Prussian Blue

by Philip Kerr

  “Commissar Gunther, I presume?” asked Bormann.

  “How do you do, sir?”

  “You’re here, at long last. We would have had you flown here, but there wasn’t a plane available. Anyway, sit down, sit down. You’ve come a long way. I expect you’re tired. I’m sorry about that, but it really can’t be helped. Are you hungry? Of course you are.” He was already snapping his fingers in the air—strong, fat fingers that were wholly unsuitable for something as delicate as a tea house to summon the man in the SS mess jacket. “Fetch our guest something to eat. What would you like, Commissar? A sandwich? Some coffee?”

  I couldn’t place the man’s accent. Perhaps it was Saxon. It certainly wasn’t an educated sort of voice. He was right about one thing, however: I was as hungry as a threshing machine. Högl and Kaspel had sat down at the table as well, but Bormann didn’t offer them anything. I soon realized that he was wont to treat the men who worked for him with open contempt and brutality.

  “Perhaps a slice of bread with mustard and some sausage, sir. And maybe a cup of coffee.”

  Bormann nodded at the waiter, who went to fetch my dinner.

  “First of all, do you know who I am?”

  “You’re Martin Bormann.”

  “And what do you know about me?”

  “From what I’ve been told you’re the Leader’s right-hand man here in the Alps.”

  “Is that it?” Bormann uttered a scornful laugh. “I thought you were a detective.”

  “Isn’t that enough? Hitler’s no ordinary leader.”

  “But it’s not just here, you know. No, I’m his right-hand man in the rest of Germany, too. Anyone else you’ve ever heard of as being a person who’s close to the Leader—Göring, Himmler, Goebbels, Hess—believe me, they don’t amount to shit when I’m around. The fact is that if any of them wants to see Hitler, they have to come through me. So when I talk, it’s as if the Leader were here now, telling you what the fuck to do. Is that clear?”

  “Very clear.”

  “Good.” Bormann nodded at the bottle of schnapps on the table. “Would you like a drink?”

  “No, sir. Not when I’m on duty.”

  “I’ll decide if you’re on duty, Commissar. I haven’t yet made up my mind if you’re the real deal or not. Until then, have a drink. Relax. That’s what this place is all about. It’s brand-new. Even the Leader hasn’t seen it yet, so you’re very privileged. We’re here tonight because we’re field-testing the place. Seeing that everything works before he gets here. That’s why you can’t smoke, I’m afraid. The Leader always knows when someone’s been smoking, even in secret—I’ve never known a man with such heightened senses.” He shrugged. “Not that I should be surprised, of course. He’s the most extraordinary man I’ve ever met.”

  “If you don’t mind me asking, sir, why a tea house?”

  Bormann poured me a glass of schnapps and handed it to me with those fat fingers of his. I sipped it carefully. At fifty percent proof, it rated a bit of caution, just like the man who’d poured it. There was a largish scar above his right eye and, with his plus-four trousers and thick tweed jacket, he had the look of a prosperous farmer who didn’t mind kicking his prize pig. Not fat, but a burly middleweight going to seed, with a proper double chin and a nose like a parboiled turnip.

  “Because the Leader likes tea, of course. Stupid question, really. He already has a tea house just across the valley from the Berghof—the Mooslahnerkopf. Which he enjoys walking to. But it was thought that perhaps something more spectacular was fitting for a man of such vision. In daylight the views from this room are breathtaking. You might almost say that this tea house is designed to help provide him with some necessary inspiration.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “Do you like the Alps, Herr Gunther?”

  “They’re a little too far off the ground for me to feel quite comfortable. I’m more of a city boy. The beanpole—that is, the Berlin radio tower—is quite high enough for me.”

  He smiled patiently. “Tell me about yourself.”

  I sipped some schnapps and leaned back in my armchair, and then sipped some more. I was dying for a smoke and a couple of times I even reached for my cigarette case before I remembered how health-conscious they were in Obersalzberg. I glanced at the faces of the other knights seated at this particular round table and perceived that perhaps I wasn’t the only one who needed a cigarette.

  “I’m a Berliner, through and through, which means I’m just naturally opinionated. Not necessarily in a good way. I got my Abitur and I might have gone to university but for the war. Saw enough in the trenches to persuade me that I like mud even less than snow. I joined the Berlin police right after the armistice. Made detective. Worked in the Murder Commission. Solved a few cases. Was on my own for a while—a private investigator, and I was doing all right for myself, making good money, until General Heydrich persuaded me to come back to Kripo.”

  “Heydrich says you’re his best detective. Is that really true? Or are you just some Fritz he’s sent down here to spy on me?”

  “I know how to work a case by the book when that’s what’s required.”

  “And what book might that be?”

  “The Prussian General Code of 1794. The Police Administration Law of 1931.”

  “Ah, that kind of book. The old kind.”

  “The legal kind.”

  “Does Heydrich still pay attention to that sort of thing? To the letter of the pre-Nazi law?”

  “More often than you might think.”

  “But you don’t like working for Heydrich, do you? At least that’s what he tells me.”

  “It has its interesting side. He keeps me around because, for me, work is the best jacket. I don’t like to take it off until I’ve worn it out and then some. Tenacity—and a stolid propensity to obstinacy—are forensic qualities the general seems to appreciate.”

  “He tells me you’ve got a lot of snout, too.”

  “I certainly don’t mean to be that way, sir. To other Germans, we Berliners seem to be insolent when we’re not. About a hundred years ago we worked out that there’s no point in being friendly and polite if no one else appreciates it. No one in Berlin, that is. So now we please ourselves.”

  Bormann shrugged. “That’s honest enough. But I’m still not convinced you’re the right fist for this particular eye, Gunther.”

  “With all due respect, sir, neither am I. With most murder cases I’m usually not required to audition for the job. On the whole, the dead don’t mind much who gives them their last manicure. And I’m not about to convince a man as important as yourself of anything, probably. I wouldn’t presume even to try. The kind of Fritz who can talk a hole through someone’s stomach—that isn’t me. These days there’s not much of a market for what’s laughingly called my personality. I certainly didn’t bring any of my favorite music to put on your nice Bechstein.”

  “But you did bring your own piano player, didn’t you?”

  “Korsch? He’s my criminal assistant. In Berlin. And a good man. We work well together.”

  “You won’t need him while you’re here. My men will give you all the assistance you need. The fewer people who know about what’s happened here, the better.”

  “With all due respect, sir. He’s a good copper. Sometimes it helps to have another brain I can borrow—to add another tooth just when I need to chew something hard. Even the best men need a good deputy, someone trustworthy they can rely on, who won’t let them down. That would seem to be as true here as anywhere else.”

  It was supposed to be a compliment and I hoped he’d see it that way, but he had the most pugnacious jaw I’d seen outside of a boxing ring. I had the sense that at any moment he might grab me by the throat, or have me thrown from the battlements—if a mountaintop tea house has such a thing as battlements. This was the first tea house I’d
been in that looked as if it could have kept the Red Army at bay. Perhaps that was the real reason it had been built and I didn’t doubt that inside the rest of Hitler’s mountain were other secrets I might prefer not to know about. It was enough to make me finish the schnapps a little more quickly than I ought to have done.

  Bormann rubbed his roughening, midnight chin thoughtfully.

  “All right, all right, keep the bastard. But he stays down at the Villa Bechstein. Outside the Leader’s Territory. Is that clear? If you want to pick his brains, you do it there.”

  ELEVEN

  April 1939

  Bormann leaned forward and poured me another drink. “I would have preferred a Bavarian up here. The Leader thinks Bavarians have a better understanding of how things work on this mountain. I think you’re probably just another Prussian bastard, but you’re my kind of bastard. I like a man with some blood in his veins. You’re not like a lot of these albino Gestapo types that Heydrich and Himmler grow on a petri dish in some fucking science lab. Which means you’ve got the job. You are acting with my full authority. At least until you screw up.”

  I steadied the glass as he filled it to the top, which is the way I like my schnapps served, and tried to look like I was taking a compliment.

  “Either way, when this is all over and you’ve caught this bastard, it never happened, do you hear? The last thing I want is for the German people to think that security here is so lax that every Krethi and Plethi can just stroll up the hill from Berchtesgaden and take a potshot at their beloved Leader outside his own front door. So you’ll sign a confidentiality agreement, and you’ll like it.”

  Bormann nodded at the man next to him, who produced a sheet of printed paper and a pen and placed them in front of me. I glanced over it quickly. “What’s this?” I asked. “Next of kin?”

  “What it says,” said Bormann.

  “I don’t have a next of kin.”

  “No wife.”

  “Not anymore.”

  “Then put your girlfriend down.” Bormann grinned unpleasantly. “Or the name and address of someone you really care about in case you’ve screwed up or you’re about to open your trap and we have to threaten to take it out on someone else.”

  He made it sound entirely reasonable that this was how things were done—how a policeman who failed to catch a murderer would be treated by the state. I thought for a moment and then wrote down the name of Hildegard Steininger and her address in Berlin’s Lepsiusstrasse. It had been six months since she’d been my girlfriend and I hadn’t liked it very much when I found out that she was seeing someone else—some shiny-looking major in the SS. I hadn’t liked it at all so I suppose I didn’t give a damn if Bormann ever decided to punish her for my shortcomings. It was small-minded, even vindictive, and I’m not proud of what I did. But I wrote her name down all the same. Sometimes true love comes with a black ribbon on the box.

  “So to find the hammer and the nails,” said Bormann, “let’s get to the reason why you’ve been brought all the way from Berlin.”

  “I’m one big ear, sir.”

  At this moment the SS waiter arrived back at the table with a tray bearing the food, and the coffee, for which I was especially grateful since the armchair was extremely comfortable.

  “This morning at eight o’clock, there was a breakfast meeting at the Berghof. That’s the Leader’s own house. Which is next to mine, a few meters farther down the mountain. The people present at this meeting were largely architects, engineers, and civil servants, and the purpose of the meeting was to consider what further improvements might be made at the Berghof and in Obersalzberg for the convenience, enjoyment, and security of the Leader. I suppose there must have been about ten or fifteen men who were present. Perhaps a few more. After breakfast, at about nine o’clock, these men went out onto the terrace that overlooks the area. At nine fifteen a.m., one of these men—Dr. Karl Flex—collapsed onto the terrace, bleeding profusely from a head wound. He’d been shot, most probably with a rifle, and died at the scene. No one else was wounded, and curiously, no one seems to have heard a thing. As soon as it was established that he had been shot, the RSD cleared the building and conducted an immediate search of the woods and mountainsides that directly overlook the Berghof terrace. But so far no trace of the assassin has been found. Can you believe it? All these SS and RSD and they can’t find a single clue.”

  I nodded and kept eating my sausage, which was delicious.

  “I don’t have to tell you how serious this is,” said Bormann. “Having said that, I don’t think this was connected with the Leader, whose movements today and yesterday have been widely reported in the newspapers. But until the killer is apprehended, it will be quite impossible for Hitler to go near that terrace. And as you will doubtless be aware, it’s his fiftieth birthday on April twentieth. He always comes here to Obersalzberg on or just after his birthday. This year will be no exception. Which means you have seven days to solve this crime. Do you hear? It’s imperative that this murderer is caught before April twentieth because I certainly don’t want to be the man who tells him he can’t go outside because there’s an assassin on the loose.”

  I put down my sausage, wiped my mouth clean of mustard, and nodded. “I’ll do my best, sir,” I said firmly. “You can rely on that.”

  “I don’t want your best,” shouted Bormann. “I want better than your best, whatever that particular heap of shit amounts to. You’re not in Berlin now, you’re in Obersalzberg. Your best may be good enough for that Jew Heydrich but you’re working for me now and that’s as good as working for Adolf Hitler. Is that clear? I want this man under a falling ax before the end of the month.”

  “Yes, sir.” I nodded again. Where Bormann was concerned, nodding silently was probably the best response. “You have my word that I’ll give it everything I’ve got. Rest assured, sir, I’ll catch him.”

  “That’s more like it,” said Bormann.

  “First thing in the morning,” I added, stifling a yawn, “I’ll get right on it.”

  “Fuck that,” yelled Bormann, banging the tabletop. My white china cup jumped on the monogrammed blue saucer as if the Kehlstein had been hit by an avalanche. “You’ll get on it right now. That’s why you’re here. Every hour that we don’t catch this swine is an hour too long.” Bormann looked around for the waiter and then at one of the men seated around the table. “Bring this man some more hot coffee. Better still, give him a packet of Pervitin. That should help to keep him on his toes.”

  The object of Bormann’s command reached into his jacket pocket and took out a little metallic blue-and-white tube, which he handed to me. I glanced at it briefly, but all I saw was the manufacturer’s name—Temmler, which was a Berlin pharmaceutical company.

  “What is this?” I asked.

  “Up here it’s what we call Hermann Temmler’s magic potion,” said Bormann. “German Coca-Cola. Helps the workforce at the Obersalzberg keep up with the construction schedule. You see, they are only permitted to work when Hitler’s not here—so as not to disturb him—which means that when he’s somewhere else, they have to work twice as long and twice as hard. That stuff helps. Göring’s considering giving it to bomber crews to help them stay awake. So. Take two with your coffee. That should put a bit more spring in your Hitler salute. Which looked like shit, by the way. I know you’ve had a long journey and you’re tired but round here that’s just not good enough, Gunther. Next time I’ll kick your arse myself.”

  I swallowed two of the tablets uncomfortably and apologized, but he was right, of course; my Hitler salute was always a bit slack. That’s what comes of not being a Nazi, I suppose.

  “Have there been any previous shooting incidents at the Berghof?”

  Bormann glanced at the man wearing an SS colonel’s uniform. “What’s the story, Rattenhuber?”

  The colonel nodded. “There was an incident about six months ago. A
Swiss called Maurice Bavaud came up here planning to shoot the Leader. But he abandoned it at the last moment and made his escape. He was finally apprehended by the French police, who turned him over to us. He’s now in a Berlin prison, awaiting trial and execution.”

  But Bormann was shaking his head. “That was nothing like a serious attempt,” he said scornfully, and then looked at me. “Colonel Rattenhuber is head of the RSD with responsibility for securing the Leader’s person, wherever he is. At least that’s the theory. In point of fact, Bavaud was armed only with a pistol, not a rifle. And he planned to shoot Hitler when he came down to the bottom of his drive to greet some well-wishers. But Bavaud lost his nerve. So, Herr Gunther, I think the simple answer to your question is no. This is the first time someone has fired a shot at anyone in this vicinity. Nothing like this has ever happened here before. This is a harmonious community. This is not Berlin. This is not Hamburg. Berchtesgaden and Obersalzberg constitute a peaceful rural idyll in which decent family values and a strong sense of morality prevail. That’s why the Leader has always enjoyed coming here.”