The cell was a mere ten feet by five with a twelve-foot high ceiling and no windows. The only way in or out was a narrow, barred door that at least gave him a view out into the corridor. It contained a bed but nothing else. If he needed the lavatory, he was escorted to a single cubicle along the corridor by an armed Polizei and twice he was given food on a tray together with a bowl of warm water, soap and towel. The cell wasn’t intended for long-stay prisoners, just those in temporary custody pending a decision on whether or not there was a charge to answer.
He’d been interviewed twice by two plain-clothes detectives – yesterday, when he’d arrived and again earlier that morning, both times in the presence of a solicitor appointed on his behalf who took copious notes but said very little. Harry had been struck by the irony of the whole affair. The detectives were, like him, in their forties and would have played some part in the greatest conflict of all time. He mused whether they’d been SS, Gestapo or just plain Wehrmacht; how many Allied soldiers they’d shot and whether he might have known any of them; how many civilians they’d murdered; whether they had been or still were fanatical Nazis or whether they had just been ordinary guys “following orders”. He felt angry about his treatment and made no attempt to conceal his bitterness that the roles seemed to have been reversed. Who won the fucking war anyway?
The Polizei seemed particularly wound up by this one, probably because they’d lost three of their own. They were less concerned about Bergmann – a foreign national – and not at all about two British field agents who knew the risks and had no business being in their country anyway. They’d ranted over British incompetence which had led to the murder of poor Frau Leitner, but glossed over their own in letting Kessler out of their grasp.
They had nothing on him. They’d examined the safe house, seen the “cooler” and the locking bar over the internal door. If he’d been an accomplice to Kessler, he would have simply let him in, shot Bergmann and disappeared. He had given them a name, which ought to be of some help, but beyond that, there was no conceivable connection between him and Kessler other than the one he’d already explained.
Harry had found the two interrogations surprisingly cathartic. Both the detectives and solicitor Goldschmidt – probably not a Nazi – were, of course, complete strangers, and as such he felt relaxed about retelling the story of the farmhouse, his role in providing humanitarian assistance to civilians while under constant bombardment from Nazi artillery. He took a perverse pleasure in describing the appearance of Kessler, the archetypal rabid Nazi, but watched in vain for any flicker of discomfort or embarrassment from the two policemen. They were either in denial or maybe it was just possible that, in the past, they’d been “good” Germans.
But he had no reason or desire to give them the benefit of the doubt. As far as he was concerned, they owed their jobs and their lives and their freedom in a western democratic society to people like him, yet here they were giving him a hard time, ungrateful bastards! He had every reason to help them bring Kessler to justice, not only for crimes he’d committed in the present, but also for those of the past. Yet he could do no more than he’d already done.
He sat on the bed and waited. Goldschmidt’s view was that there was no case to answer and since they had either to charge him or release him, he would be out by the end of the day. He guessed it was around 3 p.m. but he couldn’t be sure as he had no watch; it had been taken along with his belt and his wallet, a fountain pen and some loose change.
He thought of Petra, how he’d shut her out of his life and as a consequence put her own in danger, and he shuddered. She at least had been brave enough to confront the inevitable and if any good had come out of this ghastly business, it was that she could now go on to live a normal life. He wanted to see her and say how desperately sorry he was, but dismissed the idea. It was pointless and counter-productive.
And he thought of Kessler. Where was he? Who was he? What had turned him into the monster he’d seen in the film and the monster he continued to be to this day? Not for the first time, he wondered why this guy had stumbled into Alfredo Girardi’s farmhouse that horrendous day in 1944, bloodied and battered, screaming for murder, hell bent on killing everything he could. His performance in the film provided a clue, but it wasn’t enough.
Why hadn’t he pulled the trigger in the apartment when he had the chance? He’d casually despatched four people already so another would make no difference. He’d been cornered by the enemy and chosen not to fight his way out. Why? Because he was confident that later, he could effect an escape, or because he was genuinely ready to give up? Neither made any sense, especially not the latter. Kessler was and always had been a fanatic and would have relished the chance to kill a few more of the enemy even if it meant him going down too. The Makarov was fully loaded, apparently, his victim was on the floor, stunned, blinded and helpless. It was point blank, yet…?
He shuddered again, this time at his own mortality, yet in his head he’d died so many times he was beginning to think nothing of it. He took every day one at a time. He had no plans for the future; every day was just another in which he could think about and relive the past, neither a fresh start nor a step towards a new goal. Petra had shown him that he had to take a step in a new direction or else the past would eventually consume him. A rattle of keys broke his concentration and the door swung open. It was a uniformed Polizei, one he had hadn’t seen before.
“You are free to go,” he said curtly and turned back into the corridor. Harry followed him meekly to the front desk where he retrieved his belongings from a wooden box. They included the white envelope he’d picked up in the office and he realised he hadn’t opened it yet. He signed a piece of paper and, without a further word, stepped out into another warm Berlin afternoon.
He slung his jacket over his shoulder and watched the people of West Berlin walking in the sunshine: women pushing prams, men in suits carrying briefcases, van drivers unloading supplies, all going about their daily business. He watched the cars and the trams and the taxis carrying their passengers on their journey to somewhere, every one on their way to a predetermined destination, each of them, presumably, having some expectation of what they might find when they got there. All moving forward, none looking back.
He ripped open the envelope and pulled out a letter that bore a fancy letterhead in fine script: Rowland, Jarvis & Stroud, Family Solicitors. He scanned the text and although it told him something he’d been expecting for years, he felt a wave of sadness. He tilted his face to the sun and felt its warmth. It lifted his spirits and cleared his mind, making way for new thoughts. This was the final spur. He would move forward, not back, but not from here. He needed to start again from a different place and he knew exactly where that was.