Philip Kerr - Berlin Noir

‘Where are they taking us?’ she whispered to me.

I told her we were going to the Kärtnerstrasse.

‘No talking is allowed,’ said the English MP in appalling German. ‘Prisoners will keep quiet until we reach headquarters.’

I smiled quietly to myself. The language of bureaucracy was the only second language that an Englishman would ever be capable of speaking well.

The IP was headquartered in an old palace within a cigarette-end’s flick of the State Opera. The truck drew up outside and we were marched through huge glass doors and into a baroque-style hall, where an assortment of atlantes and caryatids showed the omnipresent hand of the Viennese stonemason. We went up a staircase that was as wide as a railway track, past urns and busts of forgotten noblemen, through a pair of doors that were longer than the legs of a circus tall-man and into an arrangement of glass-fronted offices. The Russian kapral opened the door of one of them, ushered his two prisoners inside and told us to wait there.

‘What did he say?’ Fräulein Hartmann asked as he closed the door behind him.

‘He said to wait.’ I sat down, lit a cigarette and looked about the room. There was a desk, four chairs and on the wall a large wooden noticeboard of the kind you see outside churches, except that this one was in Cyrillic, with columns of chalked numbers and names, headed ‘Wanted Persons’, ‘Absentees’, ‘Stolen Vehicles’, ‘Express Messages’, ‘Part I Orders’ and ’Part II Orders‘. In the column headed ’Wanted Persons’ appeared my own name and that of Lotte Hartmann. Belinsky’s pet Russian was making things look very convincing.

‘Have you any idea what this is all about?’ she asked tremulously.

‘No,’ I lied. ‘Have you?’

‘No, of course not. There must be some kind of mistake.’

‘Evidently.’

‘You don’t seem all that concerned. Or maybe you just don’t understand that it’s the Russians who ordered us to be brought here.’

‘Do you speak Russian?’

‘No, of course not,’ she said impatiently. ‘The American MP who arrested me said that this was a Russian call and nothing to do with him.’

‘Well, the Ivans are in the chair this month,’ I said reflectively. ‘What did the Frenchman say?’

‘Nothing. He just kept looking down the front of my dress.’

‘He would.’ I smiled at her. ‘It’s worth a look.’

She gave me a sarcastic sort of smile. ‘Yes, well, I don’t think they brought me here just to see the wood stacked in front of the cabin, do you?’ She spoke with crisp distaste, but accepted the cigarette I offered her all the same.

‘I can’t think of a better reason.’

She swore under her breath.

‘I’ve seen you, haven’t I?’ I said. ‘At the Oriental?’

‘What were you during the war – an air spotter?’

‘Be nice. Maybe I can help you.’

‘Better help yourself first.’

‘You can depend on that.’

When the office door finally opened it was a tall, burly-looking Red Army officer who came into the room. He introduced himself as Captain Rustaveli and took a seat behind the desk.

‘Look here,’ demanded Lotte Hartmann, ‘would you mind telling me why I’ve been brought here in the middle of the night? What the hell is going on?’

‘All in good time, Fräulein,’ he replied in flawless German. ‘Please sit down.’

She slumped on to a chair beside me and regarded him sullenly. The captain looked at me.

‘Herr Gunther?’

I nodded and told him in Russian that the girl spoke only German. ‘She’ll think I’m a more impressive son-of-a-bitch if you and I confine ourselves to a language she can’t understand.’

Captain Rustaveli stared coldly back at me and for a brief moment I wondered if something had gone wrong and Belinsky had not managed to make it clear to this Russian officer that our arrests were a put-up job.

‘Very well,’ he said after a long moment. ‘Nevertheless, we shall at least have to go through the motions of an interrogation. May I see your papers please, Herr Gunther?’ From his accent I took him for a Georgian. The same as Comrade Stalin.

I reached inside my jacket and handed over my identity card into which, at Belinsky’s suggestion, I had inserted two $100 bills while sitting in the truck. Rustaveli quickly slipped the money into his breeches pocket without blinking, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Lotte Hartmann’s jaw drop on to her lap.

‘Very generous,’ he murmured, turning over my identity card in his hairy fingers. Then he opened a file with my name on it. ‘Although quite unnecessary, I can assure you.’

‘There’s her feelings to think of, Captain. You wouldn’t want me to disappoint her prejudice, would you?’

‘No indeed. Good-looking, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Very.’

‘A whore, do you think?’

‘That, or something pretty close to it. I’m only guessing of course, but I’d say she was the type that likes to strip a man of a lot more than ten schillings and his underwear.’

‘Not the sort of girl to fall in love with, eh?’

‘It would be like putting your tail on an anvil.’

It was warm in Rustaveli’s office and Lotte started to fan herself with her jacket, allowing the Russian several glimpses of her ample cleavage.

‘It’s rare that an interrogation is quite so amusing,’ he said, and looking down at his papers added: ‘She has nice tits. That’s the kind of truth I can really respect.’

‘I guess it’s a lot easier for you Russians to look at.’

‘Well, whatever this little show has been laid on to achieve, I hope you get to have her. I can’t think of a better reason to go to all this trouble. Me, I’ve got a sexual disease: my tail swells up every time I see a woman.’

‘I guess that makes you a fairly typical Russian.’

Rustaveli smiled wryly. ‘Incidentally, you speak excellent Russian, Herr Gunther. For a German.’

‘So do you, Captain. For a Georgian. Where are you from?’

‘Tbilisi.’

‘Stalin’s birthplace?’

‘No, thank God. That’s Gori’s misfortune.’ Rustaveli closed my file. ‘That should be enough to impress her, don’t you think?’

‘Yes.’

‘What shall I tell her?’

‘You have information that she’s a whore,’ I explained, ‘so you’re reluctant to let her go. But you let me talk you into it.’

‘Well, that seems to be in order, Herr Gunther,’ Rustaveli said, reverting to German again. ‘My apologies for having detained you. Now you may leave.’

He handed back my identity card, and I stood up and made for the door.

‘But what about me?’ Lotte moaned.

Rustaveli shook his head. ‘I’m afraid you must stay, Fräulein. The vice squad doctor will be here shortly. He will question you regarding your work at the Oriental.’

‘But I’m a croupier,’ she wailed, ‘not a chocolady.’

‘That is not our information.’

‘What information?’

‘Your name has been mentioned by several other girls.’

‘What other girls?’

‘Prostitutes, Fräulein. Possibly you may have to submit yourself for a medical examination.’

‘A medical? What for?’

‘For venereal disease, of course.’

‘Venereal disease -?’

‘Captain Rustaveli,’ I said above Lotte’s rising cry of outrage, ‘I can vouch for this woman. I wouldn’t say I knew her very well, but I’ve known her long enough to be able to state, quite categorically, that she is not a prostitute.’

‘Well – ’ he cavilled.

‘I ask you: does she look like a prostitute?’

‘Frankly, I’ve yet to meet an Austrian girl who isn’t selling it.’ He closed his eyes for a second, and then shook his head. ‘I can’t go against the protocol. These are serious charges. Many Russian soldiers have been infected.’