Philip Kerr

by Bernard Gunther 06 - If the Dead Rise Not (v5)

  . The opera.” “You’re all surprises, you know that? I never figured you for a music lover.” “I’m not. I stayed for five minutes and then felt an irresistible urge to come here and search for you.” “Hmm. So what does that make me? A flower maiden? Klingsor’s slave—what’s her name? The one in Parsifal

  ?” “I haven’t a clue.” I shrugged. “Like I said, I only stayed five minutes.” Noreen put her arms around my neck. “I hope you brought Parsifal’s holy spear with you, Gunther, because I don’t happen to have one here.” She backed me across the room to the bed. “At least not yet, I don’t.” “You think I should stay with you tonight?” “In my humble opinion, yes.” She shrugged off the peignoir and let it fall onto the thick carpet with a whisper of chiffon. I said, “You never held a humble opinion in your life,” and kissed her. This time she allowed my hands to roam the contours of her body as if they belonged to an impatient masseur. Mostly they stayed on her bottom, my fingers gathering chiffon until I could pull her into my groin. My right hand seemed to be making a miraculous recovery. “So it’s true,” she said. “Adlon room service is the best in Europe.” “The key to running a good hotel,” I said, cupping one of her breasts in my hand, “is to eliminate boredom. Nearly all of our problems are caused by the innocent curiosity of our guests.” “I don’t think I’ve been accused of that,” she said. “Innocence. Not in a long time.” She shook her head. “I’m not the innocent type, Gunther.” I grinned. “I guess you don’t believe me,” she said, pulling a length of hair through her mouth. “Because I’m still wearing clothes.” She pushed me down to sit on the edge of the bed and then stepped back in order to make a performance out of taking off her nightgown. Nude, she was worth a private room in Pompeii, and as far as performances go, it had Parsifal

  beat by several lewd acts. Looking at Noreen, you wondered why anyone ever bothered to draw or paint anything else but a woman’s naked body. Cubes might have done it for Braque, but I liked curves, and Noreen’s were good enough to satisfy Apollonius of Perga and probably Kepler, too. She drew my head against her belly and, pulling my hair, like the coat on a favorite dog, she teased me with the absence of all that made me a man. “Why don’t you touch me?” she said softly. “I want you to touch me. Right now.” She came and sat on my augmented lap and patiently permitted my impudent curiosities with eyes that were closed to anything else but her own pleasure. With nostrils flared, she breathed deeply, like a yogi concentrating her breath. “So what changed your mind?” I asked, bending to kiss her hardening nipple. “About tonight?” “Who says I changed my mind?” she said. “Maybe I planned this all along. Like this is a scene in a play I’ve written.” She pushed off my jacket and started to undo my tie. “This is just what I want your character to do. Maybe you’ve got very little choice in the matter. Do you really feel you have a choice here, Gunther?” “No.” I bit her nipple. “Not now. But I got the impression earlier on that you were playing a little hard to get.” “I am hard to get. Only not to you. You’re the first in a long time.” “I could say the same.” “You could. But it would be a lie. You’re one of the principal characters in my play, remember? I know all about you, Gunther.” She started to unbutton my shirt. “Is Max Reles another character? You do know him, don’t you?” “Do we have to talk about him now?” “It can wait.” “Good. Because I can’t wait. I never could, not since I was a little girl. Ask me about him later, when the waiting is over.”

  18 T

  HE CEILINGS IN THE SUITES at the Adlon were just the right distance from the floor. When you lay on the bed and blew a column of cigarette smoke straight up, the crystal chandelier looked like a remote and icy mountaintop surrounded with an ermine collar of cloud. I’d never paid the ceilings much attention before. Previous erotic encounters with Frieda Bamberger had been furtive, hurried affairs, conducted with one eye on the clock and the other on the door handle, and certainly I’d never felt sufficiently relaxed to fall asleep afterward. But now that I was looking at the lofty heights of this room, I found my soul climbing up the silky walls to sit on the picture rail, like some invisible gargoyle, and then to stare down with forensic fascination on the naked aftermath of what had gone before. Our bare limbs still entwined, Noreen and Gunther lay side by sweating side, like Eros and Psyche fallen from some other, more heavenlike ceiling—although it was hard to imagine anything much more heavenly than what had just occurred. I felt like Saint Peter taking vacant possession of a smart new basilica. “I bet you’ve never even been in one of these beds,” said Noreen, taking the cigarette from my fingers and smoking it with the exaggerated gestures of a drunk or someone onstage. “Have you?” “No,” I lied. “It feels strange.” She hardly wanted to hear about my private trysts with Frieda. Certainly not as much as I wanted to hear about Max Reles. “He doesn’t seem to like you very much,” she said after I mentioned his name again. “Why is that? After all, I’ve been doing a swell job of hiding how much I dislike him. No, really, I despise the man, but he’s a guest of this hotel, which obliges me not to punch him down six flights of stairs and then kick him out the door. That’s what I’d like to do. And I’d do it, too, if I had another job to go to.” “Be careful, Bernie. He’s a dangerous man.” “That much I already know. The question is, how do you know it?” “We met on the SS Manhattan

  ,” she said. “On the voyage from New York to Hamburg. We were introduced at the captain’s table, and occasionally we met up to play gin rummy.” She shrugged. “He wasn’t a good player. Anyway, it was a longish voyage, and a single woman has to expect that she will become the focus of attention for single gentlemen. Maybe even a few married ones. There was another man, besides Max Reles. A Canadian lawyer called John Martin. I had a drink with him, and he got the wrong idea about me. The fact is, he started to believe that he and I—well, to use his words, that he and I had something special going on. Well, we didn’t. No, really we didn’t. But he couldn’t accept that and became something of a nuisance. He told me he loved me and that he wanted to marry me, and I didn’t like it. I tried to avoid him, only that’s not so easy on a boat. “One night, off the coast of Ireland, I mentioned some of this to Max Reles over a game of gin rummy. He didn’t say very much. And it’s quite possible that I’m completely mistaken about this, but the very next day, this man Martin was reported missing, and it was presumed he must have fallen overboard. I believe they carried out a search, but it was for appearance’s sake, since there was no way he could have survived after several hours in the sea. “Anyway, soon after, I formed the impression that Reles had something to do with the poor man’s disappearance. It was something he said. I can’t remember the exact words he used, but I do remember he was smiling when he said it.” Noreen shook her head. “You must think I’m crazy. I mean, this is all completely circumstantial. Which is the main reason I never mentioned this to anyone.” “Not at all,” I said. “There’s nothing wrong with evidence that’s circumstantial. In the right circumstances, that is. What did he say?” “He said something like, ‘It sounds very much as if your irritating little problem has been taken care of, Mrs. Charalambides.’ And then he asked me if I’d pushed him off the boat. Which he seemed to think was funny. I told him I didn’t think it was at all funny and asked him if he thought there was any chance that Mr. Martin might still be alive. To which he then replied, ‘I very much hope not.’ Well, after that, I kept away from him.” “What exactly do you know about Max Reles?” “Not very much. Just what he told me over cards. He said he was a businessman in that way men do when they want to give the impression that what they do isn’t very interesting. He speaks excellent German, of course. And I think some Hungarian. He told me he was on his way to Zurich, so I hardly expected to see him again. And certainly not here. I saw him again for the first time about a week ago. In the library. I had a drink with him, just to be polite. Apparently he’s been here for a while.” “That he has.” “You do believe me, don’t you?” She said it in a way that made me think she m
ight not be telling the truth. Then again, I’m just built that way. Some people like to believe in a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. I’m the type who thinks the pot of gold is being watched by four cops in a car. “You don’t think I imagined it, do you?” “Not at all,” I said, although I did wonder why any man would murder another for a woman who was nothing more than a partner for a game of cards. “From what you’ve told me, I think you came to a very reasonable conclusion.” “You think I should have told the ship’s captain, don’t you? Or the police, when we got to Hamburg.” “With no real evidence to corroborate your story, Reles would only have denied it and made you look a fool. Besides, it’s not like it would have helped the man who drowned.” “All the same, somehow I feel responsible for what happened.” She rolled across the bed, reaching for the ashtray on the bedside table, and stabbed out the cigarette. I rolled after her and caught up only an hour or two later. It was a big bed. I started to kiss her behind, then the small of her back, and then her shoulders. I was just about to sink my fangs into her neck when I noticed the book next to the ashtray. It was the book written by Hitler. She saw that I noticed it, and said, “I’m reading it.” “Why?” “It’s an important book. But reading it doesn’t make me a Nazi, any more than reading Marx makes me a communist. Although, as it happens, I do consider myself to be a communist. Does that surprise you?” “That you think you’re a communist? No, not particularly. The best people are these days. George Bernard Shaw. Even Trotsky, I hear. I like to consider myself a Social Democrat, but since democracy no longer exists in this country, that would be naive.” “I’m glad you’re a democrat. That it’s something that is still important to you. The fact is, I wouldn’t have slept with you if you’d been a Nazi, Gunther.” “Like a lot of people, I might like them a bit more if it was me who was in charge and not Hitler.” “I’m trying to get an interview with him. That’s one of the reasons I’m reading Hitler’s book. Not that I think he will agree to meet me. Most likely I’ll have to make do with seeing the sports minister. I’m meeting him tomorrow afternoon.” “You won’t mention our friend Zak Deutsch, will you, Noreen? Or me, for that matter.” “No, of course I won’t. Tell me something. Do you think he was murdered?” “Maybe. Maybe not. We’ll have a much better idea after we’ve spoken to Stefan Blitz. He’s that geologist I was telling you about. I’m hoping he can shed some light on how a man can drown in salt water in the center of Berlin. You see, it’s one thing when it happens off the coast of Ireland, in the Atlantic Ocean. It’s quite another when it happens in the local canal.” UNTIL THE SPRING OF 1934,Stefan Blitz had been a teacher of geology at Frederick William University, in Berlin. I knew him because sometimes he had helped KRIPO to identify the clay found on the shoes of murder suspects or their victims. He lived in Zehlendorf, in Berlin’s southwest, in a modern housing development called Uncle Tom’s Hut, named after a local tavern and subway shop that were themselves named after the book by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Noreen was intrigued. “I can’t believe they called it that,” she said. “In the States, people would never have dared give it a name like that in case people thought the houses were fit only for Negroes.” I parked the car in front of a four-story apartment building that was as big as a city block. The smooth, modern façade was very slightly curved and pockmarked with different-sized, recessed windows, none of which was on the same level. It looked like a face recovering from a dose of smallpox. There were hundreds, perhaps thousands of these Weimar-built homes in Berlin, and they were about as distinguished as packets of Persil. And yet, although they despised modernism, the Nazis had more in common with its mostly Jewish architects than they might have thought. Nazism and modernism were both products of the inhuman, and when I looked at one of those neat, standardized gray concrete buildings, it wasn’t hard to imagine a neat, standardized detachment of gray storm troopers living in one, like so many rats in a box. It wasn’t like that inside, however—at least not inside Stefan Blitz’s apartment. In contrast to the carefully planned modernism of the exterior, his furniture was old mahogany, tattered upholstery, chipped Wilhelmine ornaments, table oilcloths, and Eiffel Towers of books, with all of the shelves given over to slices of rock. Blitz himself was as tattered as his upholstery and, like any other Jew who was forbidden his way of making a living, he was as thin as a maquette in an artist’s garret and hardly living at all. A hospitable, kind, and generous man, he displayed character traits that made him the very opposite of the grasping bogeyman Jew so often caricatured in the Nazi press. Nevertheless, that was what he looked like: a lecher in the stews of Damascus. He offered us tea, coffee, Coca-Cola, alcohol, something to eat, a more comfortable chair, chocolates, and his last cigarettes before finally, having refused them all, we were able to come to the point of our visit. “Is it possible that a man could drown in seawater in the center of Berlin?” I asked. “I assume you’ve discounted the possibility of a swimming pool, otherwise you wouldn’t be here. The Admiral’s Garden baths on Alexanderplatz is a brine bath. I used to swim there myself before they stopped Jews from going there.” “The victim is Jewish,” I said. “And so, for that reason, yes, you’re right, I think I have discounted that possibility.” “Why, if you don’t mind my asking, is a Gentile bothering to investigate the death of a Jew in the new Germany?” “It’s my idea,” Noreen said, and told Blitz about the Olympiad and the failed U.S. boycott and the newspaper she hoped would put that to rights, and how she herself was a Jew. “I suppose it would be something if an American boycott were to succeed,” Blitz admitted. “Although I have my doubts. The Nazis won’t be so easy to dislodge, with or without a boycott. Now that they have power, they mean to hang on to it. The Reichstag will sink before they have another election, and, believe me, I know what I’m talking about. It was built on posts because of all the swampy spots that exist between it and the Old Museum.” Noreen smiled her neon smile. Her glamour seemed to warm the apartment, as if someone had lit a fire in the empty grate. She lit a cigarette from a little gold case, which she pushed toward him. He took one and slid it behind his ear like a pencil. “Could a man drown in Berlin seawater, he asks,” said Blitz. “Two hundred sixty million years ago this whole area was an ancient sea—the Zechstein Sea. Berlin itself was founded on a series of islands that appeared in a river valley during the last Ice Age. The substrata are mostly sand. And salt. A lot of salt from the Zechstein Sea. The salt formed several islands on the land surface, and quite a few deepwater groundwater chambers all over the city and the surrounding area.” “Seawater chambers?” asked Noreen. “Yes, yes. In my opinion, there are some places in Berlin where men should not be digging. Such a chamber might easily be ruptured, with potentially disastrous consequences.” “Could such a place include Pichelsberg?” “It could happen almost anywhere in Berlin,” said Blitz. “For someone in a hurry, who didn’t carry out a proper geological survey—boreholes and that kind of thing—it would not just be the old lies that the new Germany obliged him to swallow, but a considerable quantity of salt water, also.” He smiled carefully, like a man playing a card game whose rules he was still uncertain of. “Including Pichelsberg?” I persisted. Blitz shrugged. “Pichelsberg? What is this interest in Pichelsberg? I’m a geologist, not a town planner, Herr Gunther.” “Come on, Stefan, you know why I’m asking.” “Yes, and I don’t like it. I have enough problems without adding Pichelsberg as well. Where exactly are you going with this? You mentioned a drowned man. A Jew, you said. And a newspaper article. Forgive me, but it seems to me that one dead Jew is quite enough.” “Dr. Blitz,” said Noreen, “I promise you. Nothing you say will be attributed to you. I won’t quote you. I won’t mention Uncle Tom’s Cabin or that I even spoke to a geologist.” Blitz removed the cigarette from behind his ear and studied it like a core of white rock. When he lit it, his satisfaction could be seen and heard. “American cigarettes. I’m so used to cheap ones I’d forgotten how good tobacco can taste.” He nodded thoughtfully. “Perhaps I should try to go to America. I’m damne
d sure the meaning of life in Germany doesn’t include liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Not if you’re Jewish, anyway.” Noreen emptied her case on the table. “Please,” she said, “keep them. I have more back at the hotel.” “If you’re sure,” he said. She nodded, and pulled the sable coat closer to her chest. “A good engineering company,” he said, carefully. “It would first drill, not dig. You understand? The Ice Age left behind a real mixture of substrata that would make construction here very unpredictable. Especially somewhere like Pichelsberg. Does that answer your question?” “Is it possible that the people building the Olympic Stadium don’t know this?” she asked. Blitz shrugged. “Who mentioned the Olympics? I know nothing about the Olympics, and I tell you I don’t want to know. We’re told it’s not for Jews, and I for one am very happy about this.” It was chilly in his apartment, but he wiped some sweat off his forehead with a ragged handkerchief. “Look, if you don’t mind, I think I’ve said enough.” “One more question,” I said, “and then we’ll leave.” Blitz stared momentarily at the ceiling as if calling on his maker to give him patience. His hand was trembling as he put the cigarette back between his cracked lips. “Is there any gold in Berlin’s substrata?” “Gold, yes, gold. But only trace amounts. Believe me, Bernie, you won’t get rich looking for gold in Berlin.” He chuckled. “At least not unless you take it from those who already have it. This is a Jew telling you, so you can take that to the bank. Even the Nazis aren’t stupid enough to look for gold in Berlin.” We didn’t stay much longer. We both knew we’d unsettled Blitz. And in view of what he’d said, I didn’t blame him for being circumspect and nervous. The Nazis would hardly have taken kindly to what he was surely saying about the construction site at Pichelsberg. When we left, we didn’t offer him money. He wouldn’t have taken it. But when his back was turned to lead us out of the apartment, Noreen slipped a leaf under the coffeepot. BACK IN THE CAR, Noreen let out a loud sigh and shook her head. “This town is beginning to get me down,” she said. “Tell me you don’t get used to it.” “Not me. I’ve only just got used to the idea that we lost the war. Everyone says the Jews were to blame for that, but I always thought it was the navy’s fault. It was them who got us into it and their mutiny that forced us to quit. But for them we might have fought on, to an honorable peace.” “You sound like you regret that.” “Only the fact that the wrong people signed the armistice. The army should have done it instead of the politicians, which let the army off the hook rather, and which is why we’re in the state we’re in. D’you see?” “Not really.” “No? Well, that’s half the problem. Nobody does. Least of all us Germans. Most mornings I wake up and think I must have imagined the last two years. The last twenty-four hours most of all. What does a woman like you see in a man like me?” She took my left hand and squeezed it. “A man like you. You make that sound as if there’s more than one. There isn’t. I know. I’ve looked. And in all kinds of places. Including the bed we slept in. Last night I was wondering how I’d feel in the morning. Well, now I know.” “How do you feel?” “Scared.” “Of what?” “The way I feel, of course. Like you’re driving the car.” “I am driving the car.” I wiggled the steering wheel for effect. “At home no one ever drives me anywhere. I like to drive myself. I prefer to decide when to start and when to stop. But with you, I really don’t mind. I wouldn’t mind if you decided to drive us all the way to China and back.” “China? It’d be enough for me just to have you stay on in Berlin for a while.” “So what’s stopping me?” “Perhaps Nick Charalambides. And your newspaper article. And maybe this. That it’s my honest opinion that Isaac Deutsch wasn’t murdered at all. That his death was an accident. No one drowned him. He drowned. Without any help from anyone else. Right here in the center of Berlin. I know, it’s not as good a story if he wasn’t murdered. But what can I do?” “Damn.” “Exactly.” For a moment I was reminded of Richard Bömer and his disappointment at discovering that Isaac Deutsch was Jewish. And now here was Noreen Charalambides, disappointed to discover the poor guy hadn’t been murdered. It’s a hell of a world. “Are you sure?” “Here’s what I think happened. After his career as a boxer was outlawed by the Nazis, Isaac Deutsch and his uncle got a job on the Olympic building site. In spite of the official policy about hiring only Aryan workers. Given how much there is to do before the Olympiad starts, in 1936, someone decided it might be best to cut a few corners. And not just with the racial origins of the workforce. With safety, too, I suspect. Isaac Deutsch was probably involved in some kind of underground excavation when he ruptured one of those water chambers Blitz told us about. He had an accident, and he was drowned in seawater, only no one knew it was seawater. Someone figured it might be best if his body was found drowned a long way from Pichelsberg. Just in case some nosy cop started asking questions about illegal Jewish workers. Which is how the body ended up in a freshwater canal, on the other side of Berlin.” Noreen searched her empty cigarette case for a smoke. “Damn,” she said again. I gave her mine. “Much as I’m reluctant to admit it, Noreen, this little investigation is over. Nothing would give me more pleasure than to spin this out and keep on driving you around Berlin. But I think honesty’s best. Especially since I’m a little out of practice in that area, what with one thing and another.” She lit the cigarette and stared out of the window as we came into Steglitz. “Pull up,” she said, sharply. “What?” “Pull up, I said.” I stopped the car close to the town hall, at the corner of Schlossstrasse, and started to apologize on the assumption that she had taken offense at something I had said. Even before I had switched off the engine, she had got out of the car and was walking swiftly back down the street. I followed. “Hey, I’m sorry,” I said. “But there’s still a story you can write here. Maybe if you found Isaac Deutsch’s uncle Joey—the guy who was his trainer—then perhaps he’d talk. You could get his story. That would be a good angle. How Jews are forbidden to compete in the Olympics but how one who gets an illegal job building the stadium ends up dead. That could be a great story.” Noreen didn’t look like she was listening. And I was more than a little horrified to see that she was heading toward a large group of SA and SS men standing around a man and woman dressed in civilian clothes. The woman was blond and in her twenties; the man was older and Jewish. I knew he was Jewish, because, like her, he had a placard around his neck. The man’s placard read: “I’m a dirty Jew who takes German girls to his room.” The girl’s placard read: “I go to this dirty swine’s place to sleep with a Jew!” Before I could do anything to stop her, Noreen threw away her cigarette, produced her Baby Brownie from her capacious leather handbag, and, looking down through the little viewfinder, took a photograph of the somber couple and the grinning Nazis. I caught up with her and tried to take her by the arm. She pulled it away angrily. “This is not a good idea,” I said. “Nonsense. They wouldn’t have put those placards around their necks unless they wanted people to pay attention to them. And that’s just what I’m doing.” She wound her film and once again lined up the group. One of the SS shouted at me, “Hey, Bubi. Leave her alone. She’s right, your girlfriend. There’s no point in making an example of bastards like these unless people see it and take note.” “That’s exactly what I’m doing,” said Noreen. “Taking note.” I waited patiently until Noreen had finished. Until now she’d photographed only anti-Semitic signs in the parks and some Nazi flags on Unter den Linden, and I hoped this rather more candid kind of photography wasn’t about to become a habit with her. I doubt my nerves could have taken it. We walked back to the car in silence, abandoning the miscegenating couple to their public disgrace and humiliation. “If you’d ever seen them beat someone up,” I said, “then you’d be more careful about doing something like that. You want to photograph something interesting, I’ll run you over to the Bismarck Monument or the Charlottenburg Palace.” Noreen dropped the camera back in her bag. “Don’t treat me like some goddamn tourist,” she said. “I didn’t take that picture for my album. I took it for the fucking newspaper. Don’t you get it? A pic
ture like that makes an absolute mockery of Avery Brundage’s claims that Berlin is a proper place to hold an Olympic Games.” “Brundage?” “Yes, Avery Brundage. Weren’t you listening? I told you before. He’s the president of the American Olympic Committee.” I nodded. “What else do you know about him?” “Almost nothing beyond the fact that he must be a real asshole.” “Would it surprise you to learn that he’s in correspondence with your old friend Max Reles? And that he owns a construction company in Chicago?” “How do you know that?” “I’m a detective, remember? I’m supposed to know things I’m not supposed to know about.” She smiled. “Sonofabitch. You searched his room, didn’t you? That’s why you were asking me about him last night. I’ll bet that’s when you did it, too. Right after that little scene in the lobby, when you knew he’d be out for a while.” “Almost right. I followed him to the opera first.” “Five minutes of Parsifal