If the Dead Rise Not by Philip Kerr Read Free Book Online Page B

really. Anyway, Hitler watched it happen and pronounced himself very impressed. So much so that he’s ordered twenty new falling-ax machines from the manufacturer in Tegel. One for every big city in Germany. He was smiling when he left. Which is more than I can say for that poor commie. I’ve never seen it before. Goering’s idea that we should, apparently. Something about us all recognizing the gravity of the historic mission we’ve set ourselves—or some such nonsense. Well, there’s a lot of gravity involved with a falling ax, let me tell you. Have you ever seen one at work?”
    “Just once. Gormann the Strangler.”
    “Oh, right. Then you’ll know what it’s like.” Otto shook his head. “My God, I’ll never forget it as long as I live. That terrible sound. Took it well, though, the commie. When the lad saw that Hitler was there, he started to sing the Red Flag. At least he did until someone slapped him. Now ask me why I’m telling you all this.”
    “Because you enjoy scaring the shit out of people, Otto. You always were the sensitive type.”
    “I’m telling you, Bernie, because people like you need to know.”
    “People like me. What does that mean?”
    “You’ve got a smart mouth, son. Which is why you have to be told that these bastards are not playing games. They’re in power and they mean to stay in power, with whatever it takes. Last year there were just four executions at the Plot. This year there have already been twelve. And it’s going to get worse.”
    A train thundered overhead, rendering all conversation meaningless for almost a minute. It sounded like a very large, very slow falling ax.
    “That’s the thing about things getting worse,” I remarked. “Just as you’re thinking they can’t, they usually do. That’s what the fellow on the Jewish Desk at the Gestapo told me, anyway. There are some new laws on the way that mean my grandmother wasn’t quite German enough. Not that it matters much to her. She’s dead, too. But it seems as if it’s going to matter to me. If you follow my meaning.”
    “Like Aaron’s rod.”
    “Exactly. And you being an expert on forgers and counterfeiting, I was wondering if you knew someone who might help to fix it for me to lose the yarmulke. I used to think an Iron Cross was all the evidence I needed to be a German. But it would seem not.”
    “A German’s worst problems always start when he starts to think of what it means to be a German.” Otto sighed and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Cheer up, yiddo. You’re not the first to need an Aryan transfusion. That’s what they call it these days. My paternal grandfather was a gyppo. That’s where I get my Latin good looks from.”
    “I’ve never understood what they have against Gypsies.”
    “I think it’s something to do with fortune-telling. Hitler just doesn’t want us to know the future he has planned for Germany.”
    “It’s that or the price of clothespins, I suppose.” Gypsies were always selling clothespins.
    Otto produced a nice gold Pelikan from his coat pocket and started to write a name and address on a piece of paper. “Emil is expensive, so try not to let your tribe’s reputation for driving a hard bargain lead you to suppose that he’s not worth every penny, because he is. Make sure you tell him I sent you and, if necessary, remind him that the only reason he’s not cooling his heels in the Punch is because I lost his file. But I lost it in a place where I can certainly find it again.”
    The Punch was what Berlin’s police and underworld called the courthouse and jail complex in Moabit; because Moabit was a heavily working-class district, someone had once described the prison there as “an imperial punch in the face of the Berlin proletariat.” Certainly a punch in the face was more or less guaranteed when you went there, regardless of your social class. It was without question Berlin’s hardest concrete.
    He told me what was in Emil Linthe’s