He pointed to a seat in front of him; at the same time he consulted a gold hunter watch that was on his desk as if he had already decided for how long I was going to waste his time. He smiled a smile that wasn’t like any smile I’d seen outside a reptile house and leaned back in his chair while he waited for me to get comfortable. I didn’t, but that hardly mattered to someone as important as him. He fixed me with a look of almost comic pity and shook his head.
“You’re not much of a writer, are you, Captain Gunther?”
“The Nobel Prize Committee won’t be calling me anytime soon, if that’s what you mean. But Pearl Buck thinks I can improve.”
“Does she, now?”
“If she can win, anyone can, right?”
“Perhaps. From what General Nebe has told me, this is to be your first time on your hind legs at the lectern in front of an audience.”
“My first, and hopefully my last.” I nodded at the silver box on the desk in front of me. “Besides, I usually do all my best talking with a cigarette in my mouth.”
He flipped open the box. “Help yourself.”
I took one, latched it onto my lip, and lit myself quickly.
“Tell me, how many delegates are expected at this IKPK conference?”
I shrugged and took a puff at the nail in my mouth. Lately I’d been going for a double pull on my cigarettes before inhaling; that way I got more of a hit from the shitty tobacco when the smoke hit my lungs. But this was a good cigarette; good enough to enjoy; much too good to waste talking about something as trivial as what he had in mind.
“From what I’ve been told by General Nebe, some senior government officials will be present,” he said.
“I wouldn’t know about that, sir.”
“Don’t get me wrong, what you’ve written, it’s all fascinating stuff, I’m sure, and you’re an interesting fellow right enough, but from what’s written here, you’ve certainly a lot to learn about public speaking.”
“I’ve cheerfully avoided it until this present moment. Like the saying goes, it’s hard to press olive oil out of a stone. If it was down to me, Brutus and Cassius would have gotten away with it, and the First Crusade would never have happened. Not to mention Portia in The Merchant of Venice.”
“What about her?”
“With my speaking skills I’d never have gotten Antonio off the hook with Shylock. No, not even in Germany.”
“Then let us be grateful that you don’t work for this ministry,” said Gutterer. “Shylock and his tribe are something of a specialty in our department.”
“So I believe.”
“And yours, too.”
I tugged some more on his nail; that’s the great thing about a cigarette — it lets you off the hook sometimes; the only thing that need come out of your mouth is smoke, and they can’t arrest you for that; at least not yet. These are the freedoms that are important.
Gutterer gathered the sheets of laboriously typed paper in a neat stack and pushed them across the desk as if they were a dangerous species of bacillus. They’d damn near killed me anyway; I was a lousy typist.
“Your speech has been rewritten by me and retyped by my secretary,” he explained.
“That’s enormously kind of her,” I said. “Did you really do that for me?”
I turned in my chair and smiled warmly at the woman who had brought me to Gutterer. Positioned behind a shiny black Continental Silenta as big as a tank turret, she did her exasperated best to ignore me but a touch of color appearing on her cheek told me that she was losing the battle.
“You didn’t have to.”
“It’s her job,” said Gutterer. “And I told her to do it.”
“Even so. Thanks a lot, Miss—?”
“Ballack.”
“Miss Ballack. Right.”
“If we could get on, please,” said Gutterer. “Here’s your original back, so you can compare the two versions and see where I’ve improved or censored what you wrote, Captain. There were several places where you allowed yourself to become a little sentimental about how things were in the old Weimar Republic. Not to say flippant.” He frowned. “Did Charlie Chaplin really visit the Police Praesidium on Alexanderplatz?”
“Yes. Yes he did. March 1931. I remember it well.”
“But why?”
“You’d have to ask him that. I think he may even have been doing what the Americans call ‘research.’ After all, the Murder Commission used to be famous. As famous as Scotland Yard.”
“Anyway, you can’t mention him.”
“May I ask why?” But I knew very well why not: Chaplin had just made a film called The Great Dictator, playing an Adolf Hitler lookalike who was named after our own minister of culture, Hinkel, whose high life at the Hotel Bogota was the subject of intense gossip.
“Because you can’t mention him without mentioning your old boss, the former head of Kripo. The Jew, Bernard Weiss. They had dinner together, did they not?”
“Ah yes. I’m afraid that slipped my mind. His being a Jew.”
Gutterer looked pained for a moment. “You know, it puzzled me. This country had twenty different governments in fourteen years. People lost respect for all the normal standards of public decency. There was an inflation that destroyed our currency. We were in very real danger from Communism. And yet you almost seem to imply that things were better then. I don’t say that you say it; merely that you seem to imply it.”
“As you said yourself, Herr State Secretary, I was being sentimental. In the early years of the Weimar Republic my wife was still alive. I expect that would help to explain it, if not to excuse it.”
“Yes, that would explain it. Anyway, we can’t have you even suggesting as much to the likes of Himmler and Müller. You’d soon find yourself in trouble.”
“I’m relying on you to save me from the Gestapo, sir. And I’m sure your version will be a great improvement on mine, Herr State Secretary.”
“Yes. It is. And in case you are in any doubt about that, let me remind you that I’ve spoken at a great many Party rallies. Indeed Adolf Hitler himself has told me that, after Dr. Goebbels, he considers me to be the most rhetorically gifted man in Germany.”
I let out a small whistle that managed to sound as if I was lost for words and impertinent at the same time, which is a specialty of mine. “Impressive. And I’m absolutely certain the leader couldn’t be wrong — not about that kind of thing, anyway. I’ll bet you treasure a compliment like that almost as much as you do all of those medals put together. I would if I were you.”
He nodded and tried to look through the veneer of a smile that was on my face as if searching for some sign that I was absolutely sincere. He was wasting his time. Hitler might have held Gutterer to be one of the most rhetorically gifted men in Germany but I was a grand master at faking sincerity. After all, I’d been doing it since 1933.
“I expect you’d like a few tips on public speaking,” he said without a trace of embarrassment.
“Now you come to mention it, yes, I would. If you feel like sharing any.”
“Give up now, before you make a complete fool of yourself.” Gutterer let out a loud guffaw that they could have smelled back at the Alex.
I smiled back, patiently. “I don’t think General Nebe would be too happy with me if I told him I couldn’t do this speech, sir. This conference is very important to the general. And to Reichsführer Himmler, of course. I should hate to disappoint him most of all.”
“Yes, I can see that.”
It wasn’t much of a joke, which was probably why he didn’t laugh very much. But at the mention of Himmler’s name Gutterer started to sound just a little more cooperative.