A German Requiem

He set down his mug and stood up from behind his desk as the Tatar ushered me into his office.

'Sit down, please, Herr Gunther,' said Poroshin, pointing at a bentwood chair.

The Tatar waited to be dismissed. Poroshin lifted his mug and held it up for my inspection. 'Would you like some Ovaltine, Herr Gunther?'

'Ovaltine? No, thanks, I hate the stuff.'

'Do you?' He sounded surprised. 'I love it.'

'It's kind of early to be thinking of going to bed, isn't it?'

Poroshin smiled patiently. 'Perhaps you would prefer some vodka.' He pulled open his desk drawer and took out a bottle and a glass, which he placed on the desk in front of me.

I poured myself a large one. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the Tatar rub his thirst with the back of his paw. Poroshin saw it too. He filled another glass and laid it on the filing cabinet so that it was immediately next to the man's head.

'You have to train these Cossack bastards like dogs,' he explained. 'For them drunkenness is an almost religious ordinance. Isn't that so, Yeroshka?'

'Yes, sir,' he said blankly.

'He smashed a bar up, assaulted a waitress, punched a sergeant, and but for me he might have been shot. Still might be shot, eh, Yeroshka? The minute you touch that glass without my permission. Understand?'

'Yes, sir.'

Poroshin produced a big, heavy revolver and laid it on the desk to emphasize his point. Then he sat down again.

'I imagine you know quite a lot about discipline with your record, Herr Gunther?

Where did you say you served during the war?'

'I didn't say.'

He leaned back in his chair and swung his boots on to the desk. The vodka trembled over the edge of my glass as they thudded down on the blotter.

'No, you didn't, did you? But I imagine that with your qualifications you would have served in some Intelligence capacity.'

'What qualifications?'

'Come now, you're being too modest. Your spoken Russian, your experience with Kripo. Ah yes, Emil's lawyer told me about that. I'm told that you and he were once part of the Berlin Murder Commission. And you a Kommissar, too. That's quite senior, isn't it?'

I sipped my vodka and tried to keep calm. I told myself that I ought to have expected something like this.

'I was just an ordinary soldier, obeying orders,' I said. 'I wasn't even a Party member.'

'So few were, it would now seem. I find that really quite remarkable.' He smiled and raised a salutary index finger. 'Be as coy as you like Herr Gunther, but I shall find out about you. Mark my words. If only to satisfy my curiosity.'

'Sometimes curiosity is a bit like Yeroshka's thirst,' I said, ' best left unsatisfied. Unless it's the disinterested, intellectual kind of curiosity that belongs properly to the philosophers. Answers have a habit of disappointing.' I finished the glass and laid it on the blotter next to his boots. 'But I didn't come here with a cipher in my socks to play your afternoon's vexed question, Colonel. So how about you feed me with one of those Lucky Strikes you were smoking this morning and satisfy my curiosity at least as far as telling me one or two facts about this case?'

Poroshin leaned forward and knocked open a silver cigarette box on the desk.

'Help yourself,' he said.

I took one and lit it with a fancy silver lighter that was cast in the shape of a field gun; then I looked at it critically, as if judging its value in a pawnshop. He had irritated me and I wanted to kick back at him somehow. 'You've got some nice loot,' I said. 'This is a German field gun. Did you buy it, or was there nobody at home when you called?'

Poroshin closed his eyes, snorted a little laugh, then got up and went over to the window. He drew up the sash and unbuttoned his fly. 'That's the trouble with drinking all that Ovaltine,' he said, apparently unperturbed by my attempt to insult him. 'It goes straight through you.' When he started to pee, he glanced back across his shoulder at the Tatar who remained standing by the filing cabinet and the glass of vodka which stood on it. 'Drink it and get out, pig.'

The Tatar didn't hesitate. He emptied the glass with one jerk of his head and stepped swiftly out of the office, closing the door behind him.

'If you saw how peasants like him leave the toilets here, you would understand why I prefer to piss out of the window,' said Poroshin, buttoning himself. He closed the window and resumed his seat. The boots thudded back on to the blotter. 'My fellow Russians can make life in this sector rather trying at times. Thank God for people like Emil. He is a most amusing man to have around on occasion. And very resourceful too. There is simply nothing that he cannot get hold of. What is the word you have for these black-market types?'

'Swing Heinis.'

'Yes, swings. If one wanted entertainment, Emil would be the swing to arrange it.' He laughed fondly at the thought of him, which was more than I could do. 'I never met a man who knew so many girls. Of course they are all prostitutes and chocoladies, but that is not such a great crime these days, is it?'

'It depends on the chocolady,' I said.

'Also, Emil is most ingenious at getting things across the border the Green Frontier you call it, don't you?'

I nodded. 'Through the woods.'

'An accomplished smuggler. He's made a great deal of money. Until this happened he was living very well in Vienna. A big house, a fine car and an attractive girlfriend.'

'Have you ever made use of his services? And I don't mean his acquaintance with chocoladies.'

Poroshin confined himself to repeating that Emil could get hold of anything.

'Does that include information?'

He shrugged. 'Now and again. But whatever Emil does, he does for money. I find it hard to believe he would not have also been doing things for the Americans.

'In this case, however, he had a job from an Austrian. A man called K/nig, who was in the advertising and publicity business. The company was called Reklaue &

Werbe Zentrale, and they had offices here in Berlin and in Vienna. K/nig wanted Emil to collect layouts from the Vienna office to bring to Berlin, on a regular basis. He said that the work was too important to trust to the post or to a courier, and K/nig couldn't go himself as he was awaiting denazification. Of course Emil suspected that the parcels contained things besides advertisements, but the money was good enough for him to ask no questions, and since he came to and from Berlin on a fairly regular basis anyway, it wasn't going to cause him any extra problems. Or so he thought.

For a while Emil's deliveries went without a problem. When he was bringing cigarettes or some such contraband into Berlin he would also bring one of K/nig's parcels. He handed them over to a man called Eddy Holl and collected his money. It was as simple as that.

'Well, one night Emil was in Berlin and went to a nightclub in Berlin-Sch/nberg called the Gay Island. By accident he met this man, Eddy Holl. He was drunk and introduced him to an American army captain called Linden. Eddy described Emil to Captain Linden as their Vienna courier. The next day Eddy telephoned Emil and apologised for being drunk and suggested that it would be better for all their sakes if Emil forgot all about Captain Linden.

'Several weeks later, when Emil was back in Vienna, he got a call from this Captain Linden, who said that he would like to meet him again. So they met at some bar and the American started to ask questions about the advertising firm, Reklaue & Werbe. There wasn't much that Emil could tell him, but Linden's being there worried him. He thought that if Linden was in Vienna that there might not be any more need for his own services. It would be a shame, he thought, to see the end of such easy money. So he followed Linden around Vienna for a while.