“Will they chop off my little head for it, do you think? Like that poor girl in February? Sophie Scholl, wasn’t it? I can’t imagine the Pog is going to be very pleased. Or Hitler. Or von Ribbentrop. Or Goebbels, for that matter. They’re going to put me to death for this, aren’t they?”
“Nothing is going to happen to your little head, do you hear? I’m not going to let anything like that happen. Trust me, angel. You’re going to be fine. But if you’re to keep your head on your shoulders you’re going to have to make sure you don’t lose it, first. That means you’re going to have to do exactly what I tell you. Without argument.”
She smiled. “My Teutonic knight to the rescue.” She shook her head. “Help, Defend, Heal. But I think he’s a little beyond healing, don’t you think?”
“Yes, he is.”
Then she began to cry. I sat beside her on the piano stool and put my arm around her.
“But I can still help and defend you, can’t I?”
“I’m scared,” she said.
“No need to be. Everything is going to be fine. I promise.”
“Even you can’t help me now, Bernie Gunther.”
“Yes, I can, if you’ll listen. When Goebbels told me that Dragan was in Berlin, we agreed that I should take you to a safe house. Somewhere that only he knew about, and that he would call me there, when things were safe — when we’d had time to get Dragan out of the way. That’s why I came here. To tell you. That’s where I’m going to go when we’ve finished our conversation.”
“Am I coming with you?”
“No, angel. You can’t come with me this time. What I want you to do is get in that lovely big Mercedes and drive all the way home to Switzerland. Right now. You know the road. You know how long it will take. Maybe ten or twelve hours. Only this time you’re not going to stop in Munich. You’re going to keep going until you’re safely across the border. And you’re never coming back. Never, do you hear? Not while the Nazis are still in power. You’re going to go to Zurich Polytechnic and you’re going to study mathematics, just like you’d planned. Don’t worry about the cops in Zurich. I seriously doubt they’ll reopen the lady in the lake case. And even if they do, they couldn’t find their hands in their coat pockets.”
“What about you?”
“I’m staying here, in Berlin, like I said.”
“Why don’t you come with me?”
“Because someone has to stay here in Berlin and lie to our diminutive minister of Truth. I have to call him up from his cottage and say you’re there. If I don’t, he’s liable to send someone around here. And we don’t want that. Not until tomorrow, anyway.”
“Suppose he wants to speak to me? On the telephone?”
“I’ll tell him you’re asleep. Don’t worry, since I started working for him I’m getting to be quite an accomplished liar. Besides, the Swiss aren’t about to let me back in your country. Not after the way I behaved last time.”
“No, Bernie, no.”
“You’ve got to listen to me, Dalia. Once I’ve spoken to Goebbels, I figure I can stall him until tomorrow morning. By which time, you’ll be safely home. As soon as you’re there in Küsnacht, I want you to call this number.” I handed her the business card that Goebbels had given me with the cottage’s number written on the back. “Ring the number just twice and then hang up. That way I’ll know you’re safe.” I grinned. “After that I can relax.”
“What about us?”
“Us? Look, angel, I thought I told you before. I’m a married man. Or had you forgotten? It’s time I went back to my beloved wife. She’ll be wondering where I am.”
I could see she didn’t believe that; I was having a hard job believing it myself.
“Bernie, they’ll send you to a concentration camp. Or worse.”
“I’ll be all right. I’m a survivor. Look, I’ll just tell Goebbels the truth. You shot the colonel and that you took off. I’ll tell him that I assumed he’d be just as glad as I was to see you get away with it. He won’t be pleased, it’s true. And he’ll have to recast his stupid movie. But once he’s thought about it, he’ll see that it’s best for everyone that you don’t stand trial for this. Him, most of all. The last thing the minister of Truth wants is for the truth to be told about what happened here. My guess is that he’ll want this whole affair hushed up as quickly as possible. The colonel shot himself eight times. That’s certainly been my experience with sudden death and the Nazis. This was a clear case of suicide.”
I hoped all of that was true. But I had a feeling that things were going to get a lot worse for me before they got better.
She put her arms around me. “Take me to bed,” she said. “Take me to bed one last time and tell me you love me the way I love you.”
I took hold of Dalia’s arms and pulled her up onto her feet.
“There’s no time for that. Not now. You have to leave. And you have to leave right away. Someone’s bound to miss the colonel before very long. For all I know, your letter is lying on his bedside table. Or maybe he told another officer in the Ustaše he was coming here. It won’t be long before someone turns up and they find him dead. I would take him down to the lake and dump him in the water but there are so many people out there, enjoying the sun, that I might be seen. And they’d certainly soon see him. Besides, I think one body in a lake is enough where you’re concerned.”
I moved her out of the drawing room to the bottom of the stairs. “Pack a bag,” I told her. “Do it quickly. And change that dress. There’s blood on it.”
Fifteen minutes later I was opening the garage door and Dalia was steering her own Mercedes along the drive and onto the street. I leaned in the window and kissed her briefly.
“Will I see you again?” she asked tearfully.
“Sure you will.”
“When?”
“I don’t know. I’m sorry, angel, I haven’t got a better answer for you right now. At least not one you want to hear. Look, you’d better get going. Before this car of yours starts to attract attention. With any luck when it’s seen on the road people will assume it’s just Faust flying out of Auerbach’s Cellar on a wine barrel.”
“Goodbye,” she whispered. “And thank you.”
Forty-six
When I got to the cottage near Pfaueninsel, I telephoned Goebbels and told him that everything was fine. He sounded relieved. Then I found a bottle of Korn in a cabinet and a box of cigarettes, made some coffee, and waited. Thirteen hours later the telephone rang twice. I wanted to answer it, of course, but didn’t. I knew that would only make things harder for the both of us. Then I called Goebbels again. I hadn’t heard him shout like that since his total war speech at the Sportpalast, in February. I think if I’d been with him he’d have ordered someone to shoot me.
They arrested me, of course, and took me to the police station in Babelsberg, just outside Potsdam, but I didn’t care because I knew that Dalia was safe in Switzerland. For two days they held me in a cell before they took me to the Linden Hotel. It wasn’t really a hotel. That’s just what the people of Potsdam called the place because it was on Lindenstrasse. In reality this large creamy white building with redbrick windows was a Gestapo prison. There they locked me in a cell with more locks on the door than a bank vault and left me alone, but with meals and cigarettes. I had lots to read. The walls of my cell were covered with graffiti. One stayed with me for a very long time afterward: it read “Long Live our Sacred Germany.” Now, that was something noble, to give a man hope, as opposed to the dirty little secularist tyranny that Hitler had imposed on my beautiful country.