Prague Fatale

by Philip Kerr

  The heavily lined curtains looked like they belonged in a theatre and might easily have afforded me a hiding place if someone came into the study. The big windows were as thick as my little finger and quite possibly bullet-proof, too. At the back of the curtains were a couple of machine pistols and a box of grenades; Heydrich wasn’t leaving much to chance. If anyone attacked him in his house he clearly intended to defend himself to the last.

  But did I want him or one of his adjutants to catch me in there? Perhaps. Being thrown out of his office might also have resulted in my being thrown off the case and sent back to Berlin in disgrace, which seemed like an outcome devoutly to be wished. But it didn’t happen and finally, after I’d been in there for almost fifteen minutes, I got up and went out onto the landing, still unobserved.

  The next door along from Heydrich’s study was a suite of rather more feminine rooms – doubtless these had been set aside for Lina Heydrich – where, among the rose-patterned sofas, elegant chairs, and long mirrors, was a dressing table as big as a Messerschmitt.

  I went downstairs and managed to creep unnoticed past the open door of the Dining Room, which was full of cauliflower; nearer the back garden I put my head around the door of a Play Room, and then a Nursery.

  As yet I had no knowledge of the extensive servants’ quarters in the basement, so I descended a narrow flight of stairs and walked along a dimly lit corridor that seemed to serve as the spine and nervous system of the house. Even on a sunny day like this one, the stone-flagged basement corridor felt more like the lock-up at the Alex, although it smelled a lot better. Kahlo was right about that.

  In the big kitchen several cooks were hard at work preparing the next course of lunch, which was being served by waiters whose faces were more familiar. They regarded me with suspicion and alarm. Fendler, the footman I’d spoken to earlier, who happened to be smoking a cigarette near the back door, came over and asked me if was lost. I said I wasn’t of course, but a little deterred by the horrified looks I was getting, I was about to return upstairs and get some lunch after all when, at the furthest, dimmest end of the corridor, a door opened and an SS sergeant whom I was certain I’d never seen before came out, closed the door carefully behind him, and then went into the room opposite.

  In the moment before the door closed I saw a brightly lit, busy room containing what looked like a telephone switchboard, and thinking that this was as good a time as any to introduce myself in person – there was another call to the Alex I wanted to place – I went along the corridor and opened the door.

  Immediately, a burly-looking SS corporal jumped up from a wooden bench, threw down his newspaper, and blocked my way. At the same time he kicked another door shut behind him, but not before I caught a glimpse of several large taperecorders and, seated in front of them, some more SS men wearing headphones.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ said the corporal, ‘but I’m afraid you can’t come in here.’

  ‘I’m a police officer.’ I showed him my warrant disc. ‘Commissar Gunther, from the Alex. General Heydrich has given me the run of the house to investigate a murder.’

  ‘I don’t care who you are, sir, you can’t come in here. This is a restricted area.’

  ‘What’s your name, Corporal?’

  ‘You don’t need to know that, sir. You don’t need to know anything about what happens in here. It doesn’t concern you or your particular investigation.’

  ‘My particular investigation? That’s my call, Corporal. Not yours. What is this place anyway? And what happens behind that door? It looks like Deutsches Grammophon in there.’

  ‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist that you leave, sir. Right now.’

  ‘Corporal, did you know that you’re obstructing a police officer in the execution of his duty? I have no intention of leaving until I have a full explanation of what’s going on in here.’

  By now voices were raised, my own included, and there had been a certain amount of chest-on-chest pushing and shoving. I was angrier at myself than at the corporal – frustrated at having missed finding the loose floorboards before and now irritated to discover what looked to me like a listening post for eavesdropping on the house guests – only the corporal didn’t know that, and when someone appeared behind me in the door I had just come through and I turned around to see who this was, the corporal hit me. Hard.

  I didn’t blame him. I didn’t blame anyone. Like raising your voice and arguing and pointing, blaming people is not something you can do when you’re heading down through the black hole that suddenly appears underneath your shoes. Doctor Freud didn’t give it a name and, strictly speaking, you only know what being unconscious really means if a thug with a hardwood fist like a Zulu’s knobkerrie has used this same lethal object to hit you expertly on the back of the neck, as if trying to kill a large and argumentative and rather gullible rabbit. No, wait, I did blame someone. I blamed myself. I blamed myself for not listening to the eavesdropping SS corporal in the first place. I blamed myself for missing the trick with the floorboards in Kuttner’s bedroom. I blamed myself for taking Heydrich at his word and thinking I really did have the run of the house to pursue my investigation. But mostly I just blamed myself for thinking it was even possible to behave like a real detective in a world that was owned and run by criminals.

  I don’t suppose I was unconscious for longer than a couple of minutes. When I came to I could have wished it had been a lot longer. Another thing you can’t do when you’re unconscious is feel sick or have a splitting headache or wonder if you should dare to move your legs in case your neck really is broken. Ignoring the severe pain of opening my eyelids I opened my eyelids, and found myself staring down the blunderbuss-barrel of a large brandy balloon. It was a big improvement on a real blunderbuss, or the pistol that these circumstances usually produce. I took a deep, heady breath of the stuff and let it toast my adenoids for a moment before taking the glass from the hand that was holding it in front of me and then pouring all of the contents carefully – tipping my head meant moving my neck – down my throat.

  I handed the glass back and found it was Kritzinger who took it from me.

  I was in a neat little sitting room with a window onto the basement corridor, a small desk, a couple of easy chairs, a safe, and the chaise-longue I was lying on.

  ‘Where am I?’

  ‘This is my office, sir,’ said Kritzinger.

  Behind him were two SS men, one of whom was the corporal who had argued with me a few minutes before. The other was Major Ploetz.

  ‘Who hit me?’

  ‘I did, sir,’ said the corporal.

  ‘What were you trying to do? Make a bell ring?’

  ‘Sorry about that, sir.’

  ‘No, don’t apologize. Kritzinger?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Give this boy a piece of sugarloaf. I reckon he won it fair and square. The last time I got hit like that I was wearing a pointy hat and sitting in a trench.’

  ‘If only you’d listened to me, sir,’ said the corporal.

  ‘It looked to me as if that’s exactly what you’ve been doing.’ I rubbed the back of my neck and groaned. ‘To me and everyone else in this house.’

  ‘Orders are orders, sir.’

  Ploetz put his hand on my shoulder. ‘How are you feeling, Captain?’ He sounded oddly solicitous, as if he really did care.

  ‘Really, sir,’ insisted the corporal. ‘If I’d known it was you, sir—’

  ‘It’s all right, Corporal,’ Ploetz said smoothly. ‘I’ll handle things from here.’

  ‘Sure, doc, sure,’ I said. ‘You can pretend there’s a perfectly innocent explanation for all that recording equipment and while you’re at it, I’ll pretend I’m a proper detective. Right now the only thing I am absolutely certain of is the quality of that brandy. Better pour me another, Kritzinger. I pretend better when I’ve had a drink.’

  ‘Don’t give him any,’ Ploetz told Kritzinger. And then: ‘Your tongue is quite loose enough as it is,
Gunther. We wouldn’t want you to say something to your own detriment. Especially not now you’re in the General’s good books.’

  I ignored this. It didn’t sound right. Clearly the blow on the back of my neck had affected my hearing.

  ‘That’s right, doc. We’ve got to be careful what we say. What is it that the sign says? Attention! The enemy is listening. Well, they are. And they’re pretty good at it, too. Aren’t you, boys? What were you listening to anyway? And don’t tell me it was the Leader talking about the Winter Relief. Something in the Meeting Room? Something in the bedrooms? Maybe you’ve got a recording of Kuttner getting shot. That might come in useful. For me, anyway. Something in the Morning Room? Me, perhaps. Only what would be the point in that? I don’t mind calling you all crooks and liars to your ugly faces. Just see if I don’t.’

  Ploetz moved his head in the direction of the door and the two SS men started to leave.

  ‘Look, Gunther,’ Ploetz said, ‘I think it might be better if you returned to your room and had a lie-down. I’ll inform the General of what’s happened. Under the circumstances, he’ll want to know you’re all right.’

  At this moment a lie-down looked very appealing.

  Ploetz went outside while Kritzinger helped me to my feet.

  ‘Are you all right, sir? Would you like me to help you back to your room?’

  ‘Thanks no, I’ll manage. I’m used to it. It’s an occupational hazard for a policeman, being hit. It comes of sticking my nose in where it’s not wanted. I should know better by now. It used to be that a detective could turn up at a country house, question everyone, find some recognizable clues, and then arrest the butler over chilled cocktails in the library. But it hasn’t worked out like that, I’m afraid, Kritzinger. I’m afraid you won’t be getting your big moment when everyone realizes what a clever fellow you’ve been.’

  ‘That is disappointing, sir. Perhaps you would care for another brandy after all.’

  I shook my head. ‘No. I expect Doctor Ploetz is right. I do talk too much. It comes of not having any answers. I don’t suppose you know who shot Captain Kuttner.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  He smiled a fleeting smile and then scratched the back of his head, awkwardly.

  ‘Pity.’

  ‘You understand, sir, that there are lots of things in this house I prefer not to hear, but if these things had included a shot, or perhaps a snippet of conversation that might shed some light on his unfortunate death, then I should certainly tell you, Commissar. Really I would. However, I am certain there’s nothing I can tell you.’

  I nodded. ‘Well, that’s very good of you to say so, Kritzinger. I really think you mean that. And I appreciate you saying it.’

  ‘Really?’ The smile flickered on again for just a second. ‘I wonder.’

  ‘No, I do.’

  ‘I flatter myself that perhaps I know your own independent cast of mind. One can’t help but hear things in a house like this.’

  ‘So I noticed.’

  ‘Consequently, I know you believe that I think in a certain way only, for what it’s worth, I don’t. I never have. I am a good German. Like you, perhaps, I don’t know what else to be. But unlike you, I am not a courageous man, if you follow me.’

  ‘That Iron Cross ribbon in your buttonhole says otherwise, Mister Kritzinger.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. But that was then. I think things were simpler in that war, were they not? Courage was perhaps easier to recognize not only in oneself but in others as well. Well, I was younger then. I have a wife now. And a child. And long ago I concluded that the only practical course of action available to me was simply to do as I’m told.’

  ‘Me, too.’

  I headed for the stairs a little unsteadily. It had been a very German conversation.

  As I passed the dining room I noticed that lunch was finishing. Seeing me, Heydrich made his excuses to the other cauliflower and, smiling, nodded toward the Drawing Room.

  It wasn’t every day that Heydrich smiled at me. I followed him, and he led me to the French windows and out onto the terrace where he offered me one of his cigarettes and even condescended to light it for me. He did not smoke one himself. And he seemed oddly cheerful considering that Vaclav Moravek continued to elude the Gestapo. I had only ever seen him like this once before, and that had been in June 1940, after the French capitulation.

  ‘Major Ploetz told me what happened to you below stairs,’ he said, almost apologetically. ‘I should have informed you about the SD listening station but really, I’ve had so much on my plate. As if I didn’t have enough to do here in Bohemia with the Three Kings and UVOD and the traitor X. Reichsmarshal Göring has tasked me to submit to him a comprehensive draft as to how we can sort out the way the Jews are being handled in all new territories under German influence. Well, I’m sure I don’t have to tell you what things are like in the East. It’s nothing short of chaos. But that’s hardly your concern.

  ‘But to come back to the traitor X: as you know, all of the guests in this house were under suspicion in that respect. However, by a simple process of elimination our intelligence analysts had narrowed down the search for the traitor’s identity to one of six or seven officers. Consequently everything these men said on the least of subjects was of interest to us. Which is why some of the rooms in the Lower Castle have concealed microphones, just in case one of them should let something important slip.’

  ‘You mean, like the Pension Matzky.’

  Heydrich nodded. ‘You know about the microphones, do you?’ He grinned. ‘Yes, like the Pension Matzky.’

  ‘And do these rooms here include the Morning Room?’

  ‘Yes, they do.’

  My stomach turned over for a moment; not for my own sake – as far as Heydrich was concerned, I was a hopeless case – but for Kurt Kahlo’s, and I started to rack my brains for anything he had said that might have been interpreted as evidence of his disloyalty.

  ‘So you’ve heard everything that was said in there?’

  ‘No, not me personally. But I’ve read some of the transcripts.’

  ‘Kuttner’s room?’

  ‘No. My fourth adjutant was hardly important enough to have rated that level of surveillance.’ Heydrich made a face. ‘Which is a pity, because if he had been, then of course we would now know who it was who pumped two bullets into his chest.’

  I let out a weary sigh and tried to put some sort of tolerant, understanding face on what had just been revealed to me.

  ‘In my book, a traitor is a traitor. I can easily see why you should wish to employ every method at your disposal in order to catch him. Including secret microphones. But I just hope you’ll excuse some of my Criminal Assistant Kahlo’s looser talk in the Morning Room. You can blame me for a lot of that. He’s a good man. I’m afraid I’ve been a bad influence on him.’

  ‘On the contrary, Gunther. It’s thanks to you and your unconventional, not to say insubordinate methods, that the traitor has now been revealed. In fact, everything has worked out exactly as I had hoped it would. You, Gunther, have been the catalyst that changed everything. I don’t know who to congratulate more: me for having the inspiration of bringing you here in the first place, or you for your own stubbornly independent cast of mind.’

  I felt my face take on an expression of disbelief.

  ‘Yes, it’s quite true. It seems that we owe you everything in this matter, Gunther. Which makes it all the more unfortunate that your immediate reward should have been to be knocked unconscious by one of our more robust colleagues in the SD. For which, once again, I offer my sincere apologies. You were after all merely doing your job. A job well done. For even as we speak the traitor is under close arrest and on his way to Gestapo headquarters in Prague.’

  ‘But who was it? The traitor.’

  ‘It was Major Thummel. Paul Thummel, of the Abwehr.’

  ‘Thummel. He’s a man with a gold Party badge, isn’t he?’

  ‘I did say it would turn out to be
someone who was apparently above reasonable suspicion.’

  ‘But he’s also a friend of Himmler.’

  Heydrich smiled. ‘Yes. And that is something of a bonus. The acute embarrassment that this particular association will cause the Reichsführer will be a great pleasure to behold. I can’t wait to see Himmler’s face when I tell the Leader. For that same reason, however, it’s by no means certain that we’ll make any of this stick against Thummel. We shall, of course, do our best.’

  I nodded. ‘I’m beginning to understand. It has something to do with that letter I received this morning from the Netherlands, doesn’t it?’

  ‘It does indeed. You asked Major Thummel if he was the same Captain Thummel who was in The Hague in 1939. He denied it, of course. Now why? Why would that be of any interest to you? But this was a lie. It was a matter of only a few minutes to check through a record of his military service. When Thummel was a captain in 1939, he passed through The Hague on his way to Paris. We know he was in The Hague because he visited our military attaché at the German Embassy. But while he was in The Hague we also think he met secretly with his Czech controller, a man named Major Franck. Franck and Thummel shared a Dutch girlfriend named Inge Vranken. I shall want to see your letter of course, but it rather looks as if Inge Vranken was your friend Geert’s little sister.