The Other Side of Silence

I’m not sure if the effortlessly handsome, dark-haired man I saw checking into one of the hotel’s best suites the day before I tried to asphyxiate myself was on any kind of wanted list, but he was certainly German and a criminal. Not that he looked like anything less affluent than a banker or a Hollywood film producer, and he spoke such excellent French that it was probably only me who would have known he was German. He was using the name Harold Heinz Hebel and gave an address in Bonn, but his real name was Hennig, Harold Hennig, and during the last few months of the war he’d been a captain in the SD. Now in his early forties, he wore a fine, gray lightweight suit that had been tailored for him and black, handmade shoes that were as shiny as a new centime. You tend to notice things like that when you’re working at a place like the Grand Hotel. These days I can spot a Savile Row suit from the other side of the lobby. His manners were as smooth as the silk Hermes tie around his neck, which suited him better than the noose it richly deserved. He tipped all of the porters handsomely from a wad of new notes that was as thick as a slice of bread, and after that the boys treated him and his Louis Vuitton luggage with more care than a case of Meissen porcelain. Coincidentally, the last time I’d seen him he’d also had some expensive luggage with him, filled with valuables he and his boss, the East Prussian gauleiter Erich Koch, had probably looted from the city. That had been in January 1945, sometime during the terrible Battle of Konigsberg. He’d been boarding the German passenger ship Wilhelm Gustloff, which was subsequently torpedoed by a Russian submarine with the loss of more than nine thousand civilian lives. He was one of the few rats that managed to escape from that particular sinking ship, which was a great pity since he’d helped to bring about its destruction.

If Harold Hennig recognized me he didn’t show it. In our black morning coats, the hotel’s desk staff all tend to look the same, of course. There’s that and the fact that I’m a little heavier now than I was back then, with less hair probably, not to mention a light tan that my wife used to say suited me. For a man who just tried to kill himself I’m in remarkably good shape, even though I say so myself. Alice, one of the maids I’ve taken a shine to since Elisabeth left, says I could easily pass for a man ten years younger. Which is just as well, as I have a soul that feels like it’s at least five hundred years old. It’s looked into the abyss so many times it feels like Dante’s walking stick.

Harold Hennig looked straight at me, and although I didn’t hold his gaze for more than a second or two, there was no need-being an ex-cop, I never forget a face, especially when it belongs to a mass murderer. Nine thousand people-men and women and a great many children-is a lot of reasons to remember a face like Harold Heinz Hennig’s.

But I have to admit that seeing him again, looking so prosperous and in such rude health, left me feeling very depressed. It’s one thing to know that there are people like Eichmann and Mengele who got away with the most appalling crimes. It’s another thing when several of the victims of a crime were your friends. There was a time when I might have tried to exact some kind of rough justice, but those days are long gone. These days, revenge is something of which my partner and I talk lightly at the end or perhaps the beginning of a game of bridge at La Voile d’Or, which is the only other good hotel in Cap Ferrat. I don’t even own a gun. If I did I certainly wouldn’t be here now. I’m a much better shot than I am a driver.

TWO