The Iron Heart - [Franz Schmidt 02]

by Marshall Browne

  A line was switched through to her office and he called the exchange. A moment later he had a tense and excited Buhle on the line. ’I was just about to phone you. The Jew’s returned. Appeared before the door from nowhere, entered before they could get to him. They have the place surrounded.’

  Sack felt a wave of irritation. Appeared from nowhere? ‘I’ll go out there,’ he said. They could easily bungle this.

  The man cleared his throat. ‘Sir, Sturmbannfuehrer Strasser has gone to take charge.’

  A pause. ‘How did that happen?’ Sack’s voice was ominously calm.

  ‘He overheard our arrangements. Asked where you were. I couldn’t tell him. He said he must go and take charge.’ Buhle was worried, apologetic.

  Fury erupted in Sack. With an effort, he controlled himself. ‘Very well.’ He must hurry to the scene and re-assert his authority. It was his case. How many hours had his team worked on it? Fuck Strasser.

  Freda was left seething at Julius’s abrupt departure, with nothing decided about the chief auditor. ‘Sorry. A crisis,’ he’d muttered as he hurried into his overcoat and out the door. She realised it had been a convenient postponement for him of the dangerous decision. Now, back in her chair, a startling thought came slipping into her mind: Did Schmidt know where the secretary was? Visions came of the times she’d seen them together.

  The next thought struck like forked lightning: Could he be hiding her in his flat? She stared at her desk, grappling with the immensity of this. No. She shook her head. Impossible. The fellow was far too clever to do that.

  The internal phone rang. She started, took up the receiver. From the front-desk, Herr Wolff spoke in a guarded voice, ‘Fräulein Manager, Chief Auditor Schmidt has just returned.’

  He’d come back! As she’d suspected he might. Another unexplained late return. ‘Very good, Herr Wolff,’ she said brusquely. ‘I need to speak with him.’ She’d instructed Wolff to let her know if Schmidt returned, though she didn’t wish to give the impression she was spying on the auditor. She hung up.

  But she wouldn’t speak with him — yet. With luck, here was the opportunity to discover what these nocturnal returns were about. She sat stock-still, thinking hard. Without confronting him, this wouldn’t be easy. Her broad hand smoothed her ultrasmooth hair. However, the small fellow wasn’t the only one who could slip around this labyrinthine building like a shadow.

  ~ * ~

  President Funk’s car pulled up outside the Reichsbank at 9.55 pm. The rear door was opened by his driver and a moment later the diminutive president, as though driven by the wind, hurried past the clashing salutes of the SS, and the aggressive heiling of Herr Wolff. Twenty minutes later, with the nightly locking away of the satchel done and the perusal of Herr Schmidt’s meticulously sorted inward correspondence completed, he hurried out again.

  On Monday he’d return full-time to the bank, and he looked forward to re-acquainting himself with the assiduous and handsome chief auditor. He’d only the vaguest memory of the evening the fellow had come out to his house. The auditor waited - a ripe fruit on the bough.

  ~ * ~

  ‘Fräulein Manager, the president arrived at 9.55 pm and has just left the bank. That is, at 10.21 pm,’ Herr Wolff, in report mode, said on the interoffice phone.

  ‘Herr Wolff, I don’t require to know the president’s arrivals and departures.’ She kept her voice patient. The man was of limited intelligence. But tonight it was useful to know this.

  The dwarfish man’s entrance and exit hadn’t ruffled the deep silence that surrounded her. She was unaccustomed to being at the bank at this hour.

  Presumably the president had done what he did each night at this time, according to Frau Heyer: locked his confidential project in the safe.

  She sat up straight. Why would it be impossible? Her mind had swung, full-circle, to her earlier thought. The secretary could be at Schmidt’s flat. He’d done such a thing before — Julius had found that out. He was full of tricks, judging from the Wertheim bank episode, deadly tricks. It might be extremely dangerous to confront him. Damn Julius, rushing off like that. She rose and went to the light switch. A moment later, she stood behind her door in the dark room listening to the corridor, warm excitement rising in her. She breathed: ‘I’m on the verge of a breakthrough.’

  ~ * ~

  38

  O

  N THE THIRD FLOOR, precisely, quickly, Schmidt removed his overcoat and hat, hung them on the stand, then stripped off his gloves. He went to the desk, unlocked the drawer and transferred the camera equipment to his suit pockets. Putting the copies of the English papers incriminating Dr Lobe in the drawer, he re-locked it.

  He opened the bottle of eyedrops, held the dropper above his eye and squeezed a drop into it. He did this a second time, then dabbed the eye with his handkerchief.

  At the door, he remembered the automatic in his overcoat pocket. He’d leave it there. Yes. Then he hesitated about the lights. He left them on, went out to the corridor, positioning the door ajar. Herr Wolff knew he was in the building. If the watchman was sent to check, it could be surmised that he’d gone to the lavatory.

  Ten twenty-nine. The president must’ve come and gone by now. He moved along the corridor to the stairs, heading for the first floor. Without his overcoat, the chill in the unheated passageways seemed to bore into his bones like a drill.

  The anteroom: dark, silent as a tomb. Admitting himself and re-locking the door, he paused to listen. His heart leapt as the heating pipes burped. He switched on his pocket torch.

  A minute later he was in the inner sanctum. Had the Reichs-bank head kept to his routine? Schmidt opened the green leather folder on the desk. All the matters in the folder were initialled by the president. He sighed with relief. Swiftly he went to the alcove, slipped the brass key into the safe’s lock, and turned it - again that slight, heart-stopping catch before it turned. He twisted the handle, the bolts clunked back and he pulled the door open.

  The brown satchel was on its shelf.

  ~ * ~

  Freda Brandt took off her shoes and padded out from her office to the second-floor corridor. She’d put on her overcoat. The linoleum felt icy beneath her stockinged feet, but she pressed her lips tighter and endured it.

  Climbing the stairs to the third floor, she went silently along the corridor. At a corner she stopped, and looked toward Schmidt’s door. The glass panel was lit - the door ajar. Eagerly she peered at it. Yes, ajar.

  She crept the ten paces and gently pushed the door. It swung back to reveal the deserted space. Her eyes swept it. With a new spurt of tension, she saw that his coat and hat were on the stand, a pair of gloves on the desk.

  He was still in the bank. But where? She stood, frowning, analysing the possibilities.

  Decisively, she drew the door back to its original position. She turned and retraced her steps. She’d go further afield.

  The president’s suite was locked and dark. Gently she tried the door, listened. Nothing. She moved on.

  ~ * ~

  The cassette he’d loaded last night still had 30 exposures according to the exposure counter, and Schmidt quickly resumed the routine of the first session. He’d memorised the place he’d got to: page 73. Fifty-two pages to go. His vision was clear, but he feared it might be temporary.

  At the president’s desk he peered through the viewfinder, pressed the shutter release, wound on, placed the next page on the stand. In an efficient rhythm he progressed through the detailed sheets of economic plans and data. He absorbed nothing except the occasional heading, such as COAL PRODUCTION. He knew he was photographing the financial building blocks for outright war.

  Eerily, he felt von Streck was close by — even watching over his shoulder.

  His eye took only seconds to adjust to each page in the viewfinder. As he worked, he worried that a sliver of light might show under the door of the inner sanctum and illume the glass panel of the corridor door. If the watchman was passing . . . No. It will not
penetrate the draught-stopper, he told himself.

  He checked his watch: 10.43 pm.

  It happened without warning: moisture flooded his eye and in a micro-second his vision was destroyed. Urgently, he blinked several times, took out his handkerchief and dabbed. No good. Too much strain. If he waited, rested it . . .There were 21 pages to go. Vital pages, he guessed. He must change the cassette. But even that was too difficult now. He fumbled the tiny roll and it fell on the floor. He bent down to retrieve it. He’d have to give it up for tonight. Grimly, he wondered if fate - and his eye — would allow him one more chance at the safe.

  ~ * ~

  Soft-footed, Freda Brandt prowled through the deserted building, a stark contrast to her usual parading. The deputy auditor’s office was dark. The two clerks in the cable-room, surprised, twisted in their chairs to stare at the shoeless head of precious metals. ‘No, the chief auditor hasn’t been here, fräulein manager,’ one of them stammered.

  She padded away into the corridor of the west wing. Footsteps coming — in her direction. She turned and slipped into a recess near the stairs.

  The watchman on his rounds went past, stopped short, came back and directed his torchlight into the dim space. ‘Fräulein manager?’ he said, hesitant. Belatedly, he saluted.

  Her face reddened in the light. ’Is there anyone working late in this wing?’ she snapped.

  ‘No, fräulein manager.’

  ‘Have you seen the chief auditor?’

  ‘No, fräulein.’

  She bit her lip; she shouldn’t have asked that question. ‘Very well.’ She gestured for him to continue his rounds.

  She was angry with herself. There’d be gossip about her conduct tonight amongst those who’d observed her here — and whose ears would it reach?

  Back on the third floor his office remained deserted and mute. This was infuriating. Silently she descended the stairs to her floor and re-entered her office. Her feet felt like blocks of ice. She waited a few moments, then took up the phone.

  ‘Fräulein manager, Herr Schmidt hasn’t left the building,’ Wolff said. Now he sounded uncertain — and curious.

  She hung up the receiver and gazed at the photograph, which was like a touchstone to her. ‘Damn you, Julius, I need you here,’ she breathed furiously. It was a rare occasion when she felt out of her depth.

  Even so, she couldn’t just sit here!

  He has a key to the president’s office. Like a searchlight beam shooting into the sky, that thought came. The door Frau Heyer had locked that had become unlocked . . . Now she was breathing quickly.

  She hurried back there a second time. The glass panel in the president’s anteroom door was dark like all the others on the floor. Again she gently tried the handle. Locked. She was furious with herself for not persevering earlier. The place to which he had special access. But was he here? She gazed at the pebbled glass as if optical intensity would penetrate the mystery. She listened intently: heard only her own breathing. Frau Heyer said Dr Funk came back each night to lodge his work in his safe. His special and vital work. Tonight the president had come and gone.

  As sharp as a stab of toothache it came to her: he was after whatever secrets the president was committing to the safe. Sack’s story brought back from the southern city: a specialist at opening safes! It was how he’d trapped the two Party men at Bankhaus Wertheim. Innocent men sent to their deaths. She’d call up Herr Wolff with his bunch of keys, and the SS guards, and enter the president’s suite. Expose this auditor in the midst of traitorous work!

  But her eyes widened as she considered the implications if she was mistaken. She strained again to hear any sound, to detect any glimmer of light through the door. Nothing. Doubt was taking over. If he wasn’t inside, how could she explain her unauthorised entry into the inner sanctum? Certainly it would be reported to the president - as would her other movements around the bank tonight. She shuddered. He’d almost given his secretary a nervous breakdown over failing to lock the door.

  ‘Damn, damn, damn!’ she whispered under her breath. She was shivering violently. Better to lie in wait for him to come out. She needed urgently to visit the lavatory; had been conscious of it for the past half hour. The purgative she’d taken this morning was acting. With a desperate glance at the anteroom door, she slipped away to attend to the call of nature.

  ~ * ~

  Schmidt stepped out from the anteroom with the extreme caution of a man on a knife-edge. Yet he was fatalistic about it. His confusion and fear of the morning had evaporated. In the life he’d blended into in the past six months, fate to its fullest measure had to be trusted.

  The corridor was empty. He sniffed the air. Perfume! God! Freda Brandt! Moments ago. That perfume seemed to be moving in and out of his life — a fearsome signal. Blurrily, he peered each way down the corridor. He must get back to his room, get his paraphernalia locked up. He crept quietly away. In a female lavatory near the stairs a cistern flushed. A muscle flickered in the auditor’s cheek. He knew where she was.

  ~ * ~

  Fräulein Brandt rushed back to her post outside the anteroom door. She’d been gone not more than five minutes. Nothing had changed.

  I’m going to damn well freeze to death, she thought a minute later. She strained all her senses — her intuition. Somehow, the rooms behind the locked door that previously had seemed potent with intrigue now felt like dead space. Angrily, reluctantly, she turned and padded toward the stairs.

  The interoffice phone rang as she entered her office.

  ‘Fräulein manager, Chief Auditor Herr Schmidt has just left the bank,’ Herr Wolff reported.

  My God! Freda Brandt laid down the phone with almost nerveless fingers. Julius must act now. The auditor must be grabbed and interrogated. She was bitterly regretting not having called up the guards. She looked at her watch: 11.01 pm. She would go home and telephone Sack from there. However, she sat immobile, staring across her room at the photograph. ‘How has he done it?’ she asked the Fuehrer. The face gazed back, watchful and suspicious. Watchful and suspicious for good reason!

  ~ * ~

  39

  W

  HEN SACK’S CAR DREW up outside the big house, two agents were on the front steps beside the open door, peering in As he alighted, they swung around and one said, ’Sir! There’s been shooting inside. Two shots. Two of our men went in and Sturmbannfuehrer Strasser followed them. The damned Jew has a weapon.’

  Sack grunted. Surprising. He drew his Mauser and stepped past the man. It was as black as a pit inside. ‘Where did the shooting come from?’

  ‘Way upstairs.’

  Sack nodded at the speaker. ‘You come with me.’

  The electricity was cut off. Sack stepped inside and paused in what felt like a cavernous space; he made out a dark block: the staircase. No sound above, just a mocking silence. The head of Section 4 whispered to his subordinate: ‘Have your torch ready.’

  ‘Yes,’ the agent replied.

  Detestable stairs. This would test his hip. Softly he limped across the dark space, felt for and found the balustrade. Strasser was being unusually quiet. Had he stopped a bullet?

  ~ * ~

  Rubinstein was amazed that he’d made it inside. This was down to a block Spitzel. Given the zeal of these amateur spies, it’d been a matter of time. Coming silently, merged with that strip of black crape at the feet of the high houses, he’d caught them napping. He had the key in the lock before the outburst of shouts and running. Then he was inside, the door re-locked, standing in the dark hall wired tight with tension, but not fear. Familiar with the blacked-out house, he’d ascended the stairs to the first-floor landing and stopped, listening. The excited voices in the street drifted up; they’d be preparing to break down the door.

  Could he get away across the roofs? The first day here he’d surveyed that escape route. He went on up the stairs, his heart beating harder. Dizziness hit him and he stopped, gripping the balustrade waiting for it to abate. Not enough nourishmen
t and too much tension.

  The house, really a huge apartment, was in one of the great residential buildings constructed in the 1870s for the upper middle class. The building had two wings that looked down on a quad at the rear. The Frisches’ apartment comprised a basement, three floors, and access to a vast common attic. That was where he’d settled down; in a remote corner of the unlit freezing space that was a labyrinth of walkways between room-like areas, the store-places for the redundant possessions of an unknown number of families.

  No-one appeared to climb up to this wilderness any more. The doors leading to the other apartments were locked and cobwebbed. He’d settled down in the ‘room’ marked Frisch. There was a bed to sleep on piled high with old blankets. A bucket for ablutions. At the far end, near the stairs to the Frisches’ apartment, there was a sink with cold running water. Washerwomen must have worked there in bygone days and twice he’d stripped and completed freezing ablutions, drying himself on a blanket.