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
“The Dresdner Bank, on Bismarckstrasse.”
I nodded and made a note of the bank, not that it was relevant, but most clients like to see you taking a few notes.
“I thought that was the end of it. But a few days later Schmidt—that’s his true name, Otto Schmidt—returned with another man, who turned out to be a real Gestapo officer called Harold Heinz Hennig, who worked for Department II-H, which exists, I am informed, to investigate homosexuality. They asked me for more money—to be precise, another thousand marks. And once again I paid up. They said if I refused to pay they’d make sure I was sent to a concentration camp, where I’d be lucky to last the year.”
“Cash?”
“Always. Small bills, too.”
“Hmm.”
“But this was just the start, and since then I have paid this pair of scoundrels a thousand a week, which at this present moment in time amounts to almost two hundred and fifty thousand marks. I’m afraid I could ill afford the taxi that brought me here this morning.”
I whistled. Two hundred and fifty thousand marks is as attractive a figure as any you can see outside of a life class in the Berlin School of Art.
“That’s a lot of money.”
“Yes it is.”
“Look, with all due respect, sir, this horse has bolted. I fail to see how it might help for me to help you close the stable door now.”
“For the simple reason that I am now being blackmailed by the same people—or at least one of them, Captain Hennig—in an entirely different way and for an entirely different reason. Not for money. At least not for the moment. It’s my silence that seems to be required right now. If it wasn’t so tragic it might be funny. But this is where I need your help, Gunther. I assume that the Gestapo possesses a code of conduct. That corruption is frowned upon even among Nazis. Presumably this Captain Hennig has a superior, and one imagines he would hardly welcome the news of bribery in his own department.”
“What’s this man Hennig like?”
“Young, smooth, arrogant. Clever, too. Always plainclothes. Good suits. Buys his hats at Habig. Rolex wristwatch. Drives a black Opel Kapitän, which means I’ve never been able to follow him. We always meet in public places. And never the same place twice.”
I nodded slowly. I don’t mind trouble. It’s an occupational hazard, but already this case was starting to look as if it might be more than the usual amount of trouble, which, in Nazi Germany, is always dangerous.