'I don't care about them,' she said. 'All I care about is having my Ricky returned safely to me.'
'God willing, yes,' I said, pocketing the missing man's life history.
As soon as Moeller had written a receipt we left the pastor and the old lady alone and walked back to the car.
'Well?' asked Vigee.
I nodded. 'I got everything.' I brandished the old lady's envelope. 'Everything. Kettenacher's double couldn't get past this lot. That's the great thing about Nazi documentation. For one thing there was so bloody much of it. And for another, it's virtually impossible to contradict.'
'Let's hope it's not the real one,' said Vigee. 'If he was blind, then perhaps he couldn't see his mother. And perhaps her eyes are not so good and she couldn't see him.' He looked through the documents. 'Let us hope you're right about this. I don't like disappointments.'
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE: GERMANY, 1954
The following morning I remained at the pension in Gottingen while Vigee and some of the others went to arrest the man posing as Kettenacher. I asked if I might be allowed to go to church but Grottsch said that Vigee had given orders that we should remain indoors and await his return. He said, 'I hope it's him so that we can go back to Hannover. I really don't like Gottingen any more.'
'Why? It's a nice enough little town.'
'Too many memories,' said Grottsch. 'I went to university here. My wife, too.'
'I didn't know you were married.'
'She was killed in an air raid,' he said. 'October 1944.'
'Sorry.'
'And you? Were you married before?'
'Yes. She died, too. But much later on. In 1949. We had a small hotel, in Dachau.'
He nodded. 'Dachau is very lovely,' said Grottsch. 'Well, it was, before the war.'
For a moment we shared a silent memory of a Germany that was gone and, probably, would never be again. Not for us anyway. And certainly not for our poor wives. Conversations in Germany were often like this: people would just stop in the middle of a sentence and remember a place that was gone or someone who was dead. There were so many dead that sometimes you could actually feel the grief on the streets, even in 1954. The feeling of sadness that afflicted the country was almost as bad as it had been during the Great Depression.
We heard a car draw up outside the pension and Grottsch went to see if they had our man. A few minutes later he came back looking worried.
'Well,' he said. 'They've got someone. Yes, they've got someone, all right. But if it is Edgard de Boudel then he speaks German better than any Franzi I ever met.'
'Of course he would,' I said. 'He was fluent even when I knew him. His German was better than mine.'
Grottsch shrugged. 'Anyway, he insists he's Kettenacher. Vigee's confronting him with the real Kettenacher's documents now. Did you see Kettenacher's Party ID? The man had Donation stamps going back to 1934. And did you see those duelling scars on his cheek in the photographs?'
I nodded. 'It's true. He was everyone's idea of what a Nazi should look like. Especially now that he's dead.'
'Why do I get the feeling that you weren't a Party member yourself?'
'Does it really matter now? If I was or I wasn't?' I shook my head. 'As far as our new friends are concerned – the French, the Amis, the Tommies – we were all fucking Nazis. So it doesn't matter who was and who wasn't. They look at all those old Leni Riefenstahl movies and who can blame them?'
'There was never a moment, when you believed in Hitler, like the rest of us?'
'Oh yes. There was. For about a month in the summer of 1940. After we licked the French in six weeks. I believed in him then. Who didn't?'
'Yes. That was the best time for me, too.'
After a while we heard raised voices, and a few minutes later Vigee came into the room. He looked cross and out of breath and there was blood on the back of one hand as if he'd hit someone.
'He's not Richard Kettenacher,' he said. 'That much is certain. But he swears he's not Edgard de Boudel. So it's up to you now, Gunther.'
I shrugged. 'All right.'
I followed the Frenchman down to the wine cellar where Wenger and Moeller were guarding our prisoner. The photographs the Amis had shown me had been black and white, of course, and blown up after being shot from a distance so that they were a little blurred and grainy. Doubtless the real de Boudel would have gone to great lengths to disguise himself. He would have lost some weight, dyed his hair, grown a moustache perhaps. When I'd been a uniformed policeman in the Twenties I'd arrested many suspects on the basis of a photograph or a police description, but this was the first time I'd been obliged to do it in order to save my own neck.
The man was sitting in a chair. He was wearing handcuffs and his cheeks were red as if he'd been struck several times. He looked about sixty but he was probably younger. In fact I was certain of it. As soon as he saw me the man smiled.
'Bernie Gunther,' he said. 'I never thought I'd be pleased to see you again. Tell this French idiot I'm not the man he's looking for. This Edgar Boudel he keeps asking me about.' He spat on the floor.
'Why don't you tell him yourself?' I said. 'Tell him your real name and then perhaps he'll believe you.'
The man frowned and said nothing.
'Do you recognise this man?' Vigee asked me.
'Yes, I recognise him.'
'And is it him? Is it de Boudel?'
'Who is this Boudel fellow anyway?' said the prisoner. 'And what's he supposed to have done?'
I nodded. 'Yes, that's a good idea,' I told the prisoner. 'Find out what this wanted man's done and if it turns out be rather less heinous than what you did yourself, then put your hands up for it. Why not? I can see how you could think that might work.'
'I don't know what you're talking about, Gunther. I've spent the last nine years in a Russian POW camp. Whatever it is I'm supposed to have done I reckon I've paid for it, several times over.'
'As if I care.'
'I demand to know this man's name,' said Vigee.
'How about it? I told the prisoner. 'We both know you're not Richard Kettenacher. I suppose you stole his pay book and just swapped the photograph on the inside cover – stuck it on with some egg white. Russians didn't usually pay too much attention to the corner stamps. You figured a new name and a different service would keep the dogs off your trail, because after Treblinka you knew that someone would be coming to look for you. You and Irmfried Eberl, wasn't it?'
'I don't know what you're talking about.'
'Neither do I,' complained Vigee. 'And I'm beginning to get irritated.'
'Permit me to introduce you, Emile. This is Major Paul Kestner. Formerly of the SS and deputy commander of the Treblinka death camp in Poland.'
'Rubbish,' said Kestner. 'Rubbish. You don't know what you're talking about.'
'At least he was until Himmler found out about what he was doing there. Even he was horrified by what he and the commandant had been up to. Theft, murder, torture. Isn't that right, Paul? So horrified that you and Eberl were kicked out of the SS, which is how you found yourself in the Wehrmacht, defending Berlin, trying to redeem yourself for your earlier crimes.'
'Nonsense,' said Kestner.
'You may not have Edgard de Boudel in custody, Emile, but you do have one of the worst war criminals in Europe. A man who is responsible for the deaths of at least three quarters of a million Jews and gypsies.'
'Rubbish. Rubbish. And don't think I'm unaware of what this is really about, Gunther. It's about Paris, isn't it? June 1940.'
