Philip Kerr - The Other Side of Silence

“So this is where you’ve been hiding,” I said.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he said, blinking uncomfortably at the light.

“I don’t know. Maybe I’m supposed to be the caretaker. They’re gone, you see. The English. And I don’t think they’re coming back. Dunkirk all over again. There’s no one here but you and me and-for all I know-the man in the iron mask.”

“Are you sure?”

“The longer I stay here talking, the more sure of it I am.” I dangled the keys in front of his face. “I found these on the table in the room next door.”

“So?”

“Nothing. But I’ve an idea they might fit that bracelet you’re wearing.”

“How come you weren’t chained up?”

“Somebody had to release you, I suppose.”

“They obviously don’t know us very well,” he said.

“It’s best you don’t remind me of that,” I said. “I’m just liable to change my mind about this.”

I tried the key on the handcuffs he was wearing. The lock opened.

“Why are you helping me?”

“I’m not sure anyone else would come and find you here. The place looks more or less disused. I guess I’m not the type who can leave a man to die like that. Chained to a radiator like an abandoned dog. Even if it is what you probably deserve.”

“Thanks.”

“I’d be grateful if you didn’t mention it.”

“If the English spies left you unchained they must have believed something of what you said.”

“Perhaps.” I thought about Kim Philby, the Soviet agent in MI6, and reflected that but for my remembering his name, the English wouldn’t have believed a word of it.

“More than I did. I could see what you were up to, Gunther. And I congratulate you. That was quite a performance, the way you took the wind out of her sails with your story. I thought the best thing I could do-the only thing, to help your crazy story along, I mean, and fuck her up-was to try and hit you.” He moved his jaw in the palm of his hand. “I just didn’t realize that English bastard would punch me so hard. He knocked me out cold.”

“I appreciate your thoughtfulness.”

“But this has to be a trap,” said Hennig, rubbing his wrist and flexing his hand. “The English will probably shoot us when we try to walk out of the front door, don’t you think?”

“Why would they do that?”

“I don’t know. But why would they let us escape, either? It doesn’t make sense.”

“Perhaps it makes more sense than you think,” I said. “As far as they’re concerned, we’re an embarrassment to them. And no use to the Stasi. I doubt Comrade General Erich Mielke would ever believe that the British secret service just let you escape, would he?”

“No, he certainly wouldn’t.”

“In which case the British think we’re both burned. As good as dead. There’s no need to kill us if they think that the Stasi will do it for them, in time. Presumably Hollis has been cleared of suspicion, and you and I are of no further use to them. So letting us escape is the simplest, least embarrassing, and most diplomatic solution. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that’s what happened to Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean. That the Brits let them escape to Russia. To avoid a scandal. The British just hate scandals.”

“Any sign of Anne French?”

“Not so far.”

“That double-crossing bitch. I’d love to catch up with her again.”

“You were sleeping with her, too, then?”

“Of course. From way back. I’m afraid she was using you, old boy. I suppose we both were. Sorry about that. Comrade Mielke’s orders.” He stood up and rubbed his jaw again. “You really think they’re just going to let us walk out of here?”

“Yes, I do. But I still think we should get moving in case someone else shows up. The local police, perhaps. Or even the real caretaker.”

Hennig followed me out of the house, through the unkempt grounds and along a quiet main road that took us down Mont Boron and toward Villefranche, with me glancing over my shoulder from time to time to make sure he wasn’t carrying a rock with which to hit me on the head. I wouldn’t have put it past him. By now Hennig and I knew the road we were on was going to lead us right by Anne’s villa, but neither of us said anything about that. We didn’t need to. It was almost dawn when we reached the place on Avenue des Hesperides, and although the front gates were locked with a heavy chain, neither of us hesitated for a moment; we climbed over the gates and walked up the drive, but it was soon apparent that the villa was empty. There was no sign of her car, either. Hennig insisted we make sure she was gone and even clambered up to peer through the windows of her bedroom to check that she wasn’t hiding in there.

“The closets and drawers are all open,” he called down to me. “Looks like she packed in a hurry.”

“I’ll bet she did.”

He dropped down onto the terrace beneath her window and let out a sigh. “Bitch,” he said. “To treat me like this after all we went through together. I can’t understand it.”

“She must have left with the British,” I said, ignoring the pang of regret I felt at his casual mention of their earlier intimacy. “Perhaps she’s gone with them to the Belle Aurore Hotel on the Cap.”

“Maybe,” said Hennig. “But my guess is that they’re already on a boat to somewhere further along the coast. Or on a private plane back to London. Either way it doesn’t look like she’s coming back here soon.”

He knew where a key to the guesthouse was hidden in the garden and let us in through the front door. He switched on a light and found a cigarette in a drawer and then a bottle in a cabinet.

“You seem to know your way around,” I observed grimly.

“I’ve been staying here when I wasn’t at either of the hotels on the Cap,” he explained. “I kept the tapes here. Want a cognac? I know I need one.”

I thought about the state I’d left my stomach in after two bottles of schnapps; I was only just over that particular hangover.

“Sure,” I said. “Make it a large one.”

“Is there any other kind for men like us?”

He handed me a fist-size tumbler like his own and we both downed the brandy in a couple of gulps. Meanwhile I glanced around the room, noticing first that Anne’s portable typewriter was gone and then that the Hallicrafters radio had been put beyond use with a hammer that now lay on the stone-flagged floor like a murder weapon.

“Looks like someone has been in here, too,” I said.

“Looks like.”

“Her?”

“More likely the British. Just in case either of us felt like radioing Berlin.”

“I wouldn’t know how.”

“No, but I would. As soon as they find out that she’s betrayed this operation, she’s dead anyway. They’ll send a squad of killers after her.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s what they do.”

I went into the bathroom for a pee and saw my forgotten jacket was still hanging on the back of the door where I’d left it on the night I’d come from Julia Rose’s house in La Turbie. That seemed a long time ago now. Because the early morning air was cool, I put the jacket on. When I came out of the bathroom Hennig was pacing up and down like a neurotic bear, with another drink in his hand. There were even tears on his cheeks and I almost felt sorry for him, he looked so like the way I felt myself.

“It’s a pity,” he said. “I really would have liked to get even with that damn woman myself. I feel really angry about it. Jesus, I think she affected me much more than I realized.”

I shrugged. “Get used to it. I have.”

“No, really.” He put down his tumbler, picked up the hammer, and hefted it meaningfully for a moment before tossing it onto the sofa. “I think bashing her brains in would make me feel so much better. I don’t know how else a man is supposed to heal after something happens to him like that.”