'No.'
'Did you run her down?'
'Belinsky had a car, not me.'
'Say that you had no part in her murder.'
'I was going to warn her.'
Poroshin nodded. 'Da,' he said, 'dagavareelees (that's agreed). You are speaking the truth.'
'Slava bogu (Thank God).'
'You are right to thank him.' He slapped his stomach once again. 'If I had not felt it, I would have had to kill you as well.'
'As well?' I frowned. Who else was dead? 'Belinsky?'
'Yes, most unfortunate. It was smoking that infernal pipe of his. Such a dangerous habit, smoking. You should give it up.'
'How?'
'It's an old Cheka way. A small quantity of tetryl in the mouthpiece attached to a fuse which leads to a point below the bowl. When the pipe is lit, so is the fuse. Quite simple, but also quite deadly. It blew his head off.' Poroshin's tone was almost indifferent. 'You see? My mind told me that it was not you who killed her. I merely wanted to be sure that I would not have to kill you as well.'
'And now you are sure?'
'For sure,' he said. 'Not only will you walk out of here alive '
'You would have killed me down here?'
'It is a suitable enough place, don't you think?'
'Oh yes, very poetic. What were you going to do? Bite my neck? Or had you wired one of the caskets?'
'There are many poisons, Herr Gunther.' He held out a small flick-knife in his palm. 'Tetrodotoxin on the blade. Even the smallest scratch, and bye-bye.' He pocketed the knife in his tunic and gave a sheepish little shrug. 'I was about to say that not only may you now walk out of here alive, but that if you go to the сafe Mozart now, you will find someone waiting there for you.'
My look of puzzlement seemed to amuse him. 'Can you not guess?' he said delightedly.
'My wife? You got her out of Berlin?'
'Kanyeshnct (Of course). I don't know how else she would have got out. Berlin is surrounded by our tanks.'
'Kirsten is waiting at the Mozart сafe now?
He looked at his watch and nodded. 'For fifteen minutes already,' he said.
'You'd best not keep her waiting much longer. An attractive woman like that, on her own in a city like Vienna? One must be so careful nowadays. These are difficult times.'
'You're full of surprises, Colonel,' I told him. 'Five minutes ago you were ready to kill me on nothing more tangible than your indigestion. And now you're telling me that you've brought my wife from Berlin. Why are you helping me like this? Ya nye paneemayoo (I don't understand).'
'Let us just say that it was part of the whole futile romance of Communism, vot i vsyo (that's all).' He clicked his heels like a good Prussian. 'Goodbye, Herr Gunther. Who knows? After this Berlin thing, we may meet again.'
'I hope not.'
'That is too bad. A man of your talents ' Then he turned and strode off.
I left the Imperial Crypt with as much spring in my step as Lazarus. Outside, on Neuer Markt, there were still more people watching the strange little сafe-terrace that had no сafe. Then I saw the camera and the lights, and at the same time I spotted Willy Reichmann, the little red-haired production manager from Sievering Film Studios. He was speaking English to another man who was holding a megaphone. This was surely the English film that Willy had told me about: the one for which Vienna's increasingly rare ruins had been a prerequisite. The film in which Lotte Hartmann, the girl who had given me a well-deserved dose of drip, had been given a part.
I stopped to watch for a few moments, wondering if I might catch sight of K/nig's girlfriend, but there was no sign of her. I thought it unlikely that she would have left Vienna with him and passed up her first screen role.
One of the onlookers around me said, 'What on earth are they doing?' and another answered saying, 'It's supposed to be a сafe the Mozart сafe.' Laughter rippled through the crowd. 'What, here?' said another voice. 'Apparently they like the view better here,' replied a fourth. 'It's what they call poetic licence.'
The man with the megaphone asked for quiet, ordered the cameras to roll and then called for action. Two men, one of them carrying a book as if it was some kind of religious icon, shook hands and sat down at one of the tables.
Leaving the crowd to watch what happened next, I walked quickly south, towards the real Mozart сafe and the wife who was waiting there for me.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
In 1988 Ian Sayer and Douglas Hotting, who were compiling a history of the American Counter-intelligence Corps entitled America's Secret Army: The Untold Story of the Counter-intelligence Corps, were asked by a US government investigative agency to verify a file consisting of documents signed by CIC agents in Berlin towards the end of 1948 in connection with the employment of Heinrich Mnller as a CIC advisor. The file indicated that Soviet agents had concluded that Mnller had not been killed in 1945 and that he was possibly being used by Western Intelligence agencies. Sayer and Botting rejected the material as a forgery 'counterfeited by a skilful but rather confused person'. This view was corroborated by Colonel E. Browning, who was CIC Operations Chief in Frankfurt at the time the documents were supposed to have been produced.
Browning indicated that the whole idea of something as sensitive as the employment of Mnller as a CIC advisor was ludicrous. 'Regretfully,' wrote the two authors, 'we have to conclude that the fate of the chief of the Gestapo in the Third Reich remains shrouded in mystery and speculation, as it has always been, and probably always will be.'
Attempts by a leading British newspaper and an American news magazine to investigate the story in detail have so far come to nothing.
THE END
