‘Naturally I hope that it doesn’t come to that. But if it’s necessary, then so be it. So long as the military police have Becker, Muller won’t be spooked. And if that includes hanging him, yes. Knowing what I know about Emil Becker, I won’t lose much sleep.’ Belinsky watched my face carefully for some sign of approval. ‘Come on, you’re a cop. You appreciate how these things work. Don’t tell me you’ve never had to nail a man for one thing because you couldn’t prove another. It all evens up, you know that.’
‘Sure, I’ve done it. But not when a man’s life was involved. I’ve never played games with a man’s life.’
‘Provided you help us to find Muller we’re prepared to forget about Becker.’ The pipe emitted a short smoke signal, which seemed to bespeak a growing impatience on its owner’s part. ‘Look, all I’m suggesting is that you put Muller in the dock instead of Becker.’
‘And if I do find Muller, what then? He’s not about to let me walk up and put the cuffs on him. How am I supposed to bring him in without getting my head blown off?’
‘You can leave that to me. All you have to do is establish exactly where he is. Telephone me and my Crowcass team will do the rest.’
‘How will I recognize him?’
Belinsky reached behind his seat and brought back a cheap leather briefcase. He unzipped it and took out an envelope from which he removed a passport-sized photograph.
‘That’s Muller,’ he said. ‘Apparently he speaks with a very pronounced Munich accent, so even if he should have radically changed his appearance, you’ll certainly have no trouble recognizing his voice.’ He watched me turn the photograph towards the streetlight and stare at it for a while.
‘He’d be forty-seven now. Not very tall, big peasant hands. He may still even be wearing his wedding ring.’
The photograph didn’t say much about the man. It wasn’t a very revealing face; and yet it was a remarkable one. Muller had a squarish skull, a high forehead, and tense, narrow lips. But it was the eyes that really got to you, even on that small photograph. Muller’s eyes were like the eyes of a snowman: two black, frozen coals.
‘Here’s another one,’ Belinsky said. ‘These are the only two photographs of him known to exist.’
The second picture was a group shot. There were five men seated round an oak table as if they had been having dinner in a comfortable restaurant. Three of them I recognized. At the head of the table was Heinrich Himmler, playing with his pencil and smiling at Arthur Nebe on his right. Arthur Nebe: my old comrade, as Belinsky would have said. On Himmler’s left, and apparently hanging on every one of the ReichsFuhrer-SS’s words, was Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the RSHA, assassinated by Czech terrorists in 1942.
‘When was this picture taken?’ I asked.
‘November 1939.’ Belinsky leaned across and tapped one of the two other men in the picture with the stem of his pipe. ‘That’s Muller there,’ he said, ‘sitting beside Heydrich.’
Muller’s hand had moved in the same half-second that the camera-shutter had opened and closed: it was blurred as if covering the order paper on the table, but even so, the wedding ring was clearly visible. He was looking down, almost not listening to Himmler at all. By comparison with Heydrich, Muller’s head was small. His hair was closely cropped, shaven even until it reached the very top of the cranium, where it had been permitted to grow a little in a small, carefully tended allotment.
‘Who’s the man sitting opposite Muller?’
‘The one taking notes? That’s Franz Josef Huber. He was chief of the Gestapo here in Vienna. You can hang on to those pictures if you want. They’re only prints.’
‘I haven’t agreed to help you yet.’
‘But you will. You have to.’
‘Right now I ought to tell you to go and fuck yourself, Belinsky. You see, I’m like an old piano – I don’t much like being played. But I’m tired. And I’ve had a few. Maybe I’ll be able to think a little more clearly tomorrow.’ I opened the car door and got out again.
Belinsky was right: the body work of the big black Mercedes was covered in dents.
‘I’ll call you in the morning,’ he said.
‘You do that,’ I said, and slammed the door shut.
He drove away like he was the devil’s own coachman.
28
I did not sleep well. Troubled by what Belinsky had said, my thoughts made my limbs restless, and after only a few hours I woke before dawn in a cold sweat and did not sleep again. If only he hadn’t mentioned God, I said to myself.
I was not a Catholic until I became a prisoner in Russia. The regime in the camp was so hard that it seemed to me that there was an even chance it would kill me, and, wishing to make my peace with the back of my mind, I had sought out the only churchman among my fellow prisoners, a Polish priest. I had been brought up as a Lutheran, but religious denomination seemed like a matter of small account in that dreadful place.
Becoming a Catholic in the full expectation of death only made me more tenacious of life, and after I’d escaped and returned to Berlin I continued to attend mass and to celebrate the faith that had apparently delivered me.
My newfound Church did not have a good record in its relation to the Nazis, and had now also distanced itself from any imputation of guilt. It followed that if the Catholic Church was not guilty, nor were its members. There was, it seemed, some theological basis for a rejection of German collective guilt. Guilt, said the priests, was really something personal between a man and his God, and its attribution to one nation by another was blasphemy, for this could only be a matter of divine prerogative. After that, all that there remained to do was pray for the dead, for those who had done wrong, and for the whole dreadful and embarrassing epoch to be forgotten as quickly as possible.
There were many who remained uneasy at the way the moral dirt was swept under the carpet. But it is certain that a nation cannot feel collective guilt, that each man must encounter it personally. Only now did I
Now it seemed it was not too late to do something after all. It was just possible that, by seeking out Muller, the symbol not just of my own corruption but Becker’s too, and bringing him to justice, I might help to clear my own guilt for what had happened.
Belinsky rang early, almost as if he had already guessed my decision, and I told him that I would help him to find Gestapo Muller not for Crowcass, nor for the United States Army, but for Germany. But mostly, I told him, I would help him to get Muller for myself.
29
First thing that morning, after telephoning Konig and arranging a meeting to hand over Belinsky’s ostensibly secret material, I went to Liebl’s office in Judengasse in order that he might arrange for me to see Becker at the police prison.
‘I want to show him a photograph,’ I explained.
‘A photograph?’ Liebl sounded hopeful. ‘Is this a photograph that might become an item of evidence?’
I shrugged. ‘That depends on Becker.’
Liebl made a couple of swift telephone calls, trading on the death of Becker’s fiancee, the possibility of new evidence and the proximity of the trial, which gained us almost immediate access to the prison. It was a fine day and we made our way there by foot, with Liebl walking his umbrella like a colour sergeant in an imperial regiment
