Philip Kerr - Prussian Blue

“I’m sure the general will be very relieved to hear that, sir.”

What was the point of truth in a world dominated by cruelty and the arbitrary exercise of power? What had become of me now that I was so reduced? I was nodding away like a googly-eyed doll but all the time I was thinking I was a madman among the very mad, and how hateful I was. Everywhere I looked, I found my own life-preserving compromises staring back at me like friends I’d shamefully betrayed. If only Hitler could have hated himself as much as I now hated my own self. Perhaps nothing in life is more unpleasant to a man than to take the road that leads to himself. Perhaps I would only be free of these monstrous people on the day I went to hell. That’s the trouble with being an eyewitness to history; sometimes history is like an avalanche that sweeps you down off the face of the mountain and into the oblivion of some hidden black crevasse. But for now I was going back to the Berghof, to seek out Gerdy Troost in the hope I might get some answers to the many cryptic mysteries of Flex’s secret ledger.

There probably wasn’t a bus for hours but the man in the leather shorts waiting at the stop didn’t mind. He wasn’t waiting for a bus. To reach the bus stop and deal with him, I would have to cross the road, and to cross the road probably meant being seen. The road was about ten meters wide and without any sign of traffic, and so quiet you could have heard a mouse cough. I could have shot him, of course, but the sound would certainly have brought other Stasi men to the scene and I’d have had a gun battle on my hands. One I was certain to lose. It had rained while I was sleeping and the cobbles glistened in the moonlight like the skin of an enormous alligator. There wasn’t a breath of wind and the treetops were as still as if they’d been tied onto the sky. Somewhere in the thick forest behind the bus stop an owl was hooting, like Mother Nature’s own alarm, as though to warn other animals that a man with a gun was close by. Probably I’d seen one too many films from Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color. But to me the trees couldn’t have looked more like the real Germany if they’d been painted black, red, and gold. Whatever the French intended for the Saarland, it certainly looked like home to me. To get there, I needed to distract the Stasi man, and I knew I would only get one chance. If there was one thing the East German police were good at, it was guarding borders; since the creation of the GDR in 1949, “flight from the Republic” was a specific and serious crime, and hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people were killed every year by the Grenzpo. Those who were caught were often executed and, at the very least, imprisoned.

I glanced around the other terraced doorways for an object I could toss over the roof of the corrugated iron bus stop to distract him — an old wine bottle or perhaps a piece of wood. There was nothing. The little town of Freyming-Merlebach wasn’t the kind of place where anyone threw very much away. I squatted down on haunches tight from walking and cycling and watched and waited, hoping he might get up and stretch his long legs and leave the bus stop, but all he did was finish one cigarette and fire up another. They smelled good, too. In my book there’s nothing that smells better than a French cigarette, except perhaps a Frenchwoman. In the yellow flame of his lighter I caught a brief glimpse of his scarred face and the gun in his hand, and I knew I would not be so lucky with this man a second time. From time to time he leveled the silenced barrel of the automatic at one of the windows opposite the bus stop, almost as if he was keen to shoot at something, anything, if only to alleviate the boredom of his all-night stakeout. I’d been there myself. Doubtless Korsch — and by extension, Erich Mielke — had impressed on his men the absolute necessity of killing me. For all I knew they were even offering a cash bonus on my head. I’d heard it said that Grenzpos could earn themselves a full weekend’s leave with extra food and alcohol vouchers if they shot a republikflüchtiger .

I stared at my dirty shoes for a while and considered just how far they’d come since I’d left Cap Ferrat. Almost a thousand kilometers, probably. Just the thought of this distance made me feel a combination of victory and despair: victory that I had eluded capture for so long; despair at the loss of my old and comparatively comfortable life. And all because I was squeamish about killing some mendacious Englishwoman who wouldn’t have cared if I was alive or dead. I wondered what she was doing now. Making tea? I had no idea. I didn’t even like the English. In fact, I probably hated the Tommies now even more than I hated the French, which was saying a lot. But for them and the Stasi, I might still be in my old job behind the front desk at the Grand Hôtel. I leaned back against the door and pondered what to do next. The cold andouillette I’d eaten kept repeating on me and every time it did my mouth seemed to turn to piss. Just like my life.

A black cat appeared at my side, stepped sinuously between my legs, wrapped its tail around my knee, and let me fold its pointy ears for a moment or two. I’m not sure I always liked cats, but this one was so friendly that I couldn’t help but warm to it. When I was growing up in Germany my mother used to say that if a black cat crossed your path from left to right it was a sign of good luck; I couldn’t tell if this cat was from the left but it was so long since anything or anyone had come near me by choice that I picked the animal up and stroked it fondly. I needed all the friends I could get, even furry ones. Perhaps he saw in me a kindred spirit, a solitary creature of the night without ties or obligations. After a while the cat blinked an apology at me with large green eyes and explained that it had one or two things to be getting on with and, having pushed its face into mine for a second to cement our new friendship, trotted across the road. In the moonlight the black cat cast a much larger shadow so that it seemed bigger than it was; but no one could have mistaken it for anything but a cat. Which made it all the more shocking when the man in the leather shorts leaned out of the bus shelter and took a shot at it with his silenced automatic. The cat sprang forward into the bushes and disappeared. I suppose that this was the moment I started to hate the Stasi man in the bus shelter. It was one thing him planning to shoot me but it felt like something else him taking a shot at a harmless animal. For me, friends were rare and to see one of mine having to dodge a bullet for something I’d done provoked in me a strong feeling of outrage. I felt like strangling this Fritz. In my book cruelty to animals is always a sign that cruelty to human beings is not far off. It’s a well-known fact that many of Weimar Germany’s worst lust murderers began their murderous careers by torturing and killing cats and dogs.

“You cruel fucking bastard,” I whispered.

It was now that I made out a few loose cobblestones about a meter in front of me. I crept forward, tugged one out of the road, and backed into the doorway again. I hefted the stone cube in my hand. It was about the size of a doughnut and seemed ideal for what I still had in mind. After seeing the Stasi man take a potshot at the cat, I think I would have preferred to have thrown the cobblestone straight at his head. Instead, I glanced both ways along the street to check there were no cars or other Stasi men on patrol and, seeing that it remained all but deserted, I stepped forward and hurled the stone over the bus stop and into the trees, where it bounced off a trunk and then landed with a thud on the ground.