by Ben Pastor
“I was in Rome when news came that the chief had been dismissed. ‘Smiling’ Albert Kesselring got me out of trouble in the Ukraine with an assignment to Italy, where I was kept on ice but never officially laid off. The new owners never asked me, either.”
“Are you still in touch with them?”
“That’s how I got a lift here. Charity among castaways, until they blow us out of the water.” Bora turned slightly, to avoid the stare of the man in the wheelchair. “What about the chief?”
“Seems that after his cashiering he was given a sinecure as Head of the Special Office for Economic Warfare; other than that, he broods at home with his basset hound. When you’ve been a naval hero, an admiral, and have led German army counter-intelligence for umpteen years, it’s either that or a bullet in the head.”
It would have been the perfect cue to mention Dr Reinhardt-Thoma’s suspicious death, but Bora had something else in mind.
“I saw Salomon a few hours ago.”
“Ooh, old House-in-Masuria! I heard he finally made full colonel. I thought he never would. Is he in town?”
“Apparently. He sought me out.”
“What for?”
“He’s beside himself.”
Lattmann knew Bora better than anyone, including his family. He immediately caught an edge in his words. “Well, Benno von Salomon is forever hysterical about something. Is it his ‘demons’ again?”
“Don’t know. He wants to meet again tonight. Not that it makes much difference to me. Whatever he’s after, I’m scheduled to leave Berlin in the morning. It’s just that he looked even stranger than in Kharkov. I don’t know, I had the very unpleasant impression that he might be angling for help – I thought maybe you heard something.”
“You see where I am. Something like …?”
“I have no idea. Some pickle he got himself into. But I’ll probably know tonight, whether I want to or not.”
“Martin, you’re not telling me everything. You wouldn’t even mention that crackpot if there wasn’t something else.”
“He dropped names, claiming that they mentioned me to him.”
It was warm in the hall, as if it was a spa or a Roman bath. The fact that the man in the wheelchair seemed to be dozing relaxed him enough to glance his way and count his blessings.
“What can you tell me about Claus von Stauffenberg?”
Lattmann set the bottle on the floor next to his chair. “That he’s Chief of Staff of the Home Army. That he suffered disabling wounds in Africa, but since he was groomed from the start as a General Staff officer they didn’t hurt his career. If anything, quite the opposite. What else? He’s bright – Junkerish, for a Swabian. Those who know him either love or intensely dislike him, which can only be said of interesting people. Full stop.”
“Supposedly it was he who mentioned me to the younger Schulenburg, who then spoke to Salomon.”
In Russia, Lattmann had been in the habit of chewing his fingernails to the quick. A month in the sanatorium had cured him of the practice, as the chest wound had cured him of his pipe-smoking. He lay back in the lounge chair with a pensive, slightly troubled frown.
“Dunno. Schulenburg was always an administrator of sorts. Berlin’s deputy police chief under Count von Heldorff before the war. I think you’d call him a ‘Prussian socialist’. All I know is that he partied with some of those who ‘became unavailable’” – (the standard euphemism for being jailed) – “after the exposure of the foreign currency scheme, with which he helped Jews who left the Fatherland. That cost us our own General Oster last year, and Moltke, too. But such associations have more to do with rank and status than with politics. Didn’t you serve at the German embassy in Moscow when old man Schulenburg headed it up? That’s probably how Fritz-Dietlof knew about you. Why, are you really worried about this?”
Bora uncrossed his flawlessly booted legs. “I received a summons to the Criminal Police headquarters, for tonight.”
“Wait.” Lattmann waved his hands as if the words were coming in too fast. “Wait, wait, wait. Let me understand — no, hang on, wait. Sister!”
A sour-faced army nurse, in a seersucker smock and white apron, approached from the other side of the hall, and then stood there as if the two men were uninteresting shrubs in a flower bed. Lattmann asked her to bring glasses and a bottle opener for the vodka.
“You shouldn’t be drinking, Major.”
“Well, I shouldn’t have been wounded, either.”
“Only one.”
“Cross my heart and hope to die.”
After the bottle was uncorked, she remained there with her arms folded, to make sure the officers poured no more than one drink. She even went as far as to take the vodka away as soon as the glasses were half-filled.
Downing liquor on an empty stomach shot a flush through Bora’s system. He quickly emptied his glass, to get it over with.
“I should also tell you that my dead relative – my late paternal aunt’s husband – was always an … independent thinker, shall we say. He staunchly opposed the ‘lives unworthy of life’ programme, which he helped to close down with his petitions and complaints. For this and other reasons – like adopting Dr Goldstein’s orphaned son in ’35 – he stepped on several toes through the years. I won’t bore you with details, but no sooner did I arrive than a colleague of his confidentially suggested the possibility of a forced suicide. There’s nothing much I can do about it here and now, Bruno. Besides, it’s nearly impossible in these cases to prove whether one has killed himself freely or not.”
“Well, we Germans are melancholy by nature: when you add political ostracism, personal losses and bombs over your head, the mix can push one over the edge. How well did you know your uncle?”
“He was our paediatrician when Peter and I were children, though I suspect the General considered him far too liberal and freethinking for our own good. In my adult years I seldom saw him.”
“So why should the head of the Kripo want to discuss him with you? If politics was involved in your uncle’s end, I wouldn’t bet any money that it’s a reason to call you in. Was it a written summons, or did Nebe send someone?”
“Neither. Carl-Friedrich Goerdeler told my mother before the funeral.”
“And what does he have to do with the Criminal Police? Isn’t he a manager at Bosch?”
“As far as I know.” Bora took out the note from his pigeonhole at the hotel and showed it to him. Lattmann read silently, moving his lips.
“Why does he follow up a spoken message with a written one, which incidentally adds no information?”
“Exactly. I don’t want Nina to worry, but you understand …”
“And how. Nebe is SS: he and the ’Stapo must be thick.” Lattmann finished his vodka and passed his tongue around the inside of the glass to gather the last drops. “On a positive note, I recall rumours that. in Russia, he inflated the number of those given ‘special treatment’ in his jurisdiction. They say it saved lives.”
“Yes, I heard the story as well. Forgive me if I don’t believe it.”
“Well, Nebe could have lied simply to get the most credit with the least effort. The end result would be the same, if not the humanitarian intentions behind it. The ’Stapo and SS were like door-to-door salesmen those days, vying for efficiency bonuses.”
“It does not change the fact that, like the Gestapo, the Criminal Police is now part of Kaltenbrunner’s Reich Security Service.”
“The RSHA? That applies to what remains of our ‘shop’ as well. Martin, has anything happened in Italy to make you so skittish?”
“Nothing that hasn’t happened elsewhere. Except for the partisan grenade, of course.”
“You know that’s not what I mean.”
“And you know I clam up if you push me.”
Lattmann screwed up his mouth. “Just as I thought. Blast. I’m stuck here and powerless like a lump on a log. I don’t know what to tell you about the Kripo, but stay away from Salomon, whatever is ail
ing him. Such frantic blabbermouths spell nothing but trouble. No. You don’t work for him anymore, Martin. You owe him nothing. Stay away —” He interrupted himself: “See that nurse? Andreas is the name. She’s a sneaky one, planted here to spy. If she looks this way, look amused, as if we were just chatting casually.”
The nurse in question was crossing the floor with heaps of bloody cotton in an enamelled tray. It was a duty Bora had last seen Nora Murphy carry out in Rome; he’d been hopelessly heartsick but unwilling to let her know. Luckily the nurse was in a hurry, because he didn’t feel much like pretending.
“The good one,” Lattmann resumed, “is Sister Velhagen, the one who grumbled but let me drink. I’ll tell you what, Martin. There are so many of us vegetating here that rumours can surface if you know how to ask. I have access to a telephone. When are you supposed to meet Nebe? Nine o’clock? Fine. If I learn anything, I’ll pass it on before then. My advice, in any case, is not to meet House-in-Masuria.”
“Thank you. I’ll avoid him if I can.”
Lattmann saw through Bora’s composure, and worried about him.
“You had better.”
Flippancy, his personal antidote to serious turns of events, was not always well timed, but he tried it.
“Say,” he added familiarly, and it was like a verbal wink, “out with it before you go, Martin: now that Dikta is out of the picture – have you got someone new?”
“No.”
“I could introduce you to someone.”
“No.”
“Why? I could …”
“I don’t want to meet someone. Drop it, Bruno. I’m not in the right mood.”
“Oh. You mean you don’t feel like sex?”
“I feel like it. I’m simply not in the right mood.”
“What nonsense! Is it because of the hand?”
“What do you think?”
Lattmann disregarded Bora’s crossness. “You’re wrong, and I’m sorry for it. Anyhow, the girl in question needs to get laid, or I’ve lost my knack for observation.”
“Guess what, she’s in luck: there are lashings of available men in Berlin.”
“But I’d bet good money that she hasn’t had a shag in a while. Her boyfriend is here, in a coma, so you see that a little impairment is altogether negligible.”
Bora stood, ready to leave. “Christ, listen to yourself. I should slip under the sheets of a defenceless man? You know me better than that.”
“I do. And I agree with you: we haven’t yet sunk to such a level of barbarism that meeting a woman means jumping on top of her. Still, one night in Berlin and then back to the front without a bit of fun … Snuggling a bit always did it for me.”
“No. Thank you all the same.” Bora’s time at Beelitz was running out. With the car expected back at the Air Ministry in an hour and half, he had to leave now if he wanted to make it. “I have to go, Bruno. Get well soon, and give my love to Eva and the little ones.”
Lattmann clung to Bora’s hand. “Will do. It was good seeing you, too. I wish we had more time to catch up. See that you take care.”
5:00 P.M.
When Bora returned to the car, he found the driver slumped in the front seat, fast asleep. This too was an effect of Pervitin: you functioned frenetically for days, and then collapsed. The car window was open, so he knocked energetically on the windscreen until the young man started awake with a mumbled series of apologies. Bora did not wait for him to open the car door; he climbed in on his own and said drily, “If we do not arrive according to schedule, I’ll hold you responsible.”
Easier said than done. Shortly before the Michendorf turnoff, a Field Police patrol halted them. They were searching, they said, for Russian prisoners who had escaped hours earlier after cutting a sentry’s throat.
“So?” Bora shot back. “We certainly do not have them on board. I am expected in Berlin, let us through.”
“As soon as the dogs are done tracking along the side of the road ahead, Lieutenant Colonel.”
Recently shorn German shepherds accompanied the policemen. They were busily pulling on their long leashes up and down the paved road and across the wooded countryside. Ordering the driver to push ahead, around the police vehicles, was not advisable. In the heat of the afternoon, Bora opened his door and rested his foot on the asphalt. Moments dragged by before one of the dogs, with a singularly ferocious look, scented something in the air and started away from the others. He dragged his handler in the direction of the air force vehicle. He would have lunged against it, had he not been restrained, which was more than enough for the patrol to pay attention to it.
“Please, Lieutenant Colonel, you’ll have to get out,” the leading NCO urged. “And you too.” He gestured to the driver.
This was no time to make things worse by resisting. Bora got out of the car, and remained motionless and unresponsive when the dog circled him and sniffed his riding boots and their steel spurs. The airman’s dusty ankle boots drew the attention of a second dog, which was soon keen to enter the car so that he could sniff the pedals under the driver’s seat.
It was evident there were no other passengers on board, but the policemen still threw open all four doors to allow the dogs to search inside the car, and ordered the airman to unlock both the boot and the bonnet. Bora wondered what that scatterbrain might have done while he was inside the sanatorium with Lattmann. He anticipated the Field Police’s question.
“Have you met someone in my absence or left the vehicle unattended?”
The young man looked mystified. He replied that no, he’d met no one and hadn’t walked away, though at some point he’d just stepped away to urinate in the bushes. “I’d been drinking coffee all morning, Lieutenant Colonel.”
Plausible though it was, the statement forced an annoyed Bora to explain to the Field Police where he had gone, and why. A vigorous questioning of the driver ensued, because now they wanted to be shown on a map where exactly he’d relieved himself near the gate of the Beelitz Heilstätte.
After a seemingly endless time, the policemen concluded that the runaways had probably separated after escaping, and that one of them at least had paused or spent the night in the scrubland around the sanatorium, right where the driver had stood the following day.
“Maybe Ivan pissed in the same spot,” one said to the other; then one of them addressed Bora more formally: “Sorry to have held you up. But there are women living alone in the countryside, Lieutenant Colonel, and we can’t risk their safety with such filth running around.”
Right – that’s why Bruno is teaching Eva how to use a gun. And all of this in the heart of Germany. Sitting in the car once more, Bora had no need to berate the driver. They took off like lightning, so that they reached the Air Ministry two minutes early.
“The only reason I’m not turning you in is that I’m in haste,” Bora said grouchily. He left the vodka bottle for his old friend with a thank-you note, and continued on foot towards the Adlon.
The removal of the bomb from the quarter was turning out to be more complicated than expected. Bora watched another fire engine approach and slowly take a left on Voss Strasse. It stood to reason that all the vehicles blocking the streets in the morning were still there, which meant that they would continue working overnight.
Meanwhile, Nina had returned from Dahlem. There were no messages in Bora’s pigeonhole; no one had sought him (not even Salomon or Lattmann), so he asked the concierge to telephone his mother’s suite and ask if he might come up.
When in Berlin, Bora’s parents usually stayed in Grandfather Franz-August’s apartment in Zehlendorf. Nina, however, had taken rooms at the Adlon before; and she happened to occupy the same suite this time as on her last visit, when she’d come to say goodbye to Bora, then bound for the German embassy in Moscow.
As he climbed the stairs, Bora anticipated a typical Adlon combination of well-appointed rooms, with an ample archway trimmed in cane work separating the bedroom from a parlour, no different from the haven
he and Dikta had known so well. Bora fondly recalled the bathroom with its ornate turn-of-the-century tiles, where Dikta would soak in the tub after making love. Or before, joining him in bed drenched like a mermaid.
The sight of a middle-aged chambermaid met him at the top of the stairs. She was pushing a dinner cart from a door at the end of the hallway to the dumb waiter; her weary looks – long hours, little money, perhaps loneliness too – diverted Bora from his recollections, so inopportune before meeting his mother. On the cart, the leftovers on the plates (these days, too, with rations so restricted for all!) rudely reminded him how hungry he was: another embarrassing reaction he swore to conceal from Nina if they dined together later.
Later? Christ, later I have to go to the Criminal Police, a branch of the same service that purged us.
Before knocking he made sure, with a sweep of his fingers across shirt and collar, that he looked impeccable.
7:15 P.M.
Even though she affectionately thanked him for the flowers, tightly clasping his right hand, Nina seemed more anxious than in the morning. Bora assumed that she had heard rumours about his uncle’s suicide from Frau Sommer or Saskia, and regretted not informing her when he’d first learned about them.
Wasting no time, he asked, “How is Saskia?”
“Distraught. To all practical purposes, she is now alone in the world. It’s her intention not to leave the hospital for another week, or until Uncle is buried. He’d been in fine health, and she cannot understand how death could have come so suddenly. The evening before it happened, she was at the house of family friends; it was only in the morning, when they phoned her there from the clinic, that she heard that he was absent from work, and she was worried at once. She supposes he may have suffered from heart failure, because they haven’t had an easy time of it for several years, as you know.”