A German Requiem

The sky was grey by the time I got back to my rooms. I heard a handful of rain against the french windows, and seconds later there was a short flash and a huge clap of thunder that sent the pigeons on my terrace flying for cover. I stood and watched the storm as it rocked the trees and flooded the drains, discharging the atmosphere of all its surplus electrical energy until the air was clear and comfortable again.

Ten minutes later the birds were singing in the trees, as if in celebration of the purgative squall. There seemed much to envy them in this swift climatic cure, and I wished the pressure I felt on my own nerves could have been as easily resolved. Trying to keep one step ahead of all the lies, my own included, I was rapidly coming to the end of my own ingenuity, and I was in danger of losing the tempo of the whole affair. Not to mention my life.

It was about eight o'clock when I called Belinsky at Sacher's, a hotel on Philharmonikerstrasse requisitioned by the military. I thought it might be too late to catch him, but he was there. He sounded relaxed, like he'd known all along that the Org would take his bait.

'I said I'd call,' I reminded him. 'It's a bit late, but I've been busy.'

'No problem. Did they buy it? The information?'

'Damn near took my hand off. K/nig drove me to a house in Grinzing. Possibly it's their headquarters here in Vienna, I'm not sure. It's certainly grand enough.'

'Good. Did you see anything of Mnller?'

'No. But I saw someone else.'

'Oh? And who was that?' Belinsky's voice got cool.

'Arthur Nebe.'

'Nebe? Are you sure of that?' He was excited now.

'Of course I'm sure. I knew Nebe before the war. I thought he was dead. But this afternoon we spoke for almost an hour. He wants me to help K/nig find our dentist friend, and to go back to Grinzing for a meeting tomorrow morning to discuss your Russian's love letters. I've a hunch that Mnller's going to be there.'

'How do you make that out?'

'Nebe said that there would be someone there who specialized in all matters relating to the MVD.'

'Yes, coming from Arthur Nebe that description might well fit Mnller. What time is this meeting?'

'Ten o'clock.'

'That only gives me tonight to get things organized. Let me think for a minute.'

He was silent for so long that I wondered if he was still on the line. But then I heard him take a deep breath. 'How far is the house from the road?'

'Twenty or thirty metres at the front and the north side. Behind the house to the south is a vineyard. I couldn't tell you how far the road is on that side.

There's a row of trees between the house and the vineyard. Some outbuildings as well.' I gave him directions to the house as best I remembered them.

'All right,' he said briskly. 'Here's what we'll do. After ten, I'll start to have my men surround the place at a discreet distance. If Mnller is there, you signal to us and we'll close in and pick him up. That's going to be the difficult part because they'll be watching you closely. While you were there, did you happen to use the lavatory?'

'No, but I walked past one on the first floor. If the meeting is in the library where I met Nebe, as I imagine it will be, that will be the one in use. It faces north, towards Josefstadt and the road. And there's a window, with a beige roller blind. Perhaps I could use the blind to signal.'

There was another short silence. Then he said: 'Twenty minutes past the hour, or as near as you can manage, you go to the music-room. When you're in there you pull the blind down and count for five seconds, and then push it up for five seconds. Do it three times. I'll be watching the place through binoculars, and when I see your signal I'll sound the car horn three times. That will be the signal for my men to move in. Then you rejoin the meeting, sit tight and wait for the cavalry.'

'It sounds simple enough. A bit too simple really.'

'Look, kraut, I would suggest that you hang your ass out of the window and whistle Dixie but that might attract attention.' He gave an irritated sort of sigh. 'A swoop like this needs a lot of paperwork, Gunther. I have to work out code names and get all kinds of special authorizations for a major field operation. And then there's an investigation if the whole thing turns out to be a false alarm. I hope you're right about Mnller. You know, I'm going to be up all night arranging this little party.'

'That really knocks over the heap,' I said. 'I'm the one on the beach and you're bitching about some sand in the oil. Well, I'm really blue about your damned paperwork.'

Belinsky laughed. 'Come on, kraut. Don't get a hot throat about it. I just meant that it would be nice if we could be sure that Mnller will be there. Be reasonable. We still don't know for sure that he's part of the Org's set-up in Vienna.'

'Sure we do,' I lied. 'This morning I went to the police prison and showed Emil Becker one of Mnller's snapshots. He identified him immediately as the man who was with K/nig when he asked Becker to try and find Captain Linden. Unless Mnller is just sweet on K/nig, that means he must be part of the Org's Vienna section.'

'Shit,' said Belinsky, 'why didn't I think of doing that? It's so simple. He's certain it was Mnller?'

'No doubt whatsoever.' I strung him along like that for a while until I was sure of him. 'All right, slow your blood down. As a matter of fact, Becker didn't identify him at all. But he had seen the photograph before. Traudl Braunsteiner showed it to him. I just wanted to make sure it wasn't you who gave it to her.'

'You still don't trust me yet, do you, kraut?'

'If I'm going to walk into the lion's den for you, I'm entitled to give you an eye-test beforehand.'

'Yes, well that still leaves us with the problem of where Traudl Braunsteiner got hold of a picture of Gestapo Mnller.'

'From a Colonel Poroshin of MVD, I expect. He gave Becker a cigarette concession here in Vienna in return for information and the occasional bit of kidnapping.

When Becker was approached by the Org he told Poroshin all about it and agreed to try and find out everything he could. After Becker was arrested, Traudl was their go-between. She just posed as his girlfriend.'

'You know what this means, kraut?'

'It means the Ivans are after Mnller as well, right?'

'But have you thought what would happen if they got him? Frankly there's not much chance of him going on trial in the Soviet Union. Like I said before, Mnller's made a special study of Soviet police methods. No, the Russians want Mnller because he can be very useful to them. He could, for instance, tell them who all the Gestapo's agents in the NKVD were. Men who are probably still in place in the MVD.'

'Let's hope he's there tomorrow then.'

'You'd better tell me how to find this place.'

I gave him clear directions, and told him not to be late. 'These bastards scare me,' I explained.

'Hey, you want to know something? All you krauts scare me. But not as much as the Russians.' He chuckled in a way that I had almost started to like. 'Goodbye, kraut,' he said, 'and good luck.'

Then he hung up, leaving me staring at the purring receiver with the curious sensation that the disembodied voice to which I had been speaking belonged nowhere outside my own imagination.

Chapter 32

Smoke drifted up to the vaulted ceiling of the nightclub like the thickest underworld fog. It wreathed the solitary figure of Belinsky like Bela Lugosi emerged from a churchyard as he strode up to the table where I sat. The band I had been listening to could hold a beat about as well as a one-legged tap-dancer, but somehow he managed to walk to the rhythm it was generating. I knew he was still angry with me for doubting him, and that he was well aware of how, even now, I was trying to fathom why it was that he hadn't thought to show Mnller's photograph to Becker. So I wasn't very surprised when he took hold of my hair and banged my head twice on the table, telling me that I was just a suspicious kraut. I got up and staggered away from him towards the door, but found my exit blocked by Arthur Nebe. His presence there was so unexpected that I was momentarily unable to resist Nebe grasping me by both ears and banging my skull once against the door, and then once again for good luck, saying that if I hadn't killed Traudl Braunsteiner then perhaps I ought to find out who had. I twisted my head free of his hands and said that I might as soon have guessed that Rumpelstiltskin's name was Rumpelstiltskin.

I shook my head again, unwillingly, and blinked hard at the dark. There was another knock at the door, and I heard a half-whispered voice.

'Who is it?' I said, reaching for the bedside light, and then my watch. The name made no impression on me as I swung my legs out of bed and went into the sitting-room.

I was still swearing as I opened the door a little wider than was safe. Lotte Hartmann stood in the corridor, in the glistening black evening dress and astrakhan jacket I remembered her wearing from our last evening together. She had a questioning, impertinent sort of look in her eye.

'Yes?' I said. 'What is it? What do you want?'

She sniffed with cool contempt and pushed the door lightly with her gloved hand, so I stepped back into the room. She came in, closed the door behind her and, leaning on it, looked around while my nostrils got a little exercise thanks to the smell of smoke, alcohol and perfume she carried on her venal body. 'I'm sorry if I woke you up,' she said. She didn't look at me so much as the room.

'No you're not,' I said.

Now she took a little trip around the floor, peering into the bedroom and then the bathroom. She moved with an easy grace and as confidently as any woman who is used to the constant sensation of having a man's eyes fixed on her behind.

'You're right,' she grinned, 'I'm not sorry at all. You know, this place isn't as bad as I thought it would be.'

'Do you know what time it is?'

'Very late.' She giggled. 'Your landlady wasn't impressed with me at all. So I had to tell her I was your sister and that I had come all the way from Berlin to give you some bad news.' She giggled again.

'And you're it?'

She pouted for a moment. But it was just an act. She was still too amused with herself to take much umbrage. 'When she asked me if I had any luggage I said that the Russians had stolen it on the train. She was extremely sympathetic, and really rather sweet. I hope you're not going to be different.'

'Oh? I thought that's why you were here. Or are the vice squad giving you problems again?'

She ignored the insult, always supposing she had even bothered to notice it.

'Well, I was just on my way home from the Flottenbar that's on Mariahilferstrasse, do you know it?'

I didn't say anything. I lit a cigarette and fixed it in a corner of my mouth to stop me snarling something at her.

'Anyway, it's not far from here. And I thought that I'd just drop by. You know ' her tone grew softer and more seductive ' I haven't had a chance to thank you properly,' she let that one hang in the air for a second, and I suddenly wished that I was wearing a dressing-gown, 'for getting me out of that little spot of bother with the Ivans.' She untied the ribbon of her jacket and let it slip to the floor. 'Aren't you even going to offer me a drink?'

'I'd say you've had enough.' But I went ahead and found a couple of glasses anyway.

'Don't you think you'd like to find that out for yourself?' She laughed easily and sat down without any hint of unsteadiness. She looked like the type who could take the stuff through the vein and still walk a chalk line without so much as a hiccup.

'Do you want anything in it?' I held a glass of vodka up as I asked the question.

'Perhaps,' she said ruminatively, 'after I've had my drink.'

I handed her the drink and put one quickly down into the pit of my stomach to hold the fort. I took another drag on my cigarette and hoped that it might fill me up enough to kick her out.

'What's the matter?' she said, almost triumphantly. 'Do I make you nervous or something?'

I guessed it was probably the something. 'Not me,' I said, 'just my pyjamas.

They're not used to mixed company.'

'From the look of them I'd say they were more used to mixing concrete.' She helped herself to one of my cigarettes and blew a cord of smoke straight at my groin.

'I could get rid of them if they bothered you,' I said, stupidly. My lips were dry when they sucked at my cigarette again. Did I want her to leave or not? I wasn't making a very good job of throwing her out on her perfect little ear.

'Let's talk a little first. Why don't you sit down?'

I sat down, relieved that I could still fold in the middle.

'All right,' I said, 'how about you tell me where your boyfriend is tonight?'

She grimaced. 'Not a good subject, Perseus. Pick another.'

'You two have a rattle?'

She groaned. 'Do we have to?'

I shrugged. 'It doesn't make me itch a lot.'

'The man's a bastard,' she said, 'but I still don't want to talk about it.

Especially today.'

'What's so special about today?'

'I got a part in a movie.'

'Congratulations. What's the role?'

'It's an English film. Not a very big part, you understand. But there are going to be some big stars in it. I play the role of a girl at a nightclub.'

'Well, that sounds simple enough.'

'Isn't it exciting?' she squealed. 'Me acting with Orson Welles.'

'The War of the Worlds fellow?'

She shrugged blankly. 'I never saw that film.'

'Forget it.'

'Of course they're not actually sure about Welles. But they think there's a good chance they can persuade him to come to Vienna.'

'That all sounds very familiar to me.'

'What's that?'

'I didn't even know you were an actress.'

'You mean I didn't tell you? Listen, that job at the Oriental is just temporary.'

'You seem pretty good at it.'

'Oh, I've always been good with numbers and money. I used to work in the local tax department.' She leaned forward and her expression became just a little too quizzical, as if she meant to question me about my year-end business expenses.

'I've been meaning to ask you,' she said, 'that night when you dropped all that mouse. What were you trying to prove?'

'Prove? I'm not sure I follow you.'

'No?' She turned her smile up a couple of stops to shoot me a knowing, conspiratorial sort of look. 'I see a lot of quirks, mister. I get to recognize the types. One day I'm even going to write a book about it. Like Franz Josef Gall. Ever hear of him?'

'I can't say that I have.'

'He was an Austrian doctor who founded the science of phrenology. Now you've heard of that, haven't you?'

'Sure,' I said. 'And what can you tell from the bumps I'm wearing on my head?'

'I can tell you're not the kind to drop that sort of money without a good reason.' She stretched an eyebrow of draughts-man's quality up her smooth forehead. 'I've got an idea about that too.'

'Let's hear it,' I urged, and poured myself another drink. 'Maybe you'll make a better go of reading my mind than you did of reading my cranium.'

'Don't act so hard to get,' she told me. 'We both know you're the kind of man that likes to make an impression.'

'And did I? Make an impression?'

'I'm here, aren't I? What do you want Tristan and Isolde?'

So that was it. She thought that I had lost the money for her benefit. To look like a big-shot.

She drained her glass, stood up and handed it back to me. 'Pour me some more of that love potion of yours while I powder my nose.'

While she was in the bathroom I refilled the glasses with hands that were none too steady. I didn't particularly like the woman, but I had nothing against her body: it was just fine. I had an idea that my head was going to object to this little skylark when my libido had released the controls, but at that particular moment I could do nothing more than sit back and enjoy the flight. Even so, I was unprepared for what happened next.

I heard her open the bathroom door and say something ordinary about the perfume she was wearing, but when I turned round with the drinks I saw that the perfume was all that she was wearing. Actually she had kept her shoes on, but it took my eyes a little while to work their way down past her breasts and her pubic equilateral. Except for those high-heels, Lotte Hartmann was as naked as an assassin's blade, and probably just as treacherous.

She stood in the doorway of my bedroom, her hands hanging by her bare thighs, glowing with delight as my tongue licked my lips rather too obviously for me to have contemplated using it on anything but her. Maybe I could have given her a pompous little lecture at that. I'd seen enough naked women in my time, some of them in fair shape too. I ought to have tossed her back like a fish, but the sweat starting out on my palms, the flare of my nostrils, the lump in my throat and the dull, insistent ache in my groin told me that the machina had other ideas as to the next course of action than the deus which called it home.

Delighted with the effect she was having on me, Lotte smiled happily and took the glass from my hand.

'I hope you don't mind me undressing,' she said, 'only the gown is an expensive one and I had the strangest feeling that you were about to tear it off my back.'

'Why should I mind? It's not as if I haven't finished reading the evening paper.

Anyway, I like having a naked woman about the place.' I watched the slight wobble of her behind as she walked lazily to the other side of the sitting-room where she swallowed her drink and dropped the empty glass on to the sofa.

Suddenly I wanted to see her bottom shaking like a jelly against the rut of my abdomen. She seemed to sense this and, bending forwards, took hold of the radiator like a wrestler pulling against the ring ropes in his corner. Then she stood with her feet a short way apart and stood quietly with her backside towards me, as if waiting for a thoroughly unnecessary body-search. She glanced back over her shoulder, flexed her buttocks and then faced the wall again.

I'd had more eloquent invitations, but with the blood buzzing in my ears and battering those few brain cells not yet affected by alcohol or adrenalin, I really couldn't remember when. Probably I didn't even care. I tore off my pyjamas and stalked after her.

I'm no longer young enough, nor quite thin enough, to share a single bed with anything other than a hangover or a cigarette. So it was perhaps a sense of surprise that woke me from an unexpectedly comfortable sleep at around six o'clock. Lotte, who might otherwise have caused me a restless night, was no longer lying in the crook of my arm and for a brief, happy moment I supposed that she must have gone home. It was then that I heard a small, stifled sob coming from the sitting-room. Reluctantly I slipped out from under the covers and into my overcoat, and went to see what was wrong.

Still naked, Lotte had made a little ball of herself on the floor by the radiator where it was warm. I squatted down beside her and asked why she was crying. A fat tear rolled down a stained cheek and hung on her top lip like a translucent wart. She licked it away and sniffed as I handed her my handkerchief.

'What do you care?' she said bitterly. 'Now that you've had your fun.'

She had a point, but I went ahead and protested, enough to be polite. Lotte heard me out and when her vanity was satisfied she tried a crippled sort of smile that reminded me of the way an unhappy child will cheer up when you hand over 50 pfennigs or a penny-chew.

'You're very sweet,' she allowed finally, and wiped her red eyes. 'I'll be all right now, thank you.

'Do you want to tell me about it?'

Lotte glanced at me out of the corner of one eye. 'In this town? Better tell me your rates first, doctor.' She blew her nose and then uttered a short, hollow laugh. 'You might make a good screw doctor.'

'You seem quite sane to me,' I said, helping her to an armchair.

'I wouldn't bet on it.'

'Is that your professional advice?' I lit a couple of cigarettes and handed her one. She smoked it desperately, and without much apparent pleasure.

'That's my advice as a woman who's mad enough to have been having an affair with a man who just slapped her round like a circus clown.'

'K/nig? I never saw him as the violent type.'

'If he seems urbane that's only the morphine he uses.'

'He's an addict?'

'I don't know if he's an addict exactly. But whatever it was he did while he was in the SS, he needed morphine to get through the war.'

'So why did he paste you?'

She bit her lip fiercely. 'Well, it wasn't because he thought I could use a little colour.'

I laughed. I had to hand it to her, she was a tough one. I said, 'Not with that tan anyway.' I picked up the astrakhan jacket from the floor where she had dropped it and draped it around her shoulders. Lotte drew it close to her throat and smiled bitterly.

'Nobody puts his hand on my jaw,' she said, 'not if he ever wants to put his hand any place else. Tonight was the first and last time that he'll give me a pair of slaps, so help me.' She blew smoke from her nostrils as fiercely as a dragon. 'That's what you get when you try to help someone, I guess.'

'Help who?'

'K/nig came into the Oriental at around ten last night,' she explained. 'He was in a foul mood and when I asked him why, he wanted to know if I remembered a dentist who used to come into the club and gamble a bit.' She shrugged. 'Well, I did remember him. A bad player but certainly not half as bad as you like to pretend you are.' Her eyes flicked at me uncertainly.

I nodded, urgently. 'Go on.'

'Helmut wanted to know if Dr Heim, the dentist, had been in the place during the last couple of days. I told him I didn't think he had. Then he wanted me to ask some of the girls if they remembered him being there. Well, there was one particular girl I said he should be sure to speak to. A bit of a hard-luck case, but pretty with it. The doctors always went for her. I guess it was because she always looked that little bit more vulnerable, and there are some men who quite like that sort of thing. It so happened she was sitting at the bar, so I pointed her out to him.

I felt my stomach turning to quicksand. 'What was this girl's name?' I asked.

'Veronika something,' she said, and noticing my concern, added, 'Why? Do you know her?'

'A little,' I said. 'What happened then?'

'Helmut and one of his friends took Veronika next door.'

'To the hat shop?'

'Yes.' Her voice was soft now and just a little ashamed. 'Helmut's temper ' she flinched at the memory of it ' I was worried. Veronika's a nice girl. A doofy, but nice, you know. She's had a bit of a hard life but she's got plenty of guts.

Perhaps too many for her own good. I thought with Helmut the way he was, the mood he was in, it would be better for her to tell him if she knew anything or not, and to tell him quickly. He's not a very patient man. Just in case he turned nasty.' She grimaced. 'Not much of a corner to turn, when you know Helmut.'

'So I went after them. Veronika was crying when I found them. They'd already slapped her around quite hard. She'd had enough, and I told them to stop it.

That was when he slapped me. Twice.' She held her cheeks as if the pain lingered with the memory. 'Then he shoved me out into the corridor and told me to mind my own business and stay out of his.'

'What happened after that?'

I went to the Ladies, a couple of bars and came here, in that order.'

'Did you see what happened to Veronika?'

'They left with her, Helmut and the other man.'

'You mean they took her away somewhere?'

Lotte shrugged glumly. 'I guess so.'

'Where would they have taken her?' I stood up and walked into the bedroom.

'I don't know.'

'Try and think.'

'You're going after her?'

'Like you said, she's been through a lot already.' I started to dress. 'And what's more, I got her into this.'

'You. How come?'

While I finished dressing I described how, coming back from Grinzing with K/nig, I had explained how I would have gone about trying to find a missing person, in this case Dr Heim.

'I told him how we could check Heim's usual haunts if he could tell me where they were,' I told her. But I left out how I had thought it would never have got that far: how I assumed that with Mnller possibly Nebe and K/nig too arrested by Belinsky and the people from Crowcass, the need actually to look for Heim would never have arisen: how I thought that I had stalled K/nig into waiting until the meeting at Grinzing was over before we started to look for his dead dentist.

'Why should they have thought that you could find her?'

'Before the war I was a detective with the Berlin police.'

'I should have known,' she snorted.

'Not really,' I said, straightening my tie, and jabbing a cigarette into my sour-tasting mouth, 'but I should certainly have known that your boyfriend was arrogant enough to go and look for Heim on his own. It was stupid of me to think that he would wait.' I climbed back into my overcoat and picked up my hat. 'Do you think they would have taken her to Grinzing?' I asked her.

'Now I come to think of it, I had the idea they were going to Veronika's room, wherever that is. But if she's not there, Grinzing would be as good a place to look as any.'

'Well, let's hope she's home.' But even as I said it, I knew in my guts that this was unlikely.

Lotte stood up. The jacket covered her chest and her upper torso, but left bare the burning bush which earlier had spoken so persuasively and left me feeling as sore as a skinned rabbit.

'What about me?' she said quietly. 'What shall I do?'

'You?' I nodded down at her nakedness. 'Put the magic away and go home.'

Chapter 33

The morning was bright, clear and chilly. Crossing the park in front of the new town hall on my way to the Inner City, a couple of squirrels bounded up to say hello and check me out for breakfast. But before they got close they caught the cloud on my face and the smell of fear on my socks. Probably they even made a mental note of the heavy shape in my coat pocket and thought better of it. Smart little creatures. After all, it wasn't so very long since small mammals were being shot and eaten in Vienna. So they hurried on their way, like living scribbles of fur.

At the dump where Veronika lived they were used to people, mostly men, coming and going at all hours of the day and night, and even if the landlady had been the most misanthropic of lesbians, I doubt she would have paid me much attention if she had met me on the stairs. But as it happened there was nobody about, and I made my way up to Veronika's room unchallenged.

I didn't need to break the door in. It was wide open, just like all the drawers and cupboards. I wondered why they had bothered when all the evidence they needed was still hanging on the back of the chair where Doctor Heim had left it.

'The stupid bitch,' I muttered angrily. 'What's the point of getting rid of a man's body if you leave his suit in your room?' I slammed a drawer shut. The force dislodged one of Veronika's pathetic sketches from off the chest of drawers, and it floated to the floor like a huge dead leaf. K/nig had probably turned the place over out of pure spite. And then taken her to Grinzing. With an important meeting there that morning I couldn't see that they would have gone anywhere else. Assuming that they didn't kill her outright. On the other hand, if Veronika told them the truth about what had happened that a couple of friends had helped her to dispose of Heim's body after his suffering a heart attack, then (if she had omitted mentioning Belinsky's name and my own) perhaps they would let her go. But there was a real possibility that they might still kick her around to make sure she had told them everything she knew: that by the time I arrived to try and help her I would already be exposed as the man who had dumped Heim's body.

I remembered how Veronika had told me about her life as a Sudeten Jew during wartime. How she had hid in lavatories, dirty basements, cupboards and attics.

And then a DP camp for six months. 'A bit of hard life,' was how Lotte Hartmann had described it. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed to me that she'd had very little of what could properly be called life at all.

I glanced at my wristwatch and saw that it was seven o'clock. There were still three hours to go before the meeting started: longer before Belinsky could be expected with 'the cavalry', as he put it. And because the men who had taken Veronika were who they were, I began to think that there was a real possibility that she wouldn't live that long. It looked as if I had no choice but to go and get her myself.

I took out my revolver, thumbed open the six-shot cylinder and checked that it was fully loaded before heading back downstairs. Outside, I hailed a taxi at the rank on Kartnerstrasse and told the driver to go to Grinzing.

'Whereabouts in Grinzing?' he asked, accelerating away from the kerb.

'I'll tell you when we get there.'

'You're the boss,' he said, speeding on to the Ring. 'Only reason I asked was that everything there will be shut at this time of the morning. And you don't look like you're going hill-walking. Not in that coat.' The car shuddered as we hit a couple of enormous potholes. 'And you're no Austrian. I can tell that from your accent. You sound like a pifke, sir. Am I right?'

'Skip the university-of-life class, will you? I'm not in the mood.'

'That's all right, sir. Only reason I asked was in case you were looking for a little bit of fun. You see, sir, only a few minutes further on from Grinzing, on the road to Cobenzl, there's this hotel the Schloss-Hotel Cobenzl.' He wrestled with the wheel as the car hit another pothole. 'Right now it's being used as a DP camp. There's girls there you can have for just a few cigarettes.

Even at this hour of the morning if you fancy it. A man wearing a good coat like yours could have two or three together maybe. Get them to put a nice show on for you between themselves if you know what I mean.' He laughed coarsely. 'Some of these girls, sir. They've grown up in DP camps. Got the morals of rabbits, so they have. They'll do anything. Believe me, sir, I know what I'm talking about.

I keep rabbits myself.' He chuckled warmly at the thought of it all. 'I could arrange something for you, sir. In the back of the car. For a small commission of course.'

I leaned forwards on the seat. I don't know why I bothered with him. Maybe I just don't like garter-handlers. Maybe I just didn't much care for his Trotsky-lookalike face.

'That would be just great,' I said, very tough. 'If it weren't for a Russian table-trap I found in the Ukraine. Partisans put a tension-release grenade behind a drawer that they left half-open with a bottle of vodka in there, just to get your attention. I came along, pulled the drawer, the pressure was released and the grenade detonated. It took the meat and two vegetables clean off at my belly. I nearly died of shock, then I nearly died from loss of blood.

And when finally I came out of the coma I nearly died of grief. I tell you if I so much as see a bit of plum I'm liable to go mad with the frustration of it.

I'd probably kill the nearest man to me out of plain envy.' The driver glanced back over his shoulder. 'Sorry,' he said nervously, 'I didn't mean to '

'Forget it,' I said, almost smiling now.

When we came past the yellow house I told the driver to keep going to the top of the hill. I had decided to approach Nebe's house from the back, through the vineyards.

Because the meters on Vienna's taxis were old and out of date, it was customary to multiply the tariff shown by five to give the total sum payable. There were six schillings on the clock when I told him to stop, and this was all the driver asked me for, his hand trembling as he took the money. The car was already roaring away by the time I realized he had forgotten his arithmetic.

I stood there, on a muddy track by the side of the road, wondering why I hadn't kept my mouth shut, having intended to tell the man to wait a while. Now if I did find Veronika, I would have the problem of how to get away. Me and my smart mouth, I thought. The poor bastard was only offering a service, I told myself.

But he was wrong about one thing. There was something open, a сafé further up Cobenzlgasse: the Rudelshof. I decided that if I was going to get shot I'd prefer to collect it with something in my stomach.

The сafé was a cosy little place if you didn't mind taxidermy. I sat down under the beady eye of an anthraxic-looking weasel and waited for the badly stuffed proprietor to shamble up to my table.

'God's greeting to you, sir,' he said. 'It's a lovely morning.'

I reeled away from his distilled breath. 'I can tell you're already enjoying it,' I said, using my smart mouth yet again. He shrugged, uncomprehending, and took my order.

The five-schilling Viennese breakfast I gobbled tasted like the taxidermist had cooked it during his time off between jobs: the coffee had grounds in it, the roll was about as fresh as a piece of scrimshaw and the egg was so hard it might have come from a quarry. But I ate it. I had so much on my mind I'd probably have eaten the weasel if only they'd sat it on a slice of toast.

Outside the сafé I walked down the road awhile and then climbed over a wall into what I thought must be Arthur Nebe's vineyard.

There wasn't much to see. The vines themselves, planted in neat rows, were still only young shoots, hardly higher than my knee. Here and there on high trolleys were what looked like abandoned jet engines but were in fact the rapid burners they used at night to heat the atmosphere around the shoots and protect them from late frost. They were still warm to the touch. The field itself was perhaps a hundred metres square and offered little in the way of cover. I wondered exactly how Belinsky would manage to deploy his men. Apart from crawling the length of the field on your belly, you could only stay close to the wall while you worked your way down to the trees immediately behind the yellow house and its outbuildings.

When I got as far as the trees I looked for some sign of life, and seeing none I edged my way forwards until I heard voices. Next to the largest of the outbuildings, a long half-timbered affair that resembled a barn, two men, neither of whom I recognized, were standing talking. Each man wore a metal drum on his back, and this was connected by a rubber hose to a long thin tube of metal he held in his hand which I presumed to be some kind of crop-spraying contraption.

At last they finished their conversation and walked towards the opposite side of the vineyard, as if to start their attack on the bacteria, fungi and insects which plagued their lives. I waited until they were well across the field before leaving the cover of the trees and entering the building.

A musty fruit smell hit my nostrils. Large oak vats and storage tanks were ranged under the open rafters of the ceiling like enormous cheeses. I walked the length of the stone floor and emerged at the other end of this first building to be faced with the door to another, built at right angles to the house.

This second outhouse contained hundreds of oak barrels, which lay on their sides as if awaiting the giant St Bernard dogs to come and collect them. Stairs led down into the darkness. It seemed like a good place to imprison someone, so I switched on the light and went downstairs to take a look. But there were only thousands of bottles of wine, each rack marked by a small blackboard on which were chalked a few numbers that must have meant something to somebody. I came back upstairs, switched off the light and stood by the barrel-room window. It was beginning to look as if Veronika might be in the house after all.

From where I was standing I had a clear view across a short cobbled yard, to the west side of the house. In front of an open door a big black cat sat staring at me. Beside the door was the window of what looked like the kitchen. There was a large, shiny shape on the kitchen ledge which I thought was probably a pot or a kettle. After a while the cat walked slowly up to the outbuilding where I was hiding and mewed loudly at something beside the window where I was standing. For a second or two it fixed me with its green eyes, and then for no apparent reason ran off. I looked back towards the house and continued to watch the kitchen door and window. After a few more minutes I judged it safe to leave the barrel room, and started across the yard.

I had not gone three paces when I heard the ratchet sound of an automatic-slide and almost simultaneously felt the cold steel of a gun muzzle pressed hard against my neck.

'Clasp your hands behind your head,' said a voice, none too distinctly.

I did as I was told. The gun pressed under my ear felt heavy enough to be a .45.

Enough to dispose of a large part of my skull. I winced as he screwed the gun between my jaw and my jugular vein.

'Twitch and you're tomorrow morning's pig swill,' he said, smacking my pockets, and relieving me of my revolver.

'You'll find that Herr Nebe is expecting me,' I said.

'Don't know a Herr Nebe,' he said thickly, almost as if his mouth didn't work properly. Naturally I was reluctant to turn round and take a good look to make sure.

'Yes, that's right, he changed his name, didn't he?' I tried hard to remember Nebe's new surname. Meanwhile I heard the man behind me step back a couple of steps.

'Now walk to your right,' he told me. 'Towards the trees. And don't trip on your shoelaces or anything.'

He sounded big and not too bright. And it was a strangely accented German he spoke: like Prussian, but different; more like the Old Prussian I had heard my grandfather speak; almost like the German I had heard spoken in Poland.

'Look, you're making a mistake,' I said. 'Why don't you check with your boss? My name is Bernhard Gunther. There's a meeting at ten o'clock this morning. I'm supposed to be at it.'

'It's not even eight yet,' grunted my captor. 'If you're here for a meeting, how come you're so early? And how come you don't come to the front door like normal visitors? How come you walk across the fields? How come you snoop around in the outhouses?'

'I'm early because I own a couple of wineshops in Berlin,' I said. 'I thought it might be nice to take a look around the estate.'

'You were taking a look all right. You're a snooper.' He chuckled cretinously.

'I got orders to shoot snoopers.'

'Now wait a minute ' I turned into a clubbing blow from his gun, and as I fell I caught a glimpse of a big man with a shaven head and a lopsided sort of jaw.

He grabbed me by the scruff of my neck and hauled me back on to my feet, and I wondered why I had never thought to sew a razor blade under that part of my coat collar. He pushed me through the line of trees and down a slope to a small clearing where several large dustbins were standing. A trail of smoke and a sweet sickly smell arose through the roof of a small brick hut: it was where they incinerated the rubbish. Next to several bags of what looked like cement, a sheet of rusting corrugated iron lay on some bricks. The man ordered me to draw it aside.

Now I had it. He was a Latvian. A big, stupid Latvian. And I decided that if he was working for Arthur Nebe he was probably from a Latvian SS division, that had served in one of the Polish death camps. They had used a lot of Latvians at places like Auschwitz. Latvians were enthusiastic anti-Semites when Moses Mendelssohn was one of Germany's favourite sons.

I hauled the iron sheet away from what was revealed as some kind of old drain, or cesspit. Certainly it smelt every bit as bad. It was then that I saw the cat again. It emerged from between two paper sacks labelled calcium oxide close by the pit. It mewed contemptuously, as if to say, 'I warned you there was someone standing in that yard, but you wouldn't listen to me.' An acrid, chalky smell came up from the pit and made my skin crawl. 'You're right,' mewed the cat, like something from Edgar Allan Poe, 'calcium oxide is a cheap alkali for treating acid soil. Just the sort of thing you would expect to see in a vineyard. But it's also called quicklime, and that's an extremely efficient compound for speeding human decomposition.'

With horror I realized that the Latvian really did mean to kill me. And there I was trying to place his accent like some sort of philologist, and to recall the chemical formulas I had learned at school.

Then I got my first good look at him. He was big and as burly as a circus horse, but you hardly noticed that for looking at his face: its whole right side was crooked like he had a big chew of tobacco in his cheek; his right eye stared wide as if it had been made of glass. He could probably have kissed his own ear lobe. Starved of affection, as any man with such a face would have been, he probably had to.

'Kneel down by the side of the pit,' he snarled, sounding like a Neanderthal short of a couple of vital chromosomes.

'You're not going to kill an old comrade, are you?' I said desperately trying to remember Nebe's new name, or even one of the Latvian regiments. I considered shouting for help except that I knew he would have shot me without hesitation.

'You're an old comrade?' he sneered, without much apparent difficulty.

'OberSturmFnhrer with the First Latvian,' I said with a poor show of nonchalance.

The Latvian spat into the bushes and regarded me blankly with his pop eye. The gun, a big blue steel Colt automatic, remained pointed squarely at my chest.

'First Latvian, eh? You don't sound like a Lat.'

'I'm Prussian,' I said. 'Our family lived in Riga. My father was a shipworker from Danzig. He married a Russian.' I offered a few words of Russian by way of confirmation, although I could not remember if Riga was predominantly Russian or German-speaking.

His eyes narrowed, one rather more than the other. 'So what year was the First Latvian founded?'

I swallowed hard and racked my memory. The cat mewed encouragingly. Reasoning that the raising of a Latvian SS regiment would have to have followed Operation Barbarossa in 1941, I said, '1942.'

He grinned horribly, and shook his head with slow sadism. '1943,' he said, advancing a couple of paces. 'It was 1943. Now get down on your knees or I'll give it to you in the guts.'

Slowly I sank down on my knees on the edge of the pit, feeling the ground wet through the material of my trousers. I had seen more than enough of SS murder to know what he intended: a shot in the back of the neck, my body collapsing neatly into a ready-made grave, and a few spadefuls of quicklime on top. He came around behind me in a wide circle. The cat settled down to watch, its tail wrapping neatly around its behind as it sat. I closed my eyes and waited.

'Rainis,' said a voice, and several seconds passed. I hardly dared to look around and see if I had been saved.

'It's all right, Bernie. You can get up now.'

My breath came out in one huge burp of fright. Weakly, my knees knocking, I picked myself up from the edge of the pit and turned to see Arthur Nebe standing a few metres behind the Latvian ugly. To my annoyance he was grinning.

'I'm glad you find it so amusing, Dr Frankenstein,' I said. 'Your fucking monster nearly killed me.'

'What on earth were you thinking of, Bernie?' Nebe said. 'You should know better. Rainis here was only doing his job.'

The Latvian nodded sullenly and bolstered his Colt. 'He was snooping,' he said dully. 'I caught him.'

I shrugged. 'It's a nice morning. I thought I'd take a look at Grinzing. I was just admiring your estate when Lon Chancy here stuck a gun in my ear.'

The Latvian took my revolver out of his jacket pocket and handed it to Nebe. 'He was carrying a lighter, Herr Nolde.'

'Planning to shoot small game, is that it, Bernie?'

'You can't be too careful these days.'

'I'm glad you think so,' said Nebe. 'It saves me the trouble of apologizing.' He weighed my gun in his hand and then pocketed it. 'All the same, I'll hang on to this for now if you don't mind. Guns make some of our friends nervous. Remind me to return it to you before you leave.' He turned to the Latvian.

'All right, Rainis, that's all. You were only doing your job. I suggest that you go and get yourself some breakfast.'

The monster nodded and walked back towards the house, with the cat following him.

'I'll bet he can eat his weight in peanuts.'

Nebe smiled thinly. 'Some people keep savage dogs to protect them. I have Rainis.'

'Yes, well I hope he's house-trained.' I took off my hat and wiped my brow with my handkerchief. 'Me, I wouldn't let him past the front door. I'd keep him on a chain in the yard. Where does he think he is? Treblinka? The bastard couldn't wait to shoot me, Arthur.'

'Oh, I don't doubt it. He enjoys killing people.'

Nebe shook his head to my offer of a cigarette, but he had to help me light mine as my hand was shaking like it was talking to a deaf Apache.

'He's a Latvian,' Nebe explained. 'He was a corporal at the Riga concentration camp. When the Russians captured him they stamped on his head and broke his jaw with their boots.'

'Believe me, I know how they must have felt.'

'They paralysed half his face, and left him slightly soft in the head. He was always a brutal killer. But now he's more like an animal. And just as loyal as any dog.'

'Well, naturally I was thinking he'd have his good points too. Riga eh?' I jerked my head at the open pit and the incinerator. 'I bet that little waste-disposal set-up makes him feel quite at home.' I sucked gratefully at my cigarette and added, 'If it comes to that, I bet it makes you both feel at home.'

Nebe frowned. 'I think you need a drink,' he said quietly.

'I wouldn't be at all surprised. Just make sure it doesn't have any lime in it.

I think I lost my taste for lime, for ever.'

Chapter 34

I followed Nebe into the house and up to the library where we had talked the day before. He fetched me a brandy from the drinks-cabinet and set it down on the table in front of me.

'Forgive me for not joining you,' he said, watching me down it quickly.

'Normally I quite enjoy a cognac with my breakfast but this morning I must keep a clear head.' He smiled indulgently as I replaced the empty glass on the table.

'Better now?'

I nodded. 'Tell me, have you found your missing dentist yet? Dr Heim?' Now that I no longer had to worry about my own immediate prospects for survival, Veronika was once again at the front of my mind.

'He's dead, I'm afraid. That's bad enough, but it's not half as bad as not knowing what had happened to him was. At least we now know that the Russians haven't got him.'

'What did happen to him?'

'He had a heart attack.' Nebe uttered the familiar, dry little laugh I remembered from my days at the Alex, the headquarters of Berlin's criminal police. 'It seems that he was with a girl at the time. A chocolady.'

'You mean it was while they were ?'

'I mean precisely that. Still, I can think of worse ways to go, can't you?'

'After what I've just been through, that's not particularly difficult for me, Arthur.'

'Quite.' He smiled almost sheepishly.

I spent a moment searching for a frame of words that might enable me to innocently inquire as to Veronika's fate. 'So what did she do? The chocolady, I mean. Phone the police?' I frowned. 'No, I expect not.'

'Why do you say that?'

I shrugged at the apparent simplicity of my explanation. 'I can't imagine she'd have risked a run-in with the vice squad. No, I'll bet she tried to have him dumped somewhere. Got her garter-handler to do it.' I raised my eyebrows questioningly. 'Well? Am I right?'

'Yes, you're right.' He sounded almost as if he admired my thinking. 'As usual.'

Then he uttered a wistful sort of sigh. 'What a pity that we're no longer with Kripo. I can't tell you how much I miss it all.'

'Me too.'

'But you, you could rejoin. Surely you're not wanted for anything, Bernie?'

'And work for the Communists? No thanks.' I pursed my lips and tried to look rueful. 'Anyway, I'd rather stay out of Berlin for a while. A Russian soldier tried to rob me on a train. It was self-defence, but I'm afraid I killed him. I was seen leaving the scene of the crime covered in blood.'

' The scene of the crime,' quoted Nebe, rolling the phrase round his mouth like a fine wine. 'It's good to talk to a detective again.'

'Just to satisfy my professional curiosity, Arthur: how did you find the chocolady?'

'Oh, it wasn't me, it was K/nig. He tells me that it was you who told him how best to go about looking for Doctor Heim.'

'It was just routine stuff, Arthur. You could have told him.'

'Maybe so. Anyway, it seems that K/nig's girlfriend recognized Heim from a photograph. Apparently he used to frequent the nightclub where she works. She remembered that Heim used to be especially keen on one of the snappers who worked there. All Helmut had to do was persuade her to come clean about it. It was as simple as that.'

'Getting information out of a snapper is never as simple as that,' I said. 'It can be like getting a curse out of a nun. Money is the only way to get a party-girl to talk that doesn't leave a bruise.' I waited for Nebe to contradict me, but he said nothing. 'Of course, a bruise is cheaper, and leaves no margin for error.' I grinned at him as if to say that I had no particular scruples when it came to slapping a chocolady in the interests of efficient investigation.

'I'd say K/nig wasn't the type to waste money: am I right?'

To my disappointment, Nebe merely shrugged and then glanced at his watch. 'You'd better ask him yourself when you see him.'

'Is he coming to this meeting too?'

'He'll be here.' Nebe consulted his watch again. 'I'm afraid I have to leave you now. I've still one or two things to do before ten. Perhaps it would be better if you stayed in here. Security is tight today, and we wouldn't want another incident, would we? I'll have someone bring you some coffee. Build a fire if you like. It's rather cold in here.'

I tapped my glass. 'I can't say that I'm noticing it much now.'

Nebe regarded me patiently. 'Yes, well, do help yourself to some more brandy, if you think you need it.'

'Thanks,' I said, reaching for the decanter, 'I don't mind if I do.'

'But stay sharp. You'll be asked a lot of questions about your Russian friend. I wouldn't like your opinion of his worth to be doubted merely because you had too much to drink.' He walked across the creaking floor to the door.

'Don't worry about me,' I said, surveying the empty shelves, 'I'll read a book.'

Nebe's considerable nose wrinkled with disapproval. 'Yes, it's such a pity that the library is gone. Apparently the previous owners left a superb collection, but when the Russians came they used them all as fuel for the boiler.' He shook his head sadly. 'What can you do with subhumans like that?'

When Nebe had left the library I did as he had suggested and built a fire in the grate. It helped me to focus my mind on my next course of action. As the flames took hold of the small edifice of logs and sticks I had constructed, I reflected that Nebe's apparent amusement at the circumstances of Heim's death seemed to indicate that the Org was satisfied Veronika had told the truth.

It was true, I was no wiser as to where she might be, but I had gained the impression that K/nig was not yet at Grinzing, and without my gun I did not see that I could now leave and look for her elsewhere. With only two hours to go before the Org's meeting, it appeared that my best course of action was to wait for K/nig to arrive, and hope that he could put my mind at rest. And if he had killed or injured Veronika, I would settle his account personally when Belinsky arrived with his men.

I collected the poker off the hearth and stoked the fire negligently. Nebe's man arrived with the coffee, but I paid him no attention, and after he had gone again I stretched out on the sofa and closed my eyes.

The fire stirred, clapped its hands a couple of times, and warmed my side.

Behind my closed lids, bright red turned to deep purple, and then something more restful 'Herr Gunther?'

I jerked my head up from the sofa. Sleeping in an awkward position, even for only a few minutes, had made my neck as stiff as new leather. But when I looked at my watch I saw that I had been sleeping for more than an hour. I flexed my neck.

Sitting beside the sofa was a man wearing a grey flannel suit. He leaned forward and held out his hand for me to shake. It was a broad, strong hand and surprisingly firm for such a short man. Gradually I recognized his face, although I had never met him before.

'I am Dr Moltke,' he said. 'I've heard a great deal about you, Herr Gunther.'

You could have blown froth from the top of his accent it was so Bavarian.

I nodded uncertainly. There was something about his gaze I found deeply disconcerting. His were the eyes of a music-hall hypnotist.

'I'm pleased to meet you, Herr Doktor.' Here was another one who had changed his name. Another one who was supposed to be dead, like Arthur Nebe. And yet this was no ordinary Nazi fugitive from justice, if indeed justice existed anywhere in Europe during 1948. It gave me a strange feeling to consider that I had just shaken hands with a man who, but for the mysterious circumstances surrounding his 'death', might well have been the world's most wanted man. This was 'Gestapo' Heinrich Mnller, in person.

'Arthur Nebe has been telling me about you,' he said. 'You know, you and I are quite alike it seems. I was a police detective, like yourself. I began on the beat and I learnt my profession in the hard school of ordinary police work. Like you I also specialized: while you worked for the murder commission, I was led to the surveillance of Communist Party functionaries. I even made a special study of Soviet Russian police methods. I found much there to admire. As a policeman yourself, you would surely appreciate their professionalism. The MVD, which used to be the NKVD, is probably the finest secret police force anywhere in the world. Better even than the Gestapo. For the simple reason, I think, that National Socialism was never able to offer a faith capable of commanding such a consistent attitude towards life. And do you know why?'

I shook my head. His broad Bavarian speech seemed to suggest a natural geniality which I knew the man himself could not possibly have possessed.

'Because, Herr Gunther, unlike Communism, we never really appealed to the intellectuals as well as to the working classes. You know, I myself did not join the Party until 1939. Stalin does these things better. Today I see him in quite a different light than I did of old.'

I frowned, wondering whether this was Mnller's idea of a test, or a joke. But he seemed to be perfectly serious. Pompously so.

'You admire Stalin?' I asked, almost incredulously.

'He stands head and shoulders above any of our Western leaders. Even Hitler was a small man by comparison. Just think what Stalin and his Party have stood up to. You were in one of their camps. You know what they're like. Why, you even speak Russian. You always know where you are with the Ivans. They put you up against a wall and shoot you, or they give you the Order of Lenin. Not like the Americans or the British.' Mnller's face suddenly took on an expression of intense dislike. 'They talk about morality and justice and yet they allow Germany to starve. They write about ethics and yet they hang old comrades one day, and recruit them for their own security services the next. You can't trust people like that, Herr Gunther.'

'Forgive me, Herr Doktor, but I was under the impression that we were working for the Americans.'

'That is wrong. We work with the Americans. But in the end we are working for Germany. For a new Fatherland.'

Looking more thoughtful now, he got up and went over to the window. His manner of expressing deliberation was a silent rhapsody more characteristic of a peasant priest wrestling with his conscience. He folded his thick hands thoughtfully, unclasped them again and finally pressed his temples between both fists.

'There is nothing to admire in America. Not like Russia. But the Amis do have power. And what gives them this power is the dollar. That is the only reason why we must oppose Russia. We need the American dollars. All that the Soviet Union can give us is an example: an example of just what loyalty and dedication can achieve, even without money. So then, think what Germans might do with similar devotion and American cash.'

I tried and failed to stifle a yawn. 'Why are you telling me this Herr Herr Doktor?' For one ghastly second I had almost called him Herr Mnller. Did anyone but Arthur Nebe, and perhaps von Bolschwing, who had interrogated me, know who Moltke really was?

'We are working for a new tomorrow, Herr Gunther. Germany may be divided between them now. But there will come a time when we are a great power again. A great economic power. So long as our Organization works alongside the Amis to oppose Communism, they will be persuaded to allow Germany to rebuild herself. And with our industry and our technology we shall achieve what Hitler could never have achieved. And what Stalin yes, even Stalin with his massive five-year plans what he can still only dream of. The German may never rule militarily, but he can do it economically. It is the mark, not the swastika, that will conquer Europe. You doubt what I say?'

If I looked surprised it was only because the idea of German industry being on top of anything but a scrapheap seemed perfectly ludicrous.

'It's just that I wonder if everyone in the Org thinks the same way as you?'

He shrugged. 'Not precisely, no. There are a variety of opinions as to the worth of our allies, and the evil of our enemies. But all are agreed on one thing, and that is the new Germany. Whether it takes five years, or fifty-five years.'

Absently, Mnller started to pick his nose. It occupied him for several seconds, after which he inspected his thumb and forefinger and then wiped them on Nebe's curtains. It was, I considered, a poor indicator of the new Germany he had been speaking of.

'Anyway, I just wanted this opportunity to thank you personally for your initiative. I've had a good look at the documents that your friend has provided, and there's no doubt in my mind it's first-class material. The Americans will be beside themselves with excitement when they see it.'

'I'm pleased to hear it.'

Mnller strolled back to his chair by my sofa and sat down again. 'How confident are you that he can carry on providing this sort of high-grade material?'

'Very confident, Herr Doktor.'

'Excellent. You know, this couldn't have come along at a better time. The South German Industries Utilization Company is applying to the American State Department for increased funding. Your man's information will be an important part of that case. At this morning's meeting I shall be recommending that the exploitation of this new source be given top priority here in Vienna.'

He collected the poker off the hearth and jabbed violently at the glowing embers of the fire. It wasn't too difficult to imagine him doing the same to some human subject. Staring into the flames, he added: 'With a matter of such personal interest to me, I have a favour to ask, Herr Gunther.'

'I'm listening, Herr Doktor.'

'I must confess I had hoped to persuade you to let me run this informer myself.'

I thought for a minute. 'Naturally I should have to ask his opinion. He trusts me. It might take a little time.'

'Of course.'

'And as I told Nebe, he'll want money. Lots of it.'

'You can tell him I'll organize everything. A Swiss bank account. Whatever he wants.'

'Right now what he wants most is a Swiss watch,' I said, improvising. 'A Doxas.'

'No problem,' Mnller grinned. 'You see what I mean about the Russian? He knows exactly what he wants. A nice watch. Well, leave that to me.' Mnller replaced the poker on its stand and sat back contentedly. 'Then I can assume you have no objections to my proposal? Naturally you will be well-rewarded for bringing us such an important informer.'

'Since you mention it, I do have a figure in mind,' I said.

Mnller raised his hands and beckoned me to name it.

'You may or may not know that I suffered a heavy loss at cards quite recently. I lost most of my money, about 4,000 schillings. I thought that you might like to make that up to 5,000.'

He pursed his lips and started nodding slowly. 'That sounds not unreasonable. In the circumstances.'

I smiled. It amused me that Mnller was so concerned to protect his area of expertise within the Org that he was willing to buy me out of my involvement with Belinsky's Russian. It was easy to see that in this way the reputation of Gestapo Mnller as the authority on all matters relating to the MVD would be ensured. He slapped both his knees decisively.

'Good. I'm glad that's settled. I've enjoyed our little chat. We'll talk again after this morning's meeting.'

We certainly will, I said to myself. Only it would probably be at the Stiftskaserne, or wherever the Crowcass people were likely to interrogate Mnller.

'Of course we'll have to discuss the procedure for contacting your source.

Arthur tells me you already have a dead-letter arrangement.'

'It's all written down,' I said to him. 'I'm sure you'll find everything is in order.' I glanced at my watch and saw that it was already past ten o'clock. I got up and straightened my tie.

'Oh, don't worry,' Mnller said, clapping me on the shoulder. He seemed almost jovial now that he had got what he wanted. 'They will wait for us, I can assure you.'

But almost at the same moment the library door opened and the slightly irritated face of the Baron von Bolschwing peered into the room. He raised his wristwatch significantly and said, 'Herr Doktor, we really must get on now.'

'It's all right,' Mnller boomed, 'we've finished. You can tell everyone to come in now.'

'Thank you very much.' But the Baron's voice was peevish.

'Meetings,' sneered Mnller. 'One after another in this organization. There's no end to the pain of it. Like wiping your arse with a car tyre. It's as if Himmler were still alive.'

I smiled. 'That reminds me. I have to hit the spot.'

'It's just along the corridor,' he said.

I went to the door, excusing myself first to the Baron and then to Arthur Nebe as I shouldered past the men coming into the library. These were Old Comrades all right. Men with hard eyes, flabby smiles, well-fed stomachs and a certain arrogance, as if none of them had ever lost a war or done anything for which they ought to have been in any way ashamed. This was the collective face of the new Germany that Mnller had droned on about.

But of K/nig there was still no sign.

In the sour-smelling toilet I bolted the door carefully, checked my watch and stood at the window trying to see the road beyond the trees at the side of the house. With the wind stirring the leaves it was difficult to distinguish anything very clearly, but in the distance I thought that I could just about make out the fender of a big black car.

I reached for the cord of the blind and, hoping that the thing was attached to the wall rather more firmly than the blind in my own bathroom back in Berlin, I pulled it gently down for five seconds, then let it roll up again for another five seconds. When I had done this three times as arranged, I waited for Belinsky's signal and felt very relieved when I heard three blasts of a car horn from far away. Then I flushed the toilet, and opened the door.

Halfway back along the corridor leading back to the library I saw K/nig's dog.

He stood in the middle of the corridor sniffing the air and regarding me with something like recognition. Then he turned away and trotted downstairs. I didn't think there was a quicker way of finding K/nig than by letting his crapper do it for me. So I followed.

At a door on the ground floor the dog stopped and whined a little bark. As soon as I opened it, he was off again, scampering along another corridor towards the back of the house. He stopped once more and made a show of trying to burrow under another door, to what looked like the cellar. For several seconds I hesitated to open it, but when the dog barked I decided that it was wiser to let him through rather than risk that the noise would summon K/nig. I turned the handle, pushed, and, when the door didn't budge, pulled. It came towards me with only a gentle creak, largely concealed by what sounded at first like a cat mewing somewhere down in the cellar. Cool air and the horrible realization that this was no cat touched my face, and I felt myself shiver involuntarily. Then the dog twisted round the edge of the door and disappeared down the bare wooden stairs.

Even before I had tiptoed to the bottom of the flight, where a large rack of wine concealed me from immediate discovery, I had recognized the painful voice as belonging to Veronika. The scene required very little analysis. She was sitting in a chair, stripped to the waist, her face deathly pale. A man sat immediately in front of her; his sleeves were rolled up and he was torturing her knee with some bloodstained metal object. K/nig stood behind her, steadying the chair and periodically stifling her screams with a length of rag.

There was no time to worry about my lack of a gun, and it was fortunate that K/nig was momentarily distracted by the arrival of his dog. 'Lingo,' he said looking down at the brute, 'how did you get down here? I thought I locked you out.' He bent down to pick the dog up and in the same moment I stepped smartly round the wine rack and ran forwards.

The man in the chair was still in his seat as I clapped both his ears with my cupped hands as hard as I could. He screamed and fell on to the floor, clutching both sides of his head and writhing desperately as he tried to contain the pain of what were almost certainly burst eardrums. It was then that I saw what he had been doing to Veronika. Slicking out of her knee joint at a right angle was a corkscrew.

K/nig's gun was even now halfway out of his shoulder-holster. I leaped at him, punched hard at his exposed armpit and then chopped him across the upper lip with the edge of my hand. The two blows together were enough to disable him. He staggered back from Veronika's chair, blood pouring from his nose. I needn't have hit him again, but now that his hand no longer covered her mouth, her loud cries of excruciating pain persuaded me to deliver a third, more vicious blow with my forearm, aimed at the centre of his sternum. He was unconscious before he hit the ground. Immediately the dog stopped its furious barking and set about trying to revive him with its tongue.

I picked K/nig's gun off the floor, slipped it into my trouser pocket and quickly started untying Veronika. 'It's all right,' I said, 'we're getting out of here. Belinsky will be here any minute with the police.'

I tried not to look at the mess they had made of her knee. She moaned pitiably as I pulled the last of the cords away from her bloodstained legs. Her skin was cold and she was shaking all over, clearly going into shock. But when I took off my jacket and put it about her shoulders, she held my hand firmly and said through gritted teeth, 'Get it out, for God's sake get it out of my knee.'

With one eye on the cellar stairs in case one of Nebe's men should come looking for me now that my presence upstairs was overdue, I knelt down in front of her and surveyed the wound and the instrument that had caused it. It was an ordinary-looking corkscrew, with a wooden handle now sticky with blood. The sharp business end had been screwed into the side of her knee-joint to a depth of several millimetres, and there seemed no way of removing it without causing her almost as much pain as had been caused by screwing it in. The slightest touch of the handle made her cry out.

'Please take it out,' she urged, sensing my indecision.

'All right,' I said, 'but hold on to the seat of your chair. This is going to hurt.' I drew the other chair close enough to prevent her kicking me in the groin and sat down. 'Ready?' She closed her eyes and nodded.

The first anti-clockwise twist turned her face a bright shade of scarlet. Then she screamed, with every particle of air in her lungs. But with the second twist, mercifully she passed out. I surveyed the thing in my hand for a brief second and then hurled it at the man whose ears I had boxed. Lying in a corner, breathing stertorously between groans, Veronika's torturer looked to be in a bad way. The blow had been a cruel one, and although I had never used it before, I knew from my army training that sometimes it even caused a fatal brain haemorrhage.

Veronika's knee was bleedily heavily. I searched around for something with which to bandage her wound, and decided to make do with the shirt of the man I had deafened. I went over to him and tore it off his back.

Having folded the body of the shirt, I pressed it hard against the knee and then used the sleeves to tie it tightly. When the dressing was finished it was a good looking piece of first-aid work. But her breathing had turned shallow now, and I didn't doubt that she would need a stretcher out of there.

By this time, almost fifteen minutes had elapsed since my signal to Belinsky, and yet there was no sound that anything had yet happened. How long could it take his men to move in? I hadn't heard so much as a shout to indicate that they might have encountered some resistance. With people like the Latvian around, it seemed too much to expect that Mnller and Nebe could have been arrested without a fight.

K/nig moaned and moved his leg feebly like a swatted insect. I kicked the dog aside and bent down to take a look at him. The skin underneath his moustache had turned a dark, livid colour, and from the amount of blood that had rolled down his cheeks, I judged that I had probably separated his nose cartilage from the upper section of his jaw.

'I guess it'll be a while before you enjoy another cigar,' I said grimly.

I took K/nig's Mauser out of my pocket and checked the breech. Through the inspection hole I saw the familiar glint of a centre-fire cartridge. One in the chamber. I hauled out the magazine and saw another six neatly ranged like so many cigarettes. I slammed the magazine back up the handle with the heel of my hand and thumbed back the hammer. It was time to find out what had happened to Belinsky.

I went back up the cellar stairs, waited behind the door for a moment and listened. Briefly I thought I heard breathing and then realized that it was my own. I brought the gun up beside my head, slipped the safety off with my thumbnail, and came through the door.

For a split second I saw the Latvian's black cat, and then felt what seemed like the whole ceiling collapsing on top of me. I heard a small popping noise like a champagne cork, and almost laughed as I realized that it was all the sound of the gun firing involuntarily in my hand that my concussed brain was able to decode. Stunned like a landed salmon I lay on the floor. My body hummed like a telephone cable. Too late I remembered that for a big man the Latvian was remarkably light on his feet. He knelt down beside me, grinned into my face before wielding the cosh again.

Then the darkness came.

Chapter 35

There was a message waiting for me. It was written in capital letters as if to emphasize its importance. I struggled to make my eyes focus, only the message kept moving. Blearily, I picked out the individual letters. It was laborious, but I had no choice. Finally I pieced the letters together. The message read:

'CARE USA'. It seemed important somehow, although I failed to understand why.

But then I saw that this was only one part of the message, and the second half at that. I swallowed nauseously and struggled through the first part of the message, which was coded: 'GR. WT 26lbs. CU. FT. 0' 10.' What could it all mean?

I was still trying to understand the code when I heard footsteps and then the sound of a key turning in the lock.

My head cleared agonizingly as I was hauled up by two pairs of strong hands. One of the men kicked the empty cardboard Care package out of the way as they frogmarched me through the doorway.

My neck and shoulder were hurting so bad that my skin turned to gooseflesh the second they held me under my arms, which I now realized were handcuffed in front of me. I retched desperately and tried to get back on to the floor where I had felt comparatively comfortable. But I remained supported and struggling merely made the pain more intense; and so I allowed myself to be dragged along a short, damp passageway, past a couple of broken barrels and up some steps to a big oak vat. The two men sat me roughly in a chair.

A voice, Mnller's voice, told them to give me some wine. 'I want him to be fully conscious when we question him.'

Someone put a glass to my lips, and tilted my head painfully. I drank. When the glass was empty I could taste blood in my mouth. I spat in front of me, I didn't care where. 'Cheap stuff,' I heard myself croak. 'Cooking wine.'

Mnller laughed, and I turned my head towards the sound. The bare lightbulbs burned only dimly but even so they managed to hurt my eyes. I squeezed the lids hard shut, and then opened them again.

'Good,' said Mnller. 'You've still got something left in you. You'll need it to answer all my questions, Herr Gunther, I can assure you.'

Mnller was sitting on a chair with his legs crossed and his arms folded. He looked like a man who was about to watch an audition. Seated beside him, and looking rather less relaxed than the former Gestapo chief, was Nebe. Next to him sat K/nig, wearing a clean shirt, and holding his nose and mouth with a handkerchief as if he had a bad attack of hayfever. On the stone floor at their feet lay Veronika. She was unconscious, and but for the bandage round her knee quite naked. Like me she was also handcuffed, although her pallor indicated that this was an entirely redundant precaution.

I turned my head to the right. A few metres away stood the Latvian and another thug whom I hadn't seen before. The Latvian was grinning excitedly, no doubt in anticipation of my further humiliation.

We were in the largest of the outhouses. Beyond the windows the night looked in on the proceedings with dark indifference. Somewhere I could hear the low throb of a generator. It hurt to move my head or my neck, and it was actually more comfortable to look back at Mnller.

'Ask anything you like,' I said, 'you'll get nothing out of me.' But even as I spoke I knew that in Mnller's expert hands there was no more chance of my not telling him everything than there was of me naming the next Pope.

He found my bravado sufficiently absurd as to laugh and shake his head. 'It's quite a few years since I conducted an interrogation,' he said with what sounded like nostalgia. 'However, I think you'll find that I haven't lost my touch.'

Mnller looked to Nebe and K/nig as if seeking their approbation, and each man nodded grimly.

'I bet you won prizes for it, you half-sized bastard.'

At this utterance, the Latvian was prompted to strike me hard across the cheek.

The sudden jerk of my head sent an agonizing pain down to my toenails and made me cry out.

'No, no, Rainis,' Mnller said like a father to a child, 'we must allow Herr Gunther to talk. He may insult us now, but eventually he will tell us what we want to hear. Please don't hit him again unless I order you to do it.'

Nebe spoke. 'It's no use, Bernie. FrSulein Zartl has now told us all about how you and this American fellow disposed of poor Heim's body. I wondered why you were so inquisitive about her. Now we know.'

'In fact we now know a great deal,' said Mnller. 'While you have been having a nap, Arthur here posed as a policeman in order to gain access to your rooms.' He smiled smugly. 'It wasn't too difficult for him. Austrians are such docile, law-abiding people. Arthur, tell Herr Gunther what you discovered.'

'Your photographs, Heinrich. I imagine that the American must have given them to him. What do you say, Bernie?'

'Go to hell.'

Nebe continued, unperturbed. 'There was also a drawing of Martin Albers' headstone. You remember that unfortunate business, Herr Doktor?'

'Yes,' said Mnller, 'that was very careless of Max.'

'I dare say you must have guessed that Max Abs and Martin Albers were one and the same person, Bernie. He was an old-fashioned, rather sentimental kind of man. He just couldn't pretend to be dead like the rest of us. No, he had to have a stone to commemorate his passing, to make it look respectable. Really, a typical Viennese, wouldn't you say? I should think you were probably the person who tipped off the MPs in Munich that Max was due to arrive there. Of course, you weren't to know that Max was carrying several sets of papers and travel warrants. You see, documents were Max's speciality. He was a master forger. As the former head of SD clandestine operations section in Budapest, he was one of the very best in his field.'

'I suppose he was another bogus conspirator against Hitler,' I said. 'Another fake entry on the list of all those who were executed. Just like you, Arthur. I have to hand it to you: you've been very clever.'

'That was Max's idea,' said Nebe. 'Ingenious, yes, but with K/nig's help not very difficult to organize. You see, K/nig commanded the execution squad at Plotzensee, and hanged conspirators by the hundreds. He supplied all the details.'

'As well as the butcher's hooks and piano wire, no doubt.'

'Herr Gunther,' said K/nig indistinctly through the handkerchief he kept pressed to his nose, 'I hope to be able to do the same for you.'

Mnller frowned. 'We're wasting time,' he said briskly. 'Nebe told your landlady that the Austrian police thought you had been kidnapped by the Russians. After that she was most helpful. Apparently your rooms are being paid for by Dr Ernst Liebl. This man is now known to us as Emil Becker's advocate at law. Nebe is of the opinion that you were retained by him to come to Vienna and attempt to clear him of the murder of Captain Linden. I myself am of this opinion. Everything fits, so to speak.'

Mnller nodded at one of the uglies, who stepped forward and collected up Veronika in his pylon-sized arms. She made no movement, and but for her breathing which became louder and more difficult as her head lolled back on her neck, one might have thought that she was dead. She looked as if they had drugged her.

'Why don't you leave her out of this, Mnller,' I said. 'I'll tell you whatever it is you want to know.'

Mnller pretended to look puzzled. 'That surely is what remains to be seen.' He stood up, as did Nebe and K/nig. 'Bring Herr Gunther along, Rainis.'

The Latvian hauled me to my feet. Just the effort of being made to stand made me feel suddenly faint. He dragged me a few metres to the side of a sunken circular oak vat which was of the dimensions of a good-sized fish-pond. The vat itself was joined to a rectangular steel plate which had two wooden semicircular wings like the leaves of a large dining table, by a thick steel column which went up to the ceiling. The thug carrying Veronika stepped down in the vat and laid her on the bottom. Then he got out and drew down the two oak leaves of the plate to form a perfect, deadly circle.

'This is a wine press,' Mnller said matter-of-factly.

I struggled weakly in the Latvian's big arms, but there was nothing I could do.

It felt like my shoulder or collarbone was broken. I called them several filthy words and Mnller nodded approvingly.

'Your concern for this young woman is encouraging,' he said.

'It was her you were looking for this morning,' said Nebe. 'When you walked into Rainis, wasn't it?'

'Yes, all right, it was. Now let her go, for God's sake. I give you my word, Arthur, she knows absolutely nothing.'

'Yes, that's true,' Mnller admitted. 'Or at least not much. So K/nig tells me anyway, and he is a most persuasive person. But you'll be flattered to learn that she still managed to conceal the part which you played in Heim's disappearance for quite a while. Isn't that so, Helmut?'

'Yes, General.'

'But in the end she told us everything,' Mnller continued. 'Even before your impossibly heroic arrival on the scene. She told us that you and she had enjoyed a sexual relationship, and that you had been kind to her. Which was why she had asked you for help when it came to getting rid of Heim's body. Which was why you came looking for her when K/nig took her away. Incidentally, I must compliment you. You killed one of Nebe's men quite expertly. It's a great pity that a man of your formidable skills will never work for our Organization after all. But a number of things remain a puzzle, and I expect you, Herr Gunther, to enlighten us.' He glanced around and saw that the man who had laid Veronika into the vat was now standing by a small panel of electric switches on the wall.

'Do you know anything about making wine?' he asked, walking round the vat. 'The crushing, as the word suggests, is the process whereby the grape is squeezed, bursting its skin and releasing the juice. As you will no doubt be aware it was once done by treading the grapes in huge casks. But most modern presses are pneumatic or electrically operated machines. The crushing is repeated several times, and thus is an indication of the quality of the wine, with the first press being the best of all. Once every bit of juice has been squeezed out, the residue I believe Nebe calls it the cake is supplied to a distillery; or, as is the case on this small estate, it is turned into fertilizer.'

Mnller looked across at Arthur Nebe. There, Arthur, did I get that right?'

Nebe smiled indulgently. 'Perfectly right, Herr General.'

'I hate to mislead anyone,' Mnller said with good humour. 'Even a man who is going to die.' He paused and looked down into the vat. 'Of course at this precise moment it is not your life which is the most pressing issue, if I may be permitted that one tasteless little joke.'

The big Latvian guffawed in my ear, and my head was suddenly enveloped with the stink of his garlicky breath.

'So I advise you to make your answers quickly and accurately, Herr Gunther.

FrSulein Zartl's life depends on it.' He nodded at the man by the control panel who pressed a button which initiated a mechanical noise, gradually increasing in pitch.

'Don't think too harshly of us,' said Mnller. 'These are hard times. There are shortages of everything. If we had any sodium pentathol we should give it to you. We should even look to buy it on the black market. But I think you'll agree that this method is every bit as effective as any truth drug.'

'Ask your damned questions.'

'Ah, you're in a hurry to answer. That's good. Tell me then: who is this American policeman? The one who helped you dispose of Heim's body.'

'His name is John Belinsky. He works for Crowcass.'

'How did you meet him?'

'He knew that I was working to prove Becker's innocence. He approached me with an offer to work in tandem. Initially he said that he wanted to find out why Captain Linden had been murdered, but then after a while he told me that he really wanted to find out about you. If you had anything to do with Linden's death.'

'So the Americans aren't happy that they have the right man?'

'No. Yes. The military police are. But the Crowcass people aren't. The gun used to kill Linden was one which they traced back to a killing in Berlin. A corpse which was supposed to be you, Mnller. And the gun checked back to SS records at the Berlin Documents Centre. Crowcass didn't inform the military police for fear that they might spook you out of Vienna.'

'And you were encouraged to infiltrate the Org on their behalf?'

'Yes.'

'Are they so certain that I'm here?'

'Yes.'

'But until this morning you had never seen me before. Explain how they know, please.'

'The information that I supplied on the MVD was designed to draw you out. They know you like to consider yourself an expert in these matters. The thinking was that with information of such quality, you yourself would take charge of the debrief. If I saw you at this morning's meeting I was to signal to Belinsky from the toilet window. I had to pull down the blind three times. He would be watching the window through binoculars.'

'And then what?'

'He was supposed to have brought agents to surround the house. He was meant to have arrested you. The deal was that if they were successful in arresting you, then they would let Becker go free.'

Nebe glanced over at one of his men, and jerked his head at the door. 'Get some men to check the grounds. Just in case.'

Mnller shrugged. 'So you're saying that the only reason they know I'm here in Vienna is because you made some signal to them from a lavatory window. Is that it?' I nodded. 'But then why didn't this Belinsky have his men move in and arrest me, as you had planned?'

'Believe me, I've been asking myself the same question.'

'Come now, Herr Gunther. This is inconsistent, is it not? I ask you to be fair.

How am I supposed to believe this?'

'Would I have gone looking for the girl if I didn't think there were going to be agents arriving?'

'What time were you supposed to make your signal?' asked Nebe.

'Twenty minutes into the meeting I was supposed to excuse myself.'

'At 10.20 then. But you were looking for FrSulein Zartl before seven o'clock this morning.'

'I decided that she might not be able to wait until the Americans showed up.'

'You're asking us to believe that you would have risked a whole operation for one ' Mnller's nose wrinkled with disgust ' for one little chocolady?' He shook his head. 'I find that very hard to believe.' He nodded at the man controlling the wine press. This man pushed a second button and the machine's hydraulics cranked into gear. 'Come now, Herr Gunther. If what you say is true, why didn't the Americans come when you signalled to them?'

'I don't know,' I shouted.

'Then speculate,' said Nebe.

'They never meant to arrest you,' I said, putting into words my own suspicions.

'All they wanted to know was that you were alive and working for the Org. They used me, and after they found out what they wanted, they dumped me.'

I tried to wrestle free of the Latvian as the press began its slow descent.

Veronika lay unconscious, her chest swelling gently as she continued breathing, oblivious to the descending plate. I shook my head. 'Look, I honestly don't know why they didn't turn up.'

'So,' said Mnller, 'let's get this clear. The only evidence that they have of my continued existence, apart from this rather tenuous piece of ballistic evidence you mentioned, is your own signal.'

'Yes, I suppose so.'

'One more question. Do you do the Amis know why Captain Linden was killed?'

'No,' I said, and then reasoning that negative answers were not what was wanted, added: 'We figured that he was being supplied with information about war-criminals in the Org. That he came to Vienna to investigate you. At first we thought that K/nig was supplying him with the information.' I shook my head, trying to recall some of the theories I had come up with to explain Linden's death. 'Then we thought that he might somehow have been supplying the Org with information in order to help you to recruit new members. Switch that machine off, for God's sake.'

Veronika disappeared from sight as the press closed over the edge of the vat.

There were only two or three metres of life left to her.

'We didn't know why, damn you.'

Mnller's voice was slow and calm, like a surgeon's. 'We must be sure, Herr Gunther. Let me repeat the question '

'I don't know '

'Why was it necessary for us to kill Linden?'

I shook my head desperately.

'Just tell me the truth. What do you know? You're not being fair to this young woman. Tell us what you found out.'

The shrill whine of the machine grew louder. It reminded me of the sound of the elevator in my old offices in Berlin. Where I should have stayed.

'Herr Gunther,' Mnller's voice contained a gramme of urgency, 'for the sake of this poor girl, I beg you.'

'For God's sake '

He glanced over at the thug by the control panel and shook his squarely-cropped head.

'I can't tell you anything,' I shouted.

The press shuddered as it encountered its living obstacle. The mechanical whine briefly rose a couple of octaves as the resistance to the hydraulic force was dealt with, and then returned to its old pitch before finally the press came to the end of its cruel journey. The noise died away at another nod from Mxiller.

'Can't, or won't, Herr Gunther?'

You bastard,' I said, suddenly weak with disgust, 'you vicious, cruel bastard.'

'I don't think she'll have felt much,' he said with studied indifference. 'She was drugged. Which is more than you will be when we repeat this little exercise in say ' he glanced at his wristwatch ' twelve hours. You have until then to think it over.' He looked over the edge of the vat. 'I can't promise to kill you outright, of course. Not like this girl. I might want to squeeze you two or three times before we spread you on the fields. Just like the grapes.

'On the other hand, if you tell me what I wish to know, I can promise you a rather less painful death. A pill would be so much less distressing for you, don't you think?'

I felt my lip curl. Mnller winced fastidiously as I started to swear, and then shook his head.

'Rainis,' he said, 'you may hit Herr Gunther just once before returning him to his quarters.'

Chapter 36

Back in my cell I massaged the floating rib above my liver which Nebe's Latvian had selected for one stunningly painful punch. At the same time I tried to douse the lights on the memory of what had just happened to Veronika, but without success.

I had met men who had been tortured by the Russians during the war. I remembered them describing how the most awful part of it was the uncertainty whether you would die, whether you could withstand the pain. That part was certainly true.

One of them had described a way of reducing the pain. Breathing deeply and gulping could induce a light-headedness that was partly anaesthetic. The only trouble was that it had also left my friend prone to bouts of chronic hyperventilation which eventually caused him to suffer a fatal heart-attack.

I cursed myself for my selfishness. An innocent girl, already a victim of the Nazis, had been killed because of her association with me. Somewhere inside of me a voice replied that it was she who had asked for my help, and that they might well have tortured and killed her irrespective of my own involvement. But I was in no mood to go easy on myself. Wasn't there anything else I could have told Mnller about Linden's death that might have satisfied him? And what would I tell him when it came to my own turn? Selfish again. But there was no avoiding my egotism's snake's eyes. I didn't want to die. More importantly, I didn't want to die on my knees begging for mercy like an Italian war-hero.

They say impending pain offers the mind the purest aid to concentration.

Doubtless Mnller would have known that. Thinking about the lethal pill he had promised me if I told him whatever it was he wanted to hear helped me to remember something vital. Twisting round my handcuffs, I reached down into my trouser pocket, and tugged out the lining with my little finger, allowing the two pills I had taken from Heim's surgery to roll into my palm.

I wasn't even sure why I had taken them at all. Curiosity perhaps. Or maybe it was some subconscious prompt which had told me I might have need of a painless exit myself. For a long time I just stared at the tiny cyanide capsules with a mixture of relief and horrific fascination. After a while I hid one pill in my trouser-turnup, which left the one I had decided I would keep in my mouth the one that would in all probability kill me. With an appreciation of irony that was much exaggerated by my situation, I reflected that I had Arthur Nebe to thank for diverting these lethal pills from the secret agents for whom they had been created to the top brass in the SS, and from them to me. Perhaps the pill in my hand had been Nebe's own. It is of such speculations, however improbable, that a man's philosophy consists during his last remaining hours.

I slipped the pill into my mouth and held it gingerly between my back molars.

When the time came, would I even have the guts to chew the thing? My tongue pushed the pill over the edge of my tooth and into the corner of my cheek. I rubbed my fingers over my face and could feel it through the flesh. Would anyone see it? The only light in the cell came from a bare bulb fixed to one of the wooden rafters seemingly with nothing but cobwebs. All the same I couldn't help thinking that the outline of the pill in my mouth was very much visible.

When a key scraped in the mortice, I realized that I would soon find out.

The Latvian came through the door holding his big Colt in one hand and a small tray in the other.

'Get away from the door,' he said thickly.

'What's this?' I said, sliding backwards on my backside. 'A meal? Perhaps you could tell the management that what I'd like most is a cigarette.'

'Lucky to get anything at all,' he growled. Carefully he squatted down and laid the tray on the dusty floor. There was a jug of coffee and a large slice of strudel. 'The coffee's fresh. The strudel is homemade.'

For a brief, stupid second I considered rushing him, before reminding myself that a man in my weakened condition could rush about as quickly as a frozen waterfall. And I would have had no more chance of overpowering the huge Latvian than I had of engaging him in Socratic dialogue. He seemed to sense some flicker of hope on my face however, even though the pill resting on my gum remained undetected. 'Go ahead,' he said, 'try something. I wish you would; I'd like to blow your kneecap off.' Laughing like a retarded grizzly bear he backed out of my cell and closed the door with a loud bang.

From the size of him, I judged Rainis to be the kind who enjoyed his food. When he wasn't killing or hurting people it was probably his only real pleasure.

Perhaps he was even something of a glutton. It occurred to me that if I were to leave the strudel untouched, Rainis might be unable to resist eating it himself.

That if I were to put one of my cyanide capsules inside the filling then later on, perhaps long after I myself was dead, the dumb Latvian would eat my cake and die. It might, I reflected, be a comforting thought as I left the world, that he would be swiftly following me.

I decided to drink the coffee while I thought about it. Was a lethal pill hot-water-soluble? I didn't know. So I popped the capsule out of my mouth, and thinking that it might as well be that pill which I used to put my pathetic plan into action, I pushed it into the fruit filling with my forefinger.

I could happily have eaten it myself, pill and all, I was so hungry. My watch told me that over fifteen hours had passed since my Viennese breakfast, and the coffee tasted good. I decided that it could only have been Arthur Nebe who had instructed the Latvian to bring me supper.

Another hour passed. There were eight to go before they would come to take me back upstairs. I would wait until there was no hope, no possibility of reprieve before I took my own life. I tried to sleep, but without much success. I was beginning to understand what Becker must have felt like, facing the gallows. At least I was better off than he was: I still had my lethal pill.

It was almost midnight when I heard the key in the lock again. Quickly I transferred my second pill from my trouser-turnup to my cheek in case they decided to search my clothes. But it was not Rainis who came to fetch my tray but Arthur Nebe. He held an automatic in his hand.

'Don't force me to use this, Bernie,' he said. 'You know I won't hesitate to shoot you if I have to. You'd best get back against that far wall.'

'What's this? A social call?' I dragged myself back from the door. He tossed a packet of cigarettes and some matches after me.

'You might say that.'

'I hope you're not here to talk about old times, Arthur. I'm not feeling very sentimental right now.' I looked at the cigarettes. Winston. 'Does Mnller know you're smoking American nails, Arthur? Be careful. You might get into trouble: he's got some strange ideas about the Amis.' I lit one and inhaled with slow satisfaction. 'Still, bless you for this.'

Nebe drew a chair round the door and sat down. 'Mviller has his own ideas of where the Org is going,' he said. 'But there's no doubting his patriotism or his determination. He's quite ruthless.'

'I can't say I'd noticed.'

'He has an unfortunate tendency to judge other people by his own insensitive standards, however. Which means that he really does believe you are capable of keeping your mouth shut and allowing that girl to die.' He smiled. 'I, of course, know you rather better than that. Gunther is a sentimental sort of man, I told him. Even a little bit of a fool. It would be just like him to risk his neck for someone he hardly knew. Even a chocolady. It was the same in Minsk, I said. He was perfectly prepared to go to the front line rather than kill innocent people. People to whom he owed nothing.'

'That doesn't make me a hero, Arthur. Just a human being.'

'It makes you someone Mnller is used to dealing with: a man with a principle.

Mnller knows what men will take and still stay silent. He's seen lots of people sacrifice their friends and then themselves in order to keep silent. He's a fanatic. Fanaticism is the only thing he understands. And as a result he thinks you're a fanatic. He's convinced there's a possibility that you might be holding out on him. As I said, I know you rather better than that. If you had known why Linden was killed I think you would have said so.'

'Well, it's nice to know somebody believes me. It'll make being turned into this year's vintage all the more bearable. Look, Arthur, why are you telling me this?

So I can tell you that you're a better judge of character than Mnller?'

'I was thinking: if you were to tell Mnller exactly what he wants to hear, then it might save you a lot of pain. I'd hate to see an old friend suffer. And believe me, he'll make you suffer.'

'I don't doubt it. It's not this coffee that's helped to keep me awake, I can tell you. Come on, what is this? The old friend and foe routine? Like I said, I don't know why Linden was canned.'

'No, but I could tell you.'

I winced as the cigarette smoke stung my eyes. 'Let me get this straight,' I said uncertainly. 'You're going to tell me what happened to Linden, in order that I can spill it to Mnller, and thereby save myself from a fate worse than death, right?'

'That's about the size of it.'

I shrugged, painfully. 'I don't see that I've got anything to lose.' I grinned.

'Of course, you could just let me escape, Arthur. For old times' sake.'

'We weren't going to talk about old times, you said so yourself. Anyway, you know too much. You've seen Mnller. You've seen me. I'm dead, remember?'

'Nothing personal, Arthur, but I wish you were.' I took another cigarette and lit myself with the butt of the first. 'All right, unpack it. Why was Linden killed?'

'Linden had a German-American background. He even read German at Cornell University. During the war he had some minor intelligence role, and afterwards worked as a denazification officer. He was a clever man, and soon had a nice racket going for himself, selling Persil certificates, clearances for Old Comrades, you know the sort of thing. Then he joined the CIC as a desk-investigator and Crowcass liaison officer at the Berlin Documents Centre.

Naturally he kept up his old black-market contacts and by this time he had become known to us in the Org as someone sympathetic to our cause. We contacted him in Berlin and offered him a sum of money to perform a small service, on an occasional basis.

'You remember I told you about how a number of us faked our deaths? Gave ourselves new identities? Well, that was Albers the Max Abs you were interested in. His idea. But of course the fundamental weakness of any new identity, especially when it has to be done so quickly, is that one lacks a past. Think of it, Bernie: world war, every able-bodied German between the ages of twelve and sixty-five under arms, and no service record for me, Alfred Nolde.

Where was I? What was I doing? We thought we were very clever in killing off our real identities, letting the records fall into the hands of the Amis, but instead it merely created new questions. We had no idea that the Documents Centre would prove to be quite so comprehensive. Its effect has been to make it possible to check every answer on a man's denazification questionnaire.

'Many of us were working for the Americans by this stage. Naturally it suits them now to turn a blind eye to the pasts of our Org members. But what about tomorrow? Politicians have a habit of changing policy. Right now we're friends in the fight against Communism. But will the same hold true in five or ten years' time?

'So Albers came up with a new scheme. He created old documentation for our more senior personnel in their new identities, himself included. We were all of us given smaller, less culpable roles in the SS and Abwehr than were possessed by our real selves. As Alfred Nolde I was a sergeant in the SS Personnel Section.

My file contains all my personal details: even dental records. I led a quiet, fairly blameless kind of war. It's true I was a Nazi, but never a war-criminal.

That was somebody else. The fact that I happen to resemble someone called Arthur Nebe is neither here nor there.

'Security at the Centre is tight, however. It's impossible to take files out.

But it is comparatively easy to take files in. Nobody is searched when they go into the Centre, only when they leave. This was Linden's job. Once a month Becker would deliver new files, forged by Albers, to Berlin. And Linden would file them in the archive. Naturally this was before we found out about Becker's Russian friends.'

'Why were the forgeries done here and not in Berlin?' I asked. 'That way you could have cut out the need for a courier.'

'Because Albers refused to go anywhere near Berlin. He liked it here in Vienna, not least because Austria is the first step on the rat-line. It's easy to get across the border into Italy, and then the Middle East, South America. There were lots of us who came south. Like birds in winter, eh?'

'So what went wrong?'

'Linden got greedy, that's what went wrong. He knew the material he was getting was forged, but he couldn't understand what it amounted to. At first I think it was mere curiosity. He started photographing the stuff we were giving him. And then he enlisted the help of a couple of Jewish lawyers Nazi-hunters to try and establish the nature of the new files, who these men were.'

'The Drexlers.'

'They were working with the Joint Army Group on war crimes. Probably the Drexlers had no idea that Linden's motives for seeking their help were purely personal and for profit. And why should they have done? His credentials were unquestionable. Anyway, I think they noted something about all these new SS personnel and Party records: that we kept the same initials as our old identities; it's an old trick with building a new legend. Makes you feel more comfortable with your new name. Something as instinctive as initialling a contract becomes safe. I think Drexler must have compared these new names with the names of comrades who were missing or presumed dead and suggested that Linden might like to compare the details of a file held on Alfred Nolde with the file on Arthur Nebe, Heinrich Mnller with Heinrich Moltke, Max Abs with Martin Albers etc.'

'So that's why you had the Drexlers killed.'

'Exactly. That was after Linden turned up here in Vienna, looking for more money. Money to keep his mouth shut. It was Mnller who met him and who killed him. We knew that Linden had already made contact with Becker, for the very simple reason that Linden told us. So we decided to kill two flies with one swat. First we left several cases of cigarettes around the warehouse where Linden was killed in order to incriminate Becker. Then K/nig went to see Becker and told him that Linden was missing. The idea was that Becker would start going round asking questions about Linden, looking for him at his hotel and generally getting himself noticed. At the same time K/nig switched Mnller's gun for Becker's. Then we informed the police that Becker had shot and killed Linden. It was an unlooked-for bonus that Becker already knew where Linden's body was, and that he should return to the scene of the crime with the aim of taking away the cigarettes. Of course the Amis were waiting for him and caught him red-handed.

The case was watertight. All the same, if the Amis had been even half efficient they would have discovered the link between Becker and Linden in Berlin. But I don't think they even bothered to take the investigation outside of Vienna.

They're happy with what they've got. Or at least we thought they were until now.'

'With what Linden knew, why didn't he take the precaution of leaving a letter with someone? Informing the police of what had happened in the event of his death.'

'Oh, but he did,' said Nebe. 'Only the particular lawyer he chose in Berlin was also a member of the Org. On Linden's death he read the letter and passed it across to the head of the Berlin section.' Nebe stared levelly at me, and nodded seriously. 'That's it, Bernie. That's what Mnller wants to find out if you know or not. Well, now that you do know, you can tell him, and save yourself from being tortured. Naturally, I would prefer it if this conversation remained a secret.'

'As long as I live, Arthur, you can depend on it. And thanks.' I felt my voice crack a little. 'I appreciate it.'

Nebe nodded in acknowledgement and stared around him uncomfortably. Then his gaze fell upon the uneaten slice of strudel.

'You weren't hungry?'

'I've not got much of an appetite,' I said. 'One or two things on my mind, I guess. Give it to Rainis.' I lit a third cigarette.

Was I wrong, or had he really licked his lips? That would have been too much to hope for. But it was surely worth a try.

'Or help yourself if you're feeling hungry.'

Nebe really did lick his lips now.

'May I?' he asked politely.

I nodded negligently.

'Well, if you're sure,' he said, picking the plate up off the tray on the floor.

'My housekeeper made it. She used to work for Demel. The best strudel you ever tasted in your life. It would be a pity to waste it, eh?' He took a big bite.

'I never had much of a sweet tooth myself,' I lied.

'That's nothing short of tragic in Vienna, Bernie. You are in the greatest city in the world for cake. You should have come here before the war: Gerstner's, Lehmann's, Heiner's, Aida, Haag, Sluka's, Bredendick's pastrycooks like you never tasted before.' He took another large mouthful. 'To come to Vienna without a sweet tooth? Why, that's like a blind man taking a trip on the Big Wheel in the Prater. You don't know what you're missing. Why don't you try a little?'

I shook my head firmly. My heart was beating so quickly that I thought he must hear it. Suppose he didn't finish it?

'I really couldn't eat anything.'

Nebe shook his head pityingly, and bit once more. The teeth could not be real, I thought, surveying their white evenness. Nebe's own teeth had been much more stained.

'Anyway,' I said, nonchalantly, 'I'm supposed to be watching my weight. I've put on several kilos since coming to Vienna.'

'Me too,' he said. 'You know, you should really '

He never finished the sentence. He coughed and choked all in one jerk of his head. Stiffening suddenly, he made a dreadful blowing noise through his lips as if he had been trying to play a tuba, and fragments of half-chewed cake rolled out of his mouth. The plate of strudel clattered on to the floor, followed by Nebe himself. Scrabbling on top of him, I tried to wrestle the automatic from his grasp before he could fire it and bring Mnller and his thugs down on my head. To my horror I saw that the gun was cocked, and in the same half second Nebe's dying finger pulled the trigger.

But the hammer clicked harmlessly. The safety was still on.

Nebe's legs jerked feebly. One eyelid flickered shut while the other stayed perversely open. His last breath was a long mucoid gurgle smelling strongly of almonds. Finally he lay still, his face already turning a blueish colour.

Disgusted, I spat the lethal pill out of my own mouth. I had little sympathy for him. In a few hours he might have watched the same thing happening to me.

I prised the gun free from Nebe's dead hand, which was now grey-skinned with cyanosis, and having unsuccessfully searched his pockets for the key to my handcuffs, I stood up. My head, shoulder, rib, even my penis it seemed were hurting terribly, but I felt a lot better for the grip of the Walther P38 in my hand. The kind of gun that had killed Linden. I thumb-cocked the hammer for semi-automatic operation, as Nebe himself had done before coming into my cell, slipped off the safety, as he had forgotten to do, and stepped carefully out of the cell.

I walked to the end of the damp passageway and climbed the stairs to the pressing and fermentation room where Veronika had died. There was only one light near the front door and I went towards it, hardly daring to glance at the wine press. If I had seen him I would have ordered Mnller into the machine and squeezed him out of his Bavarian skin. In another body I might have risked the guards and gone up to the house, where possibly I could have tried to arrest him: probably I would just have shot him. It had been that kind of day. Now it would be as much as I could do to escape with my life.

Switching out the light I opened the front door. Without a jacket, I shivered.

The night was a cold one. I crept along to the line of trees where the Latvian had tried to execute me and hid in some bushes.

The vineyard was bright with the lights of the rapid burners. Several men were busy pushing the tall trolleys which carried the burners up and down the furrows to positions which they apparently judged important. From where I sat, their long flames looked like giant fireflies moving slowly through the air. It seemed as if I would have to choose another route to escape from Nebe's estate.

I returned to the house and moved stealthily along the wall, past the kitchen towards the front garden. None of the ground-floor lights were on, but one at an upper-floor window lay reflected on the lawn like a big square swimming-pool. I halted by the corner and sniffed the air. Someone was standing in the porch, smoking a cigarette.

After what seemed like forever, I heard the man's footsteps on the gravel, and glancing quickly round the corner I saw the unmistakable figure of Rainis lumbering down the path towards the open gates where a large grey BMW was parked facing the road.

I walked on to the front lawn staying out of the light from the house, and followed him until he got to the car. He opened the car boot and started to rummage around as if looking for something. By the time he closed it again, I had put less than five metres between us. He turned and froze as he saw the Walther levelled at his misshapen head.

'Put those car keys in the ignition,' I said softly.

The Latvian's face turned even uglier at the prospect of my escaping. 'How did you get out?' he sneered.

'There was a key hidden in the strudel,' I said, and jerked the gun at the car keys in his hand. 'The car keys,' I repeated. 'Do it. Slowly.'

He stepped back and opened the driver's door. Then he bent inside and I heard the rattle of keys as he slipped them into the ignition. Straightening again, he rested his foot almost carelessly on the running-board, and leaning on the roof of the car, smiled a grin that was the shape and colour of a rusting tap.

'Want me to wash it before you go?'

'Not this time, Frankenstein. What I would like you to do is give me the keys for these.' I showed him my still-manacled wrists.

'Keys for what?'

'Keys for handcuffs.'

He shrugged, and kept on grinning. 'I got no keys for no handcuffs. Don't believe me, you search me, you find out.'

Hearing him speak, I almost winced. Latvian and soft in the head he may have been, but Rainis had no idea of German grammar. He probably thought a conjunction was a gypsy dealing three cards on a street-corner.

'Sure you've got keys, Rainis. It was you who cuffed me, remember? I saw you put them in your vest pocket.'

He stayed silent. I was beginning to want to kill him badly.

'Look, you stupid Latvian asshole. If I say jump again you'd better not look down for a skipping-rope. This is a gun, not a fucking hairbrush.' I stepped forward a pace and snarled through clenched teeth. 'Now find them or I'll fit your ugly face with the kind of hole that doesn't need a key.'

Rainis made a little show of patting his pockets and then produced a small silver key from his waistcoat. He held it up like a minnow.

'Drop it on the driver's seat and step away from the car.'

Now that he was closer to me, Rainis could see by the expression on my face that I had a lot of hate in my mind. This time he didn't hesitate to obey, and tossed the little key on to the seat. But if I had thought him stupid, or suddenly obedient, I made a mistake. It was fatigue, probably.

He nodded down at one of the wheels. 'You'd better let me fix that slack tyre,' he said.

I glanced downwards and then quickly up again as the Latvian sprint-started towards me, his big hands reaching for my neck like a savage tiger. A half second later I pulled the trigger. The Walther fed and cycled another round into the firing chamber in less time than it took for me to blink. I fired again. The shots echoed across the garden and up the sky as if the twin sounds had been bearing the Latvian's soul to final judgement. I didn't doubt that it would be heading earthwards and below ground fairly quickly again. His big body crashed face first on to the gravel and lay still.

I ran to the car and jumped into the seat, ignoring the handcuff key underneath my backside. There was no time to do anything but start the car. I turned the key in the ignition and the big car, new by the smell of it, roared into life.

Behind me, I heard shouts. Collecting the gun off my lap, I leaned out and fired a couple of rounds back at the house. Then I threw it on the passenger seat beside me, rammed the gear stick forward, hauled the door shut and stamped on the accelerator. The rear tyres gouged at the driveway as the BMW skidded forward. For the moment it didn't matter that my hands were still manacled: the road ahead lay straight and down a hill.

But the car veered dangerously from side to side as I released the steering for a brief second, and wrestled the gear into second. My hands back on the wheel I swerved to avoid a parked car and almost put the BMW into the side of a fence.

If I could only get to Stifstkaserne and Roy Shields I would tell him all about Veronika's murder. If the Amis were quick they could at least get them for that.

Explanations about Mnller and the Org could come later. When the MPs had Mnller in the cage, there would be no limit to the embarrassment I was going to cause Belinsky, Crowcass, CIC the whole rotten bunch of them.

I looked in the wing mirror and saw the headlights of a car. I wasn't sure if it was chasing me or not but I pushed the already screaming engine even further and almost immediately braked, pushing the wheel up hard to the right. The car hit the kerb and bounced back on to the road. My foot touched the floor again, the engine complaining loudly against the lower gear. But I couldn't risk changing into third now that there were more bends in the road to negotiate.

At the junction of Billrothstrasse and the Gnrtel I almost had to lean over in order to steer the car sharp right, past a van hosing down the street. I didn't see the roadblock until it was too late, and but for the truck parked behind the makeshift barrier that had been erected I don't suppose I would have bothered to try and swerve or stop. As it was, I turned hard left and lost the back wheels on the water on the road.

For a moment I had a camera obscura's eye view as the BMW spun out of control: the barrier, the US military policemen waving their arms or chasing after me, the road I had just driven down, the car that had been following me, a row of shops, a plate glass window. The car danced sideways on two wheels like a mechanical Charlie Chaplin and then there was a cataract of glass as I crashed into one of the shops. I rolled helplessly across the passenger seat and hit the door as something solid came through the other side. I felt something sharp underneath my elbow, then my head hit the frame and I must have blacked out.

It could only have been for a few seconds. One moment there was noise, movement, pain and chaos; and the next there was just quiet, with only the sound of a wheel spinning slowly to tell me that I was still alive. Mercifully the car had stalled so my first worry, which was of the car catching fire, was allayed.

Hearing footsteps on shards of glass and American voices announcing that they were coming to get me I shouted my encouragement, but to my surprise it came out as little more than a whisper. And when I tried to raise my arm to reach for the door handle I lost consciousness again.

Chapter 37

'Well, how are we feeling today?' Roy Shields leaned forward on the chair beside my bed and tapped the plaster cast on my arm. A wire and pulley kept it high in the air. 'That must be pretty handy,' he said. 'A permanent Nazi salute? Shit, you Germans can even make a broken arm look patriotic.'

I took a short look around. It appeared to be a fairly normal hospital ward but for the bars on the windows and the tattoos on the nurses' forearms.

'What kind of hospital is this?'

'You're in the military hospital at the Stiftskaserne,' he said. 'For your protection.'

'How long have I been here?'

'Almost three weeks. You had quite a bump on your square head. Fractured your skull. Busted collarbone, broken arm, broken ribs. You've been delirious since you came in.'

'Yes? Well, blame it on the f/hn, I guess.'

Shields chuckled and then his face grew more sombre. 'Better hold on to that sense of humour,' he said. 'I've got some bad news for you.'

I riffled through the card index inside my head. Most of the cards had been thrown on the floor, but the ones I picked up first seemed somehow especially relevant. Something I had been working on. A name.

'Emil Becker,' I said, recalling a manic face.

'He was hanged, the day before yesterday,' Shields shrugged apologetically. 'I'm sorry. Really I am.'

'Well you certainly didn't waste any time,' I remarked. 'Is that good old American efficiency? Or has one of your people cornered the market in rope?'

'I wouldn't lose any sleep about it, Gunther. Whether he murdered Linden or not, Becker earned that collar.'

'That doesn't sound like a very good advert for American justice.'

'Come on, you know it was an Austrian court that dropped his cue-ball.'

'You handed them the stick and the chalk, didn't you?'

Shields looked away for a moment and then rubbed his face with irritation. 'Aw, what the hell. You're a cop. You know how it is. These things happen with any system. Just because your shoes pick up a bit of shit doesn't mean you have to buy a new pair.'

'Sure, but you learn to stay on the path instead of taking short-cuts across the field.'

'Wise guy. I don't even know why we're having this conversation. You've still not given me a shred of evidence why I should accept that Becker didn't kill Linden.'

'So you can order a retrial?'

'A file is never quite complete,' he said with a shrug. 'A case is never really closed, even when all the participants are dead. I still have one or two loose ends.'

'I'm all cut up about your loose ends, Shields.'

'Perhaps you should be, Herr Gunther.' His tone was stiffer now. 'Perhaps I ought to remind you that this is a military hospital, and under American jurisdiction. And if you remember, I once had occasion to warn you about meddling in this case. Now that you've done exactly that, I'd say you've still got some explaining to do. Possession of a firearm by a German or Austrian national. Well, that's contrary to the Austrian Military Government's Public Safety Manual for a start. You could get five years for that alone. Then there's the car you were driving. Quite apart from the fact that you were wearing handcuffs and that you don't appear to be in possession of a valid driving licence, there's the small matter of driving through a military checkpoint.' He paused and lit a cigarette. 'So what's it to be: information or incarceration?'

'Neatly put.'

'I'm a neat kind of fellow. All policemen are. Come on. Let's have it.'

I sank back on my pillow resignedly. 'I'm warning you, Shields, you're likely to have as many loose ends as you started with. I doubt if I could prove half of what I could tell you.'

The American folded his brawny arms and leaned back on his chair. 'Proof is for the courtroom, my friend. I'm a detective, remember? This is for my own private casebook.'

I told him nearly everything. When I had finished his face adopted a lugubrious expression and he nodded sagely. 'Well, I can certainly suck a bit of that.'

'That's good,' I sighed, 'but my tits are getting a little sore right now, babe.

If you've got questions, how about you save them till next time. I'd like to take a little nap.'

Shields stood up. 'I'll be back tomorrow. But just one question for now: this guy from Crowcass '

'Belinsky?'

'Belinsky, yeah. How come that he quit the game before the period was up?'

'Your guess is as good as mine.'

'Better maybe.' He shrugged. 'I'll ask around. Our relations with the Intelligence boys have improved since this Berlin thing. The American Military Governor has told them and us that we need to present a united front in case the Soviets try the same thing here.'

'What Berlin thing?' I said. 'In case they try what here?'

Shields frowned. 'You don't know about that? No, of course, you wouldn't, would you?'

'Look, my wife is in Berlin; hadn't you better tell me what's happened?'

He sat down again, only on the edge of the chair, which added to his obvious discomfort. 'The Soviets have imposed a complete military blockade on Berlin,' he said. 'They're not letting anything in or out of the Zone. So we're supplying the city by plane. Happened the day your friend got his own personal airlift. 24

June.' He smiled thinly. 'It's kind of tense up there from what I hear. Lots of folk think that there's going to be one almighty great showdown between us and the Russkies. Me, I wouldn't be at all surprised. We should have kicked their asses a long time ago. But we're not about to abandon Berlin, you can depend on it. Provided everybody keeps their heads, we should get through it all right.'

Shields lit a cigarette and put it between my lips. 'I'm sorry about your wife,' he said. 'You been married long?'

'Seven years.' I said. 'What about you? Are you married?'

He shook his head. 'I guess I never met the right girl. Do you mind me asking: has it worked out all right for you both? You being a detective and all.'

I thought for a minute. 'Yes,' I said, 'it's worked out just fine.'

Mine was the only occupied bed in the hospital. That night a barge slipping down the canal woke me with its bovine-sounding horn, and then abandoned me to stare sleeplessly at the dark as the echo of it fled into eternity like the bray of the last trump. Staring into the void of the pitch-black darkness, my whispered breathing serving only to remind me of my own mortality, it seemed that, seeing nothing, I could see beyond to what was most tangible: death itself, a lean, moth-eaten figure shrouded in heavy black velvet, ever ready to press the silent, chloroformed pad over the victim's nose and mouth, and to carry him to a waiting black sedan to some dreadful zone and DP camp where darkness never ends and whence no one ever escapes. As light returned to press against the window bars, so too did courage, although I knew that Death's Ivans held no high regard for those who met them without fear. Whether a man is ready to die or not, his requiem always sounds the same.

It was several days before Shields returned to the hospital. This time he was accompanied by two other men who from their haircuts and well-fed faces I took to be Americans. Like Shields they wore loudly cut suits. But their faces were older and wiser. Bing Crosby types with briefcases, pipes and emotions restricted to their supercilious eyebrows. Lawyers, or investigators. Or Corps.

Shields handled the introductions.

'This is Major Breen,' he said, indicating the older of the two men. 'And this is Major Medlinskas.'

Investigators then. But for which organization?

'What are you,' I said, 'the medical students?'

Shields grinned uncertainly. 'They'd like to ask you a few questions. I'll help with the translating.'

'Tell them I'm feeling a lot better, and thank them for the grapes. And perhaps one of them could fetch me the pot.'

Shields ignored me. They drew up three chairs and sat down like a team of judges at a dog show, with Shields nearest to me. Briefcases were opened, and notepads produced.

'Maybe I should have my twister here.'

'Is that really necessary?' said Shields.

'You tell me. Only I look at these two and I don't think they're a couple of American tourists who want to know the best places in Vienna to nudge a pretty girl.'

Shields translated my concern to the other two, the older of whom grunted and said something about criminals.

'The Major says that this is not a criminal matter,' reported Shields. 'But if you want a lawyer, one will be fetched.'

'If this is not a criminal matter, then how come I'm in a military hospital?'

'You were wearing handcuffs when they picked you out of that car,' sighed Shields. 'There was a pistol on the floor and a machine-gun in the trunk. They weren't about to take you to the maternity hospital.'

'All the same, I don't like it. Don't think that this bandage on my head gives you the right to treat me like an idiot. Who are these people anyway? They look like spies to me. I can recognize the type. I can smell the invisible ink on their fingers. Tell them that. Tell them that people from CIC and Crowcass give me an acid stomach on account of the fact that I trusted one of their people before and got my fingers clipped. Tell them that I wouldn't be lying here now if it wasn't for an American agent called Belinsky.'

'That's what they want to talk to you about.'

'Yeah? Well maybe if they were to put away those notebooks I'd feel a little easier.'

They seemed to understand this. They shrugged simultaneously and returned the notebooks to the briefcases.

'One more thing,' I said. 'I'm an experienced interrogator myself. Remember that. If I start to get the impression that I'm being rinsed and stacked for criminal charges then the interview will be over.'

The older man, Breen, shifted in his chair and clasped his hands across his knee. It didn't make him look any cuter. When he spoke, his German wasn't as bad as I had imagined it would be. 'I don't see any objections to that,' he said quietly.

And then it began. The major asked most of the questions, while the younger man nodded and occasionally interrupted in his bad German to ask me to clarify a remark. For the best part of two hours I answered or parried their questions, only refusing to reply directly on a couple of occasions when it seemed to me that they had stepped across the line of our agreement. Gradually, however, I perceived that most of their interest in me lay in the fact that neither the 970th CIC in Germany, nor the 430th CIC in Austria knew anything about a John Belinsky. Nor indeed was there a John Belinsky attached, however tenuously, to the Central Registry of War Crimes and Security Suspects of the United States Army. The military police had no one by that name; nor the army. There was however a John Belinsky in the Air Force, but he was nearly fifty; and the Navy had three John Belinskys, all of whom were at sea. Which was just how I felt.

Along the way the two Americans sermonized about the importance of keeping my mouth shut with regard to what I had learned about the Org and its relation to the CIC. Nothing could have suited me more and I counted this as a strong hint that as soon as I was well again, I would be permitted to leave. But my relief was tempered by a great deal of curiosity as to who John Belinsky had really been, and what he had hoped to achieve. Neither of my interrogators gave me the benefit of their opinions. But naturally I had my own ideas.

Several times in the following weeks Shields and the two Americans came to the hospital to continue with their inquiry. They were always scrupulously polite, almost comically so; and the questions were always about Belinsky. What had he looked like? Which part of New York had he said that he came from? Could I remember the number of his car?

I told them everything I could remember about him. They checked his room at Sacher's and found nothing: he had cleared out on the very day that he was supposed to have come to Grinzing with the cavalry. They staked out a couple of the bars he had said he favoured. I think they even asked the Russians about him. When they tried to speak to the Georgian officer in the IP, Captain Rustaveli, who had arrested Lotte Hartmann and me on Belinsky's instructions, it transpired that he had been suddenly recalled to Moscow.

Of course it was all too late. The cat had already fallen into the stream, and what was now clear was that Belinsky had been working for the Russians all along. No wonder he had played up the rivalry between the CIC and the military police, I said to my new American friends of truth. I thought myself a very clever sort of coat to have spotted that as early on as I had. By now he had presumably told his MVD boss all about America's recruitment of Heinrich Mnller and Arthur Nebe.

But there were several subjects about which I remained silent. Colonel Poroshin was one: I didn't like to think what might have happened had they discovered that a senior officer in the MVD had arranged my coming to Vienna. Their curiosity about my travel documents and cigarette permit was quite uncomfortable enough. I told them that I had had to pay a great deal of money to bribe a Russian officer, and they seemed satisfied with that explanation.

Privately I wondered if my meeting with Belinsky had always been part of Poroshin's plan. And the circumstances of our deciding to work together: was it possible that Belinsky had shot those two Russian deserters as a demonstration for my benefit, as a way of impressing upon me his ruthless dislike for all things Soviet?

There was another thing about which I kept resolutely silent, and that was Arthur Nebe's explanation of how the Org had sabotaged the US Documents Centre in Berlin with the help of Captain Linden. That, I decided, was their problem. I did not think I cared to help a government that was prepared to hang Nazis on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays, and to recruit them for its own security services on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. Heinrich Mnller had at least got that part right.

As for Mnller himself, Major Breen and Captain Medlinskas were adamant that I must have been mistaken about him. The former Gestapo chief was long dead, they assured me. Belinsky, they insisted, for reasons best known to himself, had almost certainly shown me someone else's picture. The military police had made a very careful search of Nebe's wine estate in Grinzing, and discovered only that the owner, one Alfred Nolde, was abroad on business. No bodies were found, nor any evidence that anyone had been killed. And while it was true that there existed an organization of former German servicemen which was working alongside the United States to prevent the further spread of international Communism, it was, they insisted, quite inconceivable that this organization could have included fugitive Nazi war-criminals.

I listened impassively to all this nonsense, too exhausted by the whole business to care much what they believed or, for that matter, what they wanted me to believe. Suppressing my first reaction in the face of their indifference to the truth, which was to tell them to go to hell, I merely nodded politely, my manners verging on the truly Viennese. Agreeing with them seemed to be the best possible way of expediting my freedom.

Shields was less complaisant however. His help with translation grew more surly and uncooperative as the days went by, and it became obvious that he was unhappy with the way in which the two officers appeared to be more concerned to conceal rather than to reveal the implications of what I had first told him, and certainly he had believed. Much to Shields's annoyance, Breen pronounced himself content that the case of Captain Linden had been brought to a satisfactory conclusion. Shields's only satisfaction might have come from the knowledge that the 796th military police, still smarting as a result of the scandal involving Russians posing as American MPs, now had something to throw back at the 430th CIC: a Russian spy, posing as a member of the CIC, with the proper identity card, staying at a hotel requisitioned by the military, driving a vehicle registered to an American officer and generally coming and going as he pleased through areas restricted to American personnel. I knew that this would only have been a small consolation for a man like Roy Shields: a policeman with a common enough fetish for neatness. It was easy for me to sympathize. I'd often encountered that same feeling myself.

For the last two interrogations, Shields was replaced by another man, an Austrian, and I never saw him again.

Neither Breen nor Medlinskas told me when at last they had concluded their inquiry. Nor did they give me any indication that they were satisfied with my answers. They just left the matter hanging. But such are the ways of people in the security services.

Over the next two or three weeks I made a full recovery from my injuries. I was both amused and shocked to learn from the prison doctor, however, that on my first being admitted to the hospital after my accident, I had been suffering from gonorrhoea.

'In the first place, you're damned lucky that they brought you here,' he said, 'where we have penicillin. If they'd taken you anywhere but an American Military Hospital they'd have used Salvarsan, and that stuff burns like Lucifer's spitball. And in the second, you're lucky it was just drip and not Russian syphilis. These local whores are full of it. Haven't any of you Jerries ever heard of French letters?'

'You mean Parisians? Sure we have. But we don't wear them. We give them to the Nazi fifth column who prick holes in them and sell them to GIs to make them sick when they screw our women.'

The doctor laughed. But I could tell that in a remote part of his soul he believed me. This was just one of many similar incidents I encountered during my recovery, as my English slowly improved, enabling me to talk with the two Americans who were the prison hospital's nurses. For as we laughed and joked it always seemed to me that there was something strange in their eyes, but which I was never able to identify.

And then, a few days before I was discharged, it came to me in a sickening realization. Because I was a German these Americans were actually chilled by me.

It was as if, when they looked at me, they ran newsreel film of Belsen and Buchenwald inside their heads. And what was in their eyes was a question: how could you have allowed it to happen? How could you have let that sort of thing go on?

Perhaps, for several generations at least, when other nations look us in the eye, it will always be with this same unspoken question in their hearts.

Chapter 38

It was a pleasant September morning when, wearing an ill-fitting suit lent to me by the nurses at the military hospital, I returned to my pension in Skodagasse.

The owner, Frau Blum-Weiss greeted me warmly, informed me that my luggage was stored safely in her basement, handed me a note which had arrived not half an hour before, and asked me if I would care to have some breakfast. I told her I would, and having thanked her for looking after my belongings, inquired if I owed any money.

'Dr Liebl settled everything, Herr Gunther,' she said. 'But if you would like to take your old rooms again, that will be all right. They are vacant.'

Since I had no idea when I might be able to return to Berlin, I said I would.

'Did Dr Liebl leave me any message?' I asked, already knowing the answer. He had made no attempt to contact me during my stay in the military hospital.

'No,' she said, 'no message.'

Then she showed me back to my old rooms and had her son bring my luggage up to me. I thanked her again and said that I would breakfast just as soon as I had changed into my own clothes.

'Everything's there,' she said as her son heaved my bags on to the luggage stand. 'I had a receipt for the few things that the police took away: papers, that kind of thing.' Then she smiled sweetly, wished me another pleasant stay, and closed the door behind her. Typically Viennese, she showed no desire to know what had befallen me since last I had stayed in her house.

As soon as she had left the room, I opened my bags and found, almost to my astonishment and much to my relief, that I was still in possession of my $2,500 in cash and my several cartons of cigarettes. I lay on the bed and smoked a Memphis with something approaching delight.

I opened the note while I ate my breakfast. There was only one short sentence and that was written in Cyrillic: 'Meet me at the Kaisergruft at eleven o'clock this morning.' The note was unsigned but then it hardly needed to be. When Frau Blum-Weiss returned to my table to clear away the breakfast things, I asked her who had delivered it.

'It was just a schoolboy, Herr Gunther,' she said, collecting the crockery on a tray, 'an ordinary schoolboy.'

'I have to meet someone,' I explained. 'At the Kaisergruft. Where is that?'

'The Imperial Crypt?' She wiped a hand on a well-starched pinafore as if she had been about to meet the Kaiser himself, and then crossed herself. Mention of royalty always seemed to make the Viennese doubly respectful. 'Why, it's at the Church of the Capuchins on the west side of Neuer Markt. But go early, Herr Gunther. It's only open in the morning, from ten to twelve. I'm sure you'll find it very interesting.'

I smiled and nodded gratefully. There was no doubting that I was likely to find it very interesting indeed.

Neuer Markt hardly looked like a market square at all. A number of tables had been laid out like a сafé terrace. There were customers who weren't drinking coffee, waiters who did not seem inclined to serve them and little sign of any сafé from where coffee might have been obtained. It seemed quite makeshift, even by the easy standards of a reconstructed Vienna. There were also a few people just watching, almost as if a crime had occurred and everyone was waiting for the police. But I paid it little regard and, hearing the eleven o'clock chimes of the nearby clock tower, hurried on to the church.

It was as well for whichever zoologist who had named the famous monkey that the Capuchin monks' style of habit was rather more remarkable than their plainish church in Vienna. Compared with most other places of worship in that city, the Kapuzinerkirche looked as if they must have been flirting with Calvinism at the time that it was built. Either that or the Order's treasurer had run off with the money for the stonemasons; there wasn't one carving on it. The church was sufficiently ordinary for me to walk past the place without even recognizing it.

I might have done so again but for a group of American soldiers who were hanging around in a doorway and from whom I overheard a reference to 'the stiffs'. My new acquaintance with English as it was spoken by the nurses at the military hospital told me that this group was intent on visiting the same place as I was.

I paid a schilling entrance to a grumpy old monk and entered a long, airy corridor that I took to be a part of the monastery. A narrow stairwell led down into the vault.

It was in fact, not one vault, but eight interconnecting vaults and much less gloomy than I had expected. The interior was simple, being in plain white with the walls faced partly in marble, and contrasted strongly with the opulence of its contents.

Here were the remains of over a hundred Habsburgs and their famous jaws, although the guidebook which I had thought to bring with me said that their hearts were pickled in urns located underneath St Stephen's Cathedral. It was as much evidence for royal mortality as you could have found anywhere north of Cairo. Nobody, it seemed, was missing except the Archduke Ferdinand, who was buried at Graz, no doubt piqued at the rest of them for having insisted that he visit Sarajevo.

The cheaper end of the family, from Tuscany, were stacked in simple lead coffins, one on top of the other like bottles in a wine-rack, at the far end of the longest vault. I half expected to see an old man prising a couple of them open to try out a new mallet and set of stakes. Naturally enough the Habsburgs with the biggest egos rated the grandest sarcophagi. These huge, morbidly ornamented copper caskets seemed to lack nothing but caterpillar tracks and gun turrets for them to have captured Stalingrad. Only the Emperor Joseph II had shown anything like restraint in his choice of box; and only a Viennese guidebook could have described the copper casket as 'excessively simple'.

I found Colonel Poroshin in the Franz Joseph vault. He smiled warmly when he saw me and clapped me on the shoulder: 'You see, I was right. You can read Cyrillic after all.'

'Maybe you can read my mind as well.'

'For sure,' he said. 'You are wondering what we could possibly have to say to each other, given all that has happened. Least of all in this place. You are thinking that in a different place, you might try to kill me.'

'You should be on the stage, Palkovnik. You could be another Professor Schaffer.'

'You are mistaken, I think. Professor Schaffer is a hypnotist, not a mind-reader.' He slapped his gloves on his open palm with the air of one who had scored a point. 'I am not a hypnotist, Herr Gunther.'

'Don't underestimate yourself. You managed to make me believe that I was a private investigator and that I should come here to Vienna to try and clear Emil Becker of murder. A hypnotic fantasy if ever I heard one.'

'A powerful suggestion, perhaps,' said Poroshin, 'but you were acting under your own free will.' He sighed. 'A pity about poor Emil. You're wrong if you think that I didn't hope you could prove him innocent. But to borrow a chess term, it was my Vienna gambit: it has a peaceable first appearance, but the sequel is full of subtleties and aggressive possibilities. All that one requires is a strong and valiant knight.'

'That was me, I suppose.'

'Tochno (exactly). And now the game is won.'

'Do you mind explaining how?'

Poroshin pointed to the casket on the right of the more elevated one containing the Emperor Franz Joseph.

'The Crown Prince Rudolf,' he said. 'He committed suicide in the famous hunting lodge at Mayerling. The general story is well-known but the details and the motives remain unclear. Just about the only thing we can be certain of is that he lies in this very tomb. For me, to know this for sure is enough. But not everyone whom we believe to have committed suicide is really quite as dead as poor Rudolf. Take Heinrich Mnller. To prove him still alive, now that was something worthwhile. The game was won when we knew that for sure.'

'But I lied about that,' I said insouciantly. 'I never saw Mnller. The only reason I signalled to Belinsky was because I wanted him and his men to come and help me save Veronika Zartl, the chocolady from the Oriental.'

'Yes, I admit that Belinsky's arrangements with you were less than perfect in their concept. But as it happens I know that you are lying now. You see, Belinsky really was at Grinzing with a team of agents. They were not of course Americans, but my own men. Every vehicle leaving the yellow house in Grinzing was followed including, I may say, your own. When Mnller and his friends discovered your escape they were so panic-stricken that they fled almost immediately. We simply tailed them, at a discreet distance, until they thought that they were safe again. Since then we have been able to positively identify Herr Mnller for ourselves. So you see? You did not lie.'

'But why didn't you just arrest him? What good is he to you if he's left at liberty?'

Poroshin made his face look shrewd.

'In my business, it is not necessarily politic always to arrest a man who is my enemy. Sometimes he can be many times more valuable if he is allowed to remain at large. From as early as the beginning of the war, Mnller was a double agent.

Towards the end of 1944 he was naturally anxious to disappear from Berlin altogether and come to Moscow. Well, can you imagine it, Herr Gunther? The head of the fascist Gestapo living and working in the capital of democratic socialism? If the British or American intelligence agencies were to have discovered such a thing they would undoubtedly have leaked this information to the world's press at some politically opportune moment. Then they would have sat back and watched us squirm with embarrassment. So, it was decided that Mnller could not come.

'The only problem was that he knew so much about us. Not to mention the whereabouts of dozens of Gestapo and Abwehr spies throughout the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. He had first to be neutralized before we could turn him away from our door. So we tricked him into giving us the names of all these agents, and at the same time started to feed him with new information which, while of no help to the German war-effort, might prove of considerable interest to the Americans. It goes without saying that this information was also false.

'Anyway, all this time we continued to put off Mnller's defection, telling him to wait just a little longer, and that he had nothing to worry about. But when we were ready we allowed him to discover that for various political reasons his defection could not be sanctioned. We hoped that this would now persuade him to offer his services to the Americans, as others had done. General Gehlen for example. Baron von Bolschwing. Even Himmler although he was simply too well known for the British to accept his offer. And too crazy, yes?

'Perhaps we miscalculated. Perhaps Mnller left it too late and was unable to escape the eye of Martin Bormann and the SS who guarded the Fnhrerbunker. Who knows? Anyway, Mnller apparently committed suicide. This he faked, but it was quite a while before we could prove this to our own satisfaction. Mnller is a very clever man.

'When we learned about the Org we thought that it wouldn't be long before Mnller turned up again. But he stayed persistently in the shadows. There was the occasional, unconfirmed sighting, but nothing for certain. And then when Captain Linden was shot, we noticed from the reports that the serial number of the murder weapon was one which had been originally issued to Mnller. But this part you already know, I think.'

I nodded. 'Belinsky told me.'

'A most resourceful man. The family is Siberian, you know. They returned to Russia after the Revolution, when Belinsky was still a boy. But by then he was all-American, as they say. The whole family were soon working for NKVD. It was Belinsky's idea to pose as a Crowcass agent. Not only do Crowcass and CIC often work at cross purposes, but Crowcass is often staffed with CIC personnel. And it is quite common for the American military police to be left in ignorance of CIC/

Crowcass operations. The Americans are even more Byzantine in their organizational structures than we are ourselves. Belinsky was plausible to you; but he was also plausible, as an idea, to Mnller: enough to scare him out into the open when you told him that a Crowcass agent was on his trail; but not enough to scare him as far as South America, where he could be of no use to us.

After all, there are others in CIC, less fastidious about employing war-criminals than the people in Crowcass, whose protection Mnller could seek out.

'And so it has proved. Even as we speak Mnller is exactly where we want him: with his American friends in Pullach. Being useful to them. Giving them the benefit of his massive knowledge of Soviet intelligence structures and secret police methods. Boasting about the network of loyal agents he still believes are in place. This was the first stage of our plan to disinform the Americans.'

'Very clever,' I said, with genuine admiration, 'and the second?'

Poroshin's face adopted a more philosophical expression. 'When the time is right, it is we who shall leak some information to the world's press: that Gestapo Mnller is a tool of American Intelligence. It is we who will sit back and watch them squirm with embarrassment. It may be in ten years' time, or even twenty. But, provided Mnller stays alive, it will happen.'

'Suppose the world's press don't believe you?'

'The proof will not be so hard to obtain. The Americans are great ones for keeping files and records. Look at that Documents Centre of theirs. And we have other agents. Provided that they know where and what to look for, it will not be too difficult to find the evidence.'

'You seem to have thought of everything.'

'More than you will ever know. And now that I have answered your question, I have one for you, Herr Gunther. Will you answer it, please?'

'I can't imagine what I can tell you, Palkovnik. You're the player, not me. I'm just a knight in your Vienna gambit, remember?'

'Nevertheless, there is something.'

I shrugged. 'Fire away.'

'Yes,' he said, 'to return to the chess board for a moment. One expects to make sacrifices. Becker, for example. And you of course. But sometimes one encounters the unexpected loss of material.'

'Your queen?'

He frowned for a moment. 'If you like. Belinsky told me that it was you who killed Traudl Braunsteiner. But he was a very determined man in this whole affair. The fact that I had a personal interest in Traudl was of no special account to him. I know this to be true. He would have killed her without a second thought. But you 'I had one of my people in Berlin check you out at the US Documents Centre. You told the truth. You were never a Party member. And the rest of it is there too.

How you asked for a transfer out of the SS. That could have got you shot. So a sentimental fool, maybe. But a killer? I will tell you straight, Herr Gunther: my intellect says that you did not kill her. But I must know it here too.' He slapped his stomach. 'Perhaps here most of all.'

He fixed me with his pale blue eyes, but I did not flinch or look away.

'Did you kill her?'

'No.'

'Did you run her down?'

'Belinsky had a car, not me.'

'Say that you had no part in her murder.'

'I was going to warn her.'

Poroshin nodded. 'Da,' he said, 'dagavareelees (that's agreed). You are speaking the truth.'

'Slava bogu (Thank God).'

'You are right to thank him.' He slapped his stomach once again. 'If I had not felt it, I would have had to kill you as well.'

'As well?' I frowned. Who else was dead? 'Belinsky?'

'Yes, most unfortunate. It was smoking that infernal pipe of his. Such a dangerous habit, smoking. You should give it up.'

'How?'

'It's an old Cheka way. A small quantity of tetryl in the mouthpiece attached to a fuse which leads to a point below the bowl. When the pipe is lit, so is the fuse. Quite simple, but also quite deadly. It blew his head off.' Poroshin's tone was almost indifferent. 'You see? My mind told me that it was not you who killed her. I merely wanted to be sure that I would not have to kill you as well.'

'And now you are sure?'

'For sure,' he said. 'Not only will you walk out of here alive '

'You would have killed me down here?'

'It is a suitable enough place, don't you think?'

'Oh yes, very poetic. What were you going to do? Bite my neck? Or had you wired one of the caskets?'

'There are many poisons, Herr Gunther.' He held out a small flick-knife in his palm. 'Tetrodotoxin on the blade. Even the smallest scratch, and bye-bye.' He pocketed the knife in his tunic and gave a sheepish little shrug. 'I was about to say that not only may you now walk out of here alive, but that if you go to the сafé Mozart now, you will find someone waiting there for you.'

My look of puzzlement seemed to amuse him. 'Can you not guess?' he said delightedly.

'My wife? You got her out of Berlin?'

'Kanyeshnct (Of course). I don't know how else she would have got out. Berlin is surrounded by our tanks.'

'Kirsten is waiting at the Mozart сafé now?

He looked at his watch and nodded. 'For fifteen minutes already,' he said.

'You'd best not keep her waiting much longer. An attractive woman like that, on her own in a city like Vienna? One must be so careful nowadays. These are difficult times.'

'You're full of surprises, Colonel,' I told him. 'Five minutes ago you were ready to kill me on nothing more tangible than your indigestion. And now you're telling me that you've brought my wife from Berlin. Why are you helping me like this? Ya nye paneemayoo (I don't understand).'

'Let us just say that it was part of the whole futile romance of Communism, vot i vsyo (that's all).' He clicked his heels like a good Prussian. 'Goodbye, Herr Gunther. Who knows? After this Berlin thing, we may meet again.'

'I hope not.'

'That is too bad. A man of your talents ' Then he turned and strode off.

I left the Imperial Crypt with as much spring in my step as Lazarus. Outside, on Neuer Markt, there were still more people watching the strange little сafé-terrace that had no сafé. Then I saw the camera and the lights, and at the same time I spotted Willy Reichmann, the little red-haired production manager from Sievering Film Studios. He was speaking English to another man who was holding a megaphone. This was surely the English film that Willy had told me about: the one for which Vienna's increasingly rare ruins had been a prerequisite. The film in which Lotte Hartmann, the girl who had given me a well-deserved dose of drip, had been given a part.

I stopped to watch for a few moments, wondering if I might catch sight of K/nig's girlfriend, but there was no sign of her. I thought it unlikely that she would have left Vienna with him and passed up her first screen role.

One of the onlookers around me said, 'What on earth are they doing?' and another answered saying, 'It's supposed to be a сafé the Mozart сafé.' Laughter rippled through the crowd. 'What, here?' said another voice. 'Apparently they like the view better here,' replied a fourth. 'It's what they call poetic licence.'

The man with the megaphone asked for quiet, ordered the cameras to roll and then called for action. Two men, one of them carrying a book as if it was some kind of religious icon, shook hands and sat down at one of the tables.

Leaving the crowd to watch what happened next, I walked quickly south, towards the real Mozart сafé and the wife who was waiting there for me.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

In 1988 Ian Sayer and Douglas Hotting, who were compiling a history of the American Counter-intelligence Corps entitled America's Secret Army: The Untold Story of the Counter-intelligence Corps, were asked by a US government investigative agency to verify a file consisting of documents signed by CIC agents in Berlin towards the end of 1948 in connection with the employment of Heinrich Mnller as a CIC advisor. The file indicated that Soviet agents had concluded that Mnller had not been killed in 1945 and that he was possibly being used by Western Intelligence agencies. Sayer and Botting rejected the material as a forgery 'counterfeited by a skilful but rather confused person'. This view was corroborated by Colonel E. Browning, who was CIC Operations Chief in Frankfurt at the time the documents were supposed to have been produced.

Browning indicated that the whole idea of something as sensitive as the employment of Mnller as a CIC advisor was ludicrous. 'Regretfully,' wrote the two authors, 'we have to conclude that the fate of the chief of the Gestapo in the Third Reich remains shrouded in mystery and speculation, as it has always been, and probably always will be.'

Attempts by a leading British newspaper and an American news magazine to investigate the story in detail have so far come to nothing.

THE END