Prussian Blue

SIXTY-SIX

“On your feet, Gunther.”

Friedrich Korsch was stuffing the gun he’d found on the floor by my leg under the waistband of his trousers and slowly backing away. In the low light I could just make out the triumphant expression on his face, as if he was looking forward to killing me; he appeared to be alone.

“Why?” I said wearily. Once before I’d escaped being shot in the Schlossberg Caves and I scarcely thought I was about to manage it again. There’s a limit to how lucky one lucky man can be. Then again, good luck is merely the ability and determination to overcome bad luck; anything else looks like capricious fortune. But my determination to do anything other than sleep inside that mountain for a thousand years was sorely lacking. “What’s the point?” I added. “You might as well shoot me in here, Friedrich. As mausoleums go, this place is as good as any.”

“Because those aren’t General Mielke’s orders. I’m to make your death look like a suicide. Something the local cops can explain away. The Blue Train murderer takes his own life. Which can hardly happen if I kill you now. So please get up. I’m not a sadistic man, and I’d hate to have to blow your kneecaps off. But I can assure you, not nearly as much as you would.”

He had a point. My luck had finally run out and, as coincidences go, this one seemed more meaningful than not; it looked very much as if fate had always meant me to meet my end in the Schlossberg Caves and was determined not to be disappointed in that respect. God moves in mysterious ways but it’s best to recognize that most of the mystery relates to why people still think he gives a damn about any of us. I stood up reluctantly and brushed some of the sand off my trousers. “I expect they’ll give you a promotion for this. Or a medal. Perhaps both.”

Korsch circled away some more now that I was on my feet. But he certainly wasn’t about to miss me from wherever he was standing in the cavern. Not even with one eye.

“For catching an old fascist enemy of the people like you? Yes, I expect so.”

“Is that what I am?”

“It’s how it will be reported in Germany, probably. And why not? These days we need our villains just as much as we need our heroes. There’s a lot we can blame on the Nazis and usually do. Now, then. Do you have any more guns?”

“Sadly, not.”

Korsch moved around the wall of the cave to where my jacket was hanging on the light switch and patted it down. “Just making sure. You always were a slippery bastard, Gunther.”

“That’s how I managed to stay alive, Friedrich.”

“You can keep telling yourself that if you like. But I rather think you stayed alive by doing exactly what the likes of Heydrich and Goebbels told you to do.”

“And you didn’t?”

“Sure. But you were the police commissar, not me. I was just your spanner for a short time.”

“I guess you have to tell yourself that now that you’re a spanner for the Ivans. More importantly, I guess you have to tell them that, too.”

“Not the Ivans, no. There’s a new Germany that’s being constructed. A socialist Germany. We’re running our own show, now. Not the Russians. Us. The Germans. It’s better this time because there’s a proper goal we’re all working toward.”

“Even in this light I can see you don’t believe any of that crap. I look at you and see myself all those years ago, trying to keep my mouth close to the Party line and pretend that everything was fine with the way our masters were running Germany. But we both know it wasn’t—and it still isn’t. The GDR and the communists are just another universal tyranny. So how about you pretend you never saw me in here and let me go? For old times’ sake. Does it really make such a difference to the new order if I’m dead?”

“Sorry, Bernie. No can do. If General Mielke ever found out I let you go it wouldn’t just be me who suffered, it would be my whole family. Besides, there are a couple of my men waiting by the entrance outside, just in case you manage to give me the slip in the dark. If I let you escape, they wouldn’t like it, either. You’ve led us on a real polka since the Riviera.”

“And why? Because I wasn’t prepared to go to England and poison Mielke’s own agent, Anne French. That’s why. That should tell you something about your new masters, Friedrich. They’re cowards. Still, it was brave of you coming in here on your own, I suppose.”

“Wasn’t it? You were joking before about my getting a medal and a promotion. But that’s not a joke to me. I will get both of those things now. My men will see to that. Catching you is my big chance of preferment with Mielke. I could get my fourth pip for this. Maybe even a major’s whipped-cream shoulder boards.”

“You do know Erich Mielke was a cop killer. Before he became a cop.”

“I remember he shot some Freikorps police bully, if that’s what you mean.”

“My, the commies really have done a good job with your reeducation, haven’t they? I bet you could even spell ‘dialectic’ and ‘bourgeoisie.’”

Korsch brandished the automatic and grinned. “Since I’m the one holding the Bismarck, it would seem as if my reeducation has turned out better than yours, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Therein lies the true essence of Marxism. ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs’ only ever works with a gun in your hand. How did you find me, anyway?”

“I’d like to say I know you better than you think, Gunther. But I can’t claim it was the result of any great insight on my part. That moto rider from Saarbrücken reported bringing you here to one of our police informants. It was him who told us you were in Homburg. He suspected you from the beginning, apparently. After that it was more or less obvious to me that you’d return to the Schlossberg Caves, given what happened here just before the war.”

“I was always under the impression that no one ever knew about that. Not precisely. Certainly Wilhelm Zander never talked about it, for obvious reasons. I never talked about it, either. Not even to Heydrich. For equally obvious reasons. I thought I was safer that way, given what Bormann had said about keeping my mouth shut concerning what happened on the Berghof terrace. And before he left the area, Zander removed anything that would have identified Johann Diesbach. Including Johann Diesbach, now I come to think of it. I believe Zander had some local Gestapo come to fetch the body so they could dump it somewhere else. So how did you ever think to connect me with this place?”

“Does it matter?”

“You might call it an itch on my nose that needs scratching now that I’m standing on the gallows with my hands tied behind my back. That is, if you wouldn’t mind.”

“Maybe I’m just cleverer than you give me credit for.”

“It’s always a possibility.”

“When you and Zander showed up in Homburg looking for Diesbach, it was his sister who suggested that he should hide in the caves. After a few days she came up here to bring him some food and found the floor of the cave entrance littered with empty cartridges. From their number she guessed there had been some sort of shoot-out and when, weeks later, Diesbach still hadn’t contacted her, she naturally assumed the worst.”

“How do you know all that?”

“Because she wrote to Diesbach’s wife, Eva, informing her that she suspected Johann might have met a violent end. And when Eva forwarded me the letter, asking for my help in finding out what had happened to him, I agreed.”

“I don’t remember the two of you being that friendly.”

“After you left me behind in Berchtesgaden, she and I got on quite well. You might say that I was a real consolation to that woman. Very soon after her husband disappeared, Eva moved to Berlin. And, for a while, we were lovers.”

“Taking a risk, weren’t you, Friedrich? Given her medical history.”

“Worth it, though. You saw what she looked like.”

“She was built, all right, if that’s what you mean. But why didn’t you ask me what became of Diesbach, to save you all that bother?”

“I did. On two or three occasions. Maybe you’ve forgotten but all you’d say was that he was dead and that I’d stay alive longer if I forgot he’d ever existed. Or words to that effect. So I did, eventually. And so did she.”

“Good advice, if you don’t mind me saying so. I did you a favor there. For Bormann, the security of the Berghof was more than just a matter of guarding Hitler’s life. It was also a matter of guarding Hitler’s feelings. It was made very clear to me that any kind of loose talk about Karl Flex’s death would be treated as treasonous. Undermining Reich security or some such nonsense.”

“Anyway, none of that matters much now.”

“And did you find out what became of Diesbach’s body?”

“In time. It seems that the local Gestapo took him to a crematorium in Kaiserslautern and had him burned to ashes at midnight. Not that Eva Diesbach cared very much by then. She had other things on her mind. Her son Benno, remember him? He got himself picked up by a man in the old Friedrichstrasse arcade and was sent to a KZ with a pink triangle on his jacket.” Korsch jerked the barrel of the silenced Makarov pistol at one of the quartz tunnels leading back to the cave entrance. “All right. Story’s over. Let’s go, shall we? This damned place gives me the shivers. And you’re right. It is exactly like being buried alive.”

“So how are you planning that I should kill myself? Thallium poisoning, or another hanging?”

“You’ll find out soon enough. Now move.”

I hesitated to move. “May I fetch my jacket? I’m cold.”

“You won’t need it where you’re going.”

“My ID is in that jacket. If the proper authorities don’t find that, then it won’t look like much of a suicide.”

“What do you care?”

“I don’t. But I really am feeling cold. Besides, my cigarettes are also in that jacket. And I’m hoping you might allow me a last smoke.”

Korsch jerked his head at my jacket. “All right. But don’t get any clever ideas, Gunther. I really don’t mind shooting you. Not after what you did to poor Helmut. He was the man in the leather shorts you strangled the day before yesterday. And one of my best men.”

“It was him or me.”

“Perhaps. But he was also my cousin.”

“Well, I am sorry about that. Cousins are hard to come by these days. But I really don’t think he was a very nice person, Friedrich. Before I killed Helmut I watched him shoot a cat for sport. What kind of a sick bastard does something like that?”

“I don’t care about cats very much. But that makes two of my men you’ve killed since we met again. There’s not going to be a third.”

I went to retrieve my jacket.

“Slowly,” said Korsch. “Like tree sap in winter.”

“Everything I do now, I do slowly. As a matter of fact, Friedrich, I’m exhausted. I couldn’t run another step, even if I wanted to. And I’m all out of clever ideas on how to evade you and your men.”

This was true. I’d had more than enough of running. My neck ached and my feet were damp. My clothes were sticking to me and I smelled almost as bad as the cold andouillette I’d eaten in Freyming-Merlebach. All I really wanted to do was smoke a last cigarette, face up to whatever was coming to me from the Stasi, and get it over with. They say a cornered rat will attack a dog and deliver a nasty bite, but this particular rat felt like it was finished, and it was as well for me that Gunther’s luck wasn’t feeling the same way because, as I tugged my jacket off the electricity switch on the quartz wall, I managed, quite accidentally, to turn off the light, plunging the cavern into complete darkness. For a millisecond I wondered what had happened. I think I may even have asked myself if someone else had killed the light. I expect we both did. And in the half second it took Friedrich Korsch to pull the trigger of the Makarov, I recognized the broken shard of a chance the gods had capriciously tossed my way and threw myself onto the thick sand. I scrambled away from the splinter of flame that punctuated the inky air with harmless delicacy, once, twice, and then a third time.

I heard Korsch curse and then fumble with a box of matches, and since it’s impossible to strike a match and pull a trigger at the same time, I stood up and launched myself desperately at the spot in space where I’d last seen the flame from the silenced automatic, hardly caring if I was injured or not. Half a second later I collided heavily with Korsch and the two of us crashed hard against the quartz wall, with him taking the full force of the impact and seemingly coming off the worst as he let out a loud groan and then stopped moving altogether. Breathlessly, I lay on top of his silent, motionless body for a full minute before realizing that I couldn’t hear him breathing.

I rolled off him and, finding my lighter, I saw that far from being unconscious, Friedrich Korsch was dead—that much was clear even in the flickering light of my Ronson. His single bulging eye stared straight at me and for a moment I thought he was wearing a red hat until I realized that the top of his head was cracked like an egg and covered with blood. More quickly than his life had been engendered between some greasy sheets in Kreuzberg, it had now abruptly disappeared, almost as if it had been turned off like the lights on the cavern floor, and all Korsch’s hopes of a captain’s pip or a major’s shoulder boards were gone as if with the flick of a switch. I held his stare for a while. For a moment I thought of all we’d been through together in Kripo, and then I pushed his horribly fractured head away with the heel of my shoe.

I didn’t feel sorry for him. Just as easily my life could have ended in the same way, and I thought it as well Korsch had used a silencer on his pistol, otherwise the Stasi men outside would have been summoned to the scene by the three shots he’d fired. I won’t say I planned to erect an altar to luck any time soon, like Goethe, but I did feel absurdly fortunate.

Now all I had to do was go to one of the other nine levels and make my escape, probably the same way I’d done in 1939.