Philip Kerr - Field Grey

'Pity,' said Weltz. 'It seems you're going to spend the rest of your life dead. Like all of your class, Gunther, you're a victim of history.'

'We both are, Major. Being a victim of history is what being a German is all about.'

But I was also a victim of my environment. They made sure of that. Soon after my meeting with the boys from K-5 I was transferred off the sorting detail and into the mine.

It was a world of constant thunder. There was the rumble of underground explosions that broke the rock into manageable chunks; and there was the crash of the cage doors before it slid down the guides and into the shaft. There was the din of rocks we split with pickaxes and then threw into the wagons; and the continual barrage as these moved backwards and forwards along the rails. And with each detonation there was dust and more dust, turning my snot black, and my sweat into a kind of grey oil. At night I coughed great gritty gobs of saliva and phlegm that looked like burnt fried eggs. It all felt like a high price to pay for my principles. But there was a camaraderie down the shaft that wasn't to be had anywhere else in Johannesgeorgenstadt, and an automatic respect from the other plenis who heard our coughing and recognised their own comparative good fortune. Pospelov had been right about that. There's always someone worse off than yourself. I hoped to get a chance to meet that someone before the work killed me.

There was a mirror in the washroom. Mostly we avoided it for fear that we'd see our own grandfathers, or worse, their decomposed bodies, looking back at us; but one day I inadvertently caught sight of myself and saw a man with a face like the pitchblende rock we were mining: it was brownish- black, lumpy and misshapen, with two dull opaque spaces where my eyes had once been, and a row of dark grey excrescences that might have been my teeth. I'd met a lot of criminal types in my life, but I looked like Mister Hyde's black-sheep brother. Acted like him, too. There were no Blues down the shaft and we settled our differences with a maximum of violence. Once, Schaefer, another pleni from Berlin who didn't much like cops, told me that he'd cheered when the leaders of the SDP had been chased out of Berlin in 1933. So I punched him hard in the face and when he tried to hit me with a pickaxe, I hit him with a shovel. It was a while before he got up, and in truth he was never quite the same again after that – another victim of history. Karl Marx would have approved.

But after a while I stopped caring about anything very much, including myself. I would squeeze into tight spaces in the black rock to work in solitude with my pick, which was the most dangerous thing to do, since cave-ins were common. But there was less dust to breathe this way than when they used explosives.

Another month passed. And then one day I was summoned to the office again and I went along expecting to find the same two MVD officers and hear them ask me if my time down the mineshaft had helped to change my mind about K-5. It had changed my mind about a lot of things but not German communism and its secret police force. I was going to tell them to go to Hell and, perhaps, sound like I meant it, too, even though I was ready for someone to come and put some plaster of Paris on my face. So I was a little disappointed that the two officers weren't there, the way you are when you've worked up a pretty good speech about a lot of noble things that don't add up to very much that's important when you're lying in the morgue.

There was only one officer in the room, a heavyset man with receding brown hair and a pugnacious jaw. Like his two predecessors he wore blue breeches and a brown gimnasterka tunic, but he was better decorated; as well as the veteran NKVD soldier badge and Order of the Red Banner there were other medals I didn't recognise. The insignia on his collar tabs and the stars on his sleeves seemed to indicate that he was at least a colonel, or perhaps even a general. His blue officer's cap with its squarish visor lay on the table alongside the Nagant revolver in its bucket-sized holster.

'The answer is still no,' I said, hardly caring who he was.

'Sit down,' he said. 'And don't be a bloody fool.'

He was German.

'I know I've put on a bit of weight,' he said. 'But I thought you of all people would recognise me.'

I sat down and rubbed some of the dust from my eyes. 'Now you come to mention it, you do seem kind of familiar.'

'You, I wouldn't have recognised at all. Not in a million years.'

'I know. I should lay off the chocolates. Get myself a haircut and a manicure. But I never do seem to have the time. My job keeps me pretty busy.'

The officer's pork butcher's face cracked a smile. Almost. A sense of humour. That's impressive, in this place. But if you really want to impress me then stop playing the tough guy and tell me who I am.'

'Don't you know?'

He tutted impatiently and shook his head. 'Please. I can help you if you'll let me. But I have to believe you're worth it. If you're any kind of detective you'll remember who I am.'

'Erich Mielke,' I said. 'Your name is Erich Mielke.'

'You knew all along.'

'There was a moment when I didn't. The last time I saw you, Erich, you looked like me.'

For a moment Mielke looked grim, as if he was remembering. 'Fucking French,' he said. 'They were as bad as the Nazis in my book. It still sticks in my throat they get to be one of the four victorious powers in Berlin. What did they do to defeat the fascists? Nothing.'

'We can agree on something, anyway.'

'Le Vernet was the second time you pulled my bread out of the oven. Why'd you do it?'

I shrugged. 'It seemed like a good idea at the time.'

'No, that won't do,' he said firmly. 'Tell me. I want to know. You were dressed like a Gestapo officer, but you didn't act like one. I didn't get it then and I don't get it now.'

'Between you and me and these four walls, Erich, I'm afraid the Gestapo were rather a bad lot.' I told him about the murders committed by Major Bomelburg and the SS storm troopers on the road to Lourdes. 'You see, it's one thing taking a man back to stand trial. It's something completely different just to shoot him in a ditch at the side of the road. It was just your good fortune that we went to the camp at Gurs first, otherwise it might have been you who was shot while trying to escape. But given what I've seen since of your friends in the MVD, it's probably what you deserved. Rats are still rats whether they're grey, black or brown. I just wasn't cut out to be much of a rat myself.'

'Maybe a white rat, eh?'

'Maybe.'

Mielke chucked a packet of Belomorkanal across the table at me. 'Here. I don't smoke myself but I brought these for you.' He tossed some matches after the cigarettes. 'It's my opinion that smoking is bad for your health.'

'My health has got more important things to worry about.' I lit one and puffed it happily. 'But maybe you didn't know. Russian nails are better for your health than American ones.'

'Oh? Why's that?'

'Because there's so little tobacco in them. Four good puffs and they're gone.'

Mielke smiled. 'Talking about your health, I don't think this place is good for you. If you stay here long enough you're liable to grow two heads. That would be a waste, in my opinion.' He came around the table and sat on the corner, swinging one of his polished riding boots carelessly. 'You know, when I was in Russia I learned to look after my health. I even won the sports medal of the Soviet Union. I was living in a little town outside Moscow called Krasnogorsk and I used to go hunting at the weekend on a sporting estate once owned by the Yussupov family. Prince Yussupov was one of those aristocrats who murdered Rasputin. There was all sorts of rubbish talked about the death of Rasputin, you know. That they had to kill him three or four times before he was actually dead. That they poisoned him, shot him, beat him to death and then drowned him. In fact, they made it all up just to make their futile deed seem more heroic. And the prince didn't even do the deed himself. The truth was that Rasputin was shot through the forehead by a member of the British Secret Service. Now I mention all of this to make the point that a man, even a strong man like Rasputin, or you perhaps, can survive almost anything except being killed. You, my friend, will die here. You know it. I know it. Perhaps you will be poisoned by the uranite. Perhaps you will be shot, attempting to escape. Or when the mine floods, as I believe sometimes it does, then you will drown. But it doesn't have to be that way. I want to help you, Gunther. Really, I do. But you'll need to trust me.'