Joseph Kanon - A Good German

“About you? I don’t know yet.”

“You’re not sending me back to Kransberg?”

“Not until I know who took you out in the first place. They might try again.”

“So I’m a prisoner here?”

“It could be worse. You could be in Moscow.”

“With you? With Lena? I can’t stay here.”

“They’d grab you the minute you hit the streets.”

“Not if I’m with the Americans. You don’t trust your own people?”

“Not with you. You trusted them, look where it got you.”

“Yes, I trusted them. How could I know? He was-sympathetic. He was going to take me to her. To Berlin.”

“Where you could pick up some files while you were at it. Von Braun send you this time too?”

Emil looked at him, uncertain, then shook his head. “He thought they were destroyed.”

“But you didn’t.”

“I thought so. But my father-I couldn’t be sure, not with him. And of course I was right. He gave them to you.”

“No. He never gave me anything. I took them. He protected you right to the end. God knows why.”

Emil looked at the floor, embarrassed. “Well, no difference.”

“It is to him.”

Emil took this in for a moment, then let it go. “Anyway, you have them.”

“But Tully didn’t. Now why is that? You tell him about the files and then you don’t tell him where they are.”

The first hint of a smile, oddly superior. “I didn’t have to. He thought he knew. He said, I know where they are, all the files. Where the Americans have them. He was going to help, if you can imagine such a thing. He said only an American could get them. So I let him think that. He was going to get them for me,” he said, shaking his head.

“Out of the kindness of his heart?” Collecting twice.

“Of course for money. I said yes. I knew they weren’t there-I would never have to pay. And if he could take me out- So I was the clever one. Then he delivered me to the Russians.”

“Quite a pair. Why the hell did you tell him in the first place?”

“I never had a head for drink. It was-a despair. How can I explain it? All those weeks, waiting, why didn’t they send us to America? Then we heard about the trials, how the Americans were looking for Nazis everywhere, and I thought, we’ll never get out, they won’t send us. And maybe I said something like that, that the Americans would call us Nazis, us, because in the war we had to do things, and how would it look now? There were files, everything we did. What files? SS, I said, they kept everything. I don’t know, I was a little drunk maybe, to say that much. And he said it was only the Jews who were doing that, hunting Nazis-the Americans wanted us. To continue our work. He understood how important that was.“ His voice firmer now, sure of something at last. ”And it’s right, you know. To stop now, for this-“

Jake put down the mug and reached for a cigarette. “And the next thing you knew, you were off to Berlin. Tell me how that worked.”

“It’s another debriefing?” Emil said, annoyed.

“You’ve got the time. Have a seat. Don’t leave anything out.”

Emil sank back onto the armrest, rubbing his temples as if he were trying to arrange his memory. But the story he had to tell was the one Jake already knew, without surprises. No other Americans, the secret of Tully’s partner still safe with Sikorsky. Only a few new details of the border crossing. The guards, apparently, had been courteous. “Even then, I didn’t know,” Emil said. “Not until Berlin. Then I knew it was finished for me.”

“But not for Tully,” Jake said, thinking aloud. “Now he had some other fish to fry, thanks to your little talk. Lots of possibilities there. Did the others at Kransberg know about this, by the way?”

“My group? Of course not. They wouldn’t—” He stopped, nervous.

“What? Be as understanding as Tully was? They’d have a mess on their hands, wouldn’t they? Explaining things.”

“I didn’t know he would have this idea. I thought the files were destroyed. I would never betray them. Never,” he said, louder, aroused. “You understand, we are a team. It’s how we work. Von Braun did everything to keep us together, everything. You can’t know what it was like. Once they even arrested him-a man like that. But together, all through the war. When you share that-no one else knows what it was like. What we had to do.”

“What you had to do. Christ, Emil. I read the file.”

“Yes, what we had to do. What do you think? I’m SS too? Me?”

“I don’t know. People change.”

Emil stood up. “I don’t have to answer to you. You, of all people.”

“You’ll have to answer to someone,” Jake said calmly. “You might as well start with me.”

“So it’s a trial now. Ha, in this whorehouse.”

“The girls weren’t at Nordhausen. You were.”

“Nordhausen. You read something in a file—”

“I was there. In the camps. I saw your workers.”

“My workers? You want us to answer for that? That was SS, not us. We had nothing to do with that.”

“Except to let it happen.”

“And what should we do? File a complaint? You don’t know what it was like.”

“Then tell me.”

“Tell you what? What is it you want to know? What?”

Jake looked at him, suddenly at a loss. The same glasses and soft eyes, now wide and defiant, besieged. What, finally?

“I guess, what happened to you,” he said quietly. “I used to know you.”

Emil’s face trembled, as if he’d been stung. “Yes, we used to know each other. It seems, both wrong. Lena’s friend.” He held Jake’s eyes for a second, then retreated to the chair, subdued. “What happened. You ask that? You were here. You know what it was like in Germany. Do you think I wanted that?”

“No.”

“No. But then what? Turn my back, like my father, until it was over? When was that? Maybe never. My life was then, not when it was over. All my training. You don’t wait until the politics are convenient. We were just at the beginning. How could we wait?”

“So you worked for them.”

“No, we survived them. Their stupid interference. The demands, always crazy. Reports. All of it. They took away Dornberger, our leader, and we survived that too. So the work would survive, even after the war. Do you understand what it means? To leave the earth? To make something new. But difficult, expensive. How else could we do it? They gave us the money, not enough, but enough to keep going, to survive them.”

“By building their weapons.”

“Yes, weapons. It was the war by then. Do you think I’m ashamed of that?” He looked down. “It’s my homeland. What I am. Lena too,” he said, glancing up. “The same blood. You do things in wartime—” He trailed off.

“I saw it, Emil,” Jake said. “That wasn’t war, not in Nordhausen. That was something else. You saw it.”

“They said it was the only way. There was a schedule. They needed the workers.”

“And killed them. To meet your schedule.”

“Ours, no. Their schedule. Impossible, crazy, like everything else. Was it crazy to mistreat the workers? Yes, everything was crazy. When I saw it, I couldn’t believe it, what they were doing. In Germany. But by then we were living in a madhouse. You become crazy yourself, living like that. How can it be, one sane person in the asylum? No, all crazy. All normal. They ask for estimates, crazy estimates, but you are crazy if you refuse. And they do terrible things to you, your family, so you become crazy too. We knew it was hopeless, all of us in the program. Even their numbers. Even numbers they made crazy. You don’t believe me? Listen to this. A little mathematical exercise,” he said, getting up to pace, the boy who could do numbers in his head.