BooksBarbecue
Back The One from the Other Save as PDF
Chapters (50)
  1. Praise
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright Page
  4. Dedication
  5. Epigraph
  6. ONE
  7. TWO
  8. THREE
  9. FOUR
  10. FIVE
  11. SIX
  12. SEVEN
  13. EIGHT
  14. NINE
  15. TEN
  16. ELEVEN
  17. TWELVE
  18. THIRTEEN
  19. FOURTEEN
  20. FIFTEEN
  21. SIXTEEN
  22. SEVENTEEN
  23. EIGHTEEN
  24. NINETEEN
  25. TWENTY
  26. TWENTY-ONE
  27. TWENTY-TWO
  28. TWENTY-THREE
  29. TWENTY-FOUR
  30. TWENTY-FIVE
  31. TWENTY-SIX
  32. TWENTY-SEVEN
  33. TWENTY-EIGHT
  34. TWENTY-NINE
  35. THIRTY
  36. THIRTY-ONE
  37. THIRTY-TWO
  38. THIRTY-THREE
  39. THIRTY-FOUR
  40. THIRTY-FIVE
  41. THIRTY-SIX
  42. THIRTY-SEVEN
  43. THIRTY-EIGHT
  44. THIRTY-NINE
  45. FORTY
  46. FORTY-ONE
  47. FORTY-TWO
  48. EPILOGUE
  49. AUTHOR’S NOTE
  50. Teaser chapter

I found a small office in Galeriestrasse, which ran west off Wagmullerstrasse. It seemed just what I had been looking for. My premises were opposite a small post office and above an antiquarian bookshop; and they shared a floor with a dentist and a coin dealer. I felt about as respectable as it was possible to feel in a building that still had its camouflage painting against Allied air attacks. The building had been some minor outpost of the War Office on Ludwigstrasse and, in an old cupboard, I found mildewed portraits of Hitler and Göring, an empty grenade bag, a rifle bandolier, and an M42 “razor edge” helmet that happened to be my size (sixty-eight). Outside the front door were a cabstand and a kiosk selling newspapers and tobacco. I had my name on a brass plate and a mailbox mounted on the wall on the ground floor. I was set.

I walked around central Munich leaving my new business cards with offices and people who might conceivably put some business my way. The Red Cross, the German Information Bureau on Sonnenstrasse, the Israel Cultural Institute on Herzog-Max-Strasse, the American Express Company on Brienner Strasse, and the Lost Property Office at police headquarters. I even looked up a few old comrades. There was an ex-cop called Korsch who was working as a senior reporter at Die Neue Zeitung, an American newspaper; and a former secretary of mine called Dagmarr who helped look after the city archives on Winzererstrasse. But mostly I hit the offices of Munich’s many lawyers in and around the Justice Palace. If there was anyone doing well under the American occupation it was the lawyers. The world might end one day but there will still be lawyers to process the documents.

My first Munich case was from a lawyer and, by a strange coincidence, it involved the Red Jackets at Landsberg. As it happened, so did the next case, which probably wasn’t a coincidence at all. And maybe even the one after that. Any one of them could have taken over my life, but only one of them did. And even now I find it a little hard to say that none of them were connected.