The Eye of the Abyss

by Marshall Browne

  Forget that! She had to move quickly and surely now. And stay calm. There’d be no second chance.

  15

  TWO DAYS HAD elapsed since Schmidt had dined with Wagner, and paid his second visit to Fräulein Dressler’s flat. In his office, he stared at the wall as if to project Herr Wertheim’s latest plan on it; but it remained a sketchy blueprint in his head. He felt like a tram driver whose hand had frozen on the shut-off lever in an emergency. Abruptly, he smoothed his blotter, made a decision, and went to the G-D’s anteroom. She wasn’t there. He returned to his office.

  At 10.00 am, Dietrich terminated this. The Nazi was a specialist in bringing matters to a head. Schmidt looked up to meet the calculating eyes, and the wolfish smile. He’d no idea how the man had arrived so silently in his doorway.

  ‘What do you have to report, Schmidt?’

  Schmidt began to rise. Dietrich waved him down impatiently. ‘Listen, Herr Auditor, don’t bother to stand up for me.You Wertheim people spend half your time lifting your bums off your chairs when a superior appears. We’re now close colleagues with the same aims. Remember that.’

  Schmidt watched the Nazi; doubtless he’d the guardianship of the Party’s business in mind. He collected himself: Feeding time. ‘Herr Director, one million in from Bremen this morning. Herr Schloss’s department’s already invested it.’

  He husbanded these morsels for Dietrich, to deflect his scrutiny. Probably the Nazi had begun to see through it, hopefully saw nothing more than an anxious underling’s desire to please.

  ‘Very good.’The cigarette case crossed the desk. Dietrich lit both their cigarettes. The oak of the desk creaked under his weight: a subtle Wertheim & Co protest. He waved his big white hand to disperse the outbreak of smoke, and appraised Schmidt with a speculative yet friendly look. ‘The Dressler affair finishes today.’ He inhaled luxuriously. Schmidt absorbed this as he did all of the Nazi’s utterances, with meticulous attention and outward calm. But his heart beat more quickly. ‘It will be tidied up this evening. The Gestapo will pick her up at her flat. That’ll be that! Another one of them flushed out, extracted from circulation. Just like the Reichsbank’s extraction of dirty banknotes! Very correct, eh Schmidt?’ He tapped his thick fingers on the cigarette case in a rapid, valedictory tattoo, and smiled at the ceiling.

  Schmidt felt his stomach rise and fall. He nodded slowly, automatically reaching deeper within himself for calm. With that smile the Nazi, too, seemed to have reached inside himself. Did Party members receive a bonus for this kind of thing? Perhaps only a testimonial. Schmidt couldn’t interpret the tone, the smile. A hint of irony? Possibly. More one of challenge, he decided.

  ‘Nothing to say? Never mind. Have you thought over joining the Party? No?’ Dietrich grinned. ‘My dear Schmidt, you’re not one to rush into action are you? When are you going to step up to the plate?’

  This last question puzzled Schmidt, but the subject was far from his mind. ‘It’s an important decision. I wish to discuss it with my wife.’ He heard himself saying this.

  ‘And she is in Dresden attending to her mother.’The auditor looked hard at the Nazi. How did he know that? ‘All right, Schmidt. We’ll pursue it another time.’ He rocked a little on his perch. ‘One picks up many things at the centre of power. For example, the Social Democratic Party, banned, presumed disbanded, in actual fact survives. Is treacherously running its affairs from Paris. From Paris! Stay alert, Schmidt! Nothing’s as safe and sound as we think.’

  He grinned again at the auditor. ‘By the way, please recommend me your dentist. I wish to have a check-up.’

  He departed with Doctor Bernstein’s address in his notebook. Schmidt considered what he’d done. For a moment, he’d thought of giving the Nazi the name of the dentist recommended by Bernstein, or of saying that the practice had closed, though he knew it was open till the month-end. But immediately he was certain these subterfuges wouldn’t work; he’d sensed that more was involved than Dietrich’s teeth. He picked up the phone to warn the doctor.

  After the call, Schmidt stared at the photo of the Wertheim building taken that long-ago summer day. His body felt chilled. His brain seemed to be overloaded. The SPD survived! Wagner had been to Paris several times this past year. Coincidence? He shook his head. Intemperate outbursts were one thing. He couldn’t believe his friend would run such a deadly risk as this implied.

  Dietrich seemed to be fitting Franz Schmidt’s life together like one of Trudi’s jigsaw puzzles, and what was this new bonhomie? An intimacy being attempted which was ominous. He must maintain his distance; use his polite, circumspect manner to its full effect. He stubbed out the cigarette.

  He knew now what Dietrich had put in motion, but remained ignorant of the situation on the first floor: knew only the general steps of their mysterious shadow-dance. Could she get away in time? Dietrich had served the news to him like a delicacy on a plate; it teased him with its danger. He was perspiring. He straightened in his chair. For him the road ahead had opened up.

  Dietrich left with a brooding expression on his face. He was confident that the Dressler situation would be correctly finalised. His revelation to Schmidt of her imminent detention, before he’d dealt finally with Herr Wertheim on the issue, underlined that. He was becoming intrigued with Schmidt’s nature, with penetrating his smokescreens. If they were that. He felt attracted to the man.

  He arrived at the first floor, and walked straight into the general-director’s office. Herr Wertheim gave the Nazi a quizzical look, and motioned him to a chair.

  Dietrich believed that the old banker’s negligence and intransigence concerning his secretary, now unmasked, had changed the balance of power between them. However, the hierarchal system should be respected. Up to a point. He began by raising one or two routine matters. The banker listened, patiently receptive. Instead of smoking, the Nazi employed his hand in expansive gestures. He paused … ‘Herr General-Director, I have to inform you the Gestapo will arrest the Dressler woman this evening at her flat. At 6.00 pm, I believe.’

  The faded eyes dilated.Wertheim laid a bluish hand on the desk; otherwise he was as inert as the paintings on his walls. After a long moment, he said, ‘Mein herr, you surprise me. I understood it was being held in abeyance pending my consideration. Our further discussion.’

  The Nazi raised his open hands, palms uppermost. He lied with an easy conviction: ‘Unfortunately, the illegality of her position came to the attention of the ever-alert authorities through other channels. It’s now out of our hands.’

  Herr Wertheim didn’t doubt that it was. He stared past the Nazi to the far wall, meditated on the so-called degenerate picture. He sighed to himself. This Nazi was not as subtle as he thought he was. It was distressing to hear the reference to ‘the Dressler woman’. They’d accelerate her departure to his cousin in Saxony.

  With narrowed eyes, Dietrich watched the Silver Fox. He said, ‘It would be a mistake for the fräulein to try to avoid arrest. For example, to attempt to hide in some well-meaning but misguided household – even in a region as remote as say … Saxony.’

  Herr Wertheim’s gaze broke contact with the unblinking eye on the wall. His face had assumed its most profound urbanity. But he was thunderstruck. So they were tapping his private telephone line! He felt the slightest film of moisture on his hands, a palpitation of his heart. His fertile plan was a frozen ruin. He was stunned. From a controlled defence to defeat, in one move.

  Dietrich stared at the banker, wondering how he’d taken it. He still couldn’t tell.

  The general-director glanced at the big clock on his wall. This was a city of clockmaking and it had been presented to him by a famous manufacturer; it resembled those they suspended above prizefight rings. The innovative sweep-hand seemed to devour time. He smiled. ‘Herr Dietrich, I won’t detain you any longer from your important work.’

  Fräulein Dressler watched the Nazi stride out through the anteroom, as though on parade at a rally. The man seemed to possess a
ragbag of poses. All he lacked was a uniform. Herr Wertheim’s red light was flashing. She took up her notebook and went in, and sat in the chair still unpleasantly warm from Dietrich’s bodyheat. Herr Wertheim was emitting hints of strain. After ten years, she detected what others couldn’t; more so than his wife, she liked to believe.

  ‘My dear fräulein … bad news. To my deep regret.’To another he might have said, ‘Please stay calm.’

  The absence of urbanity in his voice froze her heart. Then he startled her by rising, and coming around the desk to stand looking down at her, his hands caressing the air. She thought: My God!

  ‘The authorities intend to detain you for questioning this evening. Six pm. At your flat. They’ve discovered our plan. They’re listening to my private line!’

  Now Herr Wertheim was speaking in a strange voice. It seemed as if she’d been watching a moving picture of herself caught up in a dramatic plot, a climax coming, the interweaved skeins of the Prague solution, the Saxony solution, her father’s quest for a solution. And a minor thread: the inexplicable intervention of Chief Auditor Schmidt. On the physical plane, her life had become unbelievable; yet intellectually it was as clear-cut as this building on its granite foundations. She thought: Please God help me!

  ‘There’s no time to lose.’ Wertheim spun around and went into an alcove. He came back with an envelope, and gave it to her.

  Five thousand: his emergency travel funds.

  ‘Go to one of your father’s sisters. I can only recommend that. You must leave immediately.’ He knew she’d three aunts in different cities.Years ago, he’d sent flowers to one who’d become widowed. He couldn’t recall which cities. ‘All else being equal, go to the largest city.’ He paused and lightly rubbed his cheek with a veined hand, feeling events closing in, ice freezing around his heart. He became dizzy; his temples had begun to pound. ‘Astonishing, my telephone line! Presumably they can trace calls made to it. To contact me, do so through Herr Schmidt. But be very careful.’ He pursed his lips; the implications went beyond Fräulein Dressler’s case.

  She thought: He’s breathing rapidly. Someone else will have to remind him about his pills. But he’d never reveal such agitation to others.

  ‘We’ll get money to you – through your father.’ He smiled painfully, took her hand and formally shook it. She felt his deep sadness; also, his will to deal with this problem and put it behind him. She knew him too well. Suddenly, he lifted her hand to his lips. Ah, yes, she thought, but we do return, briefly, to the old days.

  Ten minutes later, Fräulein Dressler, loyal and irreplaceable private secretary to the general-director of Bankhaus Wertheim & Co AG, quit the bank and the life in which she’d hoped to be grounded for the rest of her working days. Departing by the tradesmen’s entrance, she thought: Now I must really move fast. Stay calm. As she hurried into the street she said to herself: ‘Farewell dear Wertheims. I’ll leave you my ghost.’

  16

  HELGA GLANCED AT her watch: 3.00 pm. On a glass skylight, rain rattled. Frau Seibert’s operation was in progress somewhere in the bowels of the Dresden hospital. She formulated an image of this, as she sat with Trudi in a waiting room. The child, diverted from her doll by the passing parade of mysterious, white-clad people, the squeak-squeak of trolleys carrying persons of even greater mystery, watched this new world.

  Helga was not wholly preoccupied with concern for her mother. She’d spoken by telephone to Franz on two evenings, and had been disturbed by his unusually reserved voice. Was his life-long, seemingly genetically-implanted fascination with the Teutonic Knights moving him to confront the Nazis at the bank? If so, they were in danger. She bit at her lower lip.

  ‘Well! What a delightful little girl!’

  A boomed-out remark, followed by a staccato heel-clicking. It smashed her reverie. The beaming, pink face of an officer of the SS bore down on her. He bowed stiffly; creaking black leather, hip-joints, white shirt, black uniform sprinkled with silver insignia. An apparition superimposed on her anxious thoughts.

  As though admiring the first flower of spring, he touched Trudi’s blonde head. ‘This little one would delight the Fuehrer’s heart!’ Abruptly, he saluted, heel-clicked again and left in a quick-strutting gait. Trudi looked at her. Helga stared after him. An odour of new leather remained, subverting the hospital smells. Each day, like fungi cracking the earth, these people were breaking into their lives. Now totally alert, thoughts of the Order gone, her gaze after the departing Nazi became intense, her eyes slightly dilated, as if she feared his destination was the chief auditor’s room on Wertheim & Co’s second floor.

  Schmidt left his office to run the icy gauntlet of the back stairs to the first floor. It was 3.02 pm. Since Dietrich’s departure he’d sat immobile, plunged in thought. The anteroom was deserted. Fräulein Dressler’s desk was cleared: evidence of an efficient departure. He stared at it, and in a flash had a notion that from the deck of the Wertheim he was looking at an abandoned lifeboat on a wide sea.

  The case clock bled seconds.

  He turned on his heel, and went back to his office for his overcoat and hat. That clock was ticking in his brain.

  Hurrying through the grey mid-afternoon, he felt a stranger in the streets at this hour. In ten minutes he reached the gloomy, utilitarian building. He climbed the stairway quietly, holding his tension in check. He hesitated, then rapped lightly on the door with his knuckles. A lingering silence – a suspension of life. Iciness from the concrete floor speared up through the soles of his shoes into his bones. Did this building ever get warm, even in summer? He strained to hear; heard his own breathing.

  He said, ‘It’s Schmidt.’

  Immediately the door opened; he stepped back. She’d been behind the door. A gesture to enter, but no sign of panic. He took his resolve past the questioning eyes into the flat. The crisis appeared to have brought her a deeper calm; the flat looked stripped. She closed the door behind him.

  ‘Fräulein, you know?’

  ‘Tonight. Yes.’ She stared at him.

  ‘Have you a plan?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Herr Wertheim’s plan?’

  ‘No. It can’t be used. They’ve found it out. They listen to his phone.’

  Another twist. So the techniques of totalitarianism were invading Wertheims. Quite predictable, though apparently not to the general-director. Technology’d never been his strongpoint.

  Heavily, someone was coming up the stairs. God! Too late? He glanced at his watch: 3.25. They listened, hardly breathing, joined in the danger. The steps trudged past the door, and kept on ascending. Each fading footfall took a weight off his heart.

  It was good that she was reticent, but he must test this last-ditch plan.Wertheim & Co had abandoned her! In effect. From the moment he’d gazed at her empty desk, his unfocused concern, his tentative actions, had coalesced into a direct responsibility. His vision had cleared.

  ‘What is your plan now?’

  She began to move, continuing with what he’d interrupted. She’d no time to question his presence here.Yet another move by this auditor … ’I’ll go to my father’s sister in … another city. I’ll leave tomorrow.’ She clearly enunciated the words, the last of which made no sense. He stared, his lips tight. This wasn’t calm and collected.

  ‘Fräulein, with respect, you must leave this flat immediately. Go to the station. Tomorrow will be too late.’

  ‘I will leave the flat, but I must meet my father. I’ve not been able to contact him.’

  ‘Your father’s flat will be the next place they’ll go to. A hotel is out of the question.’

  She turned to him with a perplexed but obdurate expression. The telephone shrilled in the hall. She started, hesitated, then went to it. She came back, her eyes suddenly glittering with nerves. ‘They hung up.’

  Schmidt thought: They’re on their way. He glanced around the room. ‘Three suitcases?’

  ‘Yes.’ She closed the lid of one, and lifted it to where t
he others waited. ‘O God,’ she intoned softly. It sounded like an amen.

  Schmidt thought:We must go now. Get clear of the locality. He visualised a black car on its way from Gestapo headquarters. He had, in the last minute of concentrated mental effort, thought where to take her, where he could bring her father to meet her, if he couldn’t persuade her to go direct to the station.

  She was putting on her overcoat, her hat. He’d not taken his hat off. The compulsion on him to get out was now tremendous. But were they already waiting? He moved to look down into the street, stopped: learning from Wagner. He stepped back from the panes, black as photographic plates, flecked with raindrops. ‘Leave the lights on,’ he said. ‘Is there a back way out?’

  She shook her head.

  There was nothing to do but to walk out of the building carrying the suitcases. Commit themselves to the streets. Streets murky as the Fuehrer’s mind.

  They were out … his heart seemed to be tapping like a hammer on ice. Perspiration soaked his shirt.

  An act of deliverance! A solitary taxi waited at the corner. Once they were in, and away from the area, he began to whisper in her ear, brushing the fragrant hair with his lips.

  Frau Bertha was shocked. In the open door, faded blue eyes staring, her mistress’s commanding voice at her back, she gazed at Schmidt, the woman and the heap of luggage, as if they’d arrived from a foreign clime.

  Warm air flowed out from the apartment to the chilled arrivals; Schmidt had discharged the taxi two blocks away, and was breathing audibly from hauling Fräulein Dressler’s packed-up life. He smiled tightly, ushered her into the hall past Frau Bertha, the sightless bust of the Great Man, and returned to bring in the luggage.

  In her plush salon, Frau Schmidt, her pince-nez elegantly held aloft, inspected them. Then she concentrated on her son’s face. Schmidt drew in a silent breath, and made formal introductions. At first, he’d thought to leave her in the hall while he spoke to his mother. He’d changed his mind. He was now deciding things on the run.