City of Shadows

by Ariana Franklin

  Bolle shrugged. “Department 1A, I suppose. Set a Nazi to catch a Nazi.”

  “Shit.” Schmidt stubbed out his cigarette. “Does Ringer know?”

  “Doesn’t matter, does it? Ringer’s not running this division anymore. Department 1A is.”

  Frau Pritt put her head around the door. “Major Busse wants you in his office, Inspector.”

  “Which inspector?”

  “Inspector Schmidt.”

  Schmidt’s eyes met Bolle’s. He left him puffing his pipe and ignoring a tutting Frau Pritt as she tried to flap its smoke toward the window with her handkerchief.

  He went into Busse’s office on the attack. “I hope I’ve been dragged in to hear that your department’s going to demand the personnel list from the SA.”

  Busse frowned. “What? What are you talking about?”

  “That.” Schmidt stabbed a forefinger at the Anastasia file lying open in front of Busse where he sat at his desk. “A multiple-murder case. Accordingly, it comes under my department, Busse, and I want some bloody cooperation on it. If your people are the only ones who can get a list of military personnel out of the SA, then get it.”

  “Ah, yes,” Busse said, turning over a few pages and marking a place with his finger. “The killing of the sodomite. Your mysterious R.G. of Munich.”

  “Can you get the list or not?”

  “From the Sturmabteilung?” Schmidt’s nostrils twitched with the same distaste they’d displayed at the word “sodomite.” “Shall we say that there are ...internecine difficulties? Captain Röhm guards his ...fiefdom somewhat jealously.”

  “Even from you people?” Schmidt sat down, interested despite himself. Fiefdom, eh? The Nazi powers were quarreling among themselves.

  “For the moment, yes. However . . .” Busse settled his glasses more carefully on the bridge of his nose; he had a trick of extending his little fingers as he did it. His dark hair had a middle part as straight as a flare path. Damned old woman, Schmidt thought.

  “At present I am not concerned with your R.G. of Munich.”

  “I am,” Schmidt said. “He killed my wife.”

  “Yes, I see you have made a statement to that effect.” Busse tapped the file. “Frau Busse told me at the time you seemed overwrought on the subject. She assures me it was an accident.”

  “It wasn’t.”

  “I had a high regard for Frau Schmidt,” Busse said. “The finest example of German womanhood, I always thought her. Her loss would unhinge anybody, but it is to be hoped that you will eventually marry again, to someone of equal racial purity.”

  So Busse, too, knew where he was living. What the hell did they care who he went to bed with? “I wasn’t unhinged, and I don’t want marital advice. I want help catching a killer.”

  “Yes, yes.” Busse was impervious to rebuke. “However, at the moment I am interested in the matter of the woman Anna Anderson. She has since attracted international attention. America, for instance, ap

  pears to have welcomed her as the grand duchess Anastasia.”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “But you,” Busse said, ignoring him, “seem to have gone to some lengths to throw doubt on her authenticity by suggesting that she may be some Polish peasant. Can you prove that?”

  “Look,” Schmidt said, “I don’t care who she is. For all I know, she’s the Queen of frigging Sheba. It’s only that this whole case began with somebody trying to kill her.”

  “For instance . . .” Busse wet his thumb and forefinger to leaf through the folder’s pages. “Dear, dear, where is it now?” He was the sort of man who said “dear, dear.”

  What he wasn’t, Schmidt thought, was the sort of man whose soul— if he had one—could be snatched by romance, not the sort of man who’d read bedside fairy tales of lost princesses to his children. Balance sheets, yes; fairy tales, no. This very office spoke of utilitarianism: tidy to the point of rigidity, its only decoration a portrait of President Hindenburg. Schmidt couldn’t work out whether the man wanted Anna to be Anastasia or whether he didn’t.

  “Here we are, yes, a reference to some woman at the Elizabeth Hospital who asserts that Anderson once signed adoption papers under the name of Franziska Schanskowska. Have you a statement from her?”

  “No. She’s emigrated since. To Palestine.”

  “One of those.” Busse’s nostrils were afflicted again. “Her evidence would have been suspect in any case, then.” He uncapped a fountain pen and made a note on the file.

  “Look,” Schmidt said, “I’m interested in linking Anderson to the killer so I can put handcuffs on the bastard. Whether she’s Anastasia is immaterial.”

  “You must learn to leave political matters to us, Schmidt. Now, then . . . ah, yes, the matter of the supposed Gypsy girl who also went missing from—where is it?—from Bagna Duze. It says here she arrived at the village from Russia.”

  Schmidt was curious. “Since when did all this grand-duchess stuff become political?”

  “The Gypsy girl,” Busse said. “She came from Russia?”

  “Apparently. Why? You thinking she escaped from Ekaterinburg?”

  “I wish to know the weight of such evidence as you have provided on Fräulein Anderson’s identity. Now, then . . .”

  And he continued to do it, asking questions, making notes in the margin of the file, then making them again on a pad of paper, testing the link between Ryszard Galczynski and R.G. of Munich only so far as it also provided a link between Anna and Franziska. And doing a good job of breaking it, Schmidt thought.

  “So.” Busse sat back, settling his spectacles. “In fact, there is no actual proof to connect Fräulein Anderson with your Polish peasant.”

  Schmidt shrugged. In effect, it didn’t matter; he’d gone to Bagna Duze to find R.G. of Munich, not Anastasia. “I wouldn’t advise you to buy shares in Anna Anderson as the grand duchess, Busse. I don’t think her lawyers would like that file produced in court when they ask for the Romanov inheritance.”

  “No,” Busse said slowly. “No, they wouldn’t. It is not a tidy story.” He tweaked his glasses again. “You have a duplicate copy of it, I believe.”

  Frau Pritt, the bitch. “Of course. It’s a multiple-murder case. My baby.”

  “We’ll have it back for the time being, if you don’t mind.”

  “I do mind. What the hell is this? You aren’t showing any interest in catching the bastard.”

  “Our interest is political,” Busse said. “And I should like that copy. I may have to ...insist.” Not so much the accountant now. His sibilants had the sound of a bayonet coming out of its sheath.

  “Then you can insist to the chief of police. My new department has been approved at Reichstag level.”

  “So has ours.”

  “Not as recently as mine.”

  They were playing “so there.” Two boys in a playground arguing over whose football it was. An appeal to the headmaster would probably end up with Department 1A winning, Schmidt thought—the bastards had been given unheard-of authority—but he could also count on it taking a long time.

  “We shall see.” Busse recapped his fountain pen. “In the meantime we must not quarrel. We are both on the side of order.”

  “Law and order.”

  Busse nodded, smiled, and got up. “You must tell me about the Kurten case, I am most interested. Did you bring a record of it back with you?”

  “A summary.”

  “Good. Perhaps you would let me see it. I am making a study of the diseased mind.” He accompanied Schmidt back along the corridor, chatting.

  While Schmidt pulled out the drawer of the filing cabinet, Busse looked around the office as if making a mental note of the untidiness. When Schmidt handed him the Kurten papers, he was regarding the poster of M, the haunted, toadlike eyes of Peter Lorre as the murderer staring back at him, so unmistakably Jewish that, the year before, the Nazi publicity machine had used the poster to suggest that all killers were Jews and all Je
ws were killers.

  “ ‘To Inspector Schmidt, in gratitude and respect for his part in the arrest of the real M,’ ” Busse read. “You liked the film?”

  “It was excellent.”

  “It showed sympathy for a degenerate.”

  “I helped catch Kurten. I’d have gone down to hell to catch him. I felt relief when they cut his head off, if that’s what you’re asking. The film showed a man in the grip of an obsession he couldn’t control. Maybe we should all be grateful we’re not born like that. I can’t even give up smoking.”

  “Lorre is a Jew, of course,” Busse said.

  “So I believe. Well, there you are. Have fun with your diseased mind.”

  “Thank you.”

  Schmidt held the door open for him and watched him go until he was out of sight. Then he closed the door and locked it. He got out the copied Anastasia file, put it in his briefcase, picked up his hat and coat, and went out.

  “EISENMENGER?”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Schmidt.”

  “Where are you calling from?”

  “The Wrestlers.”

  There was a heavy sigh. “Dear boy, I am in the middle of moving. At this moment louts are loading an eighteenth-century escritoire onto their van with somewhat careless sangfroid. Give me the number, and I’ll ring you back.”

  Schmidt gave him the number.

  Boxer said wearily, “Don’t they got a phone in the Alex? There’s other people want to use that one now and then.”

  “This one’s helping the police with their inquiries.” He ordered a beer and waited.

  Even entering the Wrestlers, he’d taken the precaution of ensuring that he wasn’t followed. And I’m a damn policeman, he thought, serving the state’s interest in trying to catch a killer; it shouldn’t be like this.

  But he heard two clicks on his telephone every time he used it, he was concerned with a case that “they”—whoever “they” were—didn’t want him to pursue, he had a secretary who was an informant, and the fact that he was living with a Jew had been noted. The tentacles of cancer creeping through the body of Germany were enwrapping him. And he’d begun to be afraid. That’s what they feed on, he thought. Surveillance, brutality, disappearances—those aren’t merely to get rid of the unwanted; they’re a strategy to break down our resistance.

  The telephone rang.

  “I had hoped to make it clear that I was gambling on a long and happy retirement,” Eisenmenger said. “You, young man, are shortening the odds against it. What do you want?”

  Schmidt was curious. “Where are you phoning from?”

  “My neighbor’s house. I am alone in his study, and I’ve shut the door.”

  “What is Department 1A?”

  “I hope you have not fallen foul of it.”

  “It’s taken over a case I’m interested in.”

  “Department 1A”—Eisenmenger’s voice became that of a school-master—“is the embryo of what will, should Herr Hitler be made chancellor, become the Secret State Police, the Geheime Staatspolizei, the Gestapo. It is designed to rid the state of its enemies. It is the baby of Hermann Göring, and, believe me, you don’t want to stay around and watch it grow bigger.”

  “Why would Hitler, or Göring, be interested in Anna Anderson?”

  “The Anastasia female?”

  “Yes.”

  “She’d be a useful tool, always supposing she were the grand duchess. Take up her cause and Hitler would get White Russian support, show the capitalist world his determination to fight Bolshevism. Have her by his side when he drives in triumph into Moscow.”

  “Hell of a risk for him, though. Suppose she’s a fraud? He’d look a fool.”

  “Hitler has intuition. He prides himself on it. He cannot be made to look a fool—if he says white’s black, his minions ensure that white turns a very dusky color. They call it ‘working toward the Führer.’ ”

  “So if he decides Anderson is Anastasia, his minions would be keen to wipe out any suggestion that she wasn’t?”

  “Indeed so. Is that all, dear boy? I have to get on.”

  “What are the internal politics? I mean, this Gestapo doesn’t seem particularly friendly with Röhm and his SA gang.”

  “No. It is devoted to Hitler. Röhm is somewhat unwisely setting himself up as a rival power to Hitler. I leave you to draw the conclusion.”

  “Röhm will be dispensed with, will he? So . . . oh, fuck it, I can’t talk generalities. Look, the man I’m after is a killer; he’s murdering anyone who can give him away. He’s an SA man, and what I want to know is, would Department 1A or the Gestapo or whatever it is bring him to trial if they caught him?”

  “Depends whom he’s killing. If it’s Jews, they’ll probably promote him.”

  “Aryans. Would they bring him to trial?”

  “No. He would simply disappear.”

  “Yes,” Schmidt said slowly. “Yes, I was afraid of that.”

  “Continue to be afraid,” Eisenmenger said. “And don’t ring me again.”

  “SO THEY DON’T bring him to trial,” Esther said. “So they kill him themselves. Well, I don’t care, just as long as he’s dead.”

  They were at dinner in the flat.

  Schmidt was appalled. “You can’t do that,” he said. “There’s something called law. Perhaps you Russians didn’t hear about it, but it’s . . . it’s a living thing. It’s what separates us from apes. It’s taken a thousand years to grow. People died for it. No law, then no republic—just barbarians with axes. He’s got to go on trial. For Christ’s sake, woman, people have to see what he did. Unless it is shown and proved that he killed Natalya, Hannelore, and the rest, you don’t redress the balance, don’t you see?”

  “No,” she said, “I don’t. I just want him dead.”

  “Quietly shoved in a hole somewhere. I’m told they have a nice little killing ground.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you might as well shove all his victims in with him. They’ll be as faceless as he is. They might have had revenge. They haven’t had justice.”

  “But you’ll be safe,” she said.

  He looked up, realizing. “Is that what’s worrying you, Mrs. Noah?”

  “All the time.”

  He got up and went around the table to kiss her. “None of us would be safe,” he said.

  The next morning, on his way to work, he made a diversion to the home of Joe Wolff, stopping off to pack up his Anastasia file and put on the requisite stamps.

  “Look after this, Joe. If anything happens to me, I want you to send it to the editor of the Berliner Tageblatte.” It was a newspaper he’d always trusted.

  “Why should anything happen to you, Siegfried?”

  “You never know. And, Joe, do it anonymously.” If trouble came to his old friend, Ikey’s shade would never forgive him. He’d never forgive himself.

  Continue to be afraid, Eisenmenger had said.

  He was.

  THE NEXT NIGHT, returning late from dinner at a restaurant, he and Esther found the door to 29c hanging open. For a second, Schmidt thought a grenade had been thrown inside. The big table in the living room had been smashed, books scattered from the shelves, cushions ripped open and thrown on the floor....

  “I’ll kill ’em.” Schmidt stomped over broken glass to the phone and then stopped. “What’s the fucking use? At least they didn’t get what they came for.”

  He looked around. Esther was still standing in the doorway, her eyes large and remote. “He’s been here,” she said.

  For a moment he didn’t understand; then he did. “My love, it’s not him. Did you think it was him? He’s not a burglar. Darling, I know who did this. They won’t do it again.” He kept talking as he righted a chair, fetched her to it, and held her.

  She drew in a deep breath to stop herself from shaking. “Who was it, then?”

  “Oh, just some little friends from Department 1A. They were looking for a file I won’t let them have—the
wreckage is their way of showing they were miffed because they couldn’t find it.”

  She took in another breath. “And that’s all right, is it?”

  “It’s better than the bastards getting it,” he said. “I’ll have a couple of my boys around in the morning, help clear up. And I’ll get you nice new furniture, some chintzy material, how’d that be? Red and black. Nazi colors.”

  He was sorry for the damage, he was angry, but the thought that he’d thwarted Busse buoyed him up.

  “Look at it as an interdepartmental dispute,” he said.

  MARLENE, IT TURNED out, had not only been the scion of an English Roman Catholic family but on most Sundays had tottered on high heels to mass at the tiny church near the Charlottenburg Rathaus, where, Schmidt thought, her confessions must have enlivened the day for the priest now conducting her burial service.

  Schmidt had attended reluctantly and more as a policeman than a mourner, feeling that the best he could do for Marlene was to find her killer—and find him before the gentlemen of Department 1A did.

  He’d never had much time for the Roman Church, even less since most of its bishops had begun hailing Hitler as a new messiah who’d sweep the German Temple of its Jewish money changers. But Esther had asked him to come.

  Marlene’s friends were there, in droves. The nave of the church was almost full, and sunlight coming through stained glass cast daubs of color here and there on lavish widows’ weeds and veils, some of them concealing the faces of real women while others emitted deep, masculine sobs. The Pink Parasol boys were there, most of them in sober, well-cut lounge suits, recognizable by the bandages, sticking plaster, and arm slings they wore like campaign medals.

  The priest, a wizened little man, was unexpected. He referred to Marlene as a sinner, “but a loving sinner, killed by the fiends of a godless organization,” a declaration that led Schmidt to shake him by the hand after the committal.

  Esther had arranged transport for the journey back to her apartment and the wake, an unnecessary expense, Schmidt had thought, since the distance between the church and Bismarck Allee was short.