–
Max Merten threw his cigarette out the car window and then wound it up again. He was smiling like a chess grand master who was about to make a winning move; like his witless opponent, I still couldn’t see what this might be. But instead of saying anything, he stayed silent and closed his eyes for a long time and I supposed he must be asleep; when he opened them again we were only a few miles southwest of Athens.
“Almost there,” said Elli.
“Thanks for driving all this way,” I said. “I couldn’t have done it without you.”
“Sweet of you,” she said. “I’m glad to be of help.”
“Well, isn’t that nice?” said Merten. “You know there are some men who find other people’s romances touching. Not me. When I see this kind of thing I wonder if the two parties involved really know the truth about each other. Speaking as a lawyer, I can tell you that truth has been the ruin of many a good romance. No relationship and certainly no marriage can take too much of that. Mine couldn’t.”
“Whatever you think you know,” said Elli, “I don’t want to hear it.”
“Let me tell you something about this sweet man seated behind you, Elisabeth,” he said softly.
“Don’t bother treating me like a jury. I’m a lawyer myself and I know all a lawyer’s tricks.”
“Oh, it’s no bother.”
“As far as I can see, Mr. Merten, you have only one advantage over me and it’s that you never had to endure a car journey with Max Merten.”
“I know the real Bernie Gunther. That’s one advantage.”
“The number of times I’ve heard people say they know the real me and what they actually knew was just the me they imagined I was. The longer I live the more I realize that no one knows anyone. So do yourself a favor and save your very unpleasant breath.”
“But you do like him, don’t you?”
“Are you looking for an answer or an explanation?”
“An answer.”
“Yes. I like him.”
“Why?”
“Now you want an explanation. And I’m not obliged to give you one. Not obliged and certainly not inclined.”
“I’ve known this man for almost twenty years, Elisabeth. A man whose reputation around police headquarters in Berlin went before him during the thirties. For a lot of younger and impressionable men like myself Bernie Gunther wasn’t just a successful detective, he was also something of a local hero.”
“I distinctly remember telling you I wasn’t interested in anything you had to say.”
“You heard the lady, Max. Why don’t you give it a rest?”
“Famously Bernie caught Gormann the strangler, a man who murdered many aspiring young film actresses. When were those Kuhlo murders—1929? I’m not sure about that. But I think it was probably 1931 when Bernie joined the Nazi Party and became the Party’s liaison officer in the Criminal Police, because it was definitely the following year when he helped to form the National Socialist Civil Service Society of the Berlin Police. Which means he was a die-hard Nazi even before Hitler came to power.”
“You know I was never a Nazi. Not even in my worst nightmare.”
“Oh, come on, Bernie. Don’t be so bashful. Let me tell you, Elisabeth, this man was one of the first in the police department who had the courage to declare his hand, politically. And because he did, many others followed. Me included, although to be quite frank I only did it to advance my career; unlike Bernie I really wasn’t much interested in politics and certainly not in persecuting Jews and communists. I’m not sure what he thinks about Jews but I’m quite sure Bernie hates the communists. Then, in the autumn of 1938, your friend here caught the eye of Heinrich Himmler’s number two, Reinhard Heydrich. Heydrich was a slippery sort—”
“Almost as slippery as you, Max. You could spread this stuff on a field and it would grow two crops a year.”
“—the very embodiment of fascist evil and the architect of many atrocities, which is why later on they called him the Butcher of Prague. To be fair to Bernie I expect Heydrich saw someone he could use, the way he used many others. But it was Heydrich who promoted Bernie to the rank of commissar and until Heydrich’s death, Bernie was his number-one troubleshooter; the joke around headquarters was that when Bernie saw trouble he usually shot it.”
As Merten laughed at his own joke I lifted my injured arm, grabbed him by the tie and twisted it, the way he was twisting the truth, but not enough to silence him.
“I’m beginning to see why Alo Brunner is so keen to kill you, Max. With a mouth like yours it’s a wonder how you managed to stay alive for this long.”
Still talking quickly, Merten retreated along the leather seat, pressing himself into the corner.
“For example, in November 1938 it was rumored he murdered a doctor by the name of Lanz Kindermann, because he was homosexual. The Nazis never liked homos all that much and Bernie was certainly no exception. But by then he was exceptional in one respect and that was in the amount of license he seemed to enjoy from his pale-faced master, Heydrich, and so his crime went unpunished, as most real crimes did by then. The following year—a few months before war broke out—Bernie was even invited to Obersalzberg, to stay at Hitler’s country house, the Berghof. It was Hitler’s fiftieth birthday and a singular honor for anyone to be invited, let me tell you. Not many people could say as much unless they were very highly thought of. No one ever asked me there for the weekend.” Merten chuckled. “Isn’t that right, Bernie? You were the leader’s houseguest, weren’t you? Tell her.”
For a brief moment I considered trying to explain the real reason I’d been at the Berghof—to investigate a murder—but almost immediately I could see the futility of doing so. There was no way my being there could ever have been satisfactorily explained. So I did what any man would do when confronted with another’s man barefaced lie. I laughed it off and lied straight back.
“Of course I wasn’t there. It’s absurd even to suggest such a thing. I have to hand it to you, Max. You must be quite a good trial lawyer. Next thing you’ll be trying to persuade her that Hitler was my long-lost uncle.”
Elli laughed. “Don’t give him any ideas.”
“The story is actually just getting started. A couple of years later, in 1941, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union, many of Berlin’s senior policemen were drafted into the SD, which was the intelligence agency of the SS, and that’s how Bernie here came to be an SD captain in uniform, just like Alo Brunner. Tell me, old man, which part of that isn’t true?”
“Shut up, Max. Shut up. I swear I’m going to crack you one with this gun if I have to listen to any more of this.”
I caught Elli’s eye in her rearview mirror; what I saw didn’t worry me that much. She was shaking her head as if she didn’t believe him.
“I can see exactly what he’s up to,” she said. “He’s a rat and like any rat he’ll squeak when he’s cornered.”
“Some rats need extermination,” I said, and pressed the muzzle of the Walther up against Merten’s cheek.
“Go ahead and shoot,” said Merten. “Do it. Put a bullet in my head. That’s what you’re good at, old man. You’ve had plenty of practice, after all. Better dead than doing life in a Greek jail.”
“I’m not going to shoot you, Max. But people can lose gold teeth for this kind of thing.”
“You mean for telling the truth? Surely this nice Greek girl deserves to know just what kind of man you really are.”
“Your version hasn’t got much to do with truth, Max.”
“It’s a long time since I was scared by a fairy story,” said Elli. “Especially one told by some fat old Nazi.”
“Hey, less with the old,” said Merten. “I may be putting on the pounds but I’m more than a decade younger than your friend here. Maybe you can convince her that you were a good German, Bernie, but I know better. Have you still got that SS tattoo under your arm or did you burn it off? What did you tell her it was? An old war wound?” Merten laughed.
“Light me a cigarette will you, Bernie?” she said.
I put a cigarette in my mouth, fired it up, and guided it between her lips.
“Thanks.”
A minute later we took a bend in the road a little too quickly, which had Merten sprawled onto my lap for a moment. I pushed him away roughly.
“There might be capital punishment in Greece, Bernie. But the Greeks don’t much care for killing people. Unlike Germans. Germans like you, that is. Because this is where the story starts to become really unpleasant, Elli. I’m afraid I can’t help that.”
“I wish you would shoot him, Bernie. It’s what he deserves, not just for stealing that gold but for being such a bore. I’m tired of listening to his voice. We should shoot him and throw his body in a ditch.”
“Then Bernie’s your man, Elisabeth. Perhaps you already know something about the mass murders that took place in Russia and the Ukraine during the summer of 1941. Bernie had volunteered to join another senior policeman, his old Berlin friend Arthur Nebe, as part of a police battalion attached to what was called an SS einsatzgruppe. This is not an easy thing to translate, my dear Elisabeth. It means the group was tasked with just one special action. Can you imagine what that was? Yes. That’s right. I can see you’ve guessed it. There was only one sentence that those SS men were obliged to carry out: the sentence of death. In short, Einsatz Group B was a mobile death squad operating behind Army Group Center, and tasked with the extermination of Jews and other undesirables such as communists, Gypsies, the disabled, mental retards, hostages, and generally speaking anyone they didn’t much like, in order to terrorize the local population. They operated in and around Minsk, and were very successful. Nebe and Gunther here were good at mass murder and managed to fill enough mass graves to render that part of Ukraine Jew-free in double-quick time.”
“I didn’t murder anyone in Minsk. But you have my word, Max, that I really don’t mind killing you.”
“Why then you wouldn’t get your precious passport back. Not that it’s worth much since it’s in a false name. Ask yourself why that should be the case, Elisabeth. How it is that I’m here with a passport in my real name, and Bernie has a passport in a false name? Anyone might conclude that he has more to hide than me. It might just have something to do with the fact that between July and November 1941, Group B managed to kill almost fifty thousand men, women, and children. Fifty thousand. Try to imagine what kind of men they were who could do such a thing, Elli. I’ve often tried myself and again and again I find myself without an answer. It’s inexplicable.” Merten smiled. “What’s the matter, Bernie? Is the truth too much for you? I think it’s getting to be too much for poor Elli.
“After the horrors of Minsk, Arthur Nebe and Bernie returned to Berlin and were both decorated for a job well done. Didn’t Martin Bormann give you the Coburg Badge, Germany’s highest civilian order, for services to Hitler? That must have been a proud moment. Bernie was even a guest at Heydrich’s country house in Prague, a few weeks before his assassination. Again, quite an honor. Meanwhile Nebe and Bernie resumed their more routine duties with the Criminal Police, and even worked for Interpol, this in spite of the fact that they had just helped to perpetrate the crime of the millennium. The arrogance of it simply beggars belief, does it not?”
“The only thing that beggars belief,” she said, “is your arrogance.”
“I, on the other hand,” he persisted, “a humble army captain and no one’s idea of an entertaining Nazi houseguest, was sent here, to Greece. Please note the fact that I was never in the SS or in the SD or the Gestapo. Nor did I receive any medals or promotions. This much is easily verified. Even Bernie will admit that much, surely. It’s true I stole some gold from SS men who’d already stolen it from Salonika’s Jews. But that’s the limit of my felony. I never killed anyone. The only time I ever saw anyone get shot was when Alo Brunner killed that poor man on the train from Salonika. Meanwhile, Bernie went on to do special work for Heydrich and the minister of propaganda, Josef Goebbels himself, no less; he was even sent to Croatia with some sort of carte blanche from the minister in his pocket. You would think he’d had enough killing but not a bit of it; in Croatia he assisted the fascist Ustase in murdering many thousands of Serbs and Gypsies, to say nothing of Yugoslavia’s Jews.”
“You’re good, Max. Smearing me in the hope that some of this mud sticks.”
“It’s exactly what any unscrupulous lawyer would do,” said Elli. “If he was really desperate.”
“You know I really do think she loves you, Bernie. Or at least she thinks she does. Look, Elisabeth, I can see that it might be hard to accept all of what I’ve just told you about a man you’re fond of. I can’t say I blame you. Believe me, after the war many German wives had the same problem. Could my dear Mozart-loving husband Fritz really have murdered women and children? Tell me you didn’t shoot any children, dear husband mine. Please, tell me you had nothing to do with that.”
“Didn’t you hear me, you lying malaka?” she said loudly. “I don’t believe a word of it.”
“But you can certainly believe this, Elisabeth dear: Bernie also has a wife. Perhaps he’s already told you about her? She lives in Berlin. You didn’t know? No, I thought not. In which case you’re in for an even bigger surprise. You might say it’s a coincidence and maybe a convenient one at that—since he should have no trouble remembering your name. I expect it was hard enough remembering his own, or at least the one written on his passport. You see his wife’s name is Elisabeth, just like yours.”