by Philip Kerr
Table of Contents
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Epigraph
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
THIRTY-FIVE
THIRTY-SIX
THIRTY-SEVEN
THIRTY-EIGHT
THIRTY-NINE
FORTY
FORTY-ONE
FORTY-TWO
EPILOGUE
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Teaser chapter
Praise for Philip Kerr’s The One from the Other
“Philip Kerr is the contemporary master of the morally complex thriller. . . . [A German Requiem], set mainly in postwar Vienna, has an affinity with Graham Greene’s The Third Man but—dare I say it?—equals or surpasses Greene (and the Carol Reed film featuring Orson Welles), because it doesn’t shy away from the Nazi-saturated substratum of the Viennese milieu. And then I discovered—and devoured—Mr. Kerr’s new noir, The One from the Other. It crystallized my dissatisfaction with recent le Carré novels (clumsily didactic) and made me rethink my addiction to Alan Furst’s oeuvre (brilliant but a bit too thickly varnished with romantic glamour). . . . The achievement of Philip Kerr’s novels is that he takes his Chandler/Hammett-style detective, that lone figure in the (largely ahistorical) mean streets of the urban jungle, into the midst of a far more highly charged historical backdrop, a different, more profoundly mean—indeed, evil—sort of mean-street neighborhood, the crossroads of history and tragedy. Mr. Kerr has set his detective on an Inferno-like trajectory that takes us deep into the heart of darkness.”
—Ron Rosenbaum, New York Observer
“Several elements account for the excellence of the Gunther books. First, Kerr is a fine novelist; in terms of narrative, plot, pace, and characterizations, he’s in a league with John le Carré and Alan Furst. Moreover, he has done prodigious research into an era that ended well before he was born. The political, historical, military, and cultural details feel absolutely authentic. If you want a sense of what Nazi Germany was like, day to day, not many novels equal these. Finally, Kerr was truly inspired to place a detective-turned-private-eye at work in Nazi Germany. Private eyes investigate crimes, and where in human history can we find more cosmic crimes than those of the Hitler era? The question was whether Kerr would be equal to the challenge he set for himself. He has been. . . . One of the bright spots in this always readable, often troubling novel is the suggestion, near the end, that Kerr’s good German will return again.”
—Patrick Anderson, The Washington Post
“Because he never had any illusions to begin with, Gunther is the ideal narrator for Kerr’s bleak tale of the dirty deals made by victors and vanquished alike. Having learned that there’s no way to distinguish ‘the one from the other,’ the cynical P.I. has the moral clarity to see through the deceit and hypocrisy of both friend and foe. He’s the right kind of hero for his time—and ours.”
—Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review
“It is to be sincerely hoped that a very large number of readers buy this book so that Mr. Kerr won’t be tempted to abandon Bernie Gunther again, and that his adventures will continue for many years. Even if the author wants to torture his hero, he shouldn’t do it to his readers.”
—Otto Penzler, The New York Sun
“No novelist ‘gets’ Germany and Europe before, during, and after World War II as well as Mr. Kerr, not even Alan Furst. . . . There seems to be little of which Mr. Kerr is not in command—noirish turns of phrase (‘His teeth were big and yellow, as if he usually ate grass for dinner’), pacing, atmosphere, story, and historical facts and events.”
—Roger K. Miller, The Washington Times
“Kerr’s book is his spectacular follow-up to his extraordinarily brilliant Berlin Noir trilogy. Kerr is the only bona fide heir to Raymond Chandler that I have ever come across; his German private detective Bernie Gunther would have been respected by Philip Marlowe and the two of them would have enjoyed sitting down at a bar and talking. One of the things that is so amazing about Kerr’s four Bernie Gunther novels, to me, is that while the books are ostensibly hard-boiled mysteries, they gave me a glimpse into the incomprehensible horrors of the Second World War and the Holocaust in much the same way D. M. Thomas’ The White Hotel and Spiegelman’s Maus once did. For me they are all works of art that for a moment enabled me to grasp the unimaginable, before my mind clouded over and returned to the safety of the quotidian.”
—Jonathan Ames, Salon.com Book Awards
“Kerr’s stylish noir writing makes every page a joy to read.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Grim and gripping, with the author’s customary sure-handedness in evidence.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Once more, Kerr demonstrates his mastery of a time well-mined in fiction but still rife for exploration.”
—Sarah Weinman, The Baltimore Sun
“Kerr’s expertly plotted tale glistens with period detail and punchily cynical asides. A-.”—Entertainment Weekly
“A welcome return [of Bernie Gunther] . . . A somber, melancholy, compelling work, The One from the Other stretches the notion of entertaining fiction to [the] breaking point. . . . Philip Kerr impressively sustains the novel’s parched, opportunistic, bottomlessly compromised world. Where next for Bernie Gunther?”
—The Times Literary Supplement (London)
“It is a highly entertaining book, imaginatively conceived and smartly executed. Although it stands as a remarkable work of historical fiction, fans of hard-boiled detective stories will not be disappointed.”
—Historical Novels Review
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Philip Kerr is the author of seventeen previous novels, but perhaps most importantly, the four featuring Bernie Gunther—The One from the Other and the Berlin Noir trilogy (March Violets, The Pale Criminal, and A German Requiem). He also wrote the cult classic A Philosophical Investigation and five bestselling children’s books (as P. B. Kerr). Kerr was chosen early in his career as one of Granta magazine’s Best Young British Novelists and was hailed by Salman Rushdie as “a brilliantly innovative thriller-writer.” Born in Edinburgh, he now lives in London and Cornwall with his family.
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First published in the United States of America by G. P. Putnam’s Sons,
a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. 2006
Published in Penguin Books 2009
Copyright © Philip Kerr, 2006
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PUBLISHER’S NOTE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product
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living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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FOR JANE
God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things which should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.
—REINHOLD NIEBUHR
PROLOGUE
Berlin, September 1937
I remember how good the weather was that September. Hitler weather, they used to call it. As if the elements themselves were disposed to be kind to Adolf Hitler, of all people. I remember him making a ranting speech demanding foreign colonies for Germany. It was, perhaps, the first time any of us had heard him use the phrase “living space.” No one thought for a moment that our living space could only be created if someone else died first.
I was living and working in the space we called Berlin. There was plenty of business there for a private detective. It was all missing persons, of course. And most of them were Jewish. Most of them murdered in back alleys, or sent off to a KZ, a concentration camp, without the authorities bothering to notify their families. The Nazis thought it was quite funny, the way they did that. The Jews were, of course, officially encouraged to emigrate, but because they were forbidden to take their property with them, few did so. Still, some people devised several neat tricks to get their money out of Germany.
One such trick was for a Jew to deposit a large sealed parcel containing various valuables, and labeled the “last will and testament” of so and so, with a German court of law before going abroad for “a holiday.” The Jew would then “die” in a foreign country and have the local French or English court request the German court to forward the parcel containing his “last will and testament.” German courts being run by German lawyers were usually only too happy to comply with the requests of other lawyers, even French and English ones. And in this way quite a few lucky Jews managed to be reunited with enough cash or valuables to start a new life in a new country.
It might seem hard to believe, but another neat scheme was actually devised by the Jewish Department of the Security Police—the SD. This scheme was seen as a good way of helping Jews leave Germany and, in the process, of enriching certain officers of the SD into the bargain. It was what we called the tocher, or Jewish peddler, scheme, and I first had experience of it as a result of the strangest pair of clients that ever came my way.
Paul Begelmann was a rich German Jewish businessman who owned several garages and car dealerships throughout Germany. And SS Sturmbannführer Dr. Franz Six was the head of the SD’s Jewish Department. I was summoned to meet them both in the department’s modest, three-room suite of offices at the Hohen-zollern Palais, on Wilhelmstrasse. Behind Six’s desk was a picture of the Führer, as well as a host of legal degrees from the universities of Heidelberg, Königsberg, and Leipzig. Six might have been a Nazi crook, but he was an extremely well-qualified Nazi crook. He was hardly Himmler’s ideal-looking Aryan. Aged about thirty, he was dark-haired, a little self-satisfied around the mouth, and no more Jewish-looking than Paul Begelmann. He smelled faintly of cologne and hypocrisy. On his desk was a little bust of Wilhelm von Humboldt, who had founded the University of Berlin and who, famously, had defined the limits beyond which the activities of the State should not go. I guessed it was unlikely that Sturmbannführer Six would have agreed with him there.
Begelmann was older and taller, with dark, curly hair and lips that were as thick and pink as two slices of luncheon meat. He was smiling but his eyes told a very different story. The pupils were narrow, like a cat’s, as if he was anxious to be out of the SD’s spotlight. In that building, and surrounded by all those black uniforms, he looked like a choirboy trying to make friends with a pack of hyenas. He didn’t say much. It was Six who did all the talking. I’d heard Six was from Mannheim. Mannheim has a famous Jesuit church. In his smart black uniform, that was the way Franz Six struck me. Not your typical SD thug. More like a Jesuit.
“Herr Begelmann has expressed a wish to emigrate from Germany to Palestine,” he said smoothly. “Naturally he is concerned about his business in Germany and the impact that its sale might have on the local economy. So, in order to help Herr Begelmann, this department has proposed a solution to his problem. A solution you might be able to help us with, Herr Gunther. We have proposed that he should not emigrate ‘pro forma,’ but rather that he should continue to be a German citizen working abroad. In effect, that he should work in Palestine as the sales representative of his own company. In this manner he will be able to earn a salary and to share in the profits of the company while at the same time fulfilling this department’s policy of encouraging Jewish emigration.”
I didn’t doubt that poor Begelmann had agreed to share his company’s profits not with the Reich but with Franz Six. I lit a cigarette and fixed the SD man with a cynical smile. “Gentlemen, it sounds to me like you’ll both be very happy together. But I fail to see what you need me for. I don’t do marriages. I investigate them.”
Six colored a little and glanced awkwardly at Begelmann. He had power, but it wasn’t the kind of power that could threaten someone like me. He was used to bullying students and Jews, and the task of bullying an adult Aryan male looked like it was beyond him.
“We require someone . . . someone Herr Begelmann can trust . . . to deliver a letter from the Wassermann Bank, here in Berlin, to the Anglo-Palestine Bank in Jaffa. We require that person to open lines of credit with that bank and to take a lease on a property in Jaffa that can be the premises for a new car showroom. The lease will help to validate Herr Begelmann’s important new business venture. We also require our agent to transport certain items of property to the Anglo-Palestine Bank in Jaffa. Naturally, Herr Begelmann is prepared to pay a substantial fee for these services. The sum of one thousand English pounds, payable in Jaffa. Naturally, the SD will arrange all the necessary documentation and paperwork. You would be going there as the official representative of Begelmann’s Automotive. Unofficially, you will be acting as the SD’s confidential agent.”
“A thousand pounds. That’s a lot of money,” I said. “But what happens if the Gestapo ask me questions about all this. They might not like some of the answers. Have you thought of that?”
“Of course,” said Six. “Do you take me for an idiot?”
“No, but they might.”
“It so happens that I’m sending
two other agents to Palestine on a fact-finding mission that has been authorized at the highest level,” he said. “As part of its ongoing remit, this department has been asked to investigate the feasibility of forced emigration to Palestine. As far as SIPO is concerned, you would be part of that mission. If the Gestapo were to ask you questions about your mission you would be entirely within your rights to answer, as these two others will answer: that it is an intelligence matter. That you are carrying out the orders of General Heydrich. And that for reasons of operational security, you cannot discuss the matter.” He paused and lit a small, pungent cigar. “You have done some work for the general before, have you not?”
“I’m still trying to forget it.” I shook my head. “With all due respect, Herr Sturmbannführer. If two of your own men are already going to Palestine, then what do you need me for?”
Begelmann cleared his throat. “If I might say something, please, Herr Sturmbannführer?” he said, cautiously, and in a strong Hamburg accent. Six shrugged and shook his head, indifferently. Begelmann looked at me with quiet desperation. There was sweat on his forehead and I didn’t think it was only as a result of the unusually warm September weather. “Because, Herr Gunther, your reputation for honesty goes before you.”
“Not to mention your dedication to making an easy mark,” said Six.
I looked at Six and nodded. I was through being polite to this legal crook. “What you’re saying, Herr Begelmann, is that you don’t trust this department or the people who work for it.”