Philip Kerr - Field Grey

In fact, he turned out to be something of a benefactor. He and his damn book were the main reason I managed to stay on in Paris until June 1941, and so it was Best who effectively ensured I missed out on going to Pretzsch and Himmler's pep- talk for the SS and SD. I might have stayed on a bit longer and avoided going to the Ukraine altogether but for Heydrich. Now and then he liked to tug the line a little just to remind me that he had his hook in my mouth.

I lit a cigarette and lay down on the bed again, waiting for the grey light to strengthen and the room to take shape and the uncaring guards to rouse Landsberg's inmates for exercise, breakfast, and then what was called 'free association'. To my surprise I was now allowed back into the general prison population. But to avoid Biberstein and Haensch, with their worries about what I was telling the Americans and how that might affect their own chances of parole, I found myself seeking out the company of Waldemar Klingelhofer. Since he had been cut by everyone else at Landsberg, my speaking to him was the best way of ensuring I was left alone – at least for the duration of our conversation. We talked in the garden, with the sun warming our faces.

Klingelhofer had not aged well since our time together at Lenin House in Minsk, and he was perhaps the only prisoner at WCPN1 of whom it could have been said that he had some sort of conscience about what he had done. He looked like a man haunted by his actions with the Moscow Commando. Martin Sandberger, watching us from a short distance away, merely looked psychopathic.

Looking at Klingelhofer's twitching, bespectacled face it was hard to imagine the former opera tenor who owned it singing anything, except perhaps the Dies Irae. But I was more interested in talking to him about what had happened in Minsk, after I had returned from there to Berlin.

'Do you remember a man called Paul Kestner?' I asked him.

'Yes,' said Klingelhofer. 'He was active with a murder commando in Smolensk when I got there in 1941. I was supposed to obtain furs to use for German military winter clothing. Kestner had been in Paris, I think, and was bitter about his being posted to Russia. He seemed to be taking it out on Jews, that much was obvious, and my impression was that he was a really cruel man. After that I heard he got posted to the death camp at Treblinka. That must have been about July of 1942. He was the deputy commander, I think. There was some talk about Kestner and Irmfried Eberl, who was in charge, running the camp for their own pleasure and profit; using Jewish women for sex and embezzling Jewish gold and jewellery that was properly the property of the Reich. Anyway, the bosses found out about it and by all accounts dismissed the pair of them and some others besides before putting in a new man to clean the stables. Fellow named Stangl. Meanwhile Eberl and Kestner were dismissed from the SS, and in 1944 I heard they joined the Wehrmacht in an attempt to redeem themselves. The Amis got Eberl a few years ago and I believe he hanged himself. But I've no idea what became of Kestner. They say Stangl's in South America.'

'Well, if he is it's not Argentina,' I said. 'Or Uruguay.'

'You're lucky,' said Klingelhofer. 'To have been to those places. Me, I expect I'll die here.'

'You must be the only prisoner in Landsberg who believes that, Wally. Everyone else seems to be expecting a parole. They've already let go men who, in my opinion, were worse than you.'

'Thanks. Nice of you to say so. But I just hope that if I do die in here, they'll allow my family to have my body. I wouldn't want to be buried here, in Landsberg. It would mean a lot to them. Nice of you to say so, yes. I mean, I'm not looking to get out. I mean, what would I do? What can any of us do?'

I left Klingelhofer talking to himself. He did a lot of that in Landsberg. It looked easier than talking to the Americans. Or Biberstein and Haensch. Or Sandberger, who cornered me on the way back to my cell.

'Why do you speak to a bastard like that?' he demanded.

'Why not? I speak to you. Really, I'm not that particular.'

'Funny guy. I heard that about you, Gunther.'

'I don't see you laughing. Then again you used to be a judge, didn't you? Before you went to Estonia? Not many laughs there either from what I heard.'

Sandberger had a ruffian's face with a jaw like a flat tyre and a boxer's hostile eyes. It was hard to imagine how anyone could have become a lawyer or a judge with a face like that. It was easier to imagine him murdering sixty-five thousand Jews. You didn't need to be a criminologist to figure out a physiognomy like Sandberger's.

'I hear the Amis have been giving you a hard time of it,' he said.

'You hear good with those things on the side of your head.'

'So I took the liberty of mentioning you to the Evangelical Bishop of Wurttemberg,' he said. 'In my last letter to him.'

'As long as there are prisons there will be prayers.'

'There's a lot more he can do than just pray.'

'A cake would be nice. Lots of cream and fruit and a Walther P38 filling.'

Sandberger smiled a lop-sided smile that wasn't provoking any second thoughts in my mind about the descent of man.

'He doesn't do prison breaks,' said Sandberger. 'Just letters to influential people here, and in America.'

'I wouldn't want to put him to any trouble,' I said. 'Besides, I just came back from America myself. But I certainly didn't make any friends while I was there.'

'Which part?'

'The southern half. Argentina, mainly. You wouldn't like Argentina, Martin. It's hot. Lots of insects. Plenty of Jews. But you're only allowed to kill the insects.'

'But lots of Germans, too, I hear.'

'No. Just Nazis.'

Sandberger grinned. Probably he meant it well, but it felt like seeing something unpleasant and atavistic toward the end of a seance. Evil flickering on and off like a faulty light bulb.

'Well,' he said, full of patient menace. 'Let me know if I can help. My father is a friend of President Heuss.'

'And he's trying to help free you?' I tried to contain the surprise in my voice. 'To get you a parole?'

'Yes.'

'Thanks.' I walked away before he could see the look of horror on my face. It was beginning to look as if the only way I was ever going to have any friends in the new Germany was to have friends I really didn't like.

My American friends, both of them, were in cell seven when, after breakfast, I was returned there by one of the guards. This time they'd brought a little tape recorder in a leather case with a microphone not much bigger than a Norelco shaver. One was filling his pipe from a pouch of Sir Walter Raleigh; the other was adjusting his clip-on bow tie against his reflection in my cell window. There was a short-brimmed Stetson on my bed and both men smelled lightly of Vaseline hair-tonic.

'Make yourselves at home,' I said.

'Thanks, we already did.'

'If you're here to record my singing voice I should warn you fellows I already made a deal with Parlophone.'

'This is for our listening pleasure,' said the one puffing some heat into his Sir Walter Raleigh. 'We're not planning on a general release. Not this Christmas.'

'We think we're getting to the interesting part,' said the other. 'About Erich Mielke. At long last. The part that affects us now.' He snapped on the machine and the spools began to turn. 'Say something for recording level.'

'Like what?'

'I dunno. But let's just hope that the oral tradition is not yet dead in Germany.'

'If it isn't, it must be the only thing in Germany that's not dead.'

A few seconds later I heard for the first time the sound of my own voice uttered by someone other than myself. There was something about it I didn't like. Mostly it was the laconic way I had of speaking. It was five years since I'd seen my home city but I still sounded as unhelpful as a Berlin gravedigger. It was easy to see why people didn't like me very much. If ever I was going to make a useful contribution to society I was going to have to fix that. Maybe take some lessons in courtesy and charm.