A Man Without Breath

‘Yes, you probably should,’ I remarked. The coffee was delicious. ‘At two hundred marks for a half-kilo that’s quite an orderly you have there. I’d hang on to him if I were you and learn to look the other way like everyone else does in this city.’

‘Oh dear.’ Von Dohnanyi smiled very faintly. ‘I suppose I should confess that the coffee came from me,’ he said. ‘My father gets it whenever he plays a concert in Budapest or Vienna. I was going to mention it before, but I hardly wanted to diminish your good opinion of the Putzer, Johannes. Now it seems I might get him into trouble. The coffee was a gift from me.’

‘My dear fellow, you’re too kind.’ Goldsche glanced my way. ‘Von Dohnanyi’s father is the great conductor and composer, Ernst von Dohnanyi.’ Goldsche was a tremendous snob about classical music.

‘Do you like music, Captain Gunther?’

Dohnanyi’s enquiry was scrupulously polite. Behind his round, frameless glasses the eyes didn’t care if I liked music or not; but then neither did I, and without the von in front of my name I certainly wasn’t nearly as scrupulous as he was about what I used to fill my ears.

‘I like a good melody if it’s sung by a pretty girl with a good pair of lungs, especially when the lyric is a vulgar one and the lungs are really noticeable. And I can’t tell an arpeggio from an archipelago. But life’s too short for Wagner, I do know that much.’

Goldsche grinned enthusiastically. He always seemed to take a vicarious delight in my capacity for blunt talking, which I enjoyed playing up to. ‘What else do you know?’ he enquired.

‘I whistle when I’m in the bath, which isn’t as often as I’d like,’ I added, lighting a cigarette. That was the other good thing about working for the OKW – there was always a plentiful supply of quite decent cigarettes. ‘Talking of which, it seems the Russians are here already.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked von Dohnanyi, momentarily alarmed.

‘Those fellows whistling in the corridor outside the door,’ I said. ‘The skilled German craftsmen from the local glazier’s guild who are repairing the flower-house windows. They’re Russians.’

‘Good Lord,’ said Goldsche. ‘Here? In the OKW? That hardly seems like a good idea. What about security?’

‘Someone’s got to repair the windows,’ I said. ‘It’s cold outside. There’s no secret about that. I just hope the glass is more durable than the Luftwaffe, because I’ve got the feeling the RAF is planning a return visit.’

Von Dohnanyi allowed himself a thin smile and then an even thinner puff of his cigarette. I’d seen children smoke with more gusto.

‘How are you feeling, anyway?’ Goldsche looked at the other lawyer and explained. ‘Gunther was in a house in Lutzow that was bombed while he was taking a deposition from a potential witness. He’s lucky to be here at all.’

‘That’s certainly the way I feel about it.’ I tapped my chest. ‘And I’m much better, thanks.’

‘Fit for work?’

‘Chest is still a bit tight, but otherwise I’m more or less back to normal.’

‘And the witness? Herr Meyer?’

‘He’s alive, but I’m afraid the only evidence he’s going to give any time soon is in the court of heaven.’

‘You’ve seen him?’ asked von Dohnanyi. ‘In the Jewish Hospital?’

‘Yes, poor fellow. A large part of his brain seems to have gone missing. Not that anyone notices that kind of thing very much nowadays. But he’s no use to us now, I’m afraid.’

‘Pity,’ said Goldsche. ‘He was going to be an important witness in a case we were preparing against the Royal Navy,’ he told Von Dohnanyi. ‘The British navy really does think it can get away with murder. Unlike the American navy, which recognizes all our hospital ships, the Royal Navy recognizes the larger-tonnage hospital ships but not the smaller ones.’

‘Because the smaller ones are picking up our unwounded air crews?’ asked Von Dohnanyi.

‘That’s right. It’s a great pity this case collapsed before it even got started. Then again, it does make life a little simpler for us. Not to mention more palatable. Goebbels was interested in putting Franz Meyer on the radio. That wouldn’t have done at all.’

‘It’s not just the ministry of propaganda who were interested in Franz Meyer,’ I said. ‘The Gestapo came to see me while I was in the state hospital, asking questions about Meyer.’

‘Did they?’ murmured Von Dohnanyi.

‘What sort of questions?’ asked Goldsche.

I shrugged. ‘Who his friends were, that kind of thing. They seemed to think Meyer might have been mixed up in some sort of currency-smuggling racket in order to help persuade the Swiss to offer asylum to a group of Jews.’

Goldsche looked puzzled.

‘Money for refugees,’ I added. ‘Well, you know how bighearted the Swiss are. They make all that lovely white chocolate just to help sugar the lie that they’re peace-loving and kind. Of course they’re not. Never were. Even the German army was in the habit of recruiting Swiss mercenaries. The Italians used to call it a bad war when Swiss pikemen were involved because their kind of fighting was so vicious.’

‘What did you tell them?’ asked Goldsche. ‘The Gestapo?’