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
‘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.
‘I can’t get used to that,’ he confessed. ‘The way these fighters fly so low. I keep expecting to see something blow up on the ground in front of me.’
‘Sometimes I wish it would. But take my word for it: a fighter tends to buzz a little louder when it decides to sting.’
