“Shut up, Max. Shut up. I swear I’m going to crack you one with this gun if I have to listen to any more of this.”
I caught Elli’s eye in her rearview mirror; what I saw didn’t worry me that much. She was shaking her head as if she didn’t believe him.
“I can see exactly what he’s up to,” she said. “He’s a rat and like any rat he’ll squeak when he’s cornered.”
“Some rats need extermination,” I said, and pressed the muzzle of the Walther up against Merten’s cheek.
“Go ahead and shoot,” said Merten. “Do it. Put a bullet in my head. That’s what you’re good at, old man. You’ve had plenty of practice, after all. Better dead than doing life in a Greek jail.”
“I’m not going to shoot you, Max. But people can lose gold teeth for this kind of thing.”
“You mean for telling the truth? Surely this nice Greek girl deserves to know just what kind of man you really are.”
“Your version hasn’t got much to do with truth, Max.”
“It’s a long time since I was scared by a fairy story,” said Elli. “Especially one told by some fat old Nazi.”
“Hey, less with the old,” said Merten. “I may be putting on the pounds but I’m more than a decade younger than your friend here. Maybe you can convince her that you were a good German, Bernie, but I know better. Have you still got that SS tattoo under your arm or did you burn it off? What did you tell her it was? An old war wound?” Merten laughed.
“Light me a cigarette will you, Bernie?” she said.
I put a cigarette in my mouth, fired it up, and guided it between her lips.
“Thanks.”
A minute later we took a bend in the road a little too quickly, which had Merten sprawled onto my lap for a moment. I pushed him away roughly.
“There might be capital punishment in Greece, Bernie. But the Greeks don’t much care for killing people. Unlike Germans. Germans like you, that is. Because this is where the story starts to become really unpleasant, Elli. I’m afraid I can’t help that.”
“I wish you would shoot him, Bernie. It’s what he deserves, not just for stealing that gold but for being such a bore. I’m tired of listening to his voice. We should shoot him and throw his body in a ditch.”
“Then Bernie’s your man, Elisabeth. Perhaps you already know something about the mass murders that took place in Russia and the Ukraine during the summer of 1941. Bernie had volunteered to join another senior policeman, his old Berlin friend Arthur Nebe, as part of a police battalion attached to what was called an SS einsatzgruppe. This is not an easy thing to translate, my dear Elisabeth. It means the group was tasked with just one special action. Can you imagine what that was? Yes. That’s right. I can see you’ve guessed it. There was only one sentence that those SS men were obliged to carry out: the sentence of death. In short, Einsatz Group B was a mobile death squad operating behind Army Group Center, and tasked with the extermination of Jews and other undesirables such as communists, Gypsies, the disabled, mental retards, hostages, and generally speaking anyone they didn’t much like, in order to terrorize the local population. They operated in and around Minsk, and were very successful. Nebe and Gunther here were good at mass murder and managed to fill enough mass graves to render that part of Ukraine Jew-free in double-quick time.”
“I didn’t murder anyone in Minsk. But you have my word, Max, that I really don’t mind killing you.”
“Why then you wouldn’t get your precious passport back. Not that it’s worth much since it’s in a false name. Ask yourself why that should be the case, Elisabeth. How it is that I’m here with a passport in my real name, and Bernie has a passport in a false name? Anyone might conclude that he has more to hide than me. It might just have something to do with the fact that between July and November 1941, Group B managed to kill almost fifty thousand men, women, and children. Fifty thousand. Try to imagine what kind of men they were who could do such a thing, Elli. I’ve often tried myself and again and again I find myself without an answer. It’s inexplicable.” Merten smiled. “What’s the matter, Bernie? Is the truth too much for you? I think it’s getting to be too much for poor Elli.
“After the horrors of Minsk, Arthur Nebe and Bernie returned to Berlin and were both decorated for a job well done. Didn’t Martin Bormann give you the Coburg Badge, Germany’s highest civilian order, for services to Hitler? That must have been a proud moment. Bernie was even a guest at Heydrich’s country house in Prague, a few weeks before his assassination. Again, quite an honor. Meanwhile Nebe and Bernie resumed their more routine duties with the Criminal Police, and even worked for Interpol, this in spite of the fact that they had just helped to perpetrate the crime of the millennium. The arrogance of it simply beggars belief, does it not?”
“The only thing that beggars belief,” she said, “is your arrogance.”
“I, on the other hand,” he persisted, “a humble army captain and no one’s idea of an entertaining Nazi houseguest, was sent here, to Greece. Please note the fact that I was never in the SS or in the SD or the Gestapo. Nor did I receive any medals or promotions. This much is easily verified. Even Bernie will admit that much, surely. It’s true I stole some gold from SS men who’d already stolen it from Salonika’s Jews. But that’s the limit of my felony. I never killed anyone. The only time I ever saw anyone get shot was when Alo Brunner killed that poor man on the train from Salonika. Meanwhile, Bernie went on to do special work for Heydrich and the
