by Philip Kerr
Heydrich tutted loudly and looked away for a moment as we drove onto Nollendorf Platz. There he pointed at the Mozart Hall Movie Theatre. 'The Four Feathers,' he said. 'A marvellous picture. Have you seen it?'
'Yes.'
'Quite right. It's one of the Führer's favourites. This is a movie about revenge, is it not? Albeit a very British and sentimental kind of revenge. Harry Favisham returns the four white feathers to the same men and woman who had accused him of cowardice. Absurd really. Speaking for myself I should have preferred to see my former comrades suffer a little more than they did. And perhaps die, although not without revealing myself as their Nemesis. Do you follow me?'
'I'm beginning to, Herr General.'
'As your superior officer I should inform you that it's no crime to have been a communist party member before one saw the light and became a National Socialist. I should also inform you that Paul Kestner is not without connections in the Wilhelmstrasse, and that these people have decided to overlook his dishonest role in the Mielke affair. Frankly, if we were to cashier every Sipo officer with an unfortunate past there would be no one left to wear the uniform.'
'Does he know?' I asked. 'That his superiors are aware of what he did?'
'No. We prefer to keep things like that in reserve. For when we need to bring a man into line and persuade him to do what he's told. However' - Heydrich flicked his cigarette into the street and lifted his injured arm - 'as you can see, accidents happen. Especially in time of war. And if some harm were to befall Hauptmann Kestner while he was in occupied France I doubt that anyone would be surprised. Least of all me. After all, it's a long road between Paris and Toulouse, and I dare say there are still a few pockets of French resistance. It would be a tragedy of war, just like the death of Paul Baumer reaching to protect a fledgling bird on the last page of All Quiet on the Western Front.' Heydrich sighed. 'Yes. A tragedy. But hardly a matter for regret.'
'I see.'
'Well, it's entirely a matter for you, Haupsturmführer Gunther. Your chief inspector rank in Kripo entitles you to the rank of SS captain. The same as Kestner. It makes no difference to me if he lives or dies. It's your choice.'
The car purred along Tauenzienstrasse toward the stalagmite steeples of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church and came to a rumbling halt in front of a tailor's shop. In the window was a tailor's dummy that looked like the torso at the scene of a crime, and several bolts of pewter-coloured cloth. Pedestrians shot Heydrich a curious look as he climbed out of the car and walked his bow-legged walk to the front door of Wilhelm Holters. You could hardly blame them for that. With all the medals and badges on his Luftwaffe tunic he looked like an accomplished Boy Scout, albeit a rather sinister one.
I followed him through the door with the shop bell ringing in my ears as if warning other customers of the plague we brought with us. Something fearful anyway.
An unassuming man wearing pince-nez, a black armband and a stiff collar came towards us washing one hand in the other like Pontius Pilate and smiling an intermittent smile as if he was functioning on half power only.
'Ah yes,' he said quietly. 'General Heydrich, isn't it? Yes, please come through.'
He ushered us into a room that belonged in the Herrenklub. There were leather armchairs, a clock ticking on a mantelpiece, a pair of full-length mirrors and several glass cases containing a variety of military uniforms. On the walls were an abundance of royal warrants and pictures of Hitler and Goring, whose fondness for wearing uniforms of all colours was well known. Through a green velvet curtain I could see several men cutting cloth or pressing half-finished uniforms with a hot iron and, to my surprise, one of these men was an orthodox Jew. It was a nice example of Nazi hypocrisy to have a Jewish tailor making an SS uniform.
'This officer needs an SS uniform,' explained Heydrich. 'Field grey. And it has to be ready in one week's time. Ordinarily, I should send him to the SS quartermaster for an off-the-peg Hugo Boss uniform, but he'll be travelling on the Führer's personal train, so he'll need to look smart. Can you do it, Herr Holters?'
The tailor looked surprised even to be asked such a question. He uttered a polite little guffaw and smiled with quiet confidence. 'Oh, certainly, Herr General.'
'Good,' said Heydrich. 'Send the account to my office. Gunther? I will leave you in Herr Holters's capable hands. And make sure you get your men. Both of them.' Then he turned and left.
Holters produced a notebook and a pencil and began asking questions and noting the answers.
'Rank?'
'Hauptmann.'
'Any medals?'
'Iron Cross, with Royal Citation. Great War Participation Medal with swords and wound badge. That's it.'
'Trousers or riding breeches?'
I shrugged.
'Both,' he said. 'Dress dagger?'
I shook my head.
'Hat size?'
'Sixty-two centimetres.'
Holters nodded. 'We'll have Hoffmanns in Gneisenaustrasse send over a couple for you to try on. Until then perhaps you'd like to slip off your jacket and I'll take your measurements.' He glanced at a little calendar on the wall. 'It's always a hurry with General Heydrich.'
'Yes, it's never a good idea to disagree with him,' I said, slipping off my jacket. 'I do know that feeling. Where Heydrich is concerned, your black armband could be catching.'
It was after I'd been measured and I was on my way out of the door that I bumped into Elisabeth Dehler, who was coming into the tailor's shop with a uniform box under her arm. I hadn't seen her very much since that night in 1931 when she'd taken offence at my turning up at her apartment and asking for Mielke's address. But she greeted me warmly, as if all that was forgotten now, and agreed to come and meet me for a coffee after she had delivered the uniform to Herr Holters.
I waited around the corner at Miericke, on Ranke Strasse, where the chocolate cake was about the best in Berlin.
When she arrived she told me that since the beginning of the war she'd had little or no time for making dresses; everyone wanted her for tailoring uniforms.
'This war is over before it even got started,' I told her. 'You'll be back to dressmaking in no time at all.'
'I hope you're right,' she said. 'Even so, I suppose that's why you were there, at Holters. To get yourself a uniform.'
'Yes. I have a police job to do in Paris next week.'
'Paris.' She closed her eyes for a moment. 'What I wouldn't give to be going to Paris.'
'You know, I was just thinking of you, about an hour ago.'
She pulled a face. 'I don't believe you.'
'Honestly, it's true, I was.'
'Why?'
I shrugged. I hardly wanted to tell her that I was being sent to Paris to hunt down her old friend Erich Mielke and that this was the reason she was in my mind again.
'Oh, I was just thinking that it would be nice to see you again, Elisabeth. Perhaps when I get back from Paris we could see a movie together.'
'I thought you said you were going to Paris next week.'
'I am.'
'Then what's wrong with seeing a movie this week?'
'If it comes to that,' I said, 'what's wrong with tonight?'
She nodded. 'Pick me up at six,' she said and kissed me on the cheek.
We were on our way out of the coffee shop when she said, 'I nearly forgot. I'm living somewhere else now.'
'No wonder I couldn't find you.'
'As if you tried. Motzstrasse. Number twenty-eight. First floor. My name is on the bell.'
'I'm already looking forward to ringing it.'
* * *
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: FRANCE, 1940
At least it wasn't a black uniform. But in the Anhalter Bahnhof, waiting to board the Reich Railways train early that July morning, I felt oddly uncomfortable dressed as a Sipo captain, even though almost everyone else was wearing a uniform. It was as if I'd signed a contract in blood with Hitler himself. In the event the great Mephistopheles chose not to visit the French capital by train.
The Gestapo got wind of at least two plots to kill him while he was in Paris and the word aboard the train was that Hitler had already returned from a flying visit to the jewel in his crown of conquest via Le Bourget, on June 23rd. Consequently although quite luxurious in many respects - there were, after all, several senior Wehrmacht generals aboard - the train we travelled in was not the Amerika, which was the name of the special train carrying the Führer headquarters and, by all accounts, the last word in Pullman-class comfort. That curiously named train - possibly it was a pun based on the Herms Niel song I had sung in Heydrich's office - was, it seemed, back at the Tempelhof Repair Depot in the south-west of Berlin. Since meeting Elisabeth again I rather wished I could have been there myself, for although a small part of me was looking forward to seeing Paris, mostly I felt a distinct lack of enthusiasm for my mission. A lot of people in Sipo would have leapt at an all-expenses-paid trip to the most glamorous city in the world. And a little bit of murder along the way wouldn't have bothered them in the slightest. There were some on that train who looked like they'd been murdering people since 1933. Including the fellow sitting opposite me, an SS Untersturmführer - a second lieutenant I half-recognised from police headquarters in Alexanderplatz.
His little rat's eyes got there ahead of me, however.
'Excuse me, sir,' he said politely. 'But aren't you Chief Inspector Gunther? From the Homicide Division?'
'Have we met?'
'I was working Vice Squad at the Alex when I think I saw you last. My name is Willms. Nikolaus Willms.'
I nodded, silently.
'Vice isn't as glamorous as Homicide,' he said. 'But it has its moments.'
He smiled without smiling - the sort of expression a snake has when it opens its mouth to swallow something whole. He was smaller than me but he had the ambitious look of a man who might eventually swallow something larger than himself.
'So what takes you to Paris?' I asked without much interest.
'This isn't my first trip,' he said. 'I've been there for the last two weeks. I only came back to Berlin to attend to a family matter.'
'You still have some work to do there?'
'There's plenty of vice in Paris, sir.'
'So I'm led to believe.'
'Although with any luck I won't be stuck in Vice for very long.'
'No?'
Willms shook his head. He was small but powerful and sat with his legs apart and his arms folded as if watching a football match. He said:
'After the SD school in Bernau I was sent on an exclusive leadership course in Berlin-Charlottenburg. It was the people who ran that course who organised this posting. I speak fluent French you see. I'm from Trier, originally.'
'So that's what I can hear in your accent. French. I imagine that comes in handy in your line of work.'
'To be honest with you sir, it's rather dull work. I'm hoping for something a bit more exciting than a lot of French whores.'
'There are about five hundred soldiers on this train who would disagree with that, Lieutenant.'
He smiled, a proper smile this time, with teeth, only it didn't work any better, the way a smile is supposed to work.
'So what are you hoping for?'
'My father was killed in the war,' Willms explained. 'At Verdun. By a French sniper. I was two when that happened. So I've always hated the French. I hate everything about them. I suppose I'd like a chance to pay them back for what they did to me. For taking my dad away from us. For giving me such a miserable childhood. My family should have left Trier but we couldn't afford to go. So we stayed. My mother and my sisters. We stayed in Trier and we were hated.' He nodded, thoughtfully. 'I should very much like to work for the Gestapo in Paris. Giving the Franzis a hard time sounds just about right to me. Cool a few, if you know what I mean, sir.'
'The war's over,' I said. 'I should think your chances for cooling any French, as you put it, are rather limited now. They've surrendered.'
'Oh I should think there are some left who've still got a bit of fight in them, don't you? Terrorists. We'll have to deal with them, surely. If you hear of anything in that line, sir, perhaps you'd let me know. I'm keen to get on. And to get out of Vice.' He smiled his reptilian smile and patted the briefcase on the seat next to him. 'Until then,' he added, 'perhaps I might do you a favour.'
'Oh? How?'
'In this briefcase I've got a list of about three hundred Paris restaurants and seven hundred hotels that are to be declared off limits because of prostitution. And a list of about thirty that are officially approved. Not that anyone will take a blind bit of notice either way. It's been my experience of vice that all the law in the world won't stop a fellow who's intent on having a bit of mouse or a whore who's ready to give it to him. Anyway, it's my considered opinion that if a man was looking for a good time in Paris then he could do a lot worse than go to the Hotel Fairyland on the Place Blanche in Pigalle. According to the Prefecture of Police in the Rue de Lutece the girls working in Fairyland are free of venereal disease. Of course it might be asked how they know that, and I think the simple answer would have to be that it's Paris and of course the police would know that.' He shrugged. 'Anyway, I just thought you might like to know that yourself, sir. Before the word gets around.'
'Thanks, Lieutenant. I'll bear it in mind. But I think I'm going to be too busy to go looking for any more trouble than I already have. I'm on a case, see? An old case, and I figure I've got my work laid out in front of me. Anything else gets laid out, I'm liable to get even more distracted than seems reasonable, even in Paris. I'd like to tell you more about it but I can't for security reasons. You see the man I'm after got away from me before. And I don't intend to let that happen again. They could put hot and cold running Michele Morgan in my hotel bedroom and still I'd have to behave myself.'
Willms smiled his snake smile, the one he probably used when he wanted to get some poor little snapper to give him one for free. I knew what these bulls from Vice were like. But while he was loathsome I didn't doubt that he might actually have been useful to my mission and I suppose I could have offered him a job. I had a letter from Heydrich that would have compelled any man's commanding officer to offer me his full cooperation. But I didn't make the offer. I didn't because you don't pick up a snake unless you really have to.
Arriving at Paris's Gare de l'Est in the late afternoon, I presented my taxi-warrant to a wurst-faced NCO who directed me to a military car already occupied by another officer. Petrol was scarce and, since we were to be billeted in the same hotel across the river, we were obliged to share a driver, an SS corporal from Essen who attempted to forestall our impatience at getting to the hotel by warning us that the speed limit was only 40 kph.
'And it's worse at night,' he added. 'Then it's just thirty. Which is really crazy.'
'Surely it's safer that way,' I said. 'Because of the blackout.'
'No, sir,' said the corporal. 'Night time is when this city comes alive. That's when people really want to get somewhere. Somewhere important.'
'Like where?' asked my brother officer, a naval lieutenant who was attached to the Abwehr - German military intelligence. 'For example?'
The driver smiled. 'This is Paris, sir. There's only one business of real importance here, sir. Or so you might think from the number of staff officers I drive to their liaisons, sir. The only business in Paris that's doing better than ever before, sir, is the business of male and female relations, sir. In a word, prostitution. This city is rife with it. And you'd think some of these Germans coming here have never seen a girl before, the way they go at it.'
'Good God,' exclaimed the Abwehr lieutenant, whose name was Kurt Boger.
'There will be plenty of German reinforcements on the way soon,' said the driver. 'Little Germans, that is. My advice to you both is to find yourselves a nice little girlfriend and get it for free. But if you're short of time the best brothels in the city are Maison Chabanais, at number twelve Rue Chabanais, and the One-Two-Two on Rue de Provence.'
'I heard the Fairyland was good,' I said.
'No, that's rubbish sir. With all due respect. Whoever told you that is talking out of their arse. The Fairyland is a real knocking shop. You want to keep away from there, sir, in case you wind up with a dose of jelly. If you'll forgive me for saying so. Maison Chabanais is for officers only. Madame Marthe runs a very classy house.'
Boger, hardly a typical sailor, was tutting loudly and shaking his head.
'But you'll be all right at the Hotel Lutetia,' said the driver, changing the subject. 'It's a very respectable hotel. There's nothing going on there.'
'I'm relieved to hear it,' said Boger.
'All of the best hotels have been taken over by us Germans,' said the driver. 'The general staff with red stripes on their trousers and the Party big guns are at the Majestic and the Crillon. But I reckon you're both better off here on the left bank.'
Security near the Lutetia was tight. A protective zone of sandbags and wooden barriers had been established around the hotel and armed sentries manned the entrance, to the general bewilderment of the hotel's doorman and porters. All traffic save German military vehicles was forbidden the zone. There wasn't much traffic however, since the last thing the French Army had done before abandoning the city to its fate was to set fire to several fuel storage depots to prevent them from falling into our hands. But the Paris Metro was still running, that much was evident. You could feel it underneath your feet in the Lutetia hotel lobby. Not that it was easy to see your feet, there were so many German officers milling around - SS, RSHA, Abwehr, Secret Field Police (the GFP) - and all goose-stepping on each other's toes because there was no one I knew who could have told you for sure where the responsibilities of one security service ended and another's began. It wasn't exactly Babel but there was plenty of confusion all round, and in turning men from the fear of God to a constant dependence on his own power, Hitler made a convincing Nimrod.
The Lutetia staff were no less confused than we were ourselves. When I asked the German-speaking porter to identify the cupola I could see from my window he told me he wasn't sure. He called a maid over to the window and they debated the matter for a couple of minutes before, finally, they decided that the cupola was the dome of the church at Les Invalides where Napoleon was buried. A little later on I discovered that it was in fact the Pantheon, in the opposite direction. Otherwise the service at the Lutetia was good, although hardly on a par with the Adlon in Berlin. And I couldn't help but favourably contrast my current French accommodation with what I'd endured in the Great War. Crisp clean sheets and a well-stocked cocktail bar made a very pleasant change from a flooded trench and some warm ersatz coffee. The experience was almost enough to complete my conversion to being a Nazi.
