‘You’ll feel a lot less sanguine about things when I’ve told you what I know,’ he said.
I lit a cigarette and flicked the match onto the slush-covered ground. I was smoking too much again, but then Russia does that to you. It was hard to pay much attention to your health after Stalingrad, knowing that so many Russians were hoping soon to kill you.
‘Then maybe I just don’t want to know,’ I said. ‘Maybe I should be more like Beethoven. It seems to me like he managed to do well enough when he didn’t hear a damn thing. Going deaf is probably very good for your health in Germany. These days I get the impression that listening to what other people say can be lethal. Especially listening to our leaders.’
‘Don’t I know it?’ Quidde said bitterly. He removed his helmet and rubbed his head furiously.
‘Now I begin to see and hear, and I think I might be looking at a man who maybe heard a lot more than just Midge Gillars on Radio Berlin.’
‘If Midge knew what I know, she’d play some very different tunes. Only this time they won’t be the devil’s.’
‘Still, those tunes are the good ones, right? I should know. I’m the apostle of cheap music. Just don’t tell the fellow on the pedestal.’
‘Did you come alone?’ he asked anxiously.
I shrugged. ‘I was thinking of bringing a couple of show girls. But then again, you did ask me to come alone. Now what’s this all about?’
Quidde lit another cigarette unsteadily with the stub of the old one. This did nothing for his nerves: the smoke plumed from his twitching mouth and flaring nostrils like the puff from a runaway train.
‘You’d better let some hydrogen out, corporal, or you’ll float away. Take it easy. Anyone would think you’re nervous.’
Quidde handed me the dispatch case.
‘What’s this?’ I asked.
‘A reel of recording tape,’ he said.
‘What do I want with this? I don’t own a tape recorder. I wouldn’t even know how to work one.’
‘That tape was made by Friedrich Ribe,’ said Quidde. ‘And it might just be what got him killed. Only two people knew what was on that tape, and one of them is dead.’
‘Ribe.’
Quidde nodded.
‘So how did your throat escape getting cut?’
‘I’ve asked myself the same question. I think Ribe and Greiss were killed because they were on the same duty roster. Whoever killed them must have figured they both heard what in fact only Friedrich Ribe had heard. And me, of course. Ribe wouldn’t ever have let Werner Greiss listen to what’s on this tape. At the time we all thought it was Greiss who was the Gestapo’s canary, when in fact it was Jupp Lutz all along. I only found out myself a couple of weeks ago when a friend from Lübeck wrote and told me about it.’
‘But Ribe played it for you,’ I said.
Quidde nodded. ‘We were friends. Good friends. Looking out for each other since way back.’
I glanced inside the dispatch case, which contained a box with the letters of the German Electricity Company – AEG – printed on it.
‘All right. It’s not the MDR Symphony Orchestra and it’s not the lost chord. So what’s on this tape?’
‘You remember when the leader came to Smolensk a few weeks ago?’
‘I still treasure the memory.’
‘Hitler had a meeting with Clever Hans in his office at Krasny Bor. In private. It was real cosy apparently – no aides, no adjutants, just the two of them. Only the telephone in the office hasn’t been working properly. It doesn’t always hang up when you drop the receiver back in the cradle, with the result that the operator continues to hear everything that’s said. Well, more or less everything.’
‘And so Ribe decided to tape-record it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Jesus.’ I sighed. ‘What was he thinking?’
‘He wanted a souvenir. Of Hitler’s voice. You get used to hearing him making a speech, but no one ever hears what he’s like when he’s relaxed.’
‘A signed photograph would have been less dangerous.’
‘Yes. About halfway through the tape Von Kluge guesses that he and Hitler could have been overheard, because he lifts the receiver and then bangs it down hard several times before the line is terminated.’
‘And so, what – Hitler and Von Kluge were worried that the army’s plans for a summer campaign in 1943 were compromised? Yes, I can see why that might bother them a bit.’
‘Oh, it’s worse than that,’ said Quidde.
I shook my head. I couldn’t think of anything that was worse than giving away military secrets; then again, those were the days in which my ideas of what was worse and what was worst were limited by a naïve faith in the inherent decency of my fellow Germans. After almost twenty years in the Berlin police, I thought I knew all about corruption, but if you are not corrupt yourself, then I think you cannot ever know just how corrupt others can be in their pursuit of wealth and favour. I think then I must still have believed in things like honour and integrity and duty. Life had yet to teach me the hardest lesson of all, which is that in a corrupt world about the only thing you can rely on is corruption and then death and yet more corruption, and that honour and duty have little place in a world that has had a Hitler and a Stalin in it. And perhaps the most naïve thing about my reaction was that I was actually surprised at what Quidde told me next.
‘On the tape you can clearly hear Adolf Hitler and Günther von Kluge talking for almost fifteen minutes. They talk about the new summer campaign, but only in passing, before Hitler starts asking Von Kluge about his family estates in Prussia, and it very soon becomes more apparent that Hitler is visiting headquarters in Smolensk largely because in spite of his declared previous generosity to the field marshal he has heard a few rumours back in Berlin that Von Kluge is somewhat dissatisfied with his leadership. Von Kluge then proceeds to make a few weak denials and insists he is committed to the future of Germany and to defeating the Red Army, before Hitler comes to the real point of his being there. First of all, Hitler mentions a cheque for one million marks that the German Treasury gave Von Kluge in October 1942 to help improve his estates. He mentions that he’d given a similar sum to Paul von Hindenburg in 1933. He also reminds Von Kluge that he’d promised to help with any future costs of running these estates, and to this end he has brought his own personal chequebook with him. What you then hear is Hitler writing out another cheque, and while the amount isn’t actually mentioned on the recording, you can hear from what the field marshal says when the leader hands it over that this time it’s at least as much as a million marks again, perhaps even more. Either way, at the end of the recorded conversation Von Kluge assures the leader of his unswerving loyalty and insists that the rumours of his own dissatisfaction were much exaggerated by those in the High Command who were jealous of his relationship with Hitler.’
For a moment I closed my eyes. Almost everything was now explained – why a German had murdered the two signallers. It seemed obvious to me that the reason they had been killed was to silence them both about the discovery of this huge bribe. Someone acting for Hitler or Von Kluge or perhaps both of them had murdered the two signallers. It was also clear exactly why Von Kluge had decided to withdraw from an Army Group Centre plot to murder Hitler while he was in Smolensk: this would have had nothing to do with the absence of Heinrich Himmler in Smolensk and everything to do with a cheque for approximately one million marks.
No less clear than any of this however was the gut-liquefying certainty that Martin Quidde had now put me in the same grave danger as himself.
I rolled my eyes and lit a cigarette. For a second the wind caught the smoke and blew it in my eyes and made them water. I wiped them with the back of my hand and then contemplated using it to try to slap some sense into Corporal Quidde. Maybe it was too late for that, but I hoped not.