'The gun was a Standard SS-issue Walther P38. We traced the serial-number records held at the US Documents Centre and discovered that this same pistol was one of a batch that was issued to senior officers within the Gestapo. This particular weapon was given to Heinrich Mnller. It was a long shot but we compared the bullet that killed Linden with the one that killed the man we dug up who was supposed to be Mnller, and what do you know? Jackpot. Whoever killed Linden might also have been responsible for putting a false Heinrich Mnller in the ground. Do you see, Bernie? It's the best clue that we've ever had that Gestapo Mnller is still alive. It means that only a few months ago he might have been right here in Vienna, working for the Org, of which you are now a member.
He may even still be here.
'Do you know how important that is? Think about it, please. Mnller was the architect of the Nazi terror. For ten years he controlled the most brutal secret police the world has ever known. This was a man almost as powerful as Himmler himself. Can you imagine how many people he must have tortured? How many deaths he must have ordered? How many Jews, Poles even how many Germans he must have killed? Bernie, this is your opportunity to help avenge all those dead Germans.
To see that justice is done.'
I laughed scornfully. 'Is that what you call it when you let a man hang for something he didn't do? Correct me if I'm wrong, Belinsky, but isn't that part of your plan: to let Becker take the drop?'
'Naturally I hope that it doesn't come to that. But if it's necessary, then so be it. So long as the military police have Becker, Mnller won't be spooked. And if that includes hanging him, yes. Knowing what I know about Emil Becker, I won't lose much sleep.' Belinsky watched my face carefully for some sign of approval. 'Come on, you're a cop. You appreciate how these things work. Don't tell me you've never had to nail a man for one thing because you couldn't prove another. It all evens up, you know that.'
'Sure, I've done it. But not when a man's life was involved. I've never played games with a man's life.'
'Provided you help us to find Mnller we're prepared to forget about Becker.' The pipe emitted a short smoke signal, which seemed to bespeak a growing impatience on its owner's part. 'Look, all I'm suggesting is that you put Mnller in the dock instead of Becker.'
'And if I do find Mnller, what then? He's not about to let me walk up and put the cuffs on him. How am I supposed to bring him in without getting my head blown off?'
'You can leave that to me. All you have to do is establish exactly where he is.
Telephone me and my Crowcass team will do the rest.'
'How will I recognize him?'
Belinsky reached behind his seat and brought back a cheap leather briefcase. He unzipped it and took out an envelope from which he removed a passport-sized photograph.
'That's Mnller,' he said. 'Apparently he speaks with a very pronounced Munich accent, so even if he should have radically changed his appearance, you'll certainly have no trouble recognizing his voice.' He watched me turn the photograph towards the streetlight and stare at it for a while.
'He'd be forty-seven now. Not very tall, big peasant hands. He may still even be wearing his wedding ring.'
The photograph didn't say much about the man. It wasn't a very revealing face; and yet it was a remarkable one. Mnller had a squarish skull, a high forehead, and tense, narrow lips. But it was the eyes that really got to you, even on that small photograph. Mnller's eyes were like the eyes of a snowman: two black, frozen coals.
'Here's another one,' Belinsky said. 'These are the only two photographs of him known to exist.'
The second picture was a group shot. There were five men seated round an oak table as if they had been having dinner in a comfortable restaurant. Three of them I recognized. At the head of the table was Heinrich Himmler, playing with his pencil and smiling at Arthur Nebe on his right. Arthur Nebe: my old comrade, as Belinsky would have said. On Himmler's left, and apparently hanging on every one of the ReichsFnhrer-SS's words, was Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the RSHA, assassinated by Czech terrorists in 1942.
'When was this picture taken?' I asked.
'November 1939.' Belinsky leaned across and tapped one of the two other men in the picture with the stem of his pipe. 'That's Mnller there,' he said, 'sitting beside Heydrich.'
Mnller's hand had moved in the same half-second that the camera-shutter had opened and closed: it was blurred as if covering the order paper on the table, but even so, the wedding ring was clearly visible. He was looking down, almost not listening to Himmler at all. By comparison with Heydrich, Mnller's head was small. His hair was closely cropped, shaven even until it reached the very top of the cranium, where it had been permitted to grow a little in a small, carefully tended allotment.
'Who's the man sitting opposite Mnller?'
'The one taking notes? That's Franz Josef Huber. He was chief of the Gestapo here in Vienna. You can hang on to those pictures if you want. They're only prints.'
'I haven't agreed to help you yet.'
'But you will. You have to.'
'Right now I ought to tell you to go and fuck yourself, Belinsky. You see, I'm like an old piano I don't much like being played. But I'm tired. And I've had a few. Maybe I'll be able to think a little more clearly tomorrow.' I opened the car door and got out again.
Belinsky was right: the body work of the big black Mercedes was covered in dents.
'I'll call you in the morning,' he said.
'You do that,' I said, and slammed the door shut.
He drove away like he was the devil's own coachman.
Chapter 28
I did not sleep well. Troubled by what Belinsky had said, my thoughts made my limbs restless, and after only a few hours I woke before dawn in a cold sweat and did not sleep again. If only he hadn't mentioned God, I said to myself.
I was not a Catholic until I became a prisoner in Russia. The regime in the camp was so hard that it seemed to me that there was an even chance it would kill me, and, wishing to make my peace with the back of my mind, I had sought out the only churchman among my fellow prisoners, a Polish priest. I had been brought up as a Lutheran, but religious denomination seemed like a matter of small account in that dreadful place.
Becoming a Catholic in the full expectation of death only made me more tenacious of life, and after I'd escaped and returned to Berlin I continued to attend mass and to celebrate the faith that had apparently delivered me.
My newfound Church did not have a good record in its relation to the Nazis, and had now also distanced itself from any imputation of guilt. It followed that if the Catholic Church was not guilty, nor were its members. There was, it seemed, some theological basis for a rejection of German collective guilt. Guilt, said the priests, was really something personal between a man and his God, and its attribution to one nation by another was blasphemy, for this could only be a matter of divine prerogative. After that, all that there remained to do was pray for the dead, for those who had done wrong, and for the whole dreadful and embarrassing epoch to be forgotten as quickly as possible.
There were many who remained uneasy at the way the moral dirt was swept under the carpet. But it is certain that a nation cannot feel collective guilt, that each man must encounter it personally. Only now did I realize the nature of my own guilt and perhaps it was really not much different from that of many others: it was that I had not said anything, that I had not lifted my hand against the Nazis. I also realized that I had a personal sense of grievance against Heinrich Mnller, for as chief of the Gestapo he had done more than any other man to achieve the corruption of the police force of which I had once been a proud member. From that had flowed wholesale terror.