Philip Kerr - Field Grey

'Stallmacher isn't that stupid.'

'But there is something. Something you'd like to trade.'

'Yes. Stallmacher told Elisabeth the name of a restaurant where he regularly likes to go for lunch on Saturdays.'

'And your idea is? What exactly?'

'This is your area of expertise, not mine, Chief. I was never much of an intelligence officer. I didn't have the kind of dirty mind to be really effective in your world. I was a better detective, I think. Better at uncovering a mess than creating one.'

'I see you have a low opinion of intelligence.'

'Just the people who work in it.'

'Us included.'

'You especially.'

'You prefer the French?'

'There's something honest about their hypocrisy and selfregard.'

'As a former Berlin detective what would you propose?'

'Follow Erich Stallmacher from his favourite restaurant to his apartment. And lay a trap for Erich Mielke there.'

'Risky.'

'Sure,' I said. 'But now that you've pulled me you're going to do it all the same. You have to, now that you've partly undermined all that black propaganda I'd been giving to the French about Mielke being your agent; and before that, an agent of the Nazis. Without the cherry on the cake – me identifying de Boudel for them – maybe they won't find all those lies I told about Erich so persuasive any more.'

'It's true that we would like to get our hands on Mielke. With his father in our back pocket we could even perhaps turn him into the spy you told the French he was. Of course, then we'd have to blacken your name to the French. To make sure they formed the correct impression about Mielke again. That he was and always had been a perfect communist bastard.'

'You see, I knew you'd think of some way around these problems.'

'And you. What will you want to help?'

I frowned. 'I can show you where the restaurant is. Maybe even get you a table.'

'We shall want more help than that. After all, you've met Erich Stallmacher. He took a swing at you. You arrested him. You must have got a good look at him that day. No, Herr Gunther, we shall want more than your help in obtaining a table at this man Stallmacher's favourite watering hole. We shall want you to identify him.'

I smiled wearily.

'Something funny about that?'

'You're not the first intelligence chief to have asked me to do this. Heydrich had the same idea.'

'I've often wondered about Heydrich,' said the Chief. 'They said he was the cleverest Nazi of the bunch. You agree with that?'

'It's true he had an instinctive understanding of power, which made him a very effective Nazi. You like facts, sir? Then here's a fact about Reinhardt Heydrich you might appreciate. His father, Bruno, was a music teacher and before that a composer of sorts. Ten years before his son was born, Bruno Heydrich wrote an opera entitled Reinhardt's Crime. Oh yes, and here's another fact. Heydrich was murdered on Himmler's order.'

'You don't say.'

'I was the investigating detective.'

'Interesting.'

'More interesting to me right now is the money that was taken from me when I was arrested in Cuba. And the boat that was impounded. That's part of the price for my help. Actually it was the price of the deal we had in Landsberg in return for me bullshitting the French, so you're only agreeing to what your people have already agreed. I want the boat sold and all of the money paid into a Swiss bank account, as we agreed. I also want an American passport. And, for delivering Erich Mielke, the sum of twenty-five thousand US dollars.'

"That's a lot.'

'Given that I'm about to deliver the deputy head of the East German State Security apparatus, I'd say it was cheap at twice the price.'

'Philip?'

'Yes, sir?'

'A price worth paying, would you say?'

'For Mielke? Yes, sir, I would. I've always thought that, since the beginning of this whole intelligence effort.'

'Because you know I shall want you to play the ringmaster at Herr Gunther's show, don't you?'

'No, sir.'

'Then I guess you know it now, eh Philip?'

Scheuer looked uncomfortable at being put on the spot like this. 'Yes, sir.'

'You too, Jim.'

Frei raised his eyebrows at that but nodded all the same.

I poured myself another glass of schnapps.

'Why not?' said the Chief. 'I think we could all use a drink. Don't you agree, Phil?'

'Yes, sir. I think we could.'

'But not schnapps, eh? Forgive me, Herr Gunther. There's a lot about your country I admire. But we're not very keen on schnapps at the CIA.'

'I imagine it's rather hard to spike a glass this small.'

'Don't you believe it.' The Chief smiled. 'Hmm. Yes, that's quite a sense of humour you have there, for a German.'

Philip Scheuer produced a bottle of bourbon and three glasses.

'Sure you won't try any of this, Herr Gunther?' said the Chief. 'To toast your deal with Ike.' 'Why not?' I said.

'Good man. We'll make an American of you yet, sir.' But that was exactly what I was worried about.

Most people go through life accumulating possessions. I seemed to have gone through mine losing them or having them taken away from me. The only thing I still had from before the war was a broken chess piece made of bone – the head of a black knight from a Selenus chess set. During the last days of the Weimar Republic this black knight had been constantly in use at the Romanisches Cafe, where, once or twice, I'd played the great Emmanuel Lasker. He'd been a regular at the cafe until the Nazis obliged him and his brother to leave Germany for ever, in 1933. I could still picture him crouched over a board with his cigarettes and cigars and his Wild West moustache. Generous to a fault, he would give out tips or play exhibitions for anyone who was interested; and on his last day in the Romanisches Cafe – he went to Moscow, and then to New York – Lasker presented everyone who was there to wish him goodbye with a chess piece from the cafe's best set. I got the black knight. The way I'd been played over the years I sometimes think a black pawn would have been more appropriate. Then again, a knight, even a broken one, seems intrinsically more valuable than a pawn, which was probably why I tried so hard to keep it through one adversity after another. The little bone base had become detached during the battle for Konigsberg and was lost soon afterwards; but somehow the horse's head had remained in my possession. I might have called it my lucky charm but for the salient fact that one way or another I'd not always had the best of luck. On the other hand I was still in the game, and sometimes that's all the luck you need. Anything – absolutely anything – can happen so long as you stay in the game. And, lately, as if to remind myself of this fact, the little black knight's head was often held tight in my fist the way a Mohammedan might have used a set of beads to utter the ninety-nine names of God and bring him closer during prayer. Only it wasn't being closer to God I wanted, but something more earthly. Freedom. Independence. Self-respect. No longer to be the pawn of others in a game I wasn't interested in. Surely that wasn't so much to ask.

The flight to Berlin from Frankfurt aboard a DC-7 took just under an hour. Travelling with me were Scheuer, Frei, and a third man – the man with the heavy-framed glasses who had kidnapped me in Gottingen: his name was Hamer. A black Mercedes was waiting for us in front of the airport building at Tempelhof. As we drove away Scheuer pointed out the monument to the Berlin airlift of 1948 that occupied the centre of Eagle Square. Made of concrete and taller than the airport building itself, the monument was supposed to represent the three air corridors that were used to fly in supplies during the Soviet blockade. It looked more like the statue of a comicbook ghost, arms raised, leaning over to scare someone. And as I glanced back at the airport I was rather more interested in the fate of the Nazi eagle that surmounted the centre wall of the airport building. There could be no doubt about it: the eagle had been Americanised. Someone had painted its head white so that now it looked more like an American bald eagle.