of Kirsten frenching the American captain and thoughts of the harm I could bring to him to even remember the harm I had already caused a soldier of the Red Army, and I was not as careful in answering a knock at the door as I should have been.
The Russian was short and yet he stood taller than the tallest man in the Red Army, thanks to the three gold stars and light-blue braid border on his greatcoat’s silver epaulettes identifying him as a palkovnik, a colonel, of the MVD – the Soviet secret political police.
‘Herr Gunther?’ he asked politely.
I nodded sullenly, angry with myself for not having been more careful. I wondered where I had left the dead Ivan’s gun, and if I dared to make a break for it. Or would he have men waiting at the foot of the stairs for just such an eventuality?
The officer took off his cap, clicked his heels like a Prussian and head-butted the air. ‘Palkovnik Poroshin, at your service. May I come in?’ He did not wait for an answer. He wasn’t the type who was used to waiting for anything other than his own wind.
No more than about thirty years old, the colonel wore his hair long for a soldier. Pushing it clear of his pale blue eyes and back over his narrow head, he rendered the veneer of a smile as he turned to face me in my sitting-room. He was enjoying my discomfort.
‘It is Herr Bernhard Gunther, is it not? I have to be sure.’
Knowing my name like that was a bit of a surprise. And so was the handsome gold cigarette-case which he flicked open in front of me. The tan on the ends of his cadaverous fingers suggested that he didn’t bother with selling cigarettes as much as smoking them. And the MVD didn’t normally bother to share a smoke with a man they were about to arrest. So I took one and owned up to my name.
He fed a cigarette into his lantern jaw and produced a matching Dunhill to light us both.
‘And you are a – ’ he winced as the smoke billowed into his eye ‘ –
‘Private detective,’ I said, translating automatically and regretting my alacrity almost at the very same moment.
Poroshin’s eyebrows lifted on his high forehead. ‘Well, well,’ he remarked with a quiet surprise that turned quickly first to interest and then sadistic pleasure, ‘you speak Russian.’
I shrugged. ‘A little.’
‘But that is not a common word. Not for someone who only speaks a little Russian.
‘No,’ I said. But as a Soviet prisoner of war I had eaten enough of it smeared on coarse black bread to know it only too well. Did he guess that?
‘
‘Why don’t you tell me what you want, Colonel?’
‘Come now,’ he said. ‘As an Intelligence officer it is only natural for me to wonder why. You of all people must understand that kind of curiosity, yes?’ Smoke trailed from his shark’s fin of a nose as he pursed his lips in a rictus of apology.
‘It doesn’t do for Germans to be too curious,’ I said. ‘Not these days.’
He shrugged and wandered over to my desk and looked at the two watches that were lying on it. ‘Perhaps,’ he murmured thoughtfully.
I hoped that he wouldn’t presume to open the drawer where I now remembered I had put the dead Ivan’s automatic. Trying to steer him back to whatever it was he had wanted to see me about, I said: ‘Isn’t it true that all private detective and information agencies are forbidden in your zone?’
At last he came away from the desk.
‘
Poroshin tut-tutted as I started to interrupt.
‘No, please don’t say it, Herr Gunther. You were going to say that the Soviet Union can hardly be called a democracy. But if you did, the Comrade Chairman might hear you and send terrible men like me to kidnap you and your wife.
‘Of course we both know that the only people making a living in this city now are the prostitutes, the black- marketeers and the spies. There will always be prostitutes, and the black-marketeers will last only for as long as the German currency remains unreformed. That leaves spying. That’s the new profession to be in, Herr Gunther. You should forget about being a private detective when there are so many new opportunities for people like yourself.’
‘That sounds almost as if you are offering me a job, Colonel.’
He smiled wryly. ‘Not a bad idea at that. But it isn’t why I came.’ He looked behind him at the armchair. ‘May I sit down?’
‘Be my guest. I’m afraid I can’t offer you much besides coffee.’
‘Thank you, no. I find it a rather excitable drink.’
I arranged myself on the couch and waited for him to start.
‘There is a mutual friend of ours, Emil Becker, who has got himself into the devil’s kitchen, as you say.’
‘Becker?’ I thought for a moment and recalled a face from the Russian offensive of 1941; and before that, in the Reichskriminal police – the Kripo. ‘I haven’t seen him in a long time. I wouldn’t call him a friend exactly, but what’s he done? What are you holding him for?’
Poroshin shook his head. ‘You misunderstand. He isn’t in trouble with us, but with the Americans. To be precise, their Vienna military police.’
‘So if you haven’t got him, and the Americans have, he must have actually committed a crime.’
Poroshin ignored my sarcasm. ‘He has been charged with the murder of an American officer, an army captain.’
‘Well, we’ve all felt like doing that at some time.’ I shook my head at Poroshin’s questioning look. ‘No, it doesn’t matter.’
‘What matters here is that Becker did not kill this American,’ he said firmly. ‘He is innocent. Nevertheless, the Americans have a good case, and he will certainly hang if someone does not help him.’
‘I don’t see what I can do.’
‘He wishes to engage you in your capacity as a private detective, naturally. To prove him innocent. For this he will pay you generously. Win or lose, the sum of $5,000.’
I heard myself whistle. ‘That’s a lot of money.’
‘Half to be paid now, in gold. The balance payable upon your arrival in Vienna.’
‘And what’s your interest in all this, Colonel?’
He flexed his neck across the tight collar of his immaculate tunic. ‘As I said, Becker is a friend.’
‘Do you mind explaining how?’
‘He saved my life, Herr Gunther. I must do whatever I can to help him. But it would be politically difficult for me to assist him officially, you understand.’
‘How do you come to be so familiar with Becker’s wishes in this affair? I can hardly imagine that he telephones you from an American gaol.’
‘He has a lawyer, of course. It was Becker’s lawyer who asked me to try and find you; and to ask you to help your old comrade.’
‘He was never that. It’s true we once worked together. But “old comrades”, no.’
Poroshin shrugged. ‘As you wish.’
‘Five thousand dollars. Where does Becker get $5,000?’
‘He is resourceful man.’
‘That’s one word for it. What’s he doing now?’
‘He runs an import and export business, here and in Vienna.’
‘A nice enough euphemism. Black-market, I suppose.’
Poroshin nodded apologetically and offered me another cigarette from his gold case. I smoked it with slow
