Prague Fatale

by Philip Kerr

  ‘Thank you, Hans-Achim,’ said Heydrich, as if he and not the Leader had been at the microphone. And then solemnly, as the sound of the Sports Palast crept into that room, he intoned: ‘The Leader.’

  It was typically thoughtful of Heydrich. I suppose he thought it would be a treat for those of us who were feeling a little homesick. And it was: a bit like hearing my mother reading the old story of how the bad boy Friedrich terrorized a lot of animals and people. It remained to be seen if the Third Reich’s ranting answer to bad Friedrich might yet be bitten by the same dog that had eaten the naughty boy’s sausages but, for me at any rate, there was always the hope that he would be. It was hard to think of a treat half as enjoyable as the idea of the Leader being bitten by a greedy dog. His own, perhaps.

  In the corridor outside the library a man was on the telephone, and I poked my head out of the door to see who among Heydrich’s guests had dared to make or take a call in the middle of Hitler’s speech. Whoever he was I certainly didn’t blame him. Even at the best of times the Leader was always too loud for me. Probably he’d honed his oratorical skills in the trenches, during bombardments.

  Not that you couldn’t have heard every rasping word of the broadcast in the corridor. The radio was an AEG Super Orchestra as big as a Polish peasant’s barn, and with the speech playing at full volume there was no chance of not hearing it almost anywhere in the house. Probably you could have heard the speech at the centre of the earth.

  ‘No, you did the right thing in calling me here, Sergeant Soppa.’

  The man speaking was Oscar Fleischer, head of the Gestapo’s Resistance Section in Prague – the same man who had been taunted so infamously by one of the Three Kings.

  ‘All right, I’ll be there in half an hour. Just don’t let the bastard die until I get there. He did? So it was him after all.’

  Fleischer caught my eye and turned his back on me.

  ‘No, no, I’m perfectly certain he’ll want to know. Yes, of course I’ll tell him. I’ll do it right now. Yes. Goodbye.’

  Fleischer replaced the telephone and, grinning excitedly, scribbled something on a piece of paper before handing it to Captain Pomme and then running upstairs, two steps at a time.

  I lit a cigarette and drifted out into the corridor next to Captain Pomme.

  ‘Good news?’ I asked.

  ‘I should say so,’ said the adjutant and went back into the library without further eludication.

  I was about to follow when I glanced out the window above the telephone and had a good view of Heydrich’s other adjutants – Kuttner and Kluckholn – standing under the flagpole on the front lawn. Although the window was open, I couldn’t hear what was said – not with the radio in the library so loud – but it was plain that a heated argument was in progress, indeed that the two men were on the edge of exchanging blows. I was about to go outside and play Saturday night policeman when Kuttner strode angrily up the drive toward the gatehouse. A moment later Fleischer, wearing belts and his cap, galloped downstairs again and went straight out the front door as a car drew up and then took him away in a furious spray of gravel.

  A little disappointed that I was not going to break up a fight between two SS officers, I turned my attention back to what was being broadcast in the library.

  Hitler’s speech was the traditional opening of the Winter Relief Campaign. This was the Nazi Party’s annual charitable drive to provide food and shelter for the less fortunate during the coming winter months and was as near as it ever got to real socialism. Failure to donate was not an option. People who forgot to donate were quite likely to find their names in the local newspaper. Or sometimes, worse.

  Hitler’s oratorical style for the Winter Relief speech was calculated to impress rather more than the actual content and usually it wasn’t so much what he said as the way he said it. But my normal reaction was that it was a little like listening to Emil Jannings recite a bit of cudgel verse, Caruso singing a song from a Silly Symphony or Mark Antony eulogizing a dead cat. This year it was different, however, as it soon became clear that there was more at stake than a few fat Germans going hungry in January. As well as the more predictable bromides about the glory of giving and being generous – something that was second nature to us Germans, of course – the Leader proceeded to make an announcement concerning the beginning of ‘the great decisive battle of the coming year’, which would be devastating to the enemy.

  Now many of us in that library and in the country at large were already under the impression that ‘the great decisive battle’ was already as good as won. We had certainly been told as much by Doctor Goebbels on several previous occasions. But here was Hitler more or less admitting that he’d bet the family silver on what was yet to happen, that he’d gambled all of our futures on something that was not a cast-iron certainty; and the upshot was that anyone listening to him now was left inescapably with the distinct idea that things in the East were not going entirely to plan for our hitherto invincible armed forces.

  When the speech and the thunderous applause that greeted it in the Sports Palast had finally concluded and the AEG radio was, at last, turned off by Major Dr Ploetz, it was immediately apparent that there were several others in that library who had the same thought as me: someone in the government – Hitler himself, perhaps? – had woken up to the painful reality of just what Germany had undertaken to do in Russia. And this being the Third Reich of course, which was based on lies, it meant that things were probably much worse than we had been told.

  Our sombre faces told the same grim story. Indeed, General von Eberstein, who was some big noise in the SS general staff, may actually have muttered some desperate imprecation to a God who was certainly some place else, if anywhere at all. General Hildebrandt, who was Heydrich’s equivalent rank in Danzig, merely hurled his cigarette into the fireplace as if he was as disgusted with it as he was with everything else.

  This might have been what prompted Heydrich to say a few words, to resurrect our visible lack of enthusiasm. More likely it was Fleischer’s handwritten note that Captain Pomme had handed him a few minutes earlier. Heydrich himself was grinning like he’d just eaten the last slice of honey-cake.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ he said. ‘If I could have your attention for just a few more minutes. I’ve been given a note by Criminal Commissar Fleischer of the Gestapo, which contains some excellent news. As most of you know, since May of this year we’ve had two of the Three Kings – Josef Balaban and Josef Masin – in custody at Pankrac Prison, here in Prague. These are, of course, two of the three leaders of Czech terrorism here in Bohemia. However, the third king, Melchior, as we like to call him, has eluded us. Until now. It seems that one of our two prisoners – I don’t know which, but somehow I feel sure that his name must be Josef – has agreed to cooperate with our inquiries and, finally, has revealed that Melchior’s real name is Vaclav Moravek, formerly a captain in the Czech Army. We have already begun a search for him here in Prague and at his home town of Kolin, near Losany, and it is now expected that we shall shortly make an arrest.’

  I felt oddly sick. It seemed that while we’d been stuffing ourselves with Veal Holstein and Leipziger Everything, a brave man had been tortured into revealing the name of the most wanted man in the Third Reich.

  ‘Bravo,’ said one of my brother officers, an Abwehr major named Thummel.

  Others also present applauded this news, which seemed to please Heydrich no end, and there he might, and perhaps should, have left the matter. But full of his own importance, Heydrich continued to talk for several more minutes. He was not, however, a public speaker. Self-conscious and calculating, he lacked Hitler’s common touch and rhetorical flourish. His voice was pitched too high to inspire men; worst of all, he used a string of big German words where one or two smaller ones would have worked better. Of course, this was typical of the Nazis, for whom language was often used to mask their own ignorance and stupidity – which they possessed in an inexhaustible supply – as well as to give their wo
rds the placebo effect of authority; like a doctor who has an impressive Latin name for what is wrong with you, but sadly not a cure.

  Fortunately for everyone present, Captain Kuttner and Kritzinger the butler appeared with champagne and a tray of Bohemian glass flutes, and before long there was something of a party atmosphere in that library. I drank a glass without much pleasure and, when I thought I was unobserved, I slipped away onto the terrace and smoked a cigarette in the darkness. It felt like somewhere I belonged – a crepuscular world of creatures that hooted and howled and where one might hide to avoid larger predators.

  After a while I glanced through the leaded library window and seeing no sign of Heydrich, I decided I might sneak off to bed. But I had not reckoned on Heydrich’s study being immediately at the top of the first flight of stairs; the doors were open and he was seated behind his desk signing some papers under the cold bespectacled eye of Colonel Jacobi. Insouciantly I headed toward the north wing corridor and my room; but if I had hoped not to catch the General’s eye I was quickly disappointed.

  ‘Gunther,’ he said, hardly looking up from his signature file. ‘Come in.’

  ‘Very well, sir.’

  Entering Heydrich’s study in the Lower Castle at Jungfern-Breschan I had the distinct feeling that I was in a smaller, more intimate version of the Leader’s own study at the Reich Chancellery, and this would have been typical of Heydrich. Not that there was very much that was small or intimate about that room. The ceiling was about four metres high and there were marble relief columns on the walls, a fireplace as big as a Mercedes, and enough green carpet on the floor for a decent game of golf. The refectory-style desk had more glass protecting its smooth oak surface than a good-sized shop window. On this were a marble-urn lamp, a couple of telephones, a leather blotter, an ink-stand, and a brass model of a plane – quite possibly the same Siebel Fh 104 he used to fly himself to and from Berlin. In the arched window was a bronze bust of the Leader, and behind a throne-sized desk chair was a green silk wall-hanging with a gold German eagle holding onto a laurel wreath enclosing a swastika, as if it was something worth stealing.

  Heydrich put down his fountain pen and leaned back in the chair.

  ‘That girl back at your hotel,’ he said. ‘Arianne Tauber. Have you called her to tell her you won’t be coming to see her tonight?’

  ‘Not yet, sir.’

  ‘Then don’t. Have Klein drive you into Prague. I think I will be safe enough tonight, don’t you?’

  ‘If you say so sir.’

  ‘Oh no. In future it’s for you to say so. That was rather the point of your appointment. But I’m sure you’ll get the hang of it. Meet me at Pecek Palace tomorrow morning at ten o’ clock. I have a meeting there to coordinate the arrest of this Moravek fellow.’

  ‘Very well, sir. And thank you.’

  I may even have clicked my heels and bowed my head. Working for Heydrich was like being friendly with a vicious tom cat while you were looking around for the nearest mouse hole.

  CHAPTER 13

  Arianne was pleased to see me, of course, although not as pleased as I was to see her, in our bed, alone, naked and willing to use her body to help divert my thoughts from Heydrich, Jungfern-Breschan, the Three Kings and Pecek Palace. I told her nothing of my worries. Where Heydrich was concerned, it was best to know very little, as I was beginning to discover myself. What did I tell her as, exhausted by our love-making, we lay intertwined like two primitive figures carved from the same piece of antler-horn? Only that my duties kept me out of Prague, in Jungfern-Breschan, otherwise I should certainly have visited her at the Imperial Hotel before now.

  ‘That’s all right,’ she said. ‘Really, I’m quite happy here on my own. You’ve no idea how nice it is just to sit and read a book, or to walk around the city by myself.’

  ‘I do,’ I muttered. ‘I can imagine, anyway.’

  ‘I left a message for my brother. And there are plenty of other Germans in Prague I can talk to. As a matter of fact, this hotel is full of Germans. There’s a very beautiful girl in a suite on the same floor as us who’s having an affair with some SS general. And she’s a Jew. Doesn’t that sound romantic?’

  ‘Romantic? It sounds dangerous.’

  Arianne shrugged that off. ‘Her name is Betty Kipsdorf and she’s utterly sweet.’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘The general? Konrad something. He’s more than twice her age but she says you really wouldn’t know it.’ She laughed. ‘On account of the fact that he used to be a gymnastics teacher.’

  I said I didn’t know who that could be. And I didn’t. I wasn’t exactly on first-name terms with any SS generals, even the ones I knew.

  ‘He’s very vigorous, apparently. For a general. Me, I always say that if you want a job done and done properly it’s a captain you want. Not some effete flamingo with clockwork heels.’

  Flamingos were what the ranks called officers of the General Staff, a reference to the red stripes on their trouser legs.

  ‘What do you know about flamingos?’

  ‘You’d be surprised who we get through the doors of the Jockey Bar.’

  ‘No. But I’m still surprised that you’d prefer a captain to one of them.’

  ‘And perhaps a little suspicious.’

  ‘That’s probably no fault of yours.’

  ‘We’d get on like a house on fire if you weren’t a cop, don’t you think so, Parsifal?’

  ‘These are the times we live in, I’m afraid. All sorts of things make me suspicious, angel. Two aces in a row. Double-sixes. A sure thing for the state lottery. A kind word or a compliment. Venus rising from the sea. I’m the kind of Fritz who’s apt to look for a maker’s mark on the scallop shell.’

  ‘I might get insulted if I knew what any of that was about. After all, there’s a little part of you that’s still in me.’

  ‘Now it’s my turn to get insulted.’

  ‘Don’t be, Gunther. I enjoyed it, a lot. I think that maybe you underestimate yourself.’

  ‘Perhaps. I might even call it an occupational hazard except that, so far, it’s helped to keep me alive.’

  ‘Is staying alive so very important to you?’

  ‘No. Then again I’ve seen the alternatives, and at close quarters. In Russia. Or twenty years ago, back in the trenches.’

  She gave me a little squeeze, the kind that feels like a wonderful sort of conjuring trick and that doesn’t need any limbs. Whenever a woman holds me tight like that it’s the best argument there is against the solipsistic idea that one can be truly certain only of the existence of one’s own mind.

  ‘How much more suspicious would you get if I said I’d fallen for you, Gunther?’

  ‘You’d have to say it a lot for me to believe it might be true.’

  ‘Maybe I will.’

  ‘Yeah. Maybe. When you’ve said it the first time we can review the situation. But right now it’s just a hypothetical.’

  ‘All right, I—’

  She paused for a moment, uttering a sigh that was as unsteady as a whippet’s hind leg as I nudged up deep against the edge of her latest thought.

  ‘Go on. I’m listening.’

  ‘It’s true, Parsifal. I’m falling for you.’

  ‘You’re a long time in the air, angel. By now anyone else would have hit the ground.’ I nudged into her again. ‘Hard.’

  ‘Damn you, Gunther.’

  Her breath was hot in my ear except it sounded cold and erratic, like someone laughing silently.

  I prompted her a little more and said, ‘Go on. Let’s hear what it sounds like.’

  ‘All right. I love you. Satisfied?’

  ‘Not by a long way. But I will be, if this keeps up.’

  She hit me on the shoulder but there was pleasure on her face. ‘You sadistic bastard.’

  ‘I’m a Nazi. You said so yourself. Remember?’

  ‘No, but you’re also rather wonderful, Gunther. All the more so because you don’t realize
it. Since Karl, my husband, there have been other men. But you’re the first man I’ve cared anything about since he died.’

  ‘Stop talking.’

  ‘Go ahead and make me.’

  I didn’t say anything. Conversation between us had become unnecessary. We didn’t need speech to act out a story that many others had told before. It wasn’t original but it felt like it was – an almost silent film that seemed both familiar and new. We were still performing our own highly stylized homage to German expressionism when the telephone rang on the bedside table.

  ‘Leave it,’ I said.

  ‘Is that wise?’

  ‘It sounds like trouble.’

  It stopped ringing.

  When our own motion picture finished, she got up to fetch one of my cigarettes.