Prague Fatale

by Philip Kerr

  ‘General von Eberstein’s got a point, sir,’ said Kahlo. ‘It could be them thumbing their noses at us. Just like before. And nothing would give those bastards more pleasure than to have us chasing our own tails.’

  I grinned. ‘That’s what it feels like, doesn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ said Kahlo. ‘Krautwickel. I thought that was it after the potato soup. That had real bacon in it. And real potatoes, too. But this is even better. I haven’t had Krautwickel since the war started. If this keeps up, sir, I might just have to kill someone myself just so that we keep this investigation going for a good while longer.’

  ‘That’s as good a motive for murder as any I’ve heard today,’ I said. ‘I may even have to put you down on my list of suspects after that remark.’

  We were in the Dining Room, but with Heydrich and Ploetz and some Gestapo officers away in pursuit of Vaclav Moravek, there were fewer of us for lunch at the Lower Castle than there had been for dinner. At my direction, Kahlo and I were seated at the opposite end of the table from everyone else; not because I disliked their company – which of course I did – but mostly because I wanted to avoid discussing the case with any of them. Besides, I hoped that our position at the table would set us apart and help to remind the cauliflower that a murder investigation was being conducted. Doubtless that suited Doctor Jury very well, and probably General Hildebrandt too, who, following their interviews, now regarded me as they would have regarded a large and verminous dog.

  Another reason I wanted to sit apart from the SS cauliflower was to give me a chance to get to know Kurt Kahlo, who to my surprise I liked more than I had ever expected to like anyone at Heydrich’s house.

  ‘Why do they call Mannheim the chequerboard?’

  ‘Because it’s the most regularly built city in Germany, that’s why. The city centre is divided into one hundred and thirty-six neat squares and the blocks of houses are only distinguished by letters and numerals. My dad used to live at K4. He was a factory foreman at Daimler but he got hit hard by the inflation. Me and my brother had to go to work to help supplement the family income and so that we could stay on at school, if that doesn’t sound like a contradiction.’

  ‘You married?’

  ‘Five years, to Eva. She works at a local hotel.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘The Park.’

  ‘Any good?’

  ‘Too pricey for me.’

  ‘I was in the hotel business for a while. I was the house bull at the Adlon.’

  ‘Nice.’

  ‘How does Eva like the hotel business?’

  ‘She likes it. The guests can be a bit much sometimes. Especially the English, at least when they were still coming to Germany. They used to try it on a bit, and give themselves airs, you know?’

  ‘Sounds a lot like this place.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Kahlo looked sideways at the cauliflower. ‘How’d you come to know General Heydrich?’

  ‘The way you know a dangerous dog. Most of the time I just cross the road or walk the other way when I see him coming. But sometimes he corners me and I have to humour him or end up badly bitten. Really, I’m like one of those four animals on his way to the town of Bremen. A donkey, probably. And like the donkey I’d just like to live without an owner and become a musician.’

  ‘What instrument do you play?’

  ‘Nothing, of course. Whoever heard of a donkey that could play a musical instrument? But I seem to be in the robbers’ house, all the same; just like in the story.’

  Kahlo grinned. ‘It’s not what you’d call a relaxing place, is it? Some of these bastards would frighten Himmler himself.’ He shook his head. ‘I almost feel sorry for Captain Kuttner.’

  ‘Almost?’

  ‘I met him, remember?’

  ‘What did you think of him?’

  Kahlo shrugged. ‘Hardly matters now, does it? He’s dead.’

  ‘If you think that’s going to save you from telling everything to your barber, you’re wrong.’

  ‘All right. I thought he was an arrogant little prick. Like all these fucking adjutants, he thought he was more than just his master’s voice. He turned up at Kripo headquarters here in Prague a few days ago demanding this and that and as soon as possible. My boss, Willy Abendschoen, had to deal with him and that meant to some extent I did, too. A right little cunt he was.’

  ‘A few days ago?’

  ‘Monday. Heydrich wanted a report on something.’

  ‘Specifically?’

  ‘OTA transmission intercepts. OTA is the codeword for all the intercepts.’

  ‘You mean radio broadcasts to the British, by the Czechos.’

  ‘No, no. That’s what made this interesting. The Czechos were receiving broadcasts, and what’s more, from somewhere in the Fatherland. Intelligence tip-offs. Abendschoen reckoned that the Czechos were sending the information on, to Benes, in London, so that he could boost his standing with Churchill and the Tommy intelligence community.’

  ‘A Czech spy in Germany.’

  Kahlo shook his head. ‘No, a German spy in Germany. As I’m sure you know, there’s nothing worse than that. I’m not entirely privy to all of this, you understand, sir; it goes well above my pay grade. But here in Prague the word on the cobbles is that there’s a high-level traitor in Berlin who’s behind the OTA transmissions; who’s been feeding the Czechos with top-grade information about Reich policy on a number of things. Heydrich wanted everything we had on OTA so that he could hand it all over to a special search group he’s setting up inside the SD. The Traitor X Group it’s called, or VXG, for short. Catching Moravek, the third of the Three Kings, is just half the game. You catch him then you stand a better chance of identifying traitor X.’

  ‘Yes, I see. I think I’m going to need to know more about Kuttner’s movements in the days leading up to his death.’

  ‘Very good, sir. But right now all I’ve got are his movements in the hours leading up to his death.’

  ‘Let’s hear them.’

  We sat back in our chairs as the SS waiters cleared away. Kahlo found his notebook and flicked through several pages until a wet thumb found his place. He was about to read when the waiters returned with dessert. Kahlo’s eyes were out on stalks.

  ‘That’s Mish-Mash,’ he said, groaning with anticipated pleasure. ‘With real cherry-sauce.’

  I tasted the sauce. ‘Actually, it’s cranberry,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ he breathed.

  ‘I’ll eat while you talk.’

  Kahlo looked at his shredded pancake pudding, licked his lips and hesitated. ‘You won’t finish all that sauce, will you, sir?’

  ‘No, of course not. Now, let’s hear it.’

  Reluctantly, Kahlo started to read out his notes.

  ‘Yesterday lunchtime you know about because you were here. According to Elisabeth Schreck, Heydrich’s secretary, at three p.m. Kuttner made a couple of telephone calls. One to Carl Maria Strasse – sorry, sir, that’s Kripo HQ – and one to the Pecek Palace: Gestapo HQ. At around four, you saw him again, sir, on the road to the Upper Castle. At five he spent an hour in General Heydrich’s office. I don’t yet know what that was about. Then he went to his room: Kritzinger saw him go through the door. At eight o’clock there were drinks in the library and then all of you listened to the Leader’s speech on the radio. Fleischer’s telephone call from Gestapo headquarters was put through just after nine, and that’s when you saw Kuttner outside, having an argument with Captain Kluckholn. Do you know what that was about, sir?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Kuttner helps to bring some champagne into the library after the speech and after that things are understandably vague. Just after one a.m. there is some sort of altercation between Kuttner and General Henlein and Colonel Bohme. I’m not quite sure what that was about.’

  ‘General Henlein made a pass at one of the maids. Her name is Rosa Steffel. Kuttner was her champion.’

  ‘I see. Then he’s in Heydric
h’s office for a while with the General and Colonel Jacobi.’ Kahlo lowered his voice. ‘He’s the one who I find to be the most sinister of the lot.’

  ‘Then Kritzinger sees Kuttner just before two and wishes him a good night. Says he seemed dog-tired.’

  Kahlo made a note of that and then continued reading his notes.

  ‘At six o’clock this morning Kuttner fails to awaken Captain Pomme, as arranged. Nothing new there. He often overslept because he was taking sleeping pills. At six-thirty Pomme says he’s still knocking on Kuttner’s door, trying to awaken him. At six-forty-five Pomme goes to fetch Kritzinger to see if there’s some other means of opening the door, which is locked from the inside. There isn’t. Kritzinger tells one of the footmen to go and fetch a ladder and see if he can’t get in from the outside.’

  ‘And did he?’

  ‘Yes. But the ladder was locked up and the footman had to go and fetch the gardener, so it was seven-fifteen a.m. by the time he brought it around to the window. Coming back a bit, though: at seven a.m. Heydrich is also outside Kuttner’s door, and that’s when he tells Pomme and the butler to break it down. Entering the room they find Kuttner dead and Captain Pomme is dispatched to fetch Doctor Jury. Jury arrives in the room just as the footman arrives with the ladder.’

  ‘We shall want to speak to that footman. Maybe he saw something.’

  ‘His name is Fendler, sir.’

  ‘Then at seven-thirty I get the call from Ploetz in my room at the Imperial. And at eight-thirty we viewed the scene of the crime.’

  ‘What were you doing at the Imperial anyway? Why weren’t you staying here in your room, sir?’

  ‘I was sleeping. What do you know about Veronal?’

  ‘It’s barbital. Sleeping pills. Take too many and you don’t wake up. That’s about it really.’

  ‘Ever use them yourself?’

  ‘The wife did. She’d been working nights at the Park and couldn’t sleep in the day. So the doctor gave her some Veronal. But she didn’t care for the stuff at all. They always left her feeling like she’d been coshed.’

  ‘Strong then.’

  ‘Very.’

  ‘Kuttner goes to bed at around two a.m. having told the butler that he intended to take some sleeping pills. Nobody sees him enter his room.’

  ‘I’m not sure if I’d take sleeping pills knowing I had to be up at six,’ observed Kahlo. ‘Then again, you do get used to them, so it’s possible he didn’t see that as a problem.’

  ‘Which may be why he doesn’t undress for bed. He’s still dressed when we found him.’

  ‘Looked like he took one boot off and then got tired. Or dead. So then maybe he was shot before he entered his room.’

  ‘In the corridor.’ But I was shaking my head even as I said it. ‘Sure. After he’s shot – and by the way nobody hears the shot—’

  ‘Perhaps the murderer used a sound suppressor.’

  ‘For a P38? Hasn’t been invented yet. So, after he’s shot in the corridor and no one hears anything, he staggers along to his room without mentioning it to anyone or shouting for help, locks the door carefully behind him, as you do when you’ve just been shot, lies down on the bed just to get his breath back, removes a boot, and then dies sometime between two and five-thirty a.m.’

  ‘It’s a mystery, isn’t it?’

  ‘No, not really. I solve this kind of case all the time. Usually in the penultimate chapter. I like to keep the last few pages for restoring some sort of normality to the world.’

  ‘You know what I reckon, sir? I reckon that if you solve this case Heydrich will probably promote you.’

  ‘That’s what I’m worried about.’

  ‘And then you won’t ever get to Bremen to live there without an owner.’

  ‘Shut up and eat your Mish-Mash.’

  Kahlo’s mention of the Traitor X Group and a top-level spy in Germany who had been transmitting information to the Czechos got me wondering about Arianne and her friend Gustav, the man she claimed to have met in the Jockey Bar.

  A smooth type with a thin prick accent and spats. Or so she had described him. A civil servant with a gold cigarette holder and a little gold eagle in his lapel. A man whose nerves had prevented him from meeting Franz Koci, a former lieutenant of Czech artillery and possibly one of the last members of the Three Kings group operating in Berlin – at least he had been until a collision with a taxi cab in the blackout had terminated his career as a spy.

  Was it possible that Gustav and Heydrich’s traitor X were one and the same person?

  Arianne struck me as an unlikely sort of spy. After all, hadn’t she confessed to being Gustav’s unwitting courier before I had told her that I was a cop? And, having told her I was a Commissar from the Alex, what kind of spy was it who, instead of disappearing the very next day, chose to begin a relationship with someone who very probably ought to have seen it as his duty to inform the Gestapo about her? What kind of spy was it who was prepared to risk so much for so little? After all, I was privy to no secret information she could have passed to anyone. Surely she was just what she seemed to be: a good-time girl with a dead husband and a brother who was a kennel hound with the Field Military Police. I’d checked him out, too. What else did she want but a chance to see a bit of what life had to offer before the Nazis turned her into yet another dutiful little German wife producing children for her first-class rabbit medal – the Honour Cross for the German Mother?

  All the same, now that I knew about the local SD’s VXG, it had become very obvious that bringing Arianne along to Prague for my own pleasure had helped put her in considerable danger; and it seemed imperative that she return to Berlin as soon as possible.

  It was while I was deciding to send Arianne back to Berlin that I remembered Major Ploetz had given me a letter forwarded from the Alex. Sitting in the Morning Room with a coffee and a cigarette awaiting the next senior officer on my list, I read it.

  The letter was from a girl I knew in Paris; her name was Bettina and she worked at the Lutetia Hotel. I’d stayed there during my posting to the French capital. I had fixed her up with a better job at the Adlon and she was writing to thank me and to tell me that she would be coming to Berlin before Christmas. She hoped to see me then. She wrote a lot of other things besides, and since I didn’t get many letters, least of all from attractive girls, I read it again. I even passed it under my nose a couple of times, as it seemed to be scented – then again, that might have been my own imagination.

  I was reading the letter a third time when Kahlo ushered General Henlein into the Morning Room.

  Henlein wore round metallic-framed glasses that flashed in the firelight like newly minted coins. His hair was dark and wavy but the wave was on the ebb-flow. His mouth was sulky, and facially he was not unlike Doctor Jury. It was hard to connect this 43-year-old from Maffesdorf and the leader of the Sudeten German Movement with the vigorous gymnastics teacher described by Arianne’s girl friend at the Imperial.

  Kahlo handed me the plan of the house that Kritzinger had given him, and while Henlein made himself comfortable I glanced over it briefly and, for the moment, noted only that Henlein had occupied the room immediately next to Captain Kuttner’s.

  Kahlo sat down on the piano stool. Henlein, seated on the sofa opposite me, picked some fluff off his breeches, checked the cutlery on his tunic lapel – another War Merit Cross with swords – and smiled nervously several times. He had good teeth, I’ll say that for him; they were the only vigorous-looking thing about him.

  ‘Let me say something before we go any further.’ He spoke quietly, as if he was used to being listened to. ‘It’s no secret that I was blue last night. I think we all were, after the Leader’s speech and the good news about the Three Kings.’

  He paused for a moment, as if waiting for me to agree with him; but I didn’t say anything. I just lit another cigarette and let him hang there.

  Momentarily discomfited, he swallowed noticeably and then continued:

  �
�Toward the end of the evening I believe I may have made certain remarks to the unfortunate Captain Kuttner that I now regret. They were spoken in the heat of the moment and under the influence of alcohol. I have never been much of a drinker. Alcohol does not agree with my constitution. I try to keep myself fit, you understand, as all of us should who are in the SS. It is an elite, after all, and a higher standard is expected of us. Not just physically, but in matters of behaviour, too. Consequently, it seems to me that my own behaviour was not all that it could have been. And in retrospect the poor Captain was quite right to remonstrate with me. Indeed, it is very much to that officer’s credit that he did so.