Prussian Blue

by Philip Kerr

  In the Schlossberg Caves, darkness enveloped me as if I’d been swallowed by a whale. For several black minutes I felt my breathless way along the rough quartz walls like a blind man on a cliff edge, as if my fingers were my eyes. Now and again I pressed the small of my back hard against the rock to punctuate my progress and tiny fragments of sand adhered to my palms and worked their way under my fingernails. Once or twice I even dropped to my knees, and with the toe of one shoe pressed against the wall, I reached out to check if I was still within a tunnel. It seemed that the one I was in was less than two meters in width because it could easily be touched without abandoning the thread of the labyrinthine wall I was using as my route. I didn’t care about my coat now. I was more afraid of falling than being covered in sand, or being shot. Mostly it was my nose that led me forward, because as I returned to my wall and stepped through the gently curving sable tunnels, the perfume of Johann Diesbach’s distinctively sweet pipe tobacco grew ever stronger. I could also smell Zander’s cigarette—my colleague’s favorite French cigarettes were very pungent—I could even smell the acrid sulfur of the match that had lit it—and I cursed myself roundly for not prohibiting him from smoking. If I could smell his tobacco inside the caves, then so might Johann Diesbach. For ten or fifteen minutes I moved through the void in this flat-footed, halting way, but when I reached the end of my wall I guessed the tunnel I was in had ended. Warning myself against impatience, I dropped onto my front once again and crawled forward, but this time I realized that I must now be in one of the so-called caves and, with no sense of its size, I knew I would have to risk taking a quick glimpse of approximately where I was in order to cross it, or else risk serious injury.

  My police flashlight was the Siemens kind we’d used during the war, with a little adjustable metal cowl to conceal the electric bulb from an enemy sniper while you were reading a map at night; more often than not we’d only ever used these cowled flashlights to read a map with a thick greatcoat pulled over our heads. With all this in mind—I kept telling myself that Johann Diesbach was a former Jäger and a formidable adversary, and I certainly hadn’t forgotten the trench mace I’d found in his valise; a man who could pack a weapon like that next to his toothbrush was certainly to be feared—I got down on my knees and, with the flashlight half-buried in the sand, I switched it on for just a second in the hope I might get a better idea of my immediate surroundings. It was as well that I did: in the middle of a substantial cavern a steep stair led down to a lower level; another few steps in the dark and I’d have broken my neck. I left the light on just long enough to calculate the number of steps I’d need to reach the next tunnel and then switched it off again. A minute or two later, I’d negotiated my way across the sandy floor to the opposite wall. Gradually, I reached a second inner chamber and, on the other side of silence, a few stray sounds—a cough, a throat cleared, the scrape of a match, a sigh, lips drawing fiercely on a pipe stem—crept into my empty ears like crepuscular clues. Then, at the very edge of the darkness, black became a violet gray, and with eyes straining for something to see, the way my lungs would have needed oxygen, I saw the pale beginning of what might have been light. I took a few more tentative steps, and gradually the unfocused blur grew stronger, shifting like something that was almost alive until I perceived that it was the guttering, quiet flame of a very small candle. I lifted my gun to my face, thumbed back the hammer, slipped off the safety, and poked my head around the corner of the wall.

  I saw his shoes first of all and my first thought was how big they were. The man had enormous feet. He’d taken the shoes off to allow them to dry. A green hat with a cock feather in the band lay alongside them and his loden coat was hanging on a nail in a roof prop. Diesbach himself was seated on the floor with his back to the wall, about ten or fifteen meters from where I was standing. The candle was only a few centimeters away from his stockinged foot. He was wearing a good wool suit, with plus fours I hadn’t noticed before; his arms were crossed, a briar pipe was in his mouth, and his eyes were closed. From time to time his mouth twitched to let out a puff of smoke, like a sleeping dragon. He seemed like a tougher-looking version of Adolf Hitler. The mustache wasn’t exactly uncommon in Germany; there were lots of men who wanted to look like the Leader. Some grew a Hitler mustache to make themselves more authoritative, and I’d even read in the newspaper about a man who’d claimed he was due a greater amount of respect just because he had a toothbrush mustache. Apart from the long-barreled Luger resting in his hand Diesbach appeared to be as relaxed as if he’d been on a day trip to Rügen Island and seemed very much at home in the cave, as if he’d just sat down after a good day mining salt.

  I ought to have shot the bastard just for the mustache—and without warning, the way Diesbach had shot Udo Ambros and Karl Flex. Most other cops who still worked for the Murder Commission in 1939 would certainly have put a hole in him without a moment’s hesitation. And a hole would certainly have slowed him down long enough to get the cuffs on him. In those days, however, I still entertained the foolish notion that I was better than them, and that it was my duty to give the man a chance to give himself up. But in truth, while it was a shot I could easily have made in broad daylight, in the flickering light of a solitary candle, missing him looked only too possible; and if I missed him with one shot, I knew I might not get another. From my training at the Alex I knew that most criminals were shot by police at distances of less than three meters, and at that kind of range, you couldn’t get a better pistol than a Walther PPK. But at more than ten meters, it was hard to beat a long-barreled Parabellum Luger. In the hands of a Jäger, a long-barreled Luger had the edge on my PPK, with the stopping power of a castle door. Which made it more or less imperative that I should cross as much of the cave’s floor as possible before trying to arrest him. Even then I knew I’d be taking a considerable chance. No man with an Iron Cross First Class prefers an ignominious death on the guillotine at Plötzensee to dying with a gun in his hand and a good curse on his lips. While Diesbach’s eyes were closed, the one thing I had in my favor was the element of surprise; with a thick layer of sand under my feet I might easily halve the distance between us before letting him know I was aiming a gun at his beer hole. At which point he might be of a mind to give himself up. But even as I made my plan I was aware that he was too tough to quit without a fight; the muscles of his forearms bulged like ham hocks and he had a jaw that looked as if it had been cut in a quarry. Mining was probably less of a problem to a man like that than charming customers smoothly in expensive Munich restaurants. Maybe he just scared the chefs into buying his pink gourmet salt. Him and that damned toothbrush mustache.

  SIXTY-FOUR

  April 1939

  Pointing my gun at the center of his chest I started across the cave. At fifteen meters my mouth was as dry as the sand on the ground; at fourteen meters, my heart was beating so loudly I thought he might hear it; at thirteen meters I was starting to grow in confidence; at twelve I was close enough to see the white scar on his chin; at ten I was getting ready to tell him to drop the gun and put up his hands; but at eight meters, he opened his eyes, met mine, and smiled as if he’d been expecting me.

  “I think that’s far enough, copper,” he said coolly. “Take another step and you’ll find out how excellent a shot I am.”

  “All that salt must have dried your brain like last week’s herring. If I shoot you’ll be dead before you can even wave that pistol.” I threw some handcuffs onto the sand beside his leg. “Let go of the Luger, gently, like it was one of Pony’s lovely breasts. Toss it over here and then put those bracelets on.”

  “How did you know about Pony?” he asked, still holding on to the Luger.

  “Your wife told me.”

  “I guess she told you a lot,” he said, puffing his pipe nonchalantly. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have come all this way to lovely Homburg.”

  “Don’t blame her,” I said. “Blame Benno. And then blame the Nazis. Threate
ning someone with a trip to Dachau is a very persuasive way to preface all sorts of pressing questions.”

  “You know, I somehow think that Bormann has something far worse planned for me than that. So I should tell you now, I’ve no intention of swapping my best hat for a wastepaper basket in Plötzensee. Which means I’ve really got nothing to lose by shooting it out with you here, copper. It will be a pity if we both have to take a bullet because you want to put my neck in the lunette.”

  “I can live with that. Which is more than I can say for you, Johann. The second I pull this trigger your last thought is a red mark on that wall.

  “But give up now and I give you my word I will make sure that nothing happens to Eva and Benno. I’m not a vindictive man, Johann, but I’m afraid the same cannot be said for my employers. They’ll treat your wife and son like the worst kind of criminals. Take the roof off your house. Dynamite your salt mine. If your wife thought your son was too warm for the army, how long do you think he’ll last in Dachau? And all because you want to go out like Jimmy Cagney.”

  “You’re not much of a detective, are you?”

  “I found you, didn’t I?”

  “Yes, but surely you’ve worked out that my wife and I haven’t been getting along at all well. Not since she found out about Pony. And my son. Well, you’ve met Benno, haven’t you? He’s not what I’d call a man’s man, so much as a man’s boy, if you see what I mean. His mother bribing that bastard Flex to keep him out of the army was the last straw as far as I was concerned. What I’m saying is that they’ll have to take their chances. Besides, I rather think that if I do have to shoot you, I’ll just walk out of here and be across the border tonight. I speak French. I shouldn’t think I’ll have much of a problem.”

  “You must be mistaking me for a cop who was dumb enough to come here on my own. This whole area is surrounded with the local leather heads. Besides, don’t assume that the Franzis won’t hand you over to us. They might be about to go to war with Germany, but until that happens we enjoy the total cooperation of the French police.”

  “Sounds about right. The French have always been in Germany’s back pocket. And I suppose you must be in Martin Bormann’s. How does it feel to be just another Nazi doing the dirty work in Hitler’s new order?”

  “I’m not a Nazi. And I’m tired of hearing about the new order. The only shred of self-respect left to me now is to try to do my job the old way. That means taking you to jail. Alive. To arrest you for a crime I know you committed. After you’re safely in the cement it’s up to them what they do with you. I really don’t care. But don’t make the mistake of thinking I won’t shoot you, Johann. What I know about you, shooting you would be a real pleasure.”

  “Then we’re not so very different, you and I.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “I killed Karl Flex because he was a part of the same criminal hypocrisy as your police bosses. Because he had it coming. You must have known about all the rackets he was involved in, surely. Bormann’s Obersalzberg rackets. Drugs, property, bribery. There’s nothing that man doesn’t have a piece of. Flex was one of Bormann’s rats. The worst kind of Nazi. The greedy kind. Surely you can see that.”

  “You can tell yourself what you like,” I said. “And perhaps Flex did have it coming. But you can hardly say the same for Udo Ambros. Your old comrade. Your friend. A man who served with you. I don’t see for a minute how he deserved to have his face blown off with a shotgun. By you.”

  “Don’t you see? I had to kill him. He’d threatened to go to the police and tell them about the carbine I’d borrowed from him. The one I used to shoot Flex. That was clever of you, copper—finding it down the chimney like that. Anyway, Udo said he would give me a twenty-four-hour head start out of Berchtesgaden before he went to the police. But I had too much to lose just to let him drop me in the shit pit like that. And all because I’d wiped out a piece of dirt like Karl Flex. You saw the way Udo lived. What right did he have to wreck my life? All he had to do was keep his mouth shut. Say the rifle was stolen, something like that. I had a good life, a good business. I had to kill him. Please. You have to understand. He gave me no choice. I had to protect my family and my business.”

  There was a note in his pompous Bavarian voice that hadn’t been there before. It sounded like the kind of unctuous, self-justifying mendacity we’d heard just a few weeks before, when Hitler had torn up the Munich agreement and occupied what was left of Czechoslovakia after Germany had already annexed the Sudetenland. It was what happened next that convinced me I’d overestimated him: when he reached for his pipe his hand was shaking. Johann Diesbach was scared. It was in the man’s eyes.

  “The way you talk about it—your whining explanation for an act of cold-blooded murder—in my book, that makes you as bad as the Nazis, Johann. Worse, maybe. But I think you’re losing your nerve for this stalemate game. I think that you’re the kind of Fritz who only shoots a man when he’s not expecting it. Am I right? Are you going to fire that Luger or use it to pick your nose?” Lowering my pistol I walked toward him and kicked his stockinged foot. “Go ahead, tough guy. Point that Bismarck and see what happens.” Diesbach stared at me sullenly: close up, I could see now that whatever fight had been in him was long gone. Perhaps it had never really been there. Candlelight—especially in a cave—can play some strange tricks on you. “No? I didn’t think so. Maybe once upon a time, pifke. But not anymore. Your son Benno has more guts than you.”

  I took the gun away from him and dropped it into my coat pocket. Then I dragged him onto his feet and slapped him hard. Not because of that irritating Hitler mustache but because he’d scared me and I didn’t like being scared.

  SIXTY-FIVE

  April 1939

  Holding the flashlight, I pocketed my gun and escorted my manacled prisoner back through the tunnels. As soon as he was on his feet and moving he began offering me a deal.

  “You really don’t have to do this, Commissar Gunther,” he said. “You could just let me go. I have plenty of money. Back there in the caves, I have at least a thousand reichsmarks in the lining of my loden coat. And there are also some gold coins in the belt on my trousers. It’s all yours the minute you agree to turn me loose. Just don’t hand me over to these Nazi bastards. You know exactly what they’ll do to me. They’ll starve me half to death like they did to that poor bastard Brandner and when they’ve finished doing that they’ll chop off my head.”

  “You’re going to need that money.”

  I don’t know why I said that—habit, probably. I didn’t think there was one lawyer in Germany able to save Johann Diesbach from the guillotine. Clarence Darrow couldn’t have persuaded the People’s Court in Potsdamer Platz that Karl Flex’s murderer deserved anything less than a haircut. Not that I cared very much. As soon as Diesbach was safely in police custody in Saarbrücken, I could return to Obersalzberg and organize Brandner’s immediate release from the RSD prison in the Türken Inn. It was his fate I was concerned about. I was even hoping that Martin Bormann might be so grateful to me that he would agree to commute the death sentence on the two Gestapo men from Linz. And once my business with Bormann was concluded, I would work on getting Gerdy Troost to introduce me to brother Albert; only then might it be possible to acquaint Albert Bormann with the full extent of Martin’s corruption and the blatant simony of the Obersalzberg Administration.

  Diesbach now turned threatening.

  “You’d better watch out, copper. After what you told me back there I could land you in a lot of trouble. Just see if I’m wrong.”

  “How’s that?”

  Diesbach grinned. “Maybe I’ll tell the Gestapo how you told me you hate the Nazis,” he said. “Maybe I’ll tell them that, copper.”

  “If I had five reichsmarks for every dumbhead like you who’s threatened me with the Gestapo, I’d be a rich man. Don’t you think they expect people like you to say that kind of thi
ng? To accuse cops of talking treason?”

  “I bet you’re not even a Party member. In which case it might strike a chord with them. Of course, if you let me go—”

  I took hold of him by his jacket collar. We were nearing the exit and, after taking a great deal of trouble to capture him alive, I hardly wanted Diesbach to get shot by a man who was scared of the dark.

  “Zander? It’s me, Gunther. Prussian blue, okay? Do you hear me? Everything’s fine. I’ve got the man in handcuffs. And we’re coming out, do you hear? We can go back to Obersalzberg now. Prussian blue.”

  “I hear you, Gunther,” said Zander. “Prussian blue. Right. I’ve got that. No problem. Come ahead.”

  I pushed Diesbach forward. A moment later we rounded the corner of the tunnel and stepped into the gray daylight. Zander was standing where I’d left him. He threw away his cigarette, lowered his gun, and sneered.

  “So this is the damn Fritz who’s caused all the trouble, is it?”

  “This is him.”

  “Congratulations, Gunther,” said Zander. “I must say I admire your courage, going into the caves like that. Even with a flashlight I couldn’t have done what you just did. I’m claustrophobic just standing here in the entrance. I’m actually finding it hard to believe I ever went in there as a boy. Yes, you’re quite a fellow. I can see why General Heydrich thinks so highly of you. Now and then one just needs a useful and probably expendable man like you who can get things done, the hard way. In any normal circumstances you might expect to get a police medal for this. For bravery, I mean. It’s just unfortunate for you that these are not normal circumstances. A promotion would be the very least you could expect out of this.”