The Iron Heart - [Franz Schmidt 02]

by Marshall Browne

  ‘Yes, a good man,’ Schmidt agreed quietly. His friend and colleague’s death two months ago had been tragic and, for the auditor, soul-searing. Murdered by the Gestapo. Of necessity, he’d buried it deep in his mind.

  In the corridor Schmidt began walking toward the lift. But decided instead to take the stairs. Did Fischer know any details or suspect anything about Wagner’s ‘untimely departure’? The Gestapo, true to form, had disclosed nothing, but in today’s Germany what anyone knew about any subject was an open question.

  Schmidt shivered. The corridors were icy, each heater spaced along them as dead as a doornail. But that wasn’t the sole reason for his chill. Wagner’s death was dangerous ground for him; indeed, for anyone who strayed onto it.

  With an effort, he dropped these thoughts and descended the stairs. As he went, the image of the wraithlike blonde woman came into in his head. Those eyes! And the effect on him! It wasn’t what he’d expected to encounter in a backroom of the Reichsbank on his first day. He was breathing faster as he thought of it.

  ~ * ~

  2

  S

  CHMIDT FOUND AN AGITATED Fräulein Esser hovering outside his door. The young woman hurried to him, her hands fluttering. ‘Oh, Herr Chief Auditor, the president asked for you ten minutes ago.’

  Schmidt swallowed. So soon. He recovered and nodded reassuringly. ‘I’ll go at once. Please be good enough to show me the way.’

  They took the lift to the first floor, where the auditor was introduced to Frau Heyer, the president’s secretary. A stout woman in her fifties with wispy fair hair ringing her head in a halo, she welcomed him to the Reichsbank, then hastened to her desk as if it might explode if she wasn’t there to press the correct buttons.

  Nervous tension was plainly rife in the Reichsbank this morning. Waiting in the anteroom, Schmidt knew that the first day serving a ‘new broom’ wouldn’t be easy. She’d probably been the trusted secretary to the dismissed former president; an awkward and unpleasant situation for her. His heart was beating faster. Meeting Nazi officials was never an easy experience.

  Frau Heyer’s phone rang. She answered it speaking quietly. She hung up and quickly sorted papers on her desk. The phone rang again. This happened several times before a buzzer sounded, and Frau Heyer gestured for him to go in. Outwardly calm, the chief auditor entered the inner sanctum.

  President Walther Funk raised his eyes from a file to Schmidt. The auditor halted three paces from the massive oak desk. The president sat back and studied the small neat man with increasing interest. Schmidt’s handsome face, well-proportioned body, and stillness — in a world where tics, nervous fidgeting and wary glances predominated - was unusual.

  ‘Heil Hitler,’ Dr Funk said, giving an indolent salute.

  ‘Heil Hitler!’ Schmidt responded with a correct one.

  Funk beckoned the auditor closer and half-rose to extend a slim hand across the desk. Formally shaking it, Schmidt found it clammy. This Nazi was dwarfish in stature, paunchy, dark-eyed, with hair that rippled back across his head. He’d been a newspaper editor and, in recent years, he’d held a string of high Party appointments.

  ‘Herr Schmidt, I’ve heard of your special service to the Party. You come here under impressive sponsorship. The Reichsbank’s in dire need of persons of your calibre. My congratulations on your preferment.’

  The voice was reedily incisive. The accent, Prussian.

  Schmidt bowed. ‘Thank you, Herr President.’

  The president’s glance shifted around the room. ‘You’re a Party member. Very good! Many here are not. That will change. Those who don’t join us or who’re ineligible will be removed. I’m going to make the Reichsbank worthy of the Fuehrer’s plans. Of the Party.’ He paused. ‘Do you understand?’

  ‘I do, Herr President.’

  The dark eyes had come again to rest on Schmidt, were drinking him in with a heightened intensity. Standing at attention, Schmidt felt a bead of perspiration wend its way down his spine, but his face and hands remained cool. The danger he’d survived last year had done that for him.

  He’d come a long way since last October - following the entry of the Nazis into Bankhaus Wertheim. Back then, as he’d sat drinking beer with Wagner at a café, the irritated and worried deputy foreign manager had commented on his composure. ‘Jesus Christ! Look at you, never drunk, nails always immaculate - they were, even as a junior clerk when the chief clerk lined us up for inspection each morning. You’re a bloody cameo of a man, not a gram of frivolity. Do you ever open up?’

  Schmidt had been a mild, reserved fellow of few words, whose life was totally concentrated on his family, the bank and his research into the Order of the Teutonic Knights.

  Then everything had changed.

  Now - his respectful manner, mild and attentive expression was a clever mask.

  The president grimaced a contemptuous smile. A faint yet sweet scent wafted across the desk to Schmidt. From Funk’s hair?

  The small eyes narrowed. ‘Under my leadership, the Reichsbank won’t be like the Foreign Ministry. It’s a hotbed of opponents, though they’re extremely careful. Some of the staff who’ve joined the Party don’t love it. Their membership’s counterfeit. They’re deceitful traitors. They don’t love the Fuehrer.’

  Schmidt showed a suitable surprise.

  His eyes still on the auditor’s face, Funk nodded a confirmation. ‘We’ll find them out. At some point they’ll betray themselves. It will be the same here.’ He steepled his hands, his elbows resting on a slim file. Probably mine, Schmidt thought.

  ‘The Swiss banking connections are vital to the Reich. And the Bank of International Settlements. The Fuehrer’s great plans require gold and foreign exchange. Above all, gold.’ He sucked sharply at his teeth. ‘You will maintain a careful overview on these critical sectors. You’ll report directly to me. Do you understand?’

  Schmidt dropped his head sharply in a formal acknowledgment.

  ‘Very well, that is all.’

  Respectfully, Schmidt withdrew.

  ‘Herr Chief Auditor,’ Frau Heyer said, bowing over her desk as he left the anteroom.

  In the corridor, von Streck’s voice was back. ‘Funk’s lazy, a drunkard and a raving homosexual but, Schmidt, I know you’re extremely proficient in dealing with these types.’ The special plenipotentiary had given his darkest smile.

  Frequently a user of back ways, Schmidt took the stairs up to the third floor. The Swiss banks and the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) were Herr Fischer’s territory — a non-party member. And gold was Fräulein Brandt’s province. He stared ahead considering this.

  The president’s summons at this early juncture was quite remarkable. It had to be by von Streck’s hand. What specific information about Schmidt had the special plenipotentiary cunningly inserted into the record?

  Schmidt moistened his lips. Sleazy was an apt description of the president. Shifty was too. Doubtless, the negatives of Dr Funk’s character enunciated by von Streck were accurate. Whatever lay ahead, it seemed probable that Franz Schmidt might finish up as the meat in someone’s sandwich; the trick would be to make himself indigestible. Suddenly, Schmidt had found it necessary to resort to one of his calming thoughts.

  ~ * ~

  3

  A

  T 6.30 pm, SCHMIDT received a jolt as he stepped out from the bank’s cloistered atmosphere into the freezing street. Berlin had shed its day-long shroud of pungent fog, and the streets were now ablaze with electric light, and choked with traffic. The roar of motor engines and the clanging of tram-bells so filled his head that he almost put his hands over his ears. Instead, he rearranged his scarf to protect his throat from the chill.

  All day he’d been walking the Reichsbank’s corridors, tapping on pebbled-glass doors, opening them on surprised or apprehensive faces, absorbed in his induction into the new world. The city outside the bank’s walls had vanished from his consciousness.

  Now it was back. On the kerb, his h
andsome face appearing even paler in the glare of light, he thought, I must look like a provincial, bemused by the capital. The wind from a passing tramcar sliced into this introspection. He’d eaten no lunch, though he’d been told where the canteen was.

  Schmidt entered Wilhelmstrasse and hesitated before a restaurant; a big crowded one with misted windows. He made up his mind and went in through the brass-framed revolving door and was instantly enfolded in warmth and a storm of voices. He stood there, looking around for a vacant table.

  Mentally he shook his head, chided himself: This isn’t any good, looking like a provincial, appearing conspicuous. He had to become again, and swiftly, the Franz Schmidt of last November at Bankhaus Wertheim; the chameleon who instantly adjusted to whatever was dished up, able to merge into the background in a blink of an eye.

  He spotted a vacant table and headed for it.

  When he’d recently come to Berlin to meet von Streck, he’d absorbed the mood of nervy foreboding, and scraps of conversations overheard had reinforced it. The story was that the Fuehrer had worked wonders in defeating the inflation, creating jobs and rebuilding the nation’s confidence - but this threat of war? The Great War of 1914—18 was looming in the minds of Berliners like a spectre.

  The small marble table was against a wall between a rack of newspapers and an over-burdened coat-stand. Removing his overcoat, folding it onto the empty seat, he placed his hat on top of it and sat down. Above his head a line of crystal chandeliers hung in a sea of tobacco smoke, emitting dulled gleams of light. The heads and faces of the diners, bobbing and articulating blurs in the fug, reminded him of caricatures in a Grosz drawing; the whole scene did.

  He took up the menu, peered at it, but instead saw the face of Herr Fischer’s assistant. Mid-afternoon she’d passed him as he was about to tap on one of the pebbled-glass doors. She was a woman of delicate features, small and light-boned, but her footfalls were determined.

  A door ten metres away had sprung open and a man had stepped out to stare after her; a beefy figure, thick-necked, standing stiffly, hands on hips. He’d turned to see Schmidt watching and ducked back into the room. There’d been a lustful cast to the fleshy, mole-specked face. Unmistakable. The auditor knew about undercurrents of institutions; this was one that stood out to him, like a misdemeanour in the accounts.

  A perspiring waiter appeared. The auditor ordered soup and a beer.

  As the waiter passed by a nearby table, Schmidt blinked in surprise. Another face! This time an actuality. Herr Fischer was sitting alone beside a large potted palm. Their eyes met. Fischer put aside his cigar, raised his eyebrows and pointed to the vacant chair at his table. The waiter arranged the transfer. The big banker stood up, his white head wreathed in cigar smoke. ‘Herr Schmidt! Dining alone on your first day? It’s my housekeeper’s night off. Otherwise . . .’

  They sat down. The Prussian studied Schmidt’s face. ‘The food is adequate. Many come here from the bank.’ He snorted. ‘It’s a hotbed of gossip . . . Well, your first day, and you’ve met our new president!’

  Schmidt stared at the Prussian. That fact had travelled quickly. The staff were watching Dr Funk’s first moves with bated breath. Understandable.

  Fischer smiled. ‘All eyes are on newcomers. Presidents and chief auditors especially.’ His great belly pushed over the table’s edge. He was completing his meal with a glass of schnapps and the cigar. He absentmindedly brushed ash from his waistcoat.

  Schmidt’s beer and soup arrived. Fischer, his eyes squinting, watching each sip and spoonful on its way to the auditor’s mouth, asked where he was living. Savigny Platz, Schmidt replied, a twenty-minute tramcar ride. No housekeeper, but he’d employ a weekly cleaning lady Furnished? Yes, fully. Fischer mentioned he was a widower, lived at Lichtenberg with a resident housekeeper and her fourteen-year-old son.

  Neatly spooning his soup, breaking his bread, attentive to this information, Schmidt’s mind returned to the Prussian’s assistant. To the extraordinary look they’d exchanged. He put down his spoon. ‘How long has your assistant been at the bank?’

  Fischer removed his cigar from his mouth, gave the auditor a measured look. ‘She’s been with me for eight years.’ He paused. ‘She’s from Pomerania, joined the bank when an aristocratic family and upbringing counted.’

  Schmidt wasn’t surprised at such a background, the name spoke for it. Fischer regarded him dourly. The odour of damp wool mingled with food smells in the room. Schmidt’s appetite was fading. Fischer waved his hand to disperse smoke, eyeing the room.

  Wagner. Staring into his soup plate, again Schmidt felt that his ex-colleague’s fate lay between them. Wagner’s death had been brutal. It was the last subject Schmidt would discuss with anyone; however, could Fischer, like Wagner, have belonged to the banned Social Democratic Party? He wondered if that was von Streck’s interest in this man. Yet, anything was possible in the world they now dwelt in.

  Poor Wagner. Deep in the hard winter earth.

  Ten paces away from their table a woman and a man stood up. Schmidt gave a start. Fräulein Brandt! But it was the man who was helping her into her overcoat whom he was now gazing at.

  Fischer said, ‘Yes, he looks like him, doesn’t he? The same physique, even up close there’s a strong facial resemblance.’ He twisted his large body around to better observe the departing couple.

  Schmidt stared harder. The man had the limp that he’d seen on the newsreels, wore a similar ground-sweeping black leather coat and soft black hat.

  Fischer was smiling now in friendly amusement at the auditor. ‘I call him The Impersonator. He revels in it, milks it to the maximum. He’s a Nazi fellow of some stripe — our Fräulein Brandt holds his identity close to the breast - as she does her activities at the bank.’

  Schmidt turned back to face the Prussian. He thought: I’d be watching out for her, if I were you. Then he wondered if Reich Minister Goebbels knew of his double limping around Berlin — an avid impersonator, as Fischer said.

  ~ * ~

  In a street near Hardenbergplatz, three kilometres to the west of where Schmidt was making his speculation, Anna von Schnelling left a tramcar. The stop was almost at the door of the old building where she lived. Wrapped in a thick overcoat, wearing a pert hat, she looked a more substantial figure than she’d appeared to Schmidt. She hurried up the steps, anxious to be out of the cold.

  In the hall, she checked her mailbox. One letter. She recognised the hand-writing, had known it since she was a girl. She put the letter in her pocket and walked to the second floor, up the marble stairs with its gleaming brass rail. There were two flats on each floor. On the landing, she pulled up short. Her neighbour Frau Singer’s door was ajar. Anna frowned. This was unusual. They’d been neighbours for three years. Anna hesitated, then went across to the door and knocked. As she did so she heard voices within. The Reichsbank secretary stepped back just as the door opened wider and Frau Singer stood there, her dachshund Fritz peering around her legs.

  ‘Oh, Anna!’ The aged face, once beautiful, lightened in a warm smile. She bobbed her head, dyed blonde hair as immaculate as ever in its perm. ‘How nice to see you.’

  The younger woman smiled back. ‘Frau Singer, I saw the door open . . .’ Fritz came forward and licked at the wrist she lowered to him. She was used to dogs on her family’s estate.

  Frau Singer clicked her tongue. ‘Forgetful, forgetful. Won’t you come in for a moment?’

  The younger woman hesitated but then stepped in.

  A black-bearded man stood in the hall. He was wearing an overcoat, holding a soft black hat in hand, his face expressionless.

  ‘Herr Doctor . . . Halder, may I present my dear young neighbour, Fräulein von Schnelling.’

  The man bowed. Frau Singer was all smiles. ‘Anna has been so kind to me, done so much over the years. Unfortunately, I’ve been unable to do anything in return.’

  Anna shook her head to deny this, took off her glove and moved forward to shake the man’s ha
nd. ‘It’s very little. I won’t stay, I just wanted to make sure Frau Singer was all right.’

  A moment later she was unlocking her own door.

  ~ * ~

  The bearded man, who was an ex-judge, continued to stand in the hall as Frau Singer properly closed the door. His name was not Halder, though his papers said that it was. It was Rubinstein. At least Frau Singer had been careful about that. He’d suggested that the door be left ajar; he was always listening, always watching. ‘Was it necessary to bring her in?’ he asked in mild reproof. His voice was deep.

  ‘Reuben! She is a lovely young woman from an aristocratic family. I’ve known her from the first day I came here when she brought me a welcome gift. She works at the Reichsbank.’