‘Isn’t a security man supposed to make a gift of sons to his Works?’
‘In the security field there’s an increasingly attractive range of jobs for women. For our course we’re estimating around thirty per cent female participants. Incidentally the conference of Ministers of Culture and Education is going to support us as a pilot project, and so the technical college has decided to establish a separate department for internal security. That means I can introduce myself today as the designated founding dean. I’m leaving the RCW on the first of January.’
I congratulated the right honourable dean on his office, the honour, the prestige, and the title. ‘What’s Danckelmann going to do without you?’
‘It will be difficult for him in the next few years until he retires. But I would like the department to provide consultation too, so he can buy advice from us. You’ll remember the curriculum you wanted to send me, Herr Self?’
Evidently Thomas already felt emancipated from RCW and was adapting to his new role. He invited me to join them at their table where the daughters were giggling and the mother was blinking nervously. I looked at my watch, excused myself, and dashed off to Café Scheu.
Then I embarked on round two of checking off my list. What do you give a virile man in his late fifties? A set of tiger-print underwear? Royal jelly? The erotic stories of Anaïs Nin? Finally I bought Philipp a cocktail shaker for his boat bar. Then revulsion for the Christmas din and commercialism swamped me. I was filled with immense discontent with the crowds and with myself. It would take me hours to shake it off at home. Why on earth had I launched myself into the Christmas mêlée? Why did I make the same mistake every year? Haven’t I learned anything in my life? What is the point of the whole thing?
The Opel smelled pleasantly of fir forest. When I’d fought my way through the traffic to the autobahn I heaved a sigh of relief. I shoved in a tape, fished out from way down the pile, as I’d heard the others too often on the journey to and from Locarno. But no music came.
A telephone was picked up, the dialling tone sounded, a number was dialled, and the recipient’s phone rang. He answered. It was Korten.
‘Hello, Herr Korten. Mischkey here. I’m warning you. If your people don’t leave me alone your past is going to explode around your ears. I won’t be pressured like this any longer, and I certainly won’t be beaten up again.’
‘I’d imagined you’d be more intelligent from Self’s report. First you break into our system and now you threaten blackmail. I have nothing to say.’ Actually Korten should have hung up that very second. But the second came and went, and Mischkey talked on.
‘The times are over, Herr Korten, where all it takes is an SS contact and an SS uniform to move people from here to there, to Switzerland and to the gallows.’ Mischkey hung up. I heard him take a deep gulp of air, then the click of the tape recorder. Music began. ‘And the race is on and it looks like heartache and the winner loses all.’
I turned off the player and pulled over to the hard shoulder. The tape from Mischkey’s Citroën. I had simply forgotten it.
16 Anything for one’s career?
I couldn’t sleep that night. At six o’clock I gave up and busied myself setting up and decorating my Christmas tree. I’d listened to Mischkey’s tape over and over. On Saturday I’d been in no state to think and order my thoughts.
I put the thirty empty sardine cans that I had accumulated into the sink of water. They shouldn’t still smell of fish on the Christmas tree. I looked at them, my elbows on the edge of the sink, as they sank to the bottom. The lids of some of them had been torn off as they were opened. I’d stick them back on.
Was it Korten, then, who’d made Weinstein discover the hidden documents in Tyberg’s desk and report him? I should have thought of it when Tyberg told us that only he, Dohmke, and Korten knew about the stash. No, Weinstein hadn’t come across them by accident as Tyberg supposed. They’d ordered him to find the documents in the desk. That was what Frau Hirsch had said. And perhaps Weinstein had never even seen the documents; the important thing was the statement, not the find.
When it started growing light outside I went out onto the balcony and fitted the Christmas tree to the stand. I had to saw and use the hatchet. Its top was too high. I trimmed it in such a way that the tip could be reattached to the trunk with a needle. Then I moved the tree to its place in the sitting room.
Why? Anything for one’s career? Yes. Korten couldn’t have made such a mark if Tyberg and Dohmke had still been around. Tyberg had spoken of the years following the trial as the basis for his ascendancy. And Tyberg’s liberation had been Korten’s reinsurance. It had certainly paid off. When Tyberg became general director of the RCW Korten was catapulted to dizzying heights.
The plot – with me as the dupe. Set up and executed by my friend and brother-in-law. And I’d been happy not to have to drag him into the trial. He’d used me with contemptuous calculation. I thought back to the conversation after our move to Bahnhofstrasse. I also thought of the last conversations we’d had, in the Blue Salon and on the terrace of his house. Me, the sweetheart.
My cigarettes had run out. That hadn’t happened to me in years. I pulled on my winter coat and galoshes, pocketed the St Christopher that I’d taken from Mischkey’s car and only remembered yesterday, walked to the train station, then dropped by to see Judith. It was mid-morning now. She came to the front door in a dressing gown.
‘What’s the matter with you, Gerd?’ She looked at me aghast. ‘Come on up, I’ve just put some coffee on.’
‘Do I look that bad? No, I won’t come up, I’m in the middle of decorating my tree. Wanted to bring you the St Christopher. I needn’t tell you where it’s from, I’d completely forgotten it, and I just found it again.’
She took the St Christopher and supported herself against the doorpost. She was fighting back tears.
‘Tell me something, Judith, do you remember if Peter went away for two or three days in the weeks in between the War Cemetery and his death?’
‘What?’ She hadn’t been listening, and I repeated my question. ‘Away? Yes, how do you know?’
‘Do you know where to?’
‘South, he said. To recover because it had all been too much for him. Why do you ask?’
‘I’m wondering whether he went to Tyberg pretending to be a journalist from Die Zeit.’
‘You mean looking for material to use against the RCW?’ She considered this. ‘I wouldn’t put it past him. But according to what Tyberg said about the visit, there wasn’t anything to unearth.’ Shivering, she pulled the dressing gown more tightly around her. ‘Are you sure you won’t have a coffee?’
‘You’ll be hearing from me, Judith.’ I walked home.
It all fitted together. A despairing Mischkey had attempted to use Tyberg’s grand aria about decency and resistance for his own ends against Korten. Intuitively he had recognized the dissonances better than all of us, the connection to the SS, the rescue of Tyberg, not that of Dohmke. He didn’t realize how close to the truth he was and how threatening that must have sounded to Korten. Not just sounded – was really, thanks to his dogged research.
Why hadn’t I thought of it? If it was so easy to save Tyberg, why, then, hadn’t Korten rescued both of them two days earlier while Dohmke was still alive? One was sufficient as reinsurance and Tyberg, the head of the research group, was more interesting than his co-worker Dohmke.
I removed my galoshes and clapped them against each other until all the snow had dropped off. The stairwell smelled of Sauerbraten. Yesterday I hadn’t bought anything else to eat and I could only make myself two fried eggs. The third egg I whisked over Turbo’s food. He’d been driven to distraction in recent days by the sardine odour in the apartment.