Prague Fatale by Philip Kerr Read Free Book Online

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.’
     
    ‘Talking of things blowing up,’ he said. ‘The Three Kings. You hear anything? Only, the doctors of deceit have been giving us the runaround. Back in May they said they had picked up two of the leaders and that it was only a matter of time before they got their hands on the third. Since when we’ve heard nothing. We keep asking, but no one says anything, so we figure that number three must still be at liberty. Any truth in that, you think?’
     
    ‘I really can’t say.’
     
    ‘Can’t or just won’t?’ A cloud drifted across the moon like something dark over my soul.
     
    ‘C’mon, Captain. You must know something.’
     
    ‘I’m just back from the Ukraine so I’m a little behind with what’s been happening here in Berlin. But if they’d caught Melchior, I think you’d have heard all about that, don’t you? Through a megaphone.’
     
    ‘Melchior?’
     
    ‘And I thought it was just the Germans who were a godless race.’
     
    I walked away.
     
    ‘Hey,’ said Dickson. ‘I saw that movie,
Frankenstein
. And Iremember that scene, now. Doesn’t the monster throw the little girl in the water?’
     
    ‘Yes. Sad isn’t it?’
     
    I strolled south, down to Bülowstrasse, where I turned west. I might have walked all the way home but I noticed there was a hole in my shoe and at Nolli I decided to get on the S-Bahn. Normally I would have taken the tram, but the thirty-three was no longer running; and since it was after nine o’clock the only taxis around were those that were called by the police for the service of the sick, the lame, the old, or travellers from railway stations with heavy bags. And senior Nazi Party members, of course. They never had a problem getting a cab home after nine.
     
    Nolli was almost deserted, which was not uncommon in the blackout. All you could see were occasional cigarette ends moving through the darkness like fireflies, or sometimes the phosphorescent lapel badge of someone keen to avoid a collision with another pedestrian; all you could hear were the trains as they moved invisibly in and out of the art nouveau glass dome of the station overhead, or disembodied voices, snatches of passing conversations as if Berlin was one big open-air séance – a ghostly effect that was enhanced by infrequent flashes of electric light from the rail track. It was as if some modern-day Moses – and who could have blamed him? – had stretched out his strong hand toward the sky to spread a palpable darkness over the land of