Philip Kerr - A Man Without Breath

‘It was just a friendly warning. In passing. But that’s not why I’m here, Gunther.’

‘I can’t imagine you’re here to confess to a war crime, Werner. Not yet, anyway.’

‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’

‘I wonder how far we could get with that before they cut off both our heads?’

‘Tell me about Franz Meyer.’

‘He’s sick, too.’

‘Yes, I know. I just came from the Jewish Hospital.’

‘How is he?’

Sachse shook his head. ‘Doing really well. He’s in a coma.’

‘You see? I was right. Your pay grade doesn’t run to humour. These days you need to be at least a Kriminalrat before they allow you to make jokes that are actually funny.’

‘The Meyers were under surveillance, did you know that?’

‘No. I wasn’t there long enough to notice. Not with Klara around. She was a real beauty.’

‘Yes, it’s too bad about her , I agree.’ He paused. ‘You were in their apartment, twice. On the Sunday and then the Monday evening.’

‘That’s correct. Hey, I don’t suppose the V-men who were watching the Meyers got killed, too?’

‘No. They’re still alive.’

‘Pity.’

‘But who says they were V-men? This wasn’t an undercover operation. I expect the Meyers knew they were being watched, even if you were too dumb to notice.’

He lit a couple of cigarettes and put one in my mouth.

‘Thanks, Werner.’

‘Look, you big dumb ugly bastard, you might as well know it was me and some of the other lads from the Gestapo who found you and pulled you off that pile of rubble before the chimney came down. It was the Gestapo who saved your life, Gunther. So you see we must have a sense of humour. The sensible thing would probably have been to have left you there to get crushed.’

‘Straight?’

‘Straight.’

‘Then thanks. I owe you one.’

‘That’s what I figured. It’s why I’m here asking about Franz Meyer.’

‘All right. I’m listening. Get your klieg light and switch it on.’

‘Some honest answers. You owe me that much at least.’

I took a short drag on my cigarette – just to get my breath – and then nodded. ‘That and this smoke. It actually tastes like a proper nail.’

‘What were you doing in Lutzowerstrasse? And don’t say “just visiting”.’

‘When Franz Meyer got picked up by the Gestapo in the factory action, his missus figured on the War Crimes Bureau pulling his coal out of the fire. He was the only surviving witness to a war crime when a Tommy submarine torpedoed a hospital ship off the coast of Norway in 1941. The SS Hrotsvitha von Gandersheim . I took his deposition and then persuaded my boss to sign an order for his release.’

‘And what was in this for you?’

‘That’s my job, Werner. They point my suit at a possible crime and I try to check it out. Look, I won’t deny that the Meyers were very grateful. They invited me to dinner and opened their last bottle of Spatburgunder in celebration of Meyer’s release from the Jewish Welfare Office on Rosenstrasse. We were raising a glass when the bomb hit. But I can’t deny that I had a certain satisfaction in sticking one on the Tommies. Sanctimonious bastards. According to them, the Hrotsvitha von Gandersheim was just a troop-carrying convoy and not a hospital ship at all. Twelve hundred men drowned. Troops, perhaps, but injured troops who were returning home to Germany. His deposition is with my boss, Judge Goldsche. You can read it for yourself and see if I’m telling the truth.’

‘Yes, I checked. But why didn’t you all go to the shelter with everyone else?’

‘Meyer’s a Jew. He’s not allowed in the shelter.’

‘All right, but what about the rest of you? The wife, her sisters – none of them was a Jew. You must admit that’s a bit suspicious.’

‘We didn’t think the air raid was for real. So we decided to stick it out.’

‘Fair enough.’ Sachse sighed. ‘None of us will make that mistake again, I suppose. Berlin is a ruin. St Hedwig’s is burned out, Prager Platz is just rubble, and the hospital on Lutzowerstrasse was completely destroyed. The RAF dropped more than a thousand tons of bombs. On civilian targets. Now that’s what I call a fucking war crime. While you’re at it, investigate that, will you?’

I nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘Did the Meyers make any mention of any foreign currency? Swiss francs, perhaps?’

‘You mean for me?’ I shook my head. ‘No. I wasn’t even offered a lousy packet of cigarettes.’ I frowned. ‘Are you saying those bastards had money?’

Sachse nodded.

‘Well, they never offered me any.’

‘Any mention of a man called Wilhelm Schmidhuber?’

‘No.’

‘Friedrich Arnold? Julius Fliess?’

I shook my head.

‘Operation Seven, perhaps?’

‘Never heard of it.’

‘Dietrich Bonhoeffer?’

‘The pastor?’

Sachse nodded.

‘No. I’d have remembered his name. What’s this all about, Werner?’

Sachse took a pull on his cigarette, glanced at the man in the next bed, and drew his chair closer to me – close enough to smell his Klar Klassik shaving water; even on the Gestapo it made a pleasant change from stale bandages, piss on the windowpanes and forgotten bedpans.

‘Operation Seven was a plan to help seven Jews escape from Germany to Switzerland.’

‘Seven important Jews?’

‘No such thing. Not anymore. All of the important Jews have left Germany or are – well, they’ve left. No, these were just seven ordinary Jews.’

‘I see.’

‘Of course the Swiss are every bit as anti-Semitic as we are and won’t do anything unless it’s for money. We believe the conspirators were obliged to raise a large sum of money in order to ensure that these Jews could pay their own way and not constitute a burden on the Swiss state. This money was smuggled into Switzerland. Operation Seven was originally Operation Eight, however, and included Franz Meyer. We had them under surveillance in the hope that they might lead us to the other conspirators.’

‘That’s too bad.’

Werner Sachse nodded slowly. ‘I believe your story,’ he said.

‘Thanks, Werner. I appreciate it. All the same, I assume you still searched my pockets for Swiss francs when I was lying on the street.’

‘Of course. When you turned up I thought we’d hit pay-dirt. You can see how very sad I was to discover you were probably on the level.’

‘It’s like I always say, Werner. There’s nothing quite as disappointing as the discovery that our friends and neighbours are no more dishonest than we are ourselves.’

Friday, March 5th 1943

A couple of days later the doctor gave me some more aspirin, advised me to get plenty of fresh air to help with my breathing, and told me I could go home. Berlin was rightly famous for its air, but it wasn’t always so fresh – not since the Nazis had taken over.

Coincidentally, it was the same day the authorities told the Jews still held in the welfare office that they could go home too. I couldn’t believe it when I heard, and I imagine that the men and women who were released could believe it even less than me. The authorities had gone so far as to track down some Jews who’d already been deported and had them sent back to Berlin and released, like the others.

What was happening here? What was in the minds of the government? Was it possible that after the huge defeat at Stalingrad the Nazis were losing their grip? Or had they really listened to the protests of a thousand determined German women? It was hard to tell, but it seemed the only possible conclusion. There were ten thousand Jews who had been arrested on February 27th, and of these, less than two thousand had gone to Rosenstrasse. Some had been remanded to the Clou concert hall on Mauerstrasse, others to the stables of a barracks on Rathenower Strasse, and still more to a synagogue on Levetzowstrasse in Moabit. But it was only at the Rosenstrasse, where Jews married to Germans were detained, that a protest had taken place, and it was only there that any Jews were released. The way I heard it later, all of the Jews from the other sites were deported to the East. But if the protest really had worked, it begged the question, what might have been achieved if mass protests had taken place before? It was a sobering thought that the first organized opposition to the Nazis in ten years had probably succeeded.