Field Gray

10

It’s one of life’s little jokes that whenever you think things can hardly get any worse they usually do.

I must have fallen asleep again, and for a moment I thought it was just another bad dream. I felt several pairs of hands upon me, turning me over onto my stomach and ripping the pajama jacket off my back; and then I was simultaneously hooded and handcuffed. As the manacles pinched my wrists painfully I cried out, and for this sound I received a punch on the head.

“Quiet,” murmured a voice—an American voice. “Or you’ll get another.”

The hands, which wore rubber gloves, hauled me onto my feet. Someone dragged down my pajama trousers and I was dragged and then marched out of my cell, along the landing, and down the stairs. We went outside briefly and crossed the yard. Doors opened and slammed behind us, and after that I quickly lost track of where I was beyond the obvious fact that I was still within the walls of Landsberg. I felt a hand push down on top of my hooded head.

“Sit down,” said a voice.

I sat, and that would have been fine except that there was no chair and I heard several loud guffaws as I lay sprawled in pain on the stone-flagged floor.

“Did you think of that one all by yourself?” I said. “Or did you get the idea from a movie?”

“I told you to shut up.” Someone kicked me in the small of my back, not so hard as to cause any damage but enough to shut me up. “Speak when spoken to.”

More hands picked me up again and dumped me onto a chair, and this time it was there.

Then I heard lots of footsteps leaving the room and a door closing but not being locked, and I might have supposed myself alone but for the fact that I could smell the smoke from a cigarette. I would have asked for one myself if I thought I could have smoked it with a hood over my head. There was that and the chance I might get kicked or punched again. So I stayed quiet, telling myself that despite their threats this was the opposite of what they wanted. Unless you’re going to put a man on a gallows trapdoor and hang him, you hood him for only one reason: to help soften him up and make him talk. The only thing was, I couldn’t imagine what they wanted me to say that I hadn’t already told them.

Ten minutes passed. Maybe longer. But probably less. Time starts to expand when they take your light away. I closed my eyes. That way it was me in control and not them. Even if they took the hood off now I wouldn’t see anything. I took a deep breath and let it out as steadily as I could, trying to get ahold of my fear. Telling myself I’d been in tighter spots. That after the mud of Amiens in 1918 this was easy. There weren’t even any shells bursting overhead. I was still wearing four limbs and my balls. A hood was nothing. They wanted me not to see anything, then that was fine with me. I’d lived through black and sightless days before; they don’t come much blacker than Amiens. The black day of the German army, Ludendorff called it, and not without justification. What else do you call it when you’re facing a force of four hundred fifty tanks and thirteen divisions of Anzacs? With more arriving all the time.

I heard a match and caught the smoke of another cigarette. A chain-smoker, perhaps? Or someone else? I took a deep breath and tried to get ahold of some smoke in my own lungs. American tobacco, that much was clear from the sweet smell. Probably they put sugar in it the way they put sugar in almost everything—in coffee, in liquor, on fresh fruit. Maybe they put sugar on their wives, too, and if the men were anything to go by, they probably needed a little sweetening.

Not long after my arrival at Landsberg, Hermann Priess, the former commander of the offending SS troop at Malmédy, during the Battle of the Bulge, had told me about this kind of rough treatment at the hands of the Americans. Before their trial for the murder of ninety U.S. servicemen, Priess, Peiper, and seventy-four other men had been hooded and beaten and forced to sign confessions. The whole incident had caused quite a stink at the International Court of Justice and in the U.S. Senate. Since I hadn’t yet been beaten, it was perhaps a little too early to say that the American military was incapable of learning a lesson in human rights, but underneath my hood, I wasn’t holding my breath.

“Congratulations, Gunther. That’s the longest anyone wearing a hood in here has ever kept his mouth shut.”

The man was speaking German, quite good German, too, but I was sure it wasn’t Silverman or Earp. For the moment I kept my mouth shut. And what was there to say? That’s the thing about being interrogated: You always know that eventually someone is going to ask you a question.

“I’ve been reading over the case notes,” said the voice. “Your case notes. The ones made by Silverman and Earp. By the way, they won’t be joining us for the rest of your questioning. They don’t approve of the way we do things.”

All the time he was speaking, I was tensed for the blow I felt sure was coming. One of the other prisoners told me the Amis had beaten him for a whole hour in Schwabisch Hall in an effort to get him to incriminate Jochen Peiper.

“Relax, Gunther. No one is going to hit you. So long as you cooperate, you’ll be just fine. The hood’s for my protection. Outside of this place it might be awkward for both of us if you ever recognized me. You see, I work for the Central Intelligence Agency.”

“And what about your friend? The other man in here? Does he work for the CIA as well?”

“You’ve got good ears, Gunther, I’ll say that for you,” said the other Ami. “Maybe that’s why you’ve lived so long.” His German was good, too. “Yes, I’m also with the CIA.”

“Congratulations. That must make you both very proud.”

“No, no. Congratulations to you, Gunther. Silverman and Earp have cleared you of any criminal wrongdoing.” This was the first voice speaking now. “They’re satisfied that you didn’t murder anyone. At least not by the inflated standard of everyone else who’s in here.” He laughed. “I know. That’s not saying much. But there it is. As far as Uncle Sam is concerned, you’re not a war criminal.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” I said. “If it wasn’t for these handcuffs, I might punch the air.”

“They said you had a smart mouth. And they’re not wrong. They’re just a little naïve, perhaps. About you, I mean.”

“Over the years,” said the other man, “you’ve caused us quite a few problems. Do you know that?”

“I’m pleased to hear it.”

“In Garmisch-Partenkirchen. In Vienna. As a matter of fact, you and I have met before. In the military hospital at the Stiftskaserne?”

“You didn’t speak German then,” I said.

“Actually, I did. But it suited me to let you and that American army officer, Roy Shields, think otherwise.”

“I remember you. Like it was yesterday.”

“Sure you do.”

“And let’s not forget our mutual friend, Jonathan Jacobs.”

“How is he? Dead, I hope.”

“No. But he’s still adamant you tried to kill him. Apparently, he found a box full of anopheles mosquitoes in the backseat of his Buick. Fortunately for him, they were all dead of cold.”

“Pity.”

“German winters can be brutal.”

“Not brutal enough, it would seem,” I said. “Almost ten years after the war, and you’re still here.”

“It’s a different kind of war now.”

“We’re all on the same side.”

“Sure,” I said. “I know that. But if this is how you treat your friends, I’m beginning to see why the Russians went over to the other side.”

“It wouldn’t be sensible to get smart with us, Gunther. Not in your position. We don’t like wise guys.”

“I always thought that being wise was a useful part of intelligence.”

“Doing what you’re told when you’re told is of greater value in our work.”

“You disappoint me.”

“That’s of no real consequence beside the fact that you don’t disappoint us.”

“I can feel that. I can’t feel my hands, but I can feel that. But I should warn you. I might be wearing a hood, but I’ve seen your cards. You want something from me. And since it can’t be my body, it must be because you think I possess some information that’s important to you. And believe me, it won’t sound the same if you’ve just kicked my teeth in.”

“There are other things we can do to loosen your tongue, besides kicking your teeth in.”

“Sure. And I can do fiction as well as nonfiction. You won’t even see the join. Look, the war is over now. I’m more than willing to tell you whatever you want to know. But you’ll find I respond a lot better to sugar bread than to the whip. So how about you take off these hand irons and find me some clothes? You’ve made your point.”

The two CIA agents were silent for a minute. I imagined one nodding at the other, who was probably shaking his head and mouthing a very clear “No” like a couple of gossipy old women. Then one of them laughed.

“Did you see this guy bring a case full of samples in here?”

“A regular Fuller Brush man, isn’t he?”

“Red Skelton with a bag over his head. Still trying to make a sale.”

“Not buying, huh?” I said. “Too bad. Maybe I ought to speak to the man of the house.”

“I don’t think a bag over his head was enough.”

“It’s not too late for a noose. Maybe we should just hand him over to the Ivans and have done with it.”

“Aw, look, he’s stopped talking now.”

“Did we get your attention, Red?”

“You don’t want brushes,” I said. “Okay. So why don’t you tell me what you do want?”

“When we’re ready, Gunther, and not before.”

“My friend here could tear a phone book in half, but he prefers this as a demonstration of our power over you. It’s a lot less effort, and more than just seeing the power of the spirit, you can feel it, too. We wouldn’t want you walking out of here and telling all your Nazi friends how soft we are.”

“We worked it out. People were more afraid of the Ivans than they were of us.”

“So you decided to be more like them,” I said. “To play just as rough as they do. Sure, I get it.”

“That’s right, Gunther. Which brings us back to brushes. Or rather, one particular brush.”

“A name you mentioned to Silverman and Earl. Erich Mielke.”

“I remember. What about him?”

“They formed the distinct impression that you knew him.”

“We’ve met. So what?”

“You must have known him quite well.”

“How did you figure that out?”

“You were looking out of a window at Erhard Milch when he was being released from the front gate. How far is that?”

“Sixty, seventy feet. You must have good eyesight, Gunther.”

“For reading I wear glasses,” I said.

“You can have them. When you sign your confession.”

“What confession?”

“The one you’re going to sign, Gunther.”

“I thought you said that Silverman and Earp had cleared me.”

“They did. This is our Ohio Casualty policy. It adds fidelity and surety to whatever you tell us about Erich Mielke.”

“That means we own your ass, Gunther.”

“What’s in this confession?”

“Does it matter?”

He had a point. They could say anything they wanted and I’d have to like it. “All right. I’ll sign it.”

“You took that in your stride.”

“I used to be a tall man in a circus. Besides, I’ve been walking around for a while now and I’m tired. I just want to go home and give my long legs a rest.”

“How about you give us a different act? Like Mr. Memory.”

“You haven’t yet told me why you’re so interested in him,” I said. “Which means I don’t know what to leave in or to leave out.”

“All of it,” said the other. “We want all of it. Every detail. We’ll get to why later.”

“You want the whole of Leviticus? Or just Mielke?”

“Let’s go back to the beginning.”

“Genesis, then. Sure. Darkness was upon the face of Berlin. For me, at any rate. And Walter Ulbricht said let there be some communist thugs; and Adolf Hitler said let there be some Nazi thugs, too. And Chancellor Brüning said let the cops try to keep these two sides apart. And God said why don’t you give the cops something a little easier than that to do? Because the evening and the morning were just one thing after another. Trouble. And the name of the river was the Spree and we were fishing bodies out of it every day. One day a communist and the next day a Nazi. And some men looked at that and said that it was good. As long as they’re killing each other, then that’s fine, isn’t it? Me, I believed in the Republic and in the rule of law. But a lot of cops were Nazis and were not ashamed. From that moment on, you might say, Berlin and Germany were finished and all the host of them.” I sighed. “I forget. Didn’t you know? That’s our national pastime in Germany.”

“So remember.”

“Give me a minute here. This is twenty-three years ago we’re talking about now. You just don’t cough that up like a fur ball.”

“Nineteen thirty-one.”

“An unlucky year for Germany. There were, let’s see, how many? Four million unemployed in Germany? And a banking crisis. Austrian Kreditanstalt had collapsed, what, yes, a couple of weeks before. I remember now. That was May eleventh. We were staring ruin in the face. Which is all the Nazis were waiting for, I suppose. To take advantage of that. Yes, things were bad. But not for Mielke. His luck was about to take a turn for the better. Got your notebooks handy?”

“Like I was your girl Friday.”