'Any witnesses that you were here all night?'
'The Geislers, next door.'
'Is this your book?'
'Yes.'
'Good, isn't it?'
'I wouldn't have thought it was your taste,' he said.
'Oh? Why's that?'
'I hear the Nazis want to ban it.'
'Maybe they do. But I'm not a Nazi. And neither is the Police Counsellor here.'
'All cops are Nazis in my book.'
'Yes, but this isn't it. I mean, your book.' I turned the page and removed the Ring Bahn ticket that was marking the reader's place. 'This ticket says you're lying.'
'What do you mean?'
'This ticket is for Gesundbrunnen Station, just a few minutes' walk from here. It was bought at Schonhauser Tor at eight- twenty last night, which is about ten minutes after two policemen were murdered on Bulowplatz. That's less than a hundred metres from the station at Schonhauser Tor. Which puts the owner of this book in the thick of it.'
'I'm not saying anything.'
'Herr Mielke,' said Heller, 'you're in enough trouble as it is, without putting the brakes on your mouth.'
'You won't catch him,' he said defiantly. 'Not now. If I know my Erich he's already halfway to Moscow.'
'Not nearly halfway,' I said. 'And not Moscow either, I'll bet. Not if you say so. That means it has to be Leningrad. Which in itself means he's probably travelling by boat. So the chances are he'll be heading to one of two German ports, Hamburg or Rostock. Rostock's nearer so he'll probably figure to second- guess us and head for Hamburg. Which is what? Two hundred and fifty kilometres? They might be there by now if they left before midnight. My guess is that Erich's probably on the Gras- brook or Sandtor Dock at this very moment, sneaking onto a Russian freighter, and boasting about how he shot a fascist policeman in the back. They'll probably give the little coward an Order of Lenin for bravery.'
Some of this must have touched a nerve in Mielke's changeling body. One minute his beer-swilling troll's face was in ugly repose, the next the jaw had advanced belligerently and, growling abuse, he took a swing at me. Fortunately I was half-expecting it and I was already leaning back when it connected, but it still felt like I got hit by a sandbag. Feeling sick, I sat down hard on a soft chair. For a moment I had a new way of seeing the world, but it had nothing to do with Berlin's avant-garde. Mielke senior was grinning now, his mouth a gap-toothed, moon- gnawing rictus, his big trench-mace of a fist already heading Heller's way; and when its orbit around Mielke's body was complete it crashed into the surface of Heller's skull like an asteroid, sending the police counsellor sprawling onto the floor, where he groaned and lay still.
I got to my feet again. 'I'm going to enjoy this, you ugly commie bastard.'
Mielke senior turned just in time to meet my fist coming the other way. The blow rocked the big head on his meaty shoulders like a sudden bad smell in his nostrils, and as he took a step backwards, I hit him again with a right that descended on the side of his head like a Borotra first service. That lifted his legs off the ground like a plane's undercarriage, and for a split second he actually seemed to fly through the air before landing on his knees. As he rolled onto his side I twisted one arm behind him, then the other, and managed to hold them long enough for a groggy-looking Heller to get the irons on his wrists. Then I stood up and kicked him hard because I wasn't able to kick his son and because I was wishing I hadn't saved the young man's neck. I might have kicked him again but Heller stopped me, and but for the fact that he was a counsellor and I was still feeling sick, I might have kicked him too.
'Gunther,' he yelled. 'That's enough.' He let out a gasp and leaned heavily against a wall while he tried to recover all of his wits.
I shifted my jaw; my head felt larger on one side than the other and there was something singing in my ears only it wasn't a kettle.
'With all due respect sir,' I said, 'it's not nearly enough.'
And then I kicked Mielke again before I staggered out of the apartment and onto the landing and, a minute or two later, puked over the banister.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: GERMANY, 1954
I stopped talking. My throat felt tight but not as tight as the handcuffs.
'Is that all there is?' demanded one of the two Amis.
'There's more,' I said. 'A lot more. But I can't feel my hands. And I need to use the lavatory.'
'You saw Erich Mielke again.'
'Several times. The last time was 1946, when I was a POW in Russia. You see Mielke was-'
'No, no. Let's not get ahead of ourselves. We want everything in the correct order of appearance. That's the German way, isn't it?'
'If you say so.'
'All right then. You went to his home. You had a police witness. You found the murder weapons in the drain. I take it those were the murder weapons?'
'A long-barrelled Luger and a Dreyse. 32. That was the standard police automatic back then. Yes, they were the murder weapons. Look, I really do need a rest. I can't feel my hands-'
'Yes, you said that already.'
'I'm not asking for apple pie and ice cream, just a pair of handcuffs off. That's fair, isn't it?'
'After what you just told us? About kicking Mielke's father when he was handcuffed and lying on the floor? That wasn't very fair of you, Gunther.'
'He had it ordered, on room service. You hit a cop, you get trouble. I didn't hit you, did I?'
'Not yet.'
'With these hands? I couldn't hit my own knees.' I yawned inside the hood. 'No, really, that's it. I've had enough of this. Now that I know what you want that makes it easier for me to keep my peep. Regardless of the legalities or illegalities of this situation-'
'You are in a place where there is no law. We are the law. You want to piss yourself then go ahead and make yourself comfortable. Then see what happens to you.'
'I'm beginning to understand-'
'I sure hope so, for your sake.'
'You enjoy playing Gestapo. It's a little bit of a kick for you, doing it their way, isn't it? Secretly, you probably admire them and the way they went about extracting teeth and information.'
They came close to me now, raising their voices beyond what was comfortable to hear.
'Fuck you, Gunther.'
'You hurt our feelings with that remark about the Gestapo.'
'I take it back. You're much worse than the Gestapo. They didn't pretend they were defending the free world. It's your hypocrisy that's offensive, not your brutality. You're the worst kind of fascists. The kind that think they're liberals.'
One of them started knocking at my head with the knuckle on his finger; it wasn't painful so much as annoying.
'When are you going to get it into that fucking square head of yours-'
'You're right. I still don't understand why you're doing this when I'm perfectly willing to cooperate.'
'You're not meant to understand. When are you going to understand that, asshole? We want more than your willingness to cooperate. That implies you have some choice in the matter. When you don't. It's up to us to assess your level of cooperation, not you.'
'We want to know that when you're telling us the truth there's absolutely no question it could ever be anything else. The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Which means that we'll decide when you need
