Philip Kerr - Berlin Noir

‘I was thinking: if you were to tell Müller exactly what he wants to hear, then it might save you a lot of pain. I’d hate to see an old friend suffer. And believe me, he’ll make you suffer.’

‘I don’t doubt it. It’s not this coffee that’s helped to keep me awake, I can tell you. Come on, what is this? The old friend and foe routine? Like I said, I don’t know why Linden was canned.’

‘No, but I could tell you.’

I winced as the cigarette smoke stung my eyes. ‘Let me get this straight,’ I said uncertainly. ‘You’re going to tell me what happened to Linden, in order that I can spill it to Müller, and thereby save myself from a fate worse than death, right?’

‘That’s about the size of it.’

I shrugged, painfully. ‘I don’t see that I’ve got anything to lose.’ I grinned. ‘Of course, you could just let me escape, Arthur. For old times’ sake.’

‘We weren’t going to talk about old times, you said so yourself. Anyway, you know too much. You’ve seen Müller. You’ve seen me. I’m dead, remember?’

‘Nothing personal, Arthur, but I wish you were.’ I took another cigarette and lit myself with the butt of the first. ‘All right, unpack it. Why was Linden killed?’

‘Linden had a German-American background. He even read German at Cornell University. During the war he had some minor intelligence role, and afterwards worked as a denazification officer. He was a clever man, and soon had a nice racket going for himself, selling Persil certificates, clearances for Old Comrades, you know the sort of thing. Then he joined the CIC as a desk-investigator and Crowcass liaison officer at the Berlin Documents Centre. Naturally he kept up his old black-market contacts and by this time he had become known to us in the Org as someone sympathetic to our cause. We contacted him in Berlin and offered him a sum of money to perform a small service, on an occasional basis.

‘You remember I told you about how a number of us faked our deaths? Gave ourselves new identities? Well, that was Albers – the Max Abs you were interested in. His idea. But of course the fundamental weakness of any new identity, especially when it has to be done so quickly, is that one lacks a past. Think of it, Bernie: world war, every able-bodied German between the ages of twelve and sixty-five under arms, and no service record for me, Alfred Nolde. Where was I? What was I doing? We thought we were very clever in killing off our real identities, letting the records fall into the hands of the Amis, but instead it merely created new questions. We had no idea that the Documents Centre would prove to be quite so comprehensive. Its effect has been to make it possible to check every answer on a man’s denazification questionnaire.

‘Many of us were working for the Americans by this stage. Naturally it suits them now to turn a blind eye to the pasts of our Org members. But what about tomorrow? Politicians have a habit of changing policy. Right now we’re friends in the fight against Communism. But will the same hold true in five or ten years’ time?

‘So Albers came up with a new scheme. He created old documentation for our more senior personnel in their new identities, himself included. We were all of us given smaller, less culpable roles in the SS and Abwehr than were possessed by our real selves. As Alfred Nolde I was a sergeant in the SS Personnel Section. My file contains all my personal details: even dental records. I led a quiet, fairly blameless kind of war. It’s true I was a Nazi, but never a war-criminal. That was somebody else. The fact that I happen to resemble someone called Arthur Nebe is neither here nor there.

‘Security at the Centre is tight, however. It’s impossible to take files out. But it is comparatively easy to take files in. Nobody is searched when they go into the Centre, only when they leave. This was Linden’s job. Once a month Becker would deliver new files, forged by Albers, to Berlin. And Linden would file them in the archive. Naturally this was before we found out about Becker’s Russian friends.’

‘Why were the forgeries done here and not in Berlin?’ I asked. ‘That way you could have cut out the need for a courier.’

‘Because Albers refused to go anywhere near Berlin. He liked it here in Vienna, not least because Austria is the first step on the rat-line. It’s easy to get across the border into Italy, and then the Middle East, South America. There were lots of us who came south. Like birds in winter, eh?’

‘So what went wrong?’

‘Linden got greedy, that’s what went wrong. He knew the material he was getting was forged, but he couldn’t understand what it amounted to. At first I think it was mere curiosity. He started photographing the stuff we were giving him. And then he enlisted the help of a couple of Jewish lawyers – Nazi-hunters – to try and establish the nature of the new files, who these men were.’

‘The Drexlers.’

‘They were working with the Joint Army Group on war crimes. Probably the Drexlers had no idea that Linden’s motives for seeking their help were purely personal and for profit. And why should they have done? His credentials were unquestionable. Anyway, I think they noted something about all these new SS personnel and Party records: that we kept the same initials as our old identities; it’s an old trick with building a new legend. Makes you feel more comfortable with your new name. Something as instinctive as initialling a contract becomes safe. I think Drexler must have compared these new names with the names of comrades who were missing or presumed dead and suggested that Linden might like to compare the details of a file held on Alfred Nolde with the file on Arthur Nebe, Heinrich Müller with Heinrich Moltke, Max Abs with Martin Albers etc.’

‘So that’s why you had the Drexlers killed.’

‘Exactly. That was after Linden turned up here in Vienna, looking for more money. Money to keep his mouth shut. It was Müller who met him and who killed him. We knew that Linden had already made contact with Becker, for the very simple reason that Linden told us. So we decided to kill two flies with one swat. First we left several cases of cigarettes around the warehouse where Linden was killed in order to incriminate Becker. Then König went to see Becker and told him that Linden was missing. The idea was that Becker would start going round asking questions about Linden, looking for him at his hotel and generally getting himself noticed. At the same time König switched Müller’s gun for Becker’s. Then we informed the police that Becker had shot and killed Linden. It was an unlooked-for bonus that Becker already knew where Linden’s body was, and that he should return to the scene of the crime with the aim of taking away the cigarettes. Of course the Amis were waiting for him and caught him red-handed. The case was watertight. All the same, if the Amis had been even half efficient they would have discovered the link between Becker and Linden in Berlin. But I don’t think they even bothered to take the investigation outside of Vienna. They’re happy with what they’ve got. Or at least we thought they were until now.’

‘With what Linden knew, why didn’t he take the precaution of leaving a letter with someone? Informing the police of what had happened in the event of his death.’

‘Oh, but he did,’ said Nebe. ‘Only the particular lawyer he chose in Berlin was also a member of the Org. On Linden’s death he read the letter and passed it across to the head of the Berlin section.’ Nebe stared levelly at me, and nodded seriously. ‘That’s it, Bernie. That’s what Müller wants to find out if you know or not. Well, now that you do know, you can tell him, and save yourself from being tortured. Naturally, I would prefer it if this conversation remained a secret.’