'Let's start with your joining the S S,' said the Baron.
I told him all about my service with Kripo and the RSHA, and how I had automatically become an officer in the SS. I explained that I had gone to Minsk as a member of Arthur Nebe's Action Group, but, having no stomach for the murder of women and children, I had asked for a transfer to the front and how instead I had been sent to the Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau. The Baron questioned me closely but politely, and he seemed the perfect Austrian gentleman. Except that there was also about him an air of false modesty, a surreptitious aspect to his gestures and a way of speaking that seemed to indicate something of which any true gentleman might have felt less than proud.
'Tell me about your service with the War Crimes Bureau.'
'This was between January 1942 and February 1944,' I explained. 'I had the rank of Oberleutnant conducting investigations into both Russian and German atrocities.'
'And where was this, exactly?'
'I was based in Berlin, in Blumeshof, across from the War Ministry. From time to time I was required to work in the field. Specifically in the Crimea and the Ukraine. Later on, in August 1943, the OKW moved its offices to Torgau because of the bombing.'
The Baron smiled a supercilious smile and shook his head. 'Forgive me,' he said, 'it's just that I had no idea that such an institution had existed within the Wehrmacht.'
'It was no different to what happened within the Prussian Army during the Great War,' I told him. 'There have to be some accepted humanitarian values, even in wartime.'
'I suppose there do,' sighed the Baron, but he did not sound convinced of this.
'All right. Then what happened?'
'With the escalation of the war it became necessary to send all the able-bodied men to the Russian front. I joined General Schorner's northern army in White Russia in February 1944, promoted Hauptmann. I was an Intelligence officer.'
'In the Abwehr?'
'Yes. I spoke a fair bit of Russian by then. Some Polish too. The work was mostly interpreting.'
'And you were finally captured where?'
'K/nigsberg, in East Prussia. April 1945. I was sent to the copper mines in the Urals.'
'Where exactly in the Urals, if you don't mind?'
'Outside Sverdlovsk. That's where I perfected my Russian.'
'Were you questioned by the NKVD?'
'Of course. Many times. They were very interested in anyone who had been an Intelligence officer.'
'And what did you tell them?'
'Frankly, I told them everything I knew. The war was over by that stage and so it didn't seem to matter much. Naturally I left out my previous service with the S S, and my work with the OKW. The SS were taken to a separate camp where they were either shot or persuaded to work for the Soviets in the Free Germany Committee. That seems to be how most of the German People's Police were recruited. And I dare say the Staatspolizei here in Vienna.'
'Quite so.' His tone was testy. 'Do carry on, Herr Gunther.'
'One day a group of us were told that we were to be transferred to Frankfurt an der Oder. This would be in December 1946. They said they were sending us to a rest camp there. As you can imagine we thought that was pretty funny. Well, on the transport train I overheard a couple of the guards say that we were bound for a uranium mine in Saxony. I don't suppose either of them realized I could speak Russian.'
'Can you remember the name of this place?'
'Johannesgeorgenstadt, in the Erzebirge, on the Czech border.'
'Thank you,' the Baron said crisply, 'I know where it is.'
'I jumped the train as soon as I saw a chance, not long after we crossed the German-Polish border, and then I made my way back to Berlin.'
'Were you at one of the camps for returning POWs?'
'Yes. Staaken. I wasn't there for very long, thank God. The nurses there didn't think much of us plennys. All they were interested in was American soldiers.
Fortunately the Social Welfare Office of the Municipal Council found my wife at my old address almost immediately.'
'You've been very lucky, Herr Gunther,' said the Baron. 'In several respects.
Wouldn't you say so, Helmut?'
'As I told you Baron, Herr Gunther is a most resourceful man,' said K/nig, stroking his dog absently.
'Indeed he is. But tell me, Herr Gunther, did no one debrief you about your experiences in the Soviet Union?'
'Like who, for instance?'
It was K/nig who answered. 'Members of our Organization have interrogated a great many returning plennys,' he said. 'Our people present themselves as social workers, historical researchers, that kind of thing.'
I shook my head. 'Perhaps if I had been officially released, instead of escaping '
'Yes,' said the Baron. 'That must be the reason. In which case you must count yourself as doubly fortunate, Herr Gunther. Because if you had been officially released we should now almost certainly have been obliged to take the precaution of having you shot, in order to protect the security of our group. You see, what you said about the Germans who were persuaded to work for the Free Germany Committee was absolutely right. It is these traitors who were usually released first of all. Sent to a uranium mine in Erzebirge as you were, eight weeks is as long as you could have been expected to have lived. Being shot by the Russians would have been easier. So you see we can now be confident of you, knowing that the Russians were happy for you to die.'
The Baron stood up now, the interrogation evidently over. I saw that he was taller than I had supposed. K/nig slid off his window sill and stood beside him.
I pushed myself off my chair and silently shook the Baron's outstretched hand, and then K/nig's. Then K/nig smiled and handed me one of his cigars. 'My friend,' he said, 'welcome to the Org.'
Chapter 25
During the next couple of days K/nig met me at the hat shop next to the Oriental on several occasions in order to school me in the many elaborate and secret working methods of the Org. But first I had to sign a solemn declaration agreeing, on my honour as a German officer, not to disclose anything of the Org's covert activities. The declaration also stipulated that any breach of secrecy would be severely punished, and K/nig said that I would be well-advised to conceal my new employment not only from any friends and relatives but 'even' and these were his precise words 'even from our American colleagues'. This, and one or two other remarks he made, led me to believe that the Org was in fact fully funded by American Intelligence. So when my training considerably shortened in view of my experience with the Abwehr was complete I irately demanded of Belinsky that we should talk as quickly as possible.
'What's eating you, kraut?' he said when we met at a table I had reserved for us in a quiet corner at the сafe Schwarzenberg.
'If I'm not in my plate, it's only because you've been showing me the wrong map.'
'Oh? And how's that?' He set to work with one of his clove-scented toothpicks.
'You know damned well. K/nig's part of a German intelligence organization set up by your own people, Belinsky. I know because they've just finished recruiting me. So either you put me in the picture or I go to the Stiftskaserne and explain how I now believe that Linden was murdered by an American-sponsored organization of German spies.'
Belinsky looked around for a moment and then leaned purposefully across the table, his big arms framing it as if he was planning to pick it up and drop it on my head.
'I don't think that would be a very good idea,' he said quietly.
'No? Perhaps you think you can stop me. Like the way you stopped that Russian soldier. I might just mention that as well.'
'Perhaps I will kill you, kraut,' he said. 'It shouldn't be too difficult. I have a gun with a silencer. I could probably shoot you in here and nobody would notice. That's one of the nice things about the Viennese. With
