ALSO BY PHILIP KERR
THE BERNIE GUNTHER BOOKS
The Berlin Noir Trilogy
March Violets
The Pale Criminal
A German Requiem
—
The One from the Other
A Quiet Flame
If the Dead Rise Not
Field Gray
Prague Fatale
A Man Without Breath
The Lady from Zagreb
The Other Side of Silence
Prussian Blue
OTHER WORKS
A Philosophical Investigation
Dead Meat
The Grid
Esau
The Five-Year Plan
The Second Angel
The Shot
Dark Matter: The Private Life of Sir Isaac Newton
Hitler’s Peace
Prayer
FOR CHILDREN
The Children of the Lamp Series
The Akhenaten Adventure
The Blue Djinn of Babylon
The Cobra King of Kathmandu
The Day of the Djinn Warriors
The Eye of the Forest
The Five Fakirs of Faizabad
The Grave Robbers of Genghis Khan
—
One Small Step
A MARIAN WOOD BOOK
Published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons
Publishers Since 1838
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
375 Hudson Street
New York, New York 10014
Copyright © 2018 by Thynker, Ltd.
Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Kerr, Philip, author.
Title: Greeks bearing gifts : a Bernie Gunther novel / Philip Kerr.
Description: New York : G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2018. | Series: Bernie Gunther; 13 | “A Marian Wood book.”
Identifiers: LCCN 2017037137 | ISBN 9780399177064 (hardcover)
Subjects: LCSH: Gunther, Bernhard (Fictitious character)—Fiction. | World War, 1939–1945—Germany—Fiction. | Private investigators—Germany—Fiction. | Murder—Investigation—Fiction. | GSAFD: Historical fiction. | Mystery fiction.
Classification: LCC PR6061.E784 G74 2018 | DDC 823/.914—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017037137
p. cm.
Ebook ISBN: 9780698413146
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
This book is for Chris Anderson and Lisa Pickering, to whom I am very grateful.
CONTENTS
–
ALSO BY PHILIP KERR
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT
DEDICATION
EPIGRAPH
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
CHAPTER FIFTY
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
AUTHOR’S NOTE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
They have plundered the world, stripping naked the land in their hunger . . . they are driven by greed, if their enemy be rich; by ambition, if poor. . . . They ravage, they slaughter, they seize by false pretenses, and all of this they hail as the construction of empire. And when in their wake nothing remains but a desert, they call that peace.
—TACITUS, The Agricola and the Germania
PROLOGUE
–
JANUARY 1957
This would seem like the worst story ever told if it had not happened, all of it, every detail, exactly as I have described.
That’s the thing about real life: it all looks so implausible right up until the moment when it starts to happen. I have my experience as a police detective and the events of my own personal history to confirm this observation. There’s been nothing probable about my life. But I’ve a strong feeling that it’s the same for everyone. The collection of stories that make us all who we are only looks exaggerated or fictitious until we find ourselves living on its stained and dog-eared pages.
The Greeks have a word for this, of course: “mythology.” Mythology explains everything, from natural phenomena to what happens when you die and head downstairs, or when, unwisely, you steal a box of matches from Zeus. As it happens Greeks have a lot to do with this particular story. Perhaps with every story, when you stop to think about it. After all, it was a Greek called Homer who invented modern storytelling, in between losing his sight and probably not existing at all.
Like many stories this one is probably much improved by taking a drink or two. So go ahead. Be my guest. Have one on me. Certainly I like a drink but honestly, I’m not a hopeless case. Far from it. I sincerely hope that one night I will go for a drink and wake up as an amnesiac on a steamer that’s headed for nowhere I’ve ever heard of.
That’s the romantic in me, I guess. I’ve always liked to travel even when I was quite happy to stay at home. You might say that I just wanted to get away. From the authorities, most of all. Still do, if the truth be told, which it seldom is. Not in Germany. Not for me and quite a few others like me. For us the past is like the exterior wall in a prison yard: chances are, we’ll never get over it. And of course we shouldn’t be allowed to get over it, either, given who we were and everything we did.
But how is one ever to explain what happened? It was a question I used to see in the eyes of some of the American guests at the Grand Hotel in Cap Ferrat where, until recently, I was a concierge, when they realized I was German: How was it possible that your people could murder so many others? Well, it’s like this: When you walk through a big fish market you appreciate just how alien and various life can be; it’s hard to imagine how some of the fantastic, sinister, slippery-looking creatures you see laid out on the slab could even exist, and sometimes when I contemplate my fellow man, I have much the same feeling.
Myself, I’m a bit like an oyster. Years ago—in January 1933, to be exact—a piece
