Chapters (50)
- Praise
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
- FORTY
- FORTY-ONE
- FORTY-TWO
- EPILOGUE
- AUTHOR’S NOTE
- Teaser chapter
He nodded and then handed me a small cup of black coffee. I wrapped my hands around it gratefully and inhaled the bittersweet aroma. “Do you want the other two verses as well?” I asked him.
“No, no.” He smiled. “There’s no need. It’s just one of the things I ask people to do. Just to help make sure who I am dealing with, you understand.” He fixed the cigarette in the corner of his mouth, screwed up his eye against the smoke, and took out a notebook and a pencil. “One has to be careful, you know. It’s an elementary precaution.”
“I’m not sure what the Horst Wessel Song could tell you,” I said. “By the time Hitler came to power, the Reds probably knew the words as well as we did. Some of them were even forced to learn it in concentration camps.”
He sipped his coffee loudly, ignoring my objections. “Now, then,” he said. “A few details. Your name.”
“Eric Gruen,” I said.
“Your Nazi Party number, your SS number, your rank, your place and date of birth, please.”
“Here,” I said. “I’ve written it down for you already.” I handed him the page of notes I had made while studying Gruen’s file in the Russian Kommandatura.
“Thank you.” He glanced over the paper and nodded while he read it. “Do you have any means of identification with you?”
I handed over Eric Gruen’s passport. He studied that carefully and then slipped it and the sheet of paper into the back of his notebook.
“I’m afraid I shall have to hang on to this for now,” he said. “Now, then. You had better tell me what prompted you to come and ask for my help.”
“It was my own stupidity, really, Father,” I said, affecting rueful-ness. “My mother died, more than a week ago. The funeral was yesterday. At the Central Cemetery. I knew it was a risk coming back here to Vienna, but, well, you’ve only got one mother, haven’t you? Anyway, I thought I might be safe, if I stayed in the background. If I tried to keep a low profile. I wasn’t even sure the Allies were actually looking for me.”
“And you came under your real name?”
“Yes.” I shrugged. “After all, it’s been more than five years, and one reads things in the newspapers about the possibility of there being an amnesty for . . . for old comrades.”
“I’m afraid not,” he said. “Not yet, anyway.”