Philip Kerr - Field Grey

An unassuming man wearing pince-nez, a black armband and a stiff collar came towards us washing one hand in the other like Pontius Pilate and smiling an intermittent smile as if he was functioning on half power only.

'Ah yes,' he said quietly. 'General Heydrich, isn't it? Yes, please come through.'

He ushered us into a room that belonged in the Herrenklub. There were leather armchairs, a clock ticking on a mantelpiece, a pair of full-length mirrors and several glass cases containing a variety of military uniforms. On the walls were an abundance of royal warrants and pictures of Hitler and Goring, whose fondness for wearing uniforms of all colours was well known. Through a green velvet curtain I could see several men cutting cloth or pressing half-finished uniforms with a hot iron and, to my surprise, one of these men was an orthodox Jew. It was a nice example of Nazi hypocrisy to have a Jewish tailor making an SS uniform.

'This officer needs an SS uniform,' explained Heydrich. 'Field grey. And it has to be ready in one week's time. Ordinarily, I should send him to the SS quartermaster for an off-the-peg Hugo Boss uniform, but he'll be travelling on the Fuhrer's personal train, so he'll need to look smart. Can you do it, Herr Holters?'

The tailor looked surprised even to be asked such a question. He uttered a polite little guffaw and smiled with quiet confidence. 'Oh, certainly, Herr General.'

'Good,' said Heydrich. 'Send the account to my office. Gunther? I will leave you in Herr Holters's capable hands. And make sure you get your men. Both of them.' Then he turned and left.

Holters produced a notebook and a pencil and began asking questions and noting the answers.

'Rank?'

'Hauptmann.'

'Any medals?'

'Iron Cross, with Royal Citation. Great War Participation Medal with swords and wound badge. That's it.'

'Trousers or riding breeches?'

I shrugged.

'Both,' he said. 'Dress dagger?'

I shook my head.

'Hat size?'

'Sixty-two centimetres.'

Holters nodded. 'We'll have Hoffmanns in Gneisenaustrasse send over a couple for you to try on. Until then perhaps you'd like to slip off your jacket and I'll take your measurements.' He glanced at a little calendar on the wall. 'It's always a hurry with General Heydrich.'

'Yes, it's never a good idea to disagree with him,' I said, slipping off my jacket. 'I do know that feeling. Where Heydrich is concerned, your black armband could be catching.'

It was after I'd been measured and I was on my way out of the door that I bumped into Elisabeth Dehler, who was coming into the tailor's shop with a uniform box under her arm. I hadn't seen her very much since that night in 1931 when she'd taken offence at my turning up at her apartment and asking for Mielke's address. But she greeted me warmly, as if all that was forgotten now, and agreed to come and meet me for a coffee after she had delivered the uniform to Herr Holters.

I waited around the corner at Miericke, on Ranke Strasse, where the chocolate cake was about the best in Berlin.

When she arrived she told me that since the beginning of the war she'd had little or no time for making dresses; everyone wanted her for tailoring uniforms.

'This war is over before it even got started,' I told her. 'You'll be back to dressmaking in no time at all.'

'I hope you're right,' she said. 'Even so, I suppose that's why you were there, at Holters. To get yourself a uniform.'

'Yes. I have a police job to do in Paris next week.'

'Paris.' She closed her eyes for a moment. 'What I wouldn't give to be going to Paris.'

'You know, I was just thinking of you, about an hour ago.'

She pulled a face. 'I don't believe you.'

'Honestly, it's true, I was.'

'Why?'

I shrugged. I hardly wanted to tell her that I was being sent to Paris to hunt down her old friend Erich Mielke and that this was the reason she was in my mind again.

'Oh, I was just thinking that it would be nice to see you again, Elisabeth. Perhaps when I get back from Paris we could see a movie together.'

'I thought you said you were going to Paris next week.'

'I am.'

'Then what's wrong with seeing a movie this week?'

'If it comes to that,' I said, 'what's wrong with tonight?'

She nodded. 'Pick me up at six,' she said and kissed me on the cheek.

We were on our way out of the coffee shop when she said, 'I nearly forgot. I'm living somewhere else now.'

'No wonder I couldn't find you.'

'As if you tried. Motzstrasse. Number twenty-eight. First floor. My name is on the bell.'

'I'm already looking forward to ringing it.'

At least it wasn't a black uniform. But in the Anhalter Bahnhof, waiting to board the Reich Railways train early that July morning, I felt oddly uncomfortable dressed as a Sipo captain, even though almost everyone else was wearing a uniform. It was as if I'd signed a contract in blood with Hitler himself. In the event the great Mephistopheles chose not to visit the French capital by train. The Gestapo got wind of at least two plots to kill him while he was in Paris and the word aboard the train was that Hitler had already returned from a flying visit to the jewel in his crown of conquest via Le Bourget, on June 23rd. Consequently although quite luxurious in many respects – there were, after all, several senior Wehrmacht generals aboard – the train we travelled in was not the Amerika, which was the name of the special train carrying the Fuhrer headquarters and, by all accounts, the last word in Pullman-class comfort. That curiously named train – possibly it was a pun based on the Herms Niel song I had sung in Heydrich's office – was, it seemed, back at the Tempelhof Repair Depot in the south-west of Berlin. Since meeting Elisabeth again I rather wished I could have been there myself, for although a small part of me was looking forward to seeing Paris, mostly I felt a distinct lack of enthusiasm for my mission. A lot of people in Sipo would have leapt at an all-expenses-paid trip to the most glamorous city in the world. And a little bit of murder along the way wouldn't have bothered them in the slightest. There were some on that train who looked like they'd been murdering people since 1933. Including the fellow sitting opposite me, an SS Untersturmfuhrer – a second lieutenant I half-recognised from police headquarters in Alexanderplatz.

His little rat's eyes got there ahead of me, however.

'Excuse me, sir,' he said politely. 'But aren't you Chief Inspector Gunther? From the Homicide Division?'

'Have we met?'

'I was working Vice Squad at the Alex when I think I saw you last. My name is Willms. Nikolaus Willms.'

I nodded, silently.

'Vice isn't as glamorous as Homicide,' he said. 'But it has its moments.'

He smiled without smiling – the sort of expression a snake has when it opens its mouth to swallow something whole. He was smaller than me but he had the ambitious look of a man who might eventually swallow something larger than himself.

'So what takes you to Paris?' I asked without much interest.

'This isn't my first trip,' he said. 'I've been there for the last two weeks. I only came back to Berlin to attend to a family matter.'

'You still have some work to do there?'

'There's plenty of vice in Paris, sir.'

'So I'm led to believe.'

'Although with any luck I won't be stuck in Vice for very long.'

'No?'

Willms shook his head. He was small but powerful and sat with his legs apart and his arms folded as if watching a football match. He said:

'After the SD school in Bernau I was sent on an exclusive leadership course in Berlin-Charlottenburg. It was the people who ran that course who organised this posting. I speak fluent French you see. I'm from Trier, originally.'