Heydrich's file, Erich Mielke was too smart to have been arrested and interned using his real name. Bomelburg knew this, of course. But there were others who had not been possessed of the same presence of mind as the German Comintern agent; and as these few men were identified they were led away to the Administration Barracks by the gendarmes.
'He's not in this barrack,' I said, finally.
'The adjutant says there's another all-German barrack in this section,' said Oltramare. 'This one is all International Brigade and it would make sense for Mielke to keep away from them, especially now that Stalin has closed his doors to them.'
The men from Barrack Thirty-Two were driven back inside and we repeated the whole exercise with the men from Barrack Thirty-Three. According to the yellow-faced Corsican – he looked like a careless tanner – these were all communists who had fled from Hitler's Germany only to find themselves interned as undesirable aliens when war was declared in September 1939. Consequently these men were in rather better shape than their comrades from the International Brigades. That wouldn't have been difficult.
Once again I walked up and down the lines of prisoners while Bomelburg and the Corsican called the roll. These faces were more defiant than the others and most of the men met my eye with unshifting hatred. Some were Jews, I thought. Others were more obviously Aryan. Once or twice I paused and stared levelly at a man, but I never identified any of the prisoners as Erich Mielke.
Not even when I recognised him.
As the Corsican finished the roll-call I walked back to Bomelburg's side, shaking my head.
'No luck?'
'No. He's not there.'
'Are you sure? Some of these fellows are a shadow of their former selves. Six months in this place and I doubt my own wife would recognise me. Have another look, Captain.'
'All right, sir.'
And while I looked at the prisoners again, I made an announcement, for the sake of impressing Bomelburg.
'Listen,' I said. 'We're looking for a man called Erich Fritz Emil Mielke. Perhaps you know him by a different name. I don't care about his politics, he's wanted for the murders of two Berlin policemen in 1931. I'm sure many of you read about it in the newspapers at the time. This man is thirty-three years old, fair-haired, medium height, brown eyes, Protestant, from Berlin. He attended the Kolnisches Gymnasium. Probably speaks Russian quite well, and a bit of Spanish. Maybe he's good with his hands. His father is a woodworker.'
All the time I was speaking I could feel Mielke looking at me, knowing I'd recognised him the way he'd recognised me and doubtless wondering why I didn't arrest him straight away and what the Hell was going on. I holstered my pistol and took off my officer's cap in the hope I might look a little less like a Nazi.
'Gentlemen, I make you this promise. If any one of you identifies Erich Mielke to me now, I will personally speak to the camp commander with a view to organising your release as soon as possible.'
It was the kind of promise that a Nazi would have made. A shifting promise that no one would have trusted. I hoped so. Because after what had happened to the prisoners from Gurs in the forest near Lourdes, the last thing I wanted to do was help the Nazis arrest any more Germans, even a German who had murdered two policemen. I couldn't do anything about the other men who were on Bomelburg's list, but I was damned if I was going to finger any more Germans for Heydrich. Not now.
Once again I met Erich Mielke's eye. He didn't look away and I suppose he guessed what I was doing. He was older than I remembered him, of course. Broader and more powerful- looking, especially across the shoulders. He wore a light beard but there was no mistaking the surly-looking mouth, the watchful ruthless eyes, or the coxcomb of unruly hair on top of his largish head. He must have thought I was a beefsteak
Nazi: brown on the outside, red on the inside. But he couldn't have been more wrong. The murders of Anlauf and Lenck had been just about the most cowardly I'd ever seen, and nothing would have pleased me more than to have snapped him for it, and for the Berlin courts to have sent him for a permanent haircut; but, much as I disliked him now, I disliked the casual, instinctive brutality of the Nazi police state even more. I almost wanted to tell him that but for the murders of eight men on a country road the day before he'd have been on his way to a date with a man wearing white gloves and a top hat.
I turned away and walked back to Bomelburg with a shrug.
'It was worth a shot,' he said.
Neither of us expected what happened next.
'I don't know an Erich Mielke,' said a voice.
The man was small and Jewish-looking with short dark curly hair and shifty brown eyes. A lawyer's face, which could have been why there was a large bruise on his cheek.
'I don't know an Erich Mielke,' he repeated now that he had our attention, 'but I would like to become a Nazi.'
Some of the other prisoners laughed, some whistled, but the man kept going.
'I was arrested by the French because I was a German communist,' he said. 'I wasn't an enemy of France then, but I am now. It's true, I really hate and despise these people worse than I used to hate the Nazis. I spend all day moving latrine bins and for the rest of my life I'm forever going to associate France with the smell of shit.'
The Corsican's eyes narrowed and he moved towards the man with his whip raised.
'No,' said Bomelburg. 'Let the fellow speak.'
'I'm glad France was defeated,' said the prisoner. 'And since I'm declaring myself to be an enemy of France I'd also like to join the German Army and become a loyal soldier of the
Fatherland and a follower of Adolf Hitler. Who knows? I know the war's over but I might just get the chance to shoot a Franzi, which would really make me very happy.'
His fellow prisoners started to jeer, but I could see that Major Bomelburg was impressed.
'So, if you don't mind, sir, when you leave this shithole, I'd like to come with you.'
Bomelburg smiled. 'Well,' he said. 'I think you'd better.'
And he did. But it said a lot about the rest of the Germans in Barrack Thirty-Three that there was no one else that followed his example. Not one.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: GERMANY, 1954
'Jesus Christ, Gunther,' exclaimed one of my American interrogators. 'Are you trying to tell us that you had that communist bastard Mielke in your power and you let him go?'
'Yes. I am.'
'What, are you crazy? That's twice you saved his bacon. Did you ever think about that? Jesus.'
'Of course I thought about it.'
'I mean, didn't you ever regret that?'
'I don't think I could have made myself clear,' I said. 'Even while I was doing it, even while I was pretending I didn't recognise him, I regretted it. Captain Anlauf s murder left three orphaned daughters. You see, what you've got to remember is that for a while back there, in the dog days of Weimar, the communists were every bit as loathsome as the Nazis. Maybe more so. After all, it was the Comintern that ordered the German communist party to treat the country's governing SPD as the main enemy, not the Nazis. Can you imagine it? In the Red Referendum of July 1931 the KPD and the Nazis marched together and voted together. That was the non-aggression pact in miniature. I always hated them for that. It was the Reds who really destroyed the Republic, not the Nazis.' I helped myself to another of the Ami's cigarettes. 'And if that wasn't enough, there's my own experience of Soviet hospitality to take into account as well. For why I hate the communists.'
'Well, we all hate the Reds,' said the man with the pipe.
'No. You hate the Reds because you've been told to hate them. But for five years they were your allies. Roosevelt and Truman shook hands with Stalin and pretended he was different from Hitler. Which he wasn't. I hate the Reds because I've learned to hate them the way a dog learns to hate the man who beats it regularly.
