Philip Kerr - The Other Side of Silence

“Yes, take your time,” I said. “But if it helps you can kiss me on the cheek.”

She didn’t flinch.

“I joined the Communist Party because I believed in the absence of social classes and the state, but more particularly because I believed it was the best way of opposing British and French imperialism of the kind we can see happening now at Suez.”

“Let’s not get into that, shall we?” said the man with irregular teeth.

“No, well, I’m an idealist, you see,” continued Anne. “Like my father. Or at least I was. But during my association with these two men, Gunther’s wife, Elisabeth, told me that during the war he and Hennig had both been Fascists working for the SD and the Gestapo. It was she who gave me the photographs you’ve seen. And it was this that caused me finally to question my loyalty to the party and to the HVA. The notion that the German Communist Party could use former Nazis like these two men to further its ends still seems abhorrent to me. I asked Gunther about it once and instead of denying it or feeling any shame about it, he actually boasted about his Nazi past. He said that there was no difference between the Gestapo and the Stasi. That Fascism and Communism were coterminous. That their uniforms were still made by the same tailors and that even the same concentration camps were in use for today’s political prisoners. When I protested about this he seemed to think that was very funny and told me he thought I was extraordinarily naive. Well, maybe I was. In fact, I’m sure I was.”

I tried to will her to catch my eye, but it was no good, and she carried on giving her deceitful evidence in a flat, steady voice.

“By the time he told me that some British spymasters had arrived on the Cap and were staying at the Belle Aurore Hotel, I’d already decided I didn’t believe in the party anymore-I mean, I couldn’t anymore, you do see that, don’t you? I felt completely disillusioned. As if the scales had fallen from my eyes.”

“Was it always the aim of the operation to have Maugham summon some friends from MI6 down here?”

“Yes. It seemed unlikely that he would buy the tape without some expectation that the British would underwrite its purchase. Nor that at his age he would wish to travel to London. Comrade Mielke always believed that the British would come here. And listen to the tape themselves.”

“And when Gunther told you that these spymasters were coming, what did you think?”

“I thought this was my chance to switch sides. To redeem myself. So I went to see them in person, threw myself on their mercy, and told them absolutely everything I knew about the plot to discredit this man Roger Hollis.” She sighed again. “Look, I won’t go to prison, will I?”

“That’s not up to me. But under the circumstances, no. I don’t think so. Provided you continue to cooperate, Miss French.”

“Thank you.”

“Is the HVA yet aware that you’ve told us all about Othello?’

“No, not yet. I made my last scheduled transmission two nights ago.”

“And your next scheduled transmission is tonight, I believe.”

“That’s correct.”

“At which point you will be required to report on the progress or lack of it on Othello? Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“Thus the urgency of these proceedings,” said the monk. “But you’re quite happy to resume contact with the HVA and assure your controllers that the operation is still progressing. Is that correct?”

“Yes. Of course.”

There were many more questions like this, but it was already agonizingly clear to me that as soon as Elisabeth had returned home to Berlin, Erich Mielke must have squeezed her for as much information about my life on the Cap as she was able to provide. Probably she wouldn’t have even known he was asking the questions in pursuit of an HVA operation. At the same time, any pictures and files on me would have been easy to find for a man like Mielke. Nearly all of the police records at the presidium on Berlin Alexanderplatz had been captured by the Russians and were now the property of the Stasi. But I still couldn’t bring myself to believe that Elisabeth could ever have worked for the Stasi, although of course that was rumored to be their greatest skill-they were much better than the Gestapo at blackmailing people to spy on their nearest and dearest. By comparison the Gestapo had been amateurs. Possibly they had something on Elisabeth I didn’t even know about.

As for Anne French, I could see clearly now that I had no one to blame for what had happened but myself. I’d walked straight into Gethsemane as if a taxi had driven me there from an upper room on Mount Zion. She must have known how easy I’d be to snare after Elisabeth had left me. From the first minute Anne French had spoken to me at the hotel she’d been acting on Mielke’s orders and had used me with not much more thought than she’d used the swimming pool at the Grand Hotel.

At the same time, I now understood the whole ghastly little trick that was being perpetrated by Mielke. And I had to admit it was a nice operation. The point of the whole scheme must have been to bolster Hollis’s reputation in MI5. What better way of doing that than to expose an ingenious scheme to discredit him? And just listening to all that Anne had said, the conclusion I’d come to was that Roger Hollis was indeed a spy, and a spy who must have been under a cloud of suspicion, too. After this operation, however, Hollis was surely in the clear. No one would ever suspect him now. Which was a lot more than I could say for myself. The case against Bernhard Gunther already looked watertight. Denying everything seemed pointless. I had no illusions about the probable fate that now awaited me. Thanks to Anne, I was as good as dead.

I stood up slowly, wearily, willing myself to become much smaller in their eyes, as if resigned to my probably ignominious fate. And in a way I was resigned to it, but a moment’s reflection had persuaded me that, as in a game of poker dice, I didn’t have to pick up and throw anything myself. All I had to do was close the lid on the cigar box handed to me by Anne French and make a bid that improved on the one I’d tacitly accepted. Sometimes, when you have nothing and you’ve got the stone face and the balls for it, those five dice in a closed box can get you much further than you might think is even possible. She was a pretty good liar, but, as Somerset Maugham had recently observed up at the Villa Mauresque, years of practice born of simple necessity had made me a damned good liar, too; perhaps an even better one than Anne French. That now remained to be seen.

“All right,” I said, staring unhappily at the monk, “you win, Englishman. You said before, when you were interrogating me, that you wanted a full confession. Well, I’ll give you one now. All of the dirt. The full unexpurgated version. Names, dates, everything. I’ll write it all out and sign it. Whatever you want.” I rounded my shoulders, lowered my battered head as if in penitence for what I had done, and pushed a hand through my greasy hair. I’d seen enough broken men in my time with the Murder Commission at the Berlin Alex to know the full pantomime for a true confession. “It was a put-up job, just like the bitch has said, to discredit Roger Hollis. To take your top man in MI5 and make him smell of yesterday’s shit.”

I let out a sigh, and shook my head as if in pity of the hopeless situation now affecting me. At the same time I was very careful to avoid her eye, just in case I was deflected by the incredulity I knew I would certainly meet there. This little performance was going to take all my powers of invention.

“What are you saying?” demanded Hennig. “She’s lying, you stupid idiot. Look, I don’t know what’s going on here but I think there’s been some sort of mistake.”