A Quiet Flame

by Philip Kerr

  “You mean the Nazi?” asked the baker.

  Geller looked at me and grinned. “That’s him,” he said.

  With a finger that was all knuckle and dirty nail, as if it belonged to an orangutan that was studying witchcraft, the baker pointed down the track, past a small auto-repair shop, to a two-story blockhouse with no visible windows. “He lives at the villa.”

  We drove a short distance and pulled up between a line of washing and an outhouse, from which Eichmann emerged hurriedly, carrying a newspaper and buttoning his trousers. He was followed by a strong cloacal smell. It was evident he had been alarmed by the sound of the jeep, and the obvious relief he felt that we were not the Argentine military come to arrest and hand him over to a war-crimes tribunal quickly gave way to irritation.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” he said, his lip curling in a way I now regarded as quite characteristic. It was strange, I thought, how one side of his face appeared to be quite normal, even pleasant, while the other side looked twisted and malevolent. It was like meeting Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde at the same moment.

  “I was in Tucumán, so I thought I’d come and see how you are,” I said affably. I opened my bag and took out a carton of Senior Service. “I brought you some cigarettes. They’re English but I figured you wouldn’t mind.”

  Eichmann grunted a thank-you and took the carton. “You’d better come into the villa,” he said grudgingly.

  He pushed open a very tall wooden door that was in need of several licks of green paint, and we stepped inside. From the outside, things did not augur well. Calling that blockhouse a villa was a bit like calling a child’s sandcastle the Schloss Neuschwanstein. Inside, though, things were better. There was some plasterwork on top of the brickwork. The floors were level and covered with flagstones and some cheap Indian rugs. But the small barred windows gave the place a suitably penal atmosphere. Eichmann might have evaded Allied justice, but he was hardly living a life of luxury. A half-naked woman peered out from behind a door. Angrily, Eichmann jerked his head at her and she disappeared again.

  I walked over to one of the windows and looked out at a largish, well-planted garden. There were some hutches containing several rabbits he must have kept for meat and beyond, an old black DeSoto with three wheels. A quick getaway did not seem to be on Eichmann’s mind.

  He collected a large kettle off a cast-iron range and poured hot water into two hollow gourds. “¿Mate?” he asked us.

  “Please,” I said. Since coming to Argentina, I hadn’t tasted the stuff. But everyone in the country drank it.

  He put little metal straws in the gourds and then handed them to us.

  There was sugar in it, but it still tasted bitter, like green tea with a froth on it. Akin to drinking water with a cigarette in it, I thought. But Geller seemed to like the stuff. And so did Eichmann. As soon as Geller had finished his gourd, he handed it over to our host, who added some more hot water and, without changing the straw, drank some himself.

  “So what brings you all the way out here?” he said. “It can’t just be a social call.”

  “I’m working for the SIDE,” I said. “The Perónist Intelligence Service?”

  His eyelid flickered like an almost spent lightbulb. He tried not to let it show, but we all knew what he was thinking. Adolf Eichmann, the SS colonel and close confidant of Reinhard Heydrich, had been reduced to performing hydrological surveys on the other side of nowhere, while I enjoyed a position of some power and influence in a field Eichmann might have considered his own. Gunther, the reluctant SS man and political adversary possessed of the very job that he, Eichmann, should have had. He said nothing. He took a shot at a smile. It looked more like something had got stuck under his bridge.

  “I’m supposed to decide which of our old comrades is worthy of a good-conduct pass,” I said. “You need one to be able to apply for a passport in this country.”

  “I should have expected that loyalty to your blood and your oath as an SS man would oblige you to treat the issue of any such documentation as a mere formality.” He spoke stiffly. Softening somewhat, he added, “After all, we’re all sitting on the same inkblot, are we not?” He finished the mate noisily, like a child sucking up the very last drop of a fizzy drink.

  “On the face of it, that’s true,” I said. “However, the Perónist government is already under considerable pressure from the Americans—”

  “From the Jews, more like,” he said.

  “—to clean up its backyard. While there’s no question that any of us are about to be shown the door, nevertheless there are a few people in government who worry that some of us may be guilty of greater crimes than was originally suspected.” I shrugged and looked at Geller. “I mean, it’s one thing to kill men in the heat of battle. And it’s another to take pleasure in the murders of innocent women and children. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  Eichmann shrugged. “I don’t know about innocent,” he said. “We were exterminating an enemy. Speaking for myself, I didn’t hate the Jews so much. But I don’t regret anything I did. I never committed any crimes. And I never killed anyone. Not even in the heat of battle, as you put it. I was little more than a civil servant. A bureaucrat who only obeyed orders. That was the code we all lived by in the SS. Obedience. Discipline. Blood and honor. If I have any regrets at all, it is that there wasn’t time to finish the job. To kill every Jew in Europe.”

  This was the first time I had ever heard Eichmann speak about the Jewish extermination. And wanting to hear more, I tried to lead him on.

  “I’m glad you mentioned blood and honor,” I said. “Because it seems to me that there were a few who dragged the reputation of the SS down into the dirt.”

  “Quite,” said Geller.

  “A few who exceeded their orders. Who killed for sport and pleasure. Who carried out inhumane medical experiments.”

  “A lot of that has been exaggerated by the Russians,” insisted Eichmann. “Lies told by the Communists to justify their own crimes in Germany. To stop the rest of the world from feeling sorry for Germany. To give the Soviets carte blanche to do whatever they like with the German people.”

  “It wasn’t all lies,” I said. “I’m afraid a lot of it was true, Ricardo. And even if you don’t believe it, the possibility that some of it might be true is what worries the government now. Which is why I’ve been charged to conduct this investigation. Look, Ricardo, I’m not after you. But I’m afraid I can’t regard some SS as old comrades.”

  “We were at war,” said Eichmann. “We were killing an enemy who wanted to kill us. That can get pretty brutal. At a certain level, the human costs are immaterial. What mattered most was making sure that the job got done. Trouble-free deportations. That was my specialty. And believe me, I tried to make things as humane as I could. Gas was seen as the humane alternative to mass shootings. Yes, there were some, perhaps, who went too far, but look here, there’s always some bad barley in the beer. That’s inevitable in any organization. Especially one that achieved what was achieved. And during a war, too. Five million. Can you credit the scale of it? No, I don’t think you can. Either of you. Five million Jews. Liquidated in less than two years. And you’re quibbling about the morality of a few bad apples.”

  “Not me,” I said. “The Argentine government.”

  “What? You want a name, is that it? In return for my good-conduct pass? You want me to play Judas for you?”

  “That’s about the size of it, yes.”

  “I never liked you, Gunther,” said Eichmann, his nose wrinkled with distaste. He tore open the carton of cigarettes and then lit one, with the air of a man who hadn’t had a decent smoke in a long while. Then he sat down at a plain wooden table and studied the smoke from the tip, as if trying to divine guidance from the gods about what to say next.

  “But perhaps there is such a man as you describe,” he said carefully. “Only I want your word that you won’t ever tell him that it was I who informed on him.”

  “You have m
y word on it.”

  “This man, he and I met by chance at a café in the center of Buenos Aires. Not long after we arrived. The ABC café. He told me he’s done very well for himself since he came here. Very well indeed.” Eichmann smiled thinly. “He offered me money. Me. A colonel in the SS, and him a mere captain. Can you imagine it? Patronizing bastard. Him, with all his connections and his family money. Living in the lap of luxury. And me, buried here, in this godforsaken hole.” Eichmann took a near-lethal drag at his cigarette, swallowed, and then shook his head. “He was a cruel man. Still is. I don’t know how he sleeps. I couldn’t. Not in his skin. I saw what he did. Once. A long time ago. It seems so long ago that I must have been a child when it happened. Well, perhaps I was, in a way. But I’ve never forgotten it. No one could. No one human. I first met him in 1942. In Berlin. How I miss Berlin. And then again in 1943. At Auschwitz.” He grinned bitterly. “I don’t miss that place at all.”

  “This captain,” I said. “What’s his name?”

  “He calls himself Gregor. Helmut Gregor.”

  12

  BERLIN, 1932

  I GOT OFF THE TRAIN from Berlin, walked to the end of the platform, handed over my ticket, and then looked around for Paul Herzefelde. There was no sign of him. So I bought some cigarettes and a newspaper and parked myself on a seat near my arrival platform to wait for him. I didn’t spend long with the paper. The election was only two weeks away, and this being Munich, the paper was full of stuff about how the Nazis were going to win. So was the station. Hitler’s stern, disapproving face was everywhere. After thirty minutes, I couldn’t take it any longer. I put the paper in the bin and went out into the fresh air.

  The station was in the west end of the central part of Munich. The Police Praesidium was a ten-minute walk to the east, on Ettstrasse, between Saint Michael’s Church and the Cathedral of Our Lady. It was a newish, handsome building on the site of a former monastery. Outside the main entrance were several stone lions. Inside, I found only rats.

  The desk sergeant was as big as a wrecking ball, and just as helpful. He had a bald head and a waxed mustache like a small German eagle. Every time he moved, his leather belt creaked against his belly like a ship straining on its hawsers. From time to time, he lifted his hand to his mouth and burped. You could smell his breakfast from the front door.

  I tipped my hat politely and showed him my warrant disc.

  “Good morning,” I said.

  “Good morning.”

  “I’m Commissar Gunther, from Berlin Alexanderplatz. To see Commissar Herzefelde. I just arrived at the station. I thought he’d be there to meet me.”

  “Did you now?” He said it in a way that made me want to punch him in the nose. You get a lot of that in Munich.

  “Yes,” I said patiently. “But since he wasn’t, I assumed he’d been delayed and that I’d better come and find him here.”

  “Spoken like a Berlin detective,” he said, without a trace of a smile.

  I nodded patiently and waited for some good manners to kick in. They didn’t.

  “Spare me the sweet talk and tell him I’m here.”

  The sergeant nodded at a polished wooden bench by the front door. “Have a seat,” he said coolly. “Sir. I’ll deal with you in a minute.”

  I went over to the bench and sat down. “I’ll be sure to mention your red-carpet treatment when I see your commissar,” I said.

  “You do that, sir,” he said. “I’ll look forward to it.”

  He wrote something on a piece of paper, rubbed his ham hock of a nose, scratched his ass with his pencil, and then used it to pick his ear. Then he got up, slowly, and put something in a filing cabinet. The telephone rang. He let it ring a couple of times before answering it, listened, took down some details, and then put a sheet of paper into a tray. When the call ended, he looked at the clock above the door. Then he yawned.

  “If this is how you look after the polenta in this town, I’d hate to be a criminal.” I lit a cigarette.

  He didn’t like that. He pointed at a No Smoking sign with his pencil. I stubbed it out. I didn’t want to wait there all morning. After a while, he picked up the phone and spoke, in a lowered voice. Once or twice he flicked his eyes my way, so I got the idea he was probably talking about me. So when he finished the call, I lit another cigarette. He tapped the pencil on the desk in front of his belly and, having received my attention, pointed at the No Smoking sign again. This time I ignored him. He didn’t like that, either.

  “No smoking,” he growled.

  “No kidding.”

  “You know what the trouble is with you Berlin cops?”

  “If you could point to Berlin on a map, I might be interested, fat boy.”

  “You’re all Jew-lovers.”

  “Ah, now we’re getting to it.” I blew some smoke his way and grinned. “We’re not all Jew-lovers, in the Berlin police, as a matter of fact. Some of us are a bit like you, Sergeant. Ignorant. Bigoted. And a disgrace to the uniform.”

  He tried to outstare me for minute or two. Then he said, “The Jews are our misfortune. It’s time the polenta in Berlin woke up to that fact.”

  “Well, that’s an interesting sentiment. Did you just think of it yourself, or was it written on the skin of the banana you ate for breakfast?”

  A detective arrived. I knew he must be a detective because he wasn’t dragging his knuckles on the floor. He glanced at the ape on the desk, who jerked his head my way. The detective came over and stood in front of me, looking sheepish. It might have worked, too, if his face hadn’t looked so peculiarly wolflike. His eyes were blue and his nose was more of a muzzle, but mostly it was because of his eyebrows, which met in the middle, and his canine teeth, which seemed slightly longer than was normal. But you get a lot of that in Munich as well.

  “Commissar Gunther?”

  “Yes. Is something wrong?”

  “I’m Criminal Secretary Christian Schramma.” We shook hands. “I’m afraid I have some bad news. Commissar Herzefelde is dead. He was murdered last night. Shot three times in the back as he left a bar in Sendling.”

  “Do you know who did it?”

  “No, as you may know, he’d had several death threats.”

  “Because he was Jewish. Of course.” I glanced the desk sergeant’s way. “There’s hatred and stupidity everywhere. Even in the police force.”

  Schramma remained silent.

  “I’m very sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know him for very long, but Paul was a good man.”

  We went up to the detectives’ room. It was a warm day, and through the open windows you could hear the sound of children playing in the yard of the nearby Gymnasium. Human life never sounded so lively.

  “I saw your name in his police diary,” said Schramma. “But he didn’t think to write down a telephone number or where you were from, otherwise I would have called you.”

  “That’s all right. He was about to share some information on a murder he’d been working on. Elizabeth Bremer?”

  Schramma nodded.

  “We had a similar case in Berlin,” I explained. “I came down here to read the files and find out just how similar they were.”

  He bit his lip uncomfortably, which did little to alter my first impression of him. He looked like a werewolf.

  “Look, I’m really sorry to tell you this after you’ve come all the way from Berlin. But all Paul’s case files have been sent upstairs. To the government counselor’s office. When a police officer gets killed, it’s standard procedure to assume it might have something to do with a case he was working on. I seriously doubt that you’re going to be able to see those files for a while. Maybe as long as a couple of weeks.”

  It was my turn to bite my lip. “I see. Tell me, did you work with Paul?”

  “A while ago. I’m not up to date with his current cases. Of late, he mostly worked on his own. He preferred it that way.”

  “He preferred it or other detectives preferred it?”

  “
I think that’s a little unfair, sir.”

  “Is it?”

  Schramma didn’t answer. He lit a cigarette, flicked the match out of the open window, and sat on the corner of a desk that I assumed must be his own. On the opposite side of the big room, a detective with a face like Schmeling’s was questioning a suspect. Every time he got an answer, he looked pained, as if Jack Sharkey had hit him below the belt. It was a nice technique. I felt the cop was going to win on a disqualification, the same way Schmeling did. Other detectives came and went. A few of them had loud laughs, and louder suits. You get a lot of that in Munich. In Berlin, we all wore black armbands when a cop got killed. But not in Munich. A different kind of armband—a red one with a black Sanskrit cross in the middle—looked a lot more probable. It didn’t look like anyone was about to shed any tears over the death of Paul Herzefelde.

  “Could I see his desk?”

  Schramma got up slowly and we walked over to a gray steel desk in a far-flung corner of the office, which was surrounded with a wall of files and bookcases, like a one-man ghetto. The desktop was clear, but his photographs were still on the wall. I bent over to take a closer look at them. Herzefelde’s wife and family in one. Him wearing a military uniform and decoration in the other. On the wall, next to this photograph, was the faint outline of a graffito that had been rubbed out: the Star of David and the words “Jews Out.” I traced the outline with my finger just to make sure Schramma knew I’d seen it.

  “That’s a hell of a way to honor a man who got himself a First Class Iron Cross,” I said loudly, and glanced around the detectives’ room. “Three bullets and some cave art.”

  Silence descended on the room. Typing stopped. Voices quietened. Even the children playing outside seemed to cease their noise for a moment. Everyone was now looking at me, like I was the ghost of Walther Rathenau.