Philip Kerr - Hitler's peace

“That’s okay. I guess you were aiming for my leg, huh? You always were a lousy shot.”

“Why’d you do it, John?”

“It seemed like a pretty good idea at the time, I guess.”

“Want to tell us all about it?” Reilly paused. “I brought Professor Mayer along.”

“Good. I wanted to tell him something.”

“John, before you do-”

“What about Hitler?” asked Pawlikowski. “What happened to him?”

“He went home, John.”

Pawlikowski closed his eyes for a moment. “Mike? Give me a cigarette, will you?”

“Sure, John, anything you say.” Reilly lit a cigarette and then placed it carefully between Pawlikowski’s lips. “John. I need to know something right now. You poisoned Hitler’s water, right?”

Pawlikowski smiled. “You noticed that, huh?”

“What kind of poison was it?”

“Strychnine. You should have let me kill him, Mike.”

But Reilly was already heading toward Admiral McIntire and Dr. Kaplan. Pawlikowski closed his eyes for a moment. I removed the cigarette from his mouth.

“Professor? Give me a drink of water, will you?”

I poured him a glass of water and helped him to drink it. When he had swallowed enough he shook his head and then looked at me strangely. But I was getting used to this. And Pawlikowski wasn’t in the same league as Stalin when it came to giving me a look.

“How does it feel?”

“How does what feel?” I asked. But I knew very well what he meant. Reilly came back and went around the other side of Pawlikowski’s bed. I put the cigarette back in his mouth.

“How does it feel to be the man who saved Hitler’s life?”

“I’ll be honest, I’ve done good deeds that I felt better about.”

“I’ll bet.”

“Is that all you wanted to say?”

“No.”

“What did you want to say to Professor Mayer?” asked Reilly.

“Only that he was right all along, Mike. And to apologize to him. For killing his girlfriend.”

“You killed that woman in Cairo? The princess?”

“Had to. She could have given me away. You understand, don’t you, Professor? I was there that afternoon when you came calling unexpectedly. I was up in the radio room when you arrived. Receiving a message from Berlin. When you showed up I had to wait until you and Elena were in bed before I could sneak out the back door. Which is why I forgot to burn the signal from Berlin. I remembered later. And came back in the small hours, to burn it. I figured you would be in bed with her again, and otherwise engaged. She was a great-looking broad. Nothing between us, though. Not that I would have minded, of course. But it was strictly professional. Anyway, I had just come in when I saw you up in the radio room. I stayed downstairs while you went back in her bedroom. And after you’d left the house, I went back in there and saw that you’d taken the signal.”

“But why didn’t you just kill me? Why kill her?”

Pawlikowski smiled thinly. The shadows under his eyes looked like the ash on the end of his cigarette and his lips were blue, as if the priest had been there slightly before me, with the communion wine.

“After all that heat you’d made about a German spy? No way. Killing one member of the president’s delegation was risky enough. But two? Besides, she would never have stood for it. She was fond of you, Professor. Very fond. So, I killed her, hid the radio, and made it look like you had done it. I’m sorry about that, Professor. Really I am. But I had no choice. Killing Hitler was more important than anything.”

“Yes, I see. But who put you up to this? Can you tell us who you were working for?”

“The Abwehr. Admiral Canaris. And some people in the Wehrmacht who don’t want the Allies to make a peace with Germany that leaves Hitler in power. They figured it might be easier killing him here than in Germany. That he wouldn’t be expecting it here. You see, back in Germany it gets more difficult each time they try.”

“But why you?”

“I’m a Polish-German Jew from Danzig, that’s why.” Pawlikowski took another drag off the cigarette. “That’s all the reason I needed.”

“Who recruited you, and where?”

Pawlikowski smiled. “I can’t tell you that.”

“But Thornton Cole was on to you, right? That’s why he was killed.”

“He wasn’t on to me. But he was on to my contact in Washington. That’s why he was killed. But I didn’t do it. Someone else did that.”

“But you did kill Ted Schmidt, aboard the USS Iowa, right?”

“He came to me with information that would have persuaded the police to take a closer look at Cole’s murder. It was a split-second thing. I guessed that if the Metro cops managed to find out who really did kill him, then they might find my contact. And that might put them on to me. That it might stop me from killing Hitler. So I hit him and threw the body overboard.”

“And on the Iowa, it was you who radioed your German friends back in the States, for the same reason.”

Pawlikowski nodded. “I love the boss,” he whispered. “I love him like he was my own dad. But he should never have tried to make peace with Hitler. You can’t make deals with someone like that. I’m sorry I killed those people. I didn’t like doing it. But I’d do it again, tomorrow, if it gave me another chance to kill Hitler.” He grabbed Reilly’s hand. “I’m sorry I let you down, Mike. And the boss, too. Tell him that for me, will you? But I did what I thought was right.”

“We all did, John. You, me, the professor here, and the president. We all did what we thought was right.”

“I guess so,” said Pawlikowski and fell asleep once again.

Reilly took his cigarette and stubbed it out. Straightening up, he glanced over his shoulder at the president, who was already looking a little more comfortable. We went to his bed. Dr. Kaplan said that poisoned or not, he was now quite stable and was going to be okay.

“It’s been a helluva long day,” groaned Reilly, pressing a fist into the small of his back. “So, Professor? What do you think?”

“I think that, all things considered, I wish I’d never left Princeton.”

What were the consolations of philosophy? None. And, for most of Monday and Tuesday, Stalin’s words echoed in my mind: “For myself, I think I should prefer to have seen Hitler dead on the floor of that conference room than to have him walk out of these peace talks. I cannot speak for Mr. Hull, but I know that Mr. Mikoyan would gladly have gone to the wall if it had meant us being rid of a monster like Hitler.”

I’d never had much time for the pessimism of Schopenhauer, but finding one of his books in the library at Camp Amirabad, I read him again; and what Schopenhauer had said, that no honest man at the end of his life would want to relive his own life, seemed to ring in my ears like a funeral bell.

By Tuesday, Roosevelt had made a complete recovery, and the gala dinner at the British legation to celebrate Churchill’s sixty-ninth birthday now loomed. I debated not going but decided that consideration of Prime Minister Churchill’s feelings outweighed those of Marshal Stalin. What had still not dawned on me was how much of a leper I had become among my own people in Teheran. But immediately on my arrival at the British embassy, Harry Hopkins put me properly in the picture.

“Jesus, Mayer,” he hissed. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Churchill, overhearing this, advanced on him, growling like a bulldog defending a favorite ham bone.

“He’s here because I asked him, Harry. Professor Mayer is well aware that I should have regarded it as a personal insult if he had not come here tonight. Isn’t that so, Professor?”