Philip Kerr - If the Dead Rise Not

Surrounded by the Havel and its lakes, Potsdam wasn’t much more than an island. And I couldn’t have felt more lonely if I’d been marooned on some desert atoll with a solitary palm tree and a parrot. For more than a hundred years the town had been the headquarters of the Prussian army, but it might as well have been the headquarters of the Girl Guides for all the help the army was going to give me. I was about to become the prisoner of Count von Helldorf and there was nothing anyone could do about it. One of the buildings in Potsdam was the palace called Sanssouci, which is French for “without care.” I was a long way from a state of mind like that.

As we drove past another castle and a parade ground, I caught a glimpse of a street sign. We were on Priest Strasse, and I was beginning to think I might have need of one as we turned into the courtyard of the local police praesidium.

Entering the building, we went up several flights of stairs and along a cold, dimly lit corridor to a handsomely appointed office with a nice view of the Havel, which I recognized only because there was an even more handsomely appointed motor yacht floating on it just below the leaded window and lit up like a ride at Luna Park.

In the office, a tree was burning in an open fireplace where you could have roasted a whole ox. There were a big hanging tapestry, a portrait of Hitler, and a suit of armor that looked about as stiff as the man standing beside it. He was wearing the uniform of a police general and an air of aristocratic superiority, as if he should have preferred that my shoes had been removed before I was allowed to walk on his park-sized Persian rug. I suppose he was about the same age as I, but there the similarity ended. When he spoke, his tone was careworn and exasperated, and he gave me the impression I had caused him to miss the beginning of an opera or, more likely in his case, a queerish cabaret turn. On a log cabin of a desk, a backgammon set was laid out for a game, and in his hand was a little leather cup containing a pair of dice that every now and then he would rattle nervously, like some mendicant friar.

“Please sit down,” he said.

The man in the leather coat pushed me into a seat at a meeting table and then pushed a pen and a sheet of paper toward me. He seemed to be good at pushing things. “Sign it,” he said.

“What is it?” I asked

“It’s a D- 11,” said the man. “An order for protective custody.”

“I used to be a cop myself,” I said. “At the Alex. And I never heard of a D-11. What does it mean?”

Leather Coat glanced at von Helldorf, who replied, “If you sign it, it means you agree to be sent to a concentration camp.”

“I don’t want to go to a concentration camp. As a matter of fact, I don’t want to be here, either. No offense, but it’s been a hell of a day.”

“Signing a D-11 doesn’t mean you will be sent to a camp,” explained von Helldorf. “What it means is that you agree to go.”

“Forgive me, sir, but I don’t agree.”

Von Helldorf rocked on the heels of his jackboots and rattled the dice box behind his back.

“You could say that once it’s signed, it acts as a guarantee of your good behavior,” he said. “Your future good behavior. Do you see?”

“Yes. But equally, and with all due respect to yourself, General, it could just as easily result in my being taken from here to the nearest camp. Don’t get me wrong. I could use a holiday. I’d like to sit around for a couple of weeks and catch up on my reading. But from what I’ve heard, there’s not much concentration that’s possible in a concentration camp.”

“A lot of what you say is quite true, Herr Gunther,” said von Helldorf. “However, if you don’t sign, you will be kept here in a police cell until you agree to do so. So, as you can see, you really don’t have much choice in the matter.”

“So in other words, I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t.”

“In a manner of speaking, yes.”

“I don’t suppose there’s a piece of paper I have to sign before I can be kept in a police cell, is there?”

“I’m afraid not. But let me repeat, signing the D-11 doesn’t mean you will go to a camp. The fact is, Herr Gunther, this government is doing its best to be more sparing with the use of protective custody. You may be aware that Oranienburg concentration camp has recently closed, for example. Also that the Leader has signed an amnesty affecting political prisoners, on August seventh this year. All of which makes perfect sense, given that almost everyone in the country is now inclined to favor his inspired leadership. Indeed, it is even hoped that in time all of the concentration camps will disappear, like Oranienburg.

“Nevertheless,” continued von Helldorf, “there may come a stage in the future when, shall we say, the security of the state is endangered, at which time anyone subject to a D-11 will be arrested and incarcerated without recourse to the judicial system.”

“Yes, I can understand how that might be useful.”

“Good, good. Which leaves us with the subject of your own D- 11.”

“Perhaps if I knew the reason you feel I need to give a guarantee of my own good behavior,” I said, “then I might be more inclined to sign such a thing.”

Von Helldorf frowned and looked sternly at the three men who had brought me all the way from the Adlon. “Do you mean to tell me he hasn’t been told why he’s been brought here?”

Leather Coat shook his head. His hat was off now, and I had a clearer idea of him as a human being. He looked like a gorilla. “All I was told, sir, was that we should pick him up and bring him here immediately.”

Von Helldorf rattled the dice box irritably, as if he wished it had been Leather Coat’s skull. “It seems I have to do everything myself, Herr Gunther,” he said, and walked toward me.

While I waited for him to arrive, I rolled my eyeballs around the room, which was set up for the playboy prince of Ruritania. On one wall was a geometry set of foils and sabers. Beneath this was an oceangoing sideboard that was home to a radio as big as a tombstone and a silver tray with more bottles and decanters than the cocktail bar at the Adlon. A double-front secretaire was full of leather-bound books, and a few of them were about the laws of criminal evidence and procedure, but mostly they were classics of German literature such as Zane Grey, P. C. Wren, Booth Tarkington, and Anita Loos. Police work never looked so leisured and comfortable.

Von Helldorf drew out one of the heavy dining chairs around the table, sat down, and leaned against a carved back that had more tracery than a window in a Gothic cathedral. Then he laid his hands on the desk as if he had been about to play the piano. Either way, he had my full attention.

“As you possibly know, I’m on the German Olympic Organizing Committee,” he said. “It’s my job to ensure the security not just of all the people who will be coming to Berlin in 1936, but also of all the people who are involved in making sure everything is ready in time. There are several hundred contractors, which presents something of a logistical nightmare if what looks like an almost impossible deadline is to be met. Now, given the fact that we have less than two years to get everything up and ready, I don’t think anyone will be surprised to learn that there are times when mistakes get made or when standards have to be compromised. All the same, it’s awkward for some of these contractors when, in spite of doing their very best, they feel that they’ve become the subject of scrutiny by elements who lack the same enthusiasm for the Olympic project as everyone else. Indeed, it could be argued that some of these elements are behaving in a way that might easily be construed as unpatriotic and un-German. Do you see what I mean?”