The One From the Other Read Free Page B

then take it up with Heydrich. He makes the rules, not me.”
    “The two men you’re traveling with,” he said, hardly batting an eye. “We would like you to keep an eye on them. To see that they don’t abuse the position of trust in which they find themselves. I’m even authorized to offer you some expenses. A thousand marks.”
    Everyone was throwing money at me. A thousand pounds here. A thousand marks there. I felt like an official in the Reich Ministry of Justice.
    “That’s very handsome of you, Gerhard,” I said. “A thousand marks is quite a slice of sugarloaf. Of course, you wouldn’t be the Gestapo if you didn’t also have a taste of the whip you’re offering me in the event I don’t have the sweet tooth you were counting on.”
    Flesch smiled his toothless smile. “It would be unfortunate if your racial origins were made the subject of an inquiry,” he said, stubbing out his cigarette in my ashtray. As he leaned forward and then back again in the chair, his leather coat creaked loudly, like the sound of heavy raindrops, as if he had just bought it from the Gestapo gift shop.
    “Both my parents were churchgoing folk,” I said. “I don’t see that you’ve got anything like that to throw at me.”
    “Your maternal great-grandmother,” he said. “There’s a possibility she might have been Jewish.”
    “Read your Bible, Gerhard,” I said. “We’re all Jewish if you want to go back far enough. But as it happens, you’re wrong. She was a Roman Catholic. Quite a devout one, I believe.”
    “And yet her name was Adler, was it not? Anna Adler?”
    “It was Adler, yes, I believe that’s correct. What of it?”
    “Adler is a Jewish name. If she were alive today she would probably have to add Sarah to her name, so that we could recognize her for what she was. A Jewess.”
    “Even if it was true, Gerhard. That Adler is a Jewish name? And, to be honest, I have no idea if it is or not. That would only make me one-eighth Jewish. And under section two, article five of the Nuremberg Laws, I am not, therefore, a Jew.” I grinned. “Your whip lacks a proper sting, Gerhard.”
    “An investigation often proves to be an expensive inconvenience,” said Flesch. “Even for a truly German business. And mistakes are sometimes made. It might be months before things returned to normal.”
    I nodded, recognizing the truth in what he had said. No one turned the Gestapo down. Not without some serious consequences. My only choice was between the disastrous and the unpalatable. A very German choice. We both knew I had little alternative but to agree to what they wanted. At the same time, it left me in an awkward position, to put it mildly. After all, I already had a very strong suspicion that Franz Six was lining his pockets with Paul Begelmann’s shekels. But I had no wish to be caught up in the middle of a power struggle between the SD and the Gestapo. On the other hand, there was nothing to say that the two SD men I was accompanying to Palestine were dishonest. As a matter of course, they would surely suspect that I was a spy, and, accordingly, treat me with caution. The chances were strong that I would discover absolutely nothing. But would nothing satisfy the Gestapo? There was only one way to find out.
    “All right,” I said. “But I won’t be a mouth for you people and say a lot of stuff that isn’t true. I can’t. I won’t even try. If they’re bent then I’ll tell you they’re bent and I’ll tell myself that that’s just what detectives do. Maybe I’ll lose some sleep about it and maybe I won’t. But if they are straight, that’s an end of it, see? I won’t frame someone just to give you and the other hammerheads at Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse an edge. I won’t do it, not even if you and your best brass knuckles tell me I have to. You can keep your sugarloaf, too. I wouldn’t like to get a taste for it. I’ll do your dirty little job, Gerhard. But we let the cards fall where they fall. No