The Other Side of Silence

“And where will you be? When the ship sets sail.”

“Oh, I’ll be on the ship, too. Someone has to oversee the transport of the Amber Room back to Germany. I’m sure you agree it’s much too valuable to let it travel by itself.”

“I’m impressed. How did you manage that?”

“Let’s just say that when the gauleiter was in the Ukraine-where he was also the governor, of course-he managed to spirit away the contents of four whole museums. And those are just the ones that I know about. I should say he now has an art collection to rival Hermann Goring’s.”

“And you threatened to tell Hitler or Himmler about them. Is that it?”

“It would have been my duty as a German officer.”

“And Koch? What about him?”

“He’s staying on in Konigsberg. Bravely. As you might expect of a man like that. Right up until the very last minute, when I believe he has made plans to facilitate his own escape to a house on the coast and then on an icebreaker, to Flensburg. But you needn’t concern yourself with the governor’s safety. All you have to do is go and see your little lightning maid, show her this identity pass, and then tell her what to do. She won’t even have to endure the scrutiny of her colleagues as she carries out this important duty for the governor. As we speak, she’s probably the last one there. So, it couldn’t be simpler.”

“Suppose she says no.”

“You’d better make damn sure she doesn’t say no, hadn’t you? Not if you want to be a daddy in eight months. As soon as I’ve seen her give the signal-yes, I’m coming with you, Gunther, just to make sure-I’ll sign this pass and you can drive her to Gotenhafen yourself, where you can say your romantic good-byes. I’m afraid there’s no pass for you, my friend. Sorry about that. Not unless you’re part of the submarine training division; we need those boys to crew the U-boats. Or unless you’re badly wounded. Then again, I suppose we could always make that happen. Ordinarily, that might be the only alternative for a swine like you. For me to have those two thugs in the corridor take you outside and blow your brains out. But with you, Gunther, things are different, I think. You’d probably welcome a bullet in the back of the head. But failure to comply with the governor’s orders will only result in you being assigned to the concentration camp at Palmnicken, where your duties will include assisting the SS to dispose of three thousand Jewish female workers. Which I imagine you’ll probably think of as a fate worse than death. That’s what I can promise you. So, as you can no doubt see, you really don’t have a choice.” He looked around the room as if he expected that the fluff and the chairs were going to back him up. “Look, it’s not so bad what I’m asking you to do here. Anyone would think that I want something really difficult. All I’m trying to do is preserve the lives of everyone on that ship.”

“Including yours.”

“Naturally including mine. In a few months’ time, when the war is over, and you’re dead or in a Soviet labor camp, and Irmela and I are safely in Germany, you’ll wonder why you didn’t cooperate sooner. The fact is, we could have arranged for your passage home, too. I could have used a good man to help me guard all that priceless amber. So, do I have your cooperation, or not?”

Through all that he said, even through his white smiles and his smooth laughter and total confidence that I would meekly do exactly what he said, I knew that one day, in an unimaginable tomorrow’s world to which I knew I might never belong, I would see him again and pay him back in kind for everything he had done. For a moment the threat of some nebulous future revenge tried to form itself in my mouth and I even took a breath to give these futile words air. Instead, recognizing my impotence, I said nothing and I even think I must have nodded my quiet and spineless assent. The things you do for a woman.

Hennig buttoned up his tunic and then fetched his greatcoat and his cap.

“Shall we go?”

SIXTEEN

FRENCH RIVIERA

1956

The red beam from the lighthouse tracked across the Villa Mauresque as if searching the blue night sky for an enemy bomber to target but finding only me and Somerset Maugham seated side by side, next to the almost motionless swimming pool, and alerting each of us to the possibility that one of us might bring some as yet unknown harm to the other. He remained very still, and whenever the red light crossed his creased features, turning them the color of blood, he reminded me of a sort of vampire. I had been silent for a long moment and the old Englishman was sensitive enough to see that I had been much affected by the telling of this painful story-more affected than I could have imagined. It had been more than ten years, after all, and I hadn’t even got to the good bit.

“It’s been a while since I talked about it,” I told him. “If it comes to that, I don’t think I’ve ever talked about it. Frankly, it’s not the sort of thing you bring up over a beer and a sausage.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.