Philip Kerr - The Other Side of Silence

“Saves us taking him to the bathroom. What are you complaining about?”

“The boss won’t like it.”

They dragged me to another room, almost as large, and sat me on a dining chair in front of a long table. There was a glass chandelier immediately above my head but the shutters were closed and most of the light came from some standard lamps in the corners and an Anglepoise on the desk.

The pale-faced man behind it was wearing a seersucker suit and thick glasses and seemed more interested in the contents of his cherrywood pipe than in me. His hair was thin and so were his nose and mouth and, to my way of thinking, his blood, too. At the far end of the room the door was open, and while I could not see who was in there I was certain from the clouds of tobacco smoke that the room was occupied by more than one person. Perhaps the two spymasters from London.

“Did you bring some clothes from his flat?” the pale-faced man asked the other two.

“Yes, sir.”

He nodded. I’d never seen him before, but he was English and very still and deliberate, like a monk from a nearly silent order.

“He smells. Wash him, give him something to eat and drink, and then bring him back here wearing a change of clothes.”

Fifteen minutes later I was back in front of the monk, who stared at me with polite indifference, as if he’d been watching a dull game of cricket. When I sat down the monk stood up slowly and from a wallet file removed some papers and then placed them on the table in front of him as if they were evidence. I couldn’t yet see these clearly from where I was sitting but I had a strong idea that they were to form the basis of some serious accusation against me that might easily cost me my liberty or my life. In the monk’s hand was my passport. The one Erich Mielke had given me.

“You are Walter Wolf,” he said. “And you work at the Grand Hotel in Cap Ferrat as the hotel concierge.”

“Yes. And I must protest. Why have you brought me here?”

“But that’s not your real name, is it? Your real name is Bernhard Gunther, is it not?”

“No.”

“Your real name is Bernhard Gunther and this passport was provided by the state security service of the German Democratic Republic, also known as the Stasi.” His tone was almost apologetic, as if he regretted bringing me inside on such a warm day.

“No.”

“You are in fact an agent of the Hauptverwaltung Aufklarung, the foreign intelligence service section of the East German Ministry for State Security. Is that not so? You work for the Communist HVA, don’t you, Herr Gunther?”

“No.”

“Before this, you were an officer in the Nazi secret security service. The SD. But in nineteen forty-six you were a prisoner of war at the MfS prison camp at Johanngeorgenstadt in East Germany, where you were first recruited to the Stasi.”

“No.”

“It was the condition of your release from that prison camp that you should work for the Stasi, was it not?”

“No. I was a POW, yes. And they-I don’t know what their names were-they did ask me to work for the Stasi. I refused. But later on, I escaped.”

“Escaped? That was very intrepid of you,” said the monk.

He was tall, blond, well spoken, with a deep, mellifluous voice, and now it seemed the look of a very old schoolboy, or perhaps a young schoolmaster, and certainly not a spy-there was nothing athletic or physical about him. A killer he was not; this man had been chosen for his intelligence instead of his ruthlessness. Unlike the two thugs from Portsmouth, he was more used to punching holes in paper than in the faces of men. A lot of the time he remained silent, puffing his pipe, as if he was offering me the opportunity to provide a better answer than the inadequate one I’d given. I’d have preferred someone who was a violent bully, who shouted at me and slapped my face, the kind of interrogator who tries to beat and sweat the truth out of you. You knew where you were with an interrogator like that. But this one would try to be my friend and make me dependent on him, psychologically, until he became Jesus-my only source of salvation and redemption.

“There weren’t many German POWs who were imprisoned in Russia and East Germany who escaped from labor camps, were there? To my knowledge, hardly any at all.”

“I don’t know. Not many, perhaps. I saw an opportunity and took it.”

“You were lucky, Bernhard.”

“I’ve always been lucky.”

“Oh? How’s that?”

“I’m here, talking to you, aren’t I?”

He smiled and looked at his fingernails before relighting his pipe.

“One might say that the kind of luck you enjoyed was very much the kind described by Seneca,” he said. “A case of opportunity meeting preparation. Your opportunity. But it was almost certainly someone else’s preparation. Erich Mielke’s preparation.”

“Seneca? Who’s he?”

“A Roman Stoic and an adviser to the Emperor Nero.”

“That’s a relief. I thought he might be another East German spy I’m supposed to know.”

“It’s interesting. You ask who Seneca is. But you don’t ask who Erich Mielke is.”

“I assume he’s not a Roman Stoic.”

“No indeed. Comrade General Erich Mielke is the deputy head of the Stasi.”

“I’ve not heard of him. But then I haven’t lived in Germany for several years.”

“He’s a Berliner, just like you, Herr Gunther.”

“I don’t care if he’s from Fucking, in Austria. You’ve made a mistake. I’m not whoever it is you think I am. I was helping you people, remember? You’ve a strange way of showing your gratitude. And I really don’t have time for this. I’d like to leave. Now.”

“We’ve got plenty of time. I can assure you.”

“In which case, might I have some water and a cigarette?”

The monk nodded at one of the thugs, who stepped smartly forward, as if he’d been on the parade ground, put a cigarette in my mouth, lit it with a cheap lighter, and then fetched me a glass of water.

“Thanks,” I said. “Now, where were we? Oh yes. I was telling you I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about. You’ve got the wrong man. That much is obvious, anyway.”

“Then let me refresh your memory, Herr Gunther. We checked your name with our friends in the CIA. And I think that you are the same Bernhard Gunther who was part of an elaborate Stasi operation to snatch three of their agents from the French zone of Berlin in nineteen fifty-four. Those three American agents believed they had employed you to help them kidnap Erich Mielke in return for an American passport and the sum of twenty-five thousand dollars. Instead, you betrayed them to Mielke. Two of them are still in an East German prison. Did you know that?”

I shook my head. “You’re mistaken. My name is Walter Wolf. I’m the concierge at the Grand Hotel. And I haven’t the first idea what you’re talking about. I’ve never met anyone who was working for the CIA. And once again I don’t know anyone by the name of Mielke.”

“It’s quite an elaborate operation you’ve mounted here in France, isn’t it? A lot of time and effort and money have gone into this little scheme.”

“I haven’t seen any of it. The money, I mean. You’ve seen the flat where I live. You can check my bank accounts. I have very little money. I spend what I earn at the Grand Hotel. I’m certainly not on the East German payroll.”

“We have someone who says different. A witness.”

“Then that person is mistaken or a liar.”

“Since you’ve mentioned bank accounts,” said the monk, handing me one of the papers on his desk. “This is a copy of a letter from you to the manager of a bank in Monaco, the Credit Foncier, dated February nineteen fifty-six. It states that Harold Hebel is to be a joint signatory on this bank account with you. It seems that there is more than twenty thousand francs in this account, Herr Gunther. The money appears to have been paid into this account by the Schonefeld Export Company of Bonn, in West Germany. We believe this company to be one owned by the Stasi.”