‘I can assure you, sir, I am nothing to do with the Gestapo. If that’s what you’re implying. I dare say that’s exactly what someone who was a Gestapo informer would tell you. But to be quite frank with you there’s nothing they have that I want. Except perhaps a good story. I’d kill for a good story.’
‘Have you killed many?’
‘Frankly, I don’t see how I could have done. As soon as they know I’m an American most Berliners seem to want to hit me. They seem to hold me personally responsible for all the ships we’ve been giving to the British.’
‘Don’t worry; Berliners have never been interested in having a navy,’ I said. ‘That kind of thing matters more in Hamburg and Bremen. In Berlin, you can count yourself lucky that Roosevelt never gave the Tommies any beer or sausage, or you’d be dead by now.’ I pointed toward Potsdamer Platz. ‘Come on. Let’s walk.’
‘Sure,’ he said and followed me south out of the park. ‘Anywhere in particular?’
‘No. But I need a few minutes to address the ball, so to speak.’
‘Golfing man, huh?’
‘I used to play a bit. Before the Nazis. But it’s never really caught on since Hitler. It’s too easy to be bad at it, which is not something Nazis can deal with.’
‘I appreciate your talking to me like this.’
‘I haven’t told you anything yet. Right now I’m still wondering how much I can tell you without feeling like – what was his name? The traitor. Benedict—?’
‘Benedict Arnold?’
‘That’s right.’
We crossed Potsdamer onto Leipziger Platz.
‘I hope we’re not headed for the Press Club,’ said Dickson. ‘I’d feel like a bit of a fool if you took me in there to tell me your story.’ He pointed at a door on the other side of the square where several official-looking cars were parked. ‘I hear all kinds of bullshit in that place.’
‘You don’t say.’
‘Doctor Froehlich, the Propaganda Ministry’s liaison officer for the American media, he is always summoning us in there for special press conferences to announce yet another decisive victory for German forces against the Red Army. Him or one of those other doctors. Brauweiler or Dietrich. The doctors of deceit, that’s what we call them.’
‘Not forgetting the biggest deceiver of them all,’ I said. ‘Doctor Goebbels.’
Dickson laughed bitterly. ‘It’s got so bad that when my own doctor says there’s nothing wrong with me I just don’t believe him.’
‘You can believe him. You’re American. Provided you don’t do anything stupid, like declare war on Russia, most of you should live for ever.’
Dickson followed me across to Wertheim’s department store. In the moonlight you could see the huge map of the Soviet Union that occupied the main window, so that any patriotic German might look at it and follow the heroic progress of our brave armed forces. It wasn’t like there was anything else in the store to put in the window. When the place had been owned and run by Jews it had been the best store in Germany. Now it was little better than a warehouse, and an empty one at that. The shop assistants spent most of their time gossiping and ignoring the spectators – you could hardly call them customers – who wandered around the store in search of merchandise that simply wasn’t there. Even the elevators weren’t working.
There was no one on the sidewalk in front of the window and it seemed as good a place as any to tell the American radio journalist the truth about our great patriotic war against the Russians and the Jews.
‘Give me another one of your cigarettes. If I’m going to cough up the whole story I want something inside me to help it along.’
He handed me an almost full pack of American cigarettes and told me to keep it. I lit one quickly and let the nicotine go and play in my brain. For a moment I felt giddy and light-headed like it was the first time I ever smoked. But that was how it should have been. It wouldn’t have been right to have told Dickson about the police battalions and resettlement and special actions and the Minsk ghetto and pits that were full of dead Jews without feeling a little sick inside.
Which is exactly what I told him.
‘And you saw all of this?’ Now it was Dickson who sounded sick inside.
‘I’m a captain in the SD,’ I said. ‘I saw it all.’
‘Jesus. It’s hard to believe.’
‘You wanted to know. I told you. That’s how it is. Worse than you could possibly imagine. When they don’t let you go somewhere it’s because they can’t boast about what they’re doing. You could have worked it out for yourself. I’d be there right now but for the fact that I’m a bit particular about who I pull the trigger on. They sent me home, in disgrace. I’m lucky they didn’t send me to a punishment battalion.’
‘You were in the SD?’ Dickson sounded just a bit nervous.
‘Correct.’
‘That’s like the Gestapo, isn’t it?’
‘Not exactly. It’s the intelligence wing of the SS. The Abwehr’s ugly little sister. Like a lot of men in the SD, I came in through a side door marked No Bloody Choice. I was a policeman at the Alex before I was in the SD. A proper policeman. The kind who started out helping old ladies across the road. Not all of us make Jews clean the street with a toothbrush, you know. I want you to know that. Me, I’m a bit like Frankenstein’s monster with the little girl at the lake. There’s a part of me that really wants to make friends and to be good.’
Dickson was quiet for a moment. ‘No one back home is going to believe this,’ he said, eventually. ‘Not that I’d ever get it past the local Press Censor. This is the trouble with radio. You have to clear your copy in advance.’
‘So leave the country. Go home and buy a typewriter. Write it up in the newspapers and tell the world.’
‘I wonder if anyone would believe me.’
‘There is that. I can hardly believe it myself and I was there. I saw it. Every night I go to bed in the hope that I’ll wake up and find that I imagined the whole thing.’
‘Perhaps if you told another American besides myself. That would make the story more believable.’
‘No. That’s your problem, not mine.’
‘Look,’ said Dickson, ‘the man you should really meet is Guido Enderis. He’s the chief of the New York Times Berlin office. I think you should tell him what you just told me.’
‘I think I’ve talked enough for one evening. Odd but it makes me feel guilty in a whole new way. Before I only felt like a murderer. Now I feel like a traitor, too.’
‘Please.’
‘You know there’s a limit to how guilty I can feel before I want to throw up or jump in front of a train.’
‘Don’t do that, Captain – whatever your name is. The whole world needs to know what’s happening on the eastern front. The only way that’s going to happen is if people like you are willing to talk about it.’
‘And then what? Do you think it’s going to make a difference? If America’s not prepared to come in to the war for the sake of the British I can’t believe they’re going to do it for the sake of Russia’s Jews.’
‘Maybe, maybe not. But you know, sometimes one thing leads to another.’
‘Yeah? Look what happened back at Munich, in 1938. One thing led to absolutely nothing at all. And your lot weren’t even at the negotiating table. They were back home, pretending it was nothing to do with the USA.’
Dickson couldn’t argue with that.
‘How can I get in contact with you, Captain?’
‘You can’t. I’ll speak to Willy and leave a message with him if I decide I’m ready to puke another fur ball.’
‘If it’s a question of money—’
‘It’s not.’
Instinctively we both glanced up as another 109 came rifling in from the north-west and I saw the moon illuminate the anxiety on Dickson’s smooth face. When the sound was just a footnote on the horizon I heard him let out a breath.