Philip Kerr - Prussian Blue

“I like to see lots of food when I’m eating, even if I don’t eat any of it. It’s not just a man’s stomach that needs filling. It’s his senses, too.”

I picked up the bottle and inspected the label.

“Corton-Charlemagne. I approve. Nice to see that an old communist like you can still appreciate a few of the finer things in life, General. This wine must be the most expensive on the list.”

“I do, and it most certainly is.”

I drained the glass and poured myself another. It was excellent.

The waiter approached nervously, as if he’d already felt the edge of Mielke’s tongue.

“We’ll have two juicy steaks,” said Mielke, speaking good French — the result, I imagined, of his two years spent in a French prison camp before and during the war. “No, better still, we’ll have the Chateaubriand. And make it very bloody.”

The waiter went away.

“Is it just steak you prefer that way?” I said. “Or everything else as well?”

“Still got that sense of humor, Gunther. It beats me how you’ve stayed alive for this long.”

“The French are a little more tolerant of these things than they are in what you laughingly call the Democratic Republic of Germany. Tell me, General, when is the communist government going to dissolve the people and elect another?”

“The people?” Mielke laughed, and breaking off from his lobster for a moment, placed a piece of chocolate into his mouth, almost as if it were a matter of indifference what he was eating just as long as it was something not easily obtained in the GDR. “They rarely know what’s best for them. Nearly fourteen million Germans voted for Hitler in March 1932, making the Nazis the largest party in the Reichstag. Do you honestly believe they had a clue what was best for them? No, of course not. Nobody did. All the people care about is a regular pay packet, cigarettes, and beer.”

“I expect that’s why twenty thousand East German refugees were crossing into the Federal Republic every month — at least until you imposed your so-called special regime with its restricted zone and your protective strip. They were in search of better beer and cigarettes and perhaps the chance to complain a little without fear of the consequences.”

“Who was it said that none are more hopelessly enslaved than those who believe they are free?”

“It was Goethe. And you misquote him. He said that none are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”

“In my book, they are one and the same.”

“That would be the one book you’ve read, then.”

“You’re a romantic fool. I forget that about you, sometimes. Look, Gunther, most people’s idea of freedom is to write something rude on a lavatory wall. My own belief is that the people are lazy and prefer to leave the business of government to the government. However, it’s important that the people don’t place too great a burden on those in charge of things. Hence, my presence here in France. Generally speaking I prefer to go hunting. But I often come here around this time of year to get away from my responsibilities. I like to play a little baccarat.”

“That’s a high-risk game. But then you always were a gambler.”

“You want to know the really great thing about gambling here?” He grinned. “Most of the time, I lose. If there were still such decadent things as casinos in the GDR I’m afraid the croupiers would always make sure I won. Winning is only fun if you can lose. I used to go to the one in Baden-Baden but the last time I was there I was recognized and couldn’t go again. So now I come to Nice. Or sometimes Le Touquet. But I prefer Nice. The weather is a little more reliable here than on the Atlantic coast.”

“Somehow I don’t believe that’s all you’re here for.”

“You’re right.”

“So what the hell do you want?”

“You remember that business a few months back, with Somerset Maugham and our mutual friends Harold Hennig and Anne French. You almost managed to screw up a good operation there.”

Mielke was referring to a Stasi plot to discredit Roger Hollis, the deputy director of MI5 — the British domestic counterintelligence and security agency. The real plan had been to leave Hollis smelling of roses after the bogus Stasi plot was revealed.

“It was very good of you to tie up that loose end for us,” said Mielke. “It was you who killed Hennig, wasn’t it?”

I didn’t answer but we both knew this was true; I’d shot Harold Hennig dead in the house Anne French had been renting in Villefranche and done my very best to frame her for it. Since then the French police had asked me all sorts of questions about her, but that was all I knew. As far as I was aware, Anne French remained safely back in England.

“Well, for the sake of argument, let’s just say it was you,” said Mielke. He finished the piece of chocolate he was eating, forked some pickled cucumber into his mouth, and then swallowed a mouthful of white Burgundy, all of which persuaded me that his taste buds were every bit as corrupt as his politics and morals. “The fact is that Hennig’s days were numbered anyway. As are Anne’s. The operation to discredit Hollis really only looks good if we try to eliminate her, too — as befits someone who betrayed us. And that’s especially important now that the French are trying to have her extradited back here to face trial for Hennig’s murder. Needless to say, that just can’t be allowed to happen. Which is where you come in, Gunther.”

“Me?” I shrugged. “Let me get this straight. You’re asking me to kill Anne French?”

“Precisely. Except that I’m not asking. The fact is that you agreeing to kill Anne French is a condition of remaining alive yourself.”

I estimated once that the Gestapo had employed less than fifty thousand officers to keep an eye on eighty million Germans, but from what I’d read and heard about the GDR, the Stasi employed at least twice that number — to say nothing of their civilian informants or spylets who, rumor had it, amounted to one in ten of the population — to keep an eye on just seventeen million Germans. As deputy head of the Stasi, Erich Mielke was one of the most powerful men in the GDR. And as might have been expected of such a man, he’d already anticipated all my objections to such a distasteful mission as the one he had described and was ready to argue them down with the brute force of one who is used to getting his way with people who are themselves authoritarian and assertive. I had the feeling that Mielke might have grabbed me by the throat or banged my head on the dinner table and, of course, violence was a vital part of his character; as a young communist cadre in Berlin he’d participated in the infamous murder of two uniformed policemen.

“No, don’t smoke,” he said, “just listen. This is a good opportunity for you, Gunther. You can make some money, get yourself a new passport — a genuine West German passport, with a different name and a fresh start somewhere — and, most important of all, you can pay Anne French back, with interest, for the way she used you so ruthlessly.”

“Only because you told her to. Isn’t that right? It was you who put her up to it.”

“I didn’t tell her to sleep with you. That was her idea. Either way she played you like a piano, Gunther. But it hardly matters now, does it? You fell for her in a big way, didn’t you?”

“It’s easy to see what the two of you have in common. You’re both totally unprincipled.”

“True. Although in her case she was also one of the best liars I’ve ever met. I mean a real pathological case. I really don’t think she knew when she was lying and when she was telling the truth. Not that I think the immorality of subterfuge really mattered to her. Just as long as she was able to maintain that cool smile and satisfy her own greed for material possessions. She managed to convince herself that she wasn’t in it for the money; the irony is that she thought she was quite principled. Which made her an ideal spy. Not that any of this previous story really matters a damn.