Ogpu Prison

by Sven Hassel

  ‘I begin to understand,’ says Porta, thoughtfully, craning his neck to get a better look at a woman in a brown calfskin cape, ‘you walk up in your phony parson’s uniform with a smarmy grin on your face, and ask the target when he last set foot in church. Before he’s had time to think about it, you sew him up with lead thread! Goodbye and give my love to the Old Boy!’

  ‘Somethin’ like that,’ admits Hartnacke. ‘What do you say to a hot steak? Horse they’ll give you without coupons!’

  His suggestion sets off a furious argument with the barmaid, who does not want to serve hot food at the bar. She gives in when Tiny draws his combat knife from his boot, and placing it confidentially between her legs asks her if she’s ever had one as sharp as that.

  ‘Ain’t nobody never got wise to that parson trick of yours?’ asks Tiny, his mouth stuffed with bloody horse-meat.

  ‘Yes it is funny,’ Porta puts in. ‘If I heard about a mate of mine getting put on the heavenly bus by a sky-pilot, I wouldn’t let a black cassock get anywhere near me. Not without taking the stuffing out of it first anyway.’

  ‘Most grown-up people’re stupider now’n when they came into the world,’ explains Hartnacke, ‘and you must not forget that the only guy who really knows it was a blackbird who knocked him off is not talkin’ much any more. He’s dead!’

  ‘How do you knock ’em off, usually?’ asks Porta, interestedly, ordering another steak.

  Hartnacke keeps silent until the barmaid has served their beer and Slivovitz.

  ‘I use only tried and true methods. Garrottin’ wire or a silenced hand-gun. Nothin’ that makes a mess. Messes’re repulsive. Learnt the trade at Fort Zittau, where I went as a volunteer. Knew they taught you things there, you’d never be able to learn anywhere else in peacetime.’

  ‘What things?’ asks Porta, waving a prostitute away irritably, as she is about to sit down alongside them.

  She opens her mouth to say something, but closes it again quickly when her eye falls on a knife and a set of spiked knuckle-dusters.

  ‘We learnt the kind of tricks a gentleman of the old school would absolutely not have anythin’ to do with,’ continues Hartnacke, shovelling the remains of his horsemeat steak into his mouth with a motion like that of a man cleaning out a pig-sty.

  When they saunter out of ‘The Three-legged Goose’, a couple of hours later, Porta says in a low voice, elbowing Hartnacke confidentially in the ribs, ‘I want Egon the Poof changed from being alive, alive-o, to being frozen mutton. But I want that twisted little cocksucker to know it’s me that’s turned him off! And when you’ve blown his dirty little soul to hell I want you to leave an 80% card on the body. That’s to show Berlin what happens to people who think not paying their debts to an 80% man is a big, big joke!’

  ‘Isn’t that bein’ a bit careless?’ asks Hartnacke, cautiously. ‘Everybody knows you’re an 80% man, and even if the Alex bulls aren’t exactly Berlin’s cream of crime-solvers, they wouldn’t have to knock their brains out to get to that one. The Poofs got a whole fleet of pavement pounders too. Couple of those girls get talkin’ and the Alex lot’ll be tearin’ at the seat of your pants in no time.’

  ‘It’s no fun, if Egon doesn’t know it’s me that’s put out the contract,’ laughs Porta, noisily. ‘The pleasure alone’s worth a bit of risk.’

  ‘OK, it’s your neck,’ answers Hartnacke, uncaringly, ‘I’ll keep myself in the clear, anyway!’

  ‘Too right,’ smiles Porta, ‘and when they find that 80% card on the body, there’s a lot of people here in Berlin who’ll start shittin’ themselves, and rushing out madly to pay off their just debts.’

  ‘Our patience is not inexhaustible,’ bellows Tiny, his voice echoing between the houses. ‘They’re gonna know we’re back from the wars. When the Poof’s ’ad it, we’ll take the bleedin’ dwarf.’

  Porta rings Egon from a telephone box to give him the glad news of his return to Berlin.

  ‘Love us all, dears! Is that really you then, Porta? What a nice surprise,’ cries Egon. ‘There hasn’t anything nasty happened to you while you’ve been away in that cruel, cruel war? There’s such a lot of awful things one does hear about from out there! Just when you think a dear, good friend’s still in the land of the living, then suddenly somebody says he’s dead!’

  ‘Don’t cry then,’ Porta comforts him. ‘There’s more life in this old dog than you, and some others, dream of. You might just find that out, if what you owe me for the last two years isn’t paid up by 8 o’clock this evening!’

  ‘Dear dear Porta, everything’s changed since you went off out there to pick up a bit more of that nice lebensraum for dear, old Germany. I’m really, really sorry to have to be the first to tell you about it, but some other people have taken over all your business affairs. Nasty dark-looking men, they are. Can’t ever get a smile out of them!’

  ‘Fuck that!’ roars Porta, losing his self-control. He blows smoke into the mouthpiece as if it were Egon’s face. ‘You come at the time I’ve said and hand over my coppers. And you can stuff your dark-looking men up your shitter if there’s room for ‘em!’

  ‘But Porta, darling man,’ says Egon, in a fat, self-satisfied voice, ‘you don’t think I want to get myself killed, now do you? Especially just now, when the future’s beginning to look a little brighter?’

  ‘Listen to me and listen closely, you stinking little monkey’s arsehole, you dirty rotten son of a Zulu whore, you sneaking, treacherous jackal, you,’ roars Porta, into the telephone. ‘If you don’t turn up here with a big, heavy chinking sack, something bad’s going to happen to you. Something very, very bad. Something that’ll put you out of touch with ordinary human beings very effectively and for ever!’

  ‘Oh you wouldn’t,’ whines Egon, nervously, knocking the telephone against the wall in fear.

  ‘Think it over, you little maggot, and sort out for yourself just who it is who’s boss around here!’ Porta leaves the earpiece dangling from its cord in the telephone booth. Well down the street they can still hear Egon’s excited piping.

  ‘ ’E was really scared, was Egon,’ grins Tiny, in a satisfied tone.

  ‘ ’E’ll be there.’ But Tiny is wrong. Egon does not turn up.

  The following day Porta and Tiny are walking down Sperling Strasse, together with Unteroffizier Hartnacke, to have a personal conversation with Egon the Poof. As they turn in through the gates of Egon’s apartment building, ‘Viola Ball-breaker’ comes rocketing out of it and knocks Tiny over.

  ‘What the ’ell,’ he shouts, angrily, picking his cap up out of the gutter. ‘Can’t you look where you’re goin’, you blubber-gutted sow, you?’

  ‘Who’re you callin’ blubber-gutted?’ screams Viola, insulted, kicking him in the ankle.

  ‘What you think you’re at, you seventh-rate two mark whore, you?’ explodes Tiny, furiously, hopping up and down on one foot and rubbing his painful ankle. ‘I’ll do you, I’ll split your lousy, fucked-up gorilla cunt open from arse’ole to breakfast-time!’

  ‘Blow, you village cocksucker, you,’ hisses Viola, beginning to work herself up. ‘I’ll tear your balls off. If you’ve got any to get a hold on, that is!’

  ‘You must’ve got fucked by an octopus,’ roars Tiny, throwing a punch at Viola which would have killed her, if it had landed.

  She avoids it by taking a quick step backwards. She kicks out at him, and hits him on the knee. As he doubles up with a howl she sticks a finger in his eye. He whirls, and snatches up one of the overflowing fish skips outside the fishmonger’s shop. In the same movement, he raises it and its contents of stinking fish offal above his head, and brings it down on her with all his strength. Pieces of fish fly up into the air.

  ‘Stop larking about,’ snouts Porta, irritably, vainly attempting to separate them. ‘We haven’t time to play games. We’re here on business!’

  But Viola is now as mad as a March hare. She grabs a huge catfish and swings it round her head a couple of times to build up m
omentum. She lets go of it, but misses her target. Instead of hitting Tiny, the catfish hits the fishmonger, who has come roaring out of his shop, full in the face. With a piercing scream he falls backwards. His false leg, from the first World War, flies through the air and hits Viola in the face. She thinks it is Tiny who has kicked her. Her fingers are like the claws of an eagle. Ten painted nails tear at Tiny’s cheeks. Blood spurts.

  He grabs the fishmonger’s false leg and brings it down on Viola’s head. It breaks in two.

  Viola is not beaten yet! She is in training, and used to having bottles broken over her head. Breathing stertorously she attacks Tiny’s private parts. Her trained fingers find their way through his greatcoat and three pairs of stolen Army winter underpants.

  His mouth gapes, redly. A long, agonized jungle cry rings down the street. Both knees fly up over his head. For a moment he is without contact to the ground. He would have got a great round of applause at Circus Kranz. He rolls out into the road, where a delivery tricycle, loaded with sacks of corn, runs over him. He is in such agony that he does not even notice it. When he comes to his senses again his only thought is for Viola. She has disappeared, as if swallowed up by the ground.

  ‘My leg!’ screams the fishmonger, surrounded by smashed boxes of fish.

  ‘ ’Ere then, limpy,’ cries Tiny, throwing the smashed leg down into the middle of the mess of fish. His eye falls on Viola’s blue hat sticking up from behind a cask offish ofFal. ‘There you are, then! You fuckin’ cock-swallower!’ he roars. He catches hold of her by the breasts and slings her through the door of ‘The Green Hen’.

  She flies through the air like a bullet, takes Porta with her and crashes into a heavy hatstand, which is made of shell-casings from the first World War, and weighs almost half a ton. With a deafening crash it topples on to the painters’ special table, and crushes it to kindling. Beer, pork, horsemeat, sauce and sausages splash up into the air and run down the walls.

  ‘It’s the Russians,’ howls an invalid from the first World War. He gets his false legs entangled and is unable to move. ‘Red Front!’ he just manages to groan, before he faints. He has forgotten to take off his party badge, which shines, revealingly, in his left lapel. From that day onwards he never wears it again.

  Unteroffizier Hartnacke, who is in the process of unpacking his parson’s habit, is thrown over the bar and takes three dishes of sauerkraut and Eisbein with him. He emits a hoarse, owl-like groan and goes amok. All former plans are cancelled. This is no time for caution and undercover action. Straight into the attack! With a diabolical grin he rips the Nagan from his shoulder holster.

  ‘All right Egon, you’re on the way out!’

  He knows that Egon is sitting in his office, with an overheated adding machine, just waiting for a purposeful killer to blow his head off.

  He takes an agile leap over the bar, barely avoiding Viola and Porta, who are lying on the floor chewing on one another’s ears. He wipes the sauerkraut from his face and thunders on through the bar-room. This, he thinks, is going to go down in the history of Berlin. It’s never happened before. When old Fritz and all his fucking generals are dead and forgotten they’ll still be talking about ‘Happy Release’ and what he did to Egon in the Second World War.

  Egon is sitting in a deep, upholstered chair, feeling happy about the figures he has arrived at on his adding machine, when the door is kicked open so violently that it is left hanging from only one hinge. His first impression is that a whole regiment is coming in through the door opening. He glares down the black barrel of a heavy pistol. A cry rings in his ears, making the few hairs he has left on his head stand up, quivering with fear. It is Leo, the cook, attempting to warn him of rapidly approaching danger and sudden death. The dwarf, Olfert, who is only four feet ten inches tall, but almost the same across the shoulders, goes down like lightning behind Egon’s chair, flapping his arms like a turkey with its head chopped off.

  Egon opens his water-blue eyes wide in terror, and begins to make noises like a drenched cat on a rocking ice floe.

  ‘You’ve had it! You miserable whoremonger, you!’ roars Hartnacke. ‘I’m goin’ to shoot the last of your rotten wits out, I am!’

  ‘Can’t we talk about this,’ begs Egon, who is an expert at talking his way out of difficult corners.

  ‘You’ve talked enough in your life,’ Hartnacke cuts him off with an icy laugh. ‘You’re gonna get it!’ He presses the muzzle of the pistol against Egon’s nose and presses the trigger.

  An enormous explosion echoes from wall to wall of ‘The Green Hen’, and makes the fishmonger in the street crawl to cover behind a herring barrel.

  Egon rolls over and over, still sitting in his chair. The dwarf, Olfert, sits in the middle of the floor, screaming for the police and the SS to come. He is one of the party founders, and always remembers it when his life is in danger.

  Hartnacke stands glaring in amazement at the remains of his hand. Blood drips from it onto the documents on the desk. In his hurry he has made a fateful mistake. Unforgiveable even for a recruit who has just picked up his uniform from the QM. He has the bad habit of always carrying two different types of pistol, a Russian Nagan and a German P-38. And ammunition in his pocket for both. Viola’s knocking over of the hat-stand, and the resulting confusion, has caused him to load the Nagan with P-38 ammunition. No weapon in the world can stand up to being loaded with the wrong ammunition. The Nagan has been blown to pieces, peppering the walls with pieces of itself and Hartnacke’s fingers. In shock he rushes out of ‘The Green Hen’, and never remembers, afterwards, how he got back to the War Ministry. Sanitäts-Unteroffizier Steinhart sews his hand together clumsily, in a way no surgeon would ever accept.

  ‘Don’t show your nose outside the War Ministry for at least a month,’ rages Sally furiously.

  ‘I hope you’re cured of carrying two different weapons, at least! You madman, you! You do realise you’re mad? Stark, raving mad? The whole of Berlin knows already it was you, you halfwit, who shot up “The Green Hen”! Even a starving Jew wouldn’t be that dumb! After this I know your mother must have been paralysed in the head when she dropped you in the gutter!’

  Hartnacke scowls and whines in miserable resignation. He swears silently to himself that when he sees Egon again he’ll knock him a yard into the nearest wall.

  In the inner sanctum of ‘The Green Hen’ Egon is still sitting, touching his face cautiously. Very, very slowly he realises that there is no blood, that his features are still all there. An unbelievable feeling of joy streams through him.

  ‘I’ve come back from the dead,’ he says, sobbing and laughing confusedly at the same time. He begins to thank God, and in the next second to curse Him. ‘Revenge!’ he screams furiously, ‘revenge! I want that bastard “Happy Release” brought to me in twenty-five separate pieces. And I’ll put him through the mincer and sell him for dog food, off the ration!’

  With Olfert the dwarf in the lead, Egon’s gang go through Berlin looking for Hartnacke. Egon is so furious that he cannot eat for three days, despite the fact that he is a great glutton.

  Slowly, the hunt eases off. Late one afternoon, when Egon is enjoying himself with two of his favourites, Porta and Tiny enter the room without knocking. Egon has just slipped into a set of lacy, silk women’s underclothes. He likes the feel of them.

  Tiny presses a sawn-off shotgun roughly against his ear.

  ‘Thought it was all over, didn’t you, then?’ he hisses, wickedly.

  ‘It’s not! It’s just beginning! Those cultural sods who go to the opera say the end’s the best part of it!’

  ‘We did ask you to drop in on us, didn’t we?’ asks Porta, gently, bending over Egon. He smiles, and pinches the man’s cheek, gently. ‘You don’t seem to want to hear what we say to you, so we’ve decided you can do without ears. Altogether! And now we’re going to shoot them off! You’re going to have the pleasure of hearing it, of course. We wouldn’t deny you that! It’ll be the biggest bang you’ve eve
r heard! It’ll make you feel as if your whole head’s being blown off. Maybe it will be! And those ears of yours, that you don’t like using! They’ll go with it!’

  ‘You can’t do that,’ cries Egon, in a heartbroken voice, holding his hands out in front of him.

  ‘No?’ laughs Tiny, noisily. ‘You’d better believe it, you broken-down brown’oler!’

  ‘Its murder!’ whispers Egon, hoarsely. He attempts to scramble away.

  ‘Folie de grandeur!’ Porta laughs, in a pleasant voice. ‘Let’s call it pesticide, shall we, you little rat? When we cut off your prick and hand it in to “Alex” they’ll give us a medal! Into the cupboard, you two!’ he orders the Poofs two, half-naked, companions, who are sitting trembling on the sofa. ‘Make any more noise than a tiptoeing tomcat chasing after kitten cunt and we’ll fuck your arseholes up through your brains! Know what that feels like?’

  ‘Know a prayer, do you?’ asks Tiny, with gruff friendliness, slapping Egon with the back of his hand. ‘We’re good enough fellows at ’eart, you know. Wouldn’t like to send a bloke off on ’is last flight without givin’ ’im a chance to sob a prayer first.’

  ‘Let’s talk this over,’ begs Egon, in a hoarse voice. ‘I’ve got the money. Not coming to see you, that was only a misunderstanding!’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course. Mistakes and misunderstandings! They’re the cause of ’alf the troubles of the world,’ sighs Tiny, feelingly. ‘Let’s ’ave your prayer now, just to make sure St. Peter’ll be glad to see you.’

  ‘I don’t know any prayers! I ain’t religious!’ cries Egon, unhappily.