‘Pleased to meet you,’ Arno said.
‘So you’re the art dealer that Herr Göring professes an admiration for?’ Hessen said loudly, shaking Arno’s hand. He clearly didn’t recognise him from their glances at Lassner’s gallery. ‘I understand you like to liquidate the assets of corrupt Jewish families?’
Arno tried to sound confident in his reply. ‘When an opportunity comes my way, I like to take it.’
‘I do the same! You must let me know if you come across any human assets – those I collect!’
‘I’m not sure I understand.’
‘Antiques and paintings, they’re all well and good, but there’s nothing like the gamble of a real human being to raise the stakes. And when the stakes are high, the winnings can be even higher.’
Arno found himself lost for words. Hessen spoke cryptically and with flawless confidence.
There was silence for a moment. ‘That’s why Göring sent you to me, is it not?’ the Nazi said. ‘To tell me about your Jewish collectibles, to see if you can help me and I, in return, can help you?’
Arno was about to reply when an old woman came in carrying a brass tray. On the tray were two glass tumblers and an egg salad on a white plate. She said nothing as she crossed the room. Hessen watched her patiently and thanked her when she set the tray down on a side-table.
When the old woman had gone, Hessen said, ‘Her left eye, did you notice, is completely blind? Utterly useless. I keep expecting her to walk into the furniture. One day she will oblige me and I will take great pleasure in howling at her.’ He smiled to himself. ‘On second thoughts,’ – he turned to the young soldier who was still in attendance – ‘have her replaced. Immediately. Find someone younger, prettier. I’ve had enough of looking at that wrinkled old crone.’
The soldier gazed back uncertainly. ‘I have no authority, sir.’
‘What?’ Hessen asked lightly. ‘Do I ask too much of you?’
The soldier stuttered. ‘No, I just – I don’t – I wouldn’t.’
‘Get rid of her.’
The soldier was mute.
Hessen turned to Arno, smiling still. Then he went over to the soldier, took out his pistol and struck the boy across the face with the blunt end. The soldier crumbled to the floor, holding onto his face as a ribbon of blood ran down his hand and spiralled around his wrist.
Arno watched on. He felt a chilled panic rising. He tried to smile, to pretend he was unswayed by the violence, yet the sight of the boy unable to get to his feet, taking rapid gasps of air through his mouth – because his nose was probably broken – held Arno spellbound in disgust.
Hessen spent a moment hovering over his victim like a prize-fighter over his knockout, then turned to his desk to lay his pistol on it.
‘I’m sorry about that. I’m just trying to impress you. I do that sometimes. It’s a weakness.’
Arno looked on and swallowed.
‘I like to play little games with myself,’ Hessen continued. ‘Here.’ He reached into his trouser pocket. ‘Take a look at what I picked up.’ He opened his hand and showed Arno a gold tooth. It sat in the centre of his palm like a tiny golden temple. ‘It’s a Soviet tooth. Extracted from Moscow. A Communist gave it to me. I remember, he smelled foul. I think he’d shit himself. But he did give me this tooth, after a little persuasion. What do you think?’
Arno nodded positively as Hessen held the glistening tooth under his nose.
‘Remarkable what you can get your hands on when you try,’ he said. Then, going to a small leather satchel propped up on a chair, he took out an envelope. Arno noticed it had a name and address already written on. Hessen slipped the tooth inside the envelope and sealed it shut.
‘I’m posting it to myself,’ he said. ‘Another game I like to play. I have all these envelopes addressed to myself.’ He took out a batch of about a dozen envelopes from his satchel, all of them with his own name and address written on. ‘If I find something I like the look of, something I imagine I’d like to receive as a gift, I send it to myself. You know, I have a terribly poor memory, so by the time this gets to me, I will have utterly forgotten that I sent it. It’ll be a nice surprise, don’t you think?’
‘The tooth? What if it gets lost on the way?’
‘If it gets lost, so be it. I will have forgotten about it anyway.’ Hessen’s eyes took on a rapturous glow. ‘A man like you will understand the pleasure of collecting, of course. I just like to throw in a bit of risk.’
By now, the young Brownshirt was back on his feet. A great spray of blood was drying across his cheek and over the corner of his shoulder.
‘Actually, I was hoping to speak to someone about something in particular,’ Arno eventually found the courage to say. ‘Vendetta.’
‘Vendetta? Göring told you about Vendetta?’
‘I’ve been briefed. A little. I want to know if I can assist in the project.’
‘Vendetta is a good idea. If it brings results then I’m in favour. We have to be careful, of course, about who gets told what.’
‘I couldn’t agree more – they were precisely my thoughts,’ Arno said, beginning to lose track of his lies.
‘Ah, now, here is a man who is a greater advocate of Vendetta than any of us.’
Hessen raised his arm to welcome a new visitor into the room. Arno turned, and in through the archway walked none other than Erich Ostwald.
29
‘Vendetta!’ Erich Ostwald announced loudly as he walked into the room.
Arno was amazed. Yes, he was the same confident, capricious man he remembered. Loose in stride, upbeat, a touch grandiose, even when the occasion didn’t call for it.
Erich and Hessen gave the ‘Sieg Heil!’ salute to one another, though neither did so with much gusto. Arno wondered if the limpness of their salute was in fact a method of jockeying for rank.
‘I don’t believe it,’ Erich said as he turned to Arno. ‘Am I really looking at the same Arno Hiller? My, how you have grown!’
Despite the merry sarcasm, Arno was worried. Could he maintain his cover in Erich’s presence? The last time they’d seen each other was nearly three years before when Arno was a skittish teenager. The idea that he had transformed into some sort of art expert seemed more ludicrous than ever. Still, his only choice was to push ahead – especially with the combustible Hessen looking on.
‘I’m here on business,’ Arno said in an attempt to take the lead. He passed a glance at Erich with what he hoped was confidence in his eyes.
Erich smiled back. He looked like he’d put on weight. His face was plump and ripe like a peach.
‘This young man,’ Erich said, explaining to Hessen, ‘is extremely courageous. We worked together once, do you remember?’
‘Yes I do,’ Arno said.
‘We tried to get the Communists into trouble, didn’t we?’ Erich went on, glowing. ‘We were both younger then, more naive undoubtedly. And now?’ Erich asked, putting his hand on Arno’s shoulder. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Count Hessen and I were talking about art. I’ve become a collector, or rather, a dealer.’
‘I’m told he’s doing a fine job stripping assets from our Semitic friends,’ Hessen interrupted.
‘Art?’ Erich said, his expression vexed.
‘I’m connected with the Mattias Lassner gallery,’ Arno said, holding his nerve. ‘I’m finding much success by visiting the estates of troubled Jewish families. I’ve just returned from Austria with a very favourable Caravaggio.’
Erich nodded pensively. Then he went over to the plate of egg salad and forked a yellow yolk into his mouth.
‘Caravaggio is a touch melodramatic for me,’ he said after swallowing. ‘Of the Italians, I lean towards Bellini. I will occasionally tolerate Veronese. Titian is glorious of course, but something about all those heavy allegories, it puts me off.’
Arno nodded in agreement. He had no idea what any of those words meant.
‘As long as we have your support here, th
en I’m pleased,’ Erich said, apparently satisfied with Arno’s pretence.
‘Actually, I was wondering about Vendetta,’ Arno replied. ‘If I can lend my support in any way…?’
‘Yes, yes, yes, by all means.’
Arno pushed on. ‘What’s the latest? And how exactly do you fit into the project?’
There was silence for a moment. Arno stared at Erich directly. Of all the ice he’d been skating on, this was the thinnest yet.
‘And you expect to be included in discussions do you?’ Erich said. His sarcasm seemed to have vanished.
Arno glanced to Hessen, then back to Erich. ‘Only if it’s useful for me in serving the party.’
‘Vendetta can wait! I want to hear all about what you’ve been doing.’ There was an air of recklessness in Erich’s voice. On the surface, he seemed genuinely pleased to see Arno – his young student – but still, there was something fickle in the way he spoke. Part of Arno wanted to escape the room as quickly as possible. Another part wanted to stay and make the most of this chance meeting. It could be the best opportunity he had.
He was about to impart a series of fictional stories about travels to various European cities when, to his relief, Hessen took the lead.
‘No time for small-talk. We have work to be getting on with.’ Then turning to Arno. ‘A Bavarian dancing band are coming this evening. Please stay with us. We have rooms to spare.’
‘Yes!’ Erich said briskly. ‘You can sleep upstairs and get over your hangover.’
‘Hangover?’ Arno replied.
‘Tomorrow’s. I guarantee it.’
Arno agreed, thinking it was a propitious sign to be invited to stay. For the rest of the afternoon he was given a table to work at where he pretended to write notes on his accounts. From six o’clock on, the Bavarian evening unfolded. There were great platters of food at first, followed by several rounds of drinking games. Then, when everyone was suitably dazed, a dancing show.
There were five dancers, three men and two women. To the rhythm of an accordion player, the dancers made over-the-top gestures, leaping and pinching each other’s backsides, grabbing each other by the shoulders and slapping one another’s feet. It was all very silly. The men lifted the women’s skirts and in return the women giggled coyly. By the end, two couples had paired off, leaving one man as the lonely stooge to be laughed at or sympathised with, depending on your disposition. Everyone seemed to have enjoyed it immensely, but to Arno it was old-fashioned and ridiculous; above all, he was far too drunk to care.
And yet his stupor was only temporary. At around midnight, one of the Brownshirts left the room and returned minutes later with a new addition to the party. It was a girl. She was not part of the dancing troupe and was a far more reluctant accessory to the entertainment. The Brownshirt dragged her by the hand into the middle of the room, whereby a great wave of raucous laughter rose up to the ceiling. The girl was trying to resist, pulling away from the soldier, who jerked her back into place. When she stood still, Arno could see her hands were shaking. Her hair had fallen forward over her bowed head. The Brownshirt – a fat man with cherry-red cheeks – attempted some ham-fisted delicacy by drawing back her hair and trying to dance with her.
At this point, Arno felt his heart almost explode. It was Monika who stood before them. With panic, he sat up in his seat, hardly believing what he saw. He wished his drunkenness could be wiped away so he could think more clearly. My God! It was her. It was Monika. He’d never felt so sick with desperation and horror. He wanted to rush over and prise them apart. He wanted to kick the Brownshirt in his oversized head.
An agonising throb went through him as he realised he had to resist. Make the wrong move now and it could be all over for him and Monika.
He sat back in his chair and watched on, dazzled with a torrent of nerves, anger and panic. Monika was doing her best to pull away from the Brownshirt, whilst also knowing that if she struggled too much she was liable to end up in a worse situation. Her posture stiffened and she turned her head sideways, looking away from the Brownshirt and back to the door she’d just come through. She was still wearing her nightgown; a bed-blanket wrapped over her shoulders had fallen to the floor. She hadn’t spotted Arno yet, but any moment now, she would.
ENDINGS
30
The man who stood in Monika’s doorway had the bulky silhouette of a bear. Half-drunk, he lumbered inside and hauled her from her bed by the wrist. She managed to grab a blanket and lift it over her shoulders as she was led outside and escorted along nocturnal corridors by this meatloaf of a man. Pushed through a doorway, she found herself in a room of complete disorder, where a fog of beer and cigarette smoke loomed over a hoard of drunken soldiers. She was made to dance in humiliating fashion with the fat Brownshirt, who kept taking thirsty gulps from a glass of beer as he held onto her. But the first thing that Monika became truly aware of in that awful room was the face of Arno Hiller.
Her first instinct was to call out to him. It was, for a moment anyway, wonderful to see his bright face. For more than a week she had suffered alone. To finally lay eyes on something familiar was an earth-shattering relief. Yet the relief quickly collapsed as she began to comprehend where she was. The raucous party boomed and rocked around her, a sweaty stinking room full of ungodly men listening to horrible music.
And in that instant, she realised that everything the police had told her about Arno had to be true. His involvement with this herd of beasts was impossible to doubt now. He was there, directly among them.
She didn’t want to look at him, but her eyes were irresistibly drawn. His face seemed to bob in the air like a balloon in a fairground, a balloon among a clutch of other balloons, his simple face just hanging there, white and exposed like untanned skin, floating in complete silence.
She felt entirely removed from her body as the Brownshirt lifted her arms into a waltzing posture and pushed his belly into her. They danced slowly and clumsily in circles as an accordion rolled out its rhythm. The fat man was inept and kept trying to hoist her closer, but she remained floppy and listless like a rag-doll. It seemed as if they were both the victims of some terrible joke, engaged in this embrace with a room full of monsters grinning at them and swaying in time to the music. At a certain point, they all stood and sang some old marching song, ‘Never Say Die,’ which was an ugly din and fell into disarray soon into the second verse.
Only Arno remained impassive. He never moved a muscle, never smiled nor opened his mouth to sing, only gazed vacantly or occasionally lowered his eyes to the floor.
After twenty minutes of this ridicule, her turn was over. General Hessen stepped in and said something about ‘Keeping this one for himself’ – a phrase that sent shivers through her. She raced back to her room and shut the door. After that, the night was long and dismal. She thought Arno would come to her. She wanted him to come but was also afraid of what would happen if he did. Who would he be when she saw him next? Would he find her and expect to gain entrance to her room? Would he be the same Arno she once fell in love with, or would he be the new monstrosity she had discovered tonight?
She lay in her bed and for several hours couldn’t sleep. She hated feeling afraid, and with this thought, slowly brought herself round to the point where her fear began to drop away. Arno was no more than a stranger to her now. The more she accepted this, the more her despondency lifted. She was alone, and she felt better for knowing it once and for all.
As the party wore on, Arno was beginning to understand that the men he was with were little more than a gang of savages. The idea dawned on him earlier in the night, when one of the Brownshirts began bragging about how, the day before, he’d picked up a Communist protester and sliced his mouth open with a broken bottle. He made a gesture with his fingers, pulling his own smile to twice its width to indicate the effect. The rest of the men, some twelve or fifteen of them – including Hessen and Erich – sat back in their seats and warmed themselves over the story as if beside a cosy fire
place.
What Arno found strange was how their manners remained civil – raucous yes, but strangely well-mannered too. It was like a game of cards: when each man’s turn came, he laid down his hand with a bland, pokerfaced amiability. Even in the throws of debauchery, appearances still mattered.
After the story of the Communist, there followed a round of one-upmanship. Another soldier said he had recently punched a man so hard that his two front teeth lodged into his knuckles. He offered a dashed scar-line on his fist to prove it. The man next to him said he’d once worked as a border guard and bribed a Jew by confiscating his passport and not returning it until he had handed over ten-thousand marks.
‘The Jewess upstairs,’ someone asked Hessen, ‘how much do you expect to get for her?’
Hessen replied with the assured tone of an accountant that he expected to gain up to fifty-thousand marks for the transaction.
It was only when Arno later saw Monika paraded in front of them that he realised Hessen’s true meaning. He knew then that he was spending the night with Monika’s kidnappers, drinking and smoking with them, laughing and dancing alongside them.
He went to bed that night – at two in the morning – fatigued by the weight of it all. He slept only in snatches and woke as the dawn sun illuminated his window. To think that Monika was in the very same building as he was made him rage with agony. He decided two things during the course of that sleepless night: the first was that he detested the National Socialists and all they stood for; the second was that he would be prepared to die at their hands if it meant he could set Monika free.
As the first weak rays of sun lit up the curtain drapes of his room, he got out of bed. His head throbbed with the grim residue of the night before and the clothes he was still wearing reeked with the stale reminders of everything he had consumed. The building around him was silent. He realised he had no idea where in Berlin he was.
He heard a car pass outside. A cockerel crowed. Then silence.
Vanished in Berlin: Kidnap suspense mystery set in 1930s Berlin (Berlin Tales Book 2) Page 15
