Field Gray (30 page)
“You’ve lost a bit of weight since that picture was taken.”
“You’re right,” I said. “I hardly recognize myself. Typhus does that to a man. I’m on leave back to Berlin after six weeks in hospital.”
The sergeant inched back a little.
“It’s all right,” I said. “I’m over the worst of it now. I picked it up in the POW camp at Johannesgeorgenstadt. Full of fleas and lice, it was.” I started to scratch for added effect.
He handed me back the documents and nodded a quick good-bye. I expect he washed his hands quite soon afterward. I know I would have.
I dropped down on the seat and opened the major’s bag again. There was a bottle of Asbach brandy I’d been looking forward to all morning. I opened it, took a swig, and searched through the rest of his stuff. There were some clothes, some smokes, a few papers, and an early edition of poems by Georg Trakl. I’d always rather admired his work, and one particular poem, “In the Eastern Front,” now seemed to match the time and, more especially, the place. I can still remember it by heart.
The ominous anger of the People
Is like the furious organ of the winter storm,
The purple wave of battle,
Like the leafless stars.
With broken brows and silver arms,
The night winks to dying soldiers.
In the shade of an autumn ash tree
The ghosts of the dead are sighing
A desert crown of thorns surrounds the city.
From the bleeding stairs
The moon chases the shocked women
Wild wolves break through the door.
*
GERMANY, 1954
A
nd you think that Erich Mielke wanted you dead because he owed his life to you?”
My American friend tapped his pipe and let the burned tobacco fall onto the floor of my cell. I wanted to scold him for it, to remind him that these were my quarters and to show a little respect. But what was the point? It was an American world I was living in now, and I was just a pawn in a never-ending game of intercontinental chess with the Russians.
“Not just that,” I said. “Because I could connect him with the murders of those two Berlin policemen. You see, Heydrich always suspected that Mielke felt a certain amount of embarrassment that he’d committed a crime as serious as the murders of policemen. That it was somehow unworthy of him. He thought it was almost certainly Mielke who fingered the two Germans who put him up to it—Kippenberger and Neumann—during Stalin’s Great Purge of 1937. They both died in the labor camps. Their wives, too. Even Kippenberger’s daughter was sent to a labor camp. Mielke really tried to clean house there.
“But I also knew about Mielke’s work in Spain. His work as a Chekist, with the military security service, torturing and killing those Republicans—anarchists and Trotskyites—who deviated from the party line as dictated by Stalin. Again, Heydrich strongly suspected that Mielke used his position as a political commissar with the International Brigade in Spain to eliminate Erich Ziemer. If you remember, Ziemer was the man who helped Mielke murder the two cops. And I think Heydrich was probably right. I think that Mielke may even have planned some political role for himself in Germany after the war; and he reasoned, quite rightly, that the German people—and more especially Berliners—would never take to a man who’d murdered two policemen in cold blood.”
“There was an attempt by the West Berlin courts in 1947 to prosecute him for those murders,” said the Ami with the bow tie. “A judge called Wilhelm Kühnast issued a warrant for Mielke’s arrest. Did you know about that?”
“No. By then, I wasn’t living in Berlin.”
“It failed, of course. The Soviets closed ranks in front of Mielke to shield him from further inquiry and tried their best to discredit Kühnast. The criminal records that Kühnast used to build up his case disappeared. Kühnast was lucky not to disappear himself.”
“Erich Mielke has survived numerous party purges,” said the Ami with the pipe. “He survived the death of Stalin, of course, and, rather more recently, the death of Lavrenty Beria. We think that he was never a relief volunteer for the Todt organization. That was just a story he gave you. If he had worked for them, he’d be dead like all the rest who came back and found a cold welcome from Stalin. To us it seems much more likely that Mielke got out of that French camp at Le Vernet quite soon after you saw him there, in the summer of 1940, and got himself back to the Soviet Union before Hitler invaded Russia.”
“Why not?” I shrugged. “He never struck me as the George Washington, ‘I cannot tell a lie’ type. So I’ll contain my obvious disappointment that he might have misled me.”
“Today, your old friend is East Germany’s deputy chief of the secret police. The Stasi. Have you heard of the Stasi?”
“I’ve been away for five years.”
“Okay. When Stalin died last year, there was this big workers’ strike in East Berlin, and then throughout the whole of the DDR. As many as half a million took to the streets to demand free and fair elections. Even policemen defected to the side of the protesters. This was the first big test of the Stasi as run by Mielke. And effectively, he broke the strike.”
“Big-time,” said the other Ami.
“At first martial law was declared. The Stasi opened fire on the protesters. Many were killed. Thousands were arrested and are still in prison. Mielke himself arrested the minister of justice, who’d questioned the legality of those arrests. Since then, Comrade Erich has been consolidating his position within the East German hierarchy. And he continues to expand the Stasi’s network of secret informers and spies, and to build the organization into the image of the Soviet KGB. The MVD, that was.”
“He’s a bastard,” I said. “What more can I tell you? I have nothing else to say about the man. That day in Johannesgeorgenstadt was the last time I saw him.”
“You could help us to get him.”
“Sure. Before lockdown tonight, I’ll see what I can do for you.”
“Seriously.”
“I’ve told you everything.”
“And it’s been very interesting. Most of it, anyway.”
“Don’t think we’re not grateful, Gunther. Because we are.”
“Might that gratitude stretch as far as letting me go?”
Bow Tie glanced at the Pipe, who nodded vaguely and said, “You know? It might. It just might. Provided you agree to work for us.”
“Oh.” I yawned.
“’Sa matter, Bernie boy? Don’t you want to get out of the stir?”
“We’ll put you on the payroll. We can even get your money back. The money you had when the Coast Guard picked you up in the sea off Gitmo.”
“That’s very generous of you,” I said. “But I’m tired of fighting. And frankly, I can’t see this Cold War of yours being any more worthwhile than the last two I took part in.”
“I’d say it could end up being the most crucial war of all,” said Bow Tie. “Especially if it gets any warmer.”
I shook my head. “You guys make me laugh. The people you want to work for you. Do you always treat them like this?”
“Like what?”
“My mistake. The other day, when I was handcuffed with a hood over my head, I formed the distinct impression you didn’t like my face.”
“That was then.”
“You don’t see us ill-treating you now, do you?”
“Hell, Gunther, you’ve got the best fucking room in the place. Cigarettes, brandy. Tell us what else you need and we’ll see if we can get it for you.”
“They don’t sell what I want in the army PX.”
“And what’s that?”
I shook my head and lit a cigarette. “Nothing. It doesn’t matter.”
“We’re your friends, Gunther.”
“With American friends, who needs enemies?” I pulled a face. “Look, gentlemen, I’ve had American friends before. In Vienna. And there was something about the experience I didn’t like. Even so, I knew their names. And mostly this is a given with the people who claim to be my friends.”
“You’re taking this way too personally, Gunther.”
“Nothing’s been broken that can’t be fixed. We can do this. I’m Mr. Scheuer and this is Mr. Frei. Like we said before, we work for the CIA. At a place called Pullach. You know Pullach?”
“Sure,” I said. “It’s the American part of Munich. Where you kennel all of the tame German shepherds who look after the flock for you in this part of the world. General Gehlen and his pals.”
“Unfortunately, those dogs are not coming to heel the way they used to,” said Scheuer. He was the one with the pipe. “We suspect Gehlen made a private deal with Chancellor Adenauer and that the Germans are about to run their own show from now on.”
“Very ungrateful,” said Frei. “After all we did for them.”
“Gehlen’s new intelligence outfit—the GVL—is mostly ex-SS. Gestapo, Abwehr. Some very nasty people. Much worse than you. And it’s probably riddled with Russian spies.”
“I could have told you that seven years ago in Vienna,” I said. “In fact, I think I did.”
“So it looks like we’re going to have to start again from scratch. And that means we’re going to have to be rather more certain of the kind of people we recruit. Which is why we were so rough on you from the start. We wanted to make quite sure of who and what you are. The last thing we want working for us this time is a bunch of die-hard Nazis.”
“Imagine how we felt when we discovered that the GVL was helping to train Egyptians and Syrians for a war with the state of Israel. With the Jews, Gunther. Talk about history repeating itself. I would think a man like you, someone who wasn’t ever anti-Semitic himself, might want to do something about that. Israel is our friend.”
“You’ve got to ask yourself a question, Bernie. Do you really want to stay here and let those two jokers from the OCCWC, Silverman and Earp, decide your fate?”
“I thought you said they cleared me.”
“Oh, they did. Since then the French have put in a request for your extradition to Paris. And you know what the French are like.”
“The French haven’t got anything on me.”
“That’s not what they think,” said Scheuer. “That’s not what they think at all.”
“You have to hand it to the French,” said Frei. “Their capacity for hypocrisy is nothing short of breathtaking. France was a fascist country during the war. Even more so than Italy or Spain. But even now, they like to portray themselves as victims. To hold others responsible for their crimes and misdemeanors. Others like you, perhaps. Right now there’s a big trial under way in Paris. Your old friend, Helmut Knochen. And Carl Oberg. It’s quite the cause célèbre. Really. It’s in all the newspapers, every day.”
“I don’t see what that has to do with me,” I said. “Those people, Knochen and Oberg, they were big fish. I was just a minnow. I never even met Oberg. So what the hell’s all this about?”
“The Brits tried Knochen in 1947. In Wuppertal. They found him guilty of the murders of some British parachutists and sentenced him to death. But the sentence was commuted and now the French want their kilo of flesh. They’re looking for scapegoats, Gunther. Someone to blame. And of course, so is Knochen. Which apparently is how your name came up. He made a statement to the French Sûreté that it was you who murdered all those prisoners from Gurs on the road to Lourdes in 1940.”
“Me? There must be some mistake.”
“Oh, sure,” said Frei. “I think there has been a mistake. But that’s not going to stop the French. They’ve made a formal application for your extradition to Paris. Perhaps you would care to read Knochen’s statement?”
He reached into his jacket pocket and fished out several folded sheets of paper, which he handed to me. Then he and Scheuer stood up and moved toward the cell door.
“You read that over and then decide whether working for Uncle Sam is such a bad thing after all.”
HELMUT KNOCHEN, interviewed March 1954
My name is Helmut Knochen. I was the senior commander of the security police in Paris during the Nazi occupation of France between 1940 and 1944. My jurisdiction extended from northern France to Belgium. Until the appointment of Carl Oberg as supreme leader of the SS and the German police in France I had full responsibility for keeping order and upholding the rule of law. As a policeman I tried to ensure that relations between the French and the Germans were without friction and that the proper administration of justice was unhindered by the occupation. This was not easy. I was not always made privy to senior policy decisions. And the most profound tragedy of my life has been the fact that, in an indirect way, and without being aware of it, I was involved in the persecution of the Jews of France. At no point did I know or even suspect that Jews deported to the east were to be exterminated. If I had known this I should never have gone along with their deportation. Let me say that the greatest crime in history was the systematic murder of Jews by Adolf Hitler.
Of course, there were many other crimes inflicted upon the French people and I always saw my job as being to help restrain some of my colleagues from acting with excessive zeal, not least because I was always fearful of the impact of heavy-handed policing on French public opinion, and on those Vichy officials whose willing collaboration was needed in all security matters. I was always reluctant to provoke an embarrassing confrontation. For example, in September 1942, I thwarted an early attempt to round up prominent French Jews in Paris. There were other occasions when this happened, but that was the largest, I think, involving as many as five thousand Jews. This often brought me into conflict with Heinz Röthke, who was chief of the Gestapo’s Jewish office in France. But my relationship with other fanatical elements in the SS and SD was no less fractious and difficult. Frequently I had to censure those officers who, arriving from Berlin, believed that the SD uniform permitted them to deal summarily with the French. I remember one junior officer from Berlin, Hauptsturmführer Bernhard Gunther, who, in the summer of 1940, was dispatched to the refugee camps at Gurs and Le Vernet in order to arrest a number of French and German communists and bring them back to Paris for questioning. But instead this officer ordered the men to be shot at the side of a French country road. When I heard about this I was shocked, then furious. When he subsequently murdered another German officer, Hauptsturmführer Gunther was sent back to Berlin.
HELMUT KNOCHEN, interviewed April 1954
My name is Helmut Knochen and I have been asked to make a statement concerning information I gave regarding another German officer, Captain Bernhard Gunther, in a previous statement.
I first met Captain Gunther in Paris in July 1940. The meeting took place at the Hôtel du Louvre, or possibly the HQ of the French Gestapo at 100 avenue Henri-Martin. Other officers present at this meeting included Herbert Hagen and Karl Bömelburg. Gunther had arrived in Paris as the special emissary of SS General Reinhard Heydrich and he was ordered to track down a number of French and German communists who were wanted by the Nazi government back in Berlin. Gunther struck me as typical of the type who found favor with Heydrich: cynical, ruthless, and not at all a gentlemen. He made clear his own detestation of the French and, in spite of my efforts to rein him in, he insisted on flying to the south of France and collecting a detachment of motorized SS to drive him to Gurs and Le Vernet, to search those two camps for Heydrich’s wanted men. It was my own feeling there was nothing to be lost by delaying matters until the end of summer, largely out of sensitivity to the defeated armies of France. But Gunther was most insistent. He was ill, I recall—I don’t remember why, later on there was talk of his involvement with a Swiss prostitute—but in spite of this, he still traveled south to carry out his mission, to which Heydrich had given top priority. In fairness to Captain Gunther, it may have been this illness that prompted his summary action in regard to the prisoners. He was accompanied by another German officer, Hauptsturmführer Paul Kestner, and it was him who informed me of what had happened on the road from Gurs to Lourdes.
Almost a dozen men were arrested in Gurs. Among these was the head of the French Communist Party in Le Havre, Lucien Roux. It seems terrible to think it, but apparently these men knew what Captain Gunther had in store for them. The SS drove a few kilometers out of Gurs and stopped in a forest clearing. There Gunther ordered everyone out of the trucks. The prisoners were lined up, offered a last cigarette, and then shot. Gunther delivered the coup de grâce to several men who showed signs of life and then they all went on their way, leaving the bodies where they fell.
Frankly, when Captain Kestner told me exactly what had happened down there I thought seriously about making a formal complaint against Captain Gunther; but I was advised against it: Gunther was Heydrich’s man and this made him all but untouchable. Even when he murdered another officer at a brothel in Paris and it might reasonably have been expected that Gunther would be court-martialed, he managed to evade all charges. He was merely recalled to Berlin, from where he was immediately dispatched to the Ukraine, most likely to carry out the kind of dirty work for which the SS is now notorious. It’s not given to every German officer to behave like a gentleman. Later on, I met Heydrich and expressed my own reservations about Gunther, and his response was typical of the man. He said that he rather agreed with Schopenhauer that all honor ultimately rests on considerations of expediency. Heydrich was of course strongly influenced by Schopenhauer, and I don’t just mean his anti-Semitism. Anyway, I didn’t argue with him. That was never wise. Like Kant, I believe that honor and morality contain their own imperatives. And this is, of course, why I was part of Count Stauffenberg’s plot to kill Adolf Hitler. And why I was arrested by the Nazis in July 1944.
