The Eye of the Abyss

by Marshall Browne

  He regarded the room: all that came back to him was the closed-up odour, a widower’s silence, and the atmosphere of a plain and frugal life. He said, ‘Not much to attend to, Dressler. Not much needed to complete it. Though, it’s been a long journey.’

  He’d wanted to hear the sound of his voice.

  They’d not sent Lilli’s ashes. Through his overcoat he patted the passbook. Now was the time to go upstairs to his neighbour …

  A car crept into the street, lights off; its engine died, doors were shut quietly – but not quietly enough. He’d been listening for it, but so soon? A boot kicked a garbage can, and he nodded slowly. Gestapo. They were punctilious, if amateurish in their efforts; the police would’ve waited until dawn, at least, but what could be expected from a gang of convicted criminals and rejuvenated state political police? Previously, a warning phone call from a colleague might’ve come through, but not these days. Not for him.

  He went back to his desk, took his pistol from its holster, worked the action, laid it down, resumed his seat, his casual listening. He fell to dreaming. The outcome was certain, only the details were unclear, and not important. Gradually from the dim and far distance a dull resonance built in his eardrums: the muted, yet thunderous approach of the barrage creeping across no-man’s-land, sending up great geysers of black earth. Soon, once more, hell would erupt all around him, but on a more human scale. Really, there was no comparison.

  They took their time coming up the stairs, doubtless suffering that outlandish climb, and nervous of the general environment. He heard them labouring on the last flight. The pounding on the door came as a theatrical anti-climax. However, it would wake up the building.

  Amateurs. He rose heavily and went to stand behind the door. Until this moment he’d not decided on a plan, but now, carelessly, he had one.

  ‘What is it?’ he said.

  A silence. ‘Open up! Geheime Staatspolizei!’

  He waited. ‘One moment, I’ll get my dressing-gown.’

  He did not move, but waited – as though he was back in the trenches awaiting the order to go over the top. The whistle blew in his head. He flung open the door, surged out. The two men in the midst of a whispered exchange received the pile-driving arms into their torsos, were launched into the air, became entangled in a flailing knot which landed halfway down that flight of the stairs with shuddering impact, somersaulted, kept going down.

  A third man, on the landing, threw himself out of the way of the catastrophe hurtling down, brought up a pistol and fired twice. The second shot hit Dressler in the left shoulder. He flinched, and brought his own pistol out and up, aimed, and shot the man in the centre of the forehead. The dead agent fell back across his entangled colleagues, his eyes wide-open, his face exhibiting his final frantic miscalculation.

  The gunshots were deafening and the stairwell reverberated from the concussions. Cautiously Dressler moved to the balustrade, and a fourth man fired several times at him from the hall, whining bullets off the walls, sending woodchips from the balustrade zinging. Where did they teach these men to shoot? With great concentration, the detective followed him with his gun barrel for a second or two. The man was now running back and forth in the hall like a panicked rat skittering across a barn. The senior detective squinted, squeezed off two shots, dropped this runner in his tracks, and watched him hammer out a frenetic tattoo with his heels.

  The two on the landing below had untangled themselves, thrown off their dead colleague, and were getting out their weapons. One had a broken arm, Dressler noted. He was wearying of this; he shot them both.

  He stared broodingly down at the shambles for a moment: an untidy heap of black leather, glimpses of white flesh, and emerging patches of blood, then went back into his flat, leaving the door open. One of those last shot was still moving, but it didn’t interest him. Not a door had opened – even a crack. Quite understandable. The building seemed deserted but it wasn’t, and everyone would be wide awake.

  He returned to the kitchen to reheat the coffee. Then he sat in his chair behind the desk inherited from his father, laying his pistol down. He reached in his left pocket, and from the ‘out’ tray spilled a handful of brass bullets on his blotter. The blotter where he wrote his rare letters, and the odd report not done in a café with a black coffee standing at his elbow. His shoulder was becoming numb, a little blood was oozing through the overcoat’s thick material. The next lot would come before too long, with a greater degree of preparation and forethought – if they could get their brains working. The pain glinted in his skull, not in his shoulder. He swallowed two pills. Coffee had become a main factor in his life, and he sipped this brew with dedication.

  Five minutes of quiet, and meditation. Should’ve he killed Dietrich? The Nazi had been busy on the phone. No, he was quite comfortable with that decision. In the war, almost invariably, he’d seen cowards and malingerers, traitors and crooks, get their just deserts. In a world saturated with violence. A type of world that was coming back. In that respect, the wheel appeared to turn with certainty. All you had to be was patient. In his heavy, pragmatic way, he felt confident that the Nazi would get his. Herr Schmidt had come into his head: he stood in a street, his eye hanging out on his cheekbone. The detective wondered at the memory. Why hadn’t he made that connection before? He shook his head slowly. The mind, and the memory, were strange. He’d been locked into his fear for Lilli, other matters had been passing him by. And it’d been years ago …

  Herr Dorf, his upstairs’ neighbour, who was a conductor on the tramways and a veteran like himself, an ex-cavalry-man, appeared in the doorway. Dressler had always respected the dexterity with which his neighbour, a largish man himself, moved on the building’s steep stairs, and, went that extra flight. Doubtless, it was due to his experience with edgy horses and swaying tramcars. He was swathed in a dressing-gown.

  ‘Is everything all right, Herr Dressler?’

  Obviously, everything was not.

  ‘Thank you, Herr Dorf. How is the cavalry this evening? Or, I should say, morning?’

  His neighbour sadly eyed the spreading red patch. ‘I don’t complain. How is the infantry feeling?’

  ‘Quite good, really. Certainly much better than those downstairs.’

  He smiled, and Dorf reflected, with surprise, that it was the first time he’d ever seen the municipal detective do that. In the stairwell, the surviving Gestapo agent had begun to emit piteous groans.

  ‘Could I call a doctor – for you?’

  ‘No, thank you. But take this. I’ll have no further need of it.’

  Dressler took the passbook from his pocket. ‘Go to the bank first thing in the morning. Withdraw the money, use it, with my best wishes. Your son’s education …?’

  Dressler, upright in his chair, offered his hand across the desk. ‘Now … please return to your flat, and don’t come out again on my account, on any account.’

  The conductor shook his head sadly. ‘These are bad times, Herr Dressler.’

  ‘Yes,’ Dressler agreed, ‘bad times.’

  33

  HAD WAGNER got through? ‘Has he?’ he asked Helga’s beloved Meissen coffee-pot. Each morning he used to talk to the coffee-pot for the amusement of Trudi. The attempt at levity did not alleviate the nervous tension that had settled in the pit of his stomach now. He wouldn’t know until midday when Wagner was due to ring – unless bad news came earlier.

  Seven thirty am. It was still almost dark. Schmidt stared out the window. His head felt a little heavy, though he’d been as careful with his intake of champagne, and wine, as Dietrich had permitted.

  But last night seemed like a movie. Compared to his concern about the status of Wagner’s mission, it was as past and petrified as the tulips on Dietrich’s frosted glass doors. He’d had two dreams. The remembered essence of them was interweaved with his recall of the interlude with the Nazi. In the dark early-morning hours Trudi had come, soft and light as a breeze, through the flat to his bedside, laid her tiny
hand on his, whispered: ‘Papa.’That was all. The other: a bombastic explosion – big doors thrown open on a glittering assembly of the Nazi elite, a trumpet sounding, and he, Chief Auditor Franz Schmidt, being announced with this fanfare. He sat for several moments contemplating each. Now his throat was aching with nerves.

  Lights on and bereft of passengers, the early tram waited in Bamberg Platz. Conductor Dorf seemed relieved to see someone emerge from the mist. While the auditor was folding his newspaper the Viennese came along the aisle opening his leather bag.

  ‘Good morning, Herr Schmidt – another miserable day.’

  Schmidt smiled a grim agreement, and handed over his money. The conductor punched a ticket and leaned above the auditor, a worried expression on his face. Depression of a communicable nature clung to him. Hanging on a strap, he dutifully scanned the platz for other approaching passengers, trying to penetrate the streamers of mist. He gave up, consulted his watch, and muttered, ‘No-one wants to come out this morning.’

  He turned his big, earnest eyes down to Schmidt, who was poised over his paper, and said confidentially, ‘A terrible business last night at my flats. My neighbour was shot dead. And six others.‘Though no-one else was present, he leaned closer and whispered, ‘Gestapo. I saw the bodies carried out.’

  Schmidt stared at the conductor. ‘Dead?’

  ‘Absolutely. A big gunfight. He was a police detective, a decorated veteran of the war, and clearly a very fine shot. Six of the Gestapo dead as mutton. The reason for it – I don’t know But Herr Dressler was a good man.’

  Schmidt looked down at his paper: it was spinning rapidly like newspapers seen at the beginning of newsreels. He felt ill. He became aware that the conductor was still standing over him.

  ‘Excuse me – ’ Schmidt said.

  Dorf regarded him sympathetically. This kind of event was a trial to all.

  Something else was worrying the Viennese. He’d brought out a bank passbook, and held it as though it was a fragile heirloom. His hands were shaking. ‘We were good neighbours. Herr Dressler wanted me to have this – for my son’s education. I don’t know how to get it.’

  The newspaper had fallen from Schmidt’s hands; a sense of wonderment arose in him. What was happening to forge all these amazing connections in his life? He felt omnipresent – his mind was clearing, control returning. He took the passbook from the conductor, examined it and the enclosed slip. Dorf could have problems withdrawing the money from the savings bank. He would arrange it first thing, before the account was frozen; one more last small service to the doomed Dresslers.

  He studied Dorf’s strained face. ‘Let me take it. I’ll get the money for you.’

  The big conductor smiled with immense relief and gratitude. ‘I can’t thank you enough, Herr Schmidt.’

  The driver was signalling impatiently from the front, so Dorf pulled the bell, and they shuddered and clanked into motion. ‘One minute late, my fault.’ He clucked his tongue.

  It was the first time Schmidt could remember being the only passenger from the terminus. It seemed an omen for the future.

  He couldn’t get Dressler out of his head. But after he’d attended to the post, Schmidt forced himself to examine his in-tray. The financial year-end was near and his work was falling behind. Whatever the exigencies in the wide world, despite personal crises, the bank’s processes didn’t falter. A confidential file of draft closing entries awaited his scrutiny. The bank ran two ledgers, one more or less public, the other strictly private. He grimaced. Depending on the outcome of today’s events, someone else might have to deal with these intricacies.

  After a while he put down his pen, took off his spectacles, and rubbed his good eye. Dressler’s heavy, cautious face came to him. It merged into the imagined silent images of a grotesque gunfight; finally, to a giant, bloodied, bullet-riddled corpse. He shook his head as though to deny this. Another image came into his mind’s eye: peeled of their black leather, six pink, also bloodied corpses. Harmless now as skinned rabbits. No regrets here.

  He tried to steady himself. Nearly ten o’clock. No word from Dietrich. He checked and found that the director hadn’t arrived. Was he sleeping off the champagne? Or had Party business taken him elsewhere? He did disappear frequently to mysterious meetings.

  Sharply the thought came: Had the Nazi been involved in Herr Dressler’s death? Had the Dresslers, en famille, become an obsession? He turned it over in his mind like a coin. His earlier amazement returned: Too much was interweaved in his life these days to dismiss anything. At ten he went out and collected Herr Dorf’s 4,000 marks, and returned to the bank.

  At 11.50 am the intercom phone rang and the Nazi’s voice boomed painfully into his ear: ‘What a night I’ve had Franz!’ He laughed exuberantly – but confidentially. ‘I’d counted on excitement but not the kind that turned up! I’ve spent this morning at Gestapo headquarters, sorting it out for them. It’s something which will surprise and interest you. I’ll tell you about it tomorrow evening, my friend. Be at my apartment at six. We’ll have that drink.’

  Schmidt felt his skin, his hair, prickling as he listened, as the line went dead. The Nazi had whirled to another sector of his existence, revelling in a new triumph. Forbiddingly, it seemed the connection had been established: in his mind’s eye Dressler had appeared in a shadowed doorway, nodded significantly in confirmation. Dietrich again! The Nazi’s evil hand was everywhere. Schmidt again had the feeling of speeding downhill in an out-of-control tramcar, his hand frozen on the shut-off lever. He moved his tense shoulders, seeking relief.

  Nearly 12.00, he stared at the phone now. As the second hand of the wall clock swept past 12.00, it rang; the trunk-line operator announced a call from Zurich – a Herr Wagner – and the deputy foreign manager’s familiar voice crackled down the line.

  34

  VON STRECK WAS still unpacking a bag when Schmidt was shown into his room by the tall, blond resident of the outer office with the bulge beneath his armpit. It was 3.30 pm. The Nazi functionary had a scarf around his neck. His homburg rested on his desk. Here was the man of affairs, seemingly still on the move even as he came to rest. He’d peeled off the black leather gloves.

  He waved the auditor to a seat, and continued arranging papers. The auditor sat neat and erect on the straight-backed chair in his overcoat, his own hat on his lap, and waited for attention. A portrait of the Fuehrer watched him with a melancholic expression highly charged with suspicion. He reflected: Watches the whole population, down to the last railway ticket clerk. In my case, as to suspicion – quite appropriate. These brooding portraits were almost as prolific as the swastika flags – equally reviled by Wagner.

  ‘Well, Herr Schmidt,’ von Streck said, removing the scarf, ‘this is a surprise. I presume you’ve something important to tell me about the Party’s banking affairs.’

  ‘Yes, Herr Minister, unfortunately, I do.’

  Now seated in his leather swivel chair, the short, powerfully-built man raised an eyebrow, pursed his lips, settled himself more comfortably.

  ‘I see. “Unfortunately”? I’ve a feeling I’m not going to like what you’re about to tell me, but proceed.’

  Schmidt edged his body forward. Uneasiness had begun to run in him like sand through an hourglass; something was in the air which he couldn’t fathom, something not quite right; but he was committed now.

  ‘Your instructions in mind, Herr Minister, I’ve been watching over the Party’s business with special care. In any event, that’s my duty …’ Though he’d rehearsed for this interview, suddenly he felt an imperative to take even greater care with his words. The Nazi’s eyes were bright, but expressionless, his face unreadable, his manner uncommunicative. Different from the Municipal Library. He’d no choice but to go on. ‘I believe … fear, a substantial amount of the Party’s Reich bonds may have been misappropriated.’

  Von Streck gazed unresponsively at the auditor’s face, specifically his artificial eye, making Schmidt wonder if he’d tak
en in the dramatic revelation. His disquiet was growing; this wasn’t an auspicious atmosphere for his plan to bear fruit. Perhaps if I told him the Fuehrer’s going to be shot?

  ‘“Believe”, you say …?’ The Nazi frowned. ‘No matter – we’ll pass that over for the moment. Go on.’

  Schmidt studied the functionary. Where had he been? Had his journey been so long and wearisome? He’d carefully planned the sequence of his revelations; however, there was a major gap which required filling: how the bonds had got to Zurich. Wagner must have time to do whatever he had to do, and get out to France. Presuming he survived Zurich. It was a point of danger, but waiting for it to be resolved was also very dangerous.

  The Nazi official had turned to stone: stone arteries tracing into a stone heart, all animation sealed in. So judged Schmidt. But, unaccountably, something was encouraging him to feel that the missing link in his chain of deception might be safely ignored.

  ‘With great regret, it’s my duty to inform you the persons I suspect are Herr Dietrich and Herr Otto Wertheim.’ Von Streck’s eyes had flickered. ‘I suspect both gentlemen have opened Swiss bank accounts. I’ve evidence that the combinations to the NSDAP safe of the two custodians other than Herr Otto Wertheim – that is myself and Herr Wagner – were obtained from the bank holding them on the signatures of those gentlemen.’ He paused. ‘I fear what an audit will reveal.’

  In the street below, a tram clanged its bell. Abruptly, the heating pipes gurgled in the room.

  ‘“Misappropriated”? What does that mean, precisely?’

  ‘I suspect the bonds may’ve been removed to Switzerland.’

  ‘Why do you suspect that?’