I ducked into the car, closed the door, and wound up the window without saying a word. Almost immediately I wished I’d left the window alone; Schramma’s cigar smelled like a bonfire in a plague pit.
“You want to know how I found out who you are?”
“Go ahead and amaze me.”
“The Munich Police Praesidium came through the war pretty much unscathed. The records, too. Like I said, I knew we met sometime before Hitler. And that meant it was before Heydrich, too. Heydrich was chief of police in Munich for a while and changed the filing system. He was very efficient, as you probably know. All that cross-referencing he did still comes in handy sometimes. So it was relatively simple to find the name of a detective from the famous Alex, in Berlin, who was our guest for the night after assaulting our desk sergeant.”
“As I recall the incident, he hit me first.”
“I’m quite sure of it. I remember that sergeant. A right bastard, he was. It was 1932. Twenty-five years. How about that? My God. How time flies, eh?”
“Not at this present moment.”
“Like I said before, it doesn’t bother me what you did during the war. The Old Man says it’s all ancient history now, even in the GDR. But every so often the commies still feel obliged to make an example of someone, just so as they can distinguish their own tyranny from the fascist one that went before. Could be they want you. Could be they might have you, too. Old Nazis are about the only kind of criminals the West is disposed to send back across the border these days.”
“It’s nothing like that,” I said. “I’m not a war criminal. I didn’t kill anyone.”
“Oh, sure. Christof Ganz is just the name you write poetry under. Your nom de plume, as it were. I get that. I like to move under the radar a bit myself, sometimes. For a cop, I mean. Then there’s Interpol. I haven’t checked with them yet, but I wouldn’t mind betting they have a file on you. Of course, I can’t look at that one without putting a flag up. Once I’ve asked, they’ll want to know why I want to know and maybe they’ll try to take it a stage further. So from here on in it’s your call, Gunther. Only you’d better make sure it’s the right one, for your sake.”
“You’ve made your point, Schramma. You’ve found some leverage and you have my cooperation. But get to the part where you want to do me a favor, will you? I’m tired and I want to go home. I’ve spent all night ferrying corpses and if I stay here any longer I’m liable to search your big ugly mouth for a coin.”
He didn’t get it. Not that I cared. Mostly I’m talking for myself these days. And wit only sounds like wit when there’s someone around to appreciate it. Most of the time people like Schramma just talked too much. In Germany there was too much talk, too much opinion, too much conversation and none of it very good. Television and the wireless were just noise. To be effective, words have to be distilled as if they’ve arrived in your balloon via a retort and a cool receiver.
“Have you heard of a local politician called Max Merten? Originally from Berlin, but lives in Munich now.”
“Vaguely. When I was at the Alex there was a Max Merten who was a young district court counselor from the Ministry of Justice.”
“Must be the same Fritz. Done very nicely for himself, too. Nice house in Nymphenburg. Smart office on Kardinal-Faulhaberstrasse. He’s one of the co-founders of the All-German People’s Party—the GVP, which is closely associated with the socialist SED. The other founder is Gustav Heinemann, who used to be a prominent member of the CDU and the interior minister until he fell out with the Old Man. But money’s tight for politics right now. Funds for new parties are thin on the ground. I mean, who wants to be rid of our miracle-working Konrad Adenauer—apart from Heinemann, of course, and some oversensitive Jews?
“So a few weeks ago Max Merten hired me, privately, to check out the bona fides of a potential new Party donor—General Heinrich Heinkel, who’s offered to fund the GVP. But Merten has a not unreasonable suspicion that Heinkel is still a Nazi. And he doesn’t want the GVP taking any tainted money. Anyway it turns out that Merten was right, although not in the way he suspected. Heinkel’s ten thousand is actually coming from the GDR. You see, Merten’s business partner is a prominent German politician by the name of Walter Hallstein, who’s the Old Man’s foreign minister in all but name, and the fellow who’s been conducting our negotiations to set up this new European Economic Community. The GDR hates the idea of the EEC—and more particularly the European Defense Community, of which West Germany will be an important member—and has planned an elaborate undercover operation to discredit the GVP and Merten in the hope that some of the mud they throw will eventually stick to Professor Hallstein. Now, you might ask why an old Nazi is fronting money for the GDR. Well, Heinkel’s eldest son managed to get himself arrested in Leipzig, where he is currently languishing in a jail cell as a guarantor of his father’s cooperation. If he does exactly what he’s told, the young man will be released. That’s his deal.
“A few nights from now Heinkel is going to pay over the money in cash to Merten at the general’s house in Bogenhausen. There’s a room in Heinkel’s house that has been suitably decorated with swastikas and other evidence of the general’s continuing Nazism. While Merten is there the police will turn up to arrest Heinkel for various offenses, including selling Nazi memorabilia. And in order to save his skin Heinkel will tell
