The Other Side of Silence

“There’s no maybe about it. If you ask me, you’d be putting your head in the lion’s mouth, with little prospect of getting it back with both ears. This is just the Nazis consolidating their grip on power. First the Reichstag fire, then the Night of the Long Knives when they murdered Ernst Rohm and the SA leadership, and now this-the emasculation of the army. It’s just Hitler’s way of telling the Wehrmacht that he’s in charge. You know, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he makes himself the new minister for War. After all, who else is there?”

“Goring?” I murmured, not quite believing it myself.

“That fat popinjay? He’s already too powerful for Hitler’s taste.”

I nodded. “Yes, you’re right, of course. Too powerful and too popular with the people at large.” I shook my head. “But I have to do something. In Turkey, Captain von Frisch saved my life. But for him, there would be a large hole in my head where my brains should be.”

I’d handed Bruno the straight line for the joke and of course he did not disappoint; my business partner is nothing if not predictable, which, for the most part, is an excellent quality in a partner.

“There is a large hole in your head where your brains should be. There is if you take the captain on as a client.”

“I already did. I gave him my word I’d try to help. Like I say, he saved my neck. The least I can do is try to save his.”

“Look, Bernie, that’s what happens in a war. It doesn’t mean anything. Saving someone’s life was just common courtesy in the trenches. Like giving a man a light for his cigarette. If I had ten marks for every bastard’s life I saved I’d be a rich man. Forget it. He probably has. It doesn’t mean anything, Bernie.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“No. All right. I don’t. So, how about this instead? Survival then was just a matter of luck, that’s all. Why pay it any regard now?”

I picked up my hat.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“To Gestapo headquarters in Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse,” I said. “I’m going to find that lion.”

NINE

FRENCH RIVIERA

1956

I sipped the perfectly mixed gimlet that Maugham’s stone-faced butler had just brought up to the rooftop writing aerie and winced a little as I felt the navy-strength gin entering my hardening arteries like a good quality formaldehyde. Why else does anyone drink? Then I lit a cigarette, pulled hard on the filter, and waited for the sweet Virginia tobacco to deliver the coup de grace to my senses after the dulling effect of the alcohol. Why else does anyone smoke? Meanwhile, a thin black cat had entered the room, and something about its stealthy, careful movements suggested that it was my own soul’s dark relation, come to make sure that I didn’t tell the old English writer too much. Never trust a writer, the cat seemed to be telling me; they write all sorts of things down. Things you didn’t mean to tell them. Especially this one. He already knows your name; don’t give him any more information. He’ll use it in some book he’s writing.

“I’d be grateful if you kept all that to yourself,” I said. “Me being a former detective from Berlin. It’s not something I want people to know about.”

“Of course. You have my word.”

“Anyway it’s not a story in which anyone comes out with very much credit,” I said. “Myself included.”

“That’s rather the point of a good story,” said Maugham. “I dislike heroes at the best of times and I much prefer men with flaws. Believe me, that’s what sells these days.”

“Then the surprise is that I haven’t been in a novel already. Seriously, though. In retrospect, I should have done a lot more to talk the captain out of his chosen course of action. But he was my old commander and I was used to doing what he asked. Which isn’t enough of an excuse, really. But there it is. It’s just another regret I have in the ten-volume apologia that’s the story of my life.”

“Ten volumes, eh? That sounds interesting.”

“Big print, though.”

“So what h-happened?” he asked. “In your story.”

“Nothing good,” I said. “It was a disaster for the captain, and in time for me, as well. It brought me back to the attention of General Heydrich, who, later that year, blackmailed me into returning to the police, which meant working for him and, eventually, the SD.”

“Blackmailed? What did he have on you?”

I smiled. “Nothing in particular. Only the threat of extreme violence. That’s the most effective blackmail of all. The Nazis had so many ways of threatening violence to a person that it’s sometimes hard to remember that this was the German government we’re talking about and not a bunch of Chicago gangsters. If I’d refused to do what he asked-work for him-I’d have been a dead man. No question. Heydrich always got what he wanted.”

The cat blinked up at me with slow disbelief, as if questioning the truth of that assertion. Cats just know when someone is lying or, in my case, bending the truth to suit my new persona. That’s probably why I don’t own a cat.

“And did you go to Gestapo headquarters? To put your head in the lion’s mouth?”