A German Requiem

19

‘A date for Herr Becker’s trial has now been set,’ Liebl told me, ‘which makes it absolutely imperative that we make all haste with the preparation of our defence. I trust you will forgive me, Herr Gunther, if I impress upon you the urgent need for evidence to substantiate our client’s account. While I have faith in your ability as a detective, I should very much like to know exactly what progress you have made so far, in order that I may best advise Herr Becker how we are to conduct his case in court.’

This conversation took place several weeks after my arrival in Vienna — but it was not the first time that Liebl had pressed me for some indication of my progress.

We were sitting in the Café Schwarzenberg, which had become the nearest thing I’d had to an office since before the war. The Viennese coffee house resembles a gentleman’s club, except in so far as that a day’s membership costs little more than the price of a cup of coffee. For that you can stay for as long as you like, read the papers and magazines that are provided, leave messages with waiters, receive mail, reserve a table for appointments and generally run a business in total confidence before all the world. The Viennese respect privacy in the same way that Americans worship antiquity, and a fellow patron of the Schwarzenberg would no more have stuck his nose over your shoulder than he would have stirred a cup of mocha with his forefinger.

On previous occasions I had told Liebl that an exact idea of progress was not something that existed in the world of the private investigator: that it was not the kind of business in which one might report that a specific course of action would definitely occur within a certain period. That’s the trouble with lawyers. They expect the rest of the world to work like the Code Napoléon. On this particular occasion however, I had rather more to tell Liebl.

‘König’s girlfriend, Lotte, is back in Vienna,’ I said.

‘She’s returned from her skiing holiday at long last?’

‘It looks like that.’

‘But you haven’t yet found her.’

‘Someone I know from the Casanova Club has a friend who spoke to her just a couple of days ago. She may even have been back for a week or so.’

‘A week?’ Liebl repeated. ‘Why has it taken so long to find that out?’

‘These things take time,’ I shrugged provocatively. I was fed up with Liebl’s constant quizzing and had started to take a childish delight in teasing him with these displays of apparent insouciance.

‘Yes,’ he grumbled, ‘so you’ve said before.’ He did not sound convinced.

‘It’s not like we have addresses for these people,’ I said. ‘And Lotte Hartmann hasn’t been near the Casanova since she’s been back. The girl who spoke to her said that Lotte had been trying to get a small part in a film at Sievering Studios.’

‘Sievering? Yes, that’s in the 19th Bezirk. The studio is owned by a Viennese called Karl Hartl. He used to be a client of mine. Hartl’s directed all the great stars: Pola Negri, Lya de Putti, Maria Corda, Vilma Banky, Lilian Harvey. Did you see The Gypsy Baron? Well that was Hartl.’

‘You don’t suppose he could know anything about the film studio where Becker found Linden’s body?’

‘Drittemann Film?’ Liebl stirred his coffee absently. ‘If it were a legitimate film company, Hartl would know about it. There’s not much that happens in Viennese film-production that Hartl doesn’t know about. But this wasn’t anything more than a name on a lease. There weren’t actually any films made there. You checked it out yourself, didn’t you?’

‘Yes,’ I said, recalling the fruitless afternoon I had spent there two weeks before. It turned out that even the lease had expired, and that the property had now reverted to the state. ‘You’re right. Linden was the first and last thing to be shot there.’ I shrugged. ‘It was just a thought.’

‘So what will you do now?’

‘Try and trace Lotte Hartmann at Sievering. That shouldn’t be too difficult. You don’t go after a part in a film without leaving an address where you can be contacted.’

Liebl sipped his coffee noisily, and then dabbed daintily at his mouth with a spinnaker-sized handkerchief.

‘Please waste no time in tracing this person,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry to have to press you like this, but until we discover Herr König’s whereabouts, we have nothing. Once you find him we might at least try and oblige him to be called as a material witness.’

I nodded meekly. There was more I could have told him but his tone irritated me, and any further explanation would have generated questions I was simply not equipped to answer yet. I could, for instance, have given him an account of what I had learned from Belinsky, at that same table in the Schwarzenberg, about a week after he had saved my skin — information that I was still turning over in my mind, and trying to make sense of. Nothing was as straightforward as Liebl somehow imagined.

‘First of all,’ Belinsky had explained, ‘the Drexlers were what they seemed. She survived Matthausm Concentration Camp, while he came out of the Lodz Ghetto and Auschwitz. They met in a Red Cross hospital after the war, and lived in Frankfurt for a while before they went to Berlin. Apparently they worked pretty closely with the Crowcass people and the public prosecutor’s office. They maintained a large number of files on wanted Nazis and pursued many cases simultaneously. Consequently our people in Berlin weren’t able to determine if there had been any one investigation which related to their deaths, or to Captain Linden’s. The local police are baffled, as they say. Which is probably the way they prefer it. Frankly, they don’t give much of a damn who killed the Drexlers, and the American MP investigation doesn’t look as if it’s going to get anywhere.

‘But it doesn’t seem likely that the Drexlers would have been very interested in Martin Albers. He was SS and SD clandestine operations chief in Budapest until 1944, when he was arrested for his part in Stauffenberg’s plot to kill Hitler, and hanged at Flossenburg Concentration Camp in April 1945. But I dare say he had it coming to him. From all accounts, Albers was a bit of a bastard, even if he did try and get rid of the Führer. A lot of you guys were a hell of a long time about that, you know. Our Intelligence people even think that Himmler knew about the plot all along and let it go ahead in the hope that he could take Hitler’s place himself.

‘Anyway, it turns out that this Max Abs guy was Albers’ servant, driver and general dogsbody, so it kind of looks as if he was honouring his old boss. The Albers family was killed in an air-raid, so I guess there was no one else to erect a stone in his memory.’

‘Rather an expensive gesture, wouldn’t you say?’

‘You think so? Well, I’d sure hate to get killed minding your ass, kraut.’

Then Belinsky told me about the Pullach company.

‘It’s an American-sponsored organization, run by the Germans, set up with the aim of rebuilding German commerce throughout Bizonia. The whole idea is that Germany should, become economically self-supporting as quickly as possible so that Uncle Sam won’t have to keep baling you all out. The company itself is located at an American mission called Camp Nicholas, which until a few months ago was occupied by the postal censorship authorities of the US Army. Camp Nicholas is a big compound that was originally built for Rudolf Hess and his family. But after he went AWOL Bormann had it for a while. And then Kesselring and his staff. Now it’s ours. There’s just enough security about the place to convince the locals that the camp is home to some kind of technical research establishment, but that’s no surprise given the history of the place. Anyway, the good people of Pullach give it a wide berth, preferring not to know too much about what’s happening there, even if it is something as harmless as an economic and commercial think-tank. I guess they’re good at that, what with Dachau just a few miles away.’

That seemed to take care of Pullach, I thought. But what of Abs? It didn’t seem to be in character for a man who wished to commemorate the memory of a hero of the German Resistance (such as it had existed), to kill an innocent man merely in order to remain anonymous. And how could Abs be connected with Linden, the Nazi-hunter, except as some kind of informer? Was it possible that Abs had also been killed, just like Linden and the Drexlers?

I finished my coffee, lit a cigarette and for the present moment I was content that these and other questions could not be asked in any forum other than my own mind.

The number 39 ran west along Sieveringer Strasse into Döbling and stopped just short of the Vienna Woods, a spur of the Alps which reaches as far as the Danube.

A film studio is not a place where you are likely to see any great evidence of industry. Equipment lies forever idle in the vans hired to transport it. Sets are never more than half-built even when they are finished. But mostly there are lots of people, all drawing a wage, who seem to do little more than stand around, smoking cigarettes and nursing cups of coffee; and these only stand because they are not considered important enough to be provided with a seat. For anyone foolish enough to have financed such an apparently profligate undertaking, film must seem like the most expensive length of material since Chinese silk, and would, I reflected, surely have driven Dr Liebl half-mad with impatience.

I inquired after the studio manager from a man with a clipboard, and he directed me to a small office on the first floor. There I found a tall, paunchy man with dyed hair, wearing a lilac-coloured cardigan and having the manner of an eccentric maiden aunt. He listened to my mission with one hand clasped on top of the other as if I had been requesting the hand of his warded niece.

‘What are you, some kind of policeman?’ he said combing an unruly eyebrow with his fingernail. From somewhere in the building came the sound of a very loud trumpet, which caused him to wince noticeably.

‘A detective,’ I said, disingenuously.

‘Well, we always like to cooperate with them at the top, I’m sure. What did you say this girl was casting for?’

‘I didn’t. I’m afraid I don’t know. But it was in the last two or three weeks.’

He picked up the telephone and pressed a switch.

‘Willy? It’s me, Otto. Could you be a love and step into my office for a moment?’ He replaced the receiver, and checked his hair. ‘Willy Reichmann’s a production manager here. He may be able to help you.’

‘Thanks,’ I said and offered him a cigarette.

He threaded it behind his ear. ‘How kind. I’ll smoke it later.’

‘What are you filming at the moment?’ I inquired while we waited. Whoever was playing the trumpet hit a couple of high notes that didn’t seem to match.

Otto emitted a groan and stared archly at the ceiling. ‘Well, it’s called The Angel with the Trumpet,’ he said with a conspicuous lack of enthusiasm. ‘It’s more or less finished now, but this director is such a perfectionist.’

‘Would that be Karl Hartl?’

‘Yes. Do you know him?’

‘Only The Gypsy Baron.’

‘Oh,’ he said sourly. ‘That.’

There was a knock at the door and a short man with bright red hair came into the office. He reminded me of a troll.

‘Willy, this is Herr Gunther. He’s a detective. If you’re willing to forgive the fact that he liked The Gypsy Baron you might like to give him some assistance. He’s looking for a girl, an actress who was at a casting session here not so long ago.’

Willy smiled uncertainly, revealing small uneven teeth that looked like a mouthful of rock salt, nodded and said in a high-pitched voice: ‘You’d best come into my office, Herr Gunther.’

‘Don’t keep Willy too long, Herr Gunther,’ Otto instructed as I followed Willy’s diminutive figure into the corridor. ‘He has an appointment in fifteen minutes.’

Willy turned on his heel and looked blankly at the studio manager. Otto sighed exasperatedly. ‘Don’t you ever write anything in your diary, Willy? We’ve got that Englishman coming from London Films. Mr Lyndon-Haynes? Remember?’

Willy grunted something and then closed the door behind us. He led the way along the corridor to another office, and ushered me inside.

‘Now, what is this girl’s name?’ he said, pointing me to a chair.

‘Lotte Hartmann.’

‘I don’t suppose you know the name of the production company?’

‘No, but I know that she came here within the last couple of weeks.’

He sat down and opened one of the desk drawers. ‘Well, there were only three films casting here this past month, so it shouldn’t be too difficult.’ His short fingers picked out three files which he laid on the blotter and started to sort through their contents. ‘Is she in trouble?’

‘No. It’s just that she may know someone who can help the police with an inquiry we are making.’ This was true at least.

‘Well if she’s been up for a part this last month or so, she’ll be in one of these files. We may be short of attractive ruins in Vienna, but one thing we’ve got plenty of is actresses. Half of them are chocoladies, mind you. Even at the best of times an actress is just a chocolady by another name.’ He came to the end of one pile of papers and started on another.

‘I can’t say I miss your lack of ruins,’ I remarked. ‘I’m from Berlin myself. We’ve got ruins on an epic scale.’

‘Don’t I know it. But this Englishman I have to see wants lots of ruins here in Vienna. Just like Berlin. Just like Rosellini.’ He sighed disconsolately. ‘I ask you: what is there apart from the Ring and the Opera district?’

I shook my head sympathetically.

‘What does he expect? The war’s been over for three years. Does he imagine that we delayed rebuilding just in case an English film crew turned up? Perhaps these things take longer in England than in Austria. It wouldn’t surprise me, considering the amount of red-tape the British generate. Never known such a bureaucratic lot. Christ knows what I’m going to tell this fellow. By the time they start filming they’ll be lucky to find a broken window.’

He skimmed a sheet of paper across the desk. Pinned to its top left-hand corner was a passport-sized photograph. ‘Lotte Hartmann,’ he announced.

I glanced at the name and the photograph. ‘It looks like it.’

‘Actually I remember her,’ he said. ‘She wasn’t quite what we were looking for on that occasion, but I said I could probably find her something in this English production. Good-looking, I’ll say that much for her. But to be frank with you, Herr Gunther, she isn’t much of an actress. A couple of walk-on parts at the Burgtheater during the war and that’s about it. Still, the English are making a film about the black market and so they want lots of chocoladies. In view of Lotte Hartmann’s particular experience I thought she could be one of them.’

‘Oh? What experience is that?’

‘She used to be a greeter at the Casanova Club. And now she’s a croupier at the Casino Oriental. At least that’s what she told me. For all I know she could be one of the exotic dancers they have there. Anyway, if you’re looking for her, that’s the address she gave.’

‘Mind if I borrow this sheet?’

‘Be my guest.’

‘One more thing: if for any reason Fräulein Hartmann gets in contact with you I’d be grateful if you would keep this under your hat.’

‘Like it was a new toupee.’

I stood up to leave. ‘Thanks,’ I said, ‘you’ve been very helpful. Oh, and good luck with your ruins.’

He grinned wryly. ‘Yes, well, if you see any weak walls, give them a shove, there’s a good fellow.’

I was at the Oriental that evening, just in time for the first show at 8.15. The girl dancing naked on the pagoda-like dance floor, to the accompaniment of a six-piece orchestra, had eyes that were as cold and hard as the blackest piece of Pichler’s porphyry. Contempt was written into her face as indelibly as the birds tattooed on her small, girlish breasts. A couple of times she had to stifle a yawn, and once she grimaced at the gorilla who was detailed to watch over her in case anyone wanted to show the girl his appreciation. When after forty-five minutes she came to the end of her act, her curtsy was a mockery of those of us who had watched it.

I waved to a waiter and transferred my attention to the club itself. ‘The wonderful Egyptian Night Cabaret’ was how the Oriental described itself on the book of matches I had collected from the brass ashtray, and it was certainly greasy enough to have passed for something Middle Eastern, at least in the clichéd eye of some set-designer from Sievering Studios. A long, curving stairway led down into the Moorish-style interior with its gilt pillars, cupola’d ceiling and many Persian tapestries on the mock-mosaic walls. The dank, basement smell, cheap Turkish tobacco-smoke and number of prostitutes only added to the authentic Oriental atmosphere. I half expected to see the thief of Baghdad sit down at the wooden marquetry table I had taken. Instead I got a Viennese garter-handler.

‘You looking for a nice girl?’ he asked.

‘If I were I wouldn’t have come here.’

The pimp read this the wrong way up, and pointed out a big redhead who was seated at the anachronistic American bar. ‘I can get you nice and cosy with that one there.’

‘No thanks. I can smell her pants from here.’

‘Listen, pifke, that little chocolady is so clean you could eat your supper off her crotch.’

‘I’m not that hungry.’

‘Perhaps something else, then. If it’s drip you’re worried about, I know where I can find some nice fresh snow, with no footprints. Know what I mean?’ He leaned forwards across the table. ‘A girl who hasn’t even finished school yet. How does a splash like that sound to you?’

‘Disappear, swing, before I shut your flap.’

He leaned back suddenly. ‘Slow your blood down, pifke,’ he sneered. ‘I was only trying to —’ He yelped with pain as he found himself drawn to his feet by one sideburn held between Belinsky’s forefinger and thumb.

‘You heard my friend,’ he said with quiet menace, and pushing the man away he sat down opposite me. ‘God, I hate pimps,’ he muttered, shaking his head.

‘I’d never have guessed,’ I said, and waved again at the waiter, who seeing the pimp’s manner of departure approached the table with more obsequiousness than an Egyptian houseboy. ‘What’ll you have?’ I asked the American.

‘A beer,’ he said.

‘Two Gossers,’ I told the waiter.

‘Immediately, gentlemen,’ he said, and scuttled away.

‘Well that’s certainly made him more attentive,’ I observed.

‘Yeah, well, you don’t come to the Casino Oriental for ritzy service. You come to lose money on the tables or in a bed.’

‘What about the floor-show? You forgot the show.’

‘The hell I did.’ He laughed obscenely and proceeded to explain that he usually tried to catch the show at the Oriental at least once a week.

When I told him about the girl with the tattoos on her breasts he shook his head with worldly indifference, and for a while I was obliged to listen to him tell me about the strippers and exotic dancers he’d seen in the Far East, where a girl with a tattoo was considered nothing to write home about. This kind of conversation was of little interest to me, and when after several minutes Belinsky ran out of unholy anecdote, I was glad to be able to change the subject.

‘I found König’s girlfriend, Fräulein Hartmann,’ I announced.

‘Yes? Where?’

‘In the next room. Dealing cards.’

‘The croupier? The blonde piece with the tan and the icicle up her ass?’

I nodded.

‘I tried to buy her a drink,’ he said, ‘only I might as well have been selling brushes. If you’re going to ingratiate yourself with that one you’ve got your work cut out, kraut. She’s so cold her perfume makes your nostrils ache. Perhaps if you were to kidnap her you might stand some chance.’

‘I was thinking along similar lines. Seriously, how low is your credit with the MPs here in Vienna?’

Belinsky shrugged. ‘It’s a real snake’s ass. But say what you’ve got in mind and I’ll tell you for sure.’

‘How’s this then? The International Patrol comes in here one night and arrests me and the girl on some pretext. Then they take us down to Kärtnerstrasse where I start talking tough about how a mistake has been made. Maybe some money even changes hands to make it look really convincing. After all, people like to believe that all police are corrupt, don’t they? So she and König might appreciate that little bit of fine detail. Anyway, when the police let us go I make out to Lotte Hartmann that the reason I helped her was because I find her attractive. Well naturally she’s grateful and would like me to know it, only she’s got this gentleman friend. Maybe he can repay me somehow or other. Put some business my way, that kind of thing.’ I paused and lit a cigarette. ‘Well, what do you think?’

‘In the first place,’ Belinsky said thoughtfully, ‘the IP isn’t allowed in this joint. There’s a big sign at the front door to that effect. Your ten-schilling entrance buys a night’s membership to what is, after all, a private club, which means the IP just can’t come marching in here dirtying the carpet and scaring the flower-lady.’

‘All right then,’ I said, ‘they wait outside and work a spot-check on people as they leave the club. Surely there’s nothing to stop them doing that? They pull Lotte and me in on suspicion: her of being a chocolady, and me of working some racket.’

The waiter arrived with our beers. Meanwhile the second show was starting. Belinsky swallowed a mouthful of his drink and sat back in his seat to watch.

‘I like this one,’ he growled, lighting his pipe. ‘She’s got an ass like the west coast of Africa. Just you wait until you see it.’ Puffing contentedly, his pipe fixed between his grinning teeth, Belinsky kept his eyes on the girl peeling off her brassière.

‘It might just work at that,’ he said eventually. ‘Only forget trying to bribe one of the Americans. No, if it’s grease you’re trying to simulate then it really has to be an Ivan or a Frenchy. As it happens the CIC has turned a Russian captain in the IP. Apparently he’s trying to work his passage to the United States, so he’s good for service manuals, identity-papers, tip-offs, the usual kind of thing. A fake arrest ought to be within his abilities. And by a happy coincidence the Russians are in the chair this month, so it should be easy enough to arrange a night when he’s on duty.’

Belinsky’s grin widened as the dancing girl eased her pants over her substantial backside to reveal a tiny G-string.

‘Oh, will you look at that?’ he chuckled, with schoolboyish glee. ‘Put a nice frame around her ass and I could hang it on my wall.’ He tossed back his beer and winked lasciviously at me. ‘I’ll say one thing for you krauts. You build your women every bit as well as you build your automobiles.’

20

My clothes actually seemed to fit me better. My trousers had stopped hanging loose around my waist like a clown’s pantaloons. Slipping into my jacket was no longer reminiscent of a schoolboy optimistically trying on his dead father’s suits. And my shirt-collar was as snug about my neck as the bandage on a coward’s arm. There was no doubt that a couple of months in Vienna had put some weight on me, so that I now looked more like the man who had gone to a Soviet POW camp and less like the man who had returned from one. But while this pleased me, I saw it as no excuse to get out of condition, and I had resolved to spend less time sitting in the Café Schwarzenberg, and to take more exercise.

It was the time of year when winter’s denuded trees were starting to bud, and when the decision to wear an overcoat was no longer automatic. With only a chalk-mark of cloud on an otherwise uniformly blue board of sky, I decided to take a walk around the Ring and expose my pigments to the warm spring sunshine.

Like a chandelier that is too big for the room in which it hangs, so the official buildings on the Ringstrasse, built at a time of overbearing Imperial optimism, were somehow too grand, too opulent for the geographical realities of the new Austria. A country of six million people, Austria was little more than the butt-end of a very large cigar. It wasn’t a Ring I went walking on so much as a wreath.

The American sentry outside the US-requisitioned Bristol Hotel had his pink face lifted up to catch the rays of the morning sun. His Russian counterpart guarding the similarly requisitioned Grand Hotel next door looked as if he had spent his whole life outdoors, so dark were his features.

Crossing on to the south side of the Ring in order to be close to the park as I came up the Schubertring, I found myself near the Russian Kommendatura, formerly the Imperial Hotel, as a large Red Army staff car drew up outside the enormous red star and four caryatids that marked the entrance. The car door opened and out stepped Colonel Poroshin.

He did not seem in any way surprised to see me. Indeed, it was almost as if he had expected to find me walking there, and for a moment he simply looked at me as if it had been only a few hours since I had sat in his office in the little Kremlin in Berlin. I suppose my jaw must have dropped, because after a second he smiled, murmured ‘Dobraye ootra (Good-morning)’, and then carried on into the Kommendatura followed closely by a couple of junior officers who stared suspiciously back at me, while I stood there, simply lost for words.

More than a little puzzled as to why Poroshin should have turned up in Vienna now, I wandered back across the road to the Café Schwarzenberg, narrowly escaping being hit by an old lady on a bicycle who rang her bell furiously at me.

I sat down at my usual table to give some thought to Poroshin’s arrival on the scene, and ordered a light snack, my new fitness resolution already ruined.

The colonel’s presence in Vienna seemed easier to explain with some coffee and cake inside of me. There was, after all, no reason why he should not have come. As an MVD colonel he could probably go wherever he liked. That he had not said more to me or inquired as to how my efforts were going on behalf of his friend I thought was probably due to the fact that he had no wish to discuss the matter in front of the two other officers. And he had only to pick up the telephone and ring the headquarters of the International Patrol in order to discover if Becker was still in prison or not.

All the same I had a feeling on the sole of my shoe that Poroshin’s arrival from Berlin was connected with my own investigation, not necessarily for the better. Like a man who has breakfasted on prunes, I told myself I was certain to notice something before very long.

21

Each one of the Four Powers took administrative responsibility for the policing of the Inner City for a month at a time. ‘In the chair’ was how Belinsky had described it. The chair in question was located in a meeting-room at the combined forces headquarters in the Palais Auersperg, although it also affected who sat next to the driver in the International Patrol vehicle. But though the IP was an instrument of the Four Powers and subject in theory to orders from the combined forces, for all practical purposes it was American operated and supplied. All vehicles, petrol and oil, radios, radio spares, maintenance of the vehicles and the radios, operation of the radio network system and organization of the patrols were the responsibility of the US 796th. This meant that the American member of the patrol always drove the vehicle, operated the radio and performed the first-echelon maintenance. Thus, at least as far as the patrol itself was concerned, the idea of ‘the chair’ was a bit of a movable feast.

Although the Viennese referred to ‘the four men in the jeep’, or sometimes ‘the four elephants in the jeep’, in reality ‘the jeep’ had long been abandoned as too small to accommodate a patrol of four men, their short-wave transmitter, not to mention any prisoners; and a three-quarter-ton Command and Reconnaissance vehicle was now the favoured mode of transport.

All this I learned from the Russian corporal commanding the IP truck parked a short distance from the Casino Oriental on Petersplatz, in which I sat under arrest, waiting for the kapral’s colleagues to pick up Lotte Hartmann. Speaking neither French nor English, and with only a smattering of German, the kapral was delighted to find someone with whom he could have a conversation, even if it was a Russian-speaking prisoner.

‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you very much about why you’re being arrested, apart from the fact that it’s for black-marketeering,’ he apologised. ‘You’ll find out more when we get to the Kärtnerstrasse. We’ll both find out, eh? All I can tell you about is the procedure. My captain will fill out an arrest-form, in duplicate — everything’s in duplicate — and leave both copies with the Austrian police. They’ll forward one copy to the Military Government Public-Safety Officer. If you’re held for trial in a military court, a charge sheet will be prepared by my captain; and if you’re held for trial in an Austrian court, the local police will be instructed accordingly.’ The kapral frowned. ‘To be honest with you, we don’t bother much with black-market offences these days. Or vice for that matter. It’s smugglers we’re generally after, or illegal emigrants. Those other three bastards think I’ve gone mad, I can tell. But I’ve got my orders.’

I smiled sympathetically and said how I appreciated him explaining. I was thinking of offering him a cigarette when the door of the truck opened and the French patrolman helped a very pale-looking Lotte Hartmann to climb up beside me. Then he and the Englishman came after her, locking the door from the inside. The smell of her fear was only marginally weaker than the cloying scent of her perfume.

‘Where are they taking us?’ she whispered to me.

I told her we were going to the Kärtnerstrasse.

‘No talking is allowed,’ said the English MP in appalling German. ‘Prisoners will keep quiet until we reach headquarters.’

I smiled quietly to myself. The language of bureaucracy was the only second language that an Englishman would ever be capable of speaking well.

The IP was headquartered in an old palace within a cigarette-end’s flick of the State Opera. The truck drew up outside and we were marched through huge glass doors and into a baroque-style hall, where an assortment of atlantes and caryatids showed the omnipresent hand of the Viennese stonemason. We went up a staircase that was as wide as a railway track, past urns and busts of forgotten noblemen, through a pair of doors that were longer than the legs of a circus tall-man and into an arrangement of glass-fronted offices. The Russian kapral opened the door of one of them, ushered his two prisoners inside and told us to wait there.

‘What did he say?’ Fräulein Hartmann asked as he closed the door behind him.

‘He said to wait.’ I sat down, lit a cigarette and looked about the room. There was a desk, four chairs and on the wall a large wooden noticeboard of the kind you see outside churches, except that this one was in Cyrillic, with columns of chalked numbers and names, headed ‘Wanted Persons’, ‘Absentees’, ‘Stolen Vehicles’, ‘Express Messages’, ‘Part I Orders’ and ‘Part II Orders’. In the column headed ‘Wanted Persons’ appeared my own name and that of Lotte Hartmann. Belinsky’s pet Russian was making things look very convincing.

‘Have you any idea what this is all about?’ she asked tremulously.

‘No,’ I lied. ‘Have you?’

‘No, of course not. There must be some kind of mistake.’

‘Evidently.’

‘You don’t seem all that concerned. Or maybe you just don’t understand that it’s the Russians who ordered us to be brought here.’

‘Do you speak Russian?’

‘No, of course not,’ she said impatiently. ‘The American MP who arrested me said that this was a Russian call and nothing to do with him.’

‘Well, the Ivans are in the chair this month,’ I said reflectively. ‘What did the Frenchman say?’

‘Nothing. He just kept looking down the front of my dress.’

‘He would.’ I smiled at her. ‘It’s worth a look.’

She gave me a sarcastic sort of smile. ‘Yes, well, I don’t think they brought me here just to see the wood stacked in front of the cabin, do you?’ She spoke with crisp distaste, but accepted the cigarette I offered her all the same.

‘I can’t think of a better reason.’

She swore under her breath.

‘I’ve seen you, haven’t I?’ I said. ‘At the Oriental?’

‘What were you during the war — an air spotter?’

‘Be nice. Maybe I can help you.’

‘Better help yourself first.’

‘You can depend on that.’

When the office door finally opened it was a tall, burly-looking Red Army officer who came into the room. He introduced himself as Captain Rustaveli and took a seat behind the desk.

‘Look here,’ demanded Lotte Hartmann, ‘would you mind telling me why I’ve been brought here in the middle of the night? What the hell is going on?’

‘All in good time, Fräulein,’ he replied in flawless German. ‘Please sit down.’

She slumped on to a chair beside me and regarded him sullenly. The captain looked at me.

‘Herr Gunther?’

I nodded and told him in Russian that the girl spoke only German. ‘She’ll think I’m a more impressive son-of-a-bitch if you and I confine ourselves to a language she can’t understand.’

Captain Rustaveli stared coldly back at me and for a brief moment I wondered if something had gone wrong and Belinsky had not managed to make it clear to this Russian officer that our arrests were a put-up job.

‘Very well,’ he said after a long moment. ‘Nevertheless, we shall at least have to go through the motions of an interrogation. May I see your papers please, Herr Gunther?’ From his accent I took him for a Georgian. The same as Comrade Stalin.

I reached inside my jacket and handed over my identity card into which, at Belinsky’s suggestion, I had inserted two $100 bills while sitting in the truck. Rustaveli quickly slipped the money into his breeches pocket without blinking, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Lotte Hartmann’s jaw drop on to her lap.

‘Very generous,’ he murmured, turning over my identity card in his hairy fingers. Then he opened a file with my name on it. ‘Although quite unnecessary, I can assure you.’

‘There’s her feelings to think of, Captain. You wouldn’t want me to disappoint her prejudice, would you?’

‘No indeed. Good-looking, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Very.’

‘A whore, do you think?’

‘That, or something pretty close to it. I’m only guessing of course, but I’d say she was the type that likes to strip a man of a lot more than ten schillings and his underwear.’

‘Not the sort of girl to fall in love with, eh?’

‘It would be like putting your tail on an anvil.’

It was warm in Rustaveli’s office and Lotte started to fan herself with her jacket, allowing the Russian several glimpses of her ample cleavage.

‘It’s rare that an interrogation is quite so amusing,’ he said, and looking down at his papers added: ‘She has nice tits. That’s the kind of truth I can really respect.’

‘I guess it’s a lot easier for you Russians to look at.’

‘Well, whatever this little show has been laid on to achieve, I hope you get to have her. I can’t think of a better reason to go to all this trouble. Me, I’ve got a sexual disease: my tail swells up every time I see a woman.’

‘I guess that makes you a fairly typical Russian.’

Rustaveli smiled wryly. ‘Incidentally, you speak excellent Russian, Herr Gunther. For a German.’

‘So do you, Captain. For a Georgian. Where are you from?’

‘Tbilisi.’

‘Stalin’s birthplace?’

‘No, thank God. That’s Gori’s misfortune.’ Rustaveli closed my file. ‘That should be enough to impress her, don’t you think?’

‘Yes.’

‘What shall I tell her?’

‘You have information that she’s a whore,’ I explained, ‘so you’re reluctant to let her go. But you let me talk you into it.’

‘Well, that seems to be in order, Herr Gunther,’ Rustaveli said, reverting to German again. ‘My apologies for having detained you. Now you may leave.’

He handed back my identity card, and I stood up and made for the door.

‘But what about me?’ Lotte moaned.

Rustaveli shook his head. ‘I’m afraid you must stay, Fräulein. The vice squad doctor will be here shortly. He will question you regarding your work at the Oriental.’

‘But I’m a croupier,’ she wailed, ‘not a chocolady.’

‘That is not our information.’

‘What information?’

‘Your name has been mentioned by several other girls.’

‘What other girls?’

‘Prostitutes, Fräulein. Possibly you may have to submit yourself for a medical examination.’

‘A medical? What for?’

‘For venereal disease, of course.’

‘Venereal disease —?’

‘Captain Rustaveli,’ I said above Lotte’s rising cry of outrage, ‘I can vouch for this woman. I wouldn’t say I knew her very well, but I’ve known her long enough to be able to state, quite categorically, that she is not a prostitute.’

‘Well —’ he cavilled.

‘I ask you: does she look like a prostitute?’

‘Frankly, I’ve yet to meet an Austrian girl who isn’t selling it.’ He closed his eyes for a second, and then shook his head. ‘I can’t go against the protocol. These are serious charges. Many Russian soldiers have been infected.’

‘As I recall, the Oriental where Fräulein Hartmann was arrested is off limits to the Red Army. I was under the impression that your men tended to go to the Moulin Rouge in Walfischgasse.’

Rustaveli pursed his lips and shrugged. ‘That is true. But nevertheless —’

‘Perhaps if I were to meet you again, Captain, we might discuss the possibility of me compensating the Red Army for any embarrassment regarding a breach of the protocol. In the meantime, would you be able to accept my personal surety for the Fräulein’s good character?’

Rustaveli scratched his stubble thoughtfully. ‘Very well,’ he said, ‘your personal surety. But remember, I have your addresses. You can always be re-arrested.’ He turned to Lotte Hartmann and told her that she was also free to leave.

‘Thank God,’ she breathed, and sprang to her feet.

Rustaveli nodded at the kapral standing guard on the other side of the grimy glass door, and then ordered him to escort us out of the building. Then the captain clicked his heels and apologised for ‘the mistake’, as much for the benefit of his kapral as for any effect it might have had on Lotte Hartmann.

She and I followed the kapral back down the big staircase, our steps echoing up to the ornate cornice-work on the high ceiling, and through the arched glass doors into the street where he leaned over the pavement and spat copiously into the gutter.

‘A mistake, eh?’ He uttered a bitter laugh. ‘Mark my words, I’ll be the one that gets the blame for it.’

‘I hope not,’ I said, but the man just shrugged, adjusted his lambskin hat and trudged wearily back into his headquarters.

‘I suppose I ought to thank you,’ Lotte said, tying up the collar of her jacket.

‘Forget it,’ I said, and started walking towards the Ring. She hesitated for a moment and then tripped after me.

‘Wait a minute,’ she said.

I stopped and faced her again. Frontally her face was even more attractive than its profile, as the length of her nose seemed less noticeable. And she was not cold at all. Belinsky had been wrong about that, mistaking cynicism for general indifference. Indeed, I thought she seemed more apt to entice men, although an evening of watching her in the Casino had established that she was probably one of those unsatisfactory women who dangle intimacy, only to withdraw it at a later stage.

‘Yes? What is it?’

‘Look, you’ve already been very kind,’ she said, ‘but would you mind walking me home? It is very late for a decent girl to be on the streets, and I doubt if I’ll be able to find a taxi at this time of night.’

I shrugged and looked at my watch. ‘Where do you live?’

‘It’s not very far. The 3rd Bezirk, in the British sector.’

‘All right.’ I sighed with a conspicuous lack of enthusiasm. ‘Lead the way.’

We walked eastwards, along streets that were as quiet as a house of Franciscan tertiaries.

‘You haven’t explained why you helped me,’ she said, breaking the silence after a while.

‘I wonder if that’s what Andromeda said when Perseus had saved her from the sea-monster.’

‘You seem a little less obviously heroic, Herr Gunther.’

‘Don’t be fooled by my manners,’ I told her. ‘I’ve got a whole chestful of medals down at my local pawnshop.’

‘So you’re not the sentimental type either.’

‘No, I like sentiment. It looks fine on needlework and Christmas cards. Only it doesn’t make much of an engraving on the Ivans. Or perhaps you weren’t looking.’

‘Oh, I was looking all right. It was very impressive the way you handled him. I never knew the Ivans could be greased like that.’

‘You just have to know the right spot on the axle. That kapral would probably have been too scared to take some drop, and a major too proud. Not to mention the fact that I’d met our Captain Rustaveli before, when he was plain Lieutenant Rustaveli and both he and his girlfriend had a dose of drip. I got them some good penicillin, for which he was very grateful.’

‘You don’t look like any swing Heini.’

‘I don’t look like a swing, I don’t look like a hero. What are you, the head of casting at Warner Brothers?’

‘I only wish I were,’ she murmured. And then: ‘Anyway, you started it. You said to that Ivan that I didn’t look like a chocolady. Coming from you I’d say it almost sounded like a compliment.’

‘Like I said, I’ve seen you at the Oriental, selling nothing worse than bad luck. Incidentally, I hope you’re a good card-player, because I’m supposed to go back and give him something for your liberty. Assuming you actually want to stay out of the cement.’

‘How much will that be?’

‘A couple of hundred dollars ought to do it.’

‘A couple of hundred?’ Her words echoed around Schwarz-enbergplatz as we came past a great fountain, and crossed onto Rennweg. ‘Where am I going to get that kind of mouse?’

‘Same place you got the suntan and nice jacket, I imagine. Failing that you could ask him to the club and deal him a few aces off the bottom of the deck.’

‘I could if I were that good. But I’m not.’

‘That’s too bad.’

She was quiet for a moment as she gave the matter some thought. ‘Maybe you could persuade him to take less. After all, you seem to speak pretty good Russkie.’

‘Maybe,’ I allowed.

‘I don’t suppose it would do much good to go to court and protect my innocence, would it?’

‘With the Ivans?’ I laughed harshly. ‘You might just as well appeal to the goddess Kali.’

‘No, I didn’t think so.’

We came up a side street or two and stopped outside an apartment building that was close by a small park.

‘Would you like to come in for a drink?’ She fumbled in her handbag for her key. ‘I know I could use one.’

‘I could suck one out of the rug,’ I said, and followed her through the door, upstairs and into a cosy, solidly furnished apartment.

There was no ignoring the fact that Lotte Hartmann was attractive. Some women, you look at them and calculate what modest length of time you would be willing to settle for. Generally, the better-looking the girl the less time with which you tell yourself you would be satisfied. After all, a really attractive woman might have to accommodate a lot of similar wishes. Lotte was the kind of girl with whom you could have been persuaded to settle for five steamy, unfettered minutes. Just five minutes for her to let you and your imagination do what you wanted. Not too much to ask, you would have thought. The way things happened, though, it looked like she might actually have granted me rather longer than that. Perhaps even the full hour. But I was dog-tired, and perhaps I drank a little too much of her excellent whisky to pay much attention to the way she bit her bottom-lip and stared at me through those black-widow eyelashes. I was probably supposed to lie quietly on her bed with my muzzle resting on her impressively convex lap and let her fold my big, floppy ears, only I ended up falling asleep on the sofa.

22

When I awoke later that same morning, I scribbled my address and telephone number on a piece of paper and, leaving Lotte asleep in bed, I caught a taxi back to my pension. There I washed, changed my clothes and ate a large breakfast, which did much to restore me. I was reading the morning’s Wiener Zeitung when the telephone rang.

A man’s voice, with only the smallest trace of a Viennese accent, asked me if it was speaking to Herr Bernhard Gunther. When I identified myself the voice said:

‘I’m a friend of Fräulein Hartmann. She tells me that you very kindly helped her out of an awkward spot last night.’

‘She’s not exactly out of it yet,’ I said.

‘Quite so. I was hoping that we could meet and discuss the matter. Fräulein Hartmann mentioned the sum of $200 for this Russian captain. Also that you had offered to act as her intermediary.’

‘Did I? I suppose I might have.’

‘I was hoping I might give you the money to give to this wretched fellow. And I should like to thank you, personally.’

I felt sure that this was König, but I stayed silent for a moment, not wishing to seem too eager to meet him.

‘Are you still there?’

‘Where do you suggest?’ I asked reluctantly.

‘Do you know the Amalienbad, on Reumannplatz?’

‘I’ll find it.’

‘Shall we say in one hour? In the Turkish baths?’

‘All right. But how will I recognize you? You haven’t even told me your name yet.’

‘No I haven’t,’ he said mysteriously, ‘but I’ll be whistling this tune.’ And with that he proceeded to whistle it down the line.

‘Bella, bella, bella Marie,’ I said, recognizing a melody that had been irritatingly ubiquitous some months before.

‘Precisely that,’ said the man, and hung up.

It seemed a curiously conspiratorial mode of recognition, but I told myself that if it was König, he had good reason to be cautious.

The Amalienbad was in the 10th Bezirk, in the Russian sector, which meant catching a number 67 south down Favoritenstrasse. The district was a working-class quarter with lots of dirty old factories, but the municipal baths on Reumannplatz was a seven-storeyed building of comparatively recent construction which, without any apparent exaggeration, advertised itself as the largest and most modern baths in Europe.

I paid for a bath and a towel, and after I had changed I went to find the men’s steam-room. This was at the far end of a swimming pool that was as big as a football field, and possessed only a few Viennese who, wrapped in their bath-sheets, were trying to sweat off some of the weight that was rather easy to gain in the Austrian capital. Through the steam, at the far end of the luridly-tiled room, I heard someone whistling intermittently. I walked towards the source of the tune, and took it up as I approached.

I came upon the seated figure of a man with a uniformly white body and a uniformly brown face: it looked almost as if he had blacked-up, like Jolson, but of course this disparity in colour was a souvenir of his recent skiing holiday.

‘I hate that tune,’ he said, ‘but Fräulein Hartmann is always humming it and I couldn’t think of anything else. Herr Gunther?’

I nodded, circumspectly, as if I had come there only reluctantly.

‘Permit me to introduce myself. My name is König.’ We shook hands and I sat down beside him.

He was a well-built man, with thick dark eyebrows and a large, flourishing moustache: it looked like some rare species of marten that had escaped on to his lip from some colder, more northerly clime. Drooping over König’s mouth, this small sable completed a generally lugubrious expression which started with his melancholy brown eyes. He was much as Becker had described him but for the absence of the small dog.

‘I hope you like a Turkish bath, Herr Gunther?’

‘Yes, when they’re clean.’

‘Then it’s lucky I chose this one,’ he said, ‘instead of the Dianabad. Of course the Diana’s war-damaged, but the place does seem to attract rather more than its fair share of incurables and other assorted lower humans. They go for the thermal pools they have there. You take a dip at your peril. You could go in with eczema and come out with syphilis.’

‘It doesn’t sound very healthy.’

‘I dare say that I’m exaggerating a little,’ König smiled. ‘You’re not from Vienna, are you?’

‘No, I’m from Berlin,’ I said. ‘I come and go from Vienna.’

‘How is Berlin these days? From what one hears the situation there is getting worse. The Soviet delegation walked out of the Control Commission, did it not?’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘soon the only way in or out will be by military air transport.’

König made a tutting noise and rubbed his big hairy chest wearily. ‘Communists,’ he sighed, ‘that’s what happens when you make deals with them. It was terrible what happened at Potsdam and Yalta. The Amis just let the Ivans take what they wanted. A great mistake, which makes another war a virtual certainty.’

‘I doubt if anyone’s got the stomach for another one,’ I said, repeating the same line I had used on Neumann in Berlin. This was a fairly automatic reaction with me, but I genuinely believed it to be true.

‘Not yet, maybe. But people forget, and in time —’ he shrugged ‘— who knows what may happen? Until then, we carry on with our lives and our businesses, doing the best that we can.’ For a moment he rubbed his scalp furiously. Then he said: ‘What business are you in? The only reason I ask is that I hoped that there might be some way in which I could repay you for helping Fräulein Hartmann. Such as putting a little business your way, perhaps.’

I shook my head. ‘It’s not necessary. If you really want to know, I’m in imports and exports. But to be frank with you, Herr König, I helped her because I liked the smell of her scent.’

He nodded appreciatively. ‘That’s natural enough. She is very lovely.’ But slowly, rapture gave way to perplexity. ‘Strange though, don’t you think? The way you were both picked up like that.’

‘I can’t answer for your friend, Herr König, but in my line of work there are always business rivals who would be glad to see me out of the way. An occupational hazard, you might say.’

‘By Fräulein Hartmann’s account, it’s a hazard to which you seem more than equal. I heard that you handled that Russian captain quite expertly. And she was most impressed that you could speak Russian.’

‘I was a plenny,’ I said, ‘a POW in Russia.’

‘That would certainly explain it. But tell me, do you believe that this Russian can be serious? That there were charges made against Fräulein Hartmann?’

‘I’m afraid he was very serious.’

‘Have you any idea where he could have got his information?’

‘No more than I have about how he came to have my name. Perhaps the lady has someone with a tooth against her.’

‘Maybe you could find out who. I’d be prepared to pay you.’

‘Not my line,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘The chances are that it was an anonymous tip-off. Probably done out of spite. You’d be wasting your money. If you’ll take my advice you’ll just give the Ivan what he wants and pay up. Two hundred is not a lot of coal to get a name off a file. And when the Ivans decide to keep a dog away from a bitch it’s best to settle the account without any trouble.’

König smiled and then nodded. ‘Perhaps you are right,’ he said. ‘But you know, it has occurred to me that you and this Ivan are in it together. It would after all be a nice way of raising money, wouldn’t it? The Russian puts the squeeze on innocent people, and you offer to act as intermediary.’ He kept on nodding as he surveyed the subtlety of his own scheme. ‘Yes, it could be very profitable for someone with the right kind of background.’

‘Keep going,’ I laughed. ‘Maybe you can make an ox out of an egg.’

‘Surely you admit that it’s possible.’

‘Anything is possible in Vienna. But if you think I’m trying to give you some chocolate for a lousy two hundred, that’s your affair. It may have escaped your attention, König, but it was your ladyfriend who asked me to walk her home, and you who asked me to come here. Frankly, I’ve got better things to polish.’ I stood up and made as if to leave.

‘Please, Herr Gunther,’ he said, ‘accept my apologies. Perhaps I was allowing my imagination to run away with me. But I must confess that this whole affair has me intrigued. And even at the best of times, I find myself suspicious with regard to so many things that happen today.’

‘Well, that sounds like a recipe for a long life,’ I said, sitting down again.

‘In my own particular line of work, it pays to be a little sceptical.’

‘What line of work is that?’

‘I used to be in advertising. But that is an odious, unrewarding business, full of very small minds with no real vision. I dissolved the company I owned and moved into business research. The flow of accurate information is essential in all walks of commerce. But it is something that one must treat with a degree of caution. Those who wish to be well-informed must first equip themselves with doubt. Doubt breeds questions, and questions beg answers. These things are essential to the growth of any new enterprise. And new enterprise is essential to the growth of a new Germany.’

‘You sound like a politician.’

‘Politics.’ He smiled wearily, as if the subject was too childish for him to contemplate. ‘A mere sideshow to the main event.’

‘Which is?’

‘Communism against the free world. Capitalism is our only hope of withstanding the Soviet tyranny, wouldn’t you agree?’

‘I’m no friend of the Ivans,’ I said, ‘but capitalism comes with its own particular faults.’

But König was hardly listening. ‘We fought the wrong war,’ he said, ‘the wrong enemy. We should have fought the Soviets, and only the Soviets. The Amis know that now. They know the mistake they made in letting Russia have a free hand in Eastern Europe. And they’re not about to let Germany or Austria go the same way.’

I stretched my muscles in the heat and yawned wearily. König was beginning to bore me.

‘You know,’ he said, ‘my company could use a man with your special talents. A man with your background. Which part of the SS was it that you were in?’ Noting the surprise that must have appeared on my face, he added: ‘The scar under your arm. Doubtless you too were keen to remove your SS tattoo before being captured by the Russians.’ He lifted his own arm to reveal an almost identical scar in his armpit.

‘I was with Military Intelligence — the Abwehr — when the war ended,’ I explained, ‘not the SS. That was much earlier.’

But he had been right about the scar, the result of an obliterating and excrutiatingly painful burn sustained from the muzzle flash of an automatic pistol I had fired underneath my upper arm. It had been that or risk discovery and death at the hands of the NKVD.

König himself offered no explanation for the removal of his own tattoo. Instead he proceeded to expand on his offer of employment.

This was all much more than I had hoped for. But I still had to be careful: it was only a few minutes since he had all but accused me of working in consort with Captain Rustaveli.

‘It’s not that working for someone else gives me the livers or anything,’ I said, ‘but right now I’ve got another bottle to finish.’ I shrugged. ‘Maybe when that’s empty … who knows? But thanks anyway.’

He did not seem offended that I had declined his offer, and merely shrugged philosophically.

‘Where can I find you if I ever change my mind?’

‘Fräulein Hartmann at the Casino Oriental will know where to contact me.’ He collected a folded newspaper from beside his thigh and handed it to me. ‘Open it carefully when you get outside. There are two $100 bills to pay off the Ivan, and one for your trouble.’

At that moment he groaned and took hold of his face, baring incisors and canines that were as even as a row of tiny milk-bottles. Observing my eyebrows and mistaking their inquiry for concern he explained that he was quite all right but that he had recently been fitted with two dental plates.

‘I can’t seem to get used to having them in my mouth,’ he said, and briefly allowed the blind, slow worm that was his tongue to squirm along the upper and lower galleries of his jaw. ‘And when I see myself in a mirror, it’s like having some perfect stranger grinning back at me. Most disconcerting.’ He sighed and shook his head sadly. ‘A pity really. I always had such perfect teeth.’

He stood up, adjusting the sheet around his chest, and then shook my hand.

‘It was a pleasure meeting you, Herr Gunther,’ he said with easy Viennese charm.

‘No, the pleasure was all mine,’ I replied.

König chuckled. ‘We’ll make an Austrian out of you yet, my friend.’ Then he walked off into the steam, whistling that same maddening tune.

23

There’s nothing the Viennese love more than getting ‘cosy’. They look to achieve this conviviality in bars and restaurants, to the accompaniment of a musical quartet comprising a bass, a violin, an accordion and a zither — a strange instrument which resembles an empty box of chocolates with thirty or forty strings that are plucked like a guitar. For me, this omnipresent combination embodies everything that was phoney about Vienna, like the syrupy sentiment and the affected politeness. It did make me feel cosy. Only it was the kind of cosiness you might have experienced after you had been embalmed, sealed in a lead-lined coffin, and tidily deposited in one of those marble mausoleums up at the Central Cemetery.

I was waiting for Traudl Braunsteiner, in the Herrendorf, a restaurant on Herrengasse. The place was her choice, but she was late. When at last she arrived her face was red because she had been running, and also because of the cold.

‘You have a less than Catholic air about you, the way you sit there in the shadows,’ she said, sitting down at the dinner table.

‘I work at that,’ I said. ‘Nobody wants a detective who looks as honest as the village postmaster. Being dimly lit is good for business.’

I waved to a waiter and we quickly ordered.

‘Emil’s upset that you haven’t been to see him lately,’ Traudl said, giving up her menu.

‘If he wants to know what I’ve been doing, tell him I’ll be sending him a bill for a shoe-repair. I’ve walked all over this damned city.’

‘You know he goes to trial next week, don’t you?’

‘I’m not likely to be able to forget it, what with Liebl telephoning nearly every day.’

‘Emil’s not about to forget it either.’ She spoke quietly, obviously upset.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘that was a stupid thing to say. Look, I do have some good news. I’ve finally spoken to König.’

Her face lit up with excitement. ‘You have?’ she said. ‘When? Where?’

‘This morning,’ I said. ‘At the Amalienbad.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He wanted me to work for him. I think it might not be a bad idea, as a way of getting close enough to him to find some sort of evidence.’

‘Couldn’t you just tell the police where he is so that they can arrest him?’

‘On what charge?’ I shrugged. ‘As far as the police are concerned they’ve already got their man cold. Anyway, even if I could persuade them to do it, König wouldn’t be so easy to clip. The Americans can’t go into the Russian sector and arrest him, even if they wanted to. No, Emil’s best chance is that I gain König’s confidence as quickly as possible. And that’s why I turned down his offer.’

Traudl bit her lip with exasperation. ‘But why? I don’t understand.’

‘I have to make sure that König believes I don’t want to work for him. He was slightly suspicious of the way in which I got to meet his girlfriend. So here’s what I want to do. Lotte’s a croupier at the Oriental. I want you to give me some money to lose there tomorrow night. Enough to make it look like I’ve been cleaned out. Which would give me a reason to reconsider König’s offer.’

‘This counts as legitimate expenses, does it?’

‘I’m afraid it does.’

‘How much?’

‘Three or four thousand schillings ought to do it.’

She thought for a minute and then the waiter arrived with a bottle of Riesling. When he had filled our glasses Traudl sipped some of her wine and said: ‘All right then. But only on one condition: that I’m there to watch you lose it.’

From the set of her jaw I judged her to be quite determined. ‘I don’t suppose it would do much good to remind you that it could be dangerous. It’s not as if you could accompany me. I can’t afford to be seen with you in case somebody recognizes you as Emil’s girl. If this weren’t such a quiet place I would have insisted that we met at your house.’

‘Don’t worry about me,’ she said firmly. ‘I’ll treat you like you were a sheet of glass.’

I started to speak again, but she held her hands over her small ears.

‘No, I’m not listening to any more. I’m coming, and that’s final. You’re a spinner if you think that I’m just going to hand over 4,000 schillings without keeping an eye on what happens to it.’

‘You have a point.’ I stared at the limpid disc of wine in my glass for a moment, and then said, ‘You love him a lot, don’t you?’

Traudl swallowed hard, and nodded vigorously. After a short pause, she added, ‘I’m carrying his child.’

I sighed and tried to think of something encouraging to say to her.

‘Look,’ I mumbled, ‘don’t worry. We’ll get him out of this mess. There’s no need to be the cockroach. Come on, come out of the dumps. Everything will work out, for you and the baby, I’m sure of it.’ A pretty inadequate speech I thought and lacking any real conviction.

Traudl shook her head, and smiled. ‘I’m all right, really I am. I was just thinking how the last time I was here was with Emil, when I told him that I was pregnant. We used to come here a lot. I never meant to fall in love with him, you know.’

‘Nobody ever means to do it.’ I noticed that my hand was on hers. ‘It just happens that way. Like a car accident.’ But looking at her elfin face I wasn’t sure if I agreed with what I was saying. Her beauty wasn’t the kind that’s left smeared on your pillowcase in the morning, but the kind that would make a man proud that his child should have such a mother. I realized how much I envied Becker this woman, how much I myself would have wanted to fall in love with her if she had come my way. I let go her hand and quickly lit a cigarette to hide behind some smoke.

24

The next evening found me hurrying from its sharp edge and hint of snow, although the calendar suggested something less inclement, and into the warm, lubricious fug of the Casino Oriental, my pockets packed tight with wads of Emil Becker’s easy money.

I bought quite a lot of the highest denomination chips and then wandered over to the bar to await Lotte’s arrival at one of the card-tables. Having ordered a drink, all I had to do was shoo away the sparklers and the chocoladies that buzzed around, intent on keeping me and my wallet company, which left me with a keener appreciation of what it must be like to be a horse’s ass in high summer. It was ten o’clock before Lotte showed up at one of the tables, by which time the flick of my tail was becoming more apathetic. I delayed another few minutes for appearance’s sake before carrying my drink over to Lotte’s stretch of green baize and sitting down directly opposite her.

She surveyed the pile of chips that I neatly arranged in front of me and made an equally neat purse of her lips. ‘I didn’t figure you for a quirk,’ she said, meaning a gambler. ‘I thought you had more sense.’

‘Maybe your fingers will be lucky for me,’ I said brightly.

‘I wouldn’t bet on it.’

‘Yes, well, I’ll certainly bear that in mind.’

I’m not much of a card-player. I couldn’t even have named the game I was playing. So it was with some considerable surprise that, at the end of twenty minutes’ play, I realized that I had almost doubled my original stock of chips. It seemed a perverse logic that trying to lose money at cards should be every bit as difficult as trying to win it.

Lotte dealt from the shoe and once again I won. Glancing up from the table I noticed Traudl seated opposite me, nursing a small pile of chips. I hadn’t seen her come into the club, but by now the place was so busy that I would have missed Rita Hayworth.

‘I guess it’s my lucky night,’ I remarked to no one in particular as Lotte raked my winnings towards me. Traudl merely smiled politely as if I had been a stranger to her, and prepared to make her next modest bet.

I ordered another drink and, concentrating hard, tried to make a go of being a real loser, taking a card when I should have stayed, betting when I should have folded and generally trying to sidestep luck at every available opportunity. Now and again I tried to play sensibly in order to make what I was doing appear less obvious. But after another forty minutes I had succeeded in losing all of what I had won, as well as half my original capital. When Traudl left the table, having seen me lose enough of her boyfriend’s money to be satisfied that it had been used for the purpose I had stated, I finished my drink and sighed exasperatedly.

‘It looks as if it’s not my lucky night after all,’ I said grimly.

‘Luck’s got nothing to do with the way you play,’ Lotte murmured. ‘I just hope you were more skilful in dealing with that Russian captain.’

‘Oh, don’t worry about him, he’s taken care of. You won’t have any more problems there.’

‘I’m glad to hear it.’

I gambled my last chip, lost it and then stood up from the table saying that maybe I was going to be grateful for König’s offer of a job after all. Smiling ruefully, I walked back to the bar where I ordered a drink and for a while watched a topless girl dancing in a parody of a Latin American step on the floor to the tinny, jerking sound of the Oriental’s jazz band.

I didn’t see Lotte leave the table to make a telephone call but after a while König came down the stairs into the club. He was accompanied by a small terrier, which stayed close to his heels, and a taller, more distinguished-looking man who was wearing a Schiller jacket and a club-tie. This second man disappeared through a bead curtain at the back of the club while König made a pantomime of catching my eye.

He walked over to the bar, nodding to Lotte and producing a fresh cigar from the top pocket of his green tweed suit as he came.

‘Herr Gunther,’ he said, smiling, ‘how nice to meet you again.’

‘Hello, König,’ I said. ‘How are your teeth?’

‘My teeth?’ His smile vanished as if I had asked him how his chancre was.

‘Don’t you remember?’ I explained. ‘You were telling me about your plates.’

His face relaxed. ‘So I was. They’re much better, thank you.’ Tipping in a smile again, he added, ‘I hear you’ve had some bad luck at the tables.’

‘Not according to Fräulein Hartmann. She told me that luck has nothing at all to do with the way I play cards.’

König finished lighting his four-schilling corona and chuckled. ‘Then you must allow me to buy you a drink.’ He waved the barman over, ordered a scotch for himself and whatever I was drinking. ‘Did you lose much?’

‘More than I could afford,’ I said unhappily. ‘About 4,000 schillings.’ I drained my glass and pushed it across the bartop for a refill. ‘Stupid, really. I shouldn’t play at all. I have no real aptitude for cards. So I’m cleaned out now.’ I toasted König silently and swallowed some more vodka. ‘Thank God I had the good sense to pay my hotel bill well in advance. Apart from that, there’s very little to feel happy about.’

‘Then you must allow me to show you something,’ he said, and puffed at his cigar vigorously. He blew a large smoke ring into the air above his terrier’s head and said, ‘Time for a smoke, Lingo,’ whereupon, and much to its owner’s amusement, the brute leaped up and down, sniffing excitedly at the tobacco-enriched air like the most craven nicotine addict.

‘That’s a neat trick,’ I smiled.

‘Oh, it’s no trick,’ said König. ‘Lingo loves a good cigar almost as much as I do.’ He bent down and patted the dog’s head. ‘Don’t you, boy?’ The dog barked by way of reply.

‘Well, whatever you call it, it’s money, not laughs I need right now. At least until I can get back to Berlin. You know it’s fortunate you happened to come along. I was sitting here wondering how I might manage to broach the subject of that job with you again.’

‘My dear fellow, all in good time. There’s someone I want you to meet first. He is the Baron von Bolschwing and he runs a branch of the Austrian League for the United Nations here in Vienna. It’s a publishing house called Österreichischer Verlag. He’s an old comrade too, and I know he would be interested to meet a man like yourself.’

I knew König was referring to the SS.

‘He wouldn’t be associated with this research company of yours, would he?’

‘Associated? Yes, associated,’ he allowed. ‘Accurate information is essential to a man like the Baron.’

I smiled and shook my head wryly. ‘What a town this is for saying “going-away party” when what you really mean is “a requiem mass”. Your “research” sounds rather like my “imports and exports”, Herr König: a fancy ribbon round a rather plain cake.’

‘I can’t believe that a man who served with the Abwehr could be much of a stranger to these necessary euphemisms, Herr Gunther. However, if you wish me to do so, I will, as the saying goes, uncover my batteries for you. But let us first move away from the bar.’ He led me to a quiet table and we sat down.

‘The organization of which I am a member is fundamentally an association of German officers, the primary aim and purpose of which is the collection of research — excuse me, intelligence — as to the threat that the Red Army poses to a free Europe. Although military ranks are seldom used, nevertheless we exist under military discipline and we remain officers and gentlemen. The fight against Communism is a desperate one, and there are times when we must do things we may find unpleasant. But for many old comrades struggling to adjust to civilian life, the satisfaction of continuing to serve in the creation of a new free Germany outweighs such considerations. And there are of course generous rewards.’

It sounded as if König had said these words or their equivalent on a number of other occasions. I was beginning to think that there were more old comrades whose struggle to adjust to civilian life was remedied by the simple expedient of continuing under a form of military discipline than I could guess at. He spoke a lot more, most of which went in one ear and out of the other, and after a while he drained the remainder of his drink and said that if I were interested in his proposition then I should meet the Baron. When I told him that I was very much interested, he nodded satisfiedly and steered me towards the bead curtain. We came along a corridor and then went up two flights of stairs.

‘These are the premises of the hat shop next door,’ explained König. ‘The owner is a member of our Org, and allows us to use them for recruiting.’

He stopped outside a door and knocked gently. Hearing a shout, he ushered me into a room which was lit only by a lamppost outside. But it was enough to make out the face of the man seated at a desk by the window. TAll, thin, clean-shaven, dark-haired and balding, I judged him to be about forty.

‘Sit down, Herr Gunther,’ he said and pointed at a chair on the other side of the desk.

I removed the stack of hat-boxes that lay on it while König went over to the window behind the Baron and sat on the deep sill.

‘Herr König believes you might make a suitable representative for our company,’ said the Baron.

‘You mean an agent, don’t you?’ I said and lit a cigarette.

‘If you like,’ I saw him smile. ‘But before that can happen it’s up to me to learn something of your personality and circumstances. To question you in order that we might determine how best to use you.’

‘Like a Fragebogen? Yes, I understand.’

‘Let’s start with your joining the SS,’ said the Baron.

I told him all about my service with Kripo and the RSHA, and how I had automatically become an officer in the SS. I explained that I had gone to Minsk as a member of Arthur Nebe’s Action Group, but, having no stomach for the murder of women and children, I had asked for a transfer to the front and how instead I had been sent to the Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau. The Baron questioned me closely but politely, and he seemed the perfect Austrian gentleman. Except that there was also about him an air of false modesty, a surreptitious aspect to his gestures and a way of speaking that seemed to indicate something of which any true gentleman might have felt less than proud.

‘Tell me about your service with the War Crimes Bureau.’

‘This was between January 1942 and February 1944,’ I explained. ‘I had the rank of Oberleutnant conducting investigations into both Russian and German atrocities.’

‘And where was this, exactly?’

‘I was based in Berlin, in Blumeshof, across from the War Ministry. From time to time I was required to work in the field. Specifically in the Crimea and the Ukraine. Later on, in August 1943, the OKW moved its offices to Torgau because of the bombing.’

The Baron smiled a supercilious smile and shook his head. ‘Forgive me,’ he said, ‘it’s just that I had no idea that such an institution had existed within the Wehrmacht.’

‘It was no different to what happened within the Prussian Army during the Great War,’ I told him. ‘There have to be some accepted humanitarian values, even in wartime.’

‘I suppose there do,’ sighed the Baron, but he did not sound convinced of this. ‘All right. Then what happened?’

‘With the escalation of the war it became necessary to send all the able-bodied men to the Russian front. I joined General Schorner’s northern army in White Russia in February 1944, promoted Hauptmann. I was an Intelligence officer.’

‘In the Abwehr?’

‘Yes. I spoke a fair bit of Russian by then. Some Polish too. The work was mostly interpreting.’

‘And you were finally captured where?’

‘Königsberg, in East Prussia. April 1945. I was sent to the copper mines in the Urals.’

‘Where exactly in the Urals, if you don’t mind?’

‘Outside Sverdlovsk. That’s where I perfected my Russian.’

‘Were you questioned by the NKVD?’

‘Of course. Many times. They were very interested in anyone who had been an Intelligence officer.’

‘And what did you tell them?’

‘Frankly, I told them everything I knew. The war was over by that stage and so it didn’t seem to matter much. Naturally I left out my previous service with the SS, and my work with the OKW. The SS were taken to a separate camp where they were either shot or persuaded to work for the Soviets in the Free Germany Committee. That seems to be how most of the German People’s Police were recruited. And I dare say the Staatspolizei here in Vienna.’

‘Quite so.’ His tone was testy. ‘Do carry on, Herr Gunther.’

‘One day a group of us were told that we were to be transferred to Frankfurt an der Oder. This would be in December 1946. They said they were sending us to a rest camp there. As you can imagine we thought that was pretty funny. Well, on the transport train I overheard a couple of the guards say that we were bound for a uranium mine in Saxony. I don’t suppose either of them realized I could speak Russian.’

‘Can you remember the name of this place?’

‘Johannesgeorgenstadt, in the Erzebirge, on the Czech border.’

‘Thank you,’ the Baron said crisply, ‘I know where it is.’

‘I jumped the train as soon as I saw a chance, not long after we crossed the German-Polish border, and then I made my way back to Berlin.’

‘Were you at one of the camps for returning POWs?’

‘Yes. Staaken. I wasn’t there for very long, thank God. The nurses there didn’t think much of us plennys. All they were interested in was American soldiers. Fortunately the Social Welfare Office of the Municipal Council found my wife at my old address almost immediately.’

‘You’ve been very lucky, Herr Gunther,’ said the Baron. ‘In several respects. Wouldn’t you say so, Helmut?’

‘As I told you Baron, Herr Gunther is a most resourceful man,’ said König, stroking his dog absently.

‘Indeed he is. But tell me, Herr Gunther, did no one debrief you about your experiences in the Soviet Union?’

‘Like who, for instance?’

It was König who answered. ‘Members of our Organization have interrogated a great many returning plennys,’ he said. ‘Our people present themselves as social workers, historical researchers, that kind of thing.’

I shook my head. ‘Perhaps if I had been officially released, instead of escaping …’

‘Yes,’ said the Baron. ‘That must be the reason. In which case you must count yourself as doubly fortunate, Herr Gunther. Because if you had been officially released we should now almost certainly have been obliged to take the precaution of having you shot, in order to protect the security of our group. You see, what you said about the Germans who were persuaded to work for the Free Germany Committee was absolutely right. It is these traitors who were usually released first of all. Sent to a uranium mine in Erzebirge as you were, eight weeks is as long as you could have been expected to have lived. Being shot by the Russians would have been easier. So you see we can now be confident of you, knowing that the Russians were happy for you to die.’

The Baron stood up now, the interrogation evidently over. I saw that he was taller than I had supposed. König slid off his window sill and stood beside him.

I pushed myself off my chair and silently shook the Baron’s outstretched hand, and then König’s. Then König smiled and handed me one of his cigars. ‘My friend,’ he said, ‘welcome to the Org.’

25

During the next couple of days König met me at the hat shop next to the Oriental on several occasions in order to school me in the many elaborate and secret working methods of the Org. But first I had to sign a solemn declaration agreeing, on my honour as a German officer, not to disclose anything of the Org’s covert activities. The declaration also stipulated that any breach of secrecy would be severely punished, and König said that I would be well-advised to conceal my new employment not only from any friends and relatives but ‘even’ — and these were his precise words — ‘even from our American colleagues’. This, and one or two other remarks he made, led me to believe that the Org was in fact fully funded by American Intelligence. So when my training — considerably shortened in view of my experience with the Abwehr — was complete I irately demanded of Belinsky that we should talk as quickly as possible.

‘What’s eating you, kraut?’ he said when we met at a table I had reserved for us in a quiet corner at the Café Schwarzenberg.

‘If I’m not in my plate, it’s only because you’ve been showing me the wrong map.’

‘Oh? And how’s that?’ He set to work with one of his clove-scented toothpicks.

‘You know damned well. König’s part of a German intelligence organization set up by your own people, Belinsky. I know because they’ve just finished recruiting me. So either you put me in the picture or I go to the Stiftskaserne and explain how I now believe that Linden was murdered by an American-sponsored organization of German spies.’

Belinsky looked around for a moment and then leaned purposefully across the table, his big arms framing it as if he was planning to pick it up and drop it on my head.

‘I don’t think that would be a very good idea,’ he said quietly.

‘No? Perhaps you think you can stop me. Like the way you stopped that Russian soldier. I might just mention that as well.’

‘Perhaps I will kill you, kraut,’ he said. ‘It shouldn’t be too difficult. I have a gun with a silencer. I could probably shoot you in here and nobody would notice. That’s one of the nice things about the Viennese. With someone’s brains spattered in their coffee cups, they’d still try and mind their own fucking business.’ He chuckled at the idea and then shook his head, talking over me when I tried to reply.

‘But what are we talking about?’ he said. ‘There’s no need for us to fall out. No need at all. You’re right. Maybe I should have explained before now, but if you have been recruited by the Org then you’ve undoubtedly been obliged to sign a secrecy declaration. Am I right?’

I nodded.

‘Maybe you don’t take it very seriously, but at least you can understand when I tell you that my government required me to sign a similar declaration, and that I take it very seriously indeed. It’s only now that I can take you into my complete confidence, which is ironic: I’m investigating the very same organization which your membership of now enables me to treat you as someone who no longer poses a security risk. How’s that for a bit of cock-eyed logic?’

‘All right,’ I said. ‘You’ve given me your excuse. Now how about telling me the whole story.’

‘I mentioned Crowcass before now, right?’

‘The War Crimes Commission? Yes.’

‘Well, how shall I put it? The pursuit of Nazis and the employment of German intelligence personnel are not exactly separate considerations. For a long time the United States has been recruiting former members of the Abwehr to spy on the Soviets. An independent organization was set up at Pullach, headed by a senior German officer, to gather intelligence on behalf of CIC.’

‘The South German Industrial Utilization Company?’

‘The same. When the Org was set up they had explicit instructions about exactly who they might recruit. This is supposed to be a clean operation, you understand. But for some time now we’ve had the suspicion that the Org is also recruiting SS, SD and Gestapo personnel in violation of its original mandate. We wanted intelligence people, for God’s sake, not war-criminals. My job is to find out the level of penetration that these outlawed classes of personnel have achieved within the Org. You with me?’

I nodded. ‘But where did Captain Linden fit into this?’

‘As I explained before, Linden worked in records. It’s possible that his position at the US Documents Centre enabled him to act as a consultant to members of the Org with regard to recruitment. Checking out people to see if their stories matched what could be discovered from their service records, that kind of thing. I am sure I don’t have to tell you that the Org is keen to avoid any possible penetration by Germans who may have already been recruited by the Soviets in their prison camps.’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I’ve already had that explained to me in no uncertain terms.’

‘Maybe Linden even advised them on who might have been worth recruiting. But that’s the bit we’re not sure about. That and what this stuff your friend Becker was playing courier with.’

‘Maybe he lent them some files when they were interrogating potential recruits who might have been under some suspicion,’ I suggested.

‘No, that simply couldn’t have happened. Security at the Centre is tighter than a clam’s ass. You see, after the war the army was scared your people might try to take the contents of the centre back. That or destroy them. You just don’t walk out of that place with an armful of files. All documentary examinations are on-site and must be accounted for.’

‘Then perhaps Linden altered some of the files.’

Belinsky shook his head. ‘No, we’ve already thought of that and checked back from the original log to every single one of the files which Linden had sight of. There’s no sign of anything having been removed or destroyed. It seems our best chance of finding out what the hell he was up to depends on your membership of the Org, kraut. Not to mention your best chance of finding something that will put your friend Becker in the clear.’

‘I’m almost out of time with that. He goes to trial at the beginning of next week.’

Belinsky looked thoughtful. ‘Maybe I could help you to cut a few corners with your new colleagues. If I were to provide you with some high-grade Soviet intelligence it could put you well in with the Org. Of course it would have to be stuff that my people had seen already, but the boys in the Org wouldn’t know that. If I dressed it up with the right kind of provenance, that would make you look like a pretty good spy. How does that sound?’

‘Good. While you’re in such an inspired mood you can help me out of another fix. After König had got through instructing me in the use of the dead-letter box, he gave me my first assignment.’

‘He did? Good. What was it?’

‘They want me to kill Becker’s girlfriend, Traudl.’

‘That pretty little nurse?’ He sounded quite outraged. ‘The one at the General Hospital? Did they say why?’

‘She came into the Casino Oriental to oversee me losing her boyfriend’s money. I warned her about it, but she wouldn’t listen. I guess it must have made them nervous or something.’

But this wasn’t the reason that König had given me.

‘A bit of wet-work is often used as an early test of loyalty,’ Belinsky explained. ‘Did they say how to do it?’

‘I’m to make it look like an accident,’ I said. ‘So naturally I’ll need to get her out of Vienna as quickly as possible. And that’s where you come in. Can you organize a travel warrant and a rail ticket for her?’

‘Sure,’ he said, ‘but try and persuade her to leave as much behind as possible. We’ll drive her across the zone and get her on a train at Salzburg. That way we can make it look as if she’s disappeared, maybe dead. Which would help you, right?’

‘Let’s just make sure that she gets safely out of Vienna,’ I told him. ‘If anyone has to take risks I’d rather it was me than her.’

‘Leave it to me, kraut. It’ll take a few hours to arrange, but the little lady is as good as out of here. I suggest that you go back to your hotel and wait for me to bring her papers. Then we’ll go and pick her up. In which case, perhaps it would be better if you didn’t speak to her before then. She might not want to leave your friend Becker to face the music on his own. It would be better if we could just pick her up and drive out of here. That way if she decides to protest about it there won’t be much that she can do.’

After Belinsky had left to make the necessary arrangements, I wondered if he would have been so willing to help get Traudl safely out of Vienna if he had seen the photograph which König had given to me. He had told me that Traudl Braunsteiner was an MVD agent. Knowing the girl as I did it seemed utterly absurd. But for anyone else — most of all a member of CIC — looking at the photograph that had been taken in a Vienna restaurant, in which Traudl was evidently enjoying the company of a Russian colonel of MVD, whose name was Poroshin, things might have seemed rather less than clear-cut.

26

There was a letter from my wife waiting for me when I returned to the Pension Caspian. Recognizing the tight, almost child-like writing on the cheap manilla envelope, crushed and grimy from a couple of weeks at the mercy of a haphazard postal service, I balanced it on the mantelpiece in my sitting-room and stared at it for a while, recollecting the letter to her that I had positioned similarly on our own mantelpiece at home in Berlin, and regretting its peremptory tone.

Since then I had sent her only two telegrams: one to say that I had arrived safely in Vienna and giving my address; and the other telling her that the case might take a little longer than I had first anticipated.

I dare say a graphologist could easily have analysed Kirsten’s hand and made a pretty good job of convincing me that it indicated the letter inside had been written by an adulterous woman who was in the frame of mind to tell her inattentive husband that despite his having left her $2,000 in gold she nevertheless intended divorcing him and using the money to emigrate to the United States with her handsome American schätzi.

I was still looking at the unopened envelope with some trepidation when the telephone rang. It was Shields.

‘And how are we doing today?’ he asked in his over-precise German.

‘I am doing very well, thank you,’ I said, mocking his way of speaking, but he didn’t seem to notice. ‘Exactly how may I be of service to you, Herr Shields?’

‘Well, with your friend Becker about to go to trial, frankly I wondered what kind of detective you were. I was asking myself whether you had come up with anything pertinent to the case: if your client was going to get his $5,000 worth?’

He paused, waiting for me to reply, and when I said nothing he continued, rather more impatiently.

‘So? What’s the answer? Have you found the vital piece of evidence that will save Becker from the hangman’s noose? Or does he take the drop?’

‘I’ve found Becker’s witness, if that’s what you mean, Shields. Only I haven’t got anything that connects him with Linden. Not yet anyway.’

‘Well, you had better work fast, Gunther. When trials commence in this city they’re apt to be a mite quick. I’d hate to see you get round to proving a dead man innocent. That looks bad all round, I’m sure you would agree. Bad for you, bad for us, but worst of all for the man on the rope.’

‘Suppose I could set this other fellow up for you to arrest him as a material witness.’ It was an almost desperate suggestion, but I thought it worth a try.

‘There’s no other way he’d show up in court?’

‘No. At least it would give Becker someone to point the finger at.’

‘You’re asking me to make a dirty mark on a shiny floor.’ Shields sighed. ‘I hate not to give the other side a chance, you know. So I tell you what I’m going to do. I’ll have a word with my Executive Officer, Major Wimberley, and see what he recommends. But I can’t promise anything. Chances are, the major will tell me to go balls out and get a conviction, and to hell with your man’s witness. There’s a lot of pressure on us to get a quick result here, you know. The Brig doesn’t like it when American officers are murdered in his city. That’s Brigadier-General Alexander O. Gorder, commanding the 796th. One tough son-of-a-bitch. I’ll be in touch.’

‘Thanks, Shields. I appreciate it.’

‘Don’t thank me yet, mister,’ he said.

I replaced the receiver and picked up my letter. After I’d fanned myself with it, and used it to clean my fingernails, I tore it open.

Kirsten was never much of a letter-writer. She was more one for a postcard, only a postcard from Berlin was no longer likely to inspire much in the way of wishful thinking. A view of the ruined Kaiser-Wilhelm church? Or one of the bombed-out Opera House? The execution shed at Plotzensee? I thought that it would be a good long while before there were any postcards sent from Berlin. I unfolded the paper and started to read:

Dear Bernie,

I hope this letter reaches you, but things are so difficult here that it may not, in which case I may also try to send you a telegram, if only to tell you that everything is all right. Sokolovsky has demanded that the Soviet military police should control all traffic from Berlin to the West, and this may mean that the mail does not get through.

The real fear here is that this will all turn into a full-scale siege of the city in an effort to push the Americans, the British and the French out of Berlin — although I don’t suppose anyone would mind if we saw the back of the French. Nobody objects to the Amis and the Tommies bossing us around — at least they fought and beat us. But Franz? They are such hypocrites. The fiction of a victorious French army is almost too much for a German to bear.

People say that the Amis and the Tommies won’t stand by and see Berlin fall to the Ivans. I’m not so sure about the British. They’ve got their hands full in Palestine right now (all books on Zionist Nationalism have been removed from Berlin bookshops and libraries, which seems only too familiar). But just when you think that the British have more important things to do, one hears that they’ve been destroying more German shipping. The sea is full of fish for us to eat, and they’re blowing up boats! Do they want to save us from the Russians in order that they can starve us?

One still hears rumours of cannibalism. There’s a story going around Berlin that the police were called to a house in Kreuzberg where downstairs neighbours had heard the sounds of a terrible commotion, and found blood seeping through their ceiling. They burst in and found an old couple dining off the raw flesh of a pony that they had dragged off the street and killed with rocks. It may or may not be true, but I have the terrible feeling that it is. What is certain is that morale has sunk to new depths. The skies are full of transport planes and troops of all four Powers are increasingly jumpy.

You remember Frau Fersen’s son, Karl? He came back from a Russian POW camp last week, but in very poor health. Apparently the doctor says that his lungs are finished, poor boy. She was telling me what he’d said about his time in Russia. It sounds awful! Why ever didn’t you talk to me about it, Bernie? Perhaps I would have been more understanding. Perhaps I could have helped. I am conscious that I haven’t been much of a wife to you since the war. And now that you are no longer here, this seems harder to bear. So when you come back I thought that maybe we could use some of the money you left — so much money! did you rob a bank? — to go on holiday somewhere. To leave Berlin for a while, and spend time together.

Meanwhile, I have used some of the money to repair the ceiling. Yes, I know you had planned on doing it yourself, but I know how you kept putting it off. Anyway, it’s done now, and it looks very nice.

Come home and see it soon. I miss you.

Your loving wife,

Kirsten.

So much for my imaginary graphologist, I reflected happily, and poured myself the last of Traudl’s vodka. This had the immediate effect of melting my nervousness of telephoning Liebl to report on my almost imperceptible progress. To hell with Belinsky, I said to myself, and resolved to solicit Liebl’s opinion as to whether Becker would or would not be best served by trying to obtain König’s immediate arrest in order that he be forced to give evidence.

When Liebl finally came on the line he sounded like a man who had just come to the telephone after falling down a flight of stairs. His normally forthright and irascible manner was cowed and his voice was balanced precariously at the very edge of breakdown.

‘Herr Gunther,’ he said, and swallowed his way to a more decorous silence. Then I heard him take a deep breath as he took control of himself again. ‘There’s been the most terrible accident. Fräulein Braunsteiner has been killed.’

‘Killed?’ I repeated dumbly. ‘How?’

‘She was run over by a car,’ Liebl said quietly.

‘Where?’

‘It happened virtually on the doorstep of the hospital where she worked. Apparently it was instantaneous. There was nothing they could do for her.’

‘When was this?’

‘Just a couple of hours ago, when she was coming off duty. Unfortunately the driver did not stop.’

That part I could have guessed for myself.

‘He was scared probably. Possibly he had been drinking. Who knows? Austrians are such bad drivers.’

‘Did anyone see the — the accident?’ The words sounded almost angry in my mouth.

‘There are no witnesses so far. But someone seems to recollect having seen a black Mercedes driving rather too fast much farther along Alser Strasse.’

‘Christ,’ I said weakly, ‘that’s just around the corner. To think I might even have heard the squeal of those car-tyres.’

‘Yes, indeed, quite so,’ Liebl murmured. ‘But there was no pain. It was so quick that she could not have suffered. The car struck her in the middle of her back. The doctor I spoke to said that her spine was completely shattered. Probably she was dead before she hit the ground.’

‘Where is she now?’

‘In the morgue at the General Hospital,’ Liebl sighed. I heard him light a cigarette and take a long drag of smoke. ‘Herr Gunther,’ he said, ‘we shall of course have to inform Herr Becker. Since you know him so much better than I —’

‘Oh no,’ I said quickly, ‘I get enough rotten jobs without contracting to do that one as well. Take her insurance policy and her will along if it makes it any easier for you.’

‘I can assure you that I’m every bit as upset about this as you are, Herr Gunther. There’s no need to be —’

‘Yes, you’re right. I’m sorry. Look, I hate to sound callous, but let’s see if we can’t use this to get an adjournment.’

‘I don’t know if this quite qualifies as compassionate,’ Liebl hummed. ‘It’s not as if they were married or anything.’

‘She was going to have his baby, for Christ’s sake.’

There was a brief, shocked silence. Then Liebl spluttered, ‘I had no idea. Yes, you’re right, of course. I’ll see what I can do.’

‘Do that.’

‘But however am I going to tell Herr Becker?’

‘Tell him she was murdered,’ I said. He started to say something, but I was not in a mood to be contradicted. ‘It was no accident, believe me. Tell Becker it was his old comrades who did it. Tell him that precisely. He’ll understand. See if it doesn’t jog his memory a little. Perhaps now he’ll remember something he should have told me earlier. Tell him that if this doesn’t make him give us everything he knows then he deserves a crushed windpipe.’ There was a knock at the door. Belinsky with Traudl’s travel papers. ‘Tell him that,’ I snapped and banged the receiver back onto its cradle. Then I crossed the floor of the room and hauled the door open.

Belinsky held Traudl’s redundant travel papers in front of him and gave them a jaunty wave as he came into the room, too pleased with himself to notice my mood.

‘It took a bit of doing, getting a pink as quickly as this,’ he said, ‘but old Belinsky managed it. Just don’t ask me how.’

‘She’s dead,’ I said flatly, and watched his big face fall.

‘Shit,’ he said, ‘that’s too bad. What the hell happened?’

‘A hit-and-run driver.’ I lit a cigarette and slumped into the armchair. ‘Killed her outright. I’ve just had Becker’s lawyer on the phone telling me. It happened not far from here, a couple of hours ago.’

Belinsky nodded and sat down on the sofa opposite me. Although I avoided his eye I still felt it trying to look into my soul. He shook his head for a while and then produced his pipe which he set about filling with tobacco. When he had finished he started to light the thing and in between fire-sustaining sucks of air, he said, ‘Forgive me — for asking — but you didn’t — change your mind — did you?’

‘About what?’ I growled belligerently.

He removed the pipe from his mouth and glanced into the bowl before replacing it between his big irregular teeth. ‘I mean, about killing her yourself.’

Finding the answer on my rapidly colouring face he shook his head quickly. ‘No, of course not. What a stupid question. I’m sorry.’ He shrugged. ‘All the same, I had to ask. You must agree, it’s a bit of a coincidence, isn’t it? The Org asks you to arrange an accident for her, and then almost immediately she gets herself knocked down and killed.’

‘Maybe you did it,’ I heard myself say.

‘Maybe.’ Belinsky sat forward on the sofa. ‘Let’s see now: I waste all afternoon getting this unfortunate little fräulein a pink and a ticket out of Austria. Then I knock her down and kill her in cold blood on my way here to see you. Is that it?’

‘What kind of car do you drive?’

‘A Mercedes.’

‘What colour?’

‘Black.’

‘Someone saw a black Mercedes speeding further up the street from the scene of the accident.’

‘I dare say. I’ve yet to see the car which drives slowly in Vienna. And in case you hadn’t noticed, just about every other non-military vehicle in this city is a black Mercedes.’

‘All the same,’ I persisted, ‘maybe we should take a look at the front fenders, and check for dents.’

He spread his hands innocently, as if he had been about to give the sermon on the mount. ‘Be my guest. Only you’ll find dents all over the car. There seems to be a law against careful driving here.’ He sucked some more of his pipe smoke. ‘Look, Bernie, if you don’t mind me saying so I think we’re in danger of throwing the handle after the axe-head here. It’s a real shame that Traudl’s dead, but there’s no sense in you and me falling out over it. Who knows? Maybe it was an accident. You know it’s true what I said about Viennese drivers. They’re worse than the Soviets, and they take some beating. Jesus, it’s like a chariot-race on these roads. Now I agree that it’s a hell of a coincidence, but it’s not an impossible one, by any stretch of the imagination. You must admit that, surely.’

I nodded slowly. ‘All right. I admit it’s not impossible.’

‘On the other hand maybe the Org briefed more than one agent to kill her so that if you missed, somebody else was bound to get her. It’s not unusual for assassinations to be handled that way. Certainly not in my own experience, anyway.’ He paused, and then pointed his pipe at me. ‘You know what I think? I think that the next time you see König, you should simply keep quiet about it. If he mentions it then you can assume that it probably was an accident and feel confident of taking the credit for it.’ He searched in his jacket pocket and drew out a buff-coloured envelope which he threw into my lap. ‘It makes this a little less necessary, but that can’t be helped.’

‘What’s this?’

‘From an MVD station near Sopron, close to the Hungarian border. It’s the details of MVD personnel and methods throughout Hungary and Lower Austria.’

‘And how am I supposed to account for this little lot?’

‘I rather thought that you could handle the man who gave it to us. Frankly it’s just the sort of material that they’re keen on. The man’s name is Yuri. That’s all you need to know. There are map references and the location of the dead-letter box he’s been using. There’s a railway bridge near a little town called Mattersburg. On the bridge is a footpath and about two-thirds of the way along the handrail is broken. The top part is hollow cast metal. All you have to do is collect your information from there once a month, and leave some money and instructions.’

‘How do I account for my relationship with him?’

‘Until quite recently Yuri was stationed in Vienna. You used to buy identity papers for him. But now he’s getting more ambitious, and you haven’t the money to buy what he’s got to offer. So you can offer him to the Org. CIC has already assessed his worth. We’ve had all we’re going to get out of him, at least in the short term. There’s no harm done if he gives all the same stuff to the Org.’ Belinsky re-lit his pipe and puffed vigorously while he awaited my reaction.

‘Really,’ he said, ‘there’s nothing to it. An operation of this sort is hardly deserving of the word “intelligence”. Believe me, very few of them are. But all in all a source like this and an apparently successful bit of murder leaves you pretty well accredited, old man.’

‘You’ll forgive my lack of enthusiasm,’ I said drily, ‘only I’m beginning to lose sight of what I’m doing here.’

Belinsky nodded vaguely. ‘I thought you wanted to clear your old pitman.’

‘Maybe you haven’t been listening. Becker was never my friend. But I really think he is innocent of Linden’s murder. And so did Traudl. So long as she was alive this case really felt as if it was worthwhile, there seemed to be some point in trying to prove Becker innocent. Now I’m not so sure.’

‘Come on, Gunther,’ Belinsky said. ‘Becker’s life without his girl is still better than no life at all. Do you honestly think that Traudl would have wanted you to give up?’

‘Maybe, if she knew the kind of crap he was into. The kind of people he was dealing with.’

‘You know that’s not true. Becker was no altar-boy, that’s for sure. But from what you’ve told me about her I’d bet she knew that. There’s not much innocence left anymore. Not in Vienna.’

I sighed and rubbed my neck wearily. ‘Maybe you’re right,’ I conceded. ‘Maybe it’s just me. I’m used to having things being a little more well-defined than this. A client came along, paid my fee and I’d point my suit in whatever direction seemed appropriate. Sometimes I even got to solve a case. That’s a pretty good feeling, you know. But right now it’s like there are too many people near me, telling me how to work. As if I’ve lost my independence. I’ve stopped feeling like a private investigator.’

Belinsky rocked his head on his shoulders like a man who has sold out of something. Explanations probably. He made a stab at one all the same. ‘Come on, surely you must have worked undercover before now.’

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Only it was with a sharper sense of purpose. At least I got to see a criminal’s picture. I knew what was right. But this isn’t clear-cut anymore, and it’s beginning to peel my reed.’

‘Nothing stays the same, kraut. The war changed everything for everyone, private investigators included. But if you want to see criminals’ photographs I can show you a hundred. Thousands probably. War-criminals, all of them.’

‘Photographs of krauts? Listen, Belinsky, you’re an American and you’re a Jew. It’s a lot easier for you to see the right here. Me? I’m a German. For one brief, dirty moment I was even in the SS. If I met one of your war-criminals he’d probably shake me by the hand and call me an old comrade.’

He had no answer for that.

I found another cigarette and smoked it in silence. When it was finished I shook my head ruefully. ‘Maybe it’s just Vienna. Maybe it’s being away from home for so long. My wife wrote to me. We weren’t getting along too well when I left Berlin. Frankly I couldn’t wait to leave, and so I took this case against my better judgement. Anyway she says that she hopes we can start again. And do you know, I can’t wait to get back to her and give it a try. Maybe —’ I shook my head. ‘Maybe I need a drink.’

Belinsky grinned enthusiastically. ‘Now you’re talking, kraut,’ he said. ‘One thing I’ve learned in this job: if in doubt, pickle it in alcohol.’

27

It was late when we drove back from the Melodies Bar, a nightclub in the 1st Bezirk. Belinsky drew up outside my pension and as I got out of the car a woman stepped quickly out of the shadow of a nearby doorway. It was Veronika Zartl. I smiled thinly at her, having drunk rather too much to care for any company.

‘Thank God you’ve come,’ she said. ‘I’ve waited hours.’ Then she flinched as through the open car door we both heard Belinsky utter an obscene remark.

‘What’s the matter?’ I asked her.

‘I need your help. There’s a man in my room.’

‘So what’s new?’ said Belinsky.

Veronika bit her lip. ‘He’s dead, Bernie. You’ve got to help me.’

‘I’m not sure what I can do,’ I said uncertainly, wishing that we’d stayed longer in the Melodies. I said to myself: ‘A girl ought not to trust anyone these days.’ To her I said: ‘You know, it’s really a job for the police.’

‘I can’t tell the police,’ she groaned impatiently. ‘That would mean the vice squad, the Austrian criminal police, public health officials and an inquest. I’d probably lose my room, everything. Don’t you see?’

‘All right, all right. What happened?’

‘I think he had a heart attack.’ Her head dropped. ‘I’m sorry to bother you, only there is no one else I can turn to.’

I cursed myself again and then stuck my head back into Belinsky’s car. ‘The lady needs our help,’ I grunted, without much enthusiasm.

‘That’s not all she needs.’ But he started the engine and added: ‘Come on, hop in, the pair of you.’

He drove to Rotenturmstrasse and parked outside the bomb-damaged building where Veronika had her room. When we got out of the car I pointed across the darkened cobbles of Stephansplatz to the partly restored cathedral.

‘See if you can’t find a tarpaulin over on the building site,’ I told Belinsky. ‘I’ll go up and take a look. If there’s something suitable, bring it up to the second floor.’

He was too drunk to argue. Instead he nodded dully and walked back towards the Cathedral scaffolding, while I turned and followed Veronika up the stairs to her room.

A large, lobster-coloured man of about fifty lay dead in her big oak bed. Vomiting is quite common in cases of congestive heart failure. It covered his nose and mouth like a bad facial burn. I pressed my fingers against the man’s clammy neck.

‘How long has he been here?’

‘Three or four hours.’

‘It’s lucky you kept him covered up,’ I told her. ‘Close that window.’ I stripped the bedclothes from the dead man’s body and started to raise the upper part of his torso. ‘Give me a hand here,’ I ordered.

‘What are you doing?’ She helped me to bend the torso over the legs as if I had been trying to shut an overstuffed suitcase.

‘I’m keeping this bastard in shape,’ I said. ‘A bit of chiropractic ought to slow up the stiffening and make it easier for us to get him in and out of the car.’ I pressed down hard on the back of his neck, and then, blowing hard from my exertions, pushed the man back against the puke-strewn pillows. ‘Uncle here’s been getting extra food-stamps,’ I breathed. ‘He must weigh more than a hundred kilos. It’s lucky we’ve got Belinsky along to help.’

‘Is Belinsky a policeman?’ she asked.

‘Sort of,’ I said, ‘but don’t worry, he’s not the kind of bull who cares much for the crime figures. Belinsky’s got other fish to fry. He hunts Nazi war-criminals.’ I started to bend the dead man’s arms and legs.

‘What are you going to do with him?’ she said nauseously.

‘Drop him on the railway line. With him being naked it will look like the Ivans gave him a little party and then threw him off a train. With any luck the express will go over him and fit him with a good disguise.’

‘Please don’t,’ she said weakly. ‘… He was very kind to me.’

When I’d finished with the body I stood up and straightened my tie. ‘This is hard work on a vodka supper. Now where the hell is Belinsky?’ Spotting the man’s clothes which were laid neatly over the back of a dining-chair by the grimy net curtains, I said: ‘Have you been through his pockets yet?’

‘No, of course not.’

‘You are new at this game, aren’t you?’

‘You don’t understand at all. He was a good friend of mine.’

‘Evidently,’ Belinsky said coming through the door. He held up a length of white material. ‘I’m afraid that this was all I could find.’

‘What is it?’

‘An altar-cloth, I think. I found it in a cupboard inside the cathedral. It didn’t look like it was being used.’

I told Veronika to help Belinsky wrap her friend in the cloth while I searched his pockets.

‘He’s good at that,’ Belinsky told her. ‘He went through my pockets once while I was still breathing. Tell me, honey, were you and fat boy actually doing it when he was scythed out?’

‘Leave her alone, Belinsky.’

‘Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth,’ he chuckled. ‘But me? I just hope I die in a good woman.’

I opened the man’s wallet and thumbed a fold of dollar bills and schillings on to the dressing-table.

‘What are you looking for?’ asked Veronika.

‘If I’m going to dispose of a man’s body I like to know at least a little more about him than just the colour of his underwear.’

‘His name was Karl Heim,’ she said quietly.

I found a business card. ‘Dr Karl Heim,’ I said. ‘A dentist, eh? Is he the one who got you the penicillin?’

‘Yes.’

‘A man who liked to take precautions, eh?’ Belinsky murmured. ‘From the look of this room, I can understand why.’ He nodded at the money on the dressing-table. ‘You had better keep that money, sweetheart. Get yourself a new decorator.’

There was another business card in Heim’s wallet. ‘Belinsky,’ I said. ‘Have you ever heard of a Major Jesse P. Breen? From something called the DP Screening Project?’

‘Sure I have,’ he said, coming over and taking the card out of my fingers. ‘The DPSP is a special section of the 430th. Breen is the CIC’s local liaison officer for the Org. If any of the Org’s men get into trouble with the US military police, Breen is supposed to try and help them sort it out. That is unless it’s anything really serious, like a murder. And I wouldn’t put it past him to fix that as well, providing the victim was anyone but an American or an Englishman. It looks as if our fat friend might have been one of your old comrades, Bernie.’

While Belinsky talked I quickly searched Heim’s trouser pockets and found a set of keys.

‘In that case it might be an idea if you and I were to take a look around the good doctor’s surgery,’ I said. ‘I’ve got a feeling in my socks that we might just find something interesting there.’

We dumped Heim’s naked body on a quiet stretch of railway track near the Ostbahnhof in the Russian sector of the city. I was keen to leave the scene as quickly as possible, but Belinsky insisted on sitting in the car and waiting to see the train finish the job. After about fifteen minutes a goods train bound for Budapest and the Orient came rumbling by, and Heim’s corpse was lost under its many hundreds of pairs of wheels.

‘For all flesh is grass,’ Belinsky intoned, ‘and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field: The grass withereth, and the flower fadeth.’

‘Cut that out, will you?’ I said. ‘It makes me nervous.’

‘But the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God and there shall no torment touch them. Anything you say, kraut.’

‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Let’s get away from here.’

We drove north to Währing in the 18th Bezirk, and an elegant three-storey house on Türkenschanzplatz, close to a decent-sized park which was bisected by a small railway line.

‘We could have dropped our passenger out here,’ said Belinsky, ‘on his own doorstep. And saved ourselves a trip into the Russian sector.’

‘This is the American sector,’ I reminded him. ‘The only way to get thrown off a train round here is to travel without a ticket. They even wait until the train stops moving.’

‘That’s Uncle Sam for you, hey? No, you’re right, Bernie. He’s better off with the Ivans. It wouldn’t be the first time they threw one of our people off a train. But I’d sure hate to be one of their trackmen. Damned dangerous, I’d say.’

We left the car and walked towards the house.

There was no sign that anyone was at home. Above the broad, toothy grin of a short wooden fence the darkened windows on the white stuccoed house stared back like the empty sockets in a great skull. A tarnished brass plate on the gatepost which, with typical Viennese exaggeration, bore the name of Dr Karl Heim, Consultant Orthodontic Surgeon, not to mention most of the letters of the alphabet, indicated two separate entrances: one to Heim’s residence, and the other to his surgery.

‘You look in the house,’ I said, opening the front door with the keys. ‘I’ll go round the side and check the surgery.’

‘Anything you say.’ Belinsky produced a flashlight from his overcoat pocket. Seeing my eyes fasten on the torch, he added: ‘What’s the matter? You scared of the dark or something?’ He laughed. ‘Here, you take it. I can see in the dark. In my line of work you have to.’

I shrugged and relieved him of the light. Then he reached inside his jacket and took out his gun.

‘Besides,’ he said, screwing on the silencer. ‘I like to keep one hand free for turning door handles.’

‘Just watch who you shoot,’ I said and walked away.

Round the side of the house I let myself in through the surgery door and, after closing it quietly behind me again. switched on the torch. I kept the light on the linoleum floor and away from the windows in case a nosy neighbour happened to be keeping an eye on the place.

I found myself in a small reception and waiting area which was home to a number of potted plants and a tankful of terrapins: it made a change from goldfish, I told myself, and mindful of the fact that their owner was now dead, I sprinkled some of the foul-smelling food that they ate on to the surface of their water. That was my second good deed of the day. Charity was beginning to be a bit of a habit with me.

Behind the reception desk I opened the appointment-book and pointed the torch beam on to its pages. It didn’t look like Heim had much of a practice to leave to his competition, always assuming he had any. There wasn’t a lot of spare money around for curing toothache these days, and I didn’t doubt that Heim would have made a better living selling drugs on the black market. Turning back the pages I could see that he averaged no more than two or three appointments a week. Several months back in the book I came across two names I knew: Max Abs and Helmut König. Both of them were marked down for full extractions within a few days of each other. There were lots of other names listed for full extractions, but none that I recognized.

I went over to the filing cabinets and found them mostly empty, with the exception of one that contained details only of patients prior to 1940. The cabinet didn’t look as if it had been opened since then, which struck me as odd as dentists tend to be quite meticulous about such things; and indeed, the Heim of pre-1940 had been conscientious with his patients’ records, detailing residual teeth, fillings and denture-fitting marks for each one of them. Had he just got sloppy, I wondered, or had an inadequate volume of business ceased to make such careful records worthwhile? And why so many full extractions of late? It was true, the war had left a great many men, myself included, with poor teeth. In my case this was one legacy of a year’s starvation as a Soviet prisoner. But nevertheless I had still managed to keep a full set. And there were plenty of others like me. What need for König then, who I remembered telling me that he had had such good teeth, to have had all of his teeth extracted? Or did he simply mean that his teeth had been good before they went bad? While none of this was enough for Conan Doyle to have turned into a short story, it certainly left me puzzled.

The surgery itself was much like any other I had ever been in. A little dirtier perhaps, but then nothing was as clean as it had been before the war. Beside the black-leather chair stood a large cylinder of anaesthetic gas. I turned the tap at the neck of the bottle and, hearing a hissing sound, switched it off again. Everything looked like it was in proper working order.

Beyond a locked door was a small store-room, and it was there that Belinsky found me.

‘Find anything?’ he said.

I told him about the lack of records.

‘You’re right,’ Belinsky said with what sounded like a smile, ‘that doesn’t sound at all German.’

I flashed the torch over the shelves in the store-room.

‘Hello,’ he said, ‘what have we got here?’ He reached out to touch a steel drum on the side of which was painted in yellow the chemical formula H₂ SO₄.

‘I wouldn’t, if I were you,’ I said. ‘That stuff’s not from a schoolboy’s chemistry set. Unless I’m very much mistaken, it’s sulphuric acid.’ I moved the torch beam up the side of the drum to where the words EXTREME CAUTION were also painted. ‘Enough to turn you into a couple of litres of animal fat.’

‘Kosher, I hope,’ Belinsky said. ‘What does a dentist want with a drum-load of sulphuric acid?’

‘For all I know he soaks his false teeth in it overnight.’

On a shelf beside the drum, piled one on top of the other, were several kidney-shaped steel trays. I picked one of them up and brought it under the beam of the torch. The two of us stared at what looked like a handful of odd-shaped peppermints, all stuck together as if they had been half-sucked and then saved by some disgusting small boy. But there was also dried blood on some of them.

Belinsky’s nose wrinkled with disgust. ‘What the hell are these?’

‘Teeth.’ I handed him the torch and picked one of the spiky white objects out of the tray to hold it up to the light. ‘Extracted teeth. And several mouthfuls of them too.’

‘I hate dentists,’ Belinsky hissed. He fumbled in his waistcoat and found one of his picks to chew.

‘I’d say these normally end up in the drum of acid.’

‘So?’ But Belinsky had noticed my interest.

‘What kind of dentist does nothing but full extractions?’ I asked. ‘The appointment-book is booked for nothing but full extractions.’ I turned the tooth in my fingers. ‘Would you say that there was much wrong with this molar? It hasn’t even been filled.’

‘It looks like a perfectly healthy tooth,’ agreed Belinsky.

I stirred the sticky mass in the tray with my forefinger. ‘Same as the rest of them,’ I observed. ‘I’m no dentist, but I don’t see the point of pulling teeth that haven’t even been filled yet.’

‘Maybe Heim was on some kind of piece work. Maybe the guy just liked to pull teeth.’

‘Better than he liked keeping records. There are no records for any of his recent patients.’

Belinsky picked up another kidney-tray and inspected its contents. ‘Another full set,’ he reported. But something rolled in the next tray. It looked like several tiny ball bearings. ‘Well, what have we here?’ He picked one up and regarded it with fascination. ‘Unless I’m very much mistaken, I should say each one of these little confections contains a dose of potassium cyanide.’

‘Lethal pills?’

‘That’s right. They were very popular with some of your old comrades, kraut. Especially the SS and senior state and party officials who might have had the guts to prefer suicide to being captured by the Ivans. I believe that these were originally developed for German secret agents, but Arthur Nebe and the SS decided that the top brass had a greater need of them. A man would have his dentist make him a false tooth, or use an existing cavity, and then put this little baby inside. Nice and snug — you’d be surprised. When he was captured he might even have a decoy cyanide brass cartridge in his pocket, which meant our people wouldn’t bother with a dental examination. And then, when the man had decided the right time had come, he would work off the false tooth, tongue out this capsule and chew the thing until it broke. Death is almost instantaneous. That’s how Himmler killed himself.’

‘Goering too, I heard.’

‘No,’ said Belinsky, ‘he used one of the decoys. An American officer smuggled it back to him while he was in gaol. How about that, eh? One of our own people going soft on the fat bastard like that.’ He dropped the capsule back into the tray and handed it to me.

I poured a few into my hand to get a closer look. It seemed almost astonishing that things which were so small could also be so deadly. Four tiny seed pearls for the deaths of four men. I did not think I could have carried one in my mouth, false tooth or not, and still enjoyed my dinner.

‘You know what I think, kraut? I think we’ve got ourselves a lot of toothless Nazis running round Vienna.’ I followed him back into the surgery. ‘I take it that you’re familiar with dental techniques for the identification of the dead.’

‘As familiar as the next bull,’ I said.

‘It was damned useful after the war,’ he said. ‘The best way we had of establishing the identity of a corpse. Naturally enough there were many Nazis who were keen for us to believe that they were dead. And they went to a great deal of trouble to try and persuade us of it. Half-charred bodies carrying false papers, you know the sort of thing. Well of course the first thing we did was have a dentist take a look at a corpse’s teeth. Even if you don’t have a man’s dental records you can at least determine his age from his teeth: periodontosis, root resorption, etc. — you can say for sure that a corpse isn’t who it is supposed to be.’

Belinsky paused and looked about the surgery. ‘You finished looking around in here?’

I told him I was and asked if he had found anything in the house. He shook his head and said he hadn’t. Then I said that we had better get the hell out of there.

He resumed his explanation as we climbed into the car.

‘Take the case of Heinrich Müller, chief of the Gestapo. He was last seen alive in Hitler’s bunker in April 1945. Müller was supposed to have been killed in the battle for Berlin in May 1945. But when after the war his body was exhumed, a dental expert specializing in jawbone surgery at a Berlin hospital in the British sector couldn’t identify the teeth in the corpse as those belonging to a forty-four-year-old male. He thought that the corpse was more probably that of a man of no more than twenty-five.’ Belinsky turned the ignition, gunned the engine for a second or two, and then slipped the car into gear.

Crouched over the steering-wheel, he drove badly for an American, double-declutching, missing his gears and generally over-steering. It was clear to me that driving required all of his attention, but he continued with his calm explanation, even after we had almost killed a passing motorcyclist.

‘When we catch up with some of these bastards, they’ve got false papers, new hairstyles, moustaches, beards, glasses, you name it. But teeth are as good as a tattoo, or sometimes a fingerprint. So if any of them have had all their teeth pulled it removes yet another possible means of identification. After all, a man who can explode a cartridge under his arm to remove an SS number probably wouldn’t baulk at wearing false teeth, would he?’

I thought of the burn scar under my own arm and reflected that he was probably right. To disguise myself from the Russians I would certainly have resorted to having my teeth out, assuming that I would have the same opportunity for painless extraction as Max Abs and Helmut König.

‘No, I guess not.’

‘You can bet your life on it. Which is why I stole Heim’s appointment-book.’ He patted the breast of his coat where I assumed he was now keeping it. ‘It might be interesting to find out who these men with bad teeth really are. Your friend König, for instance. And Max Abs too. I mean, why would a little SS chauffeur feel the need to disguise what he had in his mouth? Unless he wasn’t an SS corporal at all.’ Belinsky chuckled enthusiastically at the thought of it. ‘That’s why I have to be able to see in the dark. Some of your old comrades really know how to mix the maps. You know, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we’re still chasing some of these Nazi bastards when their kids are having to sugar their strawberries for them.’

‘All the same,’ I said, ‘the longer it is before you catch them, the harder it will be to get a positive identification.’

‘Don’t you worry,’ he snarled vindictively. ‘There won’t be a shortage of witnesses willing to come forward and testify against these shits. Or perhaps you think people like Muller and Globocnik should be allowed to get away with it?’

‘Who’s Globocnik, when he’s having a party?’

‘Odilo Globocnik. He headed up Operation Reinhard, establishing most of the big death camps in Poland. Another one who is supposed to have committed suicide in ’45. So come on, what do you think? There’s a trial going on in Nuremberg right now. Otto Ohlendorf, commander of one of those SS special action groups. Do you think he should hang for his war crimes?’

‘War crimes?’ I repeated wearily. ‘Listen, Belinsky, I worked in the Wehrmacht’s War Crimes Bureau for three years. So don’t think you can lecture me about fucking war crimes.’

‘I’m just interested to know where you stand, kraut. Exactly what kind of war crimes did you Jerries investigate anyway?’

‘Atrocities, by both sides. You’ve heard of Katyn Forest?’

‘Of course. You investigated that?’

‘I was part of the team.’

‘How about that?’ He seemed genuinely surprised. Most people were.

‘Frankly, I think that the idea of charging fighting men with war crimes is absurd. The murderers of women and children should be punished, yes. But it wasn’t just Jews and Poles who were killed by people like Müller and Globocnik. They murdered Germans, too. Perhaps if you’d given us half a chance we could have brought them to justice ourselves.’

Belinsky turned off Währinger Strasse and drove south, past the long edifice of the General Hospital and on to Alser Strasse where, encountering the same recollection as myself, he slowed the car to a more respectful pace. I could tell he had been about to answer my point, but now he grew quiet, almost as if he felt obliged to avoid giving me any cause for offence. Drawing up outside my pension, he said: ‘Did Traudl have any family?’

‘Not that I know of. There’s just Becker.’ I wondered at that, though. The photograph of her and Colonel Poroshin still preyed on my mind.

‘Well, that’s all right. I’m not going to lose any sleep worrying about his grief.’

‘He’s my client, in case you’d forgotten. In helping you I’m supposed to be working to prove him innocent.’

‘And you’re convinced of that?’

‘Yes, I am.’

‘But surely you must know he’s on the Crowcass list.’

‘You’re pretty cute,’ I said dumbly, ‘letting me make all the running like this, only to tell me that. Supposing that I do get lucky and win the race, am I going to be allowed to collect the prize?’

‘Your friend is a murdering Nazi, Bernie. He commanded an execution squad in the Ukraine, massacring men, women and children. I’d say that he deserved to hang whether he killed Linden or not.’

‘You’re pretty cute, Belinsky,’ I repeated bitterly, and started to get out of the car.

‘But as far as I’m concerned, he’s small fry. I’m after bigger fish than Emil Becker. You can help me. You can try and repair some of the damage that your country has done. A symbolic gesture, if you like. Who knows — if enough Germans do the same then maybe the account could be settled.’

‘What are you talking about?’ I said, from the road. ‘What account?’ I leaned on the car door and bent forward to see Belinsky take out his pipe.

‘God’s account,’ he said quietly.

I laughed and shook my head in disbelief.

‘What’s the matter? Don’t you believe in God?’

‘I don’t believe in trying to make a deal with him. You speak about God as if he sells secondhand cars. I’ve misjudged you. You’re much more of an American than I thought you were.’

‘Now that’s where you’re wrong. God likes making deals. Look at that covenant he made with Abraham, and with Noah. God’s a huckster, Bernie. Only a German could mistake a deal for a direct order.’

‘Get to the point, will you? There is a point, isn’t there?’ His manner seemed to indicate as much.

‘I’m going to level with you —’

‘Oh? I seem to remember you doing that a little earlier on.’

‘Everything I told you was true.’

‘There’s just more to come, right?’

Belinsky nodded and lit his pipe. I felt like smacking it out of his mouth. Instead I got back into the car and closed the door.

‘With your penchant for selective truth, you should get a job in an advertising agency. Let’s hear it.’

‘Just don’t make a hot throat at me until I’m through, right?’

I nodded curtly.

‘All right. For a start, we — Crowcass — believe Becker is innocent of Linden’s murder. You see, the gun which killed him was used to kill somebody else in Berlin almost three years ago. The ballistics people matched that bullet with the one that killed Linden, and they were both fired from the same gun. For the time of the first killing Becker has a pretty good alibi: he was a Russian prisoner of war. Of course he could have acquired the gun since then, but I haven’t come to the interesting part yet, the part that actually makes me want Becker to be innocent.

‘The gun was a Standard SS-issue Walther P38. We traced the serial-number records held at the US Documents Centre and discovered that this same pistol was one of a batch that was issued to senior officers within the Gestapo. This particular weapon was given to Heinrich Müller. It was a long shot but we compared the bullet that killed Linden with the one that killed the man we dug up who was supposed to be Müller, and what do you know? Jackpot. Whoever killed Linden might also have been responsible for putting a false Heinrich Müller in the ground. Do you see, Bernie? It’s the best clue that we’ve ever had that Gestapo Müller is still alive. It means that only a few months ago he might have been right here in Vienna, working for the Org, of which you are now a member. He may even still be here.

‘Do you know how important that is? Think about it, please. Müller was the architect of the Nazi terror. For ten years he controlled the most brutal secret police the world has ever known. This was a man almost as powerful as Himmler himself. Can you imagine how many people he must have tortured? How many deaths he must have ordered? How many Jews, Poles — even how many Germans he must have killed? Bernie, this is your opportunity to help avenge all those dead Germans. To see that justice is done.’

I laughed scornfully. ‘Is that what you call it when you let a man hang for something he didn’t do? Correct me if I’m wrong, Belinsky, but isn’t that part of your plan: to let Becker take the drop?’

‘Naturally I hope that it doesn’t come to that. But if it’s necessary, then so be it. So long as the military police have Becker, Müller won’t be spooked. And if that includes hanging him, yes. Knowing what I know about Emil Becker, I won’t lose much sleep.’ Belinsky watched my face carefully for some sign of approval. ‘Come on, you’re a cop. You appreciate how these things work. Don’t tell me you’ve never had to nail a man for one thing because you couldn’t prove another. It all evens up, you know that.’

‘Sure, I’ve done it. But not when a man’s life was involved. I’ve never played games with a man’s life.’

‘Provided you help us to find Müller we’re prepared to forget about Becker.’ The pipe emitted a short smoke signal, which seemed to bespeak a growing impatience on its owner’s part. ‘Look, all I’m suggesting is that you put Müller in the dock instead of Becker.’

‘And if I do find Müller, what then? He’s not about to let me walk up and put the cuffs on him. How am I supposed to bring him in without getting my head blown off?’

‘You can leave that to me. All you have to do is establish exactly where he is. Telephone me and my Crowcass team will do the rest.’

‘How will I recognize him?’

Belinsky reached behind his seat and brought back a cheap leather briefcase. He unzipped it and took out an envelope from which he removed a passport-sized photograph.

‘That’s Müller,’ he said. ‘Apparently he speaks with a very pronounced Munich accent, so even if he should have radically changed his appearance, you’ll certainly have no trouble recognizing his voice.’ He watched me turn the photograph towards the streetlight and stare at it for a while.

‘He’d be forty-seven now. Not very tall, big peasant hands. He may still even be wearing his wedding ring.’

The photograph didn’t say much about the man. It wasn’t a very revealing face; and yet it was a remarkable one. Müller had a squarish skull, a high forehead, and tense, narrow lips. But it was the eyes that really got to you, even on that small photograph. Müller’s eyes were like the eyes of a snowman: two black, frozen coals.

‘Here’s another one,’ Belinsky said. ‘These are the only two photographs of him known to exist.’

The second picture was a group shot. There were five men seated round an oak table as if they had been having dinner in a comfortable restaurant. Three of them I recognized. At the head of the table was Heinrich Himmler, playing with his pencil and smiling at Arthur Nebe on his right. Arthur Nebe: my old comrade, as Belinsky would have said. On Himmler’s left, and apparently hanging on every one of the Reichsführer-SS’s words, was Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the RSHA, assassinated by Czech terrorists in 1942.

‘When was this picture taken?’ I asked.

‘November 1939.’ Belinsky leaned across and tapped one of the two other men in the picture with the stem of his pipe. ‘That’s Müller there,’ he said, ‘sitting beside Heydrich.’

Müller’s hand had moved in the same half-second that the camera-shutter had opened and closed: it was blurred as if covering the order paper on the table, but even so, the wedding ring was clearly visible. He was looking down, almost not listening to Himmler at all. By comparison with Heydrich, Müller’s head was small. His hair was closely cropped, shaven even until it reached the very top of the cranium, where it had been permitted to grow a little in a small, carefully tended allotment.

‘Who’s the man sitting opposite Müller?’

‘The one taking notes? That’s Franz Josef Huber. He was chief of the Gestapo here in Vienna. You can hang on to those pictures if you want. They’re only prints.’

‘I haven’t agreed to help you yet.’

‘But you will. You have to.’

‘Right now I ought to tell you to go and fuck yourself, Belinsky. You see, I’m like an old piano — I don’t much like being played. But I’m tired. And I’ve had a few. Maybe I’ll be able to think a little more clearly tomorrow.’ I opened the car door and got out again.

Belinsky was right the body work of the big black Mercedes was covered in dents.

‘I’ll call you in the morning,’ he said.

‘You do that,’ I said, and slammed the door shut.

He drove away like he was the devil’s own coachman.

28

I did not sleep well. Troubled by what Belinsky had said, my thoughts made my limbs restless, and after only a few hours I woke before dawn in a cold sweat and did not sleep again. If only he hadn’t mentioned God, I said to myself.

I was not a Catholic until I became a prisoner in Russia. The regime in the camp was so hard that it seemed to me that there was an even chance it would kill me, and, wishing to make my peace with the back of my mind, I had sought out the only churchman among my fellow prisoners, a Polish priest. I had been brought up as a Lutheran, but religious denomination seemed like a matter of small account in that dreadful place.

Becoming a Catholic in the full expectation of death only made me more tenacious of life, and after I’d escaped and returned to Berlin I continued to attend mass and to celebrate the faith that had apparently delivered me.

My newfound Church did not have a good record in its relation to the Nazis, and had now also distanced itself from any imputation of guilt. It followed that if the Catholic Church was not guilty, nor were its members. There was, it seemed, some theological basis for a rejection of German collective guilt. Guilt, said the priests, was really something personal between a man and his God, and its attribution to one nation by another was blasphemy, for this could only be a matter of divine prerogative. After that, all that there remained to do was pray for the dead, for those who had done wrong, and for the whole dreadful and embarrassing epoch to be forgotten as quickly as possible.

There were many who remained uneasy at the way the moral dirt was swept under the carpet. But it is certain that a nation cannot feel collective guilt, that each man must encounter it personally. Only now did I realize the nature of my own guilt — and perhaps it was really not much different from that of many others: it was that I had not said anything, that I had not lifted my hand against the Nazis. I also realized that I had a personal sense of grievance against Heinrich Müller, for as chief of the Gestapo he had done more than any other man to achieve the corruption of the police force of which I had once been a proud member. From that had flowed wholesale terror.

Now it seemed it was not too late to do something after all. It was just possible that, by seeking out Müller, the symbol not just of my own corruption but Becker’s too, and bringing him to justice, I might help to clear my own guilt for what had happened.

Belinsky rang early, almost as if he had already guessed my decision, and I told him that I would help him to find Gestapo Müller not for Crowcass, nor for the United States Army, but for Germany. But mostly, I told him, I would help him to get Müller for myself.

29

First thing that morning, after telephoning König and arranging a meeting to hand over Belinsky’s ostensibly secret material, I went to Liebl’s office in Judengasse in order that he might arrange for me to see Becker at the police prison.

‘I want to show him a photograph,’ I explained.

‘A photograph?’ Liebl sounded hopeful. ‘Is this a photograph that might become an item of evidence?’

I shrugged. ‘That depends on Becker.’

Liebl made a couple of swift telephone calls, trading on the death of Becker’s fiancée, the possibility of new evidence and the proximity of the trial, which gained us almost immediate access to the prison. It was a fine day and we made our way there by foot, with Liebl walking his umbrella like a colour sergeant in an imperial regiment of guards.

‘Did you tell him about Traudl?’ I asked.

‘Last night.’

‘How did he take it?’

The grey brow on the old lawyer’s head shifted uncertainly. ‘Surprisingly well, Herr Gunther. Like you, I had supposed our client would be devastated by the news.’ The brow shifted again, more in consternation this time. ‘But he was not. No, it was his own unfortunate situation that seemed to preoccupy him. As well as your progress, or lack of it. Herr Becker does seem to have an extraordinary amount of faith in your powers of detection. Powers for which, if I may be frank with you, sir, I have seen little or no evidence.’

‘You’re entitled to your opinion, Dr Liebl. I guess you’re like most lawyers I’ve met: if your own sister sent you an invitation to her wedding you’d be happy only if it was signed under seal and in the presence of two witnesses. Perhaps if our client had been a little more forthcoming …’

‘You suspect he’s been holding something back? Yes, I remember you said as much on the telephone yesterday. Without knowing quite what you were talking about I did not feel able to take advantage of Herr Becker’s —’ he hesitated for a second while he debated whether or not he could reasonably use the word, and then decided that he could ‘— grief, to make such an allegation.’

‘Very sensitive of you, I’m sure. But perhaps this photograph will jog his memory.’

‘I do hope so. And perhaps his bereavement will have sunk in, and he will make a better show of his grief.’

It seemed like a very Viennese sort of sentiment.

But when we saw Becker he appeared hardly affected. After a packet of cigarettes had persuaded the guard to leave the three of us alone in the interview room I tried to find out why.

‘I’m sorry about Traudl,’ I said. ‘She was a really lovely girl.’

He nodded expressionlessly, as if he had been listening to some boring point of legal procedure as explained by Liebl.

‘I must say you don’t seem very upset by it,’ I remarked.

‘I’m dealing with it in the best way I know how,’ he said quietly. ‘There’s not a lot I can do here. Chances are they won’t even let me attend the funeral. How do you think I feel?’

I turned to Liebl and asked him if he wouldn’t mind leaving the room for a minute. ‘There’s something I wish to say to Herr Becker in private.’

Liebl glanced at Becker, who nodded curtly back at him. Neither of us spoke until the heavy door had closed behind the lawyer.

‘Spit it out, Bernie,’ Becker said, half-yawning at the same time. ‘What’s on your mind?’

‘It was your friends in the Org who killed your girl,’ I said, watching his long thin face closely for some sign of emotion. I wasn’t sure if this was true or not, but I was keen to see what it might make him reveal. But there was nothing. ‘They actually asked me to kill her.’

‘So,’ he said, with his eyes narrowing, ‘you’re in the Org.’ His tone was cautious. ‘When did this happen?’

‘Your friend König recruited me.’

His face seemed to relax a little. ‘Well, I guessed it was only a matter of time. To be honest, I wasn’t at all sure whether or not you were in the Org when you first came to Vienna. With your background you’re the kind of man they’re quick to recruit. If you’re in now, you have been busy. I’m impressed. Did König say why he wanted you to kill Traudl?’

‘He told me she was an MVD spy. He showed me a photograph of her talking to Colonel Poroshin.’

Becker smiled sadly. ‘She was no spy,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘and she was not my girlfriend. She was Poroshin’s girl. Originally she posed as my fiancée so that I could stay in contact with Poroshin while I was in prison. Liebl knew nothing about it. Poroshin said that you hadn’t been all that keen to come to Vienna. Said you didn’t seem to have a very good opinion of me. He wondered if you would stay very long when you did come. So he thought it would be a good idea if Traudl worked on you a little and persuaded you that there was someone who loved me on the outside, someone who needed me. He’s a shrewd judge of character, Bernie. Go on, admit it, she’s half the reason why you’ve stuck to my case. Because you thought that mother and baby deserved the benefit of the doubt, even if I didn’t.’

It was Becker who was watching me now, looking for some reaction. Oddly enough, I found I wasn’t angry at all. I was used to discovering that at any one time I only ever had half the truth.

‘So I don’t suppose she was a nurse at all.’

‘Oh, she was a nurse all right. She used to steal penicillin for me to sell on the black market. It was me who introduced her to Poroshin.’ He shrugged. ‘I didn’t know about the two of them for a while. But I wasn’t surprised. Traudl liked a good time, like most of the women in this city. She and I were even lovers for a brief while, but nothing like that lasts for very long in Vienna.’

‘Your wife said that you got Poroshin some penicillin for a dose of drip? Was that true?’

‘I got him some penicillin, sure, but it wasn’t for him. It was for his son. He had cerebro-spinal fever. There’s quite an epidemic of it, I believe. And a shortage of antibiotics, especially in Russia. There’s a shortage of everything but manpower in the Soviet Union.

‘After that, Poroshin did me one or two favours. Fixed papers, gave me a cigarette concession, that sort of thing. We became quite friendly. And when the Org’s people got round to recruiting me, I told him all about it. Why not? I thought König and his friends were a bunch of spinners. But I was happy to make money from them, and frankly I wasn’t much involved with the Org beyond that odd bit of courier-work to Berlin. Poroshin was keen that I get closer to them however, and when he offered me a lot of money, I agreed to try. But they’re absurdly suspicious, Bernie, and when I expressed some interest in doing more work for them they insisted that I subject myself to an interrogation about my service with the SS and my imprisonment in a Soviet POW camp. It bothered them a lot that I was released. They didn’t say anything about it at the time, but in view of what has happened since, I guess they must have decided that they couldn’t trust me, and put me out of the way.’ Becker lit one of his cigarettes and leaned back on the hard chair.

‘Why didn’t you tell this to the police?’

He laughed. ‘You think I didn’t? When I told them about the Org those stupid bastards thought I was telling them about the Werewolf Underground. You know, that shit about a Nazi terrorist group.’

‘So that’s where Shields got the idea.’

‘Shields?’ Becker snorted. ‘He’s a fucking idiot.’

‘All right, why didn’t you tell me about the Org?’

‘Like I said, Bernie, I wasn’t sure if they hadn’t already recruited you in Berlin. Ex-Kripo, ex-Abwehr, you’d have been exactly what they were looking for. But if you hadn’t been in the Org and I’d told you, you might well have gone round Vienna asking questions about it, in which case you would have ended up dead, like my two business partners. And if you were in the Org I thought that maybe that would just be in Berlin. Here in Vienna you’d be just another detective, albeit one I knew and trusted. Do you see?’

I grunted an affirmative and found my own cigarettes.

‘You still should have told me.’

‘Perhaps.’ He drew fiercely on his cigarette. ‘Listen, Bernie. My original offer still stands. Thirty thousand dollars if you can dig me out of this hole. So if you’ve got anything up your sleeve …’

‘There’s this,’ I said, cutting across him. I produced Müller’s photograph, the one that was passport-sized. ‘Do you recognize him?’

‘I don’t think so. But I’ve seen this picture before, Bernie. At least I think I have. Traudl showed it to me before you came to Vienna.’

‘Oh? Did she say how she came by it?’

‘Poroshin, I guess.’ He studied the picture more carefully. ‘Oak-leaf collar patches, silver braid on the shoulders. An SS-Brigadeführer by the look of him. Who is it, anyway?’

‘Heinrich Müller.’

‘Gestapo Müller?’

‘Officially he’s dead, so I’d like you to keep quiet about all this for the moment. I’ve teamed up with this American agent from the War Crimes Commission who is interested in the Linden case. He worked for the same department. Apparently the gun that was used to kill Linden belonged to Müller, and was used to kill the man who was supposed to be Müller. Which might leave Müller still alive. Naturally the War Crimes people are anxious to get hold of Müller at any price. Which leaves you firmly on the spot I’m afraid, at least for the moment.’

‘I wouldn’t mind if it was firmly. But the particular spot they have in mind has hinges on it. Do you mind explaining what this means exactly?’

‘It means they’re not prepared to do anything that might scare Müller out of Vienna.’

‘Assuming he’s here.’

‘That’s right. Because this is an intelligence operation, they’re not prepared to let the military police in on it. If the charges against you were to be dropped now, it might persuade the Org that the case was about to be reopened.’

‘So where does that leave me, for Christ’s sake?’

‘This American agent I’m working with has promised to let you go if we can put Müller in your place. We’re going to try and draw him out into the open.’

‘Until then they’re just going to let the trial go ahead, maybe even the sentence too?’

‘That’s about the size of it.’

‘And you’re asking me to keep my mouth shut in the meantime.’

‘What can you say? That Linden was possibly murdered by a man who’s been dead for three years?’

‘It’s just so —’ Becker flung his cigarette into the corner of the room ‘— so damned callous.’

‘Do you want to take that biretta off your head? Look, they know about what you did in Minsk. Playing a game with your life isn’t something they feel squeamish about. To be honest, they don’t much care whether you swing or not. This is your only chance, and you know it.’

Becker nodded sullenly. ‘All right,’ he said.

I stood up to leave, but a sudden thought stopped me from walking to the door.

‘As a matter of interest,’ I said, ‘why did they release you from the Soviet POW camp?’

‘You were a prisoner. You know what it was like. Always scared they were going to find out you were in the SS.’

‘That’s why I’m asking.’

He hesitated for a moment. Then he said: ‘There was a man who was due to be released. He was very sick, and would have died soon enough. What was the point in repatriating him?’ He shrugged, and looked me square in the eye. ‘So I strangled him. Ate some camphor to make myself sick — damn near killed myself — and took his place.’ He stared me out. ‘I was desperate, Bernie. You remember what it was like.’

‘Yes, I remember.’ I tried to conceal my distaste, and failed. ‘All the same, if you’d told me that before today I’d have let them hang you.’ I reached for the door handle.

‘There’s still time. Why don’t you?’

If I’d told him the truth Becker wouldn’t have understood what I was talking about. He probably thought that metaphysics was something you used to manufacture cheap penicillin for the black market. So instead I shook my head, and said, ‘Let’s just say that I made a deal with someone.’

30

I met König at the Café Sperl in Gumpendorfer Strasse, which was in the French sector but close to the Ring. It was a big, gloomy place which the many art-nouveau-style mirrors on the walls did nothing to brighten, and was home to several half-size billiard tables. Each one of these was illuminated by a light which was fixed to the yellowing ceiling above with a brass fitting that looked like something out of an old U–boat.

König’s terrier sat a short way off from its master like the dog on the record label, watching him play a solitary but thoughtful game. I ordered a coffee and approached the table.

He judged his shot at a careful cue’s length, and then applied a screw of chalk to the tip, silently acknowledging my presence with a short nod of his head.

‘Our own Mozart was particularly fond of this game,’ he said, lowering his eyes to the felt. ‘Doubtless he found it a very congenial facsimile of the very precise dynamism of his intellect.’ He fixed his eye on the cue-ball like a sniper taking aim, and after a long, painstaking moment, rifled the white on to one red and then the other. This second red coasted down the length of the table, teetered on the lip of the pocket and, enticing a small murmur of satisfaction from its translator — for there exists no more graceful manifestation of the laws of gravity and motion — slipped noiselessly out of sight.

‘I, on the other hand, enjoy the game for rather more sensuous reasons. I love the sound of the balls hitting each other, and the way they run so smoothly.’ He retrieved the red from the pocket and replaced it to his own satisfaction. ‘But most of all I love the colour green. Did you know that among Celtic peoples the colour green is considered unlucky? No? They believe green is followed by black. Probably because the English used to hang Irishmen for wearing green. Or was it the Scots?’ For a moment König stared almost insanely at the surface of the billiard table, as if he could have licked it with his tongue.

‘Just look at it,’ he breathed. ‘Green is the colour of ambition, and of youth. It’s the colour of life, and of eternal rest. Requiem aeternam dona eis.’ Reluctantly he laid his cue down on the cloth, and conjuring a large cigar from one of his pockets, turned away from the table. The terrier stood up expectantly. ‘You said on the telephone that you had something for me. Something important.’

I handed him Belinsky’s envelope. ‘Sorry it’s not in green ink,’ I said, watching him take out the papers. ‘Do you read Cyrillic?’

König shook his head. ‘I’m afraid it might as well be in Gaelic.’ But he went ahead and spread the papers out on the billiard table and then lit his cigar. When the dog barked he ordered it to be quiet. ‘Perhaps you would be good enough to explain exactly what I am looking at?’

‘These are details of MVD dispositions and methods in Hungary and Lower Austria.’ I smiled coolly and sat down at an adjacent table where the waiter had just laid my coffee.

König nodded slowly, stared uncomprehendingly at the papers for another few seconds, then scooped them up, replaced them in their envelope and slipped the papers inside his jacket pocket.

‘Very interesting,’ he said, sitting down at my table. ‘Assuming for a moment that they’re genuine —’

‘Oh, they’re genuine all right,’ I said quickly.

He smiled patiently, as if I could have had no idea of the lengthy process whereby such information was properly verified. ‘Assuming they’re genuine,’ he repeated firmly, ‘how exactly did you come by them?’

A couple of men came over to the billiard table and started a game. König drew his chair away and jerked his head at me to follow him. ‘It’s all right,’ said one of the players. ‘There’s plenty of room to get by.’ But we moved our chairs anyway. And when we were at a more discreet distance from the table I started to give him the story I had rehearsed with Belinsky. Only now König shook his head firmly and picked up his dog, which licked his ear playfully.

‘This isn’t the right time or place,’ he said. ‘But I’m impressed at how busy you have been.’ He raised his eyebrows and watched the two men at the billiard table with an air of distraction. ‘I learned this morning that you had been successful in procuring some petrol coupons for that medical friend of mine. The one at the General Hospital.’ I realized that he was talking about Traudl’s murder. ‘And so soon after we had discussed the matter too. It really was most efficient of you, I’m sure.’ He puffed smoke at the dog on his lap which sniffed and then sneezed. ‘It’s so difficult to obtain reliable supplies of anything in Vienna these days.’

I shrugged. ‘You just have to know the right people, that’s all.’

‘As you clearly do, my friend.’ He patted the breast pocket of his green tweed suit, where he had put Belinsky’s documents. ‘In these special circumstances I feel I ought to introduce you to someone in the company who will be better able than I to judge the quality of your source. Someone who, as it happens, is keen to meet you, and decide how best a man of your skills and resourcefulness may be used. We had thought to wait a few weeks before making the introduction, but this new information changes everything. However, first I must make a telephone call. I shall be a few minutes.’ He looked down the Café and pointed to one of the other free billiard tables. ‘Why don’t you try a few shots while I’m away?’

‘I’ve not much use for games of skill,’ I said. ‘I distrust a game that relies on anything but luck. That way I needn’t blame myself if I lose. I have a tremendous capacity for self-recrimination.’

A twinkle came into König’s eye. ‘My dear fellow,’ he said standing up from the table, ‘that seems hardly German.’

I watched him as he walked into the back of the Café to use the phone, the terrier trotting faithfully after him. I wondered who it was that he was calling: the one who was better able to judge the quality of my source might even be Müller. It seemed too much to hope for so soon.

When König returned a few minutes later, he seemed excited. ‘As I thought,’ he said, nodding enthusiastically, ‘there is someone who is keen to have immediate sight of this material, and to meet you. I have a car outside. Shall we go?’

König’s car was a black Mercedes, like Belinsky’s. And like Belinsky he drove too fast for safety on a road that had seen a heavy morning rain. I said that it would be better to arrive late than not to arrive at all, but he paid no attention. My feeling of discomfort was made worse by König’s dog, which sat on his master’s lap and barked excitedly at the road ahead for the whole of the journey, as if the brute had been giving directions on where we were going. I recognized the road as the one which led to Sievering Studios, but at that same moment the road forked and we turned north again on to Grinzinger Allee.

‘Do you know Grinzing?’ König shouted over the dog’s incessant barking. I said that I did not. ‘Then you really don’t know the Viennese,’ he opined. ‘Grinzing is famous for its wine production. In the summer everyone comes up here in the evening to go to one of the taverns selling the new vintage. They drink too much, listen to a Schrammel quartet and sing old songs.’

‘It sounds very cosy,’ I said, without much enthusiasm.

‘Yes, it is. I own a couple of vineyards up here myself. Just two small fields you understand. But it’s a start. A man must have some land, don’t you think? We’ll come back here in the summer and then you can taste the new wine yourself. The lifeblood of Vienna.’

Grinzing seemed hardly a suburb of Vienna at all, more a charming little village. But because of its proximity to the capital, its cosy country charm somehow appeared as false as one of the film sets they built over at Sievering. We drove up a hill on a narrow winding lane which led between old Heurige Inns and cottage gardens, with König declaring how pretty he thought it all was now that spring was here. But the sight of so much storybook provinciality merely served to stimulate my city-bred parts to contempt, and I restricted myself to a sullen grunt and a muttered sentence about tourists. To one more used to the perennial sight of rubble, Grinzing with its many trees and vineyards looked very green. However I made no mention of this impression for fear that it might set König off on one of his queer little monologues about that sickly colour.

He stopped the car in front of a high yellow-brick wall which enclosed a large, yellow-painted house and a garden that looked as if it had spent all day in the beauty parlour. The house itself was a tall, three-storey building with a high-dormered roof. Apart from its bright colour, there was a certain austerity of detail about the façade which lent the house an institutional appearance. It looked like a rather opulent sort of town hall.

I followed König through the gates and up an immaculately bordered path to a heavy studded oak door of the kind that expected you to be holding a battle-axe when you knocked. We walked straight into the house and on to a creaking wooden floor that would have given a librarian a heart attack.

König led me into a small sitting-room, told me to wait there and then left, closing the door behind him. I took a good look round, but there wasn’t much to see beyond the fact of the owner’s bucolic taste in furniture. A rough-hewn table blocked the French window, and a couple of cartwheel farmhouse chairs were ranged in front of an empty fireplace that was as big as a mineshaft. I sat down on a slightly more comfortable-looking ottoman and re-tied my shoelaces. Then I polished my toes with the edge of the threadbare rug. I must have waited there for an indifferent half-hour before König came back to fetch me. He led me through a maze of rooms and corridors and up a flight of stairs to the back of the house, with the manner of a man whose jacket is lined with oak panelling. Hardly caring if I insulted him or not now that I was about to meet someone more important, I said, ‘If you changed that suit you’d make someone a wonderful butler.’

König did not turn around, but I heard him bare his dentures and utter a short, dry laugh. ‘I’m glad you think so. You know, although I like a sense of humour I would not advise you to exercise it with the general. Frankly, his character is most severe.’ He opened a door and we came into a bright, airy room with a fire in the grate and hectares of empty bookshelves. Against the broad window, behind a long library table, stood a grey-suited figure with a closely-cropped head I half recognized. The man turned and smiled, his hooked nose unmistakably belonging to a face from my past.

‘Hello, Gunther,’ said the man.

König looked quizzically at me as I blinked speechlessly at the grinning figure.

‘Do you believe in ghosts, Herr König?’ I said.

‘No. Do you?’

‘I do now. If I’m not mistaken, the gentleman by the window was hanged in 1945 for his part in the plot to kill the Führer.’

‘You can leave us, Helmut,’ said the man at the window. König nodded curtly, turned on his heel and left.

Arthur Nebe pointed at a chair in front of the table on which Belinsky’s documents lay spread out beside a pair of spectacles and a fountain pen. ‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘Drink?’ He laughed. ‘You look as though you need one.’

‘It’s not every day I get to see a man raised from the dead,’ I said quietly. ‘Better make it a large one.’

Nebe opened a large carved-wood drinks cabinet, revealing a marble interior filled with several bottles. He took out a bottle of vodka and two small glasses, which he filled to the top.

‘To old comrades,’ he said, raising his glass. I smiled uncertainly. ‘Drink up. It won’t make me disappear again.’

I tossed the vodka back and breathed deeply as it hit my stomach. ‘Death agrees with you, Arthur. You look well.’

‘Thanks. I’ve never felt better.’

I lit a cigarette and left it on my lip for a while.

‘Minsk, wasn’t it?’ he said. ‘In 1941. The last time we saw each other?’

‘That’s right. You got me transferred to the War Crimes Bureau.’

‘I ought to have had you put on a charge for what you asked. Even had you shot.’

‘From what I hear, you were keen on shooting that summer.’ Nebe let that one pass. ‘So why didn’t you?’

‘You were a damned good policeman. That’s why.’

‘So were you.’ I sucked hard at my cigarette. ‘At least, you were before the war. What made you change, Arthur?’

Nebe savoured his drink for a moment and then finished it with one swallow. ‘This is good vodka,’ he remarked quietly, almost to himself. ‘Bernie, don’t expect me to give you an explanation. I had my orders to carry out, and so it was them or me. Kill or be killed. That’s how it always was with the SS. Ten, twenty, thirty thousand — after you’ve calculated that to save your own life you must kill others then the number makes little or no difference. That was my final solution, Bernie: the final solution to the pressing problem of my own continued survival. You were fortunate that you were never required to make that same calculation.’

‘Thanks to you.’

Nebe shrugged modestly, before pointing at the papers spread before him. ‘I’m rather glad that I didn’t have you shot, now that I’ve seen this lot. Naturally this material will have to be assessed by an expert, but on the face of it you appear to have won the lottery. All the same, I’d like to hear more about your source.’

I repeated my story, after which Nebe said:

‘Can he be trusted, do you think? Your Russian?’

‘He never let me down before,’ I said. ‘Of course, he was just fixing papers for me then.’

Nebe refilled our glasses and frowned.

‘Is there a problem?’ I asked.

‘It’s just that in the ten years I’ve known you Bernie, I can’t find anything that can persuade me that you’re now a common black-marketeer.’

‘That shouldn’t be any more difficult than the problem I have persuading myself that you’re a war-criminal, Arthur. Or for that matter, accepting that you’re not dead.’

Nebe smiled. ‘You have a point. But with so many opportunities presented by the vast number of displaced persons, I’m surprised you didn’t return to your old trade and become a private investigator again.’

‘Private investigation and the black market are not mutually exclusive,’ I said. ‘Good information is just like penicillin or cigarettes. It has its price. And the better, the more illicit the information, the higher that price. It’s always been like that. Incidentally, my Russian will want to be paid.’

‘They always do. Sometimes I think that the Ivans have more confidence in the dollar than the Americans themselves.’ Nebe clasped his hands and laid both forefingers along the length of his shrewd-looking nose. Then he pointed them at me as if he had been holding a pistol. ‘You’ve done very well, Bernie. Very well indeed. But I must confess I am still puzzled.’

‘About me as a black Peter?’

‘I can accept the idea of that rather more easily than I can accept the idea of you killing Traudl Braunsteiner. Murder was never in your line.’

‘I didn’t kill her,’ I said. ‘König told me to do it, and I thought I could, because she was a Communist. I learned to hate them while I was in a Soviet prison-camp. Even enough to kill one. But when I thought about it, I realized I couldn’t do it. Not in cold blood. Maybe I could have done it if it had been a man, but not a girl. I was going to tell him that this morning, but when he congratulated me on having done it, I decided to keep my mouth shut and take the credit. I figured there might be some money in it.’

‘So somebody else killed her. How very intriguing. You’ve no idea who, I suppose?’

I shook my head.

‘A mystery, then.’

‘Just like your resurrection, Arthur. How exactly did you manage it?’

‘I’m afraid that I can’t take any of the credit,’ he said. ‘It was something the intelligence people dreamed up. In the last few months of the war they simply doctored the service records of senior SS and party personnel, to the effect that we were dead. Most of us were executed for our part in Count Stauffenberg’s plot to kill the Führer. Well, what were another hundred or so executions on a list that was already thousands of names long? And then some of us were listed as killed in a bombing raid, or in the battle for Berlin. Then all that remained was to make sure that these records fell into the hands of the Americans.

‘So the SS transported the records to a paper mill near Munich, and the owner — a good Nazi — was briefed to wait until the Amis were on his doorstep before he started to destroy anything.’ Nebe laughed. ‘I remember reading in the newspaper how pleased with themselves the Amis were. What a coup they thought they had scored. Of course, most of what they captured was genuine enough. But for those of us who were most at risk from their ridiculous war-crimes investigations, it provided a real breathing space, and enough time to establish a new identity. There’s nothing quite like being dead for giving one a little room.’ He laughed again. ‘Anyway, that US Documents Centre of theirs in Berlin is still working for us.’

‘How do you mean?’ I asked, wondering if I was about to learn something that would throw light on why Linden had been killed. Or perhaps he had simply found out that the records had been doctored before they fell into Allied hands? Wouldn’t that have been enough to justify killing him?

‘No, I’ve said enough for the moment.’ Nebe drank some more vodka and licked his lips appreciatively. ‘These are interesting times we live in, Bernie. A man can be whoever he wants to be. Take me: my new name is Nolde, Arthur Nolde, and I make wine on this estate. Resurrected, you said. Well you’re not so very far away from it there. Only our Nazi dead are raised incorruptible. We’re changed, my friend. It’s the Russians who are wearing the black hats and trying to take over the town. Now that we’re working for the Americans, we’re the good boys. Dr Schneider — he’s the man who set the Org up with the help of their CIC — he has regular meetings with them at our headquarters in Pullach. He’s even been to the United States to meet their Secretary of State. Can you imagine it? A senior German officer working with the President’s number two? You don’t get more incorruptible than that, not these days.’

‘If you don’t mind,’ I said, ‘I find it hard to think of the Amis as saints. When I got back from Russia my wife was getting an extra ration from an American captain. Sometimes I think they’re no better than the Ivans.’

Nebe shrugged. ‘You’re not the only one in the Org who thinks that,’ he said. ‘But for my part, I never heard of the Ivans asking a lady’s permission or giving her a few bars of chocolate first. They’re animals.’ He smiled as a thought came into his head. ‘All the same, I will admit that some of those women ought to be grateful to the Russians. But for them, they might never have known what it was like.’

It was a poor joke, and in bad taste, but I laughed along with him anyway. I was still sufficiently nervous of Nebe to want to be good company for him.

‘So what did you do, about your wife and this American captain?’ he asked when his laughter has subsided.

Something made me check myself before I replied. Arthur Nebe was a clever man. Before the war, as chief of the criminal police, he had been Germany’s most outstanding policeman. It would have been too risky to give an answer which suggested that I had wanted to kill an American Army captain. Nebe saw common factors worthy of investigation where other men only saw the hand of a capricious god. I knew him too well to believe that he would have forgotten how once he had assigned Becker to a murder inquiry I was leading. Any hint of an association, no matter how accidental, between the death of one American officer affecting Becker and the death of another affecting me and I didn’t doubt that Nebe would have given orders to have had me killed. One American officer was bad enough. Two would have been too much of a coincidence. So I shrugged, lit a cigarette and said: ‘What can you do but make sure it’s her and not him who gets the slap in the mouth? American officers don’t take kindly to being socked, least of all by krauts. It’s one of the small privileges of conquest that you don’t have to take any shit from your defeated enemy. I can’t imagine you’ve forgotten that, Herr Gruppenführer. You of all people.’

I watched his grin with an extra curiosity. It was a cunning smile, in an old fox’s face, but his teeth looked real enough.

‘That was very wise of you,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t do to go around killing Americans.’ Confirming my nervousness of him, he added, after a long pause: ‘Do you remember Emil Becker?’

It would have been stupid to have tried to affect a show of protracted remembering. He knew me better than that.

‘Of course,’ I said.

‘It was his girlfriend that König told you to kill. One of his girlfriends anyway.’

‘But König said she was MVD,’ I frowned.

‘And so she was. So was Becker. He killed an American officer. But not before he’d tried to infiltrate the Org.’

I shook my head slowly. ‘A crook, maybe,’ I said, ‘but I can’t see Becker as one of Ivan’s spies.’ Nebe nodded insistently. ‘Here in Vienna?’ He nodded again. ‘Did he know about you being alive?’

‘Of course not. We used him to do a little courier work now and again. It was a mistake. Becker was a black-marketeer, like you, Bernie. Rather a successful one, as it happens. But he had delusions regarding his own worth to us. He thought he was at the centre of a very big pond. But he was nowhere near it. Quite frankly if a meteorite had landed in the middle of it, Becker wouldn’t even have noticed the fucking ripple.’

‘How did you find out about him?’

‘His wife told us,’ Nebe said. ‘When he came back from a Soviet POW camp, our people in Berlin sent someone round to his house to see if we could recruit him to the Org. Well, they missed him, and by the time they got to speak to Becker’s wife he had left home and was living here in Vienna. The wife told them about Becker’s association with a Russian colonel of MVD. But for one reason and another — actually it was sheer bloody inefficiency — it was quite a while before that information reached us here in Vienna section. And by that time he had been recruited by one of our collectors.’

‘So where is he now?’

‘Here in Vienna. In gaol. The Americans are putting him on trial for murder, and he will most certainly hang.’

‘That must be rather convenient for you,’ I said, sticking my neck out a little way. ‘Rather too convenient, if you ask me.’

‘Professional instinct, Bernie?’

‘Better just call it a hunch. That way, if I’m wrong it won’t make me look like an amateur.’

‘Still trusting your guts, eh?’

‘Most of all now that I’ve got something inside them again, Arthur. Vienna’s a fat city after Berlin.’

‘So you think we killed the American?’

‘That would depend on who he was, and if you had a good reason. Then all you would have to do is make sure they got someone’s coat for it. Someone you might want out of the way. That way you could get to hit two flies with one swat. Am I right?’

Nebe inclined his head to one side a little. ‘Perhaps. But don’t ever try to remind me of just how good a detective you were by doing something as stupid as proving it. It’s still a very sore point with some people in this section, so it might be best if you were to nail your beak about it altogether.

‘You know, if you really felt like playing detective, you might like to give us the benefit of your advice as to how we should go about finding one of our own missing persons. His name is Dr Karl Heim and he’s a dentist. A couple of our people were supposed to take him to Pullach early this morning, but when they went to his house there was no sign of him. Of course he may just have gone on the local cure,’ Nebe meant a tour of the bars, ‘but in this city there is always the possibility that the Ivans have snatched him. There are a couple of freelance gangs that the Russians have working here. In return they get concessions to sell black-market cigarettes. As far as we’ve been able to find out, both these gangs report to Becker’s Russian colonel. That’s probably how he got most of his supplies in the first place.’

‘Sure,’ I said, unnerved by this latest revelation of Becker’s involvement with Colonel Poroshin. ‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Speak to König,’ Nebe instructed, ‘give him some advice on how he might try and find Heim. If you get time, you could even give him some help.’

‘That’s simple enough,’ I said. ‘Anything else?’

‘Yes, I’d like you to come back here tomorrow morning. There’s one of our people who has specialized in all matters relating to the MVD. I have a feeling that he will be especially keen to talk to you about this source of yours. Shall we say ten o’clock?’

‘Ten o’clock,’ I repeated.

Nebe stood up and came round the table to shake my hand. ‘It’s good to see an old face, Bernie, even if it does look like my conscience.’

I smiled weakly and clasped his hand. ‘What’s past is past,’ I said.

‘Exactly so,’ he said, dropping a hand on to my shoulder. ‘Until tomorrow then. König will drive you back to town.’ Nebe opened the door and led the way down the stairs back to the front of the house. ‘I’m sorry to hear about that problem with your wife. I could arrange to have her sent some PX if you wanted.’

‘Don’t bother,’ I said quickly. The last thing I wanted was anyone from the Org turning up at my apartment in Berlin and asking Kirsten awkward questions she wouldn’t know how to answer. ‘She works in an American Café and gets all the PX she needs.’

In the hallway we found König playing with his dog.

‘Women,’ Nebe laughed. ‘It was a woman who bought König his dog, isn’t that so, Helmut?’

‘Yes, Herr General.’

Nebe bent down to tickle the dog’s stomach. It rolled over and presented itself submissively to Nebe’s fingers.

‘And do you know why she bought him a dog?’ I caught König’s embarrassed little crease of a smile, and I sensed that Nebe was about to crack a joke. ‘To teach the man obedience.’

I laughed right along with the two of them. But after only a few days’ closer acquaintance with König I thought that Lotte Hartmann would as soon have taught her boyfriend to recite the Torah.

31

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. König 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 Müller?’

‘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 König 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 Müller’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 Müller. 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 Müller 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 Müller. 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 Müller 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 Müller’s snapshots. He identified him immediately as the man who was with König when he asked Becker to try and find Captain Linden. Unless Müller is just sweet on König, 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 Müller?’

‘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 Müller.’

‘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 Müller 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, Müller’s made a special study of Soviet police methods. No, the Russians want Müller 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.

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 Müller’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 draughtsman’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 arm-chair.

‘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.’

‘König? 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?’

‘König 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 König, 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 Müller — possibly Nebe and König 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 König 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.’

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. König 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 Kärtnerstrasse 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 Café 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 Café 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 Café 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 earlobe. 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.

‘Obersturmführer 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 holstered 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 Chaney 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, Nerr 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.’

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 König. He tells me that it was you who told him how best to go about looking for poor Heim.’

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

‘Maybe so. Anyway, it seems that König’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 König 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 König 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 König 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 Müller, 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 Müller’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.’ Müller’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 Müller. 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, Müller 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.’

Müller 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,’ Müller grinned. ‘You see what I mean about the Russian? He knows exactly what he wants. A nice watch. Well, leave that to me.’ Müller 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.

Müller 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 Müller 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 Müller 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 Müller.

‘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,’ Müller 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,’ Müller 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 Müller. ‘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 Müller had droned on about.

But of König 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 König’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 König 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 König. 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. König 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 König 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. Sticking out of her knee joint at a right angle was a corkscrew.

König’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 König’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 Müller and Nebe could have been arrested without a fight.

König 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 König’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.

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, Müller’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.’

Müller 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 Müller. ‘You’ve still got something left in you. You’ll need it to answer all my questions, Herr Gunther, I can assure you.’

Müller 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 König, 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 Müller.

‘Ask anything you like,’ I said, ‘you’ll get nothing out of me.’ But even as I spoke I knew that in Müller’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.’ Müller looked to Nebe and König 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,’ Müller 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. Fräulein 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 Müller. ‘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, lawabiding 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 Müller, ‘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 König’s help not very difficult to organize. You see, König 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 König indistinctly through the handkerchief he kept pressed to his nose, ‘I hope to be able to do the same for you.’

Müller 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.’

Müller 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, Müller,’ I said. ‘I’ll tell you whatever it is you want to know.’

Müller pretended to look puzzled. ‘That surely is what remains to be seen.’ He stood up, as did Nebe and König. ‘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,’ Müller 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 Müller 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,’ Müller admitted. ‘Or at least not much. So König 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,’ Müller 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 König 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.’ Müller looked across at Arthur Nebe. ‘There, Arthur, did I get that right?’

Nebe smiled indulgently. ‘Perfectly right, Herr General.’

‘I hate to mislead anyone,’ Müller 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. Fräulein 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 Müller. ‘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, Müller. 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.’

Müller 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 Fräulein 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 —’ Müller’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 Müller, ‘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 König 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.’

Müller’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,’ Müller’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 Müller.

‘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. Müller 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.’

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 Müller 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 Müller 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 trouserturnup 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 Müller 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. ‘Müller 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 Müller is used to dealing with: a man with a principle. Müller 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 Müller?’

‘I was thinking: if you were to tell Müller 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 Müller, 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 Müller. 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 — Nazihunters — 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 Müller 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 Müller 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 König 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 König switched Müller’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 Müller 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 Müller 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 Müller 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 Müller and the Org could come later. When the MPs had Müller 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 Gürtel 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.

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 föhn, 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 Müller 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 Müller had at least got that part right.

As for Müller 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.

38

It was a pleasant September morning when, wearing an illfitting 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 Café terrace. There were customers who weren’t drinking coffee, waiters who did not seem inclined to serve them and little sign of any Café 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 Müller. 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 Müller. 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 Müller 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 Müller 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, Müller 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 Müller 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 Müller’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 Müller left it too late and was unable to escape the eye of Martin Bormann and the SS who guarded the Führerbunker. Who knows? Anyway, Müller apparently committed suicide. This he faked, but it was quite a while before we could prove this to our own satisfaction. Müller is a very clever man.

‘When we learned about the Org we thought that it wouldn’t be long before Müller 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 Müller. 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 Müller: 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 Müller could seek out.

‘And so it has proved. Even as we speak Müller 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 Müller 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 Müller 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 Café 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?’

‘Kanyeshna (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 Café 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 Café-terrace that had no Café. 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 König’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 Café — the Mozart Café.’ 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 Café and the wife who was waiting there for me.