Prussian Blue

FOUR

The Gare de Nice–Ville had a forged-steel rooftop, an impressive stone balcony, and a big ornate clock that belonged in purgatory’s waiting room. Inside were several grand chandeliers: the place looked more like a Riviera casino than a railway station. Not that I’d visited many casinos. I was never much interested in games of chance, perhaps because most of my adult life had felt like a reckless gamble All bets were certainly off as far as the next few days were concerned. It was hard to imagine working for the Stasi having anything but a negative outcome for Gunther. Undoubtedly they were planning to kill me as soon as the job in England was complete. Whatever Mielke said about working for him in Bonn or Hamburg after Anne French was safely silenced, it was on the cards that I would be the last loose end from the Hollis operation. Besides, my eyes looked like the two of diamonds, which isn’t ever much of a card to play in any game. Because of them I was wearing sunglasses and I didn’t even see the two Stasi men as I came through the station entrance. But they saw me. The GDR gives those boys radioactive carrots to help them see in the dark. They ushered me to the platform, where Friedrich Korsch was waiting beside the Blue Train that would take me to Paris.

“How are you?” he asked solicitously as I handed my bag to one of the Stasi men and let him carry it onto the carriage for me.

“Fine,” I said brightly.

“And the eyes?”

“Not nearly as bad as they look.”

“No hard feelings, I hope.”

I shrugged. “What would be the point?”

“True. And at least you’ve got two. I lost one in Poland, during the war.”

“Besides, it’s a long way to Paris. I assume you are coming to Paris. I hope you are. I haven’t got any money.”

“All in here,” said Korsch, patting the breast pocket of his jacket. “And yes, we are coming to Paris with you. In fact, we’re going all the way to Calais.”

“Good,” I said. “No, honestly, it will give us a chance to talk about old times.”

Korsch narrowed his eye, suspicious. “I must say you’ve changed your tune since last we met.”

“When last we met I was not long hanged by the neck until I was almost dead, Friedrich. Jesus might have managed to forgive his executioners after an experience like that, but I’m a little less understanding. I thought I was history.”

“I suppose so.”

“You can suppose all you like. But I know. Frankly, I’m still a bit sore about it. Thus the silk foulard scarf and the sunglasses. God only knows what they’ll make of me in the dining car. I’m a little old to be passing myself off as a Hollywood movie star.”

“By the way,” he asked. “Where did you go yesterday? You gave my men the slip. We had an anxious morning before you came back again.”

“Were you watching me?”

“You know we were.”

“You should have said. Look, there was someone I needed to see. A woman I’ve been sleeping with. She lives in Cannes. I had to tell her I was going away for a few days and, well, I didn’t want to do it on the phone. You can understand that, surely.” I shrugged. “Besides, I didn’t want you people knowing her name and address. For her own protection. After the other night I’ve no idea what you or your general are capable of.”

“Hmm.”

“Anyway, I was only gone for a few hours. I’m here now. So what’s the problem?”

Korsch said nothing, just looked at me closely, but with my eyes hidden behind the dark glasses he had nothing to go on.

“What’s her name?”

“I’m not going to tell you. Look, Friedrich, I need this job. The hotel’s closed for the season now and I just have to get back to Germany. I’ve had it with France. The French drive me mad. If I have to stay here for another winter I’ll go crazy.” That much was certainly true; and almost as soon as I said it I regretted my sincerity and did my best to cover it with some nonsense about wanting my revenge on Anne French. “What’s more, I really want to get even with this woman in England. So leave it, will you? I’ve told you all I’m going to tell you.”

“All right. But next time you’re thinking of going somewhere, make sure you keep me informed.”

We climbed aboard the train, found our compartment, left some luggage there, and then the four of us went to the dining car to eat some breakfast. I was ravenously hungry. It seemed we all were.

“Karl Maria Weisthor?” I asked affably as the waiter brought us coffee. “Or Wiligut. Or whatever the murdering bastard used to call himself when he wasn’t convinced he was an ancient German king. Or even Wotan. I can’t remember which. You mentioned him the other day and I meant to ask. Whatever became of him, do you know? After we collared him in ’38? Last I heard he was living in Wörthersee.”

“He retired to Goslar,” said Korsch. “Protected and cared for by the SS, of course. After the war the Allies permitted him go to Salzburg. But that didn’t work out. He died in Bad Arolsen, in Hesse, in 1946, I think. Or was it 1947? Anyway, he’s long dead. Good riddance, too.”

“Not exactly justice, is it?”

“You were a good detective. I learned a lot from you.”

“Stayed alive. That says something, under those circumstances.”

“It wasn’t so easy, was it?”

“Not much has changed for me, I’m afraid.”

“You’ll be around for quite a while yet. You’re a survivor. I knew it then and I know it now.”

I smiled, but of course he was lying; old comrades or not, if Mielke told him to kill me he wouldn’t hesitate. Just like in Villefranche.

“This is quite like old times, you and me, Friedrich. You remember that train we took to Nuremberg? To interview the local police chief about Streicher?”

“Almost twenty years ago. But yes, I remember.”

“That’s what I was thinking of. Just came into my mind.” I nodded. “You were a good cop, Friedrich. That’s not so easy, either. Especially under those circumstances. With a boss like the one we had back then.”

“You mean that bastard Heydrich.”

“I do mean that bastard Heydrich.”

Not that Erich Mielke was any less of a bastard than Heydrich, but I thought it best to leave this left unsaid. We ordered breakfast and the train began to move, west toward Marseilles where it would turn north for Paris. One of the Stasi men groaned a little with pleasure as he tasted the coffee.

“This is good coffee,” he muttered as if he wasn’t used to that. And he wasn’t; in the GDR it wasn’t just freedom and toleration that were in short supply, it was everything.

“Without good coffee and cigarettes there would be a revolution in this country,” I said. “You know, maybe you should suggest that to the comrade-general, Friedrich. Exporting revolution might be easier that way.”

Korsch smiled a smile that was almost as thin as his pencil mustache.

“The regime must trust you a lot, Friedrich,” I said. “You and your men. From what I hear it’s not every East German who gets to travel abroad. At least, not without snagging his socks on the barbed wire, anyway.”

“We’ve all got families,” said Korsch. “My first wife was killed in the war. I remarried about five years ago. And I have a daughter now. So you can see there’s every reason to go home again. Frankly, I can’t imagine living anywhere else than Berlin.”

“And the general? What’s his incentive to go home again? He seems to enjoy things here even more than you do.”

Korsch shrugged. “I really couldn’t say.”

“No, perhaps it’s best you don’t.” I glanced sideways at our two Stasi breakfast companions. “You never know who’s listening.”

After breakfast, we went back to the compartment and talked some more. All things considered we were getting on very well now.

“Berchtesgaden,” said Korsch. “That was a hell of a case, too.”

“I’m not likely to forget. And a hell of a place, too.”

“They should have given you a medal for the way you solved that murder.”

“They did. But I threw it away. The rest of the time I was only ever a few steps ahead of a firing squad.”

“I got a police medal toward the end of the war,” admitted Korsch. “I think I still have it in a drawer somewhere in a nice blue velvet box.”

“Is that safe?”

“I’m a party member now. The SED, that is. Everyone who worked in Kripo was reeducated, of course. It’s not for pride I keep the medal but to remind me of who and what I was.”

“Talking of which,” I said, “you might like to remind me who I am, old friend. Or at least who I’m supposed to be. Just in case someone asks me. The sooner I get used to my new identity, the better, don’t you think?”

Korsch removed a manila envelope from his jacket pocket and handed it to me. “Passport, money, ticket for the Golden Arrow. There’s a legend that comes with the passport. Your new name is Bertolt Gründgens.”

“He sounds like a communist.”

“Actually, you’re a traveling salesman from Hamburg. You sell art books.”

“I don’t know anything about art.”

“Nor does the real Bertolt Gründgens.”

“Where is he, by the way?”

“Doing ten years in the crystal coffin for publishing and distributing rabble-rousing propaganda against the state.”

The crystal coffin was what prisoners called Brandenburg Prison.

“We prefer to use real people if we can when we give someone a new identity. Somehow it gives the name a little more weight. In case someone decides to do some checking.”

“What about the thallium?” I asked, putting the envelope in the pocket of my trousers.

“Karl will hold on to it until we get to Calais,” Korsch explained, indicating one of the Stasi men. “Thallium is easily absorbed through the skin, which means that certain precautions are required to handle it safely.”

“That suits me very well.” I took off my jacket and threw it onto the seat beside me. “Aren’t you warm in those wool suits of yours?”

“Yes, but ministry expenses don’t run to a Riviera wardrobe,” said Korsch.

We talked more about Berchtesgaden and soon we’d almost forgotten the unpleasantness that had been the occasion for our renewed acquaintance. But just as often we were silent, smoking cigarettes and staring out the carriage window at the blue sea on our left. I’d become fond of the Mediterranean and wondered if I would ever see it again.

Once we were through Cannes the train started to pick up speed and within less than ninety minutes we were halfway to Marseilles. A few kilometers east of Saint-Raphaël I said I had to go to the toilet and Korsch ordered one of his men to accompany me.

“Frightened I’ll get lost?” I said.

“Something like that.”

“It’s a long way to Calais.”

“You’ll survive.”

“I hope so. At least that’s the general idea.”

The Stasi man followed me along the Blue Train to the washroom and it was about then, as the train entered the outskirts of Saint-Raphaël, that it started to slow. Fortunately they hadn’t searched me back in Nice and, alone in the washroom, I removed a leather blackjack from my sock and slapped it against my hand. I’d confiscated the sap off a visitor to the hotel a month or two before and it was a beauty, nice and flexible, with a wrist lanyard and enough heft to give you some real striking power. But it’s a nasty weapon—a villain’s tool because it often relies on a smile or a friendly inquiry to catch its victim unawares. When I was a young uniformed cop in Weimar Berlin, we took a dim view of it whenever we caught some Fritz with one in his pocket because those things can kill you. Which is why sometimes we’d use the Fritz’s own blackjack to save a bit of paperwork and dole out a bit of rough justice—on the knees and on the elbows, which is bad enough. I should know; I’ve been sapped a few times myself.

I kept it behind my back as, smiling, I emerged from the toilet a few minutes later with a cigarette in my other hand.

“Got a light?” I asked my escort. “I left my jacket in the compartment.” My villain’s smile faltered a little as I remembered he was Gene Kelly—the Leipzig man who’d lassoed my neck with the noose. This bastard had it coming, with all the strength in my shoulder.

“Sure,” said Gene, bracing himself against the carriage wall as the train began to brake noisily.

I put the cigarette between my lips expectantly as, glancing down at his jacket pocket, Gene started to retrieve his lighter. It was all the opportunity I needed and I had the blackjack swinging like a juggler’s wooden club in the blink of an eye. He saw it before it hit him the first time, but only just. The spatula-shaped weapon struck the top of his straw-colored head with the sound of a boot kicking a waterlogged football and Gene collapsed like a derelict chimney but, while he was still on his knees, I hit him hard a second time because I certainly didn’t forget or forgive his laughter as he’d watched me hang in Villefranche. I felt a spasm of pain in my neck as I hit him but it was worth it. And when he was lying, unconscious—or worse, I didn’t know and I didn’t care—on the gently moving corridor floor, I took his gun. Then, as quickly as I was able, because he was heavy, I dragged him into the washroom and closed the door, after which I ran to the opposite end of the train, opened a door, and waited for it to stop at a signal, right next to the Corniche in Boulouris-sur-Mer, as I knew it would. Over the years I’d taken that train to Marseilles several times; just the previous day I’d sat in my car after I’d given the Stasi the slip for a few hours and watched the train come to a halt at the very same light.

I jumped off the train onto the side of the tracks, reached up, slammed the carriage door shut, and ran in the direction of the Avenue Beauséjour, where I’d parked my car. Running away is always a better plan than you think; just ask any criminal. It’s only police who will say that running away doesn’t solve anything; it certainly doesn’t solve crimes or make arrests, that’s for sure. Besides, running away was a much more appealing idea than poisoning some Englishwoman I’d once slept with, even if she was a bitch. I’ve got more than enough on my conscience as it is.