Сэм Истлэнд - The Elegant Lie

Ritter fired these questions at Carter with such speed and relentlessness that Carter had almost no time to think about the answers. And he knew this was exactly the point. For almost every question, he was able to answer with the truth. Only when Ritter asked about the war did Carter shave away the facts and simply say that he had served in the Ardennes. Whoever Ritter was, he had experience in shaking people down to see if they were lying, and Carter knew that the answers mattered less than the way he answered them.

Finally, after Ritter had been pounding him with questions for more than fifteen minutes, Carter called out, ‘Stop!’

To his surprise, Ritter did just that.

‘Why are you doing this?’ asked Carter.

‘Mr Dasch considers himself an infallible judge of character,’ replied Ritter, ‘and maybe he is, but his methods leave much to be desired.’

‘And are we done?’ demanded Carter. ‘Or do you need to ask what kind of toothpaste I use and which way I stir my coffee?’

‘We are done for now,’ said Ritter calmly.

‘What are you?’ asked Carter. ‘A cop?’

‘I am what you see,’ replied Ritter. ‘A driver for Mr Dasch, and nothing more.’

‘But I doubt that’s all you’ve ever been.’

Ritter glanced across at him. ‘The war has forced us all to reinvent ourselves.’

‘So how long have you worked for Dasch?’

‘Since the time he almost ran me off the road.’

‘And why did he do that? Was he trying to kill you or something?’

‘Not at all. He wanted to purchase this car! I was driving it along the Oberländerufer in the southern part of Cologne, just along the west bank of the Rhine, when one of Dasch’s yellow trucks flashed its lights and its driver began waving at me. At first I ignored him, but he kept at it for so long that eventually I pulled over to see what the hell he wanted. It was Dasch himself! He had spotted the Tatra and decided right then that he had to have it.’

‘And did you sell it to him?’

‘Of course!’ Ritter turned to him and smiled. ‘Mr Dasch can be very persuasive. You see, he not only bought the car. He bought me to go along with it.’

‘You mean as his driver?’

‘As a person who would do whatever he wanted me to do, no matter what he asked, without question or complaint. I have amassed some considerable experience in that department. But they were the kind of skills that I had imagined would be of no use from now on, especially for someone like me.’

‘You mean you really would have shot me back there behind the Bleihof club?’

‘Of course.’ Ritter sounded almost offended. ‘Mr Dasch admires you, which means we are friends now, you and I. But you should be aware, Mr Carter, that if the day ever comes when Mr Dasch says otherwise, I’ll put you in the ground without a moment’s hesitation.’

‘Why would you commit a crime like that just to satisfy another man’s curiosity?’

‘Because he is not just another man,’ answered Ritter. ‘He is the one who saved me from myself.’

‘And how did he do that?’

‘By giving me a reason to live,’ answered Ritter. ‘When I was a child and it was time to go to bed, my mother would say, “Stay in your room. The night is full of monsters.” When the war ended, I was forced to navigate my way through a world in which, from one day to the next, I changed from a hero◦– a knight of an empire that was to last a thousand years◦– into one of those monsters about which mothers warn their children. There was no longer a place for me in the world. For proof of that, all I had to do was look out of my window at the ruins of Cologne, a city that has stood since the time of the Romans. And just as the Romans belonged to the past, so did I. The only difference, it seemed to me, was that the Romans had the luxury of being dead. For years, I was torn between killing myself and killing everyone around me. On the day that I met Hanno Dasch, I had reluctantly arrived at the conclusion that killing everyone else was impractical.’ He breathed in suddenly with a gasp of air, like a half-drowned man coming to life. ‘I was on my way to the ruins of the Drachenfels castle, just a few miles down the road at Königswinter. I had chosen this spot because it stands upon a cliff looking out over the Rhine, from which I could be sure the fall would kill me. But Mr Dasch convinced me otherwise, and that is why I owe him everything.’

‘And what about Dasch?’ asked Carter. ‘What did he do in the war?’ The question seemed innocent enough, but in fact it was high on the list of Wilby’s orders for Carter to discover exactly what Dasch had been up to before 1945. US intelligence had found nothing at all on him before that time. He seemed to have no record of service in the military, even though he was the right age to have been called up.

‘Mr Dasch,’ said Ritter, ‘does not like to speak about his time in the war.’

‘So you don’t know what he did?’

‘No.’

‘And doesn’t that bother you, not knowing?’

‘I have learned to contain my curiosity,’ said Ritter. ‘You might do well, at least for now, to follow my example.’

At the outer edge of the Raderthal district they arrived at a large gated compound, surrounded by fences topped with thick coils of barbed wire. Inside the compound was a collection of German Army Hanomags, British Bedford lorries and American Dodge trucks, all with coatings of yellow paint and the words ‘Dasch AG’ stencilled in red upon the doors.

A guard opened the gate for them to pass. He wore a battered pinwheel cap and a hip-length, double-breasted wool coat with wooden toggle buttons, and he carried a hunting rifle slung over his shoulder.

The car pulled up in front of a large brick building, which had been divided into a mechanic shop on one side and an office area on the other. In the service bays of the mechanic shop, two trucks were being worked on by men whose upper bodies were plastered black with oil. The office building had a bench out front, flanked on each side by a terracotta pot in which geraniums were growing.

Dasch himself stood at the window of the office, hands in pockets, watching the car approach.

‘As you see,’ said Ritter, ‘you are expected.’

At first glance, Carter could spot no place where it might be possible for quantities of black market goods to be hidden away, or any indication that the trucks in the lot could be loaded with contraband without being noticed, since everything was out in the open.

Far in the distance, across a tangled field of tall grass mixed with brambles, lay a railway siding in which goods wagons were being shunted back and forth by a small locomotive. The clank and rattle of the iron wheels sounded across the empty space, disjointed from the source of the noise, as if a ghostly crew of blacksmiths were hammering hot iron somewhere out there in the wasteland.

Entering the office, Carter caught the smell of coffee and cigarettes. The first person he saw was Teresa. She was sitting at a desk, tallying a stack of receipts which had been impaled upon a metal spike and whose many layers reminded Carter of the strips of meat he used to see on the kebab grill at a restaurant where he sometimes ate his lunch, down on the docks of Elizabeth. Teresa looked up at Carter, but did not smile. She seemed to be staring right through him and Carter wondered if this hostility was shared with everyone she met, or if it had been saved for him alone. ‘I didn’t think you would be so easily bought,’ she said.

‘I didn’t think I was for sale,’ replied Carter.

‘Of course you were,’ she told him. ‘Everyone who walks through that door is for sale. The only difference between them is the price.’