There was a lot I could have said, but the only thing that was true was the fact that I had no business being there. It wasn't just the bodies of fallen heroes that the Valkyries carried up to Valhalla, but also those of Berlin chief inspectors who criticised their senior officers in remote French forests. After I remembered that, there seemed little point in saying anything; but there was still plenty I could do.
For his face and my neck I even offered an apology to Bomelburg when the toe of my boot would have seemed more appropriate. In my own defence I should also add that the two MP40 machine pistols were now reloaded and ready for lethal business.
We left the bodies where they lay and took our places in the buckets, only this time it was Kestner and not Oltramare who sat with me and Frau Kemmerich. Kestner could see I was upset about what had happened, and after my earlier remarks about his membership of the KPD he was in the mood to press home what he now perceived to be some kind of advantage over me.
'What's the matter? Can't bear the sight of blood? And I thought you were a tough guy, Gunther.'
'Let me tell you something, Paul. Although it's none of your business. I've killed people before. In the war. After that I thought the whole world had learned a lesson, but it hasn't. If I have to kill someone again I'm going to make sure I make a good start by killing someone I want to kill. Someone who needs killing. So keep chirruping in my ear and see what happens, comrade. You're not the only man in this bucket who can put a bullet in the back of another man's head.'
He was quiet after that.
The evening turned to dusk. I kept my eyes on the trees above the road, and if I stayed silent it was because the noise inside my head was indescribable. I suppose it was the echo of those machine pistols. I would hardly have been surprised to find the ghosts of the men we had slain sitting in the buckets beside us. Silent and motionless, withdrawn into my own ego, I waited for the nightmare that was our journey to end.
Toulouse was called the rose city. Almost all the buildings in the centre of town, including our hotel, Le Grand Balcon, were pink, as if we had been looking through the chief inspector's rose-coloured spectacles. I decided to adopt this as a persona to help me achieve what I now needed to achieve. And my breathing was easier now, which also helped. So the following morning at breakfast, I greeted Major Bomelburg and the two French policemen warmly. I was even courteous to Paul Kestner.
'My apologies for yesterday,' I said generally. 'But before I left Paris the doctor at the hospital gave me something to help me carry out my duties. And he warned me that after it wore off I might behave in a peculiar way. Perhaps I shouldn't have come at all, but as you can probably imagine I was rather anxious to carry out the mission given to me by General Heydrich, at almost any cost to myself.'
Bomelburg was looking rather more thin and grey than the day before. Kestner might have spent the whole night polishing his bald head, so shiny did it seem. Oltramare said something in French to the commissioner, who put on his pince-nez and regarded me with indifference before nodding his apparent approval.
'The commissioner says you look much better,' said Oltramare. 'And I must say, I agree.'
'Yes, indeed,' said Bomelburg. 'Much better. Yesterday can't have been easy for you, Gunther. All that travelling when you were clearly not yourself. It's commendable that you wanted to come at all, under the circumstances. I shall certainly say so to Colonel Knochen when I make my report in Paris. What with the good news I just had from Commissioner Matignon, this is turning out to be a very good day. Don't you agree, Kestner?'
'Yes, sir.'
'What good news is that?' I asked, smiling with Toulousecoloured optimism.
'Why, that we've got the Jew who assassinated vom Rath,' said Bomelburg. 'Grynszpan.' He chuckled. 'Apparently he knocked on the door of the prison here in Toulouse and asked to be let in.'
Oltramare was laughing, too. He said, 'Apparently he speaks very little French, had no money and thought that we might be able to protect him against you fellows.'
'The stupid Kike,' muttered Kestner. 'I'm on my way to the prison now. With the commissioner and Monsieur Savigny. To organise Grynszpan's extradition back to Paris and then Berlin.'
'The Fuhrer wants a trial, apparently,' said Bomelburg. 'At all costs there must be a trial.'
'In Berlin?' I tried not to sound surprised.
'Why not in Berlin?' said Bomelburg.
'It's just that the murder took place in Paris,' I said. 'And it was my understanding that Grynszpan's not even a German citizen. He's a Pole, isn't he?' I smiled. 'I'm sorry, sir, but sometimes it's hard for me to stop being a cop and thinking about little things like jurisdiction.'
Bomelburg wagged his finger at me. 'You're just doing your job, old fellow. But I know this case better than anyone. Before I joined the Gestapo I was with our foreign service in Paris and I spent three months working on this case. For one thing, Poland is now a part of the Greater German Reich. As is France. And for another the murder took place in the German embassy, here in Paris. Technically, diplomatically, that was German soil. And that makes a big difference.'
'Yes, of course,' I said, meekly. 'That does make a big difference.'
Certainly it had made a big difference to Germany's Jews. Herschel Grynszpan's murder of a junior official in the Paris embassy in November 1938 had been used as an excuse by the Nazis to launch a massive pogrom at home. Until the night of November 10th, 1938 – Kristallnacht – it was almost possible to imagine that I still lived in a civilised country. The trial was certain to be the kind the Nazis liked: a show trial, with the verdict a foregone conclusion; but – if Bomelburg was being honest – at least Grynszpan wasn't about to be murdered by the roadside.
Leaving Kestner, Matignon and Savigny to go to the Prison St Michel in Toulouse, Bomelburg and I, accompanied by six SS men, set off on the sixty-five-kilometre drive south to Le Vernet. Frau Kemmerich did not come with us as it seemed her husband was after all in another French concentration camp at Moisdon-la-Riviere, in Brittany.
Le Vernet was near Pamiers and the camp was a short way south of the local railway station, which Bomelburg described as 'convenient'. There was a cemetery to the north of the camp but he neglected to mention if that was convenient too, although I was sure it would be: Le Vernet was even worse than Gurs. Surrounded by miles of barbed wire in an otherwise deserted patch of French countryside, the many huts looked like coffins laid out after some giant's battle. They were in a deplorable state, as were the two thousand men who were imprisoned there, many of them emaciated and guarded by well-fed French gendarmes. The prisoners laboured to build an inadequate road between the railway station and the cemetery. There were four roll-calls a day, each of them lasting half an hour. We arrived just before the third, explained our mission to the French policeman in charge, and he handed us politely over to the care of a vile-looking officer who smelt strongly of aniseed, and his yellow-faced Corsican sergeant. They listened as Oltramare translated the details of our mission. Monsieur Aniseed nodded and led the way into the camp.
Bomelburg and I followed, pistols in hand, as we had been warned that the men of Hut Thirty-Two, the 'Leper Barrack' were considered the most dangerous in Camp Le Vernet. Oltramare followed at a distance, also armed. And the three of us waited outside while several French gendarmes entered the pitch-black barrack and drove the occupants outside with whips and curses.
These men were in a disgraceful condition – worse than at Gurs, and even worse than Dachau. Their ankles were swollen and their bellies distended from starvation. They wore cheap- looking galoshes on their feet and the same ragged clothing they'd probably been wearing since the winter of 1937 when they had fled the advance of Franco's Nationalist army. Some of them were half-naked. They were all infested with vermin. They knew what was coming but were too beaten to sing the Internationale in defiance of our presence.
It took several minutes for the barrack to empty and the men to line up again. Just as you thought the barrack couldn't contain any more men, others came out until there were three hundred and fifty of them paraded in front of us. The judgement line from Purgatory to Hell could not have looked more abject. And with every second I was confronted with their gaunt, unshaven faces the more I wanted to shoot Monsieur Aniseed and his fat gendarmes.
While the Corsican called the roll, Bomelburg checked his clipboard looking for names that tallied; and while they did that I walked between their ranks, like the Kaiser come to hand out a few Iron Crosses to the bravest of the brave, looking to see if I could pick out a man I hadn't seen for nine years. But I never saw him there; and I never heard his name called out. Not that I put much faith in a name. From everything I'd read about him in
