The Lady from Zagreb

by Philip Kerr

  “He’s probably right about that,” I said. “Beautiful movie stars are in short supply these days.”

  “All he really wants is for me to start this stupid picture as soon as possible.”

  “I’m just guessing, but somehow I don’t think it’s all that he wants.”

  “No, perhaps it isn’t. But trust me, I can handle him easily enough. If the leader ever heard about what Josef’s wife, Magda, gets up to—her ‘retaliatory affairs’—there would be hell to pay.”

  “Do you mean you’d tell him?”

  “If I had to, I would. Indirectly, anyway. I’ve no wish to become another of Josef’s many conquests.”

  “It almost makes me glad I’m not married myself.”

  “If I could just know for sure that my father was alive. If he could only read a letter I’ve written to him. I’m sure I’d feel I’d done everything possible. But until then, my mind is elsewhere. I simply can’t concentrate on something as frivolous as a movie like Siebenkäs. I mean, have you read the novel?”

  “No,” I said. “And somehow I don’t think I’m going to.”

  She shook her head, as if the book were beneath contempt. “I know it’s a lot to ask of anyone—to go to Yugoslavia on my account—but if I could just know that everything that could be done to find him has been done, then I’d feel a whole lot better. Do you understand? Then I might actually be able to do this stupid picture.”

  I nodded. “Let me get this straight, Fräulein Dresner. You want me to be your postman. To travel to Yugoslavia and deliver a letter, in person, to your father, if I can find him.”

  “That’s right, Herr Gunther. To remind him he has a daughter who would like to see him again. I was thinking that Josef might be able to organize a visa for him to travel to Germany, and I could meet with him here in Berlin. It would mean so much to me.”

  “And the minister’s prepared to do that? To facilitate my going there and your father coming here?”

  “Yes.”

  “This monastery in Banja Luka. Is that your father’s last known address?”

  She nodded.

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Banja Luka is in Bosnia-Herzegovina, about two hundred kilometers south of Zagreb. It’s a largish town in the hands of the Ustaše. So quite safe for Germans, I think. You could probably drive there in a day, depending on the condition of the roads. The Petricevac Monastery of the Most Holy Trinity is run by Franciscans. I’ve only been there once, when I was a small child. It’s probably the biggest building in Banja Luka so I don’t think you could miss it.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Antun Djurkovic. When he joined the order he took Ladislaus as his religious name. After the saint. He calls himself Father Ladislaus now. I have some pictures of him in the house, if you’d care to look at them.”

  “Sure. But I might need to take them with me if I’m going to look for him.”

  “Does that mean you’ll do it? That you’ll go to Yugoslavia?”

  “Don’t rush me, Fräulein Dresner. It’s considered normal practice when you’re going to stick your head in a lion’s mouth to think about it first, even in the circus. Not least to check out the lion. See if he’s been fed. What his breath is like. That kind of thing.”

  “Meaning what, exactly?”

  “Meaning I shall probably go and speak to some of our people in Foreign Intelligence this afternoon. The kind of people who know the country and who can tell me how things are down there. And there’s a judge from my own department—Judge Dorfmüller—who’s handled many investigations in Yugoslavia. I expect he’ll have something useful to say, too. After that I’ll come back here and tell you what I propose to do. How does that sound?”

  “It sounds fine if you let me cook you dinner at the same time. I’m an excellent cook considering that I’m never allowed to cook. Shall we say eight o’clock?”

  I thought for a minute. On my way to the War Crimes Bureau offices on Blumeshof I could stop by Berkaerstrasse and speak to whoever it was in Schellenberg’s Foreign Intelligence department who knew anything about Yugoslavia. Of course, I’d have to return Joey’s car and come back to her house on the S-Bahn, but that would be all right. Then again maybe I could persuade Joey to let me keep the car for the night. Besides, it had been ages since a pretty girl had made me so much as a cup of coffee.

  “Don’t say yes too soon,” she said. “I’ll get to thinking you actually like me.”

  “Oh, I like you all right. I was just trying to work out if I could do what I need to do—that is, speak to the right people—and then be back here wearing a clean shirt having learned something useful.”

  “And what’s the conclusion?”

  “That I should leave. But I’ll be back here at eight. If your cooking is as good as you say it is, then I wouldn’t miss it for the world, a bit like your bathing costume. I’d certainly like to see that again sometime.”

  Sixteen

  I took the 540K back into Berlin. It was like driving a shiny new Messerschmitt. And Joey was right; the supercharger did whine when you started it. But once it was going, the car was magnificent. The ultimate driving machine.

  At Department Six in Berkaerstrasse I asked to talk to one of Schellenberg’s people about the situation in Yugoslavia and found myself ushered upstairs into the presence of the little general himself. It wasn’t a large office like the minister’s. And the view from the window seemed relentlessly suburban. But it was easy to see why he preferred being here to somewhere closer to Prinz Albrechtstrasse; a man could be left alone out here in the sticks, with no one like Himmler to bother him. He stood up and came around his modern-looking desk. There was some gray in his neatly combed hair. He looked thinner than when last I’d seen him—his uniform was at least a size too big—and he confessed that he was suffering from problems with his liver and his gallbladder.

  “These days I only seem to gain weight,” I said. “Although I think it’s mostly on my conscience, not my waistline.”

  Schellenberg liked that one. We were off to a good start.

  “This will be the second time this year I’m obliged to go back to Holter’s and have my suits and uniforms altered,” he said. “I’m even seeing Himmler’s masseur. He’s the only one who seems to make me feel better. But there’s nothing he seems to be able to do about my weight loss.”

  From a man like Schellenberg this was quite a confession. In a department full of murderers, any one of whom would have wanted his job as the SD’s chief of Foreign Intelligence, what he’d told me almost counted as an admission of weakness and, but for knowledge that his offices had once been an old people’s home and the strong suspicion that he must have had a hand in the murder of Dr. Heckholz the previous summer, I might even have felt sorry for him. Of Horst Janssen, the man I presumed had done the actual killing, there was no sign, and when I asked Schellenberg about him, he said, “Safely back in Kiev, for the moment.”

  “Doing what?”

  Schellenberg shook his head as if he didn’t want to discuss it and rubbed the blue stone on his gold signet ring as if he hoped it might make the man disappear for good. And perhaps it wouldn’t be long before that came true: rumor had it that the Battle of Kursk wasn’t going well for the German forces; if we lost that front, Kiev would certainly be next.

  “So what’s this war crime you’re investigating in Zagreb?” he asked. “You must be spoiled for choice in a place like Croatia.”

  It suited me very well for Schellenberg to believe that my business in Zagreb was on behalf of the German Army’s War Crimes Bureau; but at the same time, I hardly wanted to tell him an outright lie. I was still an officer of SD, after all.

  “I’m sorry, sir, but I can’t say what that is.”

  “I respect that. I like a man who can keep his mouth shut. Pity there aren’t more like you, Gunther.
I used to think you were Heydrich’s man. But I think I know different now. He was a master of case-based reasoning and mental reservation. Rather like a Jesuit. For him the end always justified the means. I don’t expect you ever had much choice but to work for him. But I have a different approach. I couldn’t ever trust a man I’d coerced to work for me.”

  “I’ll remember you said that, General.”

  “Please do. You know, your lecture at last year’s IKPK conference impressed me. As a matter of fact, there was something you said that I even wrote down. About how being a detective is a little like the traffic-control tower that stands in the center of Berlin’s Potsdamer Platz: not only do its lights have to control traffic from five different directions, it also tells the time and, in bad weather, provides much needed shelter for a traffic policeman. That’s a pretty good analogy for what I do in this office, too.”

  “Have you seen Potsdamer Platz lately? There’s hardly any traffic at all. No one has petrol to waste driving around Berlin.”

  No one except Goebbels, it seemed.

  “You impress me, Gunther. As a matter of fact, you also made an impression on Captain Meyer-Schwertenbach. You remember? The Swiss fellow you met at the conference? He said he thought you were a man who could be trusted. And so do I. It occurs to me now that you can do me a small service when you’re in Zagreb.”

  “I was afraid of that.”

  “Oh, it’s nothing much. And you don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. You can call it a favor, if you like. I just need a man to deliver something—someone I can rely on. Believe me, that’s in rather short supply around here, what with Kaltenbrunner’s spies everywhere. You wouldn’t believe how paranoid that man is. But before I tell you what I want you to do, let me first tell you about the situation in Zagreb, which is what you came here to ask about. The situation is bloody awful, and likely to get even worse if—as seems likely—the fucking Italians capitulate this side of Christmas. As usual it’ll be us who has to go and tidy up after them. Just like in Greece. But I think you’ll be all right to go there for the present. With regard to going anywhere else, like Banja Luka, it’s really impossible to say from here how safe it will be. You could seek advice from the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, of course—Haj Amin al-Husseini. He’s living just up the road from here in a very nice house on Goethestrasse that’s costing von Ribbentrop seventy-five thousand reichsmarks a month.”

  “What’s he got to do with Yugoslavia?”

  “There are lots of Muslims in Yugoslavia. Himmler’s made Haj Amin a general in the SS, so that he can organize the establishment of a Bosnian Islamic Waffen-SS division. There’s a whole bunch of them undergoing training right now in France and Brandenburg. And Goebbels has had him give several radio broadcasts in Arab countries calling on Muslims to kill Jews.”

  “From Radio House? On Masurenallee?”

  “No, he’s got his own transmitter in the house. It all sounds insane, I know.”

  “I sometimes wonder just how insane things are going to get before it all ends.”

  “More insane than I hope you can know. But as far as Yugoslavia is concerned, you’d probably do better to get an appraisal of the situation in the country at large from my man on the ground down there, a fellow named Koob. Sturmbannführer Emil Koob. He’s more of a Bulgarian expert, really, but good on the Balkans in general. I want you to take some American dollars to him, that’s all. We’re in the process of setting up a wireless communication system in Zagreb: called I-Netz, it can communicate with the Wannsee Institute. In the event of the Balkans being overrun by the Allies, we want some people who will be able to function behind enemy lines. I’ll send Koob a signal to expect you. You’ll find him at the Esplanade Hotel. It’s the only decent place to stay in Zagreb. Now, that’s some foreign intelligence which is really worth having. Think you can handle that?”

  “No problem. And thanks for the tip about the hotel.”

  “Look, come and speak to me when you’re back in Berlin. I’d like an appraisal of the latest situation in Croatia myself. Will you do that?”

  “Certainly, sir.”

  Before I left, Schellenberg gave me a briefcase in which was a small parcel he informed me was full of money. And then I was on my way again.

  At the Bendlerblock I went to find Eugen Dorfmüller, a judge who, like me, was one of the temporaries recruited to the War Crimes Bureau. Dorfmüller had considerable experience investigating war crimes in Yugoslavia. He was about the same age as me and perhaps just as cynical.

  “It’s a simple missing persons inquiry,” I told him. “With any luck, I can be there and back in no time at all. I just want some advice on how far I’m sticking my neck out by going there. I don’t like sticking it out unless I have to. On account of the fact that my head’s attached to it. Which is important when I nod.”

  “Advice? My advice is this. If you go to Croatia, try and keep away from the Ustaše. Nasty lot. Cruel.”

  “I’m looking for a priest, so hopefully I won’t need to have too much contact with them.”

  “A priest, eh? You’ll find plenty of those in Croatia. It’s a very Catholic country.” He shook his head. “I don’t know much about Banja Luka. But it’s mostly SS who are down there now. A volunteer Waffen-SS division called the Prinz Eugen commanded by a highly decorated Romanian-German general called Artur Phleps. He’s a bit of a bastard, quite frankly, even by the standards of the SS. You’d do well to stay away from them, too. But I don’t have to tell you about that, of course. You were in Smolensk, weren’t you? The Katyn Forest massacre, wasn’t it? Christ, investigating a Russian mass murder down there—well, that was like the donkey calling the ass ‘big ears.’”

  “It was kind of ridiculous.”

  “Actually, it’s good you’re going down there to Croatia,” he said. “I want you to confirm a decision the bureau made at the beginning of the year, which is to stop investigating war crimes in Yugoslavia.”

  “Why did we stop?”

  “Because there were so many it hardly seemed to matter. By the way, here’s an interesting thing I discovered only just the other day. All the bureau’s files on war crimes in Yugoslavia have gone missing. All the depositions I took, all my case notes, all my observations, everything. Hundreds of pages of documents, all gone. It’s like I was never there. Be careful. It’s not just files that can go missing in Yugoslavia, Bernie. It’s men, too. Especially men like you. My advice to you when you’re down there is this: to say nothing at all about the fact that you are currently on attachment to the War Crimes Bureau. Do this job for the Ministry of Truth—whatever it is—and get yourself back here as quickly as possible and then forget you even heard the name of Croatia.”

  My last port of call was the ministry, to return Joey’s magnificent car and to make a bid to hang on to it for the evening. I liked having a car again. Having a car makes it so easy to get around. You just turn the engine over and then aim the sights at the end of the bonnet where you want to go.

  At the Ministry of Truth a secretary told me that Joey had gone to his city mansion, at the corner of Hermann-Göring-Strasse. It was a short drive away from Wilhelmplatz and anyone from Berlin could have found the place with his eyes closed: formerly the palace of the marshals of the Prussian royal court, the old building had been demolished and replaced with an expensive new house designed by Albert Speer. I was thinking of having Speer around myself to see what he could do with my place on Fasanenstrasse. Goebbels had the whole of the Tiergarten round his town house and quite a bit of it on the walls; I’ve never seen so much oak paneling. A butler with a face like a melted elephant led me to a cozy little room with a tapestry as big as a battlefield and an uninterrupted view of prelapsarian Berlin; just grass and above the trees in the distance, the golden lady on top of the Victory Column. A lot of people said she was the only girl in Berlin who Goebbels hadn’t been able to get his leg o
ver.

  He was on the telephone and in a bad mood. From what I could gather, Hitler had decided to award a posthumous Knight’s Cross with Oak-Leaf Cluster and Swords to the chief of the Japanese Navy; the only trouble was that it seemed the Japanese emperor had raised some objections to the idea of a Japanese officer being decorated by “barbarians,” by which I assume he meant us.

  “But it’s a great honor,” Goebbels said. “The first time a foreign military officer has been awarded this decoration. Please impress upon Tojo and his Imperial Majesty that the leader merely wishes to acknowledge the respect in which the admiral was held by him and that this is in no way intended as a way of trumping your own Order of the Chrysanthemum. Yes. I understand. Thank you.”

  Goebbels banged down the telephone receiver and stared at me balefully.

  “Well? What do you want?”

  “I can come back if you like, Herr Doctor,” I said.

  Goebbels shook his head. “No, no. Tell me what you think.” He pointed to a chair and I sat down.

  Finally he smiled. “Beautiful, isn’t she?”

  “Yes, I suppose she is,” I said with teasing skepticism; and then: “Astonishingly so. She’s beautiful in a fantastic, unearthly, in-your-dreams sort of way.”

  “That’s right. And her face. Did you notice how it has a very luminous quality? Like it has its own key light.” Seeing me look baffled, Goebbels added, “That’s a technical, film-lighting name for a stage light that shines only on one person. Usually the star of the picture.”

  “Yes, I did.” Under the circumstances I thought it best not to say anything more about how attractive I thought Dalia Dresner was. I’d already said too much. “I can go to Yugoslavia as soon as you like, provided I can get into the Esplanade Hotel,” I said. “But first I’d like to take a run out to Brandenburg and speak to a detachment of Bosnian Muslim SS about the situation in their country. If I’m going to travel to Banja Luka, I want to make sure that I’m fully aware of the local situation. Which, by all accounts I’ve had so far, is uncertain, to say the least. From what I’ve heard, I’m going to earn every pfennig of what you’ve paid me, Herr Doctor.”