Greeks Bearing Gifts

by Philip Kerr

  I followed the three men down the creaking wooden stairs. At the end of a long stone-flagged corridor was a big gray metal door with two lock handles. Underneath a spy hole was the word PANZERLIT. It was an old bomb shelter.

  “Open it,” Schramma told the general.

  “What are you going to do?” asked the general, turning the handle. He opened the door and switched on the light to reveal a largish wine cellar. A rich smell of mildewed bottles and damp filled the air. I didn’t know much about wine, but I estimated there must have been almost a thousand bottles in there. It was the best-equipped bomb shelter I’d ever seen.

  “I’m going to lock you in here so you can’t call the police,” said Schramma. He jerked the pistol again. “Get inside. Both of you.”

  “You won’t get away with this,” said the man in the hat. He snatched it off his head and held it between his hands like he was about to pray.

  “No?”

  “No. You’re making a big mistake. You know who this money belongs to? To the foreign intelligence division of the East German Ministry for State Security, that’s who.”

  “Shut up and get in the cellar,” said Schramma.

  “The MfS will come after you. You know that, don’t you? This money is only going to buy you a lot of sleepless nights.”

  “That’s all right. I don’t sleep much anyway.”

  The two men walked into the wine cellar and turned to face Schramma as he followed them a short way inside. Then he put his forefinger in one ear and what with the tape on the butt of the gun I knew for certain that he was going to kill them both. Instinctively I took a step back as he took one forward—so that he didn’t miss his target, I guess—and, the next moment, he shot the general and then he’d shot the man in the hat as well, both of them at close enough range to do some fatal damage. In the earsplitting second’s gap between the two gunshots I decided I might very well be his third victim and, stepping quickly back again, I slammed the steel door behind me and jammed it shut with a large ax handle that someone had left lying on the floor.

  I snatched the mask from my face and took a deep breath of the combusted air. My ears were whistling from the gunshots and it was a second or two before I even heard Schramma hammering on the door and shouting. Through the peephole I could see one of his bright eyes fixed on me like a piece of blue topaz. Meanwhile I managed to jam the other handle with half a brick. The aroma of strudel in the house was gone; now it was just gunpowder and death I could smell.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Gunther?” he shouted quietly. “Let me out of here.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  “Don’t be an idiot. We don’t have time for this. We need to get out of here in case someone reported hearing those shots.”

  “I’m glad you mentioned that.” I dropped the magazine from the Walther and inspected the ammunition quickly. Blanks. Like I’d thought. “Why did you kill them? You didn’t need to do that.”

  “Why take the risk of them identifying us? That’s the way I look at it.”

  “Oh, I get that. Only the way I figure it, you were going to shoot me, too. Why not? Right now I’m more expendable than a stick of celery.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Well, for one thing, you’re a corrupt cop who knows how to dress up a murder scene. And for another, this gun you gave me is loaded with blanks.”

  “Sure. I wanted to see if I could trust you. Look, listen to me. Let me tell you about these two Fritzes I just shot. The one with the hat was Stasi. The other was a Nazi war criminal. Got away with it for years. No one’s going to weep about these two. They both had it coming.”

  “I’ve pulled the trigger a couple of times on some people who had it coming. At least, that’s what I told myself at the time. Now I realize that all of us have got it coming. Me, probably. You, especially.”

  “Forget that. They’re dead now. Look, maybe ten percent of the take wasn’t fair of me. I get that. So how about half? I’ll give you half the money. Only don’t leave me in here. What do you say, Gunther?”

  “I say no deal.”

  “I’ll even give you a job in my new cutlery business.”

  “You’ve got nothing I want, Schramma.”

  The blue eye in the spy hole narrowed and then disappeared. “If you look through the spy hole you can see me unload my revolver before you open the door. How about that?”

  “I doubt that would work, either. My guess is there’s a third gun in your coat pocket. The one you were going to use on me and then leave behind in that Stasi man’s hand.”

  The eye returned to the spy hole.

  “Think about it, Gunther. You can’t call the cops. Because who do you think they’re going to believe? Me, a local cop with thirty years’ service? Or you, a man who’s living under a false name? Right now we can both walk out of this place like we were never here.”

  “You make a good point. And of course I’m not going to call the cops. Who said anything about me calling the cops?”

  “So what are you going to do? You can’t just leave me here.”

  “Sure I can. Someone will turn up. Maybe.”

  “The general lives alone.”

  “Then I’d say you’d better hope there’s a corkscrew in there. All that wine. Be a shame to waste it. Might be a while before someone shows up and lets you out.”

  “And you.” The single blue eye narrowed again. “You’d better hope I never get out of here,” he yelled. “Because if I do I’m going to kill you, Gunther.”

  My ears were still ringing like an alarm bell; an alarm bell that was warning me that the longer I stayed there the more likely I was to be in serious trouble; not that my leaving there would be the end of it either. I had the traces of a plan half-formed in my head but it went against all my instincts.

  “This is a bad idea, I know. But it was you who backed me into this corner. Besides, we both know that you were going to kill me anyway. That’s why you had the grip on that gun taped. So you could leave it behind and make it look like I was shot while trying to rob these two. I figure I’ve bought myself some breathing space for now. With ten thousand marks I can get a long way from Munich. By the time someone finds you in there I’m going to be far away from this city. Maybe out of the country. You just worry what happens if the cops do show up and find you with a murder weapon and two bodies. Even the Munich cops aren’t so dumb they can’t figure this one out. What we have here is a locked-room mystery where the only mystery is how you were dumb enough to get yourself caught in the first place.”

  “Don’t you believe it, Gunther. In spite of any evidence to the contrary I’m good at my job. They’ll listen to me.”

  “Mister, you’re good. Very persuasive. I bet you could sell a butcher a steak. But I’ll take that risk. That just happens to be what I’m good at.”

  SEVEN

  –

  I tucked the gun under my waistband, ran upstairs, filled my pockets with the money, and stepped, cautiously, outside the white house. No one was around and, according to my ears, the organist was still playing Bach as if nothing had happened. Maybe that’s why people like his stuff. I didn’t return to the car. It wasn’t mine. Instead I walked down the slope through the trees and then up the street onto Max-Joseph Bridge to cross the Isar, pausing in the center to stare down at the turbulent, coffee-colored waters in an effort to clear my head of some of what had just taken place. There’s nothing like the sound and sight of a river in spate to help flush the human spirit of what ails it, and if that doesn’t work you can always drown yourself. When I was sure no one was around on the bridge I dropped the Walther into the river and then walked west, as far as the English Garden. I wasn’t sure why it was called that. To me there seemed nothing particularly English about it—unless it was the number of snotty-looking people riding tall horses or
walking big dogs; then again, it might have been the presence of a huge Chinese pagoda. I’m told no English garden is complete without one. There was a beer garden next to the pagoda, where I had a quick one to steady my nerves; it was getting close to the time when I was supposed to report at the Schwabing Hospital for work, but with ten thousand marks in my coat pocket and a couple of bodies in my wake I figured I had more urgent things to do if I wanted to stay out of jail. So I went to a small taxi rank and asked the driver to take me to Kardinal-Faulhaberstrasse in the center of the city. Once there, I walked up and down a while, inspecting names on the shiny brass plaques on the doorways until, next to a bank, I found the one I was looking for—the one Schramma had thoughtfully informed me about: Dr. Max Merten, Attorney at Law. Trusting a lawyer didn’t seem like much of a plan and it went against all my instincts—some of the worst war criminals I’d ever met had been lawyers and judges—but I could see little alternative. Besides, this was a lawyer with a special interest in my case.

  There was a cage elevator but it wasn’t working so I climbed up a wide marble staircase to the third floor, where I stopped for a minute to catch my breath before going in; I needed to look and, more important, sound calm—even if I wasn’t—before telling a lawyer I hadn’t seen since before the war that we were both of us connected with a double murder. A woman I presumed was Merten’s secretary was getting ready to go home, and catching sight of me, she winced a little as if she knew I was going to delay her. Her bright yellow hair had probably been styled by a whole hive of bees and seemed to act as a crucial counterweight to her chest, which seemed both remarkable and appetizing at the same time. You can call me cynical but I had an idea that maybe her typing and shorthand skills weren’t the main reasons why she’d been hired.

  “Can I help you?”

  “I’d like to see Dr. Merten.”

  “I’m afraid he’s about to go home for the night.”

  “I’m sure he’ll want to see me. I’m an old friend.”

  I wasn’t wearing my best clothes so I could see her wondering about that.

  “If I could have your name?”

  I was reluctant to use my real name and I didn’t think there was any point in giving my new one; it wouldn’t have meant anything to Merten; nor did I want to mention Schramma’s name, for the simple reason that he was now a murderer. Even the most loyal of secretaries can find that kind of thing a little too much.

  “Just say I’m from the Alex, in Berlin. He’ll know what that is.”

  “The Alex?”

  “Since you ask, it was the Police Praesidium. Like the one you have here in Munich. But bigger and better. Or at least it was until Karl Marx came to town. I used to be a policeman, which is how we know each other.”

  Slightly reassured now that she knew I had once been a policeman, Merten’s secretary went to find her boss. She stepped into a back office, leaving me with the expensive view out the corner window. Merten’s offices were opposite the Greek Orthodox church on Salvatorstrasse. Built of red bricks in the Gothic style, the church looked oddly out of step with everything else in that otherwise uniformly Baroque street. I was still looking at it when the secretary came back and informed me that her boss would see me now. She showed me into his office and then closed the door behind us, as Max Merten came around his desk to greet me.

  “My God, I never expected to see you again. Bernie Gunther. How long has it been? Fifteen years?”

  “At least.”

  “But not a cop, I think. Not anymore. No, you don’t look like a cop. Not with that beard.”

  “It’s been a while since I carried a badge.”

  “Have a seat, Bernie. Have a cigarette. Have a drink. Would you like a drink?” He checked his watch. “Yes, I think it’s time.” He went over to a big Biedermeier sideboard and lifted up a decanter the size of a streetlamp. “Schnapps? It’s that or nothing, I’m afraid. It’s the only thing I drink. That and anything alcoholic.”

  “Schnapps.”

  He was much bigger than I remembered, in almost every way: taller, louder, broader, fatter; his silver-haired head was huge and looked as if it belonged on a stone lion. Only his hands were small. He didn’t look younger than me, but he was, by at least a decade. He wore a good-quality thick tweed suit, ideal for a Munich winter, and while this didn’t fit him well—the waist of his trousers was positioned just below his breast, like a life belt—he was in more urgent need of a dentist than a good tailor; one of his front teeth was gold but the rest weren’t so good, perhaps a result of the large number of cigarettes he smoked. The office was pungent with the smell of Egyptian cigarettes. I smoke a lot myself, but Max Merten could have smoked for West Germany. His cigarettes arrived between his thick pink lips from a packet of Finas on his desk, one after the other, in an almost unbroken thin white line, one passing on a tiny flame to the next, like the baton in a never-ending relay race. He handed me a glass and then ushered us both to some comfortable armchairs beside the window, where he drew the heavy curtains and sat down opposite me.

  “So what have you been doing with yourself?”

  “Trying to stay out of trouble.”

  “And not succeeding if I know you.”

  “That’s why I’m here, Max. I need a lawyer. It’s just possible we both do.”

  “Oh dear. That sounds ominous.”

  “You hired a cop to do some freelance work for you. Christian Schramma.”

  “That’s right.”

  “You wanted him to check out the bona fides of a potential donor for this political party you’ve started. The CVP.”

  “GVP. That’s right. General Heinkel. I wanted to find out where his campaign money was coming from.”

  “Well, Schramma hired me. Not so much hired, perhaps. I didn’t have much choice in the matter.”

  “To check out the money?”

  “I thought so, but as things turned out he wanted me to help him steal it. I didn’t have much choice in the matter, either. I’m living here in Munich under a false name. For the obvious reasons.”

  “The war.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So what precisely has happened? You’re not a thief.”

  I told him everything that had taken place inside the general’s house. And then placed the money on his desk, all ten thousand marks of it.

  “Then General Heinkel is dead.”

  I nodded.

  “But who’s the other man that’s been murdered?”

  “I don’t know his name. But I think he worked for the East German foreign intelligence service. The MfS.”

  “What’s the DDR have to do with this?”

  “You were going to go to the general’s house tomorrow morning, to collect the money for the GVP, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “The MfS planned to have the local police turn up to arrest the general who, in order to clear himself, was then going to allege that the money was a bribe for you and your friend Professor Hallstein.”

  “Why would the general do such a thing?”

  “Because, according to Schramma, the Stasi have his son in a Leipzig prison cell. My guess is that the fellow from the MfS was in this with Schramma. But that Schramma double-crossed him.”

  “I see. This is all very disturbing.”

  “For me, too.”

  “I had no idea that Christian Schramma was such a dangerous man.”

  “Cops have guns. And they mix with all kinds of bad people. That makes them dangerous.”

  “And Schramma is still there? Locked in the general’s wine cellar with the two bodies?”

  “That’s right.” I sipped some of the schnapps and helped myself to a cigarette. “Given that it was you who hired him in the first place, I thought you might have an idea about what to do next. But for the fact that I’m living under a false name, and your friend�
�s a cop who’s put a lot of years into the job, I’d have called the police myself and left them to it. I was hoping you might do it instead of me.”

  “You did the right thing coming to me, Bernie. I mean from what you’ve said, it looks like an open-and-shut case: two bodies and the killer and the murder weapon all in one locked room. But experience tells me that even cases that look open-and-shut have a habit of not closing properly, from an evidentiary point of view. And then there’s the Munich police, of course. If Schramma’s corrupt, then there’s every chance that there are others who are also corrupt. That they’ll pretend to believe his story and just let him go. No, this needs very careful thought about who to call, and when. It may be that I shall have to inform the Bavarian State Ministry of Justice.”

  “That’s up to you, of course. But whoever you tell, please bear in mind that if it should come to my needing a lawyer, I can’t afford to pay you. I’m hoping my coming here and putting you in the picture about everything that’s happened would be enough for you to take me on as your client for free.”

  “Oh, surely. And I do appreciate it. Very much. After all, you could easily have disappeared with the money and I’d have been none the wiser about any of this.”

  “I’m glad you see it that way, Max.”

  “By the way, what do you expect me to do with all this cash?”

  “That’s up to you. No one but me knows you have it.”

  “How much is here, anyway?”

  “Ten thousand.”

  “I suppose I’ll have to give it to the police.”

  I took a long drag on the cigarette and narrowed my eyes against my smoke. If it made me look cagey and thoughtful that was always my intention.

  “I get the feeling you have a few ideas of your own about what should happen to the money,” said Merten.