Philip Kerr - Field Grey

It's one of life's little jokes that whenever you think that things can hardly get any worse they usually do.

I must have fallen asleep again, and for a moment I thought it was just another bad dream. I felt several pairs of hands upon me, turning me over onto my stomach and ripping the pyjama jacket off my back; and then I was simultaneously hooded and handcuffed. As the manacles pinched my wrists painfully I cried out, and for this sound I received a punch on the head.

'Quiet,' hissed a voice – an American voice. 'Or you'll get another.'

The hands, which wore rubber gloves, hauled me onto my feet. Someone pulled down my pyjama trousers and I was dragged and then marched out of my cell, along the landing and down the stairs. We went outside briefly and crossed the yard. Doors opened and slammed behind us and after that I quickly lost track of where I was beyond the obvious fact that I was still within the walls of Landsberg. I felt a hand push down on top of my hooded head.

'Sit down,' said a voice.

I sat and that would have been fine except that there was no chair and I heard several loud guffaws as I lay sprawled in pain on the stone-flagged floor.

'Did you think of that one all by yourself?' I said. 'Or did you get the idea from a movie?'

'I told you to shut up.' Someone kicked me in the small of my back, not so hard as to cause any damage but enough to shut me up. 'Speak when spoken to.'

More hands picked me up again and dumped me onto a chair, and this time it was there.

Then I heard lots of footsteps leaving the room and a door closing but not being locked, and I might have supposed myself alone but for the fact that I could smell the smoke from a cigarette. I would have asked for one myself if I thought I could have smoked it with a hood over my head. There was that and the chance I might get kicked or punched again. So I stayed quiet, telling myself that despite their threats this was the opposite of what they wanted. Unless you're going to put a man on a gallows trapdoor and hang him, you hood him for only one reason: to help soften him up and make him talk. The only thing was, I couldn't imagine what they wanted me to say that I hadn't already told them.

Ten minutes passed. Maybe longer, but probably less. Time starts to expand when they take your light away. I closed my eyes. That way it was me in control and not them. Even if they took the hood off now I wouldn't see anything. I took a deep breath and let it out as steadily as I could, trying to get a hold of my fear. Telling myself I'd been in tighter spots. That after the mud of Amiens in 1918 this was easy. There weren't even any shells bursting overhead. I was still wearing four limbs and my balls. A hood was nothing. They wanted me not to see anything, then that was fine with me. I'd lived through black and sightless days before. They don't come much blacker than Amiens. The black day of the German Army, Ludendorff called it, and not without justification. What else do you call it when you're facing a force of four hundred and fifty tanks and thirteen divisions of Anzacs? With more arriving all the time.

I heard a match and caught the smoke of another cigarette. A chain smoker, perhaps? Or someone else? I took a deep breath and tried to get a hold of some smoke in my own lungs. American tobacco, that much was clear from the sweet smell. Probably they put sugar in it the way they put sugar in almost everything – in coffee, in liquor, on fresh fruit. Maybe they put sugar on their wives, too and, if the men were anything to go by, they probably needed a little sweetening.

Not long after my arrival at Landsberg, Hermann Priess, the former commander of the offending SS troop at Malmedy, during the battle of the Bulge, had told me about this kind of rough treatment at the hands of the Americans. Before their trial for the murder of ninety US servicemen, Priess, Peiper and seventy-four other men had been hooded and beaten and forced to sign confessions. The whole incident had caused quite a stink at the International Court of Justice and in the US Senate. Since I hadn't yet been beaten, it was perhaps a little too early to say that the American military was incapable of learning a lesson in human rights but, underneath my hood, I wasn't holding my breath.

'Congratulations, Gunther. That's the longest anyone wearing a hood in here has ever kept his mouth shut.'

The man was speaking German, quite good German, too, but I was sure it wasn't Silverman or Earp.

For the moment I kept my mouth shut. And what was there to say yet? That's the thing about being interrogated: you always know that eventually someone is going to ask you a question.

'I've been reading over the case notes,' said the voice. 'Your case notes. The ones made by Silverman and Earp. By the way, they won't be joining us for the rest of your questioning. They don't approve of the way we do things.'

All the time he was speaking I was tensed for the blow I felt sure was coming. One of the other prisoners told me the Amis had beaten him for a whole hour in Schwabisch Hall in an effort to get him to incriminate Jochen Peiper.

'Relax, Gunther. No one is going to hit you. So long as you cooperate you'll be just fine. The hood's for my protection. Outside of this place it might be awkward for both of us if you ever recognised me. You see, I work for the Central Intelligence Agency.'

'And what about your friend? The other man in here? Does he work for the CIA as well?'

'You've got good ears, Gunther, I'll say that for you,' said the other Ami. 'Maybe that's why you've lived so long.' His German was good, too. 'Yes, I'm also with the CIA.'

'Congratulations. That must make you both very proud.'

'No, no. Congratulations to you, Gunther. Silverman and Earp have cleared you of any criminal wrongdoing.' This was the first voice speaking now. 'They're satisfied that you didn't murder anyone. At least, not by the inflated standard of everyone else who's in here.' He laughed. 'I know, that's not saying much. But there it is. As far as Uncle Sam is concerned, you're not a war criminal.'

'Well, that's a relief, 'I said. 'If it wasn't for these handcuffs I might punch the air.'

'They said you had a smart mouth. And they're not wrong. They're just a little, naive, perhaps. About you, I mean.'

'Over the years,' said the other man, 'you've caused us quite a few problems. Do you know that?'

'I'm pleased to hear it.'

'In Garmisch-Partenkirchen. In Vienna. As a matter of fact, you and I have met before. In the military hospital at the Stiftskaserne?'

'You didn't speak German then,' I said.

'Actually I did. But it suited me to let you and that American army officer, Roy Shields, think otherwise.'

'I remember you. Like it was yesterday.'

'Sure you do.'

'And let's not forget our mutual friend, Jonathan Jacobs.'

'How is he? Dead I hope.'

'No. But he's still adamant you tried to kill him. Apparently he found a box full of anopheles mosquitoes in the back seat of his Buick. Fortunately for him they were all dead of cold.'

'Pity.'

'German winters can be brutal.'

'Not brutal enough, it would seem,' I said. 'Almost ten years after the war, and you're still here.'

'It's a different kind of war now.'

'We're all on the same side.'

'Sure,' I said. 'I know that. But if this is how you treat your friends I'm beginning to see why the Russians went over to the other side.'

'It wouldn't be sensible to get smart with us, Gunther. Not in your position. We don't like wise guys.'

'I always thought that being wise was a useful part of Intelligence.'

'Doing what you're told when you're told is of greater value in our work.'

'You disappoint me.'

"That's of no real consequence beside the fact that you don't disappoint us.'