Prussian Blue

by Philip Kerr

  I went to retrieve my jacket.

  “Slowly,” said Korsch. “Like tree sap in winter.”

  “Everything I do now, I do slowly. As a matter of fact, Friedrich, I’m exhausted. I couldn’t run another step, even if I wanted to. And I’m all out of clever ideas on how to evade you and your men.”

  This was true. I’d had more than enough of running. My neck ached and my feet were damp. My clothes were sticking to me and I smelled almost as bad as the cold andouillette I’d eaten in Freyming-Merlebach. All I really wanted to do was smoke a last cigarette, face up to whatever was coming to me from the Stasi, and get it over with. They say a cornered rat will attack a dog and deliver a nasty bite, but this particular rat felt like it was finished, and it was as well for me that Gunther’s luck wasn’t feeling the same way because, as I tugged my jacket off the electricity switch on the quartz wall, I managed, quite accidentally, to turn off the light, plunging the cavern into complete darkness. For a millisecond I wondered what had happened. I think I may even have asked myself if someone else had killed the light. I expect we both did. And in the half second it took Friedrich Korsch to pull the trigger of the Makarov, I recognized the broken shard of a chance the gods had capriciously tossed my way and threw myself onto the thick sand. I scrambled away from the splinter of flame that punctuated the inky air with harmless delicacy, once, twice, and then a third time.

  I heard Korsch curse and then fumble with a box of matches, and since it’s impossible to strike a match and pull a trigger at the same time, I stood up and launched myself desperately at the spot in space where I’d last seen the flame from the silenced automatic, hardly caring if I was injured or not. Half a second later I collided heavily with Korsch and the two of us crashed hard against the quartz wall, with him taking the full force of the impact and seemingly coming off the worst as he let out a loud groan and then stopped moving altogether. Breathlessly, I lay on top of his silent, motionless body for a full minute before realizing that I couldn’t hear him breathing.

  I rolled off him and, finding my lighter, I saw that far from being unconscious, Friedrich Korsch was dead—that much was clear even in the flickering light of my Ronson. His single bulging eye stared straight at me and for a moment I thought he was wearing a red hat until I realized that the top of his head was cracked like an egg and covered with blood. More quickly than his life had been engendered between some greasy sheets in Kreuzberg, it had now abruptly disappeared, almost as if it had been turned off like the lights on the cavern floor, and all Korsch’s hopes of a captain’s pip or a major’s shoulder boards were gone as if with the flick of a switch. I held his stare for a while. For a moment I thought of all we’d been through together in Kripo, and then I pushed his horribly fractured head away with the heel of my shoe.

  I didn’t feel sorry for him. Just as easily my life could have ended in the same way, and I thought it as well Korsch had used a silencer on his pistol, otherwise the Stasi men outside would have been summoned to the scene by the three shots he’d fired. I won’t say I planned to erect an altar to luck any time soon, like Goethe, but I did feel absurdly fortunate.

  Now all I had to do was go to one of the other nine levels and make my escape, probably the same way I’d done in 1939.

  SIXTY-SEVEN

  April 1939

  Until 1803, Berchtesgaden had a college of Augustinian canons, whose priors were granted the rank of princes of the empire at the end of the fifteenth century. The Schloss, once the monastic buildings, was now the property of the ex–crown prince Rupprecht. But neither a king nor an emperor could have penetrated the tight RSD security cordon around Obersalzberg now in place following the Leader’s arrival there; I certainly couldn’t. My own clearance was revoked indefinitely and it was explained to me, in person, by Colonel Rattenhuber, that this wouldn’t change until the Leader had left the area and returned to Berlin.

  I was installed in my new lodgings at Berchtesgaden’s Grand Hotel & Kurhaus when Rattenhuber came to see me, full of apologies for this apparent slight and desperate for a cigarette but unable to have one in case Hitler smelled tobacco on his breath.

  “You must understand that there are lots of people in Berchtesgaden to wish Hitler a happy fiftieth birthday and that it would be impossible to accommodate you now in the Leader’s Territory. The Villa Bechstein is full.”

  “I’ll try to contain my disappointment.”

  “I only just succeeded in getting you in here, at the Grand. I’ve never seen so many people in Berchtesgaden. It’s a real carnival atmosphere.”

  I wondered how many carnivals Rattenhuber had been to; the prospect of a war in Poland surely wouldn’t make anyone inclined to run around a maypole.

  “On behalf of Martin Bormann I’m authorized to congratulate and thank you for your excellent work, Herr Commissar. Not to mention your bravery. He’s already telephoned General Heydrich in Berlin to express his gratitude that this whole business has been handled with such enormous discretion on your part and is now concluded satisfactorily.”

  “Who told you that?” I asked bluntly.

  “Wilhelm Zander, of course.”

  “So he’s back in Obersalzberg, is he?”

  “Yes.”

  “Exactly what did he tell you, Colonel?”

  “Only that the two of you traced Johann Diesbach all the way to Homburg, and that when he resisted arrest you were obliged to shoot and kill him. He said you acted with great bravery.”

  I smiled thinly. “That was kind of him.”

  “No doubt about it, you acted for the best. A public trial would only have drawn unwelcome attention to this regrettable lapse in security. For the Leader’s sake, it’s expedient that we should now proceed on the assumption that Karl Flex was never shot on the terrace of the Berghof. That no one was. That there was no sniper on the roof at the Villa Bechstein. And that Johann Diesbach never even existed. As a corollary of all that, we should like to make it quite clear that your investigation never took place. Indeed, that you were never really here in Berchtesgaden. So as not to alarm the Leader unnecessarily. For this reason, the fewer people who see a Kripo detective from Berlin’s Murder Commission around the Berghof and the Villa Bechstein, the better for all concerned. And even though you can’t talk about this matter—no, you really shouldn’t talk about this, and perhaps I need to remind you of the confidentiality agreement you signed up at the tea house—you still have the satisfaction of knowing that you have given a great service to the Leader and to Germany. So then, your orders are to return to Berlin as soon as possible and report to General Heydrich. Your assistant, Korsch, has already left by train, on Arthur Nebe’s orders.”

  Wilhelm Zander had done his job well. I saw that my earlier plan—to confront him in front of Martin Bormann—was now pointless. After all, I could hardly accuse Zander of the murder of someone no one was prepared to admit had ever even existed; besides, Martin Bormann had sanctioned Diesbach’s murder. As for Zander’s attempt on my own life, it would be his word against mine, and it wasn’t difficult to see who would be believed: an expendable Berlin cop who wasn’t even a Party member, or Martin Bormann’s trusted servant? I guess I wasn’t surprised by any of that. After all, I wasn’t even there. Never had been. I already felt like the Invisible Man.

  “How is your jaw, by the way?” asked Rattenhuber.

  “Better, thanks. I had a doctor in Kaiserslautern take a look at it. It’s not broken. Just badly bruised. Like my feelings, I guess.”

  “You’re tougher than you think, Gunther. But what happened there?” He pointed at the bandage now swathing my hand.

  “I was shot,” I said lightly. “It’s just a graze really.”

  “Shot while you were arresting Diesbach?”

  “You might say that.”

  “Foolish fellow.”

  I smiled again, uncertain if Colonel Rattenhuber was talkin
g about Diesbach or me.

  “It’s an occupational hazard for a man like you, I suppose, Herr Commissar. Being shot.”

  I changed the subject. “What about the widow?” I asked uncomfortably. With three men in the Türken Inn already facing a firing squad it didn’t take much imagination to see that a fourth name could easily be added. “Surely Frau Diesbach will have something to say about her husband’s disappearance from Berchtesgaden.”

  “She’s to be resettled,” said Rattenhuber. “Permanently. In Berlin. The house in Kuchl and the salt mine are to be purchased by the OA. In a few weeks no one will know they ever lived in the area.”

  “I suppose that’s an occupational hazard, too. But suppose she doesn’t want to move?” In view of what I already knew about the OA, this was a naïve question, perhaps, but I still wanted to see how Rattenhuber dealt with it. “Suppose she wants to stay put exactly where she is.”

  “She doesn’t have a choice in the matter. There’s her son, you see. Shall we say he’s not like other men? I think you know what I mean by that. And I’m sure I don’t have to remind you about what paragraph 175 of the German Criminal Code says about acts of severe lewdness, Herr Commissar, and those who are likely to commit them. Major Högl has already informed her that it would be best, for both mother and son, if they didn’t make any waves.”

  “I agree about that, anyway.”

  I lit a cigarette, blew some of the smoke at Rattenhuber’s desperate nostrils and, more important, onto his uniform, and went to the window of my hotel room. Outside, it was busy with black staff cars going up and down the left bank of the Ache. I might have been looking at the Wilhelmstrasse in Berlin; Berchtesgaden really did look more like Germany’s second capital city than a sleepy little market town of just four thousand natives. I wondered how long it would take Bormann to get rid of them, too. I said, “I don’t much care what happens to mother or son, to be honest. All I care about is that an innocent man is released. I’m referring to Johann Brandner. There’s absolutely no reason to hold him now the real culprit is dead. Frankly, he belongs in a hospital. Besides, Bormann promised to let him go. He also promised to consider releasing those two Gestapo officers from Linz, who are also being held in the Türken Inn cells under sentence of death.”

  “It’s very magnanimous of you to plead for them,” said Rattenhuber, “in view of the fact that they meant to kill you.”

  “They made an unfortunate mistake that can be cleared up very easily. It was nothing personal, I’m sure. With so many different agencies for law enforcement now operating in the new Germany, these things are bound to happen, wouldn’t you agree? Gestapo, Abwehr, Kripo, SS, SD, RSD—it’s not just the left hand that doesn’t know what the right is doing, it’s all the fingers and toes as well.”

  Rattenhuber looked awkward. “Yes, I do agree. Policing is a bit of a jurisdictional mess. But I regret to have to inform you, Commissar Gunther, that all three of the men you mentioned were shot by a firing squad at six o’clock this morning. Major Högl took charge of the execution. It was carried out before the Leader’s arrival. The two Gestapo men were shot on Heydrich’s explicit orders, of course, and, given the exemplary service afforded by his office to the government leader, Martin Bormann hardly wished to disappoint him in this respect. As for Brandner, Bormann felt that he already knew far too much about Karl Flex and the shooting on the Berghof terrace, if only because of the questioning to which he’d been subjected by myself and Peter Högl. We could hardly go to such enormous lengths to ensure Frau Diesbach’s silence if Johann Brandner were allowed to remain in the area and say what he liked to anyone who cared to listen. As he has done on previous occasions. Besides, it has since been discovered that his release from Dachau was an administrative error. He was supposed to have been transferred to Flossenburg concentration camp. So you see, really, there’s not much harm done at the end of the day. The status quo is restored.”

  “Is that what you’d call it?”

  “This is all that one requires in a case like this, is it not? For the furniture to be put back the same way it was arranged before. These days it’s only the lawyers and the pedants and the foreign correspondents who worry about how one conducts a case. The proper procedures, the gathering of evidence—these things mean nothing, not anymore. Not since Hitler. He cuts through these decadent superfluities and shows us that the conclusion is everything, Gunther. You of all people should understand this. The important thing in concluding a case successfully is actually concluding it. Not postponing it. Not allowing for the possibility of compromise, or appeal, or a faulty verdict. The end has to satisfy everyone, does it not?”

  This “everyone” didn’t include me, obviously, but I nodded all the same. What would have been the point of arguing? I could even see how they’d shot the three men in the Türken before Hitler’s arrival so as to spare the Leader the distressing sound of loud gunshots from across his back garden. The Nazis were never very difficult to understand; their logic was always impeccably fascistic.

  “But most of all it has to satisfy Martin Bormann,” said Rattenhuber. “And by extension, the Leader, of course.”

  Of course I was angry, and tremendously sorry, and as I stood there brooding on the true nature of the new order that was being created in Germany I felt a haunting sense of the man I’d once been—the detective who would have protested such an outrageous demonstration of tyranny, at the expense of his own career, perhaps even at the expense of his own life—and all I kept thinking was, You have to do something to stop these people, Gunther, even if it means shooting Adolf Hitler. You have to do something. Rattenhuber’s mouth was still moving inside his fat red face and I saw that what had happened to Diesbach and the two Gestapo men from Linz and Brandner was, to him, entirely justifiable. It was also very brutal and ruthless. These were brutal and ruthless men, Martin Bormann and his dwarves—they destroyed people and then they sat around the red marble fireplace at the tea house or wherever they talked about such things, and planned the destruction of others. No doubt the subject of a Polish invasion would be part of the Leader’s fascinating table talk at his own birthday party. To think I’d been so close to Hitler’s study at the Berghof. Couldn’t I have done something then? Planted a bomb, perhaps, or placed a land mine under his bathroom rug? Why hadn’t I acted then? Why had I done nothing?

  “I daresay Heydrich will congratulate you in his own way,” said Rattenhuber. “But Bormann and I were discussing how he might honor you and we concluded that this was perhaps the most appropriate way of recognizing your excellent work.” He started to fumble in his tunic pocket for something. “After all, you did exactly what you were asked to do, in double-quick time, and against considerable odds. I still find it hard to understand how you worked out who the culprit was. But then I’m not a detective. Just a policeman.”

  “A detective is just a policeman with a dirty mind,” I muttered. “And maybe mine is dirtier than most.”

  Rattenhuber removed a shiny leather medal-presentation case from his pocket and handed it to me. On the velvet cushion was a little bronze badge featuring a sword placed down across the face of a swastika within an oval wreath.

  “It’s the Coburg Badge,” he explained. “The Party’s highest civilian order. It memorializes the famous date in 1922 when Hitler led eight hundred stormtroopers to Coburg for a weekend rally where a very important battle was fought with the communists.”

  He made it sound like Thermopylae but I had no memory of such a significant historical event.

  “I take it we won,” I said drily.

  Rattenhuber laughed nervously. “Of course we won. Did we win?” Rattenhuber laughed again and clapped me on the shoulder. “You’re such a joker, Gunther. Always kidding. Look here, at the top of the wreath you can see Coburg Castle and village. And the wreath contains the words ‘With Hitler in Coburg 1922–32.’ Of course, that’s not literally true in your case
, but the great honor is in the implied assumption that you were there after all, do you see?”

  “Yes, I do see that. I think Leibniz had a word for that. Fortunately I don’t remember what that word is. Anyway, thanks a lot, Colonel. Whenever I look at it I shall always be reminded of exactly how great a man Hitler is.”

  I closed the box and laid it on the dresser, telling myself that in the Bavarian Alps at least there were plenty of good places to throw away my Coburg Badge so that it might never be found.

  “Also, I have a railway warrant for you,” said Rattenhuber, laying an envelope on the sideboard beside my decoration. “And some expenses. There’s a train to Munich first thing in the morning, and then the express to Berlin. Might I recommend the Hofbraustübl for your dinner tonight? The pork knuckle is excellent. As is the beer, of course. There’s nothing to beat Bavarian beer, is there?”

  “No, there certainly isn’t.”

  But my plans for the evening didn’t include pork knuckle and beer. I had an appointment with Gerdy Troost and Martin Bormann’s brother, Albert. I don’t know how else I could have listened to Rattenhuber’s bullshit and kept my mouth shut.

  SIXTY-EIGHT

  April 1939

  I drove west out of Berchtesgaden toward the suburb of Stanggass. The new Reichs Chancellery stood at the end of the Urbanweg, off Staatsstrasse, a three-story Alpine-style building about the size of an aircraft hangar, with a red-shingled roof, a parade ground, and a flagpole. It was after two a.m., but important-looking cars were still coming and going and the lights in several high windows were burning; smoke billowed from several squarish chimneys and somewhere a dog was barking. It seemed as if the whole area was now on Hitler time, and that until he decided to go to bed, nobody else would, either, even down here at the Chancellery, which was almost eight kilometers away from Obersalzberg and the Berghof.