Field Gray (28 page)

I read the form forward and then backward: Sometimes, things in the Soviet Union and its zones of occupation made more sense if you read them backward.

I signed it, and Major Weltz drew the form toward him.

“So at least we know that you do want to get out of here,” he said. “To go home. Now that we’ve established that much, all we have to do is figure out a way of making that happen. I mean, sooner rather than later. To be exact, twenty-five years from now. That is, if you survive what anyone here will tell you is hazardous work. Personally, I don’t much care to be even this close to large deposits of uraninite. Apparently, they turn it into this yellow powder that glows in the dark. God only knows what it does to people.”

“Thanks, but I’m not interested.”

“We haven’t told you what we’re offering yet,” said Weltz. “A job. As a policeman. I would have thought that might appeal to a man with your qualifications.”

“A man who was never a member of the Nazi Party,” said Lieutenant Rascher. “A former member of the Social Democratic Party.”

“Did you know, Captain, that the KPD and the SDP have joined together?”

“It’s a bit late,” I said. “We could have used the support of the KPD in December 1931. During the Red Revolution.”

“That was Trotsky’s fault,” said Weltz. “Anyway. Better late than never, eh? The new party—the Socialist Unity Party, the SED—it represents a fresh start for us both to work together. For a new Germany.”

“Another new Germany?” I shrugged.

“Well, we can hardly make do with the old one. Wouldn’t you agree? There’s so much that we have to rebuild. Not just politics, but law and order, too. The police force. We’re starting a new force. For the moment, it’s being called the Fifth Kommissariat, or K-5. We hope to have it up and running by the end of the year. And until then we’re looking for recruits. A man such as yourself, a former Oberkommissar with Kripo, with a record for honesty and integrity, who was chased out of the force by the Nazis, is just the sort of principled man we need. I think I can probably guarantee reinstatement at your old rank, with full pension rights. A Berlin-weighted allowance. Help with a new apartment. A job for your wife.”

“No, thanks.”

“That’s too bad,” said Lieutenant Rascher.

“Look, why don’t you think it over, Captain,” said Weltz. “Sleep on it. You see, to be perfectly honest with you, Gunther, you’re at the top of our list in this camp. And, for obvious reasons, we’d rather not stay here longer than we have to. I’m already a father, but the lieutenant here has no wish to damage his chances of having a son if and when he marries. Radiation does something to a man’s ability to procreate. It also affects the thyroid and the body’s ability to use energy and make proteins. At least, that’s what I think it does.”

“The answer is still no,” I said. “May I go now?”

The major adopted a rueful expression. “I don’t understand you,” he said. “How is it that you, a Social Democrat, were prepared to go and work for Heydrich? And yet you won’t work for us. Can you explain that, please?”

It was now I realized who the major reminded me of. The uniform might have been different, but with the white-blond hair, blue eyes, high forehead, and even loftier tone—I was already thinking of Heydrich before he mentioned the name. Probably Weltz and Heydrich would have been about the same age, too. If he hadn’t been murdered in June 1942, Heydrich would have been about forty-two now. The younger lieutenant was rather more gray-haired, with a face as wide as the major’s was long. He looked like me before the war and a year in a POW camp.

“Well, Gunther? What have you to say for yourself? Perhaps you were always just a Nazi in all but name. A party fellow traveler. Is that it? Did it take you this long to understand what you really are?”

“You and Heydrich,” I said to the major. “You’re not so very different. I never wanted to work for him either, but I was afraid to say no. Afraid of what he might do to me. You, on the other hand, have shot your bolt there. You’ve already done your worst. Short of shooting me, there’s not much more you can actually do to me. Sometimes it’s a great comfort to know that you’ve already hit rock bottom.”

“We could break you,” said Weltz. “We could do that.”

“I’ve broken a few men myself in my time,” I said. “But there has to be some point to it. And with me, there isn’t, because if you break me, then you’d be doing it just for the hell of it, and what’s more, I’d be no good to you when you were finished. I’m no good to you now, only you just don’t know it, Major. So let me tell you why: I was the kind of cop who was too dumb to act smart and look the other way, or to kiss someone’s behind. The Nazis were cleverer than you. They knew that. The only reason Heydrich brought me back to Kripo was because he knew that even in a police state there are times when you need a real policeman. But you don’t want a real policeman, Major Weltz, you want a clerk with a badge. You want me to read Karl Marx at bedtime and people’s mail during the day. You want a man who’s eager to please and looking for advancement in the Communist Party.” I shook my head wearily. “The last time I was looking for advancement in a party, a pretty girl slapped my face.”

“Pity,” said Weltz. “It seems you’re going to spend the rest of your life dead. Like all of your class, Gunther, you’re a victim of history.”

“We both are, Major. Being a victim of history is what being a German is all about.”

B
ut I was also a victim of my environment. They made sure of that. Soon after my meeting with the boys from K-5, I was transferred off the sorting detail and into the mine shaft.

It was a world of constant thunder. There was the rumble of underground explosions that broke the rock into manageable chunks; and there was the crash of the cage doors before it slid down the guides and into the shaft. There was the din of rocks we split with pickaxes and then threw into the wagons, and the continual barrage as these moved backward and forward along the rails. And with each detonating noise there was dust and more dust, turning my own snot black and my sweat into a kind of gray oil. At night, I coughed great gritty gobs of saliva and phlegm that looked like burned fried eggs. It all felt like a high price to pay for my principles. But there was a camaraderie in the shaft that wasn’t to be had anywhere else in Johannesgeorgenstadt, and an automatic respect from the other
pleni
s who heard our coughing and recognized their own comparative good fortune. Pospelov had been right about that. There’s always someone worse off than yourself. I hoped to get a chance to meet that someone before the work killed me. There was a mirror in the washroom. Mostly we avoided it, for fear that we’d see our own grandfathers or, worse, their decomposed bodies looking back at us; but one day I inadvertently caught sight of myself and saw a man with a face like the pitchblende rock we were mining. It was brownish black, lumpy and misshapen, with two dull opaque spaces where my eyes had once been, and a row of dark gray excrescences that might have been my teeth. I’d met a lot of criminal types in my life, but I looked like Mr. Hyde’s black-sheep brother. Acted like him, too. There were no Blues in the shaft, and we settled our differences with a maximum of violence. Once, Schaefer, another
pleni
from Berlin who didn’t much like cops, told me that he’d cheered when the leaders of the SDP had been chased out of Berlin in 1933. So I punched him hard in the face, and when he tried to hit me with a pickax, I hit him with a shovel. It was a while before he got up, and in truth, he was never quite the same again after that—another victim of history. Karl Marx would have approved.

But after a while I stopped caring about anything very much, including myself. I would squeeze into tight spaces in the black rock to work in solitude with my pick, which was the most dangerous thing to do, since cave-ins were common. But there was less dust to breathe this way than when they used explosives.

Another month passed. And then one day I was summoned to the office again, and I went along expecting to find the same two MVD officers and hear them ask me if my time in the mine shaft had helped to change my mind about K-5. It had changed my mind about a lot of things, but not German communism and its secret police force. I was going to tell them to go to hell, and perhaps sound like I meant it, too, even though I was ready for someone to come and put some plaster of Paris on my face. So I was a little disappointed that the two officers weren’t there, the way you are when you’ve worked up a pretty good speech about a lot of noble things that don’t add up to very much that’s important when you’re lying in the morgue.

There was only one officer in the room, a heavyset man with receding brown hair and a pugnacious jaw. Like his two predecessors, he wore blue breeches and a brown
gimnasterka
tunic but was better decorated; as well as the veteran NKVD soldier badge and Order of the Red Banner, there were other medals I didn’t recognize. The insignia on his collar tabs and the stars on his sleeves seemed to indicate that he was at least a colonel, or perhaps even a general. His blue officer’s cap, with its squarish visor, lay on the table alongside the Nagant revolver in its bucket-sized holster.

“The answer is still no,” I said, hardly caring who he was.

“Sit down,” he said. “And don’t be a bloody fool.”

He was German.

“I know I’ve put on a bit of weight,” he said. “But I thought you of all people would recognize me.”

I sat down and rubbed some of the dust from my eyes. “Now you come to mention it, you do seem kind of familiar.”

“You I wouldn’t have recognized at all. Not in a million years.”

“I know. I should lay off the chocolates. Get myself a haircut and a manicure. But I never do seem to have the time. My job keeps me pretty busy.”

The officer’s pork-butcher’s face cracked a smile. Almost. “A sense of humor. That’s impressive in this place. But if you really want to impress me, then stop playing the tough guy and tell me who I am.”

“Don’t you know?”

He tutted impatiently and shook his head. “Please. I can help you if you’ll let me. But I have to believe you’re worth it. If you’re any kind of detective, you’ll remember who I am.”

“Erich Mielke,” I said. “Your name is Erich Mielke.”

GERMANY, 1946

Y
ou knew all along.”

“There was a moment when I didn’t. The last time I saw you, Erich, you looked like me.”

For a moment Mielke looked grim, as if he was remembering. “Fucking French,” he said. “They were as bad as the Nazis in my book. It still sticks in my throat they get to be one of the four victorious powers in Berlin. What did they do to defeat the fascists? Nothing.”

“We can agree on something, anyway.”

“Le Vernet was the second time you pulled my bread out of the oven. Why’d you do it?”

I shrugged. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“No, that won’t do,” he said firmly. “Tell me. I want to know. You were dressed like a Gestapo officer. But you didn’t act like one. I didn’t get it then and I don’t get it now.”

“Between you and me and these four walls, Erich, I’m afraid the Gestapo were rather a bad lot.” I told him about the murders committed by Major Bömelburg and the SS storm troopers on the road to Lourdes. “You see, it’s one thing taking a man back to stand trial. It’s something completely different just to shoot him in a ditch at the side of the road. It was just your good fortune that we went to the camp at Gurs first, otherwise it might have been you who was shot while trying to escape. But given what I’ve seen since of your friends in the MVD, it’s probably what you deserved. Rats are still rats whether they’re gray, black, or brown. I just wasn’t cut out to be much of a rat myself.”

“Maybe a white rat, eh?”

“Maybe.”

Mielke chucked a packet of Belomorkanal across the table at me. “Here. I don’t smoke myself, but I brought these for you.” He tossed some matches after the cigarettes. “It’s my opinion that smoking is bad for your health.”

“My health has got more important things to worry about.” I lit one and puffed it happily. “But maybe you didn’t know. Russian nails are better for your health than American ones.”

“Oh? Why’s that?”

“Because there’s so little tobacco in them. Four good puffs and they’re gone.”

Mielke smiled. “Talking about your health, I don’t think this place is good for you. If you stay here long enough, you’re liable to grow two heads. That would be a waste, in my opinion.” He came around the table and sat on the corner, swinging one of his polished riding boots carelessly. “You know, when I was in Russia, I learned to look after my health. I even won the sports medal of the Soviet Union. I was living in a little town outside Moscow called Krasnogorsk, and I used to go hunting at the weekend on a sporting estate once owned by the Yusupov family. Prince Yusupov was one of those aristocrats who murdered Rasputin. There was all sorts of rubbish talked about the death of Rasputin, you know. That they had to kill him three or four times before he was actually dead. That they poisoned him, shot him, beat him to death, and then drowned him. In fact, they made it all up to make their futile deed seem more heroic. And the prince didn’t even do the deed himself. The truth was that Rasputin was shot through the forehead by a member of the British Secret Service. Now, I mention all of this to make the point that a man, even a strong man like Rasputin, or you perhaps, can survive almost anything except being killed. You, my friend, will die here. You know it. I know it. Perhaps you will be poisoned by the uraninite. Perhaps you will be shot, attempting to escape. Or when the mine floods, as I believe sometimes it does, then you will drown. But it doesn’t have to be that way. I want to help you, Gunther. Really, I do. But you’ll need to trust me.”

“I’m all ears, Erich. Just two of them at the last count.”

“We both know that you would make a very poor officer in the Fifth Kommissariat. First, you would have to attend the Anti-Fascist School in Krasnogorsk. For reeducation. To be turned into a believer. From our one meeting and everything I’ve read about you, Gunther, I’m quite convinced that it would be a waste of time trying to convert you into a communist. However, that still remains your best way out of here. To volunteer for K-5 and reeducation.”

“It’s true, I’ve rather neglected my reading of late, but…”

“Naturally, this would only be a smoke screen for your escape.”

“Naturally. I suppose there’s no chance of me being shot through this smoke screen.”

“There’s a chance of us both being shot, if you really want to know. I’m sticking my neck out for you, Gunther. I hope you appreciate that. Over the last ten or twelve years, I’ve become something of an expert at saving my own skin. I imagine it’s something we have in common. Either way, it’s not something I do lightly.”

“Why do it at all? Why take the risk? I don’t get it the same way you didn’t get it.”

“You think you’re the only rat that’s not cut out for it? You think a Gestapo officer is the only man who can develop a conscience?”

“I was never a believer. But you—you believed it all, Erich.”

“It’s true. I did believe. Absolutely. Which is why it comes as a shock to discover that party loyalty can count for nothing, and everything can be taken away again at the stroke of a pen.”

“Why would they do that to you, Erich?”

“We all have our little secrets, that’s why.”

“No, that won’t do,” I said, parroting his earlier speech once more. “Tell me. I want to know. And then maybe I’ll trust you.”

Mielke stood up and walked around the room with his arms folded around himself in thought. After a while, he nodded and said:

“Did you ever wonder what happened to me after Le Vernet?”

“Yes. But I told Heydrich you joined the Foreign Legion. I’m not sure if he believed me.”

“I was interned at Le Vernet for another
three
years after I saw you in 1940. Can you imagine that? Three years in hell. Well, perhaps you can now—yes, I suppose you can. I was posing as a German Latvian called Richard Hebel. Then, in December 1943, I was conscripted as a laborer into Speer’s Ministry for Armaments and War Production. I became what had previously been known as a Todt worker. Effectively, I and thousands of others were slave labor for the Nazis. I myself was a woodcutter in the Ardennes Forest, supplying fuel for the German army. That’s where I became the man you see now. These are woodcutter’s shoulders. Anyway, I remained a so-called relief volunteer, working twelve hours a day until the end of the war, when I made my way back to Berlin and walked into the newly legalized KPD headquarters on Potsdamer Platz to volunteer my services to the party. I was extremely lucky. I met someone who told me to lie about what I’d been doing during the war. He advised me to say that I hadn’t been a prisoner at all, and certainly not a relief volunteer for the fascists.”

Mielke frowned a big, puzzled frown, like a bear gradually realizing that it had been stung by a bee. He shook his head.

“Well, this didn’t make any sense to me. After all, it was hardly my fault that I’d been forced to work for the Nazis. But I was told that the party wouldn’t see it that way. And against all of my instincts, which were to have faith in Comrade Stalin and the party, I decided to put my trust in this one man. His name was Victor Dietrich. So I told them I’d been lying low in Spain and then fighting with the French partisans. It was just as well I did say this, for without Dietrich’s advice my honesty would have been fatal. You see, back in August 1941, Comrade Stalin, as People’s Commissar for Defense, had issued an infamous order—order number two-seventy—which, in essence, said that there were no Soviet prisoners of war, only traitors.” Mielke shrugged. “Of almost two million men and women who returned from German and French incarceration to the Soviet Union and its zones of control—many of them loyal party members—a very large percentage have been executed or sent to labor camps for between ten and twenty years. These included my own brother. That’s why I no longer believe, Gunther. Because at any moment my past might catch up with me and I could be where you are now.

“But I want a future. Something concrete. Is that so unusual? I’m seeing this woman. Her name is Gertrud. She’s a seamstress in Berlin. My mother was a seamstress. Did you know that? Anyway, I’d like us to feel that we might have a life together. I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. I don’t have to justify why I’m helping you, surely. You saved my life. Twice. What kind of man would I be if I forgot that?”

I stayed silent for a moment. Then his face darkened with impatience.

“Do you want my help or not, damn it?”

“How is it going to happen?” I asked. “That’s what I’d like to know? If I’m going to put my soul in your hands, you can hardly be surprised if I want to check that your fingernails are clean.”

“Spoken like a true Berliner. And fair enough. Now, then. The Central Anti-Fa School is in Krasnogorsk. Every month, we send them a bag of Nazis on a plane from Berlin for reeducation. There’s quite a number of them there now. Members of the National Committee for a Free Germany, they call themselves. Field Marshal Paulus is one of them. Did you know that?”

“Paulus, a collaborator?”

“Ever since Stalingrad. Also there is von Seydlitz-Kurzbach. Of course, you’d remember his propaganda broadcasts in Königsberg. Yes, it’s quite a little German colony over there. A regular Nazi home away from home. Once you’re on the plane to Krasnogorsk from Berlin, there’s no getting off. But on the train between here and Berlin—or better still, between here and Zwickau—that’s where you could make your escape. Just think. From this camp to the Ami zone of occupation is less than sixty kilometers. If my lady friend, Gertrud, was not in East Berlin, I might be tempted myself. So what I propose is this: I will inform Major Weltz that I’ve persuaded you to change your mind. That you are prepared to undergo reeducation at the Anti-Fa School. He’ll speak to the camp commander, who’ll take you out of the pit and put you back on the sorting. Otherwise, everything else will appear as normal until the day you leave this place, when a clean uniform and new boots will be provided for you to wear. By the way, what size boots do you take?”

“Forty-six.”

Mielke shrugged. “A man’s body weight can fluctuate dramatically, but his feet always stay the same size. All right. There will be a gun inside the leg of the boot. Some papers. And a key for your manacles. You’ll probably be accompanied on your journey by that young MVD lieutenant and a Russian
starshina
. But be warned. They won’t give up easily. The penalty for allowing a
pleni
to escape is to take the prisoner’s place in the labor camp. And the chances are you’ll have to use the gun and kill them both. But that shouldn’t be a problem for you. The train won’t be like previous convict trains you’ve been on. You’ll be in a compartment. As soon as you’re moving, ask to use the toilet. And come out shooting. The rest is up to you. The best thing would be if you took the uniform of one of your escorts. Since you speak Russian, that shouldn’t be a problem either. Jump the train and head west, of course. If you’re caught, I shall deny everything, so please spare me the embarrassment. If they torture you, blame Major Weltz. I never liked him anyway.”

Mielke’s ruthlessness made me smile. “There’s just one problem,” I said. “The other
pleni
s. My comrades. They’ll think I sold out.”

“They’re Nazis, most of them. Do you really care what they think?”

“I didn’t think I would. But oddly, I do, yes.”

“They’ll find out you escaped soon enough. That kind of news travels fast. Especially if that major gets the rap for it. And I’ll make sure he does. There’s just one more thing. When you get to the Ami zone, I want you to do me a favor. I want you to go to an address in Berlin and give someone I know some money. A woman. As a matter of fact, you met her once. You probably don’t remember, but you gave her a lift in your car that same day you saved me from those SA storm troopers.”

“I wouldn’t want to make helping you a habit, Erich. But sure. Why not?”

H
ow much of what Erich Mielke told me was true was neither here nor there. He was certainly right that if I remained at the camp in Johannesgeorgenstadt I would probably die. What Mielke didn’t know when he offered me a way to escape was that I had been about ready to throw in the towel and join K-5 in the hope that much later on, after I had become a good communist, I might find an opportunity to escape.

Almost immediately after my meeting with Mielke, I was, as he’d promised, transferred back to the sorting of the rock. This raised some suspicions that I’d agreed to collaborate with the German communists and I was subjected to some close questioning by General Krause and his adjutant, an SS major named Dunst; however, they seemed to accept my assurances that I remained “loyal to Germany,” whatever that meant. And as the days passed, their earlier suspicions began to diminish. I had no idea when I would be summoned to the office and given my clean uniform and the all-important boots, and as yet more time passed, I began to wonder if Mielke had deceived me or even if he had been arrested himself. Then, one cold spring day, I was ordered to the showers, where I was allowed to wash and then given another uniform. It had been boil-washed and all of the badges and insignia removed, but after my own lousy clothes it felt like it had been tailored at Holter’s. The
pleni
who gave it to me was a Russian
besprisorni
—an orphaned boy who’d grown up in the Soviet labor camp system and was regarded by the Blues as a trusted prisoner who needed no supervision. He handed me my boots, which were made of rather fine soft leather, and then kept a lookout for me.

The money was rubles and, in an envelope addressed to Mielke’s friend, several hundred dollars. The papers included a pink pass, a ration card, a travel permit, and a German identity card—everything I’d need if I was stopped on the road to Nuremburg in the Ami zone. There was a small key for a set of manacles. And there was a loaded gun that was almost as small as the key: a six-shot Colt .25 with a two-inch barrel. Not much of a gun, but enough to make you think again about disagreeing with the person who might be holding it. But only just. It was a joy girl’s gun, hammer-less so as not to snag her stockings.