first. They're animals.' He smiled as a thought came into his head. 'All the same, I will admit that some of those women ought to be grateful to the Russians. But for them, they might never have known what it was like.'

It was a poor joke, and in bad taste, but I laughed along with him anyway. I was still sufficiently nervous of Nebe to want to be good company for him.

'So what did you do, about your wife and this American captain?' he asked when his laughter has subsided.

Something made me check myself before I replied. Arthur Nebe was a clever man.

Before the war, as chief of the criminal police, he had been Germany's most outstanding policeman. It would have been too risky to give an answer which suggested that I had wanted to kill an American Army captain. Nebe saw common factors worthy of investigation where other men only saw the hand of a capricious god. I knew him too well to believe that he would have forgotten how once he had assigned Becker to a murder inquiry I was leading. Any hint of an association, no matter how accidental, between the death of one American officer affecting Becker and the death of another affecting me and I didn't doubt that Nebe would have given orders to have had me killed. One American officer was bad enough. Two would have been too much of a coincidence. So I shrugged, lit a cigarette and said: 'What can you do but make sure it's her and not him who gets the slap in the mouth? American officers don't take kindly to being socked, least of all by krauts. It's one of the small privileges of conquest that you don't have to take any shit from your defeated enemy. I can't imagine you've forgotten that, Herr GruppenFnhrer. You of all people.'

I watched his grin with an extra curiosity. It was a cunning smile, in an old fox's face, but his teeth looked real enough.

'That was very wise of you,' he said. 'It doesn't do to go around killing Americans.' Confirming my nervousness of him, he added, after a long pause: 'Do you remember Emil Becker?'

It would have been stupid to have tried to affect a show of protracted remembering. He knew me better than that.

'Of course,' I said.

'It was his girlfriend that K/nig told you to kill. One of his girlfriends anyway.'

'But K/nig said she was MVD,' I frowned.

'And so she was. So was Becker. He killed an American officer. But not before he'd tried to infiltrate the Org.'

I shook my head slowly. 'A crook, maybe,' I said, 'but I can't see Becker as one of Ivan's spies.' Nebe nodded insistently. 'Here in Vienna?' He nodded again.

'Did he know about you being alive?'

'Of course not. We used him to do a little courier work now and again. It was a mistake. Becker was a black-marketeer, like you, Bernie. Rather a successful one, as it happens. But he had delusions regarding his own worth to us. He thought he was at the centre of a very big pond. But he was nowhere near it.

Quite frankly if a meteorite had landed in the middle of it, Becker wouldn't even have noticed the fucking ripple.'

'How did you find out about him?'

'His wife told us,' Nebe said. 'When he came back from a Soviet POW camp, our people in Berlin sent someone round to his house to see if we could recruit him to the Org. Well, they missed him, and by the time they got to speak to Becker's wife he had left home and was living here in Vienna. The wife told them about Becker's association with a Russian colonel of MVD. But for one reason and another actually it was sheer bloody inefficiency it was quite a while before that information reached us here in Vienna section. And by that time he had been recruited by one of our collectors.'

'So where is he now?'

'Here in Vienna. In gaol. The Americans are putting him on trial for murder, and he will most certainly hang.'

'That must be rather convenient for you,' I said, sticking my neck out a little way. 'Rather too convenient, if you ask me.'

'Professional instinct, Bernie?'

'Better just call it a hunch. That way, if I'm wrong it won't make me look like an amateur.'

'Still trusting your guts, eh?'

'Most of all now that I've got something inside them again, Arthur. Vienna's a fat city after Berlin.'

'So you think we killed the American?'

'That would depend on who he was, and if you had a good reason. Then all you would have to do is make sure they got someone's coat for it. Someone you might want out of the way. That way you could get to hit two flies with one swat. Am I right?'

Nebe inclined his head to one side a little. 'Perhaps. But don't ever try to remind me of just how good a detective you were by doing something as stupid as proving it. It's still a very sore point with some people in this section, so it might be best if you were to nail your beak about it altogether.

'You know, if you really felt like playing detective, you might like to give us the benefit of your advice as to how we should go about finding one of our own missing persons. His name is Dr Karl Heim and he's a dentist. A couple of our people were supposed to take him to Pullach early this morning, but when they went to his house there was no sign of him. Of course he may just have gone on the local cure,' Nebe meant a tour of the bars, 'but in this city there is always the possibility that the Ivans have snatched him. There are a couple of freelance gangs that the Russians have working here. In return they get concessions to sell black-market cigarettes. As far as we've been able to find out, both these gangs report to Becker's Russian colonel. That's probably how he got most of his supplies in the first place.'

'Sure,' I said, unnerved by this latest revelation of Becker's involvement with Colonel Poroshin. 'What do you want me to do?'

'Speak to K/nig,' Nebe instructed, 'give him some advice on how he might try and find Heim. If you get time, you could even give him some help.'

'That's simple enough,' I said. 'Anything else?'

'Yes, I'd like you to come back here tomorrow morning. There's one of our people who has specialized in all matters relating to the MVD. I have a feeling that he will be especially keen to talk to you about this source of yours. Shall we say ten o'clock?'

'Ten o'clock,' I repeated.

Nebe stood up and came round the table to shake my hand. 'It's good to see an old face, Bernie, even if it does look like my conscience.'

I smiled weakly and clasped his hand. 'What's past is past,' I said.

'Exactly so,' he said, dropping a hand on to my shoulder. 'Until tomorrow then.

K/nig will drive you back to town.' Nebe opened the door and led the way down the stairs back to the front of the house. 'I'm sorry to hear about that problem with your wife. I could arrange to have her sent some PX if you wanted.'

'Don't bother,' I said quickly. The last thing I wanted was anyone from the Org turning up at my apartment in Berlin and asking Kirsten awkward questions she wouldn't know how to answer. 'She works in an American сafe and gets all the PX she needs.'

In the hallway we found K/nig playing with his dog.

'Women,' Nebe laughed. 'It was a woman who bought K/nig his dog, isn't that so, Helmut?'

'Yes, Herr General.'

Nebe bent down to tickle the dog's stomach. It rolled over and presented itself submissively to Nebe's fingers.

'And do you know why she bought him a dog?' I caught K/nig's embarrassed little crease of a smile, and I sensed that Nebe was about to crack a joke. 'To teach the man obedience.'

I laughed right along with the two of them. But after only a few days' closer acquaintance with K/nig I thought that Lotte Hartmann would as soon have taught her boyfriend to recite the Torah.

Chapter 31

Вы читаете A German Requiem (1991)
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