Prussian Blue (Bernie Gunther, #12)

by Philip Kerr

Prinz Albrechtstrasse was always the quietest street in Berlin and for much the same reason that the remoter parts of the Carpathian Mountains were avoided by all sensible Transylvanians. Like Castle Dracula, number 8 Prinz Albrechtstrasse contained its own pale-faced prince of darkness, and whenever I approached the neo-baroque entrance I couldn’t help but think that the two naked ladies who adorned the broken segmental pediment were actually a pair of vampire sisters married to Heydrich who wandered the building at night in search of some clothes and a good meal.

I’d said enough for the moment. When you sit down with the devil it’s wise not to insult him more than you have to.

There is evil in the best of us, of course; but perhaps just a little bit more in the worst of us.

And there, in hay still warm from the heat of the day and with only a few insects for company, I ate the bread and cheese I’d bought in Chaumont—I even ate a raw onion, too—drank a bottle of beer, smoked my last Camel, and slept as well as any man ever slept who had no job, no home, no friends, no wife, nor any notion of a future. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

A righteous man falls down seven times, and gets up again. You persevere.

I’d always thought there was plenty of time to do a lot of things and yet, now I really thought about it, there had been not a moment to spare.

There’s a limit to how lucky one lucky man can be.

These days it’s only the lawyers and the pedants and the foreign correspondents who worry about how one conducts a case. The proper procedures, the gathering of evidence—these things mean nothing, not anymore. Not since Hitler. He cuts through these decadent superfluities and shows us that the conclusion is everything, Gunther.