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
“And yet in spite of what he did, you said you didn’t want to kill him. I think under the circumstances—if I’d lost what you lost—I would have killed him.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t want to kill him. I said I wasn’t going to kill him. There’s a big difference. I’m through with all that kind of thing. It’s me I’m thinking about now, not him. My own peace of mind versus my own tawdry revenge. I have to live with myself. Even at the best of times I can be poor company.”
“But if Hebel is Harold Hennig and was once a Nazi, how is it possible that he could be working for the Communists now? For Soviet intelligence? Surely they must know about his Nazi past?”
“The KGB or the HVA doesn’t care about who you were and what you did any more than the American CIA does. What matters is how they can use you to their present advantage. After the war, the East German HVA—that’s the foreign intelligence service of the GDR—recruited lots of Nazis at the behest of the Russians. They perfected many of the Gestapo’s techniques. Almost nothing changed except the ideology. The fact is they’re still the Gestapo in all but name. And if you’re an enemy of the state who’s facing the guillotine or ten years in a labor camp, there’s nothing to distinguish between a Communist German tyranny and a Nazi one. It’s the same Fascism but with a different flag. If the shit looks and smells the same as it did before, it’s still shit.”
“I suppose so.”
“Take my word for it. I know these people.” I smiled. “I should, since they’re my people.”
“You scare me, Walter. I know that isn’t your real name but I can’t imagine you’d feel comfortable with me using that, so I will just go on calling you Walter, or Mr. Wolf. But the world you describe isn’t a world with which I am familiar. Not anymore. In nineteen seventeen it was all a bit of a lark, really—spying on the Russians. Look, what I’m saying is, I’d appreciate your help with all this. I’m an old man. And it strikes me that these people are playing a game I’m no longer qualified to play. My offer—that you should come and be my bodyguard—it still stands.”