Philip Kerr - If the Dead Rise Not

She turned some of the pages of shorthand, shaking her head.

“Listen to this. I mean, he said a lot of things that sounded sort of unhinged to me, but this took the biscuit. When I asked him about Hitler’s promise that, in the selection of its Olympic team, Germany would observe Olympic statutes and recognize neither race nor color, he said-and I quote, ‘But it is being observed. At least, in principle. Technically, nobody is being excluded on any of those grounds.’ And listen to this, Bernie. This is the best bit. ‘By the time the games are held, Jews will probably no longer be German citizens, or at least first-class German citizens. They may be admissible as guests. And in view of all the international agitation on behalf of the Jews, it may even happen that, at the last moment, the government will accede to there being a small quota of Jews on the team, albeit in those sporting events in which Germany stands only a slight chance of winning, such as chess or croquet. Because the fact remains that there are certain sports in which it cannot be denied, a German-Jewish victory would present us with a political, not to say philosophical, question.’ ”

“Is that so?” I put out my cigarette. It was still only half smoked, but I felt something sticking in my throat, as if I had swallowed the little silver death’s-head badge from the lieutenant’s black cap.

“Depressing, isn’t it?”

“If I’ve given you the impression that I’m a tough guy, then I should tell you now, I’m not. I appreciate a little bit of warning before anyone punches me in the stomach.”

“There’s more. Von Tschammer und Osten said that all Roman Catholic and Protestant youth organizations are, like all Jewish organizations, to be expressly forbidden to pursue any sport. As far as the Nazis are concerned, people are going to have to make a choice between religion and sports. The point being that all sports training is to be done under Nazi auspices. He actually said that the Nazis are conducting a cultural war against the church.”

“He said that?”

“Any Catholic or Protestant athletes who don’t join Nazi sports clubs will lose their chance of representing Germany.”

I shrugged. “So let them. Who cares about a few idiots running around a track anyway?”

“You’re missing the point, Gunther. They’ve purged the police. Now they’re purging sports. If they succeed, there will be no aspect of German life in which they won’t be able to exert their authority. In all aspects of German society, Nazis will be preferred. If you want to get on in life, you will have to become a Nazi.”

She was smiling, and it annoyed me that she was smiling. I knew why she was smiling. She was pleased because she thought she had a scoop for her newspaper article. But it still annoyed me that she was smiling. To me this was more than just a story, this was my country.

“It’s you who’s missing the point,” I said. “You think it was an accident that SS lieutenant decided to speak to you? You think he was just passing the time of day?” I laughed. “The Gestapo marked your card, angel. Why else would he have told you he was joining the Gestapo? After your interview with the sports leader they probably followed you here.”

“Oh, that’s nonsense, Bernie.”

“Is it? Most likely Lieutenant Seetzen was told to charm you, to find out what kind of person you are. Who your associates are. And now they know about me.” I glanced around the café. “They’re probably watching us right now. Perhaps the waiter is one of theirs. Or that man reading the newspaper. It could be anyone. That’s what they do.”

Noreen swallowed nervously and lit another cigarette. Her lovely blue eyes flicked one way and then the other, examining the waiter and then the man with the newspaper for some sign that they were spying on us. “You really think so?”

Noreen was beginning to look convinced, and I might have smiled and told her I was joking but for the fact that I’d also succeeded in convincing myself. Why wouldn’t the Gestapo have followed an American journalist who had just finished interviewing the sports leader? It made perfect sense. It’s what I’d have done if I’d been in the Gestapo. I told myself I ought to have seen this coming.

“So now they know about you,” I said. “And they know about me.”

“I’ve put you in danger, haven’t I?”

“Like you said this morning. A certain amount of danger is written into the job description.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Forget it. Then again, maybe you shouldn’t forget it, after all. I like your feeling guilty on my part. It means I can blackmail you with a clear conscience, angel. Besides. As soon as I saw you I knew you were trouble. And it just so happens that’s just the way I like my women. With big fenders, polished coachwork, lots of chrome, and a supercharged engine, like that car Hedda drives. The kind of car where you find yourself in Poland the moment you touch the gas. I’d be on the bus if I was interested in sleeping with librarians.”

“All the same, I’ve been thinking about this story and not thinking at all about the impact it might have on you. I can’t believe I’ve been so stupid as to bring you to the attention of the Gestapo.”

“Maybe I didn’t mention it before, but I’ve been in their sights for quite a while. Ever since I quit the force, as a matter of fact. There are several good reasons I can think of why the Gestapo or for that matter KRIPO could arrest me if they wanted to. It’s the reasons I can’t think of that are the ones I worry about most.”

NOREEN WANTED TO SPEND THE NIGHT with me at my apartment, but I couldn’t bring myself to bring her to what was little more than a room with a tiny kitchen and an even tinier bathroom. Calling it an apartment at all was a bit like describing a mustard seed as a vegetable. There were smaller apartments in Berlin, but mostly it was the families of mice that got them first.

It was embarrassment that prevented me from showing her how I lived. But it was shame that prevented me from telling her that I was one-eighth Jewish. It’s true I had been discomfited at the discovery my so-called mixed blood had been denounced to the Gestapo, but I felt no shame in being who and what I was. How could I? It seemed so insignificant. No, the shame I felt related to my having asked Emil Linthe to airbrush from the official record the very blood that connected me with Noreen, albeit in a small way. How could I tell her that? And, still nursing my secret, I spent another blissful night with Noreen in her suite at the Adlo.n.

Lying between her thighs, I slept only a little. We had better things to do. And early in the morning, when I made my nefarious exit from her room, I told her only that I was going home and that I would see her later that day, and nothing at all about catching the S-Bahn to Grunewald and Schildhorn.

I kept some working clothes in my office. As soon as I had changed, I went out into the predawn darkness and walked to Potsdamer Station. About forty-five minutes after that, I was walking up the steps to the Schildhorn monument with several other men, most of them Jewish-looking types with brown hair, dark melancholy eyes, bat ears, and beaks that made you wonder if God had chosen his people on the basis of their having noses they might not have chosen for themselves. This generalization was made easier by the certain knowledge that all these men shared a bloodline that was probably purer than my own. In the moonlight, one or two of them shot me a questioning look, as if wondering what the Nazis could possibly have against a tall, burly man with blond hair, blue eyes, and a nose like a baker’s thumb. I didn’t blame them. In that particular company I stuck out like Rameses II.