Shout in the Dark

by Christopher Wright

  Chapter 18

  Germany

  KÖLN STATION, at eight o'clock on a damp summer morning, was pure hospitality. The people, the announcements in German, even the posters seemed to Kessel to be here specially to make him feel welcome, like long-lost friends on a reunion.

  "We'll find an Imbiss for breakfast, Karl." He spoke in a subdued voice. "Then we'll get down to business."

  He took his time eating local rye bread with cold meat and gherkins, laughing and talking loudly. A German needed to eat German food and to be seen enjoying it. The rain descended in a cloud of heavy drizzle, sending streams of invigorating water down the window panes of the small snack-bar: a welcome change from the dryness of Rome.

  A taxi would normally be out of the question, but with the possibility of success looming closer, Kessel indulged himself.

  The tall, balding man at the photographic studio looked to be in his early fifties: too young to be Helmut, but the right age for a son.

  "Ja, I am Otto Bayer," he said cautiously in answer to Kessel's inquiries. "We were expecting you to phone again, not to call here in person. So, you think my father served in the army in Italy in the war?"

  "Where is he? I must... I'd quite like to see him." Kessel realized he was sounding a little too eager, and slowed down.

  "You know him?"

  "I believe my father did, Herr Bayer. They almost certainly served together in Italy."

  The small reception area to the photographic studio was hung with ornately framed photographs of wedding couples, laughing children, and formidable business men in dark suits sitting grim faced against somber library backgrounds. Advertisements for German films, German photo chemicals and German photographic equipment were spaced in carefully controlled order. The area showed the meticulous touch of an over-efficient woman.

  "Then you must meet my father, Herr Kessel. He got through the war unscathed. His illness now is quite unconnected. You will excuse me for not being able to recall the exact details of his military service, but if your father also served in the same regiment you will understand the reason for that lapse of memory." The tall, bespectacled man gave the slightest of bows, which Kessel took as a mark of respect towards his father. Mention of the Defense Echelon, the SS, was still taboo. "Quite a popular man all of a sudden. Is there some wartime reunion being planned?"

  "Not that I know of." Kessel shrugged his shoulders, anxious to meet Helmut Bayer.

  "Well, you will have to come up. He is unable to use the stairs any more. Mother is up there with him. Her name is Monika. Did you know her?"

  Kessel shook his head. Seen in the studio mirror, his blond hair was turning to gray now, but it was unmistakably still fair. Maybe he should have it tinted. "I don't even know your father, but I think he may recognize me."

  The significance behind this statement was apparently lost on Otto Bayer. "Follow me," he said curtly. He slipped the catch to the entrance door before leading the way up a steep flight of stairs to the apartment above the studio.

  "Someone to see you, Papa. He says you know his father."

  "Sturmbannführer Kessel!" The shriveled man in the wheelchair attempted to stand. "Sturmbannführer Kessel! After all these years..."

  The elderly woman who had risen as they entered the darkened room, restrained the old man from trying to lift himself from the seat. "Helmut, Helmut," she admonished him. "You must not exert yourself."

  Kessel hardly gave Frau Bayer a glance. He felt elated. His mother had once mentioned an English soldier in Anzio. To be confused with his father was the confirmation he needed. Someone who had known his father thought they were the same person. A tremendous feeling like an electric shock coursed through his body. It was true! It was absolutely true!

  Of course that English soldier in Anzio had not been his father. Why had his mother even mentioned him, in a moment of sharing a great load of guilt? He'd been stupid to even entertain the possibility. Rüdi's finger had pointed at him in the hospital. He was a real German, with a prophetic destiny. The confirmation was sensational.

  "I am Monika," explained the woman. "You must excuse my husband, he gets muddled at times. I think it is the staying indoors so much that aggravates the problem. We are not able to get out much, as we cannot carry him down the narrow stairs with the wheelchair."

  Kessel could think of nothing to say to that. What a pathetic ending for a member of the SS. He recalled how the old soldier had confused him with his father, and the thought buoyed him up.

  "I can excuse the mistake, Frau Bayer. My father and I are very much alike in looks. He would have been a little younger than me when your husband knew him." His voice swelled with pride as he spoke. A pride of overwhelming intensity.

  A pity they didn't open the curtains wider. It was gloomy in the apartment, and damp smelling. If he lived here he would open both the curtains and the window, in spite of the rain. He was repelled by an overpowering medicinal odor: some sort of embrocation or liniment. No wonder the old soldier was going demented.

  Helmut Bayer was more capable than his wife seemed to realize. He had only been taking his time in thinking. "Of course you cannot be the Sturmbannführer. Sturmbannführer Kessel was killed outside his lodgings in the Via Tasso. Good thing too. Never did like the man."

  Monika Bayer seized the initiative, using her tact to save an embarrassing situation from becoming worse. "You are getting muddled again, Helmut dear. You always spoke highly of your Sturmbannführer. This is his son. He has come specially to see you."

  Helmut Bayer, his cheeks shrunken and his limbs wasting away, obviously understood the meaning in his wife's carefully pronounced words. He agreed that he had indeed been thinking of someone else, allowing Kessel to introduce himself formally.

  Kessel shook the gaunt hand gently and began his carefully prepared speech. "It is a privilege, Untersturmführer Bayer. It is indeed an honor to shake a former member of the SS Sicherheitsdienst by the hand. To think that these very hands were favored with military service for the Reich."

  Helmut Bayer's delicate body shook with mirth and Monika joined with him. Otto sided with Karl in appearing to miss the joke.

  "I was a photographer," explained Helmut, while his wife dabbed tears from his sunken eyes. "All the shooting I ever did was with my camera!"

  Kessel felt obliged to join in with the stupid laughter, but when sufficient time had elapsed to get to the point of his visit, he said, "It is for that reason I have come to see you, Herr Bayer. I want to ask about a monastery that you raided during the war."

  "There were plenty of those." Suddenly there was no merriment on the shriveled face. "I lost count of just how many we searched by the time we had to get out of Italy. Thirty, forty, as well as schools and churches. God, I regret it all now."

  "I am part of an official organization, working for the German and Italian governments." Kessel hoped this carefully fabricated statement would not be questioned. "Shortly before the death of my father he came upon a monastery with a relic of a bronze head. Do you remember?"

  "Remember?" Helmut sighed. "Your father threatened to have me shot. Do you know, someone stole that thing -- and my lovely camera -- from right under our noses? The Sturmbannführer wanted a close-up photograph of the head, but I had already used too much of the film -- on Monika here!" The sickly man gave his wife an intimate look that told of the closeness that still existed after many years of marriage.

  "Can you remember what the head looked like?"

  "It was painted white," said the old man after a moment's thought.

  "But can you describe it to me?" asked Kessel impatiently.

  "All I can remember is that it was white."

  Kessel could have rung the scrawny neck, but his anger must not show. He had spent too long teaching self-control at the Total Training weekends to fail here. "Perhaps you took more photographs, Herr Bayer? Do you still have any as souvenirs?"

  "I have the film!"

  Otto intervened, sounding a
lmost guilty. "Do not be silly, Papa."

  Helmut Bayer appeared weak and confused. "I had it last night."

  Otto Bayer tucked the blanket round the bony shoulders. "I think you must have been dreaming again, Father."

  "Dreaming? It is all so confusing, you know."

  Kessel produced his treasured photograph from between the pages of his notebook. "Is this one of yours, Untersturmführer Bayer?"

  Helmut's thin hands snatched it eagerly. The broad-bordered print obviously brought back memories. "Yes, yes, it is not the standard military print format. I took it with my new Leica. A model IIIc I believe. Thirty-five millimeter film. The first thirty-five-millimeter film I used for the army. It was all roll-film and glass plates for us before that, but there was not enough emulsion to spare for large negatives. See those wide borders; I did not have an enlarger set up for the miniature negatives from that first film. Sub-miniature we called it at the time. I remember doing it in a hurry specially for you in ... in the Via Tasso."

  Monika Bayer smoothed his hair. "Now, now, Helmut, you are getting mixed up again. It was this man's father."

  Kessel turned to examine the gloomy room. His own father, had he been spared the war, would be even older than Helmut Bayer. He had desperately wanted to see his father, a desire that obsessed him through his growing years. It seemed he'd been a fool. To watch his father become such a wretched, useless member of the Fatherland would have sickened him.

  Kessel retrieved the photograph from the bent fingers. It was his only evidence and he did not intend to let the Bayer family keep it as a memento. "Can you remember what happened to this painted head?"

  "Perhaps I never knew. Just a monastery on a hill, and Christian monks and Jews inside with fear in their eyes. We blew it up, to teach the local community a lesson in co-operation. But I thought I had the negatives..."

  Quite unexpectedly Otto appeared eager to take a more prominent part in the conversation. "Herr Kessel, my father is finding sleep difficult with all the pain. He needs rest. There is no point in reviving these memories. Come downstairs with me. I must return to my studio. Business is slow and I do not care to leave the door locked during the day."

  Kessel and Otto Bayer descended the narrow staircase towards fresh air with Kessel holding firmly to the handrail in the semi-darkness. "Do you want to tell me something confidential, Herr Bayer?" He tried to sound hopeful, to prompt an affirmative reply from Otto.

  "If you want to know more about your photograph, Herr Kessel, then I can help you, yes. One of your friends called here only yesterday evening."

  "A friend?"

  Otto shrugged. "An Italian. He also wanted to know if my father could remember about a monastery -- a monastery where the Sicherheitsdienst found some special relic."

  Kessel stared at Otto but said nothing. He could feel his heart pumping.

  "Herr Kessel, would you believe my father still had negatives of your monastery put away with his wartime souvenirs? Your print was made from one of those negatives. Some years ago, I found a roll of processed thirty-five millimeter film from his time with the military, but I didn't bother to examine it."

  The silence in the small reception area was broken only by the snap of the latch as Otto reopened for business.

  "Your father had negatives?" asked Kessel. Bad news was surely about to follow the good.

  "I told you, Herr Kessel, one of your colleagues called yesterday. He flew up from Rome. He talked for over an hour, and I remembered my father's roll of film. There were several photographs of my mother wearing nothing. Completely naked. My, she knew how to pose -- if you understand my meaning. Perhaps you would like to see them?"

  Kessel drew away in horror at the thought that this man could leer at pictures of his mother stripped for the camera. The porn films he and Rüdi had bought and sold had been for the ADR, and at the time left him unmoved. Maybe he had become prudish, but this was close and it was personal. He should have been aware that something was wrong. The whole atmosphere in the building seemed unhealthy.

  He wanted to get out into the street, into the open air. At least he was normal, although by choice he had never started an intimate relationship with a woman. It had been necessary to put all thoughts of sex from his mind as he grew into manhood. The chance of a child with Italian looks, or worse still with Jewish looks, was too high for a man with Aryan blood in his veins to risk. A life devoted to serving the ADR, devoid of sex outside his own hands, had been the outlet for his creative energy.

  "Your Italian friend only wanted the negatives of the monastery, Herr Kessel. I am, of course, extremely grateful to him for bringing the film to light again." Otto smiled, showing a row of regular, white teeth.

  "Do you mind if I sit down?" Without waiting for permission, Kessel sat on an upright red velvet chair below a pin-sharp color photograph of a Bavarian castle. Otto Bayer was not to be trusted. "Let me get this straight. Your father had kept the negatives from which this photograph was printed?"

  "He was not supposed to, but things were chaotic towards the end of the war."

  "And you've given them to an Italian!" Kessel interrupted the photographer deliberately, not even trying to conceal his contempt.

  "Only the military ones. I think he wants them for publication. He was very generous, and my father needs the money much more than he needs a roll of old film."

  "Your father signed a contract?"

  Otto remained silent for a moment. "It was cash in hand, and I am looking after the money for the moment. Of course I will bank it for Papa soon, but I do not want him to know about it just yet. He will only become agitated. The Italian says he will send a further fee when he makes use of any of the pictures. The Italian is apparently working for a publisher of wartime literature. Ah, maybe you are a competitor!" There was sarcasm in Otto Bayer's voice.

  Kessel looked at Karl in the hope that inspiration for the next move would come from the brain-dead skinhead. But Karl was fiddling with a Hasselblad camera as Otto watched anxiously, hands clenched, clearly unwilling to say anything for fear his words might precipitate disaster.

  Kessel stood up slowly from the velvet chair. "Herr Bayer, the Italian and I are ... both very interested in ... the discoveries made in these monasteries during the war." He cursed himself for not having thought through his story. The idea that someone had been here yesterday was shattering and certainly not a coincidence.

  Karl peered down into the screen as he swung the camera around the studio. Kessel knew he would have to work this one out alone. "You are right of course, Herr Bayer, this is most embarrassing. Sometimes the right hand does not know what the left is doing. It would seem that my friend from the Italian end has been overzealous. We work for the same publisher, and this should have been my part of the investigation -- Germans working for the German department and all that." The lie sounded pathetic.

  "Yes, of course." Otto's answer was indistinct. His mind seemed to be on the swinging camera. "Please be careful, young man, there is film in there."

  Damn Karl. "Go and wait outside!" Kessel used his voice of authority. The idiot would do some damage, and they would be asked to leave before they could get details of the Italian.

  Shrugging his powerful shoulders, the youth left the shop.

  Otto smiled arrogantly. "The Italian asked if I had pictures of the killings."

  "You had photographs of killings?" This was not what Kessel wanted to hear.

  "No, my father had not taken any. That sort of thing could be used in war trials, so I believe."

  Who the hell had been snooping into the past -- his father's past? "And there were no negatives showing a close view of the head?"

  "Only the distant shot you have already, or one very like it. You heard my father: he can remember running out of film."

  "Your father's memory, it may not be too reliable." Kessel tried to put it tactfully.

  Otto laughed, tapping his head. "Oh yes, he is fine up here."

  "But in
the apartment..."

  "You saw an act, Herr Kessel. My father is afraid my mother will lose interest in him if she cannot fuss over him all the time. He lets her do it because it makes her happy."

  Kessel was not totally convinced, although it did explain some of the rational statements the Untersturmführer had made. "What exactly did my Italian colleague want?"

  "He wanted me to enlarge a small portion showing the white bust, but the result was rather disappointing. I enlarged it as much as possible, and printed it quite dark in an attempt to show detail. Wartime film was not anything like the emulsions you get today." Otto waved a hand towards the adverts for modern German film as though to prove his point. "I would know it if I saw it in real-life. Even if the paint has been removed, some of the features were so distinctive I could not mistake them. Do you know where this monastery is, Herr Kessel?"

  Kessel shook his head. "It has to be near Rome. That's all I know."

  "There were also some of views of a monastery on the negatives," said Bayer tantalizingly. "What a shame I didn't make copies from those negatives."

  "You didn't make any spares?"

  Otto looked surprised. "Why should I? I had a few scrap prints last night, but the Müllwagen, the garbage truck, calls early in the morning."

  "Perhaps you could let me have a description of my colleague from Rome, Herr Bayer."

  "A description? I can do better than that. I have his name, Herr Kessel, here in my diary. Let me see. Yes, Bastiani. Bruno Bastiani. You know him?"

  Kessel felt the blood leaving his face. His Jewish half-brother must have bugged the room in the hotel to get here first; perhaps even bugged the telephone. Bruno's job with the press would give him all the equipment needed.

  "You want me to help find that head, ja, Herr Kessel? That surely is why you are here."

  Kessel's breath caught in his throat, like a panic attack. "Why should I want to do that?"

  "Business is slow. There might be money in it for me if I were to help you?"

  "The publishers..."

  "You cannot even lie convincingly, Herr Kessel. You are not here for any publisher."

  Kessel opened the door. "Herr Bayer, you have overstepped the mark!"

  "Well, you know where to find me," countered the photographer, unabashed. "I would be able to recognize the monastery and the head, if I saw either of them in real life. I have a good memory, and if I am reading the situation correctly you want to get there before Herr Bastiani."

  "My publishers will..."

  "Cut the publisher crap, Herr Kessel. Yesterday you phone up asking if my father was in Italy in the war. Last night an Italian comes here and asks about a monastery. Then this morning you turn up with the same questions. My father thinks he knows you, and you say your father worked with mine in the SS. I do not have to be a genius to know you are after something. A religious relic perhaps?" He laughed loudly. "Do you think I never watch television? TV Roma is nearly as famous as our own national broadcasters right now."

  Holding the door partially open, Kessel drew himself erect, the way his father would have done if ever a subordinate stepped out of line. "So?" he snapped.

  "So you will have to reward me properly if you want my help. I am not interested in all this Nazi muck, but I could do with some money right now."

  "Nothing doing!" Kessel retorted, slamming the door behind him. That would make the greedy pervert think twice before using such tactics on the ADR. But he remembered Otto Bayer's words. Yes, if it came to it, he would know where to find him again.

  Karl stood on the opposite side of the street, sheltering in a doorway from the rain. He crossed over to meet Kessel. "Well, Herr Kessel?"

  "Well what?" Kessel felt angry and wanted the boy to know it.

  "Do you know who's beaten us to it?"

  At least Karl had been listening while fiddling with that damn camera. Kessel wondered if he had underestimated the overweight neo-Nazi. He regarded him closely. If he had dared have a child of his own, then maybe Rüdi's son here had some of the attributes he would have wished for. Perhaps the Jungling could become a positive member of Achtzehn Deutschland Reinigung.

  Hesitantly he reached out an arm, withdrew it, and finally placed it on Karl's shoulder. The act did not come naturally to him and he reddened.

  "Karl my son, this is serious. Yes, I do know who it was. I have an enemy in Rome. We grew up together, but I sometimes think he would like to kill me. So, how would you like to keep us both safe -- and kill him first?"