Philip Kerr - Prussian Blue

“Look, just mind your own business, right? Now fuck off before I lose patience with you.”

While this conversation was taking place I stepped quietly out of the doorway and started back down the street, intent on putting as much distance as possible between me and Mielke’s men. Hoping the Stasi man would assume I had just come out of the door and ignore me, I walked quickly but calmly, like someone who was actually headed somewhere in particular. I even stopped to glance in the window of a tabac before continuing and I had reached the premises of the local funeral home at the bottom of the street when a light came on at a window immediately above me. It might as well have been a searchlight designed to defeat enemy nighttime maneuvers and it marked me out like an actor on a stage. The next second there was a shout and then a pane of glass shattered near my head. I glanced around and saw the man in shorts leveling a pistol at me. I had been recognized. I didn’t hear the second shot, which made me think he was using a silencer, but I certainly felt the bullet zip past my ear and, taking to my heels, I turned sharply left and ran for about twenty meters before, next to a hairdresser’s shop, I spied a narrow patch of waste ground behind an overgrown metal fence. I climbed over it quickly, dropped into a tall bed of nettles, and ran as far as I could until I arrived at an old garage door. Fortunately it was not locked. I went inside, squeezed past a dusty motorcar, closed the main door carefully behind me, kicked open the back door, which had been locked, and found myself in the concrete yard of someone’s house. Some threadbare towels were drying on a washing line next to a small herb garden and these helped to screen my presence. A man was seated in a barely furnished parlor listening to a football match on the radio, which was loud enough to conceal the sound of me opening his own door and stepping quietly onto the brown linoleum floor of his malodorous kitchen; this was easily referable to a plate of half-eaten andouillettes that lay on the table. If ever a sausage-loving German needed a good excuse to dislike the French it was the pissy smell of an andouillette. It seemed to me there was only one thing worse than that smell and it was the stink of my own unwashed underwear. I paused for a moment and then advanced slowly through the half-lit house, unnoticed by the man still listening intently to the radio. I reached the front door, opened it, glanced outside, and saw a man running along the street. Guessing he must be Stasi, I shut the door and tiptoed up the house stairs in the hope I might find somewhere to hide. The main bedroom was easily identified and even more stinky than the kitchen, but the spare was clean and from the look of it, rarely ever used. A picture of Philippe Pétain hung on the wall; he was wearing a red kepi and a gray tunic and seemed every inch the proud warrior; his mustache looked like a prize chicken, which was also a very good description of the French army he and Weygand had commanded in June 1940. I went to the window and watched the street for ten or fifteen minutes as a car drove slowly up and down; the occupants were obviously looking for me. I could just make out Friedrich Korsch wearing his eye patch in the front seat.

It was cold in the room, and I wrapped myself in a red blanket I found on top of the wardrobe. After a while I slid underneath the bed with only a chamber pot and a few toenails for company. I told myself I was probably better off where I was, at least for a couple of hours. Gradually my heart slowed and eventually I closed my eyes and even slept a little. Not surprisingly I dreamed I was being chased by a pack of slavering wolves who were almost as ravenously hungry as I was. For some reason I was dressed as Little Red Riding Hood. If only I’d listened to my Grandmother Mielke and stayed strictly on the path.

When I awoke the radio was off and the whole house was in darkness. I slid out from under the bed, used the chamber pot, went to the window, and checked the street. There was no sign of my pursuers but that didn’t mean they weren’t around. I took the blanket and crept downstairs. A wall clock was ticking loudly in the tiny dining room. It sounded like someone chopping firewood. The smell persisted; the andouillettes were still on the kitchen table and overcoming my very real disgust I ate them, almost gagging as inevitably they reminded me of that chamber pot, and then helped myself to some bread to strangle the taste in my mouth. I drank a cup of cold instant coffee for the caffeine, which was almost as bad as the sausages, took a sharp knife from the drawer, slid it inside the leg of my sock, and then left the house.

The town was still in darkness and as deserted as if a Gestapo curfew had been in force. I would have to move carefully, like one of those French resistance fighters who were now the stuff of popular fiction. And probably always had been. Anyone moving around at this time of night would raise suspicion. I knew the old border was at the top of the hill but not much more. Somehow I had to find it and then some rough country where, for a while, I might go to ground like a hunted fox. Moving from one little doorway to another as if I were delivering letters, I made my way stealthily up the streets of Freyming-Merlebach and through the town. Finally I saw a long line of conifer trees and knew instinctively that this was Holy Germany and sanctuary. I was just about to run across the road when I caught the strong smell of a French cigarette and paused long enough to see the man in the leather shorts seated in a bus shelter. I knew I would be fortunate to avoid being shot this time. Stasi men were always excellent marksmen, and with his silencer this one was probably an experienced assassin. Korsch would have taken a strip off him for missing me with any shots he fired. Maybe even put another scar on his face with that switchblade. I’d been lucky twice and I didn’t think I’d ever be that lucky again. Somehow I was going to have to get past this man, but I couldn’t see how.

Heydrich’s tall, smooth-faced adjutant, Hans-Hendrik Neumann, was waiting for us up at the Villa Bechstein. In his hand was a book about Karl Ferdinand Braun and the invention of the cathode-ray tube, which served to remind me that Heydrich had a habit of picking clever people from a variety of different backgrounds to work for him. Maybe this included me. Neumann had driven down from Salzburg with an order from Heydrich that had absolutely nothing to do with finding Karl Flex’s assassin and, in the wake of Kaltenbrunner’s clumsy attempt to have me arrested, everything to do with imposing his absolute authority on the Security Service.

“These two comedians from Linz,” said Neumann. “Where are they now?”

“In the jail cells beneath the Hotel Türken,” I said. “I stabbed one of them with a piece of glass.”

“I’m afraid his situation is not about to improve very much. Heydrich has some important questions he wants put to them. Before we shoot them and send the bodies back to Linz.”

I shouldn’t have been surprised at this news, but I was, and while I disliked the Gestapo intensely I didn’t appreciate being the reason why two men were going to be shot. “You’re going to shoot them?”

“Not me. The local RSD can do it. That’s what they’re for.” Neumann looked at Friedrich Korsch. “You. Criminal Assistant Korsch, isn’t it? Go and find the duty officer from the RSD and tell him to organize a firing squad for tomorrow morning.”

Korsch glanced back at me, and I nodded. Now wasn’t the right time to speak up for the two men from Linz. He got up and went off to find the RSD duty officer.

“The general wants these men to be made an example,” said Neumann. “Interfering with a police commissar from Kripo HQ carrying out Heydrich’s express orders — that’s you, in case you didn’t recognize yourself — is treasonable. And of course Kaltenbrunner will get the message this sends. But first, we have to interrogate them and make sure that they have told us absolutely everything.”