Prussian Blue

THREE

I returned to my flat in Villefranche, satisfied only that I’d managed to convince Mielke that I was actually going to carry out his orders and travel to England to poison Anne French. The truth was that while I hated the woman for all the pain she’d given me, I didn’t quite hate her enough to murder her, and certainly not in the monstrous way that Mielke had described. I very much wanted a new West German passport but I also wanted to stay alive long enough to use it, and I had no doubt that Mielke was quite prepared to have his men kill me if he even half-suspected I was preparing to double-cross him. So it was that for a few moments I contemplated packing a suitcase immediately and leaving the Riviera for good. I had a bit of money under the mattress and a gun, and the car of course, but there was a good chance that his men would be watching my flat, in which case flight was probably futile. That presented the hair-raising prospect of my cooperating with Mielke’s plan long enough to get hold of the passport and the money, and then looking for an opportunity to give his men the slip, which left me somewhere between the tree and its bark. Most of the men in the Stasi had been trained by the Gestapo and were experts at finding people; giving them the slip would be like trying to evade a pack of English tracker hounds.

In order to see if I was under surveillance I decided to take a walk along the seafront, hoping that this might make the Stasi reveal themselves and also that the cool night air would help to clear my head enough to think of a solution to my immediate problem. Inevitably my feet took me to a bar in the correctly named Rue Obscure, where I drank a bottle of red and smoked half a packet of cigarettes, which achieved exactly the opposite result from the one I was hoping for. And I was still shaking my head and pondering my limited options when I walked, a little unsteadily, home again.

Villefranche is a strange warren of alleys and narrow backstreets and, especially at night and at the close of the season, resembles a scene from a Fritz Lang movie. It’s all too easy to imagine yourself being followed by unseen vigilantes through this dark, meandering catacomb of French streets, like poor Peter Lorre with a letter M chalked onto the back of your coat, especially when you’re drunk. But I wasn’t so drunk that I couldn’t spot the tail that had been pinned to my arse. Not so much spot it as hear the stop-start, clip-clop sound of their cheap shoes on the cobbled alleyways as they tried to match the erratic pace of my own footsteps. I might have called out to them, too, in mockery of their attempts to keep eyes on me but for the sense—the good sense, perhaps—that it might be best not to give them, and more important, the comrade-general, even the vaguest impression that I was anything but subordinate to him and his orders. The new Gunther had a much shorter spout than the old one, which was probably just as well; at least it was if I wanted to see Germany again. So I was surprised when I found my way back down to the esplanade blocked by two human bollards, each with absurdly blond, master-race hair of the kind that Himmler’s favorite barber would have put up on his hero-haircut wall. In the shadows behind them was a smaller man with a leather eye patch, whom I half-recognized from a long time ago but failed to remember why, if only because the two human bollards were already busy gagging my mouth and tying my wrists in front of me.

“I’m sorry about this, Gunther,” said the man I’d half-recognized. “It’s a shame that we have to meet again in these circumstances but orders are orders. I don’t have to tell you how that works. So nothing personal, see? But this is just how the comrade-general wants it.”

Even as he spoke the two blond bollards lifted me off my feet by the forearms and carried me to the end of the vaulted blind alley like a shop-window mannequin. Here a single streetlight singed the evening air a sulfurous shade of yellow until someone killed it with a silenced pistol shot, but not before I saw the wooden beam that crossed the vaulted roof and the plastic noose that was dangling off it with obviously lethal intent. The realization that I was about to be hanged summarily in that dim, forgotten alley was enough to lend a last spasm of strength to my intoxicated limbs and I struggled hard to escape the iron grip of the two Stasi men, but to no avail. Like Christ ascending into heaven I felt myself already rising up from the cobbled ground to meet the noose, where another obliging Stasi man, wearing a gray suit and a hat, was holding on to a street lamp like Gene Kelly to help lasso my neck with it.

“That’s it,” he said, when the lasso was in place. The Leipzig accent. The same man from the Hotel Ruhl, perhaps? Must have been. “Okay, boys, you can let go now. I reckon this bastard will swing like a church bell.”

As he steadied the noose under my left ear I sucked a quick breath and the next second the two human bollards let me go. The plastic noose slipped tight, the world blurred like a bad photograph, and I stopped breathing altogether. Desperately trying to find the uneven ground with the toecaps of my shoes, I only managed to turn myself around in space like the last ham in a butcher-shop window. I caught a brief glimpse of the Stasi men watching me hang and then pedaled some more on my invisible bicycle before deciding that it might go easier for me if I didn’t struggle and, in truth, it didn’t really hurt that much. It wasn’t pain I felt so much as a tremendous sense of pressure, as if my whole body might actually explode for want of an airhole. My tongue was like a baccarat pallet, it was so big, which was probably why most of it seemed to be outside my mouth, and my eyes were looking at my ears, as if trying to determine the source of the infernal racket I was hearing, which must have been the sound of the blood pounding in my head, of course. Most curious of all, I felt the actual presence of the little finger I had lost years before, in Munich, when another old comrade had cut it off with a hammer and chisel. It was as if all my being were suddenly concentrated in a part of my body that no longer even existed. And then 1949 and Munich and poor Vera Messmann seemed like ten minutes ago. The phantom finger swiftly spread and became a whole limb and then the rest of my body and I knew I was dying, which is when I pissed myself. I remember someone laughing and thinking that maybe, after all these years, I had it coming anyway and that I’d done pretty well to get this far without mishap. Then I was at the bottom of the cold Baltic Sea and I was swimming hard up from the wreck of the MV Wilhelm Gustloff to reach the undulating surface, only it was too far, and with bursting lungs I knew I wasn’t going to make it, which is when I must have passed out.

I was still up in the air but looking down on myself as I was lying on the cobbles of the Rue Obscure. I seemed to be hovering above the straw-dog heads of all those Stasi men like a cloud of gas. They’d cut me down and were trying to loosen the ligature around my neck but they gave up when one of the agents produced a pair of wire cutters and clipped it along with some of the skin under my ear. Someone stamped on my chest, which was all the first aid I was about to receive from the Stasi, and I started to live again. One of them was applauding my performance on the high wire—his words, not mine—and now back in my body I turned over on my stomach to retch and drool onto the cobbles and then to haul some air painfully into my starved lungs. I touched something wet on my neck, which turned out to be my own blood, and heard myself mumble something with a tongue that was only just accustomed to being inside my mouth again.

“What’s that?” The man with the wire cutters bent down to help me sit up, and I spoke again.

“Need a cigarette,” I said. “Get my breath.” I put a hand on my chest and willed my heart to slow down a bit before it packed up altogether after the excitement of what I’d assumed were my last few minutes on earth, or near it anyway.

“You’re a game one, uncle, I’ll say that for you. He wants a nail, he says.” He laughed and fetched a packet of Hit Parades from his pocket and stabbed one between the lips of my still trembling mouth. “There you go.”

I coughed some more, and then sucked hard when his lighter sparked into life. It was probably the best cigarette I’d ever tasted.

“I’ve heard of a last cigarette,” he said. “But I never saw the condemned man smoke one after the execution. Tough old bastard, aren’t you?”

“Less of the old,” I said. “Feel like a new man.”

“Get him on his feet,” said another man. “We’ll walk him home.”

“Don’t expect a kiss,” I croaked. “Not after you’ve pulled me through the cocoa like that.”

But they’d made a pretty good job of hanging me half to death, and when I was on my feet I almost fainted and they had to catch me.

“I’ll be all right,” I said. “Give me a minute.” And then I puked, which was a shame after the nice steak I’d eaten with Mielke. But it’s not every day you survive your own hanging.

They half-carried, half-walked me home and along the way the man I’d recognized before explained why they’d tried to make me hand in my spoon.

“Sorry about that, Gunther,” he said.

“Don’t mention it.”

“But the boss feels that you weren’t taking him seriously. He didn’t like that. Reckons that the old Gunther would have put up a bit more resistance to the idea of killing your old girlfriend. And I have to say I agree with him. You always did have a lot of hair on your teeth. So for him not to see any—well, he thought you were taking the piss. We were going to just mix you up a bit but he said we should impress on you what would happen to you for real if you try to give him the fucking basket. Next time, our orders are that we leave you dangling. Or worse.”

“It’s nice to hear a German voice again,” I said wearily—I could hardly put one foot in front of the other. “Even if you are a bastard.”

“Aw, don’t say that, Gunther. You’ll hurt my feelings. We used to be friends, you and me.”

I started to shake my head but thought better of it when the pain kicked in. My neck felt like I’d had a chiropractic session with a gorilla. I began coughing again and paused to retch into the gutter once more.

“I don’t remember. Then again, my brain’s been starved of oxygen for several minutes so I can only just remember my own name, let alone yours.”

“You need some pain expeller,” said my old friend and, producing a little hip flask, he put it to my lips and let me take a substantial bite of the contents. It tasted like molten lava.

I winced and then uttered a short, staccato concerto of coughs. “Christ, what is that stuff?”

“Gold Water. From Danzig. That’s right.” The man grinned and nodded. “Now you’re getting there. You remember me, don’t you, Gunther?”

In truth I still hadn’t a clue who he was, but I smiled and nodded back at the man; there’s nothing quite like being hanged to make you anxious to please, especially when it’s your own hangman who’s genially claiming your acquaintance.

“That’s right. I used to drink this stuff when we were both cops at the Alex. You probably remember that, don’t you? Man like you doesn’t forget much, I reckon. I was your criminal assistant in ’38 and ’39. We worked a couple of big cases together. The Weisthor case. Remember that bastard? And Karl Flex, of course, in ’39. Berchtesgaden? You certainly wouldn’t have forgotten him. Or the cold air of Obersalzberg.”

“Sure, I remember you,” I said, tossing my cigarette away and still without a clue as to who he was. “Thought you were dead. Everyone else is these days. People like you and me, anyway.”

“We’re the last of them, you and me, true enough,” he said. “From the old Alex. You should see it now, Gunther. I swear, you wouldn’t recognize the place. Railway station’s there, like before, and the Kaufhaus, but the old Police Praesidium is long gone. Like it was never there. The Ivans demolished it on account of the fact it being a symbol of fascism. That and the Gestapo HQ on Prinz Albrechtstrasse. The whole area is just one enormous wind tunnel. These days the cops are headquartered over in Lichtenberg. With a smart new building on the way. All the modern conveniences. Canteen, showers, crèche. We’ve even got a sauna.”

“Nice for you. About the sauna.”

We reached my front door and someone helpfully fetched the keys from my pocket and let me into the flat. They followed me inside and, being policemen, had a good poke around in my stuff. Not that I cared. When you’ve nearly lost your life everything else seems of little importance. Besides, I was too busy looking at my cadaver’s face in the bathroom mirror. I looked like a South American tree frog; the whites of my eyes were now completely red.

My anonymous friend watched me for a while and then, stroking a chin that was as long as a concert harp, he said, “Don’t worry, that’s just a few burst blood vessels.”

“I’m a couple of centimeters taller, too, I think.”

“In a few days, you’ll find the eyes are back to normal. You might want to wear some sunglasses until they calm down a bit. After all, you don’t want to frighten anyone, do you?”

“It sounds like you’ve done this before. Half-hanged someone, I mean.”

He shrugged. “It’s lucky we’ve already got your picture on your new passport.”

“Isn’t it?” I touched the livid crimson mark that the plastic cord had left on my neck; anyone would have been forgiven for thinking my head had been stitched onto my shoulders by Dr. Mengele.

One of the other Stasi men was in my kitchen, making coffee. It was odd how the men who’d tried to hang me were now looking after me so carefully. Everyone was just obeying orders, of course. That’s the German way, I guess.

“Hey, boss,” said one, to the man standing next to me in my bathroom. “His phone’s not working.”

“Sorry about that,” I said. “Since no one ever calls me I hadn’t noticed.”

“Well, go and find a pay phone.”

“Boss.”

“We’re supposed to call the comrade-general and tell him how things went.”

“Tell the general I can’t say it’s been one of my best evenings,” I said. “And be sure to thank him for dinner.”

The Stasi man went away. My friend handed me the hip flask again and I took another bite of Gold Water. There’s real gold in that stuff. Tiny flecks of it. The gold doesn’t make the stuff expensive, but it does make your tongue look semiprecious. They should give it to all men who are about to be hanged. It might brighten the proceedings up a bit.

“No initiative,” he said. “You have to tell them what to do. By the numbers. Not like it was in our day, eh, Bernie?”

“Look, Fridolin, no offense,” I said. “I mean, I’m not anxious to repeat tonight’s experience, but I really haven’t a fucking clue who you are. The chin I recognize. The bad skin, the leather eye patch—even the pimp mustache. But the rest of your ugly mug is a mystery to me.”

The man touched the top of his bald head self-consciously. “Yeah, I’ve lost a lot of hair since last we met. But I had the eye patch. From the war.” He held out his hand affably. “Friedrich Korsch.”

“Yeah, I remember now.” He was right; we had once been friends, or at least close colleagues. But all that was in the past. Call me petty but I tend to hold it against my friends when they try to kill me. Ignoring his hand, I said, “When was that? The last time we met?”

“Nineteen forty-nine. I was working undercover for the MVD on an American newspaper in Munich. Remember? Die Neue Zeitung? You were looking for a war criminal called Warzok.”

“Was I?”

“I bought you lunch in the Osteria Bavaria.”

“Sure. I had pasta.”

“And before that you came to see me in ’47, in Berlin, when you were looking to get in touch with Emil Becker’s wife.”

“Right.”

“Whatever happened to him, anyway?”

“Becker? The Amis hanged him, in Vienna. For murder.”

“Ah.”

“What’s more, they finished the job. Those cowboys weren’t doing it for kicks like you guys. My kicks, that is. I never thought it would feel so good to have my feet firmly on the ground.”

“I feel bad about this,” said Korsch. “But—”

“I know. You were only obeying orders. Trying to stay alive. Look, I understand. For men like you and me, it’s an occupational hazard. But let’s not pretend we were ever friends. That was a long time ago. Since then you’ve become a real pain in the neck. My neck. Which is the only one I’ve got. So how about you and your boys get the hell out of my place and we’ll see each other at the train station in Nice, the day after tomorrow, like I agreed with the comrade-general?”