Philip Kerr - The Other Side of Silence

“You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Under the circumstances I can’t honestly see that God will mind very much. Frankly, I think he’ll be glad that anyone can be in a ruin like this and still believe that the idea of God is even possible.”

“I think he’s possible, just not very likely,” she said. “There were a hundred children killed in this cathedral when they took shelter from those RAF bombs. As a way of confirming that God doesn’t exist it probably beats Nietzsche, don’t you think?”

“In which case this will be like a second chance for him. For God, yes. A good way for him to get started in this city again. A chance to make it up to us. To show us that he really means something. You know, I’ll bet we’ll be the first people to get married in this church since that happened.”

“You’re mad, do you know that?” But she was smiling. “Why do you want to do this?”

“Because words matter, don’t they? Most of the time I don’t say what I mean just to keep from being arrested by the Gestapo. For once I’d like to say something that’s actually important and mean it.”

She nodded.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

We were still celebrating our mock marriage-to be honest, it had seemed a lot more than a mock marriage at the time-with a horsemeat dinner in the Spatenbrau Restaurant when the devil put in an early appearance, as might have been expected after our lighthearted blasphemy. An unexpected bottle of extremely good Riesling arrived at our table, followed closely by its handsome donor, an SD captain whom, for a moment-it had been six years-I only half-remembered. But he remembered me, all right. Blackmailers need to have good memories. It was Harold Hennig, and to my irritation, he greeted me as if we’d been old friends.

“Berlin, wasn’t it?” he said. “January, thirty-eight.”

I stood up; he was a captain, after all, and I a mere lieutenant and it was a few moments before I connected him with the von Frisch case.

“Yes. It was. Gunther. FHO.”

“Harold Hennig,” he said, and clicked his heels as he bowed politely at Irmela. “Well, Gunther, aren’t you going to introduce me to this charming young lady?”

“This is Over Auxiliary-?” I was never quite sure of her non-military rank in the women’s auxiliary and glanced at Irmela, who nodded back that I’d got this right. “Miss Irmela Schaper.”

“May I join you both?”

“Yes.”

“You look as if you’re celebrating something,” he observed.

“We’re alive,” I said. “That’s always a cause for celebration these days.”

“True.” Captain Hennig sat down and took out an elegant, amber cigarette case, which he opened in front of us to reveal a perfectly paraded battalion of good cigarettes and then offered them around the table. “True. Where there’s life, there’s hope, eh?”

Irmela took one of his cigarettes and studied it like an interesting curio, and then sniffed the tobacco appreciatively. “I don’t know if I should smoke this or keep it as a souvenir.”

“Smoke it,” he said, “and take another one for later.”

So she did.

“Is this what the Gestapo is smoking these days?” I said, savoring the taste of a real nail. “Things must be better than I thought.”

“Oh, I’m not with the Gestapo anymore,” he said. “Not since the beginning of the war. I work for the Erich Koch Institute now.”

“On the corner of Tragheimer and Gartenstrasse,” said Irmela. “I know that building.”

“Since the bombing we’re rather more often found in Friedrichsberg.”

“That must be nice,” I said. “And a lot safer, too, I’d have thought.”

Erich Koch was the Nazi Party gauleiter of East Prussia, and his huge country estate at Friedrichsberg, just outside the city, was the center of his commercial exploitation of the province, which, by all accounts, was completely unscrupulous. But his authority was absolute and General Lasch was obliged to give way to Koch’s imperious demands. Even now the Erich Koch Institute in the city’s Tragheim district was being remodeled-to a princely standard, it was bruited; while, at Koch’s orders, a large number of civilian workers was soon to be put to work building an airplane runway on Paradeplatz, presumably so Koch could make a quick getaway in his personal Focke-Wulf Condor-and this at a time when there was a more pressing need to build the city’s defenses for the Battle of Konigsberg that was coming as soon as winter was over. Everyone assumed it would be the spring thaw of 1945 when the Red Army made its big push against the city. Right now, everything was frozen solid. Even the Russians. It was Erich Koch who had refused to consider the comprehensive and systematic plan proposed by General Lasch for the immediate evacuation of all civilians from East Prussia and who had placed his faith in building a wall-the Erich Koch Wall-in a place and to a construction standard that was of questionable value.

“The governor isn’t in Friedrichsberg for reasons of his own personal safety,” explained Hennig, “but because that’s simply the best place to coordinate the defense of the city. It’s not just Konigsberg that’s under threat but Danzig, too. Rest assured, the governor is looking after all our interests.”

“I was sure he would be,” I said, but everyone knew that Koch was looking out for his own interests most of all. I had a good idea that the Park Hotel where I was living was actually owned by the Erich Koch Institute and that the army was obliged to pay Koch four marks a night for every officer staying there, but I thought it best to confine my comments to general approval of the gauleiter. Koch was notoriously touchy and inclined to order the arrest and execution of anyone critical of his absolute rule. Public executions were common in Konigsberg, with bodies left hanging from lampposts near the refugee camps on the southern side of the city where, it was believed, there was a much greater need for discipline.

“And what service do you perform for Governor Koch?” I asked Hennig, being careful not to mention blackmail and extortion.

He shook his head and poured some wine into a glass. “You might say that I’m his aide-de-camp. A military liaison officer. Just a glorified messenger, really. The governor issues an order and I have the job of conveying it to the military commander. Or anyone else who matters.” He smiled at Irmela. “And what about you, my dear? I can see that you’re in the naval auxiliary but doing what, may I ask.”

“I’m in signals.”

“Ah. You’re a Valkyrie. A lightning maiden. No wonder this fellow Gunther is spending time with you, my dear. He always did like to stand a little too close to high voltages. In nineteen thirty-eight, he almost got his fingers burned. Didn’t you, Gunther?”

“It’s a wonder I have any fingerprints left,” I said.

At this Irmela picked up my right hand and kissed my fingertips, one by one, and while I appreciated the tenderness of her gesture, I could have wished that she’d not done this in front of Harold Hennig, for whom all knowledge was power, probably. It wasn’t that I thought he might tell my wife, but there was just something about him knowing about us I didn’t like.

He grinned. “Well, we’re all survivors, eh?”

“For how much longer, though,” I said. “That’s the question.”

“A word of advice, old fellow,” said Hennig. “There are only two people in East Prussia who still believe in the final victory. One of them is Adolf Hitler. The other is Erich Koch. So, if I were you, I’d avoid defeatist talk like that. I’d hate to see you end up decorating a lamppost for the edification of some foreign workers and refugees.”