Field Gray

by Philip Kerr

  The MVD starshina made a long, slow gurgling noise, and adjusting my balance against the movement of the railway carriage, I kicked him hard—as hard as I could—against the side of his head. There had been enough shooting for one day.

  My ears were still ringing from the shots and the carriage smelled strongly of cordite. But I wasn’t disturbed by any of this. After the Battle of Königsberg, nothing like that bothered me much, and my mind was disposed to interpret the ringing in my ears as an alarm and a call to action. If I kept my nerve, I could still complete my escape. In other circumstances, I might easily have panicked, jumped off the train, and tried to make for the American zone, as I’d originally intended; but a better plan was already presenting itself, and this depended on my acting quickly, before the blood spreading on the floor spoiled everything.

  Both the German MVD officers had luggage. I opened up the bags and found that each man had brought a spare gimnasterka. This was just as well, as there was blood on both of their tunics. But the all-important blue trousers were still unmarked. First I emptied their pockets and removed their decorations, their blue shoulder boards, and their portupeya cross-belts. Then I pulled their tunics up and wrapped their shattered heads in the thick cloth to help staunch the blood. Weltz’s skull felt like a bag full of marbles.

  You have to be a certain type of man to clean up efficiently after a murder, and no one does that better than a cop. Maybe what I was planning wouldn’t work, maybe I’d get caught, but the two Germans had bigger problems. They were both as dead as Weimar.

  I took off their boots, unlaced the legs of their blue breeches, and then hauled those off, too. I put both pairs carefully up on the luggage rack, well out of the way of what I was going to do next.

  It would have been a mistake to have opened the carriage door. A Red Army soldier in one of the other carriages might have seen me doing it. So I slid down the window, balanced the major’s naked body on the sill, and waited for a tunnel. It was fortunate that we were traveling through the Erzgebirge. There are lots of tunnels for the railway line that runs through the Erzgebirge.

  By the time I had defenestrated the two dead Germans I was exhausted, but working down in the mine shaft had given me the capacity to go beyond the limits of my own exhaustion, to say nothing of a wiry muscularity in my arms and shoulders, and in this respect I was also fortunate. I might add that I was also desperate.

  I wasn’t sure if the Ukrainian was dead, but I hardly cared. His NKVD assassin’s badge did not inspire my sympathy. In his pockets I found some money—quite a lot of money—and, more interesting, a piece of paper bearing an address in Cyrillic, and a note in German; it was the same address as on the envelope Mielke had given me for his friend, and I guessed that, my assassin once he had killed me, was detailed to deliver the dollars and the note in the envelope himself. That envelope had been a nice touch, partly allaying any fears of a double cross on Mielke’s part. After all, who would give an envelope full of money to a man he intended to have killed? There was also an identity document that gave the Ukrainian’s name as Vasili Karpovich Lebyediev; he was stationed at MVD headquarters in Berlin, at Karlshorst, which I remembered better as a villa colony with a race-course. He worked not for the MVD but for the Ministry of Military Forces—the MBC—whatever that was. The Nagant revolver in his apparently lifeless hand was dated 1937 and had been well looked after. I wondered how many innocent victims of Stalin it had been used to kill. For that reason, I took a certain pleasure in pushing his naked body out of the carriage window. It felt like a kind of justice.

  I used the Ivan’s tunic and my old uniform to mop the floor and wipe the walls of any remaining blood and brain tissue, then threw them out of the window. I put the pieces of glass into the Russian’s cap alongside his decorations and threw that out of the window, too. And when everything apart from me looked almost respectable, I dressed carefully in the lieutenant’s blue breeches—the major’s were too big around the waist—and his spare tunic, and prepared to face down any Ivans who might come aboard at Dresden. I was ready for that.

  What I wasn’t ready for was Dresden. The train went straight past the ruins of the city’s eighteenth-century cathedral. I could hardly believe my own eyes. The bell-shaped dome was completely gone. And the rest of the city was no better. Dresden had never seemed like an important town or one with any strategic significance, and I began to worry about what Berlin might look like. Did I even have a hometown that was worth returning to?

  The Red Army sergeant who came aboard the carriage at Dresden and asked to see my papers glanced at the broken window with mild surprise.

  “What happened in here?” he asked.

  “I don’t know, but it must have been some party.”

  He shook his head and frowned. “Some of these young lads they have in uniform now. They’re just kolkhozniks. Peasants who don’t know how to behave. Half of them have never even seen a proper passenger train, let alone traveled on one.”

  “You can’t blame them for that,” I said generously. “And for letting off a bit of steam now and again. Especially when you consider what the fascists did to Russia.”

  “Right now I’m more concerned about what they’ve done to this train.” He glanced at Lieutenant Rascher’s identity document and then at me.

  I met his gaze with steady-eyed innocence.

  “You’ve lost a bit of weight since that picture was taken.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “I hardly recognize myself. Typhus does that to a man. I’m on leave back to Berlin after six weeks in hospital.”

  The sergeant inched back a little.

  “It’s all right,” I said. “I’m over the worst of it now. I picked it up in the POW camp at Johannesgeorgenstadt. Full of fleas and lice, it was.” I started to scratch for added effect.

  He handed me back the documents and nodded a quick good-bye. I expect he washed his hands quite soon afterward. I know I would have.

  I dropped down on the seat and opened the major’s bag again. There was a bottle of Asbach brandy I’d been looking forward to all morning. I opened it, took a swig, and searched through the rest of his stuff. There were some clothes, some smokes, a few papers, and an early edition of poems by Georg Trakl. I’d always rather admired his work, and one particular poem, “In the Eastern Front,” now seemed to match the time and, more especially, the place. I can still remember it by heart.

  The ominous anger of the People

  Is like the furious organ of the winter storm,

  The purple wave of battle,

  Like the leafless stars.

  With broken brows and silver arms,

  The night winks to dying soldiers.

  In the shade of an autumn ash tree

  The ghosts of the dead are sighing

  A desert crown of thorns surrounds the city.

  From the bleeding stairs

  The moon chases the shocked women

  Wild wolves break through the door.*

  26

  GERMANY, 1954

  And you think that Erich Mielke wanted you dead because he owed his life to you?”

  My American friend tapped his pipe and let the burned tobacco fall onto the floor of my cell. I wanted to scold him for it, to remind him that these were my quarters and to show a little respect. But what was the point? It was an American world I was living in now, and I was just a pawn in a never-ending game of intercontinental chess with the Russians.

  “Not just that,” I said. “Because I could connect him with the murders of those two Berlin policemen. You see, Heydrich always suspected that Mielke felt a certain amount of embarrassment that he’d committed a crime as serious as the murders of policemen. That it was somehow unworthy of him. He thought it was almost certainly Mielke who fingered the two Germans who put him up to it—Kippenberger and Neumann—during Stalin’s Great Purge of 1937. They both died in the labor camps. Their wives, too. Even Kippenberger’s daughter was sent to a labor camp. Mielke really tri
ed to clean house there.

  “But I also knew about Mielke’s work in Spain. His work as a Chekist, with the military security service, torturing and killing those Republicans—anarchists and Trotskyites—who deviated from the party line as dictated by Stalin. Again, Heydrich strongly suspected that Mielke used his position as a political commissar with the International Brigade in Spain to eliminate Erich Ziemer. If you remember, Ziemer was the man who helped Mielke murder the two cops. And I think Heydrich was probably right. I think that Mielke may even have planned some political role for himself in Germany after the war; and he reasoned, quite rightly, that the German people—and more especially Berliners—would never take to a man who’d murdered two policemen in cold blood.”

  “There was an attempt by the West Berlin courts in 1947 to prosecute him for those murders,” said the Ami with the bow tie. “A judge called Wilhelm Kühnast issued a warrant for Mielke’s arrest. Did you know about that?”

  “No. By then, I wasn’t living in Berlin.”

  “It failed, of course. The Soviets closed ranks in front of Mielke to shield him from further inquiry and tried their best to discredit Kühnast. The criminal records that Kühnast used to build up his case disappeared. Kühnast was lucky not to disappear himself.”

  “Erich Mielke has survived numerous party purges,” said the Ami with the pipe. “He survived the death of Stalin, of course, and, rather more recently, the death of Lavrenty Beria. We think that he was never a relief volunteer for the Todt organization. That was just a story he gave you. If he had worked for them, he’d be dead like all the rest who came back and found a cold welcome from Stalin. To us it seems much more likely that Mielke got out of that French camp at Le Vernet quite soon after you saw him there, in the summer of 1940, and got himself back to the Soviet Union before Hitler invaded Russia.”

  “Why not?” I shrugged. “He never struck me as the George Washington, ‘I cannot tell a lie’ type. So I’ll contain my obvious disappointment that he might have misled me.”

  “Today, your old friend is East Germany’s deputy chief of the secret police. The Stasi. Have you heard of the Stasi?”

  “I’ve been away for five years.”

  “Okay. When Stalin died last year, there was this big workers’ strike in East Berlin, and then throughout the whole of the DDR. As many as half a million took to the streets to demand free and fair elections. Even policemen defected to the side of the protesters. This was the first big test of the Stasi as run by Mielke. And effectively, he broke the strike.”

  “Big-time,” said the other Ami.

  “At first martial law was declared. The Stasi opened fire on the protesters. Many were killed. Thousands were arrested and are still in prison. Mielke himself arrested the minister of justice, who’d questioned the legality of those arrests. Since then, Comrade Erich has been consolidating his position within the East German hierarchy. And he continues to expand the Stasi’s network of secret informers and spies, and to build the organization into the image of the Soviet KGB. The MVD, that was.”

  “He’s a bastard,” I said. “What more can I tell you? I have nothing else to say about the man. That day in Johannesgeorgenstadt was the last time I saw him.”

  “You could help us to get him.”

  “Sure. Before lockdown tonight, I’ll see what I can do for you.”

  “Seriously.”

  “I’ve told you everything.”

  “And it’s been very interesting. Most of it, anyway.”

  “Don’t think we’re not grateful, Gunther. Because we are.”

  “Might that gratitude stretch as far as letting me go?”

  Bow Tie glanced at the Pipe, who nodded vaguely and said, “You know? It might. It just might. Provided you agree to work for us.”

  “Oh.” I yawned.

  “’Sa matter, Bernie boy? Don’t you want to get out of the stir?”

  “We’ll put you on the payroll. We can even get your money back. The money you had when the Coast Guard picked you up in the sea off Gitmo.”

  “That’s very generous of you,” I said. “But I’m tired of fighting. And frankly, I can’t see this Cold War of yours being any more worthwhile than the last two I took part in.”

  “I’d say it could end up being the most crucial war of all,” said Bow Tie. “Especially if it gets any warmer.”

  I shook my head. “You guys make me laugh. The people you want to work for you. Do you always treat them like this?”

  “Like what?”

  “My mistake. The other day, when I was handcuffed with a hood over my head, I formed the distinct impression you didn’t like my face.”

  “That was then.”

  “You don’t see us ill-treating you now, do you?”

  “Hell, Gunther, you’ve got the best fucking room in the place. Cigarettes, brandy. Tell us what else you need and we’ll see if we can get it for you.”

  “They don’t sell what I want in the army PX.”

  “And what’s that?”

  I shook my head and lit a cigarette. “Nothing. It doesn’t matter.”

  “We’re your friends, Gunther.”

  “With American friends, who needs enemies?” I pulled a face. “Look, gentlemen, I’ve had American friends before. In Vienna. And there was something about the experience I didn’t like. Even so, I knew their names. And mostly this is a given with the people who claim to be my friends.”

  “You’re taking this way too personally, Gunther.”

  “Nothing’s been broken that can’t be fixed. We can do this. I’m Mr. Scheuer and this is Mr. Frei. Like we said before, we work for the CIA. At a place called Pullach. You know Pullach?”

  “Sure,” I said. “It’s the American part of Munich. Where you kennel all of the tame German shepherds who look after the flock for you in this part of the world. General Gehlen and his pals.”

  “Unfortunately, those dogs are not coming to heel the way they used to,” said Scheuer. He was the one with the pipe. “We suspect Gehlen made a private deal with Chancellor Adenauer and that the Germans are about to run their own show from now on.”

  “Very ungrateful,” said Frei. “After all we did for them.”

  “Gehlen’s new intelligence outfit—the GVL—is mostly ex-SS. Gestapo, Abwehr. Some very nasty people. Much worse than you. And it’s probably riddled with Russian spies.”

  “I could have told you that seven years ago in Vienna,” I said. “In fact, I think I did.”

  “So it looks like we’re going to have to start again from scratch. And that means we’re going to have to be rather more certain of the kind of people we recruit. Which is why we were so rough on you from the start. We wanted to make quite sure of who and what you are. The last thing we want working for us this time is a bunch of die-hard Nazis.”

  “Imagine how we felt when we discovered that the GVL was helping to train Egyptians and Syrians for a war with the state of Israel. With the Jews, Gunther. Talk about history repeating itself. I would think a man like you, someone who wasn’t ever anti-Semitic himself, might want to do something about that. Israel is our friend.”

  “You’ve got to ask yourself a question, Bernie. Do you really want to stay here and let those two jokers from the OCCWC, Silverman and Earp, decide your fate?”

  “I thought you said they cleared me.”

  “Oh, they did. Since then the French have put in a request for your extradition to Paris. And you know what the French are like.”

  “The French haven’t got anything on me.”

  “That’s not what they think,” said Scheuer. “That’s not what they think at all.”

  “You have to hand it to the French,” said Frei. “Their capacity for hypocrisy is nothing short of breathtaking. France was a fascist country during the war. Even more so than Italy or Spain. But even now, they like to portray themselves as victims. To hold others responsible for their crimes and misdemeanors. Others like you, perhaps. Right now there’s a big trial und
er way in Paris. Your old friend, Helmut Knochen. And Carl Oberg. It’s quite the cause célèbre. Really. It’s in all the newspapers, every day.”

  “I don’t see what that has to do with me,” I said. “Those people, Knochen and Oberg, they were big fish. I was just a minnow. I never even met Oberg. So what the hell’s all this about?”

  “The Brits tried Knochen in 1947. In Wuppertal. They found him guilty of the murders of some British parachutists and sentenced him to death. But the sentence was commuted and now the French want their kilo of flesh. They’re looking for scapegoats, Gunther. Someone to blame. And of course, so is Knochen. Which apparently is how your name came up. He made a statement to the French Sûreté that it was you who murdered all those prisoners from Gurs on the road to Lourdes in 1940.”

  “Me? There must be some mistake.”

  “Oh, sure,” said Frei. “I think there has been a mistake. But that’s not going to stop the French. They’ve made a formal application for your extradition to Paris. Perhaps you would care to read Knochen’s statement?”

  He reached into his jacket pocket and fished out several folded sheets of paper, which he handed to me. Then he and Scheuer stood up and moved toward the cell door.

  “You read that over and then decide whether working for Uncle Sam is such a bad thing after all.”

  HELMUT KNOCHEN, interviewed March 1954

  My name is Helmut Knochen. I was the senior commander of the security police in Paris during the Nazi occupation of France between 1940 and 1944. My jurisdiction extended from northern France to Belgium. Until the appointment of Carl Oberg as supreme leader of the SS and the German police in France I had full responsibility for keeping order and upholding the rule of law. As a policeman I tried to ensure that relations between the French and the Germans were without friction and that the proper administration of justice was unhindered by the occupation. This was not easy. I was not always made privy to senior policy decisions. And the most profound tragedy of my life has been the fact that, in an indirect way, and without being aware of it, I was involved in the persecution of the Jews of France. At no point did I know or even suspect that Jews deported to the east were to be exterminated. If I had known this I should never have gone along with their deportation. Let me say that the greatest crime in history was the systematic murder of Jews by Adolf Hitler.