The One From the Other by Philip Kerr Read Free Book Online Page A

thoughts to their superiors in Berlin. Formal letters were exchanged. After which Eichmann concluded the meeting with an assurance for Haj Amin that now that they had met, they would surely meet again. Nothing of any real import had been agreed upon, and yet I had the sense that the Mufti’s words had made a real impression on the two SD men.
    When the meeting was concluded and the Grand Mufti and his entourage had left Eichmann’s suite at the National—his Arab translator making a joke about how the British believed they still had Haj Amin cooped up somewhere within the Muslim holy places in Jerusalem (which, of course, they did not dare violate by entering to search for him)—the four of us looked at one another, lit cigarettes, and shook our heads in yet more wonder.
    “I never heard such madness,” I said, hiking over to the window and watching the street below as Haj Amin and his men climbed into an anonymous-looking van with hard panel sides. “Utter madness. The fellow is a complete spinner.”
    “Yes,” agreed Hagen. “And yet there was a certain cold logic to his madness, wouldn’t you say?”
    “Logic?” I repeated, slightly incredulous. “How do you mean ‘logic’?”
    “I agree with Gunther,” said Reichert. “It all sounded like complete madness to me. Like something from the First Crusade. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m no Jew lover, but, really, you can’t just liquidate a whole race of people.”
    “Stalin liquidated a whole class of people in Russia,” said Hagen. “Two or three if you stop to think about it. He might just as easily have fixed on the Jews as on peasants, kulaks, and the bourgeoisie. And liquidated them instead. He’s spent the last five years starving the Ukrainians to death. There’s nothing to say you couldn’t starve the Jews to death in just the same way. Of course, that kind of thing presents enormous practical problems. And essentially my opinion remains unchanged. We should try to send them to Palestine. What happens when they get here is hardly our concern.”
    Hagen came over to the window and lit a cigarette.
    “Although I do think that the establishment of an independent Jewish state in Palestine must be resisted at all costs. That’s something I’ve realized since we got here. Such a state might actually be capable of diplomatic lobbying against the German government. Of suborning the United States into a war against Germany. That possibility ought to be resisted.”
    “But surely you haven’t changed your opinion about de facto Zionism,” said Eichmann. “I mean, clearly, we’re going to have to send the bastards somewhere. Madagascar makes no sense. They’d never go there. No, it’s here, or the other—what Haj Amin was talking about. And I can’t see anyone in the SD agreeing with that solution. It’s too far-fetched. Like something out of Fritz Lang.”
    Reichert picked up the Mufti’s letter. There were two words on the envelope: Adolf Hitler. “Do you suppose he’s said any of that in his letter?” he asked.
    “I don’t think there’s any doubt of it,” I said. “The question is, what are you going to do with it?”
    “There can be no question of not handing this letter to our superiors.” Hagen sounded shocked at the very idea of not delivering the Mufti’s letter—more shocked at my implied suggestion than anything the Grand Mufti had said. “That wouldn’t do at all. This is diplomatic correspondence.”
    “It didn’t sound all that diplomatic to me,” I said.
    “Perhaps not. Nevertheless the letter still has to go back to Berlin. This is part of what we came for, Gunther. We have to have something to show for our mission here. Especially now that we know we’re being watched by the Gestapo. Fiddling expenses is one thing. Coming down here on a wild-goose chase is something else. That would make us look ridiculous in the eyes of General Heydrich. Our careers in the SD can’t afford that.”
    “No, I