by Chris Petit
Word came back that Stalin was amenable, with a proviso.
‘Only if the Führer is removed before anyone sits down at the table,’ Fegelein announced then added, ‘As a sign of our bona fides, General Secretary Stalin wants a sweetener.’
That was when Fegelein first mentioned the drawings.
‘What do you know about them?’ Bormann thought it as well to ask.
‘The Braun sisters say the minx had the Führer under her spell. She was depraved and obsessed with her own shit and made the Führer draw her doing caca.’
Bormann wondered how far Fegelein’s sexual kinks went.
On 29 June – the day before the Führer raised the subject over dinner – Bormann had the drawings removed from the Führer’s private safe. The transfer was managed by Fegelein, who was flitting between Berlin and his bride in Munich.
When Bormann finally got to see the drawings, his first thought was: Fuck me.
‘What do you think?’ he asked.
‘They’re not very good,’ volunteered Fegelein.
They were so amateurish Stalin would think they were having him on and throw a fit. They were not even schoolboy art – they looked like they could have been done by that degenerate Picasso on a bad day. One showed spread female genitalia and a healthy bush and the other a well-formed turd about to drop from a plump squatting female arse.
Something more credible had to be produced fast – requiring an artist and a plump-arsed model whose auditions Bormann took upon himself – allowing for the originals to be returned to the Führer, leaving that part of the problem solved.
The new drawings were to be passed on to Stalin’s agents in Istanbul via the Japanese in Budapest. Bormann was aware of Fegelein’s contempt for, and mistrust of, the slitty-eyed honorary Aryans. The real reason Fegelein was leery was irate Nippon husbands, subsequent to his pursuit of horizontal relations with the wives of Japanese embassy staff. Sometimes Bormann wondered why Fegelein didn’t just wear his dick outside his pants for all the world to see.
With Fegelein revealed as a liability and showboater, Bormann preferred to deal directly with the man’s old partner in crime, the more thorough Kurt Becher, who was in Budapest negotiating a twelve-year lease for a Jewish family’s steel factories and acquiring their art collection in exchange for safe passage to Lisbon, all according to legal contracts not worth the paper, etcetera. Bormann was impressed by how the crafty and urbane Becher was laying down personal survival strategies, by being seen to be negotiating with local Zionists about saving those that could be extracted from death’s maw. Becher’s infamous ransom train allowed some Jews to buy their way out, in exchange for safe passage to neutral territory.
Fleecing ploys were there to be repeated; Bormann appreciated that. The ransom train was a bucket-class version of Becher’s brokered deal with the industrialist family. In both cases, a fortune got paid and Becher took what became known as the Becher deposit.
Morgen’s reports told Bormann that Becher was operating at a level far above anything Fegelein was capable of, probably on his way to becoming a millionaire and getting away scot-free.
What Becher didn’t know was that Morgen at the time was answering to Bormann. It was a Machiavellian arrangement, which involved the unscrupulous passing on of details of Bormann’s personal enemies for Morgen to sort for corruption. By then practically the entire upper echelon was corrupt anyway, having been bought off, so it was a matter of Bormann taking his pick. He and Morgen had squabbled over Fegelein. Epic corruption, Morgen said. Non-negotiable, countered Bormann. Bormann admired Morgen’s persistence but found his stubbornness verged on stupidity. Becher was agreed upon as a possible compromise target, hence Morgen in Budapest, playing an elaborate and probably useless game, in keeping with the strange dreamlike atmosphere of that summer.
*
For the commission and delivery of the drawings, Bormann turned to the compromised art dealer; queer and pretending not to be. Bormann could always sniff a homo. This one had the waspish humour of one, which he didn’t mind.
It was one of those situations where it was impossible to tell exactly the extent of everyone’s involvement. Bormann, the spider at the centre, knew as much as anyone but even he was not at first aware that the courier was the same man that would cause him so much discomfort by filing a report on the mysterious burning down of a Berlin clinic.
The drawings were secreted by sealing them within the actual cover of the document folder and the switch was supposed to have involved a straightforward swap of one folder for another, with the original passed on to the Japanese. In a less suspicious world, that would have been done during the signing of the contract, but Becher ducked it, telephoning Bormann to say he feared he was being watched by Morgen and too many others. The Hungarians were mad at him because they had been promised there would be no confiscations. Göring was livid because he had been cut out of the art deal. The Hungarian secret police were taking careful note. Becher got on his high horse and said such cheap tricks were beneath a man of his rank and class. The man’s sublime cynicism was rendered more exquisite by impeccable manners. Bormann – tiring of kid-gloved dilettantes – told him to make it work. Only later did he learn that this consisted of Becher informing the Budapest Japanese Trade Delegation, which was fronting their end, that it was up to them to make the switch.
From then on the situation deteriorated.
*
When the courier’s name eventually surfaced it was a shock to Bormann. Suddenly, Schlegel was everywhere. Schlegel the Budapest courier. Schlegel and the clinic. Schlegel hobnobbing with Dr Goebbels. Müller kept Bormann informed. They talked every day as it was, and had done so for years, climbing the greasy pole together since their lowly beginnings in Munich.
Bormann assembled a full account of Schlegel’s moves in Budapest. From Becher. From Morgen. From several sources in the Astoria, which was riddled with informers, including women who hang around lobbies. The only thing he hadn’t known was the wretched man’s name, abbreviated to WHM (‘white-haired man’).
Bormann’s report noted that WHM had complained to the hotel management about finding a Japanese gentleman going through his room on the evening of the eighteenth. WHM reported nothing stolen. The house detective said he would keep an eye out for any further errant Japanese behaviour and WHM agreed it was not necessary to involve the police.
Why the search of the hotel room had proved fruitless was because the desired object had been deposited by WHM in the hotel safe.
When the Japanese informed Becher they had failed, it fell to a reluctant Becher to go to the hotel the next morning and inform WHM he needed to make an amendment to the contract.
But then only the contract was removed by WHM from the safe. According to desk staff, a ‘childish’ standoff followed. A testy Becher announced a change of plan and he was now to take the contract and the folder. WHM refused, insisting his orders were to return the contract.
What should have been a straightforward swap never took place, leaving the courier to return home with the original folder, which was why he was stopped by Berlin customs, the folder swapped then flown back to Budapest on the night mail plane for collection by Becher for forwarding to the Japanese. As it happened, the whole operation turned out to be a complete waste of time, given what happened the next day with the failure of the bomb plot, after which the Japanese initiative collapsed.
As for the dopey courier, if he noticed when he returned the papers it wasn’t the same folder, so what?
*
What delighted Bormann more than anything was discovering how secret puzzles joined up, especially those of his own making, and the whereabouts of missing pieces: the roles of those running and being run; the nobodies who think they are somebody and the plain nobodies; the accidental damage and the women who get fucked along the way (plump-arsed model there for the taking, as well as others he had auditioned). Then there were the overlaps and coincidences: for instance, how th
e Führer had raised the matter of the drawings on the very evening after Bormann had arranged to have them removed. And all this wild goose chase going on while the world was being rocked on its heels, at the whim of two of its foremost leaders, who perhaps should have been concentrating more on steering the ship of state than thinking about mucky drawings. But in this Bormann understood exactly how the world worked, which was why he was rather good at running it.
24
Schlegel reached Gerda at his first attempt. She sounded cheerful and happy and he thought perhaps the day was salvageable after all. He was sitting at his desk. Everyone gave him a wide berth. Dunkelwert was back in her hutch, giving someone a hard time on the telephone.
Dunkelwert had told him his case was ‘under review’. They had sweated him for the rest of the afternoon, going over his time in Budapest. He stuck to his edited highlights. No Hungarian actress. No attempted snatch in the street. No mention of violin repairs. No mention of being followed by two Japanese gentlemen, though he did mention the one found in his room, only because he had reported it to the hotel. He tried to look as baffled as they were.
Dunkelwert had nothing she could make stick but was reluctant to let him go. She looked exhausted, with black smudges under her eyes. Schlegel felt almost sorry for her. She had wanted to break him and not succeeded. In the end, she was forced to admit defeat.
There was the awkwardness of leaving the room together. He supposed he should feel relief rather than nothing. If they let him live he would continue to burrow his way through the days with no sense of future, his inner life as empty as a winter greenhouse.
He told Gerda, ‘I saw the Führer today,’ to see how it sounded. He didn’t quite believe it even as he said it.
Her enthusiasm was touching and he laughed. Sounding bashful she said, ‘A child conceived on the day you saw the Führer!’
Schlegel cringed. He still could not tell whether she was serious and wondered if he shouldn’t go out and get plastered instead. She told him she would be as quick as she could. It would take her an hour or so to finish up.
Schlegel was doodling on the old message telling him to call Frau Busl. He decided he couldn’t be bothered, then called to avoid a bad conscience, hoping she wouldn’t answer.
Someone picked up as he was about to give up, listened to him ask for Frau Busl and replaced the receiver. He called back and the line rang unanswered.
He still had time, he supposed. He should check. The bit players, extending to himself, were the most expendable – those in the wrong place at the wrong time.
He called again from the station. No answer.
Schlegel was amazed that the structure of the day still resembled something that passed for normal: see the mother wipe the nose of the snotty child; see the two secretaries meet after work. There were fewer men and those that were left looked a mite furtive about it, and a lot more widows, younger and younger these days, with their black armbands.
The train sat for a long time between stations. Apart from the dimmest lights in the tunnel, which served only to give definition to the darkness, Schlegel could see nothing. Were it not for the sound of collective breathing and a child’s occasional snivels he could have been buried alive.
*
Schlegel was across the street from Frau Busl’s block, catching his breath because he had jogged the last part, being late – Gerda would let herself in anyway – when he saw two men leave the building, and ducked back into a doorway.
It was the two thugs from the night of the fire, moving with easy assurance, scoping the street as they hit the pavement. They went the other way from Schlegel, who was in no doubt they were the ones doing the tidying. Bormann’s henchmen, he supposed, or Gestapo Müller’s, or maybe even Dr Goebbels had been told that all traces of his potentially embarrassing extracurricular activity must be removed.
The downstairs main door was open.
More worrying, Schlegel found the door to the Busl apartment open too. He called out, fearing the worst. No answer.
The office showed no sign of disturbance. Dr Goebbels grinned out at him from the wall.
He checked the rest. With every reveal, he expected Frau Busl’s body.
The wooden floor squeaked when walked on. Schlegel tried cupboards in case she was hiding. He checked the building’s inner well, to see if they had chucked her down that.
Gradually he formed an impression she was alive and had managed to avoid her hunters. If she wasn’t in the building, she would have locked her front door. Schlegel searched the back stairs. He looked in the cellar. There was no concierge or warden to ask. He was reluctant to leave. He felt responsible. Outside, he continued to hang around. He looked at the time. He really was late now. He had done what he could.
Public transport as usual was infrequent and full, with crowds waiting at stops. Schlegel half-ran up Friedrichstrasse, pausing to wait at the next stop, then hurried on, to be overtaken by buses and trams sailing past. He gave up on them and decided to walk the rest of the way. Half an hour late was nothing these days.
It was staring to get dark as Schlegel came to his street. He didn’t make much of the crowd, staring up, necks craned, a gathering of maybe thirty or forty, spilling into the road. Cops were on the scene. An ambulance was parked. It looked like an accident.
Two men moved through the crowd. Schlegel knew already who they were. The fat one gave a nod and what could be taken for a rueful look. They took up a position on the edge of the crowd, keeping him in sight. Schlegel understood. He looked up, barely daring to. The window of his apartment was open. He knew the rest.
Someone said, ‘Girl fell from a high window.’
The window would have been open anyway. In summer it was always stifling.
Schlegel knew the two men were waiting for him from the way they lingered. If he left, they would follow. If he stayed, they would stay. Either way, they would finish their intended business, even if it meant sticking a knife in him in the confusion of the crowd. Perhaps he should provoke a fight and be done with it. He had nothing left. Gerda should have been exempt. She had nothing to do with it. They must have found the door open upstairs, barged in and thrown her out, for no reason other than to show Schlegel what was in store for him or just because they were irritated to have missed Frau Busl.
Schlegel pushed his way through the crowd. The cops at least had had the decency to put a tent around the body. Even so, a leg stuck out, without its shoe.
When he thought there were no more surprises left, there was one in the shape of the big, ugly man walking out of the entrance. Stoffel.
He was with two uniformed cops.
Stoffel asked Schlegel what he was doing. Schlegel suspected Stoffel was drunk. It was like the old days, with Stoffel in no mood to be friendly, seeming to regard Schlegel turning up a huge inconvenience, just as everyone was packing up. Stoffel took his time working out that it was Schlegel who lived upstairs.
‘She fell from your apartment?’
Schlegel nodded.
Stoffel said, ‘In that case, identify the body for me. Instant death. Very little mess. I’ve seen worse.’
He produced a hip flask and didn’t offer.
Schlegel was shown the body. He looked away. Smashed teeth.
Stoffel repeated that he’d had her down as a jumper. He didn’t need to add, ‘Until you showed up.’
He lit up one of his cheroots that always ended up looking like a dog’s dick.
Schlegel pointed out the two men who were responsible, still hanging around. Stoffel looked at the two thugs and told Schlegel he didn’t want to know. Schlegel’s control snapped.
‘You there!’ he shouted at them, but before he could go on Stoffel had his arm in a vice-like grip.
‘Don’t go causing me trouble. Let’s go inside.’
Stoffel followed Schlegel upstairs. Schlegel couldn’t tell what Stoffel had in mind. Stoffel kept having to stop to catch his breath.
The room showed
no sign of struggle. Schlegel crossed to the window and looked down. The tent and Gerda’s body were in the process of being taken away. The crowd was dispersing. The two thugs loitered, looking up, waiting.
Schlegel turned away and said to Stoffel, ‘Cigarette butt on the floor. She didn’t and I don’t smoke.’
Stoffel shrugged. ‘Probably one of ours. A lot of sloppy work these days.’
The man was impossible. Schlegel realised what it was: even by pointing out the two thugs he was telling Stoffel it was a case of no trespass. There was nothing Stoffel could do.
Schlegel pleaded in desperation, ‘Say it was me who pushed her.’
‘Get on,’ said Stoffel. The man was wheezing like a pair of old bellows from the climb.
‘I need to be arrested.’
Stoffel focused for a moment and said, ‘Never made a false arrest in my life.’
‘Otherwise those men will do for me.’
Stoffel looked at Schlegel expectantly. Schlegel couldn’t work out why, then realised and stepped forward and socked Stoffel as hard as he could across the jaw with his right fist. It was like hitting cast iron. Stoffel barely staggered. He came back and thumped Schlegel in the gut and the air left him in a rush, like it was taking his insides with it.
Stoffel put Schlegel’s arm in a half nelson and held him almost gently by the neck, telling him to breathe deep however much it hurt.
‘There you are, son. Nearly there.’
When Schlegel finally managed to pull himself upright Stoffel punched him in the stomach again, not so hard.
‘Just to remind you how we do things,’ he said. ‘Turn round and put your hands behind your back.’
Schlegel felt the handcuffs snap shut, so tight they bit into his flesh, which was when it hit him that Gerda really was dead.
Stoffel manhandled a staggering Schlegel out of the building, none too kindly. The two thugs sauntered over like they owned Schlegel.