by Philip Kerr
Field Grey
Philip Kerr
* * *
* * *
First published in Great Britain in 2010 by
Quercus
21 Bloomsbury Square
London WC1A 2NS
Copyright © 2010 by Philip Kerr
The moral right of Philip Kerr to be
identified as the author of this work has been
asserted in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication
may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopy, recording, or any
information storage and retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 84916 412 2 (HB)
ISBN 978 1 84916 413 9 (TPB)
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
businesses, organizations, places and events are
either the product of the author's imagination
or are used fictitiously.
For Allan Scott
'I don't like Ike.'
Graham Greene, The Quiet American
* * *
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE: CUBA, 1954
CHAPTER TWO: CUBA, 1954
CHAPTER THREE: CUBA AND NEW YORK, 1954
CHAPTER FOUR: NEW YORK, 1954
CHAPTER FIVE: GERMANY, 1954
CHAPTER SIX: MINSK, 1941
CHAPTER SEVEN: MINSK, 1941
CHAPTER EIGHT: GERMANY, 1954
CHAPTER NINE: GERMANY, 1954
CHAPTER TEN: GERMANY, 1954
CHAPTER ELEVEN: GERMANY, 1931
CHAPTER TWELVE: GERMANY, 1931
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: GERMANY, 1954
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: GERMANY, 1954
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: GERMANY, 1940
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: FRANCE, 1940
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: FRANCE, 1940
CHAPTER EIGHTTEEN: FRANCE, 1940
CHAPTER NINETEEN: FRANCE, 1940
CHAPTER TWENTY: FRANCE, 1940
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: GERMANY, 1954
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: FRANCE, 1940
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: GERMANY, 1954
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: GERMANY AND RUSSIA, 1945-1946
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: GERMANY, 1946
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: GERMANY, 1954
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: FRANCE, 1954
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: FRANCE AND GERMANY, 1954
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: GERMANY, 1946
CHAPTER THIRTY: GERMANY, 1954
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: GERMANY, 1954
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO: GERMANY, 1954
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE: GERMANY, 1954
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR: GERMANY, 1954
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE: GERMANY, 1954
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX: GERMANY, 1954
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN: BERLIN, 1954
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT: BERLIN, 1954
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE: BERLIN, 1954
CHAPTER FORTY: BERLIN, 1954
* * *
CHAPTER ONE: CUBA, 1954
'That Englishman with Ernestina,' she said, looking down at the luxuriously appointed public room. 'He reminds me of you, Señor Hausner.'
Dõna Marina knew me as well as anyone in Cuba, possibly better, since our acquaintance was founded on something stronger than mere friendship: Dõna Marina owned the best and largest brothel in Havana.
The Englishman was tall and round-shouldered with pale blue eyes and a lugubrious expression. He wore a blue linen short-sleeved shirt, grey cotton trousers, and well-polished black shoes. I had an idea I'd seen him before, in the Floridita Bar or perhaps the lobby of the National Hotel, but I was hardly looking at him. I was paying more attention to the new and near-naked chica who was sitting on the Englishman's lap and helping herself to puffs from the cigarette in his mouth while he amused himself by weighing her enormous breasts in his hands, like someone judging the ripeness of two grapefruit.
'In what way?' I asked and quickly glanced at myself in the big mirror that hung on the wall, wondering if there really was some point of similarity between us other than our appreciation of Ernestina's breasts and the huge dark nipples that adorned them like mountainous limpets.
The face that stared back at me was heavier than the Englishman's with a little more hair on top, but similarly fiftyish and cross-hatched with living. Perhaps Dõna Marina thought it was more than just living that was dry-etched on our two faces - the chiaroscuro of conscience and complicity perhaps, as if neither of us had done what ought to have been done or, worse, as if each of us lived with some guilty secret.
'You have the same eyes,' said Dõna Marina.
'Oh, you mean they're blue,' I said, knowing that this probably wasn't what she meant at all.
'No, it's not that. It's just that you and Señor Greene look at people in a certain way. As if you're trying to look inside them. Like a spiritualist. Or perhaps like a policeman. You both have very searching eyes that seem to look straight through a person. It's really most intimidating.'
It was hard to imagine Dõna Marina being intimidated by anything or anyone. She was always as relaxed as an iguana on a sun-warmed rock.
'Señor Greene, eh?' I wasn't in the least bit surprised that Dõna Marina had used his name. The Casa Marina was not the kind of place where you felt obliged to use a false one. You needed a reference just to get through the front door. 'Perhaps he is a policeman. With feet as big as his I wouldn't be at all surprised.'
'He's a writer.'
'What kind of a writer?'
'Novels. Westerns, I think. He told me he writes under the name of Buck Dexter.'
'Never heard of him. Does he live in Cuba?'
'No, he lives in London. But he always visits us when he's in Havana.'
'A traveller, eh?'
'Yes. Apparently he's on his way to Haiti this time.' She smiled. 'You don't see the likeness, now?'
'No, not really,' I said firmly and was pleased when she seemed to change the subject.
'How was it with Omara today?'
I nodded. 'Good.'
'You like her, yes?'
'Very much.'
'She's from Santiago,' said Dõna Marina as if this explained everything. 'All of my best girls come from Santiago. They're the most African-looking girls in Cuba. Men seem to like that.'
'I know I do.'
'I think it has something to do with the fact that unlike white women, black women have a pelvis that's almost as big as a man's. An anthropoid pelvis. And before you ask me how I know that it's because I used to be a nurse.'
I wasn't surprised to learn this. Dõna Marina put a premium on sexual health and hygiene and the staff at her house on Malecon included two nurses who were trained to deal with everything from a dose of jelly to a massive heart-attack. I'd heard it said that you had a better chance of surviving cardiac arrest at Casa Marina than you did at the University of Havana Medical School.
'Santiago's a real melting-pot,' she continued. 'Jamaicans, Haitians, Dominicans, Bahamians - it's Cuba's most Caribbean city. And its most rebellious, of course. All of our revolutions start in Santiago. I think it's because all of the people who live there are related to each other, in one way or another.'
She twisted a cigarette into a little amber holder and lit it with a handsome silver Tallboy.
'For example, did you know that Omara is related to the man who looks after your boat in Santiago?'
I was beginning to see that there was some purpose behind Dõna Marina's conversation, beca
use it was not just Mister Greene who was going to Haiti, it was me, too, only my trip was supposed to be a secret.
'No, I didn't.' I glanced at my watch, but before I could make my excuses and leave Dõna Marina had ushered me into her private drawing room and was offering me a drink. And thinking that perhaps it was best that I listen to what she had to say, in view of her mentioning my boat, I replied that I'd take an aniejo.
She fetched a bottle-aged rum and poured me a large one.
'Mister Greene is also very fond of our Havana rum,' she said.
'I think you'd better come to the point now,' I said. 'Don't you?'
And so she did.
Which is how it was that I came to have a girl in the passenger seat of my Chevy as, about a week later, I drove south-west along Cuba's central highway to Santiago, at the opposite end of the island. The irony of this experience did not escape me; in seeking to escape from being blackmailed by a secret policeman I had managed to put myself in a position where a brothel madam who was much too clever to threaten me openly, felt able to ask a favour that I hardly wanted to grant: to take a chica from another Havana casa with me on my 'fishing trip' to Haiti. It was almost certain that Dõna Marina knew Lieutenant Quevedo and knew he would have held a very dim view of my taking any kind of a boat trip; but I rather doubted she knew he had threatened to have me deported back to Germany, where I was wanted for murder, unless I agreed to spy on Meyer Lansky, the underworld boss who was my employer. Either way I had little choice but to accede to her request, although I could have felt a lot happier about my passenger. Melba Marrero was being sought by the police in connection with the murder of a police captain from the Ninth Precinct, and there were friends of Dõna Marina who wanted Melba off the island of Cuba as quickly as possible.
Melba Marrero was in her early twenties, although she hardly liked anyone to know that. I suppose she wanted people to take her seriously, and it's possible that this is why she had shot Captain Balart. But it's more likely that she had shot him because she was connected with Castro's communist rebels. She was coffee-coloured with a fine gamine face, a belligerent chin and a stormy-weather look in her dark eyes. Her hair was cut after the Italian fashion - short, layered locks with a few wispy curls combed forward across her face. She wore a plain white blouse, a pair of tight fawn trousers, a tan leather belt and matching gloves. She looked like she was going riding on a horse that was probably looking forward to it.
'Why didn't you buy a convertible?' she asked when we were still a way short of Santa Clara, which was to be our first stop. 'A convertible is better, in Cuba.'
'I don't like convertibles. People look at you more when you're driving a convertible. And I don't much like being looked at.'
'So, are you the shy type? Or are you just guilty about some thing?'
'Neither. Just private.'
'Got a smoke?'
'There's a packet in the glove box.'
She stabbed the lock on the lid with a finger and let it fall open in front of her.
'Old Gold. I don't like Old Gold.'
'You don't like my car. You don't like my cigarettes. What do you like?'
'It doesn't matter.'
I took a sideways glance at her. Her mouth always seemed to be on the edge of a snarl, an impression that was enhanced by the strong white teeth that filled it. Hard as I tried I couldn't imagine anyone touching her without losing a finger. She sighed and, clasping her hands tightly, pushed them between her knees.
'So what's your story, Señor Hausner?'
'I don't have one.'
She shrugged. 'It's seven hundred miles to Santiago.'
'Try reading a book.' I knew she had one.
'Maybe I will.' She opened her handbag and took out a pair of glasses and a book and started to read.
After a while I managed to sneak a look at the title. She was reading How the Steel Was Tempered by Nikolai Ostrovsky. I tried not to smile but it was no good.
'Something funny?'
I nodded at the book on her lap. 'I wouldn't have thought so.'
'It's about someone who participated in the Russian Revolution.'
'That's what I thought.'
'So, what do you believe in?'
'Not much.'
'That's not going to help anyone.'
'As if that matters.'
'Doesn't it?'
'In my book the party of not much beats the party of brotherly love every time. The people and the proletariat don't need anyone's help. Certainly not yours or mine.'
'I don't believe that.'
'Oh, I'm sure. But it's funny don't you think? Both of us running away to Haiti like this. You because you believe in something and me because I believe in nothing at all.'
'First it was not much you believed in. Now it's nothing at all. Marx and Engels were correct. The bourgeoisie does produce its own gravediggers.'
I laughed.
'Well, we've established something,' she said. 'That you are running away.'
'Yes. That's my story. If you're really interested, it's the same story as always. The Flying Dutchman. The Wandering Jew. There's been quite a bit of travel involved, one way or the other. I thought I was safe here in Cuba.'
'No one is safe in Cuba,' she said. 'Not any more.'
'I was safe,' I said, ignoring her. 'Until I tried to play the hero. Only I forgot. I'm not the stuff of which heroes are made. Never was. Besides, the world doesn't want heroes. They're out of fashion, like last year's hemlines. What is now required are freedom fighters and informers. Well, I'm too old for the one and too scrupulous for the other.'
'What happened?'
'Some obnoxious lieutenant of military intelligence wanted to make me his spy, only there was something about it I didn't like.'
'Then you're doing the right thing,' said Melba. 'There's no disgrace in not wanting to be a police spy.'
'You almost make it sound like I'm doing something noble. It isn't that way at all.'
'What way is it?'
'I don't want to be the coin in anyone's pocket. I had enough of that during the war. I prefer to roll around on my own. But that's just part of the reason. Spying is dangerous. It's especially dangerous when there's a good chance of being caught. But I dare say you know that by now.'
'What did Marina tell you about me?'
'All she needed to. I kind of stopped listening after she said that you shot a cop. That pretty much brings the curtain down on the movie. My movie, anyway.'
'You speak like you don't approve.'
'Cops are the same as anyone else,' I said. 'Some good and some bad. I was a cop like that myself, once. A long time ago.'
'I did it for the revolution,' she said.
'I didn't imagine you did it for a coconut.'
'He was a bastard and he had it coming and I did it for-'
'I know, you did it for the revolution.'
'Don't you think Cuba needs a revolution?'
'I won't deny that things could be better. But every revolution smokes well before it turns to ash. Yours will be like all the others that went before. I guarantee it.'
Melba was shaking her pretty head but, warming to my subject, I kept on going: 'Because when someone talks about building a better society you can bet he's planning to use a couple of sticks of dynamite.'
After that she remained silent and so did I.
We stopped for a while in Santa Clara. About one hundred and eighty miles east of Havana, it was a picturesque, unremarkable little town with a central park faced by several old buildings and hotels. Melba went off by herself. I sat outside the Central Hotel and had lunch on my own, which suited me fine. When she reappeared we set off again.
In the early evening we reached Camaguey, which was full of triangular houses and large earthenware jars filled with flowers. I didn't know why and it never occurred to me to ask. Parallel to the highway a goods train moving in the opposite direction was loaded with timber cut from the region's many forests.
; 'We're stopping here,' I announced.
'Surely it would be better to keep going.'
'Can you drive?'
'No.'
'Neither can I. Not any more. I'm beat. It's another two hundred miles to Santiago and if we don't stop soon we'll both wake up in the morgue.'
Near a brewery - one of the few on the island - we passed a police car, which got me thinking again about Melba and the crime she had committed.
'If you shot a cop, then they must want you bad,' I said.
'Very bad. They bombed the casa where I was working. Several other girls were killed or seriously injured.'
'Which is why Dõna Marina agreed to help get you out of Havana?' I nodded. 'Yes, it makes sense now. When one casa gets bombed it's bad for all of them. In which case it will be safer if we share a room. I'll say you're my wife. That way you won't have to show them your identity card.'
'Look, Señor Hausner, I am grateful to you for taking me with you to Haiti. But there's one thing you should know. I only volunteered to play the part of a chica to get close to Captain Balart.'
'I was wondering about that.'
'I did it for the-'
'The revolution. I know. Listen, Melba, your virtue, if there is anything left of it, it's safe with me. I told you, I'm tired. I could sleep on a bonfire. But I'll settle for a chair or a sofa and you can have the bed.'
She nodded. 'Thank you, Señor.'
'And stop calling me that. My name is Carlos. Call me that. I'm supposed to be your husband, remember?'
We checked into the Gran Hotel in the centre of town and went up to the room. I crawled straight to bed, which is to say I slept on the floor. During the summer of 1941 some of the floors I slept on in Russia were the most comfortable beds I ever had, only this wasn't as comfortable. Then again I wasn't nearly as exhausted as I'd been back then. About two o'clock in the morning I awoke to find her wrapped in a sheet and kneeling beside me.