Kestner was tall and thin and round-shouldered like someone who had spent a lot of time behind a desk. His head was almost completely hairless apart from the dark eyebrows that softened his solidly cut features. It was a face engraved with integrity and it was hard to believe that a man with a jaw as square as the Brandenburg Gate could have betrayed the police service and then me with such impunity. Kestner's was a head that belonged on a Swiss banknote, only I'd spent a large part of the rail journey from Berlin considering the idea of putting a bullet in it. Heydrich's myrmidons had done their homework well. The file he'd handed me in his car contained a copy of the anonymous letter Kestner had sent to the Jew desk denouncing me as a Mischling, as well as a sample of Kestner's own – identical – handwriting which, conveniently, he had also signed. There was even a photograph taken in March 1925 – before he'd joined the Berlin police – of Kestner wearing the uniform of a communist party cadre and aboard a KPD election bus, with a placard over his shoulder on which was printed, YOU MUST ELECT THALMANN. At the very same moment I smiled and shook Kestner's hand and talked about the old times we shared I wanted to punch his teeth in, and the only thing that seemed likely to stop me from doing it was the affection I still held for his little sister.
'How's Traudl?' I asked. 'Has she finished medical school?'
'Yes. She's a doctor now. Working for something called the
Charitable Foundation for Health and Institutional Care. Some government-funded clinic in Austria.'
'You'll have to give me the address,' I said. 'So that I can send her a postcard from Paris.'
'It's the Schloss Hartheim,' he explained. 'In Alkoven, near Linz.'
'Not too near Linz, I hope. Hitler's from Linz.'
'Same old Bernie Gunther.'
'Not quite. You're forgetting this pirate hat I'm wearing now.' I tapped the silver skull and crossbones on my grey officer's cap.
'That reminds me.' Kestner glanced at his wristwatch. 'We have an eleven o'clock appointment with Colonel Knochen at the Hotel du Louvre.'
'He's not here at the Lutetia?'
'No. Colonel Rudolph of the Abwehr is in charge here. Knochen likes to run his own show. The SD is mostly at the Hotel du Louvre on the other side of the river.'
'I wonder why they put me here.'
'Possibly to piss Rudolph off,' said Kestner. 'Since almost certainly he knows nothing about your mission. By the way, Bernie, what is your mission? The Prinz Albrechtstrasse has been rather secretive about what you're doing in Paris.'
'You remember that communist who murdered the two policemen in Berlin, in 1931? Erich Mielke?'
To his credit Kestner didn't even flinch at the mention of this name.
'Vaguely,' he said.
'Heydrich thinks he's in a French concentration camp somewhere in the south of France. My orders are to find him, get him back to Paris and then arrange his transport back to Berlin, where he's to stand trial.'
'Nothing else?'
'What else could there be?'
'Only that we could have organised that on our own, without your having to come here to Paris. You don't even speak French.'
'You forget, Paul. I've met Mielke. If he's changed his name, as seems likely, I might be able to identify him.'
'Yes, of course. I remember now. We just missed him in Hamburg, didn't we?'
'That's right.'
'Seems like a lot of effort for just one man. Are you sure there's nothing else?'
'What Heydrich wants, Heydrich gets.'
'Point made,' said Kestner. 'Well, shall we walk? It's a fine day.'
'Is it safe?'
Kestner laughed. 'From who? The French?' He laughed again. 'Let me tell you something about the French, Bernie. They know that it's in their interest to get on with us Fridolins. That's what they call us. Quite a lot of them are happy we're here. Christ, they're even more anti-Semitic than we are.' He shook his head. 'No. You've got nothing to worry about from the French, my friend.'
Unlike Kestner I didn't speak a word of French, but it was easy to find your way around Paris. There were German direction signs on every street corner. It was a pity I didn't have a similar arrangement inside my own head, it might have made it easier to decide what to do about Kestner.
Kestner's French was, to my Fridolin ears, perfect, which is to say he sounded like a Frenchman. His father was a chemist who, disgusted by the Dreyfus affair, had left Alsace to live in Berlin. In those days Berlin had been a more tolerant place than France. Paul Kestner had been just five years old when he came to live in Berlin, but for the rest of his life his mother always spoke to him in French.
'That's how I got this posting,' he said as we walked north to the Seine.
'I didn't think it was because of your love of art.'
The Hotel du Louvre on the Rue de Rivoli was older than the Lutetia but not dissimilar, with four facades, several hundred rooms and an international reputation for luxury. It was a natural choice for the Gestapo and the SD. Security was every bit as tight as at the Lutetia and we were obliged to sign in at a makeshift guardroom inside the front door. An SS orderly escorted us through the lobby and up a sweeping staircase to the public rooms where the SD had established some temporary offices. Kestner and I were ushered into a tasteful salon with a rich red carpet and a series of hand-painted murals. We sat down at a long mahogany table and waited. A few minutes passed before three SD officers entered the room – one of whom I recognised.
The last time I had seen Herbert Hagen had been in 1937 in Cairo, where he and Adolf Eichmann were attempting to make contact with Haj Amin, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. Hagen had been an SS sergeant then, and a rather incompetent one. Now he was a major and aide to Colonel Helmut Knochen, who was a lugubrious officer of about thirty – about the same age as Hagen. The third officer, also a major, was older than the other two, with thick horn-rimmed glasses and a face that was as thin and grey as the piping on his cap. His name was Karl Bomelburg. But it was Hagen who took charge of the meeting and came swiftly to the point without any reference to our former meeting. That suited me just fine.
'General Heydrich has ordered us to provide you with all available assistance in visiting the refugee camps at Le Vernet and Gurs,' he said. 'And in facilitating the arrest of a wanted communist murderer. But you will appreciate that these camps are still under the control of the French police.'
'I was led to believe that they would cooperate with our extradition request,' I said.
'That's true,' said Knochen. 'Even so, under the terms of the armistice signed on June 22nd those refugee camps are in the non-occupied zone. That means we have to pay lip service to the idea that in that part of France at least, they remain in charge of their own affairs. It's a way of avoiding hostility and resistance.'
'In other words,' said Major Bomelburg, 'we get the French to do our dirty work.'
'What else are they good for?' said Hagen.
'Oh, I don't know,' I said. 'The food at Laperouse is quite spectacular.'
'Good point, Captain,' said Bomelburg.
'We shall have to involve the Prefecture of Police in your mission,' said Knochen. 'So that the French may persuade themselves that they are preserving French institutions and the French way of life. But I tell you gentlemen that the loyalty of the French police is indispensable to us. Hagen? Who's the Franzi that the Maison has put up as liaison?' He looked my way. 'The Maison is what we call the flics in the Rue de Lutece. The Prefecture of Police. You should see the building, Captain Gunther. It's as big as the Reichstag.'
'The Marquis de Brinon, sir,' said Hagen.
'Oh yes. You know, for a republic, the French are awfully impressed by aristocratic titles. They're almost as bad as the Austrians in that respect. Hagen, see if the marquis can suggest anyone to help the captain.'
Hagen looked awkward. 'Actually, sir, we're not entirely certain that the marquis isn't married to a Jew.'
Knochen frowned. 'Do we have to worry about that sort of thing now? We've only just got here.' He shook his head. 'Besides it's not his wife who's the liaison officer, is it?'
Hagen shook his head.
