A German Requiem

'It's not every day I get to see a man raised from the dead,' I said quietly.

'Better make it a large one.'

Nebe opened a large carved-wood drinks cabinet, revealing a marble interior filled with several bottles. He took out a bottle of vodka and two small glasses, which he filled to the top.

'To old comrades,' he said, raising his glass. I smiled uncertainly. 'Drink up.

It won't make me disappear again.'

I tossed the vodka back and breathed deeply as it hit my stomach. 'Death agrees with you, Arthur. You look well.'

'Thanks. I've never felt better.'

I lit a cigarette and left it on my lip for a while.

'Minsk, wasn't it?' he said. 'In 1941. The last time we saw each other?'

'That's right. You got me transferred to the War Crimes Bureau.'

'I ought to have had you put on a charge for what you asked. Even had you shot.'

'From what I hear, you were keen on shooting that summer.' Nebe let that one pass. 'So why didn't you?'

'You were a damned good policeman. That's why.'

'So were you.' I sucked hard at my cigarette. 'At least, you were before the war. What made you change, Arthur?'

Nebe savoured his drink for a moment and then finished it with one swallow.

'This is good vodka,' he remarked quietly, almost to himself. 'Bernie, don't expect me to give you an explanation. I had my orders to carry out, and so it was them or me. Kill or be killed. That's how it always was with the SS. Ten, twenty, thirty thousand after you've calculated that to save your own life you must kill others then the number makes little or no difference. That was my final solution, Bernie: the final solution to the pressing problem of my own continued survival. You were fortunate that you were never required to make that same calculation.'

'Thanks to you.'

Nebe shrugged modestly, before pointing at the papers spread before him. 'I'm rather glad that I didn't have you shot, now that I've seen this lot. Naturally this material will have to be assessed by an expert, but on the face of it you appear to have won the lottery. All the same, I'd like to hear more about your source.'

I repeated my story, after which Nebe said:

'Can he be trusted, do you think? Your Russian?'

'He never let me down before,' I said. 'Of course, he was just fixing papers for me then.'

Nebe refilled our glasses and frowned.

'Is there a problem?' I asked.

'It's just that in the ten years I've known you Bernie, I can't find anything that can persuade me that you're now a common black-marketeer.'

'That shouldn't be any more difficult than the problem I have persuading myself that you're a war-criminal, Arthur. Or for that matter, accepting that you're not dead.'

Nebe smiled. 'You have a point. But with so many opportunities presented by the vast number of displaced persons, I'm surprised you didn't return to your old trade and become a private investigator again.'

'Private investigation and the black market are not mutually exclusive,' I said.

'Good information is just like penicillin or cigarettes. It has its price. And the better, the more illicit the information, the higher that price. It's always been like that. Incidentally, my Russian will want to be paid.'

'They always do. Sometimes I think that the Ivans have more confidence in the dollar than the Americans themselves.' Nebe clasped his hands and laid both forefingers along the length of his shrewd-looking nose. Then he pointed them at me as if he had been holding a pistol. 'You've done very well, Bernie. Very well indeed. But I must confess I am still puzzled,'

'About me as a black Peter?'

'I can accept the idea of that rather more easily than I can accept the idea of you killing Traudl Braunsteiner. Murder was never in your line.'

'I didn't kill her,' I said. 'K/nig told me to do it, and I thought I could, because she was a Communist. I learned to hate them while I was in a Soviet prison-camp. Even enough to kill one. But when I thought about it, I realized I couldn't do it. Not in cold blood. Maybe I could have done it if it had been a man, but not a girl. I was going to tell him that this morning, but when he congratulated me on having done it, I decided to keep my mouth shut and take the credit. I figured there might be some money in it.'

'So somebody else killed her. How very intriguing. You've no idea who, I suppose?'

I shook my head.

'A mystery, then.'

'Just like your resurrection, Arthur. How exactly did you manage it?'

'I'm afraid that I can't take any of the credit,' he said. 'It was something the intelligence people dreamed up. In the last few months of the war they simply doctored the service records of senior SS and party personnel, to the effect that we were dead. Most of us were executed for our part in Count Stauffenberg's plot to kill the Fnhrer. Well, what were another hundred or so executions on a list that was already thousands of names long? And then some of us were listed as killed in a bombing raid, or in the battle for Berlin. Then all that remained was to make sure that these records fell into the hands of the Americans.

'So the SS transported the records to a paper mill near Munich, and the owner a good Nazi was briefed to wait until the Amis were on his doorstep before he started to destroy anything.'Nebe laughed. 'I remember reading in the newspaper how pleased with themselves the Amis were. What a coup they thought they had scored. Of course, most of what they captured was genuine enough. But for those of us who were most at risk from their ridiculous war-crimes investigations, it provided a real breathing space, and enough time to establish a new identity.

There's nothing quite like being dead for giving one a little room.' He laughed again. 'Anyway, that US Documents Centre of theirs in Berlin is still working for us.'

'How do you mean?' I asked, wondering if I was about to learn something that would throw light on why Linden had been killed. Or perhaps he had simply found out that the records had been doctored before they fell into Allied hands?

Wouldn't that have been enough to justify killing him?

'No, I've said enough for the moment.' Nebe drank some more vodka and licked his lips appreciatively. 'These are interesting times we live in, Bernie. A man can be whoever he wants to be. Take me: my new name is Nolde, Arthur Nolde, and I make wine on this estate. Resurrected, you said. Well you're not so very far away from it there. Only our Nazi dead are raised incorruptible. We're changed, my friend. It's the Russians who are wearing the black hats and trying to take over the town. Now that we're working for the Americans, we're the good boys. Dr Schneider he's the man who set the Org up with the help of their CIC he has regular meetings with them at our headquarters in Pullach. He's even been to the United States to meet their Secretary of State. Can you imagine it? A senior German officer working with the President's number two? You don't get more incorruptible than that, not these days.'

'If you don't mind,' I said, 'I find it hard to think of the Amis as saints.

When I got back from Russia my wife was getting an extra ration from an American captain. Sometimes I think they're no better than the Ivans.'

Nebe shrugged. 'You're not the only one in the Org who thinks that,' he said.

'But for my part, I never heard of the Ivans asking a lady's permission or giving her a few bars of chocolate first. They're animals.' He smiled as a thought came into his head. 'All the same, I will admit that some of those women ought to be grateful to the Russians. But for them, they might never have known what it was like.'

It was a poor joke, and in bad taste, but I laughed along with him anyway. I was still sufficiently nervous of Nebe to want to be good company for him.

'So what did you do, about your wife and this American captain?' he asked when his laughter has subsided.