Hitler's peace

Lieutenant

76th Infantry,

Camp Number 108

Beketovka.

I went to the hotel balcony and put my face in the sun just to remind myself I was still alive. Between the jumbled rooftops and the minarets, elegantly tall palm trees swayed in the warm breeze that swept off the Nile. In the street below, the Cairo traffic was going about its reassuringly argumentative business. I took a deep breath of air and tasted gasoline, sweat, Turkish coffee, horse dung, and cigarettes. It tasted good. Beketovka seemed like a million miles away, on another planet. I couldn’t think of a better antidote to Camp 108 than Cairo, with its smelly drains and its dirty postcards.

The smart thing to have done would have been to leave it alone. Not to get personally involved. Except that I was involved. So instead of doing the smart thing and lying to Reichleitner-telling him I had given the file to FDR-I decided that I had to talk to someone about what I had read. And I could think of no one better than the major himself. But first I went down to the Long Bar and asked the head barman if they had a bottle of Korn. He said they had several because there was no demand for German liquor among the British. It wasn’t that the English didn’t like the taste, just that they didn’t know such a thing even existed. I gave the man a couple of pounds and told him to bring me a bottle and two small glasses. Then I put it inside my briefcase and had Coogan drive me back to Grey Pillars.

Major Reichleitner was at work on the ciphers. He looked a little tired. But his eyes widened when he saw the bottle.

“My God, Furst Bismarck,” he said. “I don’t believe it.”

I produced the two glasses, placed them on the table, and filled each to the brim. We toasted each other silently and then drained the glass. The German mixed-grain liquor slipped into my body as if it had been something that belonged there, like my own heart and my lungs. I sat down on the bed and lit us both a cigarette.

“I owe you an apology, Major.”

“Oh? How’s that?”

“Earlier on, when I told you I’d read the Beketovka File, that was a lie. I hadn’t read it at all. But I’ve read it now.”

“I see,” said Reichleitner. He looked a little uncertain of where this conversation was now headed. I wasn’t sure myself. I refilled his glass. This time he sniffed it carefully, several times, before emptying the spirits down his throat.

I produced the Beketovka File from my briefcase and laid it on the table next to the bottle of Korn.

“My father is a German Jew,” I told him. “Born in Berlin, but brought up and educated in the United States. My mother comes from an old German family. Her father was the Baron von Dorff, who also went to live in the United States, to seek his fortune. Or at least to make another. He left behind a sister and two brothers. One of them had a son, my mother’s cousin. Friedrich von Dorff. We all spent one Christmas together in Berlin. Many years ago.

“When the war started, Friedrich’s son, Helmut, joined the cavalry. The Sixth Panzer Army, Sixteenth Division. With General Hube. The battering ram of the Panzer Corps. In August 1942 they crossed the Don, heading for Stalingrad. I thought he had been killed there. Until this afternoon, that is, when I read Heinrich Zahler’s account of life in Camp Number 108, at Beketovka. If you can call it life.”

I picked up the relevant page and read from it aloud.

“Your mother’s cousin’s son,” said Reichleitner.

I nodded. “I know a second cousin doesn’t sound like very much of a reason to be affected. But we were a close family. And I remember Helmut von Dorff extremely well. He was just a boy when I knew him. Not more than ten or twelve years old, I suppose. A beautiful boy. Gentle, well read, thoughtful, interested in philosophy.” I shrugged. “As I said, I had thought he was dead already. So it seems strange to read about him now. And horrible, of course, to learn the mean and degrading circumstances of his death.”

“Then we are enemies no more,” said Reichleitner.

He took the bottle by the neck and filled our glasses himself. We toasted each other again.

“I just wanted you to know. So that you can be sure I will do everything I can to make sure that the president reads this.”

“Thank you,” said Reichleitner. He smiled sadly. “This is good stuff. Where did you get it?”

“Shepheard’s Hotel.”

“Ah, Shepheard’s. I wish I were there now.”

“After the war perhaps you will be.”

“You know, I was thinking. I never saw Hitler. Not close up, anyway. But in Teheran, you’ll probably get to see Stalin. Up close. As close as I am now, perhaps.”

“Perhaps.”

“I envy you that opportunity. A chance to look him in the eye and see what kind of man he is. If he’s the monster I imagine him to be.”

“Do you think he is a monster?”

“I tell you honestly,” said Major Reichleitner. “I think I’m more afraid that he might seem just like you or me. An ordinary man.”

I left Major Reichleitner with the bottle and the cigarettes to continue working on the ciphers.