The Eye of the Abyss - [Franz Schmidt 01]

by Marshall Browne

  Schmidt said, ‘You’re not still active in politics, Heinrich?’

  ‘Active? Inactive? Dormant? Inert? My friend, I’m not going to tell you. But take heart, the SPD is banned, disbanded. What did you say about dead coals?’

  It was not the answer Schmidt had hoped for.

  Senior Detective Dressler’s giant shadow was cast on the façade of a row of houses. The street was deserted. His footfalls were silent on their thick rubber. Exception: glass crunched occasionally beneath his weight, though most of it had been swept away. Through cracks, lights glimmered here and there. The shop windows were boarded up with new lumber.

  An atmosphere of dread and mourning. He’d had a good education, and had disappointed his parents when he’d joined the police. He wasn’t a literary-minded man, though some things he’d read stuck in his mind: ‘For all guilt is punished on earth.’

  ‘We must live in hope about that,’ he said to the darkness.

  Against orders he’d been here last night seeing what he could do. Not much. The teletype from Berlin had chattered out its instructions at 6.00 pm: the police were not to intervene. At 8.00 pm, truckloads of Brownshirts had swept into the district. From a doorway, he’d watched its violation; the beating-up, dragging away of citizens, hair, beards streaming, clothing torn, eyes of dumb animals, though some with eyes more calculating. He’d heard screams, frequent explosions of shop-windows, shards of glass clanging onto the cobbles; possessions had rained down from buildings. His beat. The representative of law and order, he’d stood by, backed into the shadows, massive in his overcoat, his pistol strapped to his chest — as helpless as a baby. The only reactive force had been in his brain.

  Now, he went on. It remained his beat. He still had to look these people in the eye. How could he? Moreover, how to reason it through? He wished he’d Lilli’s brains. ‘Though what’s the use of brains, these days, Dressler?’ he asked himself.

  The Party had been out counting, sending excited reports to Berlin: three synagogues, twenty-two shops and businesses destroyed, 150 shops and businesses damaged, uncounted number of dwellings damaged and sacked. Two Jews killed, twenty-five seriously injured. Not a bad result for a city of four hundred thousand. Multiply that across the Reich.

  He’d been of some use: a Jewish merchant draper whom he knew slightly had run out to the street screaming of a sexual assault. The detective had left his doorway, hauled himself up two long flights of stairs into an apartment. Screams of terror guided him to a bedroom where two Brownshirts, white bums pumping in unison, had two women down on a massive bed, side by side.

  Dressler’s huge hands had plucked them off the frantic women like pulling weeds from the earth. The heads of the S A had cracked together. He’d thrown them down the stairs, reclaimed them at the bottom, his breath steaming out, vision blurring with the effort, handcuffed them together, propelled them, dazedly clutching their trousers, into the street. Other SA men had run up threateningly, but he’d flourished his badge and roared: ‘Caught raping Jews!’ They’d shrunk back reluctantly, knowing the consequences.

  As he walked on, the acrid smell of burnt material came to him. So Herr Wertheim had failed the test Lilli had set for him. Not unexpected. Steel barriers were crashing down against even the most influential. Now this alternative scheme — no less suspect. And as yet, he’d no fall-back plan. Bleakly he wondered how Herr Rubinstein had fared last night, whether he was still in a position, of a mind, to help. He’d been waiting for a call; now it might never come.

  Ten pm. With an untired eye, Schmidt inspected the street. No car, no watchers. Perhaps it had become too cold. Or were Wagner’s nerves playing tricks? He stepped into bitter air. In a warm, counter-attacking wave, the single glass of schnapps rallied in him.

  Wagner was up there behind that slit of light, drowsing in his fecund atmosphere of Mozart and Biedermeier, his haze of schnapps and cigarette smoke. Fervently, Schmidt hoped his colleague could find a way to modify his behaviour.

  Abruptly, as though nudged by his destiny, he turned in the direction of Fräulein Dressler’s flat.

  She spoke insistently through the door. ‘Go away, Herr Otto.’

  ‘It’s Franz Schmidt here.’

  She opened the door a little on a chain, and they regarded each other. ‘I see,’ she said.

  She wore a silk gown, which allowed a glimpse of deep and creamy breasts, and clung to her abundant hips. This Fräulein Dressler staggered him. Incongruously, he remembered Wagner’s description of her as a devotee of cream cakes. Her face was pale — as a white tea rose — but resolute, even defiant.

  Staring at her in the gap of the door, her aura of perfect efficiency seemed cracked, like a porcelain plate. He was mesmerised. His brain had stopped functioning, then like a stalled aeroplane at the top of a loop turning its nose down, re-igniting its engine, it cut back in. Suddenly it was distasteful being here on her doorstep, gazing at her like a mournful bailiff.

  Last night’s passionate embrace overwhelmed him afresh. It had more immediacy than the present moment. He struggled with himself, fighting down his emotion.

  ‘How can I help you, Herr Schmidt?’

  ‘Might I come in?’

  She opened the door, and stepped back into the minuscule hall. She motioned him to a chair.

  ‘I hope it’s not too much of a shock, Herr Schmidt, to see me minus cosmetics and glamour. But then you’re a married man.’

  He hardly heard that. Help you? he was pondering. I wish to help you, but how can I?

  ‘Well, Herr Schmidt?’ — the general-director’s secretary back on duty. The hints of intimacy from this morning had evaporated — with the abandoned Prague mission? Did she even remember last night?

  ‘Herr Wertheim informed me this afternoon the Prague trip is cancelled. Herr Dietrich, that —’

  ‘My days at Wertheims are over?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How kind of him. Nearly over. I’ll leave this week.’

  He considered this. Reluctantly, she came and sat opposite him, and gave a small, dismissive shrug. ‘Herr Wertheim did his best, but the problems of people like me worsen each day.’

  Schmidt would have sympathised with bitterness, but detected none. He was sitting here on the slenderest of pretexts. How ridiculous it must seem to her: a kind of meddling curiosity. What was going on was rotten and terrifically bad luck, but merely saying, thinking that was worse than useless.

  Had the knight ever had such self-doubt, been a host to similar powerlessness? He said: ‘I wish to help but I don’t know what I can do.’

  ‘Thank you. I’ve understood that. Herr Wertheim has a new proposal.’ She considered how much to say. ‘He knows a man, an academic living a reclusive life in a remote place, who he’s persuaded to take in a secretary. He believes in this household I’d drop from sight. Until something else can be arranged.’

  Silently Schmidt gazed at her. A stop-gap solution. Out of Germany, beyond the reach of the Third Reich was the only safe haven ... This was no good. Dietrich’s interest in the case wouldn’t cease at the point when she left the bank. The dedicated Nazi, the Munich-trained lawyer, would want to see her before the courts. In prison.

  It had been a long and eventful day, but Schmidt didn’t feel weary, instead more and more keyed up.

  She said, ‘I’ve not decided to accept Herr Wertheims offer. I wish to discuss it with my father.’

  He stood up. He’d come here, he realised, to discover what, if anything, was to replace the Prague initiative. At least he’d that answer. Another reason existed, he supposed with a pang of self-disgust. ‘Herr Otto ... ‘ she’d said through the door. He had the unpleasant vision of the director and her in the corridor.

  She watched him leave. There was to be no repetition of that passionate embrace. He felt he’d been dismissed from her mind as he closed the door. However, when he was gone, Fräulein Dressler remained motionless, staring at the varnished oak. A strange, well-meaning man.
That serious, watchful face, his worried concern, awoke her sympathy Did he realise the danger he might be in? It was far too late in the day to render assistance. They’d all been sleepwalking. A million troubled consciences such as his couldn’t make any difference now. She’d felt the sexual pressure upon him, brushing against her spinster’s life. It should have been merely a surprising and curious byway, yet the blood had been coursing through her last night, as it did sometimes in her solitary and intimate moments. Eligible men were few, and far between. Affairs had been rare in her life. A generation of mates killed off. Millions of German women shared her predicament. Some nights, she was desperate — less so these days.

  Forget that! She had to move quickly and surely now. And stay calm. There’d be no second chance.

  ~ * ~

  15

  T

  WO DAYS HAD elapsed since Schmidt had dined with Wagner, and paid his second visit to Fräulein Dressler’s flat. In his office, he stared at the wall as if to project Herr Wertheim’s latest plan on it; but it remained a sketchy blueprint in his head. He felt like a tram driver whose hand had frozen on the shut-off lever in an emergency. Abruptly, he smoothed his blotter, made a decision, and went to the G-D s anteroom. She wasn’t there. He returned to his office.

  At 10.00 am, Dietrich terminated this. The Nazi was a specialist in bringing matters to a head. Schmidt looked up to meet the calculating eyes, and the wolfish smile. He’d no idea how the man had arrived so silently in his doorway.

  ‘What do you have to report, Schmidt?’

  Schmidt began to rise. Dietrich waved him down impatiently. ‘Listen, Herr Auditor, don’t bother to stand up for me. You Wertheim people spend half your time lifting your bums off your chairs when a superior appears. We’re now close colleagues with the same aims. Remember that.’

  Schmidt watched the Nazi; doubtless he’d the guardianship of the Party’s business in mind. He collected himself: Feeding time. ’Herr Director, one million in from Bremen this morning. Herr Schloss’s department’s already invested it.’

  He husbanded these morsels for Dietrich, to deflect his scrutiny. Probably the Nazi had begun to see through it, hopefully saw nothing more than an anxious underling’s desire to please.

  ‘Very good.’ The cigarette case crossed the desk. Dietrich lit both their cigarettes. The oak of the desk creaked under his weight: a subtle Wertheim & Co protest. He waved his big white hand to disperse the outbreak of smoke, and appraised Schmidt with a speculative yet friendly look. ‘The Dressler affair finishes today.’ He inhaled luxuriously. Schmidt absorbed this as he did all of the Nazi’s utterances, with meticulous attention and outward calm. But his heart beat more quickly. ‘It will be tidied up this evening. The Gestapo will pick her up at her flat. That’ll be that! Another one of them flushed out, extracted from circulation. Just like the Reichsbank’s extraction of dirty banknotes! Very correct, eh Schmidt?’ He tapped his thick fingers on the cigarette case in a rapid, valedictory tattoo, and smiled at the ceiling.

  Schmidt felt his stomach rise and fall. He nodded slowly, automatically reaching deeper within himself for calm. With that smile the Nazi, too, seemed to have reached inside himself. Did Party members receive a bonus for this kind of thing? Perhaps only a testimonial. Schmidt couldn’t interpret the tone, the smile. A hint of irony? Possibly. More one of challenge, he decided.

  ‘Nothing to say? Never mind. Have you thought over joining the Party? No?’ Dietrich grinned. ‘My dear Schmidt, you’re not one to rush into action are you? When are you going to step up to the plate?’

  This last question puzzled Schmidt, but the subject was far from his mind. ‘It’s an important decision. I wish to discuss it with my wife.’ He heard himself saying this.

  ‘And she is in Dresden attending to her mother.’ The auditor looked hard at the Nazi. How did he know that? ‘All right, Schmidt. We’ll pursue it another time.’ He rocked a little on his perch. ‘One picks up many things at the centre of power. For example, the Social Democratic Party, banned, presumed disbanded, in actual fact survives. Is treacherously running its affairs from Paris. From Paris! Stay alert, Schmidt! Nothing’s as safe and sound as we think.’

  He grinned again at the auditor. ‘By the way, please recommend me your dentist. I wish to have a check-up.’

  He departed with Doctor Bernstein’s address in his notebook. Schmidt considered what he’d done. For a moment, he’d thought of giving the Nazi the name of the dentist recommended by Bernstein, or of saying that the practice had closed, though he knew it was open till the month-end. But immediately he was certain these subterfuges wouldn’t work; he’d sensed that more was involved than Dietrich’s teeth. He picked up the phone to warn the doctor.

  After the call, Schmidt stared at the photo of the Wertheim building taken that long-ago summer day. His body felt chilled. His brain seemed to be overloaded. The SPD survived! Wagner had been to Paris several times this past year. Coincidence? He shook his head. Intemperate outbursts were one thing. He couldn’t believe his friend would run such a deadly risk as this implied.

  Dietrich seemed to be fitting Franz Schmidt’s life together like one of Trudi’s jigsaw puzzles, and what was this new bonhomie? An intimacy being attempted which was ominous. He must maintain his distance; use his polite, circumspect manner to its full effect. He stubbed out the cigarette.

  He knew now what Dietrich had put in motion, but remained ignorant of the situation on the first floor: knew only the general steps of their mysterious shadow-dance. Could she get away in time? Dietrich had served the news to him like a delicacy on a plate; it teased him with its danger. He was perspiring. He straightened in his chair. For him the road ahead had opened up.

  Dietrich left with a brooding expression on his face. He was confident that the Dressler situation would be correctly finalised. His revelation to Schmidt of her imminent detention, before he’d dealt finally with Herr Wertheim on the issue, underlined that. He was becoming intrigued with Schmidt’s nature, with penetrating his smokescreens. If they were that. He felt attracted to the man.

  He arrived at the first floor, and walked straight into the general-director’s office. Herr Wertheim gave the Nazi a quizzical look, and motioned him to a chair.

  Dietrich believed that the old banker’s negligence and intransigence concerning his secretary, now unmasked, had changed the balance of power between them. However, the hierarchal system should be respected. Up to a point. He began by raising one or two routine matters. The banker listened, patiently receptive. Instead of smoking, the Nazi employed his hand in expansive gestures. He paused ... ‘Herr General-Director, I have to inform you the Gestapo will arrest the Dressler woman this evening at her flat. At 6.00 pm, I believe.’

  The faded eyes dilated. Wertheim laid a bluish hand on the desk; otherwise he was as inert as the paintings on his walls. After a long moment, he said, ‘Mein herr, you surprise me. I understood it was being held in abeyance pending my consideration. Our further discussion.’

  The Nazi raised his open hands, palms uppermost. He lied with an easy conviction: ‘Unfortunately, the illegality of her position came to the attention of the ever-alert authorities through other channels. It’s now out of our hands.’

  Herr Wertheim didn’t doubt that it was. He stared past the Nazi to the far wall, meditated on the so-called degenerate picture. He sighed to himself. This Nazi was not as subtle as he thought he was. It was distressing to hear the reference to ‘the Dressler woman’. They’d accelerate her departure to his cousin in Saxony.

  With narrowed eyes, Dietrich watched the Silver Fox. He said, ‘It would be a mistake for the fraulein to try to avoid arrest. For example, to attempt to hide in some well-meaning but misguided household — even in a region as remote as say ... Saxony.’

  Herr Wertheim’s gaze broke contact with the unblinking eye on the wall. His face had assumed its most profound urbanity. But he was thunderstruck. So they were tapping his private telephone line! He felt the s
lightest film of moisture on his hands, a palpitation of his heart. His fertile plan was a frozen ruin. He was stunned. From a controlled defence to defeat, in one move.

  Dietrich stared at the banker, wondering how he’d taken it. He still couldn’t tell.

  The general-director glanced at the big clock on his wall. This was a city of clockmaking and it had been presented to him by a famous manufacturer; it resembled those they suspended above prizefight rings. The innovative sweep-hand seemed to devour time. He smiled. ‘Herr Dietrich, I won’t detain you any longer from your important work.’

  Fräulein Dressler watched the Nazi stride out through the anteroom, as though on parade at a rally. The man seemed to possess a ragbag of poses. All he lacked was a uniform. Herr Wertheim’s red light was flashing. She took up her notebook and went in, and sat in the chair still unpleasantly warm from Dietrich’s bodyheat. Herr Wertheim was emitting hints of strain. After ten years, she detected what others couldn’t; more so than his wife, she liked to believe.