star in some remote galaxy. I’d gone missing and it was likely that I was going to be missing for quite a while, perhaps permanently. Back in Berlin, even before the Nazis, looking for missing persons used to cost the city millions of marks a year. Did any of it ever matter? Perhaps it was even possible that I would never be found, as those before me had not been found. When the darkness of the chimney closed around me I had the strong sense that life was over as surely as if I’d sat in my car once again and tried to asphyxiate myself with carbon monoxide. I took a deep breath of my present oblivion and hoped my useless, tired mind was no longer required. I didn’t want to know anything anymore. What difference did it make anyway? There was no need to hold on to life so tightly. So I let go. I let go. The Englishman had done me a favor. I welcomed the darkness as a child welcomes Christmas morning.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  I stared at the yellow lightbulb on the dark green ceiling for a long time. It never went out. The yellow wasn’t just yellow but orange and sometimes green and perhaps more than just a simple lightbulb. It looked like the evil eyeball of some almost invisible Cyclops that was trying to stare into my soul in order to decide if I was worth devouring. Once or twice I tried to stand, thinking to smash it, but the ceiling must have been at least twelve feet from the bare wooden floor on which I lay. The room was as big as a ballroom, but stiflingly hot and oppressive with the smell of vomit—my own—and the sound of flies now enjoying this unexpected repast. I was covered in sweat and my salt-stained shirt stuck to my back like a butter wrapper. If I’d been wearing any shoes I would have thrown one at the bulb because I couldn’t see a light switch anywhere. Louvered shutters as big as the garden gates at the Villa Mauresque were closed, and even without opening them I knew the windows were barred and that I was a prisoner. Not that I had energy for doing anything as strenuous as throwing a shoe or opening a window. Besides, my hands were tied painfully behind my back. My jaw ached as if I’d tried to chew my way out through the skirting boards below the blood-red walls. Even the hair on my scalp seemed painful. Most of all I was desperately thirsty. I shouted for water but no one came.

  There was an old French clock on the dusty marble mantelpiece and, as time passed, I realized it was permanently stuck at ten past twelve, like my life, it seemed. I guessed I was in some disused or vacant villa close to Villefranche-sur-Mer. I could hear the sound of the ocean, which helped to calm me, and I imagined all of the places I would go if I’d been given a ship and my freedom. Scotland? Norway? Kaliningrad? The Cape of Good Hope? Good hope was something in very short supply, and so that felt like a good place to go. Beyond the louvered shutters it seemed to be dark, but with the pain behind my eyes I couldn’t be entirely sure. I’d stared at the bulb for so long most of my vision was just a negative afterimage. Something negative, anyway. Like everything else. At ten past twelve I heard a key in the lock on the doors and the two Englishmen from Portsmouth walked heavily in and hauled me to my feet.

  “Pissed himself,” said one, his nose wrinkling with disgust.

  “Saves us taking him to the bathroom. What are you complaining about?”

  “The boss won’t like it.”

  They dragged me to another room, almost as large, and sat me on a dining chair in front of a long table. There was a glass chandelier immediately above my head but the shutters were closed and most of the light came from some standard lamps in the corners and an Anglepoise on the desk.

  The pale-faced man behind it was wearing a seersucker suit and thick glasses and seemed more interested in the contents of his cherrywood pipe than in me. His hair was thin and so were his nose and mouth and, to my way of thinking, his blood, too. At the far end of the room the door was open, and while I could not see who was in there I was certain from the clouds of tobacco smoke that the room was occupied by more than one person. Perhaps the two spymasters from London.

  “Did you bring some clothes from his flat?” the pale-faced man asked the other two.

  “Yes, sir.”

  He nodded. I’d never seen him before, but he was English and very still and deliberate, like a monk from a nearly silent order.

  “He smells. Wash him, give him something to eat and drink, and then bring him back here wearing a change of clothes.”

  Fifteen minutes later I was back in front of the monk, who stared at me with polite indifference, as if he’d been watching a dull game of cricket. When I sat down the monk stood up slowly and from a wallet file removed some papers and then placed them on the table in front of him as if they were evidence. I couldn’t yet see these clearly from where I was sitting but I had a strong idea that they were to form the basis of some serious accusation against me that might easily cost me my liberty or my life. In the monk’s hand was my passport. The one Erich Mielke had given me.

  “You are Walter Wolf,” he said. “And you work at the Grand Hôtel in Cap Ferrat as the hotel concierge.”

  “Yes. And I must protest. Why have you brought me here?”

  “But that’s not your real name, is it? Your real name is Bernhard
Gunther, is it not?”

  “No.”

  “Your real name is Bernhard Gunther and this passport was provided by the state security service of the German Democratic Republic, also known as the Stasi.” His tone was almost apologetic, as if he regretted bringing me inside on such a warm day.

  “No.”

  “You are in fact an agent of the Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung, the foreign intelligence service section of the East German Ministry for State Security. Is that not so? You work for the Communist HVA, don’t you, Herr Gunther?”

  “No.”

  “Before this, you were an officer in the Nazi secret security service. The SD. But in nineteen forty-six you were a prisoner of war at the MfS prison camp at Johanngeorgenstadt in East Germany, where you were first recruited to the Stasi.”

  “No.”

  “It was the condition of your release from that prison camp that you should work for the Stasi, was it not?”

  “No. I was a POW, yes. And they—I don’t know what their names were—they did ask me to work for the Stasi. I refused. But later on, I escaped.”

  “Escaped? That was very intrepid of you,” said the monk.

  He was tall, blond, well spoken, with a deep, mellifluous voice, and now it seemed the look of a very old schoolboy, or perhaps a young schoolmaster, and certainly not a spy—there was nothing athletic or physical about him. A killer he was not; this man had been chosen for his intelligence instead of his ruthlessness. Unlike the two thugs from Portsmouth, he was more used to punching holes in paper than in the faces of men. A lot of the time he remained silent, puffing his pipe, as if he was offering me the opportunity to provide a better answer than the inadequate one I’d given. I’d have preferred someone who was a violent bully, who shouted at me and slapped my face, the kind of interrogator who tries to beat and sweat the truth out of you. You knew where you were with an interrogator like that. But this one would try to be my friend and make me dependent on him, psychologically, until he became Jesus—my only source of salvation and redemption.

  “There weren’t many German POWs who were imprisoned in Russia and East Germany who escaped from labor camps, were there? To my knowledge, hardly any at all.”

  “I don’t know. Not many, perhaps. I saw an opportunity and took it.”

  “You were lucky, Bernhard.”

  “I’ve always been lucky.”

  “Oh? How’s that?”

  “I’m here, talking to you, aren’t I?”

  He smiled and looked at his fingernails before relighting his pipe.

  “One might say that the kind of luck you enjoyed was very much the kind described by Seneca,” he said. “A case of opportunity meeting preparation. Your opportunity. But it was almost certainly someone else’s preparation. Erich Mielke’s preparation.”

  “Seneca? Who’s he?”

  “A Roman Stoic and an adviser to the Emperor Nero.”

  “That’s a relief. I thought he might be another East German spy I’m supposed to know.”

  “It’s interesting. You ask who Seneca is. But you don’t ask who Erich Mielke is.”

  “I assume he’s not a Roman Stoic.”

  “No indeed. Comrade General Erich Mielke is the deputy head of the Stasi.”

  “I’ve not heard of him. But then I haven’t lived in Germany for several years.”

  “He’s a Berliner, just like you, Herr Gunther.”

  “I don’t care if he’s from Fucking, in Austria. You’ve made a mistake. I’m not whoever it is you think I am. I was helping you people, remember? You’ve a strange way of showing your gratitude. And I really don’t have time for this. I’d like to leave. Now.”

  “We’ve got plenty of time. I can assure you.”

  “In which case, might I have some water and a cigarette?”

  The monk nodded at one of the thugs, who stepped smartly forward, as if he’d been on the parade ground, put a cigarette in my mouth, lit it with a cheap lighter, and then fetched me a glass of water.

  “Thanks,” I said. “Now, where were we? Oh yes. I was telling you I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about. You’ve got the wrong man. That much is obvious, anyway.”

  “Then let me refresh your memory, Herr Gunther. We checked your name with our friends in the CIA. And I think that you are the same Bernhard Gunther who was part of an elaborate Stasi operation to snatch three of their agents from the French zone of Berlin in nineteen fifty-four. Those three American agents believed they had employed you to help them kidnap Erich Mielke in return for an American passport and the sum of twenty-five thousand dollars. Instead, you betrayed them to Mielke. Two of them are still in an East German prison. Did you know that?”

  I shook my head. “You’re mistaken. My name is Walter Wolf. I’m the concierge at the Grand Hôtel. And I haven’t the first idea what you’re talking about. I’ve never met anyone who was working for the CIA. And once again I don’t know anyone by the name of Mielke.”

  “It’s quite an elaborate operation you’ve mounted here in France, isn’t it? A lot of time and effort and money have gone into this little scheme.”

  “I haven’t seen any of it. The money, I mean. You’ve seen the flat where I live. You can check my bank accounts. I have very little money. I spend what I earn at the Grand Hôtel. I’m certainly not on the East German payroll.”

  “We have someone who says different. A witness.”

  “Then that person is mistaken or a liar.”

  “Since you’ve mentioned bank accounts,” said the monk, handing me one of the papers on his desk. “This is a copy of a letter from you to the manager of a bank in Monaco, the Crédit Foncier, dated February nineteen fifty-six. It states that Harold Hebel is to be a joint signatory on this bank account with you. It seems that there is more than twenty thousand francs in this account, Herr Gunther. The money appears to have been paid into this account by the Schönefeld Export Company of Bonn, in West Germany. We believe this company to be one owned by the Stasi.”

  “I’ve never even heard of this bank until now.”

  “Was this money meant to cover your expenses?”

  “Look, I didn’t write the bank any letter. That isn’t my signature. And I’ve certainly never heard of the Schönefeld Export Company of Bonn.”

  “But you do know Harold Hebel, don’t you?”

  “Of course I do. If you’ve spoken with Somerset Maugham you’ll already know that. He’ll confirm what I already told him: that Harold Hebel is a professional blackmailer from before the war. He’s the man who’s been blackmailing Maugham. And now, it seems, the British secret service. And I’ve been helping Mr. Maugham at his request. Ask him.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not possible. He’s had a mild stroke.”

  “Look, I didn’t ask to be involved in this. Until he asked for my help I was minding my own business at the Grand Hôtel. And now if you don’t mind I’d like to go back to the hotel and resume my duties.”

  “Harold Hebel. Real name, Harold Heinz Hennig, formerly of the Gestapo and now working for the Communist HVA, too.”

  “That certainly wouldn’t surprise me. I guess it was them who supplied him with that tape. And before them, the KGB. Is Hennig your witness?” I shook my head. “The man’s a liar. I wouldn’t trust a word he says.”

  “But you and he were working together here on the Riviera. From the very beginning.”

  I sucked my cigarette and blew some smoke at the chandelier in the hope I might deter a large spider that was now abseiling down a length of gossamer toward my head.

  “No. I hate him. I’d kill him before ever working with him. He and I have a long history of enmity.”

  “Whose operation was this? Mielke’s? Or your namesake’s?”

  “My namesake’s? I don’t know who you mean.”

  “Major General Markus Wolf.”r />
  “I’ve never heard of him, either. All these generals I’m supposed to know. The next thing you’ll be telling me is that I’m a general, too.”

  “Our information is that Markus Wolf is head of the East German HVA and reports directly to Mielke.”

  I glanced up at the spider again, which had been only momentarily deterred.

  “How well do you know Comrade General Mielke?”

  “I already told you. I’ve never heard of him, either.”

  “Come now, Herr Gunther. Elisabeth Dehler—the woman who was living as your wife here in the South of France until quite recently—she knows Erich Mielke very well, doesn’t she? From way back. And what’s more, she also works for the HVA.”

  “Elisabeth?” I smiled. “I doubt that very much.”

  “Most assuredly she does work for them. And she’s now safely back in Berlin.”

  “That much I do know.” I shrugged. There was nothing I could have said about that other than the fact that it was true. Elisabeth did know Erich Mielke. They were old friends from before the war, when Mielke was just a young KPD thug with a gun, but I hardly wanted to admit as much to my English interrogator. Certainly not until I knew of what I was being accused. “Look, she left me, a while ago. Couldn’t stand the heat. Couldn’t come to grips with the language. She missed Germany more than she figured she’d miss me, I guess. What she’s done since she got back home—I really have no idea. She hasn’t written to me in a while.”