Field Gray

by Philip Kerr

  “Because they couldn’t have known what they were letting themselves in for,” I said. “Fighting partisans sounds fair enough back here in Paris. But out there, in Byelorussia, it meant something very different.” I shook my head sadly. “There was no honor in it. No glory. Not what they were looking for, anyway.”

  “So what did it mean?” asked Eyebrows. “On the ground.”

  I shrugged. “That kind of action was, quite often, nothing more than murder. Mass murder. Of Jews. All sorts of police actions and antipartisan activities were merely a euphemism for killing Jews. To be frank with you, the Wehrmacht High Command in Russia wouldn’t have trusted the 638th with any other kind of task but murder.”

  “The name of the unit commander. Can you remember that?”

  “Labonne. Colonel Labonne. After the winter of 1941, I lost touch with Edgard.” I clicked my fingers. “De Boudel. That was his name. Edgard de Boudel.”

  “You’re quite sure of that?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Go on.”

  “Well, then. Let’s see. A couple of years later, I was briefly back in that theater to investigate an alleged war crime. That was when I heard that the 638th was now attached to an SS division in Galicia. And that it was pretty bad there. But I didn’t see de Boudel again until 1945, when the war was over and we were both at a Soviet prisoner-of-war camp called Krasno-Armeesk. As a matter of fact, there were quite a few French and Belgian SS there. And Edgard told me something of what he’d been up to. How the 638th ended up as a part of a French brigade of the SS and that kind of thing. Apparently, there was a recruiting drive here in Paris in July 1943. The French who joined had to prove the usual Himmler rubbish about not having any Jewish blood, and then they were in. A few weeks of basic training in Alsace and then at a place near Prague. By the late summer of 1944, the war in France was almost over, but there was a whole brigade of French SS ready to fight the Ivans. About ten thousand of them, he said. And they were called the SS-Charlemagne.

  “The brigade got sent by train to the Eastern Front, in Pomerania, which wasn’t very far from where I was. Edgard said that as the train carrying the brigade pulled into the railhead at Hammerstein they came under attack by the Soviet First Byelorussian and were divided up into three groups. One group, commanded by General Krukenberg, made it north to the Baltic coast, near Danzig. Of these, quite a few managed to get themselves evacuated to Denmark. But some, like Edgard, fought on until they were captured. The rest were wiped out or fell back to Berlin.

  “There were other French at Krasno-Armeesk who’d been captured at Berlin. I can’t say I remember any names. By all accounts, it was the SS-Charlemagne who were the last defenders of Hitler’s bunker in Berlin. I think they were the only SS happy to be caught by the Soviets rather than the Americans, because the Amis handed them over to the Free French, who shot them immediately.”

  “Tell us about Edgard de Boudel.”

  “In the camp?”

  “Yes.”

  “He was a decorated lieutenant colonel. In the SS, I mean. Easy to be with. Charming, even. Good-looking. Unscathed by the war, you might even say. He was one of those types who looked like he was always going to survive pretty much anything. He spoke good Russian. Edgard was the kind for whom languages are easy. His German was perfect, of course. Even I couldn’t have guessed that he was French if I hadn’t already known that about him. I think he might have spoken Vietnamese, too. It was his facility with languages that made him especially interesting to the MVD. In the beginning, they made life pretty difficult for him. And, of course, once they had got their hooks into you it was very difficult for any man to resist them. I know that from my own experience with them.”

  “What specifically did they want him for? Do you know?”

  “Well, it wasn’t K-5. That’s for sure.”

  “That’s the forerunner of the Stasi.”

  “Yes. I don’t know what they had in mind for him. But the next thing I knew, he’d been sent to the Anti-Fa School in Krasnogorsk for reeducation. As you know, I almost ended up there myself. They’d have got me, too, but for the fact that the MVD officer who interrogated me was a man I’d known from before the war. A man named Mielke. Erich Mielke. He was the German political commissar in charge of recruiting us plenis for K-5.”

  The French asked me some more questions about Edgard de Boudel and then took me back to La Santé. It means “health,” but that didn’t have much to do with what went on inside the prison. It was called La Santé because of the prison’s proximity to a psychiatric hospital, the Sainte-Anne on the rue de la Santé, which was just east of the boulevard Raspail.

  In La Santé I kept to myself as much as possible. I didn’t see Helmut Knochen, which suited me just fine. I read my newspaper, which reported that things in North Africa were as bad for the French as they had been in Vietnam. In spite of my new friends in the SDECE, this news was not displeasing to me. There were times when I was never very far away from the trenches. Especially given all the rats there were at La Santé. Real rats. They walked along the landings as coolly as if they’d been carrying keys.

  Back at the Swimming Pool the next day, the French asked me about Erich Mielke.

  “What do you want to know?” I asked, as if unaware of what my audience would best like to hear—or, to be more accurate, what it was best they were told. “It’s all ancient history. Surely you don’t want me to go over all that.”

  “Everything you can tell us.”

  “I can’t see how it’s at all relevant to my being here in Paris.”

  “You should allow us to be the judge of that.”

  I shrugged. “Perhaps if I knew why you were interested in him, I could be more specific. After all, it’s not like this is a story that takes only a couple of minutes to tell. Christ, some of this stuff is twenty years old. Or even older.”

  “We’ve got plenty of time. Perhaps if you went from the beginning. How you first met and when. That kind of thing.”

  “You mean the whole novel, with a beginning, a middle, and an end.”

  “Precisely.”

  “All right. If you really want to know this stuff. I’ll tell you everything.”

  Of course, I hardly wanted to do that. Hell, no. Not all over again. So I gave them an edited, more entertaining version of what I’d already told the Amis. A French version. A smooth-tongued précis, if you like, that was not spoiled by the inclusion of too many facts and that, like the French themselves, was the result of an exhausted conscience wrestling with simple pragmatism and being very quickly overcome. A story that was the best kind of story being better told than believed.

  “The decision was made in the Ministry of the Interior to let Mielke make his escape. Despite the fact that he had participated in the murders of two cops. It came about like this. Department IA had been brought into being to protect the Weimar Republic against conspirators on the left and on the right, and we decided that the best way to do this was to cultivate a few informers on both sides. But on the face of it, that hardly applied to a man like Mielke. We had arrested him and fully intended to send him to the guillotine. However, the Abwehr—German intelligence—persuaded the ministry that they might turn Mielke into their agent. And this is what happened. We were persuaded to let him escape so that he might become our long-term agent, the Abwehr’s Moscow mole. In return, we looked after his family. The Abwehr kept him going all the way through the thirties and the Spanish Civil War. As well as passing us some very important information on Republican troop movements that was extremely helpful to the Condor Legion, he was able to initiate several political purges of some of their best men, on the grounds that they were Trotskyites or anarchists. In that respect, Mielke was doubly useful.

  “When the war broke out, the SD and the Abwehr decided to share Mielke. The trouble was, we’d lost him. So Heydrich sent me to France in the summer of 1940 to get him out of Gurs or Le Vernet, which is where we thought he must be. Which is what
happened. I got him out of Le Vernet and across the sea to Algeria. From there, German agents managed to facilitate his return to Russia. I was his case officer at the SD for the next three years as he worked his way up through the party hierarchy. I lost contact with him in 1945, at the end of the war. However, he managed to track me down at the same time that he was recruiting German officers for the Stasi, and he helped me to escape back to Germany, where I negotiated a deal with some Amis in the Counterintelligence Corps on behalf of both of us.”

  “What kind of a deal?”

  “Money, of course. Lots of money. After that, I helped handle him in Berlin and Vienna until the CIC came to the conclusion that my SS background made me a possible embarrassment to them. So they assigned Mielke a new controller and got me out of the country on a ratline, via Genoa, to Argentina. And then Cuba. I’d still be in Havana but for American incompetence. Having gone to all that trouble to spirit me out of Germany, they sent me back there. A case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. And now here I am with you.”

  “Is Mielke still working for the Americans?”

  “I can’t imagine why not. Someone that highly placed? He was the mother lode of all their intelligence on the GDR. But they weren’t sharing. Even the GVL had no idea that Mielke was spying for the Amis. Gehlen knew the Amis had a very highly placed agent. When the Amis refused to reveal who this was, Gehlen decided to quit and throw in his lot with the West Germans.”

  “So why would they risk letting you go to tell us?”

  “Well, for one thing, they don’t know everything about me and Mielke. There were certain things I’ve told you that I never told them. But now it hardly seems to matter. Not anymore. I haven’t had any contact with Mielke since 1949, when I went to Argentina. Since then, Mielke has become the second or third most powerful man in the GDR, so who would believe me? How could I prove anything of what I’ve told you? It’s just my word, right? Besides, I have other things on my mind. In case you’ve forgotten, I’m rather more concerned that you believe it wasn’t me who shot those prisoners from Gurs on the road to Lourdes in 1940. I don’t think it’s even crossed their minds that you might be interested in Mielke. As far as they’re concerned, you’re only interested in settling old scores against people like me. If you’ll forgive me for saying so, gentlemen, they think your intelligence is snagged on the fence of Muslim extremism in Algeria and wholly irrelevant in their Cold War against Russian communism. You’re a sideshow. Even the British look more relevant to them than you do.”

  None of this was what the French wanted to hear, of course; but it was what they expected to hear. The French were nothing if not pragmatic; facts were always of lesser importance than experience. It was, of course, the only way the French could live with themselves.

  Later on, our conversation returned again to the subject of Edgard de Boudel, and one of the two SDECE men asked me the same question that Heydrich had posed about Mielke in 1940:

  “Do you think you would recognize him again?”

  “Edgard de Boudel? I don’t know. It’s been seven years. Maybe. Why?”

  “We want to arrest him and put him on trial.”

  “In the Cherche-Midi? How many trials have there been in that court? Hundreds, isn’t it? How many war criminals and collaborators have you sentenced to death? Let me tell you how many. It was in the newspaper. Six thousand five hundred. Four thousand of those sentences handed down in absentia. Don’t you think that’s enough? Or do you really mean it to feel like the French Revolution?”

  They said nothing while I lit a cigarette.

  “Why do you want to put him on trial? For being in the SS? Well, I’m not buying that. France is full of ex-Nazis. Besides, I liked him. I liked him a lot. Why should I betray him? Even if I could.”

  “Since the death of Stalin last year, your President Adenauer has been negotiating the release of the last German POWs. These last are, perhaps, the worst of the worst—or merely the most important and, in Soviet eyes, the most culpable. Many of these men are wanted for war crimes in the West. Including Edgard de Boudel. We have received information that he plans to make his way back to Germany as part of one of these repatriations from the Soviet Union. From Germany we think he will, eventually, make his way back to France.”

  “I don’t get it,” I said. “If he was working for the KGB, why is he coming back as a POW?”

  “Because, in his current role, he’s outlived his usefulness to them. The only way he can worm his way back into their favor is by doing what they tell him to do. And what they want him to do is pose as someone else. A German. A German who’s probably already dead. You said yourself he’s a fluent German speaker, that even you couldn’t fault his German. Many of these returning POWs are treated as heroes. A returning hero is a good place to begin rebuilding a career in German society. Perhaps in German politics. And then, one day, he’ll be useful again.”

  “But what can I do?”

  “You know the man. Who better than you to recognize if someone or something doesn’t look quite right?”

  “Perhaps.” I shook my head. “If you say so.”

  “All of the returning POWs arriving back in West Germany come through the station in Friedland. The next train is due in four weeks.”

  “What do you want me to do? Stand at the end of the platform with a bunch of flowers in my hand, like some pathetic widow who doesn’t know her old man’s never coming home?”

  “Not exactly, no. Have you heard of the VdH?”

  I shrugged. “Something to do with the German government compensating returning German POWs, yes?”

  “It’s the Association of Returnees. And that’s one of the things it’s about, yes. According to the West German POW Compensation Law passed in January of this year, there’s a flat rate payable to all POWs of one mark for every day spent in captivity after January first, 1946. And two marks for every day after January first, 1949. But the VdH is also a citizens’ association that advertises the advantages of German democracy to former Nazis. It’s denazification of Germans, by Germans.”

  “Your background,” said the other Frenchman, “makes you ideally suited to be a part of this association. Not that this would be a problem. The Lower Saxony branch of the VdH is under our control. The chairman and several of his members are in the service of the SDECE. And working for us, it goes without saying you’ll be well paid. You’re probably even entitled to some of that POW compensation yourself.”

  “And what’s more, we can make all this business with Helmut Knochen go away.” The Insomniac clicked his fingers. “Like that. We’ll put you up at a little boardinghouse in Göttingen. You’ll like Göttingen. It’s a nice town. From there it’s a short car ride down to Friedland.” He shrugged. “If things work out, we could perhaps make the arrangement more permanent.”

  I nodded. “Well, it’s been a long time since I saw de Boudel. And naturally, I would like to get out of La Santé. Göttingen’s nice, as you say. And I do need a job. It all sounds very generous, yes. But there is something else I’d like. There’s a woman in Berlin. Perhaps the only person in the whole of Germany who means anything to me. I’d like to go and see her. Make sure she’s all right. Give her some money, perhaps.”

  The Insomniac picked up a pencil and prepared to write. “Name and address?”

  “Her name is Elisabeth Dehler. When I was last in Berlin, about five years ago, her address was twenty-eight Motzstrasse, off the Ku-damm.”

  “You never mentioned her before.”

  I shrugged.

  “What does she do?”

  “She was a dressmaker. Still is, for all I know.”

  “And you and she were—what?”

  “We were involved for a while.”

  “Lovers?”

  “Yes, lovers, I suppose.”

  “We’ll check out the address for you. See if she’s still at that address. Save you the trouble if she’s not.”

  “Thanks.”
<
br />   He shrugged. “But if she is, we have no objections. It will be difficult. It’s always difficult going in and out of Berlin. Still, we’ll manage.”

  “Good. Then we have a deal. If I knew the words, I’d sing ‘The Marseillaise.’”

  “A signature on a piece of paper will do for now. We’re not much for singing here at the Swimming Pool.”

  “There’s one question I have. Everyone calls this place the Swimming Pool. Why?”

  The two Frenchmen smiled. One of them stood up and opened a window. “Can’t you hear it?” he said after a moment. “Can’t you smell it?”

  I got up and went to his side and listened carefully. In the distance I could hear what sounded like a school playground.

  “You see that turreted building over the wall?” he explained. “That is the largest swimming pool in all of Paris. It was built for the 1924 Olympics. On a day like today, half the children in the city are there. We go there ourselves sometimes when it’s quieter.”

  “Sure,” I said. “We had the same thing in the Gestapo. The Landwehr Canal. We never went swimming there ourselves, of course. But we took lots of others there. Communists, mostly. That is, provided they couldn’t swim.”

  28

  FRANCE AND GERMANY, 1954

  From La Santé I was transferred to the Pension Verdin at 102 avenue Victor Hugo in the suburbs of Sainte-Mandé, which was about a five-minute drive south from the Swimming Pool. It was a quiet, comfortable place with polished parquet floors, tall windows, and a lovely garden, where I sat in the sun awaiting my return to Germany. The pension was a sort of safe house and hotel for members of the SDECE and its agents, and there were several faces I half recognized from my time in the Swimming Pool, but no one bothered me. I was even allowed out—although I was followed at a distance—and spent a day walking northeast along the Seine as far as the Île de la Cité and Notre Dame Cathedral. It was the first time I’d seen Paris without the Wehrmacht everywhere, or without hundreds of signs in German. Bicycles had given way to a great many cars, which did little to make me feel any safer than I’d felt as an enemy soldier in 1940. But a lot of this was just nerves—cement fever after spending the last six months in one prison or another: I couldn’t have felt more like a big-house brother if I’d been carrying a ball and chain. Or looked like one. That was why they took me to Galeries Lafayette on boulevard Haussmann to get some new clothes. It would be an exaggeration to say that my new clothes made me feel normal again: Too much water had run off the mountain for that to happen. However, I did feel partly restored. Like an old door with a new lick of paint.