Read The One From the Other Online
Authors: Philip Kerr
Tags: #Mystery, #Thriller, #Suspense, #Historical
The One From the Other (2 page)
Begelmann was older and taller, with dark, curly hair and lips that were as thick and pink as two slices of luncheon meat. He was smiling but his eyes told a very different story. The pupils were narrow, like a cat’s, as if he was anxious to be out of the SD’s spotlight. In that building, and surrounded by all those black uniforms, he looked like a choirboy trying to make friends with a pack of hyenas. He didn’t say much. It was Six who did all the talking. I’d heard Six was from Mannheim. Mannheim has a famous Jesuit church. In his smart black uniform, that was the way Franz Six struck me. Not your typical SD thug. More like a Jesuit.
“Herr Begelmann has expressed a wish to emigrate from Germany to Palestine,” he said smoothly. “Naturally he is concerned about his business in Germany and the impact that its sale might have on the local economy. So, in order to help Herr Begelmann, this department has proposed a solution to his problem. A solution you might be able to help us with, Herr Gunther. We have proposed that he should not emigrate ‘pro forma,’ but rather that he should continue to be a German citizen working abroad. In effect, that he should work in Palestine as the sales representative of his own company. In this manner he will be able to earn a salary and to share in the profits of the company while at the same time fulfilling this department’s policy of encouraging Jewish emigration.”
I didn’t doubt that poor Begelmann had agreed to share his company’s profits not with the Reich but with Franz Six. I lit a cigarette and fixed the SD man with a cynical smile. “Gentlemen, it sounds to me like you’ll both be very happy together. But I fail to see what you need me for. I don’t do marriages. I investigate them.”
Six colored a little and glanced awkwardly at Begelmann. He had power, but it wasn’t the kind of power that could threaten someone like me. He was used to bullying students and Jews, and the task of bullying an adult Aryan male looked like it was beyond him.
“We require someone . . . someone Herr Begelmann can trust . . . to deliver a letter from the Wassermann Bank, here in Berlin, to the Anglo-Palestine Bank in Jaffa. We require that person to open lines of credit with that bank and to take a lease on a property in Jaffa that can be the premises for a new car showroom. The lease will help to validate Herr Begelmann’s important new business venture. We also require our agent to transport certain items of property to the Anglo-Palestine Bank in Jaffa. Naturally, Herr Begelmann is prepared to pay a substantial fee for these services. The sum of one thousand English pounds, payable in Jaffa. Naturally, the SD will arrange all the necessary documentation and paperwork. You would be going there as the official representative of Begelmann’s Automotive. Unofficially, you will be acting as the SD’s confidential agent.”
“A thousand pounds. That’s a lot of money,” I said. “But what happens if the Gestapo ask me questions about all this. They might not like some of the answers. Have you thought of that?”
“Of course,” said Six. “Do you take me for an idiot?”
“No, but they might.”
“It so happens that I’m sending two other agents to Palestine on a fact-finding mission that has been authorized at the highest level,” he said. “As part of its ongoing remit, this department has been asked to investigate the feasibility of forced emigration to Palestine. As far as SIPO is concerned, you would be part of that mission. If the Gestapo were to ask you questions about your mission you would be entirely within your rights to answer, as these two others will answer: that it is an intelligence matter. That you are carrying out the orders of General Heydrich. And that for reasons of operational security, you cannot discuss the matter.” He paused and lit a small, pungent cigar. “You have done some work for the general before, have you not?”
“I’m still trying to forget it.” I shook my head. “With all due respect, Herr Sturmbannführer. If two of your own men are already going to Palestine, then what do you need me for?”
Begelmann cleared his throat. “If I might say something, please, Herr Sturmbannführer?” he said, cautiously, and in a strong Hamburg accent. Six shrugged and shook his head, indifferently. Begelmann looked at me with quiet desperation. There was sweat on his forehead and I didn’t think it was only as a result of the unusually warm September weather. “Because, Herr Gunther, your reputation for honesty goes before you.”
“Not to mention your dedication to making an easy mark,” said Six.
I looked at Six and nodded. I was through being polite to this legal crook. “What you’re saying, Herr Begelmann, is that you don’t trust this department or the people who work for it.”
Poor Begelmann looked pained. “No, no, no, no, no,” he said. “That’s not it at all.”
But I was enjoying myself too much to let go of this bone. “And I can’t say as I blame you. It’s one thing to get robbed. It’s quite another when the robber asks you to help carry the loot to the getaway car.”
Six bit his lip. I could see he was wishing it was the vein on the side of my neck. The only reason he wasn’t saying anything was because I hadn’t yet said no. Probably he guessed that I wasn’t going to. A thousand pounds is a thousand pounds.
“Please, Herr Gunther.”
Six looked quite happy to leave the begging to Begelmann.
“My whole family would be extremely grateful for your help.”
“A thousand pounds,” I said. “I already heard that part.”
“Is there something wrong with the remuneration?” Begelmann was looking at Six for guidance. He wasn’t getting any. Six was a lawyer, not a horse dealer.
“Hell no, Herr Begelmann,” I said. “It’s generous. No, it’s me, I guess. I start to itch when a certain kind of dog cozies up to me.”
But Six was refusing to be insulted. So far in this, he was just a typical lawyer. Prepared to put aside all human feelings for the greater good of making money. “I hope you’re not being rude to an official of the German government, Herr Gunther,” he said, chiding me. “Anyone would think you were against National Socialism, the way you talk. Hardly a very healthy attitude these days.”
I shook my head. “You mistake me,” I said. “I had a client last year. His name was Hermann Six. The industrialist? He was less than honest with me. You’re no relation to him, I trust.”
“Sadly not,” he said. “I come from a very poor family in Mannheim.”
I looked at Begelmann. I felt sorry for him. I should have said no. Instead I said yes. “All right, I’ll do it. But you people had better be on the level about all this. I’m not the type who forgives and forgets. And I’ve never turned the other cheek.”
It wasn’t long before I regretted becoming involved in Six and Begelmann’s Jewish peddler scheme. I was alone in my office the next day. It was raining outside. My partner, Bruno Stahlecker, was out on a case, so he said, which probably meant he was propping up a bar in Wedding. There was a knock at the door and a man came in. He was wearing a leather coat and a wide-brimmed hat. Call it a keen sense of smell, but I knew he was Gestapo even before he showed me the little warrant disk in the palm of his hand. He was in his mid-twenties, balding, with a small, lopsided mouth and a sharp, delicate-looking jaw that made me suspect he was more used to hitting than being hit. Without saying a word he tossed his wet hat onto my desk blotter, unbuttoned his coat to reveal a neat, navy-blue suit, sat in the chair on the other side of my desk, took out his cigarettes, and lit one—all the while staring at me like an eagle watching a fish.
“Nice little hat,” I said, after a moment. “Where’d you steal it?” I picked it off my blotter and tossed it onto his lap. “Or did you just want me and my roses to know that it’s raining outside?”
“They told me you were a tough guy at the Alex,” he said, and flicked his ash on my carpet.
“I was a tough guy when I was at the Alex,” I said. The Alex was police headquarters, on Berlin’s Alexanderplatz. “They gave me one of those little disks. Anyone can pretend he’s tough when he’s got KRIPO’s beer token in his pocket.” I shrugged. “But if that’s what they say, then it must be true. Real cops, like the cops at the Alex, don’t lie.”
The little mouth tightened into a smile that was all lips and no teeth, like a newly stitched scar. He put the cigarette back in his mouth as if sucking a length of thread to poke in the eye of a needle. Or even my eye. I don’t think he would have cared which. “So you’re the bull who caught Gormann, the strangler.”
“That was a very long time ago,” I said. “Murderers were a lot easier to catch before Hitler came to power.”
“Oh? How’s that?”
“For one thing, they weren’t nearly as thick on the ground as they are now. And for another, it seemed to matter more. I used to take a real satisfaction in protecting society. Nowadays I wouldn’t know where to start.”
“Sounds suspiciously like you disapprove of what the Party’s done for Germany,” he said.
“Not at all,” I said, careful with my insolence now. “I don’t disapprove of anything that’s done for Germany.” I lit one of my own and let him fill in the double meaning and entertained myself with a mental picture of my fist connecting with the kid’s pointy jaw. “Have you got a name, or is that just for your friends? You remember those, don’t you? All the people who used to send you a birthday card? Always supposing you can remember when that is.”
“Maybe you can be my friend,” he said, smiling. I hated that smile. It was a smile that said he knew he had something on me. There was a sort of twinkle in his iris that came off his eyeball like the point of a sword. “Maybe we can help each other. That’s what friends are for, eh? Maybe I’ll do you a favor, Gunther, and you’ll be so damned grateful you’ll send me one of those birthday cards you were talking about.” He nodded. “I’d like that. That would be nice. With a little message inside.”
I sighed some smoke his way. I was growing weary of his hard act. “I doubt you’d like my sense of humor,” I said. “But I’m willing to be proved wrong. It might make a nice change to be proved wrong by the Gestapo.”
“I am Inspector Gerhard Flesch,” he said.
“Pleased to meet you, Gerhard.”
“I head up the Jewish Department in SIPO,” he added.
“You know something? I’ve been thinking of opening one of those in here,” I said. “Suddenly everyone seems to have a Jewish Department. Must be good for business. The SD, the Foreign Office, and now the Gestapo.”
“The operational spheres of the SD and the Gestapo are demarcated by a functions order signed by the Reichsführer-SS,” said Flesch. “Operationally, the SD is to subject the Jews to intense surveillance and then report to us. But in practice the Gestapo is locked in a power struggle with the SD, and in no area is this conflict more hotly contested than in the area of Jewish affairs.”
“That all sounds very interesting, Gerhard. But I don’t see how I can help. Hell, I’m not even Jewish.”
“No?” Flesch smiled. “Then let me explain. We have heard a rumor that Franz Six and his men are in the pay of the Jews. Taking bribes in return for facilitating Jewish emigration. What we don’t yet have is proof. That’s where you come in, Gunther. You’re going to get it.”
“You overestimate my resourcefulness, Gerhard. I’m not that good at shoveling shit.”
“This SD fact-finding mission to Palestine. Exactly why are you going?”
“I need a holiday, Gerhard. I need to get away and eat some oranges. Apparently sunlight and oranges are very good for the skin.” I shrugged. “Then again, I’m thinking of converting. I’m told they give a pretty good circumcision in Jaffa, if you get them before lunchtime.” I shook my head. “Come on, Gerhard. It’s an intelligence matter. You know I can’t talk about it with anyone outside of the department. If you don’t like that, then take it up with Heydrich. He makes the rules, not me.”
“The two men you’re traveling with,” he said, hardly batting an eye. “We would like you to keep an eye on them. To see that they don’t abuse the position of trust in which they find themselves. I’m even authorized to offer you some expenses. A thousand marks.”
Everyone was throwing money at me. A thousand pounds here. A thousand marks there. I felt like an official in the Reich Ministry of Justice.
“That’s very handsome of you, Gerhard,” I said. “A thousand marks is quite a slice of sugarloaf. Of course, you wouldn’t be the Gestapo if you didn’t also have a taste of the whip you’re offering me in the event I don’t have the sweet tooth you were counting on.”
Flesch smiled his toothless smile. “It would be unfortunate if your racial origins were made the subject of an inquiry,” he said, stubbing out his cigarette in my ashtray. As he leaned forward and then back again in the chair, his leather coat creaked loudly, like the sound of heavy raindrops, as if he had just bought it from the Gestapo gift shop.
“Both my parents were churchgoing folk,” I said. “I don’t see that you’ve got anything like that to throw at me.”
“Your maternal great-grandmother,” he said. “There’s a possibility she might have been Jewish.”
“Read your Bible, Gerhard,” I said. “We’re all Jewish if you want to go back far enough. But as it happens, you’re wrong. She was a Roman Catholic. Quite a devout one, I believe.”
“And yet her name was Adler, was it not? Anna Adler?”
“It was Adler, yes, I believe that’s correct. What of it?”
“Adler is a Jewish name. If she were alive today she would probably have to add Sarah to her name, so that we could recognize her for what she was. A Jewess.”
“Even if it was true, Gerhard. That Adler is a Jewish name? And, to be honest, I have no idea if it is or not. That would only make me one-eighth Jewish. And under section two, article five of the Nuremberg Laws, I am not, therefore, a Jew.” I grinned. “Your whip lacks a proper sting, Gerhard.”
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