by Philip Kerr
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 damned 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 picture 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. I remember. So that’s why you went.”
“His guests included the sports leader. Funk from Propaganda. Some army general called von Reichenau. The rest I didn’t recognize. But I’ll bet they were all Nazis.”
“Those you mentioned are all on the German Olympic
Organizing Committee,” she said. “And I’ll bet the rest were, too.” She shook her head. “So you went back to the Adlon and searched his room while you knew he was safely otherwise engaged. What else did you find?”
“A lot of letters. Reles employs a stenographer I found for him, and it seems he keeps her very busy writing to companies who are bidding for Olympic contracts.”
“Then he must be on a kickback. Maybe lots of kickbacks. The GOC, too, maybe.”
“I took some carbon copies from his wastepaper basket.”
“Great. Can I see them?”
When we were in the car once again I handed them over. She started to read one. “Nothing incriminating here,” she said.
“That’s what I thought. At first.”
“It’s just a bid for a contract to supply cement to the Ministry of the Interior.”
“The other one is a bid for a contract to supply propane gas for the Olympic flame.” I paused. “Don’t you get it? That’s a carbon. It means that it was typed by the Adlon’s own stenographer in his suite. Contracts are supposed to be for German companies only. And Max Reles is an American.”
“Maybe he bought these companies.”
“Maybe. I think he’s probably got enough money. Probably that’s why he went to Zurich before he came here. There’s a bag in his room containing thousands of dollars and gold Swiss francs. Not to mention a submachine gun. Even in Germany you don’t need a machine gun to run a company these days. Not unless you have some serious problems with your labor force.”
“I need to think about this.”
“We both do. I’ve a feeling we’re getting in over our heads, and I’m kind of attached to mine. I mention that only because we have the falling ax in this country, and it’s not just criminals who get haircuts. It’s communists and republicans and probably anyone the government doesn’t like. Look, you really won’t mention any of this to von Tschammer und Osten, will you?”