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
“That’s not forged,” I said. “That’s a real passport. It’s the other one that’s a fake.” I sighed and shook my head. “But if I’m dead, then does it matter what I say? You’ll be killing the wrong person. But then of course that wouldn’t be the first time you’ve killed the wrong person. Vera Messmann wasn’t the war criminal Jacobs told she was. As it happens, I can prove who I say I am. Twelve years ago, in Palestine . . .”
“You bastard,” yelled the big man with the elephant ears. “You murdering bastard.” He came toward me quickly and hit me hard with something in his fist. I think the younger man might have tried to restrain him, but it didn’t work. He wasn’t the type to be restrained by anything much except perhaps a heavy machine gun. The blow when it came knocked me off the chair. I felt as if I had been hit by fifty thousand volts. My whole body was left tingling, with the exception of my head, which felt as if someone had wrapped it in a thick, damp towel so I couldn’t hear anything, or see anything. My own voice sounded muffled. Then another towel got wrapped around my head and there was just silence and darkness and nothing at all except a magic carpet that picked me up and floated me away to a place that didn’t exist. And that was a place where Bernie Gunther—the real Bernie Gunther—felt very much at home.
FORTY-ONE
FORTY-ONE
Everything was white. Excluded from the beatific vision, but purified from sin, I lay in a temporary place awaiting some sort of a decision about what to do with me. I hoped they would hurry up and decide because it was cold. Cold and wet. There was no sound, which is as it should have been. Death is not noisy. But it ought to have been warmer. Curiously, one side of my face seemed much colder than the other and, for a dreadful moment, I thought the decision about me had already been made and I was in hell. A small cloud kept visiting my head as if anxious to communicate something to me, and it was another moment or two before I realized that it was my own breath. My earthly torment was not yet over. Slowly I lifted my head from the snow and saw a man digging in the ground, just a few feet from my head. It seemed a curious thing to be doing in a forest in the middle of winter. I wondered what he was digging for.
“Why’s it me who has to dig?” he moaned. This one sounded like the only real German of the three.
“Because you’re the one who hit him, Shlomo,” said a voice. “If you hadn’t hit him we could have made him dig that grave.”