Field Gray

16

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 in spite of the fact that 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 23. Consequently, although quite luxurious in many respects—there were, after all, several senior Wehrmacht generals aboard—the train we traveled in was not the Amerika, 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 southwest 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 lieutenant I half recognized 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 organized 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 was 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 favor.”

“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 is 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 Lutèce, 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 Michèle 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 offer him a job. 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 forty 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. “Nighttime 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 Twenty-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. The madame, Mademoiselle 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 Hôtel 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 in 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 Métro 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 one another’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 around, 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; and, calling a maid over to the window, 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 favorably contrasting 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.

I wasn’t fond of the French. The war—the Great War—was much too recent in my mind to make me like them, but I felt sorry for them now that they were second-class citizens in their own country. They were forbidden the best hotels and restaurants; Maxim’s was under German management; on the Paris Métro, first-class carriages were reserved for Germans; and the French, for whom good food was virtually a religion, found it was rationed and there were long lines for bread, wine, meat, and cigarettes. Of course, nothing was in short supply if you were German. And I enjoyed an excellent dinner at Lapérouse—a nineteenth-century restaurant that looked more like a brothel than the brothels.

The next day, Paul Kestner was waiting for me in the Lutetia lobby, as arranged. We shook hands like old friends and admired each other’s tailoring. German officers did a lot of that in 1940, especially in Paris, where fine clothes seemed to matter more.

Kestner was tall and thin and round-shouldered like someone who had spent a lot of time behind a desk. His head was almost completely hairless apart from the dark eyebrows that softened his solidly cut features. It was a face engraved with integrity, and it was hard to believe that a man with a jaw as square as the Brandenburg Gate could have betrayed the police service and then me with such impunity. Kestner’s was a head that belonged on a Swiss banknote, only I’d spent a large part of the rail journey from Berlin considering the idea of putting a bullet in it. Heydrich’s myrmidons had done their homework well. The file he’d handed me in his car contained a copy of the anonymous letter Kestner had sent to the Jew desk denouncing me as a mischling, as well as a sample of Kestner’s own identical handwriting, which, conveniently, he had also signed. There was even a photograph taken in March 1925—before he’d joined the Berlin police—of Kestner wearing the uniform of a Communist Party cadre and aboard a KPD election bus, with a placard over his shoulder on which was printed “You Must Elect Thalmann.” At the very same moment I smiled and shook Kestner’s hand and talked about the old times we shared, I wanted to punch his teeth in, and the only thing that seemed likely to stop me from doing it was the affection I still held for his little sister.

“How’s Traudl?” I asked. “Has she finished medical school?”

“Yes. She’s a doctor now. Working for something called the Charitable Foundation for Health and Institutional Care. Some government-funded clinic in Austria.”

“You’ll have to give me the address,” I said. “So that I can send her a postcard from Paris.”

“It’s the Schloss Hartheim,” he explained. “In Alkoven, near Linz.”

“Not too near Linz, I hope. Hitler’s from Linz.”

“Same old Bernie Gunther.”

“Not quite. You’re forgetting this pirate hat I’m wearing now.” I tapped the silver skull and crossbones on my gray officer’s cap.

“That reminds me.” Kestner glanced at his wristwatch. “We have an eleven-o’clock appointment with Colonel Knochen at the Hôtel du Louvre.”

“He’s not here at the Lutetia?”

“No. Colonel Rudolf of the Abwehr is in charge here. Knochen likes to run his own show. The SD is mostly at the Hôtel du Louvre, on the other side of the river.”

“I wonder why they put me here.”

“Possibly to piss Rudolf off,” said Kestner. “Since almost certainly he knows nothing about your mission. By the way, Bernie, what is your mission? The Prinz Albrechtstrasse has been rather secretive about what you’re doing in Paris.”

“You remember that communist who murdered the two policemen in Berlin in 1931? Erich Mielke?”

To his credit, Kestner didn’t even flinch at the mention of this name.

“Vaguely,” he said.

“Heydrich thinks he’s in a French concentration camp somewhere in the south of France. My orders are to find him, get him back to Paris, and then arrange his transport back to Berlin, where he’s to stand trial.”

“Nothing else?”

“What else could there be?”

“Only that we could have organized that on our own, without your having to come here to Paris. You don’t even speak French.”

“You forget, Paul. I’ve met Mielke. If he’s changed his name, as seems likely, I might be able to identify him.”

“Yes, of course. I remember now. We just missed him in Hamburg, didn’t we?”

“That’s right.”

“Seems like a lot of effort for just one man. Are you sure there’s nothing else?”

“What Heydrich wants, Heydrich gets.”

“Point made,” said Kestner. “Well. Shall we walk? It’s a fine day.”

“Is it safe?”

Kestner laughed. “From who? The French?” He laughed again. “Let me tell you something about the French, Bernie. They know that it’s in their interest to get on with us Fridolins. That’s what they call us. Quite a lot of them are happy we’re here. Christ, they’re even more anti-Semitic than we are.” He shook his head. “No. You’ve got nothing to worry about from the French, my friend.”

Unlike Kestner, I didn’t speak a word of French, but it was easy to find your way around Paris. There were German direction signs on every street corner. It was a pity I didn’t have a similar arrangement inside my own head; it might have made it easier to decide what to do about Kestner.

Kestner’s French was, to my Fridolin ears, perfect, which is to say he sounded like a Frenchman. His father was a chemist who, disgusted by the Dreyfus affair, had left Alsace to live in Berlin. In those days, Berlin had been a more tolerant place than France. Paul Kestner had been just five years old when he came to live in Berlin, but for the rest of his life his mother always spoke to him in French.

“That’s how I got this posting,” he said as we walked north to the Seine.

“I didn’t think it was because of your love of art.”

The Hôtel du Louvre on the rue de Rivoli was older than the Lutetia but not dissimilar, with four façades and several hundred rooms; with an international reputation for luxury, it was a natural choice for the Gestapo and the SD. Security was every bit as tight as at the Lutetia, and we were obliged to sign in at a makeshift guardroom inside the front door. An SS orderly escorted us through the lobby and up a sweeping staircase to the public rooms, where the SD had established some temporary offices. Kestner and I were ushered into a tasteful salon with a rich red carpet and a series of hand-painted murals. We sat down at a long mahogany table and waited. A few minutes passed before three SD officers entered the room—one of whom I recognized.

The last time I had seen Herbert Hagen had been in 1937 in Cairo, where he and Adolf Eichmann were attempting to make contact with Haj Amin, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. Hagen had been an SS sergeant then and a rather incompetent one. Now he was a major and aide to Colonel Helmut Knochen, who was a lugubrious officer of about thirty—about the same age as Hagen. The third officer, also a major, was older than the other two, with thick, horn-rimmed glasses and a face that was as thin and gray as the piping on his cap. His name was Karl Bömelburg. But it was Hagen who took charge of the meeting and came swiftly to the point without any reference to our former meeting. That suited me just fine.

“General Heydrich has ordered us to provide you with all available assistance in visiting the refugee camps at Le Vernet and Gurs,” he said. “And in facilitating the arrest of a wanted communist murderer. But you will appreciate that these camps are still under the control of the French police.”

“I was led to believe that they would cooperate with our extradition request,” I said.

“That’s true,” said Knochen. “Even so, under the terms of the armistice signed on June 22 those refugee camps are in the non-occupied zone. That means we have to pay lip service to the idea that in that part of France, at least, they remain in charge of their own affairs. It’s a way of avoiding hostility and resistance.”

“In other words,” said Major Bömelburg, “we get the French to do our dirty work.”

“What else are they good for?” said Hagen.

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “The food at Lapérouse is quite spectacular.”

“Good point, Captain,” said Bömelburg.

“We shall have to involve the Préfecture de Police in your mission,” said Knochen. “So that the French might persuade themselves that they are preserving French institutions and the French way of life. But I tell you, gentlemen, that the loyalty of the French police is indispensable to us. Hagen? Who’s the Franzi that the maison has put up as liaison?” He looked my way. “The maison is what we call the flics in the rue de Lutèce. The Préfecture de Police. You should see the building, Captain Gunther. It’s as big as the Reichstag.”

“The Marquis de Brinon, sir,” said Hagen.

“Oh yes. You know, for a republic, the French are awfully impressed by aristocratic titles. They’re almost as bad as the Austrians in that respect. Hagen, see if the Marquis can suggest anyone to help the captain.”

Hagen looked awkward. “Actually, sir, we’re not entirely certain that the Marquis isn’t married to a Jew.”

Knochen frowned. “Do we have to worry about that sort of thing now? We’ve only just got here.” He shook his head. “Besides, it’s not his wife who’s the liaison officer, is it?”

Hagen shook his head.

“All in good time we shall see who is a Jew and who isn’t a Jew, but right now it seems to me the priority is the apprehension of a communist fugitive from German justice. A murderer. Isn’t that right, Captain Gunther?”

“That’s right, sir. He murdered two policemen.”

“As it happens,” said Knochen, “this department is already in the process of drawing up a list of wanted war criminals to present to the French. And in the establishment of a special joint commission—the Kuhnt Commission—to oversee these matters in the unoccupied zone. A German officer, Captain Geissler, has already gone down to Vichy to begin the work of this commission. And, in particular, to hunt for Herschel Grynszpan. You will perhaps recall that it was Grynszpan, a German-Polish Jew, who murdered Ernst vom Rath here, in Paris, in November 1938, and whose actions provoked such a strong outpouring of feeling in Germany.”

“I remember it very well, sir,” I said. “I live on Fasanenstrasse. Just off the Ku-damm. The synagogue at the end of my street was burned down during that strong outpouring of feeling you were talking about, Herr Colonel.”

“A representative of the German Foreign Ministry, Herr Dr. Grimm, is also on Grynszpan’s trail,” said Knochen. “It seems that the little Jew was here in Paris, in the Fresnes Prison, until early June, when the French decided to evacuate all of the prisoners to Orléans. From there he was sent to prison in Bourges. However, he didn’t arrive there. The convoy of buses transporting the prisoners was attacked by German aircraft, and after that the picture is rather confused.”

“As a matter of fact, sir,” said Bömelburg, “we rather think that Grynszpan might have gone to Toulouse.”

“If that’s the case, then what’s Geissler doing in Vichy?”

“Setting up this Kuhnt Commission,” said Bömelburg. “To be fair to Geissler, for a while there was also a rumor that Grynszpan was in Vichy, too. But Toulouse now looks like a better bet.”

“Bömelburg? Karl. Correct me if I’m wrong,” said Knochen. “But I seem to recall that this French concentration camp at Le Vernet—where Captain Gunther’s quarry may be imprisoned—is in the Ariège département, in the mid-Pyrenees. That’s near Toulouse, is it not?”

“Quite near, sir,” agreed Bömelburg. “Toulouse is in the neighboring department of Haute-Garonne and about sixty kilometers north of Le Vernet.”

“Then it strikes me,” said Knochen, “that you and Captain Gunther should both get yourselves to Toulouse as quickly as possible. Perhaps the day after tomorrow. Bömelburg? You can remain in Toulouse and look for Grynszpan while Gunther here travels further south, to Le Vernet. Have the Marquis find someone to go with Gunther and Kestner to smooth over any ruffled French feathers. Meanwhile, I shall send a telegram to Philippe le Gaga in Vichy and inform him of what is happening. I daresay that by the time you get down there we will have a clearer idea of who to arrest and who to leave where they are.”

“Any trains running down that way yet, sir?” This was Kestner.

“I’m afraid not.”

“Pity. That’s rather a long drive. About six hundred kilo meters. You know, it might be an idea to take a leaf out of the Führer’s book and fly down there from Le Bourget. In a couple of hours we could be in Biarritz, where a motorized detachment from the SS-VT or secret GFP could take us on to Le Vernet and Toulouse.”

“Agreed.” Knochen looked at Hagen. “See to it. And find out if there are there any motorized detachments of SS operating that far south.”

“Yes, sir, there are,” said Hagen. “In which case the only question that remains is whether these men should be wearing uniforms when they cross the demarcation line into the French zone.”

“An officer’s uniform might lend us more authority, sir,” argued Kestner.

“Gunther? What do you think?” asked Knochen.

“I agree with Captain Kestner. In a surrender situation, it’s as well to be reminded that the surrender began with a war. After 1918, I think the French would do well to learn a little humility. If they’d treated us better at Versailles, then we might not be here at all. So I don’t see any sense in trying to sugarcoat the pill they have to swallow. There’s no getting away from the fact that they just got their arses kicked. The sooner they recognize it, the sooner we can all go home. But I came here to arrest a man who murdered two policemen. And I don’t much care if some Franzi doesn’t care for my manners while I’m doing it. Since I put on a uniform I don’t much care for them myself. I can take the uniform off again and pretend to be something I’m not in order to get the job done, but I can’t pretend to be diplomatic and charming. I never was one for French kissing. So to hell with their feelings, I say.”

“Bravo, Captain Gunther,” said Knochen. “That was a fine speech.”

Maybe it was and maybe I even believed some of it, too. One thing I said was certainly true: The sooner I went home, the better I was going to feel about a lot of things, especially myself. Mixing with anti-Semites like Herbert Hagen reminded me just why I’d never become a Nazi. And French victory or no French victory, I wouldn’t ever be able to overcome my instinctive loathing of Adolf Hitler.

That afternoon I went to see Les Invalides. It was a very Nazi-looking monument. The front door had more gold than the Valley of the Kings, but the atmosphere was that of a public swimming bath. The mausoleum itself was a piece of mahogany-colored marble that resembled an enormous tea caddy. Hitler had visited Les Invalides just a couple of weeks before. And I can’t have been the only person who wished that it had been he and not the Emperor Napoleon who was inside the six coffins that were contained in that overblown mausoleum. After his escape from Elba, I suppose they were worried the little monster might escape from his grave, like Dracula. Maybe they’d even put a stake through his heart just to be on the safe side. Burying Hitler in pieces looked like a better bet. With the Eiffel Tower through his heart.

Like every other German in Paris that summer, I’d brought a camera with me. So I walked around and took some photographs. In the Parc du Champ de Mars, I photographed some German soldiers getting directions from a gendarme. When he saw me the gendarme saluted smartly, as if a German officer’s uniform really did command authority. But the way I saw it, the French police had an attitude problem. They didn’t seem to mind the fact that they’d been defeated. Back in Germany, I’d seen cops look less happy when they failed to get elected to the Prussian Police Officers’ Association.

I enjoyed another solitary dinner in a quiet restaurant on the rue de Varennes before returning to the Lutetia. The hotel was a mixture of Art Nouveau and Art Deco, but the swastika flag that appeared on the sinuous, broken-art pediment below the Lutetia’s name was the clearest indication of the neobrutalism that afflicted its guests, me included.

The bar was busy and surprisingly inviting. A Welte-Mignon pianola was playing a selection of maudlin German tunes. I ordered a cognac and smoked a French cigarette and avoided the eye of the reptilian lieutenant who’d been on the train from Berlin. When he looked like he was headed my way, I finished my brandy and left. I rode the elevator up to the seventh floor and walked along the curving corridor to my room. A maid came out of another room and smiled. To my surprise, she spoke good German.

“Would you like me to turn down your bed linen for the night, sir?”

“Thanks,” I said and, opening my door, complimented her German.

“I’m Swiss. I grew up speaking French and German and Italian. My father runs a hotel in Bern. I came to Paris to get some experience.”

“Then we have something in common,” I told her. “Before the war I worked at the Hotel Adlon, in Berlin.”

She was impressed with that, which was of course my intention, as she was not without her charms. A little homely perhaps. But I was in the mood to think well of home and homely-looking girls. And when she finished her duties, I gave her some German money and the rest of my cigarettes for no other reason than I wanted her to think better of me than I thought of myself. Especially the man I saw in the mirror on the front of the wardrobe. In some pathetic little fantasy I imagined her coming back in the small hours, knocking on my door, and climbing into my bed. As things worked out, this wasn’t so far from the mark. But that was later on, and when she left I wished I hadn’t given her my last cigarettes.

“Well, at least you won’t fall asleep with a cigarette in your hand and set the bed on fire, Gunther,” I said, with one eye on the brass fire extinguisher that stood in the corner of the room next to the door. I closed the window, undressed, and went to bed. For a while I lay there feeling a little drunk, staring up at the blank ceiling and wondering if I should have gone to the Maison Chabanais after all. And perhaps I might even have got up and gone there if it hadn’t been for the thought of putting on my riding boots again. Sometimes morality is just a corollary of laziness. Besides, it felt good to be back in the world of grand-hotel luxury. The bed was a good one. Sleep quickly came my way and put an end to all thoughts of what I might have been missing at the Maison Chabanais. A deep sleep that became unnaturally deeper as the night progressed and almost put an end to all thoughts of Maison Chabanais and Paris and my mission. The kind of sleep that almost put an end to me.