A German Requiem Read online

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  A GERMAN REQUIEM

  Philip Kerr was born in Edinburgh in 1956 and lives in London. As a freelance journalist he has written for a number of newspapers and magazines. March Violets, his first novel featuring private eye Bernie Gunther, was published to critical acclaim in 1989. The second novel in this sequence, The Pale Criminal, and an anthology, The Penguin Book of Lies, were both published in 1990.

  PHILIP KERR

  A GERMAN

  REQUIEM

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto,

  Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell,

  Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

  Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), cnr Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany,

  Auckland 1310, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in Great Britain by Penguin Books Ltd 1991

  First published in the United States of America by Viking Penguin,

  a division of Penguin Books USA Inc. 1991

  Published in Penguin Books (U.K.) 1992

  Published in Penguin Books (U.S.A.) 1993

  This edition published 2006

  3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Copyright © Philip Kerr, 1991

  All rights reserved

  The lines quoted on p. vii are from “A German Requiem”

  by James Fenton, copyright © James Fenton.

  Published by the Salamander Press

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

  Kerr, Philip.

  A German requiem / Philip Kerr.

  p. cm.

  ISBN: 978-1-101-64016-6

  1. Gunther, Bernhard (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Private investigators—Austria—Vienna—Fiction. 3. Vienna (Austria)—History—1918—Fiction. I. Title.

  PR6061.E784G47 2006

  823’.914—dc22 2006040625

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  For Jane,

  and in memory of my father

  It is not what they built. It is what they knocked down.

  It is not the houses. It is the spaces between the houses.

  It is not the streets that exist. It is the streets that no longer exist.

  It is not your memories which haunt you.

  It is not what you have written down.

  It is what you have forgotten, what you must forget.

  What you must go on forgetting all your life.

  From ‘A German Requiem’, by James Fenton

  Table of Contents

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Part Two

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Author’s Note

  PART ONE

  BERLIN, 1947

  These days, if you are a German you spend your time in Purgatory before you die, in earthly suffering for all your country’s unpunished and unrepented sins, until the day when, with the aid of the prayers of the Powers – or three of them, anyway – Germany is finally purified.

  For now we live in fear. Mostly it is fear of the Ivans, matched only by the almost universal dread of venereal disease, which has become something of an epidemic, although both afflictions are generally held to be synonymous.

  1

  It was a cold, beautiful day, the kind you can best appreciate with a fire to stoke and a dog to scratch. I had neither, but then there wasn’t any fuel about and I never much liked dogs. But thanks to the quilt I had wrapped around my legs I was warm, and I had just started to congratulate myself on being able to work from home – the sitting-room doubled as my office – when there was a knock at what passed for the front door.

  I cursed and got off my couch.

  ‘This will take a minute,’ I shouted through the wood, ‘so don’t go away.’ I worked the key in the lock and started to pull at the big brass handle. ‘It helps if you push it from your side,’ I shouted again. I heard the scrape of shoes on the landing and then felt a pressure on the other side of the door. Finally it shuddered open.

  He was a tall man of about sixty. With his high cheekbones, thin short snout, old-fashioned side-whiskers and angry expression, he reminded me of a mean old king baboon.

  ‘I think I must have pulled something,’ he grunted, rubbing his shoulder.

  ‘I’m sorry about that,’ I said, and stood aside to let him in. ‘There’s been quite a bit of subsidence in the building. The door needs rehanging, but of course you can’t get the tools.’ I showed him into the sitting-room. ‘Still, we’re not too badly off here. We’ve had some new glass, and the roof seems to keep out the rain. Sit down.’ I pointed to the only armchair and resumed my position on the couch.

  The man put down his briefcase, took off his bowler hat and sat down with an exhausted sigh. He didn’t loosen his grey overcoat and I didn’t blame him for it.

  ‘I saw your little advertisement on a wall on the Kurfürstendamm,’ he explained.

  ‘You don’t say,’ I said, vaguely recalling the words I had used on a small square of card the previous week. Kirsten’s idea. With all the notices advertising life-pa
rtners and marriage-markets that covered the walls of Berlin’s derelict buildings, I had supposed that nobody would bother to read it. But she had been right after all.

  ‘My name is Novak,’ he said. ‘Dr Novak. I am an engineer. A process metallurgist, at a factory in Wernigerode. My work is concerned with the extraction and production of non-ferrous metals.’

  ‘Wernigerode,’ I said. ‘That’s in the Harz Mountains, isn’t it? In the Eastern Zone?’

  He nodded. ‘I came to Berlin to deliver a series of lectures at the university. This morning I received a telegram at my hotel, the Mitropa —’

  I frowned, trying to remember it.

  ‘It’s one of those bunker-hotels,’ said Novak. For a moment he seemed inclined to tell me about it, and then changed his mind. ‘The telegram was from my wife, urging me to cut short my trip and return home.’

  ‘Any particular reason?’

  He handed me the telegram. ‘It says that my mother is unwell.’

  I unfolded the paper, glanced at the typewritten message, and noted that it actually said she was dangerously ill.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear it.’

  Dr Novak shook his head.

  ‘You don’t believe her?’

  ‘I don’t believe my wife ever sent this,’ he said. ‘My mother may indeed be old, but she is in remarkably good health. Only two days ago she was chopping wood. No, I suspect that this has been cooked up by the Russians, to get me back as quickly as possible.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘There is a great shortage of scientists in the Soviet Union. I think that they intend to deport me to work in one of their factories.’

  I shrugged. ‘Then why allow you to travel to Berlin in the first place?’

  ‘That would be to grant the Soviet Military Authority a degree of efficiency which it simply does not possess. My guess is that an order for my deportation has only just arrived from Moscow, and that the SMA wishes to get me back at the earliest opportunity.’

  ‘Have you telegraphed your wife? To have this confirmed?’

  ‘Yes. She replied only that I should come at once.’

  ‘So you want to know if the Ivans have got her.’

  ‘I’ve been to the military police here in Berlin,’ he said, ‘but —’

  His deep sigh told me with what success.

  ‘No, they won’t help,’ I said. ‘You were right to come here.’

  ‘Can you help me, Herr Gunther?’

  ‘It means going into the Zone,’ I said, half to myself, as if I needed some persuasion, which I did. ‘To Potsdam. There’s someone I know I can bribe at the headquarters of the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany. It’ll cost you, and I don’t mean a couple of candy-bars.’

  He nodded solemnly.

  ‘You wouldn’t happen to have any dollars, I suppose, Dr Novak?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Then there’s also the matter of my own fee.’

  ‘What would you suggest?’

  I nodded at his briefcase. ‘What have you got?’

  ‘Just papers, I’m afraid.’

  ‘You must have something. Think. Perhaps something at your hotel.’

  He lowered his head and uttered another sigh as he tried to recall a possession that might be of some value.

  ‘Look, Herr Doktor, have you asked yourself what you will do if it turns out your wife is being held by the Russians?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said gloomily, his eyes glazing over for a moment.

  This was sufficiently articulate. Things did not look good for Frau Novak.

  ‘Wait a moment,’ he said, dipping his hand inside the breast of his coat, and coming up with a gold fountain-pen. ‘There’s this.’

  He handed me the pen.

  ‘It’s a Parker. Eighteen carat.’

  I quickly appraised its worth. ‘About fourteen hundred dollars on the black market,’ I said. ‘Yes, that’ll take care of Ivan. They love fountain-pens almost as much as they love watches.’ I raised my eyebrows suggestively.

  ‘I’m afraid I couldn’t part with my watch,’ said Novak. ‘It was a present — from my wife.’ He smiled thinly as he perceived the irony.

  I nodded sympathetically and decided to move things along before guilt got the better of him.

  ‘Now, as to my own fee. You mentioned metallurgy. You wouldn’t happen to have access to a laboratory, would you?’

  ‘But of course.’

  ‘And a smelter?’

  He nodded thoughtfully, and then more vigorously as the light dawned. ‘You want some coal, don’t you?’

  ‘Can you get some?’

  ‘How much do you want?’

  ‘Fifty kilos would be about right.’

  ‘Very well.’

  ‘Be back here in twenty-four hours,’ I told him. ‘I should have some information by then.’

  Thirty minutes later, after leaving a note for my wife, I was out of the apartment and on my way to the railway station.

  In late 1947 Berlin still resembled a colossal Acropolis of fallen masonry and ruined edifice, a vast and unequivocal megalith to the waste of war and the power of 75,000 tonnes of high explosive. Unparalleled was the destruction that had been rained on the capital of Hitler’s ambition: devastation on a Wagnerian scale with the Ring come full circle — the final illumination of that twilight of the gods.

  In many parts of the city a street map would have been of little more use than a window-cleaner’s leather. Main roads meandered like rivers around high banks of debris. Footpaths wound precipitously over shifting mountains of treacherous rubble which sometimes, in warmer weather, yielded a clue unmistakable to the nostrils that something other than household furniture was buried there.

  With compasses in short supply you needed a lot of nerve to find your way along facsimile streets on which only the fronts of shops and hotels remained standing unsteadily like some abandoned film-set; and you needed a good memory for the buildings where people still lived in damp cellars, or more precariously on the lower floors of apartment blocks from which a whole wall had been neatly removed, exposing all the rooms and life inside, like some giant doll’s house: there were few who risked the upper floors, not least because there were so few undamaged roofs and so many dangerous staircases.

  Life amidst the wreckage of Germany was frequently as unsafe as it had been in “the last days of the war: a collapsing wall here, an unexploded bomb there. It was still a bit of a lottery.

  At the railway station I bought what I hoped might just be a winning ticket.

  2

  That night, on the last train back to Berlin from Potsdam, I sat in a carriage by myself. I ought to have been more careful, only I was feeling pleased with myself for having successfully concluded the doctor’s case: but I was also tired, since this business had taken almost the whole day and a substantial part of the evening.

  Not the least part of my time had been taken up in travel. Generally this took two or three times as long as it had done before the war; and what had once been a half-hour’s journey to Potsdam now took nearer two. I was closing my eyes for a nap when the train started to slow, and then juddered to a halt.

  Several minutes passed before the carriage-door opened and a large and extremely smelly Russian soldier climbed aboard. He mumbled a greeting at me, to which I nodded politely. But almost immediately I braced myself as, swaying gently on his huge feet, he unslung his Mosin Nagant carbine and operated the bolt action. Instead of pointing it at me, he turned and fired his weapon out of the carriage window, and after a brief pause my lungs started to move again as I realized that he had been signalling to the driver.

  The Russian burped, sat down heavily as the train started to move again, swept off his lambskin cap with the back of his filthy hand and, leaning back, closed his eyes.

  I pulled a copy of the British-run Telegraf out of my coat-pocket. Keeping one eye on the Ivan, I pretended to read. Most of the news was about crime: rape and robbery in the Eastern Zone wer
e as common as the cheap vodka which, as often as not, occasioned their commission. Sometimes it seemed as if Germany was still in the bloody grip of the Thirty Years’ War.

  I knew just a handful of women who could not describe an incident in which they had been raped or molested by a Russian. And even if one makes an allowance for the fantasies of a few neurotics, there was still a staggering number of sex-related crimes. My wife knew several-girls who had been attacked only quite recently, on the eve of the thirtieth anniversary of the Russian Revolution. One of these girls, raped by no less than five Red Army soldiers “at a police station in Rangsdorff, and infected with syphilis as a result, tried to bring criminal charges, but found herself subjected to a forcible medical examination and charged with prostitution. But there were also some who said that the Ivans merely took by force that which German women were only too willing to sell to the British and the Americans.

  Complaints to the Soviet Kommendatura that you had been robbed by Red Army soldiers were equally in vain. You were likely to be informed that ‘all the German people have is a gift from the people of the Soviet Union’. This was sufficient sanction for indiscriminate robbery throughout the Zone, and you were sometimes lucky if you survived to report the matter. The depredations of the Red Army and its many deserters made travel in the Zone only slightly less dangerous than a flight on the Hindenburg. Travellers on the Berlin-Magdeburg railway had been stripped naked and thrown off the train; and the road from Berlin to Leipzig was so dangerous that vehicles often drove in convoy: the Telegraf had reported a robbery in which four boxers, on their way to a fight in Leipzig, had been held up and robbed of everything except their lives. Most notorious of all were the seventy-five robberies committed by the Blue Limousine Gang, which had operated on the Berlin–Michendorf road, and which had included among its leaders the vice-president of the Soviet-controlled Potsdam police.

  To people who were thinking of visiting the Eastern Zone, I said ‘don’t’; and then if they still wanted to go, I said ‘Don’t wear a wristwatch — the Ivans like to steal them; don’t wear anything but your oldest coat and shoes — the Ivans like quality; don’t argue or answer back — the Ivans don’t mind shooting you: if you must talk to them speak loudly of American fascists; and don’t read any newspaper except their own Taegliche Rundschau.’