Chapters (38)
- Cover
- Also by Philip Kerr
- 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
- AUTHOR’S NOTE
“Naturally including mine. In a few months’ time, when the war is over, and you’re dead or in a Soviet labor camp, and Irmela and I are safely in Germany, you’ll wonder why you didn’t cooperate sooner. The fact is, we could have arranged for your passage home, too. I could have used a good man to help me guard all that priceless amber. So, do I have your cooperation, or not?”
Through all that he said, even through his white smiles and his smooth laughter and total confidence that I would meekly do exactly what he said, I knew that one day, in an unimaginable tomorrow’s world to which I knew I might never belong, I would see him again and pay him back in kind for everything he had done. For a moment the threat of some nebulous future revenge tried to form itself in my mouth and I even took a breath to give these futile words air. Instead, recognizing my impotence, I said nothing and I even think I must have nodded my quiet and spineless assent. The things you do for a woman.
Hennig buttoned up his tunic and then fetched his greatcoat and his cap.
“Shall we go?”
SIXTEEN
FRENCH RIVIERA
1956
The red beam from the lighthouse tracked across the Villa Mauresque as if searching the blue night sky for an enemy bomber to target but finding only me and Somerset Maugham seated side by side, next to the almost motionless swimming pool, and alerting each of us to the possibility that one of us might bring some as yet unknown harm to the other. He remained very still, and whenever the red light crossed his creased features, turning them the color of blood, he reminded me of a sort of vampire. I had been silent for a long moment and the old Englishman was sensitive enough to see that I had been much affected by the telling of this painful story—more affected than I could have imagined. It had been more than ten years, after all, and I hadn’t even got to the good bit.
“It’s been a while since I talked about it,” I told him. “If it comes to that, I don’t think I’ve ever talked about it. Frankly, it’s not the sort of thing you bring up over a beer and a sausage.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
I tapped a fingernail against the cocktail gong. It sounded just like my heart. Or so I wanted to believe. How else was I going to finish my story? I swallowed hard and kept on going.