Philip Kerr - The Other Side of Silence

“Unfortunately, the captain of the S-13 was a drunk named Alexander Marinesko, who was already facing a court-martial for a previous bender. He was probably drunk when he decoded the message from Kronstadt, and in the decryption of his orders it seems that he must have made a fatal flaw, probably omitting the word ‘not’ from his plaintext message. Minutes later, at eight forty-five p.m. on January thirtieth, nineteen forty-five, he ordered four torpedoes loaded into the S-13’s forward-firing tubes. At nine fifteen he gave the order to fire, and three of the torpedoes hit their target.

“I can hardly imagine what it must have been like. The snow, the cold, the freezing water, the high seas, the dark. All of the naval auxiliary women, including Irmela Schaper, were quartered in the empty swimming pool on the ship’s lowest deck, and they were probably killed instantly by the second torpedo. Others were not so lucky. Thousands of passengers were drowned inside the ship as water flooded in through the damaged hull. Thousands more jumped into the water and were drowned or quickly succumbed to hypothermia and died. The ship sank to the bottom of the Baltic Sea less than an hour after the torpedoes hit, with the loss of over nine thousand lives, making the Gustloff the largest single loss of life in maritime history. Eight thousand of them were women and children. By contrast, just fifteen hundred people were lost on the Titanic .”

“Good God,” said Maugham. “I had no idea. I mean, I’ve never even heard of the Wilhelm Gustloff .”

“Two thousand people survived, among them Captain Harold Hennig-obviously-and many of the Gustloff ’s worthless crew, including the ship’s captain, Friedrich Petersen. Hennig was one of almost five hundred men who managed to get into lifeboats and who were rescued by Gustloff ’s escort vessel, the Lowe . Within less than forty-eight hours, these people were all safely landed in Kolberg, some two hundred and fifty kilometers to the west of Danzig. As for the Amber Room, it’s by no means certain it was on the ship. Later on there were rumors that this was just a lie-disinformation to try and dissuade the Russians from sinking the ship-and that the Amber Room was actually transferred onto a train for Germany. But if it was on the ship it went to the bottom of the Baltic Sea with all those people, including Irmela and her unborn child.

“Of course, if she hadn’t been on that ship she might easily have died on any of the other ships carrying German refugees that were sunk in the winter of nineteen forty-five. The Goya , on which seven thousand people lost their lives. The Cap Arcona , on which another seven thousand also died. And the Steuben , on which three and a half thousand Germans died. Six months later, the S-13’s captain, Marinesko, was dismissed from the Russian navy. And that’s as much as I know, most of it from a book about the Gustloff that was published about four years ago, which is the factual account of a survivor. Until I saw Harold Heinz Hennig checking into the Grand Hotel in Cap Ferrat under the name of Harold Hebel, that was the last I’d seen or heard of him in more than ten years. Now you know why I hate him so much. And what kind of man we’re dealing with.”

“And after the war? What happened to him? Why was he never brought to justice?”

“He was much too small a fish for anyone to bother with. The Allies were after more important Nazis. Believe me, no one gave a damn about Harold Hennig. And that is especially true now as the Federal Republic of Germany tries to move on and become a good partner for America and Britain in the war against world Communism. These days, justice takes second place to pragmatism. But Erich Koch was arrested in nineteen forty-nine and is in a Polish prison awaiting trial for war crimes. The Poles have a different attitude than the Bonn Republic about the deaths of half a million Poles. Frankly, I don’t give much for his chances. My guess is that they’ll hang him and good riddance. If ever a man deserved to be hanged, it’s Erich Koch. Not that Hennig doesn’t deserve to be killed a hundred times over for what he did, too.”

“And yet in spite of what he did, you said you didn’t want to kill him. I think under the circumstances-if I’d lost what you lost-I would have killed him.”

“I didn’t say I didn’t want to kill him. I said I wasn’t going to kill him. There’s a big difference. I’m through with all that kind of thing. It’s me I’m thinking about now, not him. My own peace of mind versus my own tawdry revenge. I have to live with myself. Even at the best of times I can be poor company.”

“But if Hebel is Harold Hennig and was once a Nazi, how is it possible that he could be working for the Communists now? For Soviet intelligence? Surely they must know about his Nazi past?”

“The KGB or the HVA doesn’t care about who you were and what you did any more than the American CIA does. What matters is how they can use you to their present advantage. After the war, the East German HVA-that’s the foreign intelligence service of the GDR-recruited lots of Nazis at the behest of the Russians. They perfected many of the Gestapo’s techniques. Almost nothing changed except the ideology. The fact is they’re still the Gestapo in all but name. And if you’re an enemy of the state who’s facing the guillotine or ten years in a labor camp, there’s nothing to distinguish between a Communist German tyranny and a Nazi one. It’s the same Fascism but with a different flag. If the shit looks and smells the same as it did before, it’s still shit.”

“I suppose so.”

“Take my word for it. I know these people.” I smiled. “I should, since they’re my people.”

“You scare me, Walter. I know that isn’t your real name but I can’t imagine you’d feel comfortable with me using that, so I will just go on calling you Walter, or Mr. Wolf. But the world you describe isn’t a world with which I am familiar. Not anymore. In nineteen seventeen it was all a bit of a lark, really-spying on the Russians. Look, what I’m saying is, I’d appreciate your help with all this. I’m an old man. And it strikes me that these people are playing a game I’m no longer qualified to play. My offer-that you should come and be my bodyguard-it still stands.”

I wanted nothing to do with it all, of course. What did it matter to me what this Burgess fellow had said about the British SIS on the tape? I’d never cared much for the English. In two wars against Germany I’d seen how they were capable of fighting to the last American. And yet in spite of my commendable moral stance on the subject of Harold Hennig, there was a part of me that wanted to see this vile man brought down, and for good. I liked the old man and I think he liked me. If I could help him defeat a blackmailer like Hennig then that would be some kind of payback for what he’d done to Irmela and, in a smaller way, to me.

“I don’t think so, Mr. Maugham. But I’ll be happy to partner you in this rubber. That’s the least I can do. But in return you can do me a favor and say hello to a lady friend of mine who’s keen to meet you. She’s a writer, too.”

“All right. I’ll be glad to. If she’s a friend of yours.”

“So, tomorrow, when Hebel gives me the tape, I’ll bring it straight here to the villa and you can listen to it and decide what to do then. And if you think I can still be of service to you-well, let’s wait until tomorrow, shall we?”

After telling my story I got back in the car and went away with a hole inside me where before a heart and stomach had once been coexisting. That’s the thing about the past; it never quite belongs as much to the past as you think it does. I hadn’t thought about Irmela or her unborn child in a long time, but I still bitterly regretted their passing. The idea that I could have talked about them both with impunity now seemed risible. Time hadn’t healed anything, and I think people who say time makes things better really don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. For me, it was an inoperable tumor that I’d managed to ignore for more than a decade; but the tumor was still there. Probably it was going to stay with me until I died.