Prague Fatale

by Philip Kerr

  ‘What you also have to understand,’ said Frank, ‘is that after Kuttner’s breakdown in Latvia, and because it was Heydrich and von Eberstein who saved the young man from being cashiered, his brother officers were already cutting him quite a bit of slack. And for Jacobi to have pressed the matter through official channels would have meant taking on Heydrich. And since Heydrich is now the source of all advancement in Bohemia, you would only do that if you were prepared to park your career in the toilet. Jacobi might be a cunt and a complete waxed moustache but he’s not entirely stupid. No, not entirely.’

  ‘But is he a killer?’ I said. ‘To shoot a fellow officer in cold blood, that does seem stupid.’

  Frank’s tired eyes tightened, and a few seconds after that a smile arrived on his lean face, like a winning card. ‘And I thought you were supposed to be a detective.’

  ‘It’s Jacobi who’s keen on the occult, sir, not me. And generally, I question witnesses because, more often than not, it turns out to be more reliable than a crystal ball, or a set of Tarot cards.’

  Leaning forward in a way that made him seem almost simian, Frank played with a ring on his right hand for a moment and kept on smiling as he enjoyed the superiority of knowing something I didn’t, at least for a few seconds longer; it was obvious to both of us that he was going to tell me, eventually, exactly what this was.

  ‘Heydrich thinks highly of you, Gunther. But I’m not so sure.’

  ‘To some coppers that might seem like a crushing blow, sir, but I’m sure I’ll get over it, with a drink or two.’

  ‘I don’t mind if I do.’

  Frank glanced at Kahlo, who went over to the drinks tray.

  ‘Yes sir? What’ll it be?’

  ‘Brandy.’

  ‘Me, too,’ I said. ‘And have one yourself, why don’t you?’

  I waited until we were all holding a glass and then toasted the General.

  ‘Here’s to getting over our superiors not thinking as highly of us as we’d like.’

  Frank knew that was meant for him – that of course he might have been the new Reichsprotector of Bohemia and not Heydrich if the Leader had thought more of him. To his credit Frank took the jab on his chin without blinking, but he took the drink even better, like he was swallowing a baby’s cordial. I’d seen men drink like that before and it helped explain how we were both the same sort of age but with different maps on our faces. Mine was all right, I guess, but his looked like the Ganges Delta.

  ‘I think we’d better have the decanter over here, Kurt,’ I said.

  ‘Good idea,’ said Frank.

  When there was a fresh glassful in his fingers Frank studied it carefully for a moment and said, ‘Usually there’s a payoff for a good informer, isn’t there?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ I said. ‘But with all due respect, you don’t look like a man who’s going to be happy with five marks and a cigarette.’

  ‘A favour, Commissar. More than one favour perhaps.’

  ‘What kind of favour?’

  ‘Information. You see, since being passed over for the top job here in Bohemia – as you were kind enough to remind me – I don’t hear as well as I used to.’

  ‘And you’d like us to be your ear-trumpet, is that it?’

  Frank looked critically at Kahlo. ‘I don’t know about him. But you’ll do for now.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I just want to be kept in the loop, that’s all. Right now I’m the last to know everything. It’s Heydrich’s little way of reminding me he’s in charge. You saw the way he dealt with von Neurath the other evening. Well, I get the same treatment.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s not like I’m asking very much, Commissar. After all—’ He poured the second brandy on top of the first and then licked his lips loudly. ‘It’s not like I’m a spy or anything.’

  Kahlo and I exchanged a swift look.

  Smiling, I poured myself another drink. ‘Are you sure about that, sir?’ I kept on smiling, to make him think I might be joking and to keep him listening without taking offence. ‘Let’s look at it logically. A man with an axe to grind like you. I think you’d make a pretty good spy.’

  Frank ignored me. ‘Don’t change the subject. Not now when we’re making progress. Just tell me this: do we have a deal?’

  ‘To trade information now and in the future? Yes, I think so. I could use a few friends in Prague. Right now I don’t have any. Come to that, I don’t have any at home either.’

  Frank nodded, his eyes glistening.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘You first. Some information. A sign of good faith.’

  ‘Yes. If you like.’

  ‘What’s the name of this bit of mouse that Henlein has got stashed in the Imperial Hotel? I hear you know all about her.’

  ‘Her name is Betty Kipsdorf.’

  ‘Is it now?’

  ‘Now tell me why you want to know.’

  ‘Maybe I just wanted to see if you were prepared to keep your end of the bargain before I told you about Lieutenant Colonel Jacobi’s interesting past.’

  ‘What, more interesting than fighting a duel with my murder victim? And threatening to shoot him?’

  ‘Oh this is very much more interesting than that, Commissar. That was merely an appetizer. Here is the main dish.

  ‘Jacobi joined the SA in 1930, while he was still a law student in Tübingen. Nothing unusual about that, of course, but I would suggest that there are not many law students who get themselves arrested for murder in the same week that they graduate.

  ‘Yes, I thought that would catch your breath. In 1932, Jacobi murdered someone in Stuttgart, which is only twenty kilometres from Tübingen. The victim was a KPD cadre, although it seems that might not be the real reason the boy was killed. There was it seems some suspicion he was queer and that this was the real motive for the murder. Now I don’t have to tell you of all people what things were like in 1932. In some ways von Papen’s government was every bit as right-wing as Hitler’s. The Stuttgart prosecutor’s office was rather slow in putting together a case against Walter Jacobi. So slow, in fact, that the case was never actually brought because, of course, in January 1933 the Nazis were elected and nobody was interested in bringing a case against a loyal Party member like Jacobi any more. All the same it’s no wonder he joined the SS and then the SD soon afterward; it was probably the best way of staying out of jail. And of course one of the very first things he did when he achieved a certain position of authority within the SS was to have the papers in the case destroyed. That almost got him kicked out of the SD, in 1937; but Himmler stepped in and pulled his nuts out of the nosebag.’

  ‘And you were thinking that a good detective might have found that out for himself, sir?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘You overestimate me, General. Then again there’s only so much I can find out in less than twelve hours. That’s how long I’ve been on this case. And of course there’s a limit to how much I can ask my superior officers without bringing down a charge of gross insubordination on my head.’

  Frank laughed. ‘We both know that’s not true.’

  He laughed again in a way that made me think that there were probably a lot of things he found funny that I would have felt very differently about.

  ‘We both know that it suits General Heydrich to have you humiliate us all. Especially at this particular moment as he becomes Reichsprotector of Bohemia. It becomes an object lesson in power for us all. Perhaps to test our loyalty. Hitler admires Heydrich because he suspects everyone of everything. Me included. Me especially.’

  ‘And why would he suspect you, General?’

  Frank looked at Kahlo almost as if he knew it had been Kahlo who told me about the VXG.

  ‘Don’t pretend to be naïve. I’m married to a Czech woman, Commissar. Karola. My first wife, Anna, hates my guts and is married to a man who affects to look like the Leader and now makes it his business to tell lies about me and my new wife. Just because she’s German Czech. Between them they
have already turned my two sons against me. And now they’re doing their best to allege that the only reason my wife married me was because she is a Czech spy and that when I go home at night she persuades me to part with state secrets. Well, it’s simply not true. And it’s why I didn’t think your joke was funny. I’m loyal to Germany and the Party, and one day I hope that I will have the opportunity to demonstrate to the whole world just how devoted to the Leader and the cause of National Socialism I really am. Until then I hope I can count on your help – yes, both of you – to put paid to this baseless innuendo.’

  He stood up and I shook hands with him and, in my defence, so did Kurt Kahlo. It was Frank’s idea that we should, not mine, and at the time I thought nothing of it – a handshake seemed like a small price to pay for some important information about a potential new suspect. It was another eight or nine months before I realized I’d shaken hands with the man who had ordered the destruction of the small town of Lidice and the murder of everyone in it, in reprisal for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich.

  I glanced at my watch. It was seven o’clock.

  ‘If I wasn’t confused before,’ admitted Kurt Kahlo, ‘I’m certainly confused now. Every time we speak to someone we find out a little bit more. The only trouble is that it leaves me a little bit less enlightened. It’s curious, really. You might even call it a paradox. Even as I think I’m getting a proper grip on this case I find there’s something interrupting my thoughts, as though someone had built a wall between the two halves of my brain. Just as I find a big enough chair to stand on and look over at the other side, I forget what I’m supposed to be looking for anyway. And then, before you know it, I’ve even forgotten why I’m standing on the chair in the first place.’

  Kahlo sighed and shook his head ruefully.

  ‘Sorry, sir, that’s not helping, I know.’

  Even as Kahlo spoke I was trying to put up a fight against the rampaging contagion of his utter confusion. In my mind I seemed to hear a lost chord and see some words underneath the palimpsest. An elusive fragment of real insight flashed like a pan of magnesium powder inside the dark chamber that was my skull and then all was black again. For a brief moment everything was illuminated and I understood all and I was on the cusp of articulating exactly what the problem was and where the solution might lie and didn’t he, Kahlo, know that what he was describing was precisely the intellectual dilemma that afflicted every detective? But the very next moment a grey mist descended behind my eyes and, before I knew it, this same thought that looked like an answer was slowly suffocating like a fish landed by an angler on a riverbank, its mouth opening and shutting with no sound emerging.

  I told him I needed to get away from the Lower Castle so that I might order my own thinking. That’s what I also told myself. I’d had enough of them all for one day and suddenly that included Kahlo, too. I decided that I wanted to go back to the hotel and devote my energies to Arianne for a while and that we could spend our last night together before I sent her home in the morning.

  ‘Ask Major Ploetz to find a car that will take me back into Prague,’ I said.

  Kahlo looked sad for a moment, as if disappointed I was not ready to be honest with him about where I was going.

  ‘Yes sir.’

  I did not have long to wait before a car became available but I was less than pleased to discover that I was to share a ride with Heydrich himself.

  ‘Now you can tell me what conclusions you’ve come to,’ he said as Klein steered us left out of the Lower Castle’s infernal gates and onto the picture-postcard country road.

  ‘I haven’t any, yet.’

  ‘I was rather hoping you would have everything wrapped up by this weekend. Before my wife, Lina, gets here.’

  ‘Yes. I know. You told me that before.’

  ‘And before my guests are obliged to leave. They do have duties to perform.’

  ‘Mmm-hmm.’

  ‘I must say I find it rather odd than you think you can just take the evening off while a murderer remains at liberty in my house. Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear this morning. It is urgent that this case is solved before news gets back to Berlin.’

  ‘No, you made that perfectly clear, sir.’

  ‘And yet you’re still going to see that whore of yours.’

  I nodded. ‘Tell me something, sir. Do you play chess?’

  ‘Yes. But I don’t see what that has to do with this. Or your whore.’

  ‘Well then you might know that in major tournaments it isn’t uncommon for players to get up and leave the board between moves. Reading, sleeping, or indeed any pleasant distraction can refresh the human mind, enabling the player to perform at a higher intellectual level. Now, while I don’t expect to do any reading this evening, I do expect my lady friend will provide some very pleasant distractions, after which it’s perfectly possible that I may get some sleep. All of which is a long way of saying that I need some time away from you and your house in order to try to make sense of everything I’ve discovered today.’

  ‘Such as?’

  Reaching the main road at last, Klein stepped hard on the accelerator leaving Jungfern-Breschan behind, and we sped toward Prague at almost eighty kilometres an hour, obliging me to raise my voice to answer the General.

  ‘I know of at least three people who are staying at the Lower Castle who hated Captain Kuttner. Henlein, Jacobi and Kluckholn. I can’t yet say if they hated him enough to kill him. They hated him for a variety of reasons that mostly come down to the fact that Kuttner was insubordinate and clever and perhaps a bit conceited and really not quite the senior officer’s toady that a good adjutant ought to be. But there were other reasons, too – probably more important reasons – that might have got him murdered. Principally the fact that he was your liaison officer for the SD’s Traitor X Group. If he’d found out something concerning the identity of the traitor, that would have been a pretty good reason for someone to kill him. You might have told me about that yourself, General.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘This morning. When we were in your office. When you handed me this case.’

  ‘I hardly wanted to broadcast the news about the existence of such a squad in front of my own butler. Besides, I had assumed your Criminal Assistant would inform you about that. Major Ploetz tells me Kahlo is part of the VXG.’

  ‘He assumed it was a secret. I’ve only just found out about it.’

  ‘Well, you know now.’

  ‘Is everyone who has been invited to your house under suspicion?’

  ‘Until the traitor is apprehended? Yes. Of course. What a ridiculous question. Oddly enough, Gunther, traitors have a habit of turning out to be the people we trusted most. It would be foolish to assume that there are some people who are simply above suspicion merely by virtue of a long acquaintance with the Leader or me, or their continuing demonstration of Party loyalty. A Czech spy would be no good if he was suspected of being a Czech spy, would he? However, I do agree that this might conceivably have been the reason why Kuttner was murdered. Which makes it all the more imperative that we catch the bastard as soon as possible, wouldn’t you agree?’

  ‘I have another reason why he might have been murdered.’

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘Captain Kuttner was homosexual.’

  ‘Nonsense. Whatever gave you such a ridiculous idea? Let me tell you, I knew Kuttner for more than a decade. And I would have known. It’s impossible that I wouldn’t have known such a thing.’

  ‘Nevertheless it’s a fact.’

  ‘You’d better have some damned good evidence for an assertion like that, Gunther.’

  ‘I’ll spare you the details, sir, but you can take it from me that I would hardly have told you in front of your butler; and I wouldn’t mention it now, in front of your driver, unless I was damned sure about what I’m saying. Moreover I think we can agree that being homosexual, especially in the SS, is, in these enlightened times that we live in, more than enough reason to get
you killed. I suspect any number of SS officers would feel entirely justified in shooting that kind of man. Equally, I suspect one or two would have felt quite justified in having Kuttner shot for – what shall we call it, sir? – his dereliction of duty with that Special Action Group in Latvia.’

  ‘That’s something you should know quite a bit about yourself, Gunther. Perhaps you have asked yourself why you were allowed to leave your own police battalion in Minsk so easily. If you have not done so already then perhaps you should.’

  I nodded. ‘Arthur Nebe said something to me at the time, by way of an explanation.’