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
“As far as I can remember,” I said, “II-H is run by two revolting bastards, Josef Meisinger and Eberhard Schiele. The chances are that they’re getting a large piece of everything this man Hennig’s extorting from you. I’d be very surprised if they weren’t. But Meisinger does have a superior he reports to. A man I know called Arthur Nebe, who’s not entirely without principles. It may be that he takes a dim view of these sordid activities. I suppose we might persuade him to get them to lay off.”
“I hope so.”
“But wait, you said they were now blackmailing you to keep quiet. If it’s not too embarrassing, maybe you’d like to explain why. I’m not entirely clear about that.”
“Actually, it’s not embarrassing at all. Otto Schmidt spent time in prison. While he was there Schmidt informed some other people in the Gestapo that he had been blackmailing me for some years and the idiots managed to confuse me with the commander in chief of the army—Blomberg’s number two, Colonel General Freiherr Werner von Fritsch. That’s Fritsch with a t, you understand. He’s an officer of the old school and very definitely not a Nazi, so perhaps they are looking for an excuse to get rid of him. In other words, it would seem they have deliberately mistaken him for me in an attempt to smear his name and force his resignation from the army. And I am now being blackmailed to keep my mouth shut regarding what I know about this.”
“By Hennig.”
“By Hennig.”
“And who’s the officer in the Gestapo who’s trying to pin this on General von Fritsch?”
“A commissar by the name of Franz Josef Huber. And a Detective Inspector Fritz Fehling.”
“But it doesn’t make any sense,” I objected. “They’re already trying to get rid of von Blomberg. Surely von Fritsch is best placed to succeed von Blomberg. Why get rid of him, too?”
“Sense? None of this makes sense. As far as I can see, dumb and unswerving loyalty to Hitler is all that matters to the Nazis. The question as it affects me is this: How far up the chain of command does this go? That is what I need to know. Does this knowledge that von Fritsch is entirely innocent extend all the way up the chain to Göring and to Hitler?”
“And if it did? What then, sir?”