“Incredible,” they exclaimed almost in one voice.
“Now, listen carefully,” said the Russian.
He briefly recounted the story. The two wounded colonels met by chance in the field hospital in May 1943. Fritz von Schwabe was seriously wounded, a hopeless case, but Klaus Hempf’s injuries were less severe. The latter expected to be promoted to general as soon as he was discharged from the hospital and sent to a new front. His colleague was waiting only to die.
It was the sort of deathbed friendship that was common in military hospitals. The officers opened their hearts to each other. The dying man grew nostalgic as his strength ebbed and as he left his last wishes. The colonels shared a common interest in the Balkans. Klaus Hempf was to be transferred there after he left hospital. Fritz von Schwabe had dreamed of such a posting because his bosom friend from university, Gurameto, was there. Both had read the popular novels of Karl May, which extolled the local customs, especially those of the Albanians: hospitality, the word of honour, the Kanun of Lekë Dukagjini. Gurameto had often talked about these things.
Clearly Fritz would not be going anywhere and least of all to Albania as he had promised his friend. So he asked his fellow-officer to carry out his dying wish, if destiny led him there: to seek out his friend and bid him farewell. He gave his address: Dr Gurameto, 22 Varosh Street, Gjirokastër.
Klaus promised. It was 11 May 1943. Fritz died, practically in his arms.
Klaus might have forgotten his vow if he had not by chance been in command of the tank regiment entering Albania four months later on 16 September 1943. The name of the city reminded him of his promise. He found the address in his notebook. And so the events as we know them unfolded: his meeting with Dr Gurameto, the sudden whim to present himself as his friend, the invitation and the dinner.
“This sounds like a romantic movie, no?” asked the Russian investigator. “Or a fairy tale. That’s what you kept shouting during the interrogation, didn’t you? ‘What is this fairy tale? What does it mean? Speak!’”
They nodded that this was true.
“But you see, it’s no fairy tale. Dr Gurameto is not lying. All this actually happened. This is not speculation or rumour. Our files prove everything.”
The Russian investigator now produced from the file some photographs of written pages, extracts from Klaus Hempf’s diary. “Does this dinner strike you as mysterious? There is no mystery at all. Here is a record of the conversation, written the next morning with exemplary accuracy.”
He also handed over four typed pages.
“You look as if you’ve seen a ghost. Now take a look at the rubber stamp at the top of each page.”
There was the Nazi emblem with the word “Gestapo”. Their skin crept more than at the sight of any ghost.
“Didn’t it ever occur to you that one of the colonel’s aides at the famous dinner would be a Gestapo man? Here are his notes, which we found in the Gestapo archive. You see, we know everything.”
The Russian laughed.
“You may ask, so this hero of a colonel was being watched? Of course he was. At that time everybody was suspected of something. You didn’t become a suspect; you were one already. But now after the good news here comes the bad. In some cases we don’t know everything, and this is one of them.”
He sipped the last of his coffee.
“There is one vital element we don’t know, and that is why Colonel Klaus Hempf, there on the city square, did not tell Dr Gurameto that he brought a message from his college friend, but said that he himself was Fritz von Schwabe.”
For a moment he pinned the two Albanians in his stare.
“Was it a whim? Of course it was. Hempf’s personal file describes him as an impulsive, even unreliable character. It’s a characteristic of these headstrong, reckless types. But we don’t know the real reason behind this caprice. The riddle remains unsolved and this mystery lies behind the dinner. How can we find out this secret?”
He requested a second cup of coffee and continued as the others listened in silence.
“The authors of this conundrum now lie dead and buried.”
The Albanian investigators listened in bewilderment.
“They took the truth to their graves,” the Russian added. “But before we ask how we can dig up this truth, we must ask ourselves if we need it. Dr Gurameto talked about the German strategy for this country, secret agreements and the like. At the time these things were important but now they are merely the politics of a bygone era. Albania is now a communist country. This story is finished. But let me say again, there is a mystery behind this dinner. From the moment that the German colonel introduces himself as a visitor from the next world, we are in the dark. Now, listen carefully to me.”
The atmosphere was heavy on that night of 27 February 1953. Shaqo Mezini could not sleep. Lightning was bad for sleep, he had heard. He stood up several times and went to the window, watching the jagged forks above the prison. He had not seen such lightning for a long time. It was called false lightning, he remembered. His thoughts whirred compulsively. What if the wire of the lightning conductor breaks? He imagined the lightning carried into the depths of the prison, down to the Cave of Sanisha, and Gurameto burned to a cinder.
It was almost midnight. He seized his winter coat that lay thrown across the chair, silently descended the stairs and went out into the street.
The staff car of the Interior Ministry was waiting at the end of the alley, with Arian Ciu inside. They muttered a greeting to each other. “What a night!” said his colleague. The car climbed the street with difficulty.
“Dr Gurameto, we have thought a lot about your case.”
“What?” said Arian Ciu in a tired voice.
“Nothing. Was I talking to myself?”
“That’s what it seemed to me.”
Shaqo Mezini had thought about what he would say. “Dr Gurameto, we believe that you have been honest with us in this investigation. You have ideals. We’re cut from the same cloth as yourself. We have ideals, but different ones to yours. Fortunately we agree on one thing and that is the importance of the nation. You’re convinced that you’re helping the nation in what you do. We think the same. Both sides can’t be right. It’s you or us, Dr Gurameto. Let’s find out which it will be.’
The engine noise changed and they noticed they had entered the castle. The scattered lights barely illuminated the arched vaults. Shaqo Mezini turned over in his mind the same thoughts that had preoccupied him for the last thirty hours.
“We could take the shortest route and convict you on the spot. Collaboration with the occupier. The people are shedding blood on the battlefield against the enemy while you host dinners with music and champagne. That would be sufficient for a bullet in the neck in any country, even France or England.
“We could take it further. Let’s go back to the dinner; what was it for? To celebrate treason and toast the German invasion? How shocking. But it could be still worse. Something else might be behind it. Some horror manifesting itself at your dinner. Something that would appal even the Germans. Something monstrous that is bigger than any of us.”
Shouts of “Halt!” came from the guards, then the prison’s outer gates creaked. A soldier holding an oil lamp lit up the investigators’ faces. Then the car proceeded across the deserted courtyard.
“What were we talking about? Your sentence. Hundreds of people heard the music coming from your dinner. The most obvious thing would be to shoot you and intern your wife and daughter. Your story would end on a sandbank by the river. But we have another idea. We have faith in your vein of idealism and we think that you can do something for the nation. The evening before last, you talked to us about the pro-German elite, which included Mehdi Frashëri, Father Anton Harapi, Eqrem Çabej, Lasgush Poradeci, Mustafa Kruja and, if I recollect rightly, Ernest Koliqi. Even though they all made or were about to make the wrong choice, their purpose was, as you said, to serve an ideal. They sacrificed all they had, their reputation, their ho
nour, in a mistaken cause. One sacrificed his Franciscan habit and another his own talent. But they were thinking of the nation. Big Dr Gurameto, that is all we are asking of you. Do what they did.”
The car stopped with a jolt.
The inner gates creaked louder than the outer pair. The investigators walked in silence behind the guard, who led them down the long vaulted passage. They found Gurameto huddled on a straw mattress. They helped him to sit up on a chair at the table and brought him coffee with milk.
“Thank you,” said the prisoner in German.
It took him some time to collect himself.
It was hard for Shaqo Mezini too. His head felt as heavy as lead. He recited, like a monologue learned by heart, the greater part of what had been running through his mind for the last thirty hours. When he came to the words, “Do what they did”, he had a sudden mental block.
The prisoner looked at him helplessly, uncomprehending.
“What the hell,” the investigator said to himself, and leafed through the file at random. A short letter in German caught his eye.
“What do you say to this?” he said quietly, handing it to the prisoner.
Gurameto took it from him with a shaking hand.
“This is from my Jewish colleague. This is the second time you’ve asked me.”
“Of course. The letter was intercepted by Soviet intelligence.”
Shaqo Mezini read the translated text for the umpteenth time. “My dear colleague, what has happened to you? I have had no news from you since I arrived in Jerusalem. How are you? Have they bothered you because of me? Please write. My heartfelt greetings, Jakoel.”
What the hell, Shaqo Mezini thought again. What was the relevance of this letter to what he wanted to say? His memory had never failed him like this before. This bloody doctor had worn him out.
“Do what they did,” he said again. This was where he had got stuck. He held his head in the palm of his hand.
“I’ve got it,” he almost exclaimed aloud. His train of thought came back to him. He was talking about the dinner. Of course, that was where it all began. That was the riddle. Nobody could penetrate its innermost depths, its darkest recesses, not all the investigators of the communist camp, not even the Nazis in their day. Not Colonel Klaus Hempf, nor Gurameto himself.
This mystery loomed above everything, and its roots ran deep. Political regimes fell and states were overthrown but the spores of this organism survived. The “Joint” was one of them. The participants themselves did not understand how far it stretched. Murder was only part of its activities. Would Hitler have been a target? His turn might have come. Do something for your country.
All the communist secret services had been on the trail of the “Joint”. Stalin was waiting. Did Dr Gurameto understand what this meant? That Stalin himself was waiting . . .
Let Dr Gurameto make this sacrifice for his country.
Sooner or later, the “Joint” would be exposed. Let it be Albania’s destiny to do this. Let Albania unmask it and become the golden boy of the bloc, of Stalin himself.
Shaqo Mezini was exhausted. The prisoner’s face showed not the slightest comprehension. The investigators tried to calm themselves. In cold, precise terms they told Gurameto what they expected of him. A simple thing, a confession. In other words, a signature, admitting he was a member of the “Joint”, as no doubt he was. Just like his old college friend, Fritz von Schwabe and the other colonel, Klaus Hempf. And Little Dr Gurameto, who had already signed.
He had no reason to stare at them like that. He had said it himself during the famous dinner. “I’m not Albania. Just as you’re not Germany. We’re something else.”
“You were members of the ‘Joint’, Jews, Germans, Albanians, Hungarians. You held your meetings everywhere. The meeting in Albania was just one in a series.”
The investigators interrupted one another in their haste.
“You were everywhere. Like the plague.”
Everybody knew about the Zionist “Joint” and felt its presence, but it was invisible to the eye. Only Gurameto could see it, only he could fathom the unfathomable. He could explain this dinner and illuminate its dark void. So they could finally get out of this cave. “Talk, you . . . de—”
Whether they pronounced the word “devil” before they saw the shackled man shake his head or just afterwards, they could not tell, neither then nor later. They recollected only a scream of “It’s finished!” after which Shaqo Mezini held on to his colleague to keep himself upright.
At three in the morning they gave the order for the prisoner to be put to torture.
When dawn broke the torture was still continuing. People came and went through the chambers of the cave like ghosts. The shouts of the torturers were heard, interspersed with Gurameto’s groans. “The name of the chief. His nickname. Your cover name. The secret code. Talk!”
The tapping of a cane was heard in the semi-darkness. It must be Blind Vehip who for some reason they had brought there, only to take him away again.
The shouts were gruff, unvarying. “After Stalin, who? Where? You? When? With poison? Radiation? Talk!”
The mournful strains of a gypsy song were heard from somewhere. Shaqo Mezini remembered the day when his fiancée had left him. He had heard a song like this in the distance. He could not remember the words but they more or less went “You said farewell to me/But not to my knife in your heart.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
He had the feeling that this was not the first time he had dreamed of Sanisha. She seemed composed and aloof, especially towards himself. Finally she set aside her indifference and, turning her pale face towards him asked, “Is your investigation about me?”
Shaqo Mezini shrugged his shoulders, which seemed to him the best he could do. It was a kind of answer that combined an apology (he was only doing his job) with a feeble protest (an investigation in your cave doesn’t necessarily mean it’s about you).
She was not at all angry, but not grateful either. In different circumstances this ravished woman might have opened her heart to him. “Officer, if you only knew what they did to me.” But she remained cold and distant.
He heard the indistinct buzz of conversation around him. There was a double door through which he could see sparkling chandeliers and people moving to and fro. He heard the name of Stalin, but it seemed to him improper to ask what was happening. Then he understood: Comrade Stalin was hosting a dinner in the Kremlin. Journalists were relaying the news. “Comrade Stalin, on this occasion . . . All communists should know that the peoples of the world owe a debt . . . ”
Sanisha appeared again among the guests. “I don’t care,” she said to Shaqo Mezini, “but I’m sure my brother won’t like it. No brother wants his sister’s rape investigated.” The investigator shrugged his shoulders again. He wanted to ask if she was invited to Comrade Stalin’s dinner. Comrade Stalin, the Father of the Peoples. Then she said, “Perhaps you’re no longer frightened of my brother, Ali Pasha Tepelene. In my day, everybody was terrified of him.”
It was the sort of dream that you could, with a little effort, snap yourself out of. Shaqo Mezini forced it away but it lingered in his mind. Even after he opened his eyes he could hear the words, “Comrade Stalin, Comrade Stalin, the glorious leader.”
He leaped out of bed and ran to the window. Even before flinging the window open, he identified the source of his torment. The voice came from a huge loudspeaker on top of the castle. You did not need to hear the words to know this meant bad news. Loudspeakers did not broadcast anything else. The words came distorted, fragmentary. “At this hour of trial, when Comrade Stalin is suffering . . . ”
At least he’s not dead, Shaqo Mezini thought.
On the street, as he ran towards the Interior Ministry’s branch office, he heard the broadcast distinctly from another direction. It was a bulletin on the patient’s condition. “Breathing difficulties . . . intermittent . . .”
He sprinted across the office yard. His colleague Ari
an Ciu, with a pale, waxen face, was trying to make a phone call. “All the lines are engaged,” he said with a guilty look.
Shaqo Mezini, short of breath, did not reply. “Are there any instructions?” he finally gasped.
A short call had come from headquarters in Tirana. “Everybody at their post. This is an order.” There was no further explanation.
“At our posts,” Shaqo Mezini thought. “Of course.”
An inscrutable expression crossed Arian Ciu’s face.
“No more?” Shaqo Mezini asked. The lines had been busy for the past hour. “Is the chief in his office?”
“Yes. Our enemies are rejoicing too soon. That was all he said.”
“Are you scared?” Shaqo Mezini asked suddenly.
Arian Ciu did not know where to look. “No. What do you mean by that?”
Shaqo Mezini was overcome by a wave of emotion he had never felt before, a barely resistible urge to lay his head on the chest of his office colleague, and say, “Hold on to me, brother. We’re both lost.”
The door opened noisily. The chief of investigations entered, stared at them as if surprised to find them there, and just as noisily departed again.
They stood in silence and looked towards the window. It gradually dawned on them that they were both looking in the direction of the military airport. How incredible to think back to the time when the investigators from Berlin and Moscow had landed there.
At midday the station chief held a short meeting in his office. The latest bulletin reported no change in Stalin’s condition. The orders from headquarters remained the same: everybody at their posts. The radio was broadcasting classical music and two of the typists were in tears.
At four in the afternoon Shaqo Mezini jumped to his feet. His face glowered. “Get up,” he said to his colleague. “Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“You know where.”
Without a word to anybody and with unsteady steps they set off for the prison. Sometimes the noise of their footsteps seemed too much to bear and the cobbles cracked explosively under their boots, and sometimes the sound was muffled, as if they were walking on clouds.