by Philip Kerr
“What about Otto Steinäusl? He used to be the IKPK president, didn’t he?”
“Died of TB, in Vienna, year before last.”
“That other fellow in Prague. Heinz Pannwitz.”
“He’s a thug, Bernie. I doubt he could speak for five minutes before he used a swearword or started beating the lectern with a cosh.”
“Schellenberg.”
“Too secretive. And much too aloof.”
“All right, what about that fellow who caught Ogorzow—the S-Bahn murderer? That was only last year. Heuser, Georg. That’s the fellow you should get.”
“Heuser is the head of Gestapo, in Minsk,” said Nebe. “Besides, since Heuser caught Ogorzow, Lüdtke is terribly jealous of him. That’s why he’s going to stay in Minsk for the time being. No, you’re it, I’m afraid.”
“Stopgap Lüdtke’s not exactly fond of me, either. You are aware of that.”
“He’ll damn well do what I tell him. Besides, there’s no one who’s jealous of you, Bernie. Least of all Lüdtke. You’re no threat to anyone. Not anymore. Your career is going nowhere. You could have been a general now, like me, if you’d played your cards right.”
I shrugged. “Believe me, I’m a disappointment to myself most of all. But I’m not a speaker, Arthur. Sure, I’ve handled a few press conferences in my time, however, they were nothing like what you’re asking. I’ll be terrible. My idea of public speaking is to shout for a beer from the back of the bar.”
Nebe grinned and tried to puff his Havana back into life; it took a bit of doing but he finally managed to get the cigar going. I could tell he was thinking of me while he went about it.
“I’m counting on you being crap,” he said. “In fact, I expect every one of our speakers will be bloody awful. I’m hoping the whole IKPK conference is so fucking boring that we’ll never have to do another one again. It’s ridiculous talking about international crime while the Nazis are busy committing the international crime of the century.”
“First time I’ve ever heard you call it that, Arthur.”
“I said it to you, so it doesn’t count.”
“Suppose I say something out of turn? Something to embarrass you. I mean, just think who’ll be there. The last time I met Himmler, he kicked me on the shin.”
“I remember that.” Nebe grinned. “It was priceless.” He shook his head. “No, you needn’t worry about putting your foot in the German butter. When you’ve written your speech you’ll have to submit the whole text to the Ministry for Propaganda and National Enlightenment. They’ll put it into proper, politically correct German. State Secretary Gutterer has agreed to cast his eye over everyone’s speeches. He’s SS anyway so there shouldn’t be a problem between our departments. It’s in his interest if everyone sounds even duller than him.”
“I feel reassured already. Jesus, what a farce. Is Chaplin speaking, too?”
Nebe shook his head. “You know, one day I think someone really will shoot you. And that will be goodbye, Bernie Gunther.”
“Nothing says goodbye quite like a bullet from a nine-millimeter Walther.”
In the distance, at the shimmering edge of the lake, I could just about make out the schoolteacher, Kirsten. She and her shapely friends were now disembarking at the jetty in front of the Swedish Pavilion. I collected the oars and started to row again, only this time I was putting my back into it. Nebe hadn’t asked and I didn’t tell him, but I like pretty girls. That’s my worldview.
Two
Ever since the Second Reich, Berlin’s city architects have been trying to make its citizens feel small and insignificant, and the new wing of the Reich Ministry of Propaganda and National Enlightenment was no exception. Located on Wilhelmplatz, and just a stone’s throw from the Reich Chancellery, it looked very much like the Ministry of Aviation on the corner of Leipziger Strasse. Looking at them side by side it would have been easy to imagine that the architect, Albert Speer, had managed to mix up his drawings of these two gray stone buildings, so closely did they resemble each other. Since February, Speer was the minister of Armaments and War, and I hoped he was going to make a better job of doing that than he had of being Hitler’s court architect. It’s said that Giotto could draw a perfect circle with just one turn of his hand; Speer could draw a perfectly straight line—at least he could with a ruler—and not much else. Straight lines were what he was obviously good at drawing. I used to sketch quite a good elephant, myself, but there’s not much call for that when you’re an architect. Unless the elephant is white, of course.
I’d read in the Volkischer Beobachter that the Nazis didn’t much like German modernism—buildings like the technical university in Weimar, and a trade union building in Bernau. They thought modernism was un-German and cosmopolitan, whatever that meant. Actually, I think it probably meant that the Nazis didn’t feel comfortable living and working in city offices designed by Jews that were mostly made of glass, in case they suddenly had to fight off a revolution. It would have been a lot easier defending a stone building like the Ministry of Propaganda and National Enlightenment than it would have been defending the Bauhaus in Dessau. A German art historian—probably another Jew—once said that God was in the details. I like details, but for the Nazis a soldier positioned in a high window with a loaded machine gun looked like it offered more comfort than anything as capricious and unreliable as a god. From any one of the new ministry’s small, regular windows a man with an MP40 commanded a clear field of fire across the whole of Wilhelmplatz and could comfortably have held an intoxicated Berlin mob at bay for as long as our handsome new minister of Armaments and War could keep him supplied with ammunition. All the same, it was a contest I should have enjoyed watching. There’s nothing quite like a Berlin mob at play.
Inside the ministry things were a little less rusticated and more like a sleek, modern ocean liner; everything was burred walnut, cream walls, and thick fawn carpets. In the ballroom-sized entrance hall, underneath an enormous portrait of Hitler—without which no German ministry could possibly do its work—was an outsized scalloped vase of white gardenias that perfumed the whole building and doubtless helped conceal the prevailing smell of billy goat shit that’s an inevitable corollary of national enlightenment in Nazi Germany, and which otherwise might have offended the nostrils of our glorious leader.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” I said as I turned right through the heavy doors and entered what I assumed was the old Leopold Palace.
Behind a solid oak reception desk they could have used as a redoubt to provide a second line of defense against a mob, a couple of silent clerks with soft collars and softer hands regarded my slow progress across their floor with a well-practiced show of indifference. But I welcomed it: the only pleasure I ever get from wearing the uniform of an SD officer is the knowledge that if I wasn’t wearing it I might have to take a lot more humiliation from the kind of stone-faced bureaucrats that run this country. Sometimes I even get the chance to hand out a little humiliation of my own. It’s a very sadistic, Berlin sort of game and one I never seem to get tired of playing.
The two clerks were a low pair of clubs and didn’t look particularly busy but they still went through a comedy routine they had perfected that was supposed to make me feel as if they were. It was several minutes before one of the men looked like he was paying me some attention.
And then another minute.
“You ready now?” I asked.
“Heil Hitler,” he said.
I touched my cap with a finger and nodded. Paradoxically, without any storm troopers around to kick your backside, not giving the Hitler salute was safe enough in a place like a Reich ministry.
“Heil Hitler,” I said, because there is only so much resistance that can safely be given at any one time. I glanced up at the painted ceiling and nodded my appreciation. “Beautiful. This is the old ceremonial palace, isn’t it? It must be fine working here. Tell me,
have you still got the throne room? Where the Kaiser used to hand out the important decorations and medals? Not that my own Iron Cross would count as anything like that. It was given to me in the trenches, and my commanding officer had to find a space on my tunic that wasn’t covered in mud and shit to pin it onto my chest.”
“Fascinating, I’m sure,” said the man who was the taller of the two. “But this has been the government press building since 1919.”
He wore pince-nez and lifted himself up on his toes as he spoke, like a policeman giving directions. I was tempted to give him some directions of my own. The white carnation he wore in the buttonhole of his summer-weight, double-breasted black jacket was a friendly touch but the waxed mustache and the pocket handkerchief were pure Wilhelmstrasse. His mouth looked like someone had poured vinegar in his coffee that morning; his wife, supposing he had one, would surely have chosen something a little more fatal.
“If you could come to the point, please. We’re very busy.”
I felt the smile drying on my face like yesterday’s shit. “I don’t doubt it. Did you two characters come with the building, or did they have you installed with the telephones?”
“How can we help you, Captain?” asked the shorter man, who was no less stiff than his colleague and had the look of a man who came out of his mother’s womb wearing pin-striped trousers and spats.
“Police commissar Bernhard Gunther,” I said. “From the presidium at Alexanderplatz. I have an appointment with State Secretary Gutterer.”
The first official was already checking off my name on a clipboard and lifting a cream-colored telephone to his pink rose of an ear. He repeated my name to the person on the other end of the line and then nodded.
“You’re to go up to the state secretary’s office right away,” he said as he replaced the phone in its cradle.
“Thank you for helping.”
He pointed at a flight of stairs that could have staged its own “Lullaby of Broadway.”
“Someone will meet you up there, on the first landing,” he said.
“Let’s hope so,” I said. “I’d hate to have to come down here and be ignored again.”
I went up the stairs two at a time, which was a lot more energy than they’d seen around that palace since Kaiser Wilhelm II lifted his last Blue Max off a silk cushion, and came to a halt on the enormous landing. No one was there to meet me but without a pair of binoculars to see across to the other side of the floor I couldn’t be sure. I glanced over the marble balustrade, and rejected the idea of whistling at the two tailor’s dummies downstairs. So I lit my last cigarette and parked my behind on a gilt French sofa that was a little too low, even for a Frenchman; but after a moment or two I stood up and walked toward a tall open door that led into what I assumed was the old Blue Gallery. It had frescoes and chandeliers and looked like the perfect spot if they ever needed somewhere to dry-dock a submarine for repairs. The frescoes covering the walls were mostly naked people doing things with lyres and bows, or standing around on pedestals waiting for someone to hand them a bath towel; they all looked bored and wishing they could be out on the nude beach enjoying the sun at Strandbad Wannsee instead of posing in a government ministry. I had the same feeling myself.
A slim young woman in a dark pencil skirt and white blouse appeared at my shoulder.
“I was just admiring the graffiti,” I said.
“They’re called frescoes, actually,” said the secretary.
“Is that so?” I shrugged. “Sounds Italian.”
“Yes. It means fresh.”
“It figures. Personally, I think there’s only so many naked people you can have getting fresh with each other on one wall before the place starts to look like a Moroccan bathhouse. What do you think?”
“It’s classical art,” she said. “And you must be Captain Gunther.”
“Is it that obvious?”
“It is in here.”
“Good point. I guess I should have taken off my clothes if I’d wanted to blend in a bit.”
“This way,” she said without a flicker of a smile. “State Secretary Gutterer is waiting for you.”
She turned away in a haze of Mystikum and I followed on an invisible dog leash. I watched her arse and gave it careful appraisal as we walked. It was a little too skinny for my taste but it moved well enough; I expect she got a lot of exercise just getting around that building. For such a small minister as Joey the Crip it was a very big ministry.
“Believe it or not,” I said, “I’m enjoying myself.”
She stopped momentarily, colored a little, and then started walking again. I was starting to like her.
“Really, I don’t know what you mean, Captain,” she said.
“Sure you do. But I’ll certainly try to enlighten you if you care to meet me for a drink after work. That’s what people do around here, isn’t it? Enlighten each other? Look, it’s all right. I got my Abitur. I know what a fresco is. I was making a little joke. And the scary black badge on my sleeve is just for show. I’m really a very friendly fellow. We could go to the Adlon and share a glass of champagne. I used to work there so I’ve got some pull with the barman.”
She didn’t say anything. She just kept walking. That’s just what women do when they don’t want to tell you no: they ignore you and hope you’ll go away right up until the moment you don’t and then they find an excuse to say yes. Hegel got it all wrong; relations between the sexes, there’s nothing complicated about it—it’s child’s play. That’s what makes it such fun. Kids wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t.
Blushing now, she led me through what looked like the Herrenklub library into the presence of a heavyset, clean-shaven man of about forty. He had a full head of longish gray hair, sharp brown eyes, and a mouth like a bow that no ordinary man could draw into a smile. I resolved not to try. The air of self-importance was all his but the cologne with which it was alloyed was Scherk’s Tarr pomade and must have been battering on the panes of the double-height windows there was so much of it. He wore a wedding band on his left hand and plenty of cauliflower on the lapel badges of his SS tunic, not to mention a gold party badge on his left breast pocket; but the ribbon bar above the pocket was the kind you bought like sticks of candy from Holter’s, where they made the uniform. On such a warm day the brilliantly white shirt around his neck was perhaps a little snug for comfort but it was perfectly pressed and encouraged me to believe that he might be happily married. To be well fed with all laundry found is really all that most German men are looking for. I know I was. There was a large gold pen in his fingers and some red ink on a sheet of paper in front of him; the handwriting was neater than the typing, which was mine. I hadn’t seen that much red ink on my homework since leaving school.
He pointed to a seat in front of him; at the same time he consulted a gold hunter watch that was on his desk as if he had already decided for how long I was going to waste his time. He smiled a smile that wasn’t like any smile I’d seen outside a reptile house and leaned back in his chair while he waited for me to get comfortable. I didn’t, but that hardly mattered to someone as important as him. He fixed me with a look of almost comic pity and shook his head.
“You’re not much of a writer, are you, Captain Gunther?”
“The Nobel Prize Committee won’t be calling me anytime soon, if that’s what you mean. But Pearl Buck thinks I can improve.”
“Does she, now?”
“If she can win, anyone can, right?”
“Perhaps. From what General Nebe has told me, this is to be your first time on your hind legs at the lectern in front of an audience.”
“My first, and hopefully my last.” I nodded at the silver box on the desk in front of me. “Besides, I usually do all my best talking with a cigarette in my mouth.”
He flipped open the box. “Help yourself.”
I took one, latched it onto my lip, and l
it myself quickly.
“Tell me, how many delegates are expected at this IKPK conference?”
I shrugged and took a puff at the nail in my mouth. Lately I’d been going for a double pull on my cigarettes before inhaling; that way I got more of a hit from the shitty tobacco when the smoke hit my lungs. But this was a good cigarette; good enough to enjoy; much too good to waste talking about something as trivial as what he had in mind.
“From what I’ve been told by General Nebe, some senior government officials will be present,” he said.
“I wouldn’t know about that, sir.”
“Don’t get me wrong, what you’ve written, it’s all fascinating stuff, I’m sure, and you’re an interesting fellow right enough, but from what’s written here, you’ve certainly a lot to learn about public speaking.”
“I’ve cheerfully avoided it until this present moment. Like the saying goes, it’s hard to press olive oil out of a stone. If it was down to me, Brutus and Cassius would have gotten away with it, and the First Crusade would never have happened. Not to mention Portia in The Merchant of Venice.”
“What about her?”
“With my speaking skills I’d never have gotten Antonio off the hook with Shylock. No, not even in Germany.”
“Then let us be grateful that you don’t work for this ministry,” said Gutterer. “Shylock and his tribe are something of a specialty in our department.”
“So I believe.”
“And yours, too.”
I tugged some more on his nail; that’s the great thing about a cigarette—it lets you off the hook sometimes; the only thing that need come out of your mouth is smoke, and they can’t arrest you for that; at least not yet. These are the freedoms that are important.
Gutterer gathered the sheets of laboriously typed paper in a neat stack and pushed them across the desk as if they were a dangerous species of bacillus. They’d damn near killed me anyway; I was a lousy typist.