Philip Kerr - Field Grey

What I wasn't ready for was Dresden. The train went straight past the ruins of the city's eighteenth-century cathedral. I could hardly believe my own eyes. The bell-shaped dome was completely gone. And the rest of the city was no better. Dresden had never seemed like an important town, or one with any strategic significance, and I began to worry about what Berlin might look like. Did I even have a home town that was worth returning to?

The Red Army sergeant who came aboard the carriage at Dresden and asked to see my papers glanced at the broken window with mild surprise.

'What happened in here?' he asked.

'I don't know, but it must have been some party.'

He shook his head and frowned. 'Some of these young lads they have in uniform now. They're just kolkhozniks. Peasants who don't know how to behave. Half of them have never even seen a proper passenger train, let alone travelled on one.'

'You can't blame them for that,' I said generously. 'And for letting off a bit of steam now and again. Especially when you consider what the fascists did to Russia.' 'Right now I'm more concerned about what they've done to this train.' He glanced at Lieutenant Rascher's identity document and then at me.

I met his gaze with steady-eyed innocence.

'You've lost a bit of weight since that picture was taken.'

'You're right,' I said. 'I hardly recognise myself. Typhus does that to a man. I'm on leave back to Berlin after six weeks in hospital.'

The sergeant inched back a little.

'It's all right,' I said. 'I'm over the worst of it now. I picked it up in the POW camp at Johannesgeorgenstadt. Full of fleas and lice, it was.' I started to scratch for added effect.

He handed me back the documents and nodded a quick goodbye. I expect he washed his hands quite soon afterwards. I know I would have done.

I dropped down on the seat and opened the major's bag again. There was a bottle of Asbach brandy I'd been looking forward to all morning. I opened it, took a swig, and searched through the rest of his stuff. There were some clothes, some smokes, a few papers, and an early edition of poems by Georg Trakl. I'd always rather admired his work and one particular poem, 'In the Eastern Front', now seemed to match the time, and more especially, the place. I can still remember it by heart.

The ominous anger of the People

Is like the furious organ of the winter storm,

The purple wave of battle,

Like the leafless stars.

With broken brows and silver arms,

The night winks to dying soldiers.

In the shade of an autumn ash tree

The ghosts of the dead are sighing

A desert crown of thorns surrounds the city. From the bleeding stairs The moon chases the shocked women Wild wolves break through the door.* * Author's own translation.

'And you think that Erich Mielke wanted you dead because he owed his life to you?'

My American friend tapped his pipe and let the burnt tobacco fall onto the floor of my cell. I wanted to scold him for it, to remind him that these were my quarters and to show a little respect. But what was the point? It was an American world I was living in now, and I was a pawn in a never-ending game of intercontinental chess with the Russians.

'Not just that,' I said. 'Because I could connect him with the murders of those two Berlin policemen. You see, Heydrich always suspected that Mielke felt a certain amount of embarrassment that he'd committed a crime as serious as the murders of policemen. That it was somehow unworthy of him. He thought it was almost certainly Mielke who fingered the two Germans who put him up to it – Kippenberger and Neumann – during Stalin's great purge of 1937. They both died in the labour camps. Their wives, too. Even Kippenberger's daughter was sent to a labour camp. Mielke really tried to clean house there.

'But I also knew about Mielke's work in Spain. His work as a Chekist, with the military security service, torturing and killing those Republicans – Anarchists and Trotskyites – who deviated from the Party line as dictated by Stalin. Again, Heydrich strongly suspected that Mielke used his position as a political commissar with the International Brigade in Spain to eliminate Erich Ziemer. If you remember, Ziemer was the man who helped Mielke murder the two cops. And I think Heydrich was probably right. I think that Mielke may even have planned some political role for himself in Germany after the war; and he reasoned, quite rightly, that the German people – and more especially Berliners – would never take to a man who'd murdered two policemen in cold blood.'

'There was an attempt by the West Berlin courts to prose cute him for those murders in 1947,' said the Ami with the bow tie. 'A judge called Wilhelm Kuhnast issued a warrant for Mielke's arrest. Did you know about that?'

'No. By then, I wasn't living in Berlin.'

'It failed of course. The Soviets closed ranks in front of Mielke to shield him from further inquiry and tried their best to discredit Kuhnast. The criminal records that Kuhnast used to build up his case disappeared. Kuhnast was lucky not to disappear himself.'

'Erich Mielke has survived numerous party purges,' said the Ami with the pipe. 'He survived the death of Stalin, of course and, rather more recently, the death of Lavrenty Beria. We think that he was never a relief volunteer for the Todt organisation. That was just a story he gave you. If he had worked for them he'd be dead like all the rest of them who came back and found a cold welcome from Stalin. To us it seems much more likely that Mielke got out of that French camp at Le Vernet quite soon after you saw him there, in the summer of 1940, and got himself back to the Soviet Union before Hitler invaded Russia.'

'Why not?' I shrugged. 'He never struck me as the George Washington "I cannot tell a lie" type. So I'll contain my obvious disappointment that he might have lied to me.'

'Today, your old friend is East Germany's deputy chief of the secret police. The Stasi. Have you heard of the Stasi?'

'I've been away for five years.'

'Okay. When Stalin died last year, there was this big workers' strike, in East Berlin, and then throughout the whole of the DDR. As many as half a million took to the streets to demand free and fair elections. Even policemen defected to the side of the protesters. This was the first big test of the Stasi as run by Mielke. And effectively he broke the strike.'

'Big time,' said the other Ami.

'At first martial law was declared. The Stasi opened fire on the protesters. Many were killed. Thousands were arrested and are still in prison. Mielke himself arrested the minister of justice who'd questioned the legality of those arrests. Since then, Comrade Erich has been consolidating his position within the East German hierarchy. And he continues to expand the Stasi's network of secret informers and spies, and to build the organisation into the image of the Soviet KGB. The MVD that was.'

'He's a bastard,' I said. 'What more can I tell you? I have nothing else to say about the man. That day in Johannesgeorgenstadt was the last time I saw him.'

'You could help us to get him.'

'Sure. Before lock-down tonight I'll see what I can do for you.'

'Seriously.'

'I've told you everything.'

'And it's been very interesting. Most of it, anyway.'

'Don't think we're not grateful, Gunther. Because we are.'

'Might that gratitude stretch as far as letting me go?'

Bow Tie glanced at the Pipe, who nodded vaguely and said, 'You know? It might. It just might. Provided you agree to work for us.'

'Oh.' I yawned.

'S'a matter, Bernie boy? Don't you want to get out of stir?'

'We'll put you on the payroll. We can even get your money back. The money you had when the coastguard picked you up in the sea off Gitmo.'