Philip Kerr - The Other Side of Silence

“I’ve never even heard of this bank until now.”

“Was this money meant to cover your expenses?”

“Look, I didn’t write the bank any letter. That isn’t my signature. And I’ve certainly never heard of the Schonefeld Export Company of Bonn.”

“But you do know Harold Hebel, don’t you?”

“Of course I do. If you’ve spoken with Somerset Maugham you’ll already know that. He’ll confirm what I already told him: that Harold Hebel is a professional blackmailer from before the war. He’s the man who’s been blackmailing Maugham. And now, it seems, the British secret service. And I’ve been helping Mr. Maugham at his request. Ask him.”

“I’m afraid that’s not possible. He’s had a mild stroke.”

“Look, I didn’t ask to be involved in this. Until he asked for my help I was minding my own business at the Grand Hotel. And now if you don’t mind I’d like to go back to the hotel and resume my duties.”

“Harold Hebel. Real name, Harold Heinz Hennig, formerly of the Gestapo and now working for the Communist HVA, too.”

“That certainly wouldn’t surprise me. I guess it was them who supplied him with that tape. And before them, the KGB. Is Hennig your witness?” I shook my head. “The man’s a liar. I wouldn’t trust a word he says.”

“But you and he were working together here on the Riviera. From the very beginning.”

I sucked my cigarette and blew some smoke at the chandelier in the hope I might deter a large spider that was now abseiling down a length of gossamer toward my head.

“No. I hate him. I’d kill him before ever working with him. He and I have a long history of enmity.”

“Whose operation was this? Mielke’s? Or your namesake’s?”

“My namesake’s? I don’t know who you mean.”

“Major General Markus Wolf.”

“I’ve never heard of him, either. All these generals I’m supposed to know. The next thing you’ll be telling me is that I’m a general, too.”

“Our information is that Markus Wolf is head of the East German HVA and reports directly to Mielke.”

I glanced up at the spider again, which had been only momentarily deterred.

“ How well do you know Comrade General Mielke?”

“I already told you. I’ve never heard of him, either.”

“Come now, Herr Gunther. Elisabeth Dehler-the woman who was living as your wife here in the South of France until quite recently-she knows Erich Mielke very well, doesn’t she? From way back. And what’s more, she also works for the HVA . ”

“Elisabeth?” I smiled. “I doubt that very much.”

“Most assuredly she does work for them. And she’s now safely back in Berlin.”

“That much I do know.” I shrugged. There was nothing I could have said about that other than the fact that it was true. Elisabeth did know Erich Mielke. They were old friends from before the war, when Mielke was just a young KPD thug with a gun, but I hardly wanted to admit as much to my English interrogator. Certainly not until I knew of what I was being accused. “Look, she left me, a while ago. Couldn’t stand the heat. Couldn’t come to grips with the language. She missed Germany more than she figured she’d miss me, I guess. What she’s done since she got back home-I really have no idea. She hasn’t written to me in a while.”

“Let’s talk some more about the operation, shall we?”

“I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”

“I’m talking about a put-up job by Karlshorst to frame Roger Hollis, the deputy director of MI5, as a spy working for the Soviet military intelligence-the GRU.”

“Karlshorst? I know the area, in Berlin. But I’ve no idea why you mention it now, as if it means something to me.”

“It’s where the HVA is based these days.”

“MI5. The GRU. The HVA? You’ll have to remind me.”

“The Hauptverwaltung Aufklarung. The East German foreign intelligence service. The equivalent of the British MI6. Or the American CIA.”

“There you go again. You learn something new every day, I guess. Look, until a day or two ago, I’d heard of Guy Burgess. I’d even heard of MI6. But I’d never heard the name of Roger Hollis. And if he is a spy for the Soviet Union then good luck to him. I don’t care. None of this has anything to do with me. All I’ve done was act as a middleman between Hennig and Somerset Maugham. You make it sound as if I’m the one who has suggested Hollis is a spy. I didn’t. And I’ve certainly never mentioned him to Sir John Sinclair or Patrick Reilly.”

“You didn’t have to. That’s what was so damned clever about it. A small, almost insignificant detail in Burgess’s so-called taped confession that Erich Mielke and Markus Wolf hoped we would spot. And we did. We fell right into the trap. The Shanghai connection, let’s call it. British American Tobacco. You really did have us chasing our tails about this. I have to hand it to you. You’ve no idea the kind of panic this has produced in Whitehall. But for the timely defection of one of your own people, poor Roger Hollis would now be under a very large, very dark cloud of suspicion.”

“So what do you want from me? A reference for him so that he can be completely exonerated? Fine. To the best of my knowledge Roger Hollis is actually a very nice man and was never a Russian spy. Is that what you want me to say? Sure. Give me a piece of paper and I’ll write a letter to the Queen on his behalf and recommend him for a knighthood. You British seem to hand those out much more frequently than brains.”

“A confession would be preferable to a letter. It would save us a lot of time.”

“In other words, you haven’t any proof. If this was a game of bridge I’d say you were bluffing.”

“Since you mention bridge, Somerset Maugham’s nephew, Robin-”

“Robin isn’t very reliable, you know. Why don’t you ask him where the photograph came from?”

“Oh, we have. He freely admits selling it to Anthony Blunt. But when Harold Hennig turned up here with the picture, he felt he had no choice but to go along with what Hennig wanted him to do. Robin says it was Hennig who suggested that Robin invite you up to the Villa Mauresque to play bridge. He was most insistent. And of course it was Hennig who suggested you as a suitable go-between in the blackmail. As a disinterested and apparently reliable person who could be trusted not to lose his head. But from the start you two were partners in this whole covert operation, weren’t you?”

“No bid.”

I leaned forward to avoid the spider that was now a few centimeters above my head and stubbed out my cigarette in an ashtray on the table. I was tired. All I wanted to do was sleep. But as I leaned forward the monk placed a photograph in front of me, and then another. In both photographs I was wearing a Stasi uniform. To me they seemed like obvious forgeries, but I could tell that the British wanted to believe the pictures and that made a big difference.

“How do you explain these?” said the monk, showing me another photograph.

This one I’d seen before; it was a picture of me taken in Prague with SD General Reinhard Heydrich, just a short while before he’d been murdered by Czech assassins.

“You’ve had an interesting life,” said the monk. “No doubt about it. I expect you’re an excellent hotel concierge, able to provide all sorts of information. Not just about local restaurants.”

“What are you-a spy? A cop? A civil servant?”

“Something like that.”

“Put me in a room with Harold Hennig,” I said. “And let me ask him some questions. You’ll see just how unreliable your star witness really is. Frankly, it’s just his word against mine.”

“Perhaps.”

“Look, I can see that this man, Erich Mielke, and the Stasi-they’ve been to a great deal of trouble here. But ask yourself this: If they went to all this trouble to discredit your man Hollis, how is it that their plan now falls apart so easily? How is it that Harold Hennig is possessed of pictures that are incriminating to me, if he’s supposed to be on an operation with me? That makes no sense at all.”