Philip Kerr: Prussian Blue

It was the end of the season and most of the hotels on the Riviera, including the Grand Hôtel Cap Ferrat, where I worked, were already closed for the winter. Not that winter meant much in that part of the world. Not like in Berlin, where winter is more a rite of passage than a season: you’re not a true Berliner until you’ve survived the bitter experience of an interminable Prussian winter; that famous dancing bear you see on the city’s coat of arms is just trying to keep himself warm.

The Hotel Ruhl was normally one of the last hotels in Nice to close because it had a casino and people like to gamble whatever the weather. Maybe they should have opened a casino in the nearby Hotel Negresco — which the Ruhl resembled, except that the Negresco was closed and looked as if it might stay that way the following year. Some said they were going to turn it into apartments but the Negresco concierge — who was an acquaintance of mine, and a fearful snob — said the place had been sold to the daughter of a Breton butcher, and he wasn’t usually wrong about these things. He was off to Bern for the winter and probably wouldn’t be back. I was going to miss him but as I parked my car and crossed the Promenade des Anglais to the Hotel Ruhl I really wasn’t thinking about that. Perhaps it was the cold night air and the barman’s surplus ice cubes in the gutter but instead I was thinking about Germany. Or perhaps it was the sight of the two crew-cut golems standing outside the hotel’s grand Mediterranean entrance, eating ice cream cones and wearing thick East German suits of the kind that are mass-produced like tractor parts and shovels. Just seeing those two thugs ought to have put me on my guard but I had something important on my mind; I was looking forward to meeting my wife, Elisabeth, who, out of the blue, had sent me a letter inviting me to dinner. We were separated, and she was living back in Berlin, but Elisabeth’s handwritten letter — she had beautiful Sütterlin handwriting (banned by the Nazis) — spoke of her having come into a bit of money, which just might have explained how she could afford to be back on the Riviera and staying at the Ruhl, which is almost as expensive as the Angleterre or the Westminster. Either way I was looking forward to seeing her again with the blind faith of one who hoped reconciliation was on the cards. I’d already planned the short but graceful speech of forgiveness I was going to make. How much I missed her and thought we could still make a go of it — that kind of thing. Of course, a part of me was also braced for the possibility she might be there to tell me she’d met someone else and wanted a divorce. Still, it seemed like a lot of trouble to go to — it wasn’t easy to travel from Berlin these days.

The hotel restaurant was on the top floor in one of the corner cupolas. It was perhaps the best in Nice, designed by Charles Dalmas. Certainly it was the most expensive. I hadn’t ever eaten there but I’d heard the food was excellent and I was looking forward to my dinner. The mâitre d ’ sidestepped his way across the beautiful Belle Epoque room, met me at the bookings lectern, and found my wife’s name on the page. I was already glancing over his shoulder, searching the tables anxiously for Elisabeth and not finding her there yet, checking my watch and realizing that I was perhaps a little early. I wasn’t really listening to the mâitre d ’ as he informed me that my host had arrived, and I was halfway across the marble floor when I saw I was being ushered to a quiet corner table where a squat, tough-looking man was already working on a very large lobster and a bottle of white Burgundy. Recognizing him immediately, I turned on my heel only to find my exit blocked by two more apes who looked as if they might have climbed in through the open window, off one of the many palm trees on the Promenade.

“Don’t leave yet,” one of them said quietly in thick, Leipzig-accented German. “The comrade-general wouldn’t like it.”

For a moment I stood my ground, wondering if I could risk making a run for the door. But the two men, cut from the same crude mold as the two golems I’d seen by the hotel entrance, were more than a match for me.

“That’s right,” added the other. “So you’d best sit down like a good boy and avoid making a scene.”

“Gunther,” said a voice behind me, also speaking German. “Bernhard Gunther. Come over here and sit down, you old fascist. Don’t be afraid.” He laughed. “I’m not going to shoot you. It’s a public place.” I suppose he assumed that German speakers were at a premium in the Hotel Ruhl and he probably wouldn’t have been wrong. “What could possibly happen to you in here? Besides, the food is excellent and the wine more so.”

I turned again and took another look at the man who remained seated and was still applying himself to the lobster with his cracker and a pick, like a plumber changing the washer on a tap. He was wearing a better suit than his men — a blue pinstripe, tailor-made — and a patterned silk tie that could only have been bought in France. A tie like that would have cost a week’s wages in the GDR and probably earned you a lot of awkward questions at the local police station, as would the large gold watch that flashed on his wrist like a miniature lighthouse as he gouged at the flesh of the lobster, which was the same color as the more abundant flesh of his powerful hands. His hair was still dark on top but cut so short against the sides of his wrecking ball of a head it looked like a priest’s black zucchetto. He’d put on some weight since last I’d seen him, and he hadn’t even started on the new potatoes, the mayonnaise, the asparagus tips, the salade niçoise , sweet cucumber pickles, and a plate of dark chocolate arranged on the table in front of him. With his boxer’s physique he reminded me strongly of Martin Bormann, Hitler’s deputy chief of staff; he was certainly every bit as dangerous.

I sat down, poured myself a glass of white wine, and tossed my cigarette case onto the table in front of me.

“General Erich Mielke,” I said. “What an unexpected pleasure.”

“I’m sorry about bringing you here under false pretenses. But I knew you wouldn’t have come if I’d said it was I who was buying dinner.”

“Is she all right? Elisabeth? Just tell me that and then I’ll listen to whatever you have to say, General.”

“Yes, she’s fine.”

“I take it she’s not actually here in Nice.”

“No, she’s not. I’m sorry about that. But you’ll be glad to know that she was most reluctant to write that letter. I had to explain that the alternative would have been so much more painful, for you at least. So please don’t hold that letter against her. She wrote it for the best of reasons.” Mielke lifted an arm and snapped his fingers at the waiter. “Have something to eat. Have some wine. I drink very little myself but I’m told this is the best. Anything you like. I insist. The Ministry of State Security is paying. Only, please don’t smoke. I hate the smell of cigarettes, especially when I’m eating.”

“I’m not hungry, thanks.”

“Of course you are. You’re a Berliner. We don’t have to be hungry to eat. The war taught us to eat when there’s food on the table.”

“Well, there’s plenty of food on this table. Are we expecting anyone else? The Red Army, perhaps?”