Philip Kerr - Prussian Blue

“Taking a risk, weren’t you, Friedrich? Given her medical history.”

“Worth it, though. You saw what she looked like.”

“She was built, all right, if that’s what you mean. But why didn’t you ask me what became of Diesbach, to save you all that bother?”

“I did. On two or three occasions. Maybe you’ve forgotten but all you’d say was that he was dead and that I’d stay alive longer if I forgot he’d ever existed. Or words to that effect. So I did, eventually. And so did she.”

“Good advice, if you don’t mind me saying so. I did you a favor there. For Bormann, the security of the Berghof was more than just a matter of guarding Hitler’s life. It was also a matter of guarding Hitler’s feelings. It was made very clear to me that any kind of loose talk about Karl Flex’s death would be treated as treasonous. Undermining Reich security or some such nonsense.”

“Anyway, none of that matters much now.”

“And did you find out what became of Diesbach’s body?”

“In time. It seems that the local Gestapo took him to a crematorium in Kaiserslautern and had him burned to ashes at midnight. Not that Eva Diesbach cared very much by then. She had other things on her mind. Her son Benno, remember him? He got himself picked up by a man in the old Friedrichstrasse arcade and was sent to a KZ with a pink triangle on his jacket.” Korsch jerked the barrel of the silenced Makarov pistol at one of the quartz tunnels leading back to the cave entrance. “All right. Story’s over. Let’s go, shall we? This damned place gives me the shivers. And you’re right. It is exactly like being buried alive.”

“So how are you planning that I should kill myself? Thallium poisoning, or another hanging?”

“You’ll find out soon enough. Now move.”

I hesitated to move. “May I fetch my jacket? I’m cold.”

“You won’t need it where you’re going.”

“My ID is in that jacket. If the proper authorities don’t find that, then it won’t look like much of a suicide.”

“What do you care?”

“I don’t. But I really am feeling cold. Besides, my cigarettes are also in that jacket. And I’m hoping you might allow me a last smoke.”

Korsch jerked his head at my jacket. “All right. But don’t get any clever ideas, Gunther. I really don’t mind shooting you. Not after what you did to poor Helmut. He was the man in the leather shorts you strangled the day before yesterday. And one of my best men.”

“It was him or me.”

“Perhaps. But he was also my cousin.”

“Well, I am sorry about that. Cousins are hard to come by these days. But I really don’t think he was a very nice person, Friedrich. Before I killed Helmut I watched him shoot a cat for sport. What kind of a sick bastard does something like that?”

“I don’t care about cats very much. But that makes two of my men you’ve killed since we met again. There’s not going to be a third.”

I went to retrieve my jacket.

“Slowly,” said Korsch. “Like tree sap in winter.”

“Everything I do now, I do slowly. As a matter of fact, Friedrich, I’m exhausted. I couldn’t run another step, even if I wanted to. And I’m all out of clever ideas on how to evade you and your men.”

This was true. I’d had more than enough of running. My neck ached and my feet were damp. My clothes were sticking to me and I smelled almost as bad as the cold andouillette I’d eaten in Freyming-Merlebach. All I really wanted to do was smoke a last cigarette, face up to whatever was coming to me from the Stasi, and get it over with. They say a cornered rat will attack a dog and deliver a nasty bite, but this particular rat felt like it was finished, and it was as well for me that Gunther’s luck wasn’t feeling the same way because, as I tugged my jacket off the electricity switch on the quartz wall, I managed, quite accidentally, to turn off the light, plunging the cavern into complete darkness. For a millisecond I wondered what had happened. I think I may even have asked myself if someone else had killed the light. I expect we both did. And in the half second it took Friedrich Korsch to pull the trigger of the Makarov, I recognized the broken shard of a chance the gods had capriciously tossed my way and threw myself onto the thick sand. I scrambled away from the splinter of flame that punctuated the inky air with harmless delicacy, once, twice, and then a third time.

I heard Korsch curse and then fumble with a box of matches, and since it’s impossible to strike a match and pull a trigger at the same time, I stood up and launched myself desperately at the spot in space where I’d last seen the flame from the silenced automatic, hardly caring if I was injured or not. Half a second later I collided heavily with Korsch and the two of us crashed hard against the quartz wall, with him taking the full force of the impact and seemingly coming off the worst as he let out a loud groan and then stopped moving altogether. Breathlessly, I lay on top of his silent, motionless body for a full minute before realizing that I couldn’t hear him breathing.

I rolled off him and, finding my lighter, I saw that far from being unconscious, Friedrich Korsch was dead — that much was clear even in the flickering light of my Ronson. His single bulging eye stared straight at me and for a moment I thought he was wearing a red hat until I realized that the top of his head was cracked like an egg and covered with blood. More quickly than his life had been engendered between some greasy sheets in Kreuzberg, it had now abruptly disappeared, almost as if it had been turned off like the lights on the cavern floor, and all Korsch’s hopes of a captain’s pip or a major’s shoulder boards were gone as if with the flick of a switch. I held his stare for a while. For a moment I thought of all we’d been through together in Kripo, and then I pushed his horribly fractured head away with the heel of my shoe.

I didn’t feel sorry for him. Just as easily my life could have ended in the same way, and I thought it as well Korsch had used a silencer on his pistol, otherwise the Stasi men outside would have been summoned to the scene by the three shots he’d fired. I won’t say I planned to erect an altar to luck any time soon, like Goethe, but I did feel absurdly fortunate.

Now all I had to do was go to one of the other nine levels and make my escape, probably the same way I’d done in 1939.

Until 1803, Berchtesgaden had a college of Augustinian canons, whose priors were granted the rank of princes of the empire at the end of the fifteenth century. The Schloss, once the monastic buildings, was now the property of the ex — crown prince Rupprecht. But neither a king nor an emperor could have penetrated the tight RSD security cordon around Obersalzberg now in place following the Leader’s arrival there; I certainly couldn’t. My own clearance was revoked indefinitely and it was explained to me, in person, by Colonel Rattenhuber, that this wouldn’t change until the Leader had left the area and returned to Berlin.

I was installed in my new lodgings at Berchtesgaden’s Grand Hotel & Kurhaus when Rattenhuber came to see me, full of apologies for this apparent slight and desperate for a cigarette but unable to have one in case Hitler smelled tobacco on his breath.

“You must understand that there are lots of people in Berchtesgaden to wish Hitler a happy fiftieth birthday and that it would be impossible to accommodate you now in the Leader’s Territory. The Villa Bechstein is full.”

“I’ll try to contain my disappointment.”

“I only just succeeded in getting you in here, at the Grand. I’ve never seen so many people in Berchtesgaden. It’s a real carnival atmosphere.”