Philip Kerr - Field Grey

'Yes. Thank you.'

Scheuer lit me with an armour-plated Dunhill and then lit one for himself. I noticed the shields on his bow tie were the same as the ones on the Chiefs and I assumed they shared more than just a service, but a background, too. Ivy League, probably.

'Your letter, Herr Gunther, was fascinating. Especially in the context of what Phil here has told me and what I've read in the file. But it's my job to discover how much of it is fact. Oh, I'm not for a moment suggesting that you're lying to us. But after twenty years, people can easily make mistakes. That's fair, isn't it?'

'Very fair.'

He regarded my un-drunk coffee with vicarious disgust. 'Horrible, isn't it? The coffee. I don't know why we put up with it. Phil, get Herr Gunther something stronger. What are you drinking, sir?'

'A schnapps would be nice,' I said and glanced around as Scheuer fetched a bottle and a small glass from inside the sideboard and placed it on the desk. 'Thank you.'

'Coaster,' snapped the Chief.

Coasters were fetched and placed under the bottle and my glass.

"This table's made of walnut,' said the Chief. 'Walnut marks like a damask napkin. Now then, sir. You have your cigarette. You have your drink. All I need from you are some facts.'

In his fingers he held a sheet of unfolded paper on which I recognised my own handwriting. He placed a pair of half- moon glasses on the end of his snub nose and viewed the letter with a detached curiosity. He barely read the contents before letting the note fall onto the table.

'Naturally, I've read this. Several times. But now that you're here, I'd prefer it if you told me, in person, what you have written to Agents Scheuer and Frei in this letter of yours.'

'So that you can see if I deviate from what I wrote before?'

'We understand each other perfectly.'

'Well, the facts are these,' I said suppressing a smile. 'As a condition of my working with the SDECE-'

The Chief winced. 'Exactly what does that mean, Phil?'

'Service de Documentation Exterieure et de Contre-Espionage,' said Scheuer.

The Chief nodded. 'Go on, Herr Gunther.'

'Well, I agreed to work for them if they permitted me to visit Berlin and an old friend of mine. Perhaps the only friend I have left.'

'She have a name? This friend of yours?'

'Elisabeth,' I said.

'Surname? Address?'

'I don't want her involved in any of this.'

'Meaning you don't want to tell me.'

'That's true.'

'You met her how and when?'

'1931. She was a seamstress. A good one, too. She worked in the same tailor's shop as Erich Mielke's sister, which was also where Mielke's mother, Lydia Mielke, worked until her death in 1911. It was pretty hard for Erich's father bringing up four children on his own. His elder daughter went to work and cooked for the family meals, and because Elisabeth was her friend, sometimes she helped out. There were even times when Elisabeth was like a sister to Erich.'

'Where did they live? Can you remember the address?'

'Stettiner Strasse. A grey tenement building in Gesundbrunnen, in north-west Berlin. Number twenty-five. It was Erich who introduced me to Elisabeth. After I'd saved his neck.'

'Tell me about that.'

I told him.

'And this is when you met Mielke's father.'

'Yes. I went to Mielke's address to try to arrest him and the old man took a swing at me and I had to arrest him. It was Elisabeth who had given me the address and she wasn't very happy that I'd asked her for it. As a result, our relationship hit a rock. And it was very much later on, I suppose it must have been the autumn of 1940, before we became reacquainted; and the following year before we started our relationship again.'

'You never mentioned any of this when you were interrogated at Landsberg,' said the Chief. 'Why not?'

I shrugged. 'It hardly seemed relevant at the time. I almost forgot that Elisabeth even knew Erich. Not least because she'd always kept it a secret from him that we were friends. Erich didn't like cops much, to put it mildly. I started seeing her again in the winter of 1946, when I came back from the Russian POW camp. I lived with Elisabeth for a short while until I managed to find my wife again, in Berlin. But I was always very fond of her and she of me. And recently, when I was in Paris, I got to thinking of her again and wondering if she was okay. I suppose you might say I began to entertain romantic thoughts about her. Like I said, there's no one else in Berlin I know. So I was resolved to look her up as soon as possible and see if she and I couldn't make another go of it.'

'And how did that go?'

'It went well. She's not married. She was involved with some American soldier. More than one I think. Anyway, both men were married and so they went back to their wives in the States, leaving her middle-aged and scared about the future.'

I poured a glass of schnapps and sipped it while the Chief watched me closely, as if weighing my story in each hand, trying to judge how much or how little he believed.

'She was at the same address as she'd been in 1946?'

'Yes.'

'We can always ask the French, you know. Her address.'

'Go ahead.'

'They might reasonably assume that's where you've gone,' he said. 'They might even make life difficult for her. Have you thought of that? We could protect her. The French aren't always as romantic as they're often portrayed.'

'Elisabeth lived through the battle of Berlin,' I said. 'She was raped by the Russians. Besides, she's not the type to give a man an injection of thiopental on the streets of Gottingen, in broad daylight. When Grottsch tells his story I imagine the French will think the Russians pinched me, don't you? After all, that's what you wanted them to think, isn't it? I wouldn't be at all surprised if your men were speaking Russian when they grabbed him. Just for appearance's sake.'

'At least tell me if she lives in the East or the West.'

'In the West. The French gave me a passport in the name of Sebastian Kleber. You'll be able to check me coming through Checkpoint Alpha at Helmstedt, and into Berlin at the Dreilinden Crossing. But not leaving it to enter East Berlin.'

'All right. Tell me your news about Erich Mielke.'

'My friend Elisabeth said she'd seen Mielke's father, Erich. That he was still alive and in good health. He was in his early seventies, she said. They went for a coffee at the Cafe Kranzler. He said he'd been living in the DDR but that he didn't like it. Missed the football and his old neighbourhood. While Elisabeth was telling me this it was clear she had no idea what Erich junior had been doing. Who and what he was. All she said was that Erich visits his father from time to time and gives him money. And I assumed, given who he was, that this must be in secret.'

'From time to time. How often is that?'

'Regularly. Once a month.'

'Why didn't you say so?'

'I might have done if you'd given me enough time.'

'Did she say where Erich senior had been living? In the DDR?'

'A village called Schonwalde, north-west of Berlin. She said he told her he had a nice enough cottage there but that he was bored in Schonwalde. It's rather a boring place. Of course she knew that Erich senior had been a staunch communist and so she asked him if living in the West meant he had left the Party. And he said that he had come to the conclusion that the communists were every bit as bad as the Nazis.'

'She said he said that?'

'Yes.

'You know we checked and there's no record of an Erich Mielke living in West Berlin.'

'Mielke's father isn't called Mielke. His name is Erich Stallmacher. Mielke was illegitimate. Not that the father's using the name of Stallmacher either.'

'Did she tell you what his name is?'

'No.'

'Give you an address?'