Philip Kerr - Field Grey

Once again I met Erich Mielke's eye. He didn't look away and I suppose he guessed what I was doing. He was older than I remembered him, of course. Broader and more powerful- looking, especially across the shoulders. He wore a light beard but there was no mistaking the surly-looking mouth, the watchful ruthless eyes, or the coxcomb of unruly hair on top of his largish head. He must have thought I was a beefsteak

Nazi: brown on the outside, red on the inside. But he couldn't have been more wrong. The murders of Anlauf and Lenck had been just about the most cowardly I'd ever seen, and nothing would have pleased me more than to have snapped him for it, and for the Berlin courts to have sent him for a permanent haircut; but, much as I disliked him now, I disliked the casual, instinctive brutality of the Nazi police state even more. I almost wanted to tell him that but for the murders of eight men on a country road the day before he'd have been on his way to a date with a man wearing white gloves and a top hat.

I turned away and walked back to Bomelburg with a shrug.

'It was worth a shot,' he said.

Neither of us expected what happened next.

'I don't know an Erich Mielke,' said a voice.

The man was small and Jewish-looking with short dark curly hair and shifty brown eyes. A lawyer's face, which could have been why there was a large bruise on his cheek.

'I don't know an Erich Mielke,' he repeated now that he had our attention, 'but I would like to become a Nazi.'

Some of the other prisoners laughed, some whistled, but the man kept going.

'I was arrested by the French because I was a German communist,' he said. 'I wasn't an enemy of France then, but I am now. It's true, I really hate and despise these people worse than I used to hate the Nazis. I spend all day moving latrine bins and for the rest of my life I'm forever going to associate France with the smell of shit.'

The Corsican's eyes narrowed and he moved towards the man with his whip raised.

'No,' said Bomelburg. 'Let the fellow speak.'

'I'm glad France was defeated,' said the prisoner. 'And since I'm declaring myself to be an enemy of France I'd also like to join the German Army and become a loyal soldier of the

Fatherland and a follower of Adolf Hitler. Who knows? I know the war's over but I might just get the chance to shoot a Franzi, which would really make me very happy.'

His fellow prisoners started to jeer, but I could see that Major Bomelburg was impressed.

'So, if you don't mind, sir, when you leave this shithole, I'd like to come with you.'

Bomelburg smiled. 'Well,' he said. 'I think you'd better.'

And he did. But it said a lot about the rest of the Germans in Barrack Thirty-Three that there was no one else that followed his example. Not one.

'Jesus Christ, Gunther,' exclaimed one of my American interrogators. 'Are you trying to tell us that you had that communist bastard Mielke in your power and you let him go?'

'Yes. I am.'

'What, are you crazy? That's twice you saved his bacon. Did you ever think about that? Jesus.'

'Of course I thought about it.'

'I mean, didn't you ever regret that?'

'I don't think I could have made myself clear,' I said. 'Even while I was doing it, even while I was pretending I didn't recognise him, I regretted it. Captain Anlauf s murder left three orphaned daughters. You see, what you've got to remember is that for a while back there, in the dog days of Weimar, the communists were every bit as loathsome as the Nazis. Maybe more so. After all, it was the Comintern that ordered the German communist party to treat the country's governing SPD as the main enemy, not the Nazis. Can you imagine it? In the Red Referendum of July 1931 the KPD and the Nazis marched together and voted together. That was the non-aggression pact in miniature. I always hated them for that. It was the Reds who really destroyed the Republic, not the Nazis.' I helped myself to another of the Ami's cigarettes. 'And if that wasn't enough, there's my own experience of Soviet hospitality to take into account as well. For why I hate the communists.'

'Well, we all hate the Reds,' said the man with the pipe.

'No. You hate the Reds because you've been told to hate them. But for five years they were your allies. Roosevelt and Truman shook hands with Stalin and pretended he was different from Hitler. Which he wasn't. I hate the Reds because I've learned to hate them the way a dog learns to hate the man who beats it regularly. During Weimar. During the war. On the Russian front. But most of the reason I hate them is because I spent almost two years in a Soviet labour camp. And until I met you boys I thought that was about as much hate as I could have for any one race of people.'

'We're not so bad.' The man with the pipe took it out of his mouth and started to refill it. 'When you get to know us.'

'You can get used to anything, it's true,' I said.

The man with the glasses tutted loudly. By now I vaguely recognised him from seven years earlier, at the Stiftskaserne Hospital, in Vienna.

'After all the trouble we had getting you this exclusive suite,' he said. He started to clean his glasses with the end of his tie. 'I'm hurt.'

'When you're done cleaning your glasses,' I said, 'the windows in here could use a wipe, too. I'm particular about windows. Particularly when I know who's been breathing on them. There's nothing about this cell I like now I know who was in here last.'

The man with the pipe was finally lighting up. Hitler would have hated his pipe. It looked as if I'd found one reason at last to like Adolf Hitler.

The Ami sucked at the stem, blew out some sweet smoke, and said, 'I watched an old newsreel the other day. Of Hitler making a speech at Tempelhof Field, in Berlin. There were one million people that day. Apparently it took twelve hours just to get everyone in there, and another twelve to get them all out again. I guess you were the only Berliner who stayed home that night.'

'Berlin nightlife was much better before the Nazis,' I said.

'That's what I hear. People say it was quite something. Degenerate but lively. All those clubs. Striptease dancers. Naked ladies. Open homosexuality. What were you people thinking? I mean no wonder the Nazis got an in.' He shook his head. 'On the other hand, Munich's kind of dull, I think.'

'It has some advantages,' I said. 'There are no Ivans in Munich.'

'Is that why you lived there, after you were in that POW camp? Instead of Berlin?'

'One reason, I suppose.'

'You were in and out of that camp relatively quickly.' He had finished cleaning his glasses and put them back on his head. They were still too small for him and I wondered if American heads were like American stomachs and kept on growing faster than those in Europe. 'In comparison with a lot of other guys. I mean, some of your old comrades are only just coming home now.'

'I was lucky,' I said. 'I escaped.'

'How?'

'Mielke was involved.'

'Then we'll pick it up there tomorrow, shall we? In here. Ten o'clock.'

'You'd better clear that with my secretary,' I said. 'Tomorrow's the day when I start writing my book.'

'What did I tell you? You know this is a great room for a writer. Maybe the spirit of Adolf Hitler will come and help you out with a few pages.'

'Seriously, though,' said the other Ami. 'If you need pen and paper to make a few notes, about Mielke, just ask the guard. Might help to jog your memory if you wrote a few things down.'

'Why now? Why not before?'

'Because things are starting to become more important. Mielke starts to become more important. So, the more details you can remember the better.'

'I know one spirit that might help a lot,' I said. 'And it isn't Hitler's.'