Philip Kerr - A Man Without Breath

‘Oh, please, for God’s sake let’s not talk about politics. I might not like the communists but I’ve never thought of them as subhuman. Misguided, perhaps. But not degenerate or racially corrupt, the way he does. Christ, Gunther, what do you take me for?’

‘You’re not the fool I thought you were, that’s for sure.’

Von Gersdorff laughed. ‘Thanks very much.’

‘By the way, what’s the news of Von Dohnanyi and Bonhoeffer?’

‘They’re both in Tegel Military Prison, awaiting trial. But so far we’ve been very lucky. The Judge Advocate General appointed to investigate their case is Karl Sack. He’s very sympathetic to our cause.’

‘That is good news.’

‘Meanwhile, we listened to your tape. Myself and General von Tresckow. And Von Schlabrendorff.’

‘It wasn’t my tape,’ I insisted. ‘It was Corporal Quidde’s tape. Let’s get that straight, just in case of any mishap. I don’t happen to have any friends who are Judge Advocate General.’

‘Yes. All right. I take your point. But the tape certainly confirms what you said about Von Kluge. You know I didn’t believe it when you told me, but I could hardly ignore the evidence of that tape. Anyway, it puts a whole new complexion on our conspiracy here in Smolensk. It’s very clear we can’t trust those we thought we could trust. Henning – I mean von Tresckow – is very upset and angry with the field marshal. They’re old friends, after all. At the same time, it now seems that Von Kluge may not be the first Prussian Junker that Hitler ever bought off. There have been others, including I’m afraid to say, Paul von Hindenburg. It may even be that back in 1933 Hitler agreed to drop the Reichstag’s “East-Help” investigation into the misappropriation of parliamentary subsidies by Junker land barons in return for the president’s blessing for his becoming Chancellor.’

I nodded. It was only what many like me had always suspected: a behind-the-scenes deal between the Nazis and the impoverished aristocrats of East Prussia that had let the Nazis snatch control of the German government.

‘Then it seems only fitting that your class should be the one to get rid of Hitler, given it was your lot who landed us with him in the first place.’

‘Touche,’ said Von Gersdorff. ‘But look here, you can’t say we haven’t tried.’

‘No one could ever say you haven’t tried,’ I admitted. ‘I’m not so sure about the others.’

A little sheepishly Von Gersdorff looked at his watch. ‘I’d better be getting along. General von Tresckow is joining me for a drink in a while.’ He flicked away his cigarette. ‘By the way, have you heard the news? The Soviets have broken off diplomatic relations in London with the Poles. I got a telegram this morning from the Abwehr. It would seem that the little doctor’s plan is working.’

‘Yes. I’m almost sorry I gave him the idea.’

‘Did you?’

‘I think I did,’ I said. ‘Although him being him, he probably thinks it was all his idea.’

‘Why did you?’

‘You have your plans to knock over the heap and so have I. Perhaps my plans will take less courage than yours, colonel. In fact, I’m sure of it. I aim to be alive when my bomb goes off. Not a real bomb, you understand. But there will be a sort of an explosion and I hope some serious repercussions.’

‘Would you care to share those plans with me?’

‘Trust doesn’t come easily to a Fritz with my background, colonel. Perhaps if I had an extensive family tree framed on the wall of my big house in East Prussia, I could share them with you. But I’m just a regular boy from Mitte . The only family tree I can remember is a rather sorry-looking linden in the gloomy yard my mother called a garden. Besides, I think you’ll do better not knowing what I’m up to. I’m not a hundred per cent sure yet I’m even doing the right thing, but when I go through with it – or don’t go through with it – I mean to make sure I’m only answerable to my own conscience and no one else’s.’

‘Now I really am intrigued. I had no idea you were so independently minded, Gunther. Or so resourceful. Of course, there is the rather enterprising way you shot Corporal Quidde in the head in Glinka Park. Yes, we mustn’t forget what happened there.’

‘That certainly doesn’t make me independently minded, colonel. Not since Operation Barbarossa. These days everyone is shooting someone in the head. It was necessary to put a tap in the corporal’s head and I just happened to be in the right place at the right time. I’ve always been lucky that way. No, it’s my sense of adventure that’s persuaded me to take the course I’m on. That and an overpowering desire to cause trouble for the people who invented it.’

‘And if it did? What then? What if I were to suggest that whatever you have in mind might also cause trouble for me and my friends? In the same way that you believed Corporal Quidde might cause trouble?’

‘Are you threatening me, colonel?’

‘Not at all, Gunther. You mistake me. I’m just trying to point out that there are times when you need a very steady arm when you’re taking aim at something. Or someone. Someone like Hitler, for example. And it helps if someone isn’t rocking the boat while you’re doing it.’

‘That’s a good point. And I’ll certainly bear it in mind the next time you’re taking aim at him.’ I made a face. ‘Whenever that might be.’

*

After Von Gersdorff left, I walked on my own for a while and smoked another cigarette in the encroaching darkness. I was tempted to go and knock on Ines’s door, only I didn’t want her to think I couldn’t handle a whole evening without her. And I was just about ready to concede that I couldn’t handle a whole evening without her when I heard two shots in the distance; there was a short interval and then a large splinter from the birch tree next to my head flew into the air as a split second later, I heard a third shot. I dropped to the ground and extinguished my cigarette. Someone was trying to kill me. It was a while since anyone had fired a gun at me, but absence had not made the experience feel any less personal or unpleasant. Bullets don’t care who they hit.

I kept my head down for several minutes and then glanced nervously around. All I could see were trees and more trees. My own hut and the officers’ mess were on the other side of the health resort; Ines’s front door was two or three hundred metres away, but without knowing where the shots had come from, there was no point in making a run for it. I could as easily have run towards the shooter as away from him.

Another minute passed and then another. Two wood pigeons settled on a branch above me and a gust of wind rose and then died away. All was silence now, apart from the beating of my heart. Ignoring the sharp pain in my ribs – I had fallen onto the root of an upturned tree stump – I tried once again to estimate where the shots had come from, but without success, and deciding that caution was the better part of valour, I scrambled behind the rest of the stump and tried to get as much of my body underneath it as possible. Then I took out my gun, worked the slide quietly, and waited for something to happen. Four long years in the trenches had taught me the wisdom of staying put and doing nothing under fire until it’s possible to make out a target. I lay very still, hardly daring to breathe, staring up at the treetops and the twilight sky, assuring myself that one of the guards at Krasny Bor would surely have heard the shots, and asking myself who wanted me dead enough to try to make that happen sooner than later. I could think of any number of people, of course, but mostly they were in Berlin, and gradually, instead of questioning the identity of my assailant, I started questioning the wisdom of the plan I had been reluctant to tell Von Gersdorff.