Dover didn’t answer. He just kept his eyes fixed on Bogolepov, noting the slight tremble in his hands and recording the increasing bitterness in his gestures and voice.
‘My father was a Russian – my surname is Russian, of course – but I was born in Germany in 1927. My father was a refugee, too, you see. He left Russia after the Revolution and eventually he went to Germany. He was a doctor, a good doctor, but it is difficult to make a new start in a foreign country. However, he was lucky. He married my mother and her family helped him. They were very kind and good, but there was one thing wrong with them. They were Jews. That was a stupid thing to be in Germany when the Nazis came to power, Inspector, a very stupid thing to be.
‘Well, you can imagine what happened. It is a very common story. Things got worse and worse for us. I was sent away to a private school, high in the mountains, where my little friends did not spit at me and beat me up and cover me with filth. Then, in 1937, my father was warned by a grateful patient that the Gestapo were going to arrest him. There was, as you say, no time to lose. My father and my mother and my two sisters got out of the country within twelve hours. They left me behind. There was not time to get a message to me. You find it hard to believe, eh? That a family could leave their only son behind like that, a little,
half-Jewish boy of ten alone in Germany? Oh, of course, I was to join them later but, unfortunately, it was too late.’
Boris Bogolepov gave a bitter, sardonic laugh and slopped more whisky into his glass.
‘So there I was! The only people I could turn to for help were the family of my mother’ But they were dirty Jews, too. When the war broke out they were all shipped off’ like silly cows to the concentration camps, and I was shipped off as well.
‘But I was one of the lucky ones! As you see, I survived. And the big joke is that my mother and father and my two sisters – they are all dead! Isn’t it funny? They were all killed in an air raid in London in 1940 while I was safe and sound in my little concentration camp. Sometimes I wake up at night and laugh until the tears run down my face at the wonderful irony of it.
‘I spent six years in concentration camps’ I lived because I was young and strong and ruthless. I am only half a Jew, you see. I was not resigned to the extermination of my race, I did not deliver myself up passively into the hands of God! No, I made up my mind to live at any cost! And I did! Do you know what my dream was all those dreary years, Inspector, the fantasy I hugged to myself when I went to sleep? I wanted to be a Nazi! I wanted to wear that uniform, to flourish that twisted cross on my arm, to have a dagger at my waist and those wonderful jackboots on my feet! I did not hate them! I admired them, their arrogance, their power, their superb contempt for human life and suffering. I did not blame them for what they were doing to the Jews. I admired and envied them. If only I could have become one of them, I would have done twice as much!’
Bogolepov’s eyes were blazing fanatically and his voice was hoarse and excited. Dover stirred uneasily in his seat. This chap must be a nut case, all right.
Bogolepov apparently guessed his thoughts because he grinned and said: ‘Oh, do not worry, Inspector. I am not mad. Most boys go through a stage of this kind. I was lucky to be so normal. In fact, you could say I have been lucky all my life, in a way. I was a very handsome boy, and that was lucky. If I had been ugly I would surely have been dead by now. One of the camp commanders saw me and took a fancy to me. You know what I mean’ I did not understand at first, but when I did I was wonderfully happy. At last, for the first time in my life, I had some power, however small it was, on my side. This great and important man in his beautiful colonel’s uniform wanted something that only I could give him. It was a marvellous feeling. And when he was sent away, I found another “protector” and I soon learned to market my talents where they did the most good.
‘Not that my “friends” overwhelmed me with their generosity. I was not suddenly transported to a life of ease and luxury. But a little extra food here, one of the better jobs there – these are the things which make the difference between life and death in those camps. I used to try and get on the burial squad. We carried the bodies out of the gas chambers to the pits near by. Sometimes you were lucky, you found some old Jew had a gold ring or a piece of bread still clutched in his hand-the bread was the bigger treasure, of course.’
Bogolepov paused and shrugged his shoulders. ‘Well, I am probably boring you,’ he said with heavy sarcasm, ‘all this happened a long time ago, and who cares, anyhow? My cousins in America felt much the same. They got me out of Germany when the war was over and, at first, they nearly stifled
