Prague Fatale

by Philip Kerr

  ‘Come on,’ he said, almost kindly, like a father speaking to a child who was lagging behind on a Sunday afternoon walk in the park. ‘That’s it, Arianne. Wakey-wake. Say hello to our important visitors.’

  Arianne retched bath water and some vomit that was part blood and then coughed for almost a minute.

  ‘Come on. Open your eyes.’

  She started to shiver, probably from shock as much as the cold, but still she didn’t open her eyes; at least not until her fatherly interrogator sucked at his cigarette for a second, peeled it off his lower lip and then touched her breast with it.

  Arianne opened her eyes and screamed.

  ‘That’s the girl,’ said the man who had burned her.

  It was odd how sorry he looked, I thought; almost as if he regretted hurting her; as if he wouldn’t have hurt anyone by choice; right up until the moment he smiled a smile that was as thin as a razor and then burned her breast a second time, for the pleasure of it. I could see that now. He enjoyed giving pain.

  Arianne screamed again and started to weep invisible tears.

  ‘Please, stop this,’ I pleaded.

  Heydrich ignored me. He finished reading the transcript of the interrogation and handed the pages back to Bohme.

  ‘Is this really all that she knows, do you think?’ he asked.

  Bohme shrugged. ‘That’s a little hard to say, sir. We’ve only had her for a few hours. At this stage there’s no telling how much she knows about anything.’

  So it was true; her arrest had preceded Paul Thummel’s; in which case they couldn’t be connected.

  ‘Sergeant Soppa, isn’t it?’ Heydrich was looking at the very blond man whose foot was on the water board.

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘I believe you are something of an expert in matters like this. It was you who got Balaban to talk, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Finally. Yes sir.’

  ‘What is your opinion?’

  Sergeant Soppa shifted his feet a little but still managed to keep Arianne’s head aloft. She looked like a human torpedo that, at any moment, he might launch into the water.

  ‘In my experience they always keep something back to the end, sir,’ he said ruefully. ‘There’s always one important thing that they’ll hold onto until the last. For their own self-respect, you might say. And they figure you’ll miss it because they’ve already told you absolutely everything else. It’s only when they’re begging to tell you something they think you don’t know – anything – that you can be sure you’ve got everything there is to be had out of them. Which means that it’s always best to keep the interrogation going for longer than seems decent.’

  Heydrich nodded.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I see what you mean. So then, I think we shall have to know if she knows something that we don’t yet know.’

  Heydrich nodded at Sergeant Soppa, who immediately took a step back so that the bascule carrying Arianne’s naked body tipped forward and hit the water with a splash, head first.

  There was a horrible gurgling sound, like a drain trying to clear itself. Arianne was swallowing water. Her hands and feet flailed helplessly under their restraints like the fins of a landed fish. Then Soppa picked up a length of thick rubber cable that was lying on the wet floor and started to beat Arianne hard, the way no living creature, not even a stubborn mule, should ever be beaten. Each blow of the cable snapped loudly on her flesh and sounded like a dangerous electrical short-circuit.

  I watched her beautiful body endure this for several seconds. I remembered the exquisite pleasure we had given each other just a few hours before in the hotel room back at the Imperial. That seemed a very long time ago now. More than that, it seemed like another life, in another place where cruelty and pain did not exist. Worse than this, the body I had known and kissed so tenderly already seemed like a different one from the one I was looking at now.

  Why had I agreed to bring her to Prague? I could easily have refused her request to accompany me. Surely this was all my fault. I had perhaps foreseen something like this happening, only not quickly enough.

  Her hair floated and twisted in the water like yellow seaweed. There was only so much of this kind of treatment she could take. That anyone could take. I told myself I had to do something and I hauled on the chain with all my strength but I was helpless to help her. At this realization, I felt an unpleasant sensation and taste arrive in my mouth from my gut and I spat it out onto the wet floor. If I’d thought, I might have spat it at Heydrich.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, you’re killing her,’ I yelled.

  ‘No,’ said Soppa’s smiling colleague. ‘Not at all.’ His tone was scoffing. ‘You might say that we’re the ones keeping her alive. Believe me, you have to know what you’re doing to take someone right to the edge like this. To almost kill them, and then not kill them. That’s the skill, sir. Besides, this little bitch is a lot tougher than she looks. She might panic a bit if ever she was to go swimming again. But, no, we won’t kill her.’ He glanced at Heydrich. ‘Not unless he tells us to do it.’

  Arianne’s head stayed under the water but Sergeant Soppa stopped beating her for a moment, wiped his brow and nodded. ‘That’s right. We’ve been helping people to take the waters in Prague like this for a while now. Just like Marienbad, it is, this place. Or Bad Kissingen.’

  He grinned at his own attempt at humour. Then he started beating her again.

  After a few seconds I turned my face to the wall and closing my eyes against the edge of my vision, I pressed my forehead against the cold, hard tiles. These felt like Heydrich’s conscience. I might have closed my eyes but I could hardly close my ears, and the awful combination of sound that was Arianne drowning while she took a dreadful beating continued for another fifteen long seconds before I heard the ghastly dripping creak of the bascule being lifted out of the bath and the banshee rasp of her trying, painfully, to drag air into lungs that were already bloated with water.

  By now I was absolutely certain that Colonel Bohme was right: there was not much that was worse than the water board. Just listening to it seemed bad enough. And when I looked again I saw Arianne was just a few centimetres above the surface of the water, dripping wet, trembling uncontrollably, her body galvanized with the spasms that were her agonized attempts to breathe and covered with fresh, livid welts. Sergeant Soppa had thrown aside his cable and had the heel of his hand on the edge of the water board, ready to do exactly the same thing again the very second that Heydrich or Bohme gave him the order.

  Soppa’s colleague tossed away his cigarette and turned on a tap to pour some more water into the bath. Had she swallowed that much? Or had it just spilled onto the floor? It was hard to tell. Then he lifted Arianne’s head by the hair, shook it like a handbell, and spoke into her ear.

  ‘Is there anything you want to tell us, darling?’ he asked. ‘Something close to your heart. Next time we’ll fucking drown you, if we have to. Won’t we, Sarge?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Soppa. ‘And I’ll fuck her while she’s drowning.’ He stroked Arianne’s bare behind with lascivious intent and then patted it fondly.

  ‘Ask her – ask her if she knows where Vaclav Moravek is hiding,’ said Heydrich.

  Soppa’s colleague repeated the question into Arianne’s ear.

  She gulped loudly and whispered, ‘No. I’ve told you everything I know. I’ve never heard of Vaclav Moravek. Please. You have to believe me.’

  She swallowed another painful breath, belched and tried to say something else, but her previous answer drew a sneer and then a nod from Heydrich which was the cue for another ducking. And this time her head banged against the side of the bath as she fell into the water. Her body struggled against the leather straps and the buckles which cut cruelly into her skin so that a thin trickle of blood ran down her shoulders and dripped into the turbulent bath water.

  I held my own breath at the same time as she went under the water so that I could at least experience some small part of her ordeal. But this time t
hey kept her under for much longer than a minute and when, with my lungs bursting, I realized I could hold my own breath for no longer I let it out with a yell, even as Arianne’s struggles appeared to have ended for good. Her hands and feet stopped moving. The water calmed. All was still. Including my heart.

  ‘Pull her up, you bastards.’

  ‘Is she dead?’ asked Heydrich.

  ‘No,’ said Soppa. ‘Not by a long chalk. Not to worry, sir. We’ve brought people round who were under the water for much longer than that.’

  He and the other man lifted Arianne out of the bath and proceeded to use a combination of smelling salts, slaps, brandy and massage to try to put some life back into her.

  ‘Leave her alone,’ I pleaded. ‘For God’s sake. She hasn’t done anything.’

  ‘You think so?’ said Heydrich. ‘I’m afraid that you’re wrong about that, Gunther. At least, that was the impression I gained from Colonel Bohme, on the telephone, just before lunchtime.’

  He turned and faced the stenographer.

  ‘Read the Captain what she’s already told us, please.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Just the salient points if you will.’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  The stenographer picked up her transcript and read entirely without emotion, like someone announcing the arrival or departure of a train.

  Question: What is your name and address?

  Answer: My name is Arianne Tauber and I live in a room at Flat 6, 3 Uhland Strasse, Berlin, which is owned by Frau Marguerite Lippert. I have lived there for ten months. I work at the Jockey Bar on Luther Strasse, where I am employed to be the cloakroom attendant.

  Question: You are a Berliner?

  Answer: No, originally I am from Dresden. My mother still lives there. She lives in Johann Georgen Allee.

  Question: So why are you here in Prague?

  Answer: I am on holiday. I came here with a friend. I was staying at the Imperial Hotel.

  Question: What is the name of that friend?

  Answer. Kripo Commissar Bernhard Gunther. From the Police Praesidium at Berlin Alexanderplatz. I am his mistress. He will vouch for me. He works for General Heydrich. Clearly there has been some mistake here. I spent the weekend with him and I was going home to Berlin when I was arrested.

  Question: Do you know why you were arrested at the Masaryk Station this morning?

  Answer: No. Clearly there’s been some sort of mistake here. I’ve never been in any trouble before. I am a good German. A law-abiding citizen. Commissar Gunther will vouch for me. So will my employers.

  Question: But aren’t you also working for UVOD?

  Answer: I don’t know what you mean by that. What is UVOD? I do not understand.

  Question: UVOD is the Home Resistance Network here in Prague. We know you are working for UVOD. Why?

  Prisoner refused to answer the question.

  Prisoner refused to answer the question.

  Prisoner refused to answer the question.

  Answer: Yes, I am working for UVOD. Following the deaths of my husband and my father in February and May 1940, for which I held Adolf Hitler ultimately responsible, I decided to work for a foreign government against the National Socialist government of Germany. Since I am from Dresden and my mother is Czech, it seemed logical that this foreign government should be Czech.

  Question: How did you go about establishing contact with UVOD?

  Prisoner refused to answer the question.

  Heydrich interrupted the stenographer. ‘Perhaps I did not make myself entirely clear, my dear young woman,’ he said patiently. ‘I asked you to read out only the salient points. What I meant was that it will save a great deal of time if you omit all mention of when the prisoner refused to answer a question.’

  The stenographer coloured a little. ‘I’m sorry, sir.’

  ‘Now continue.’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  Question: How did you go about establishing contact with UVOD?

  Answer: I made contact with an old friend from university called Friedrich Rose in Dresden, a Sudeten German communist, who put me in contact with a Czech terrorist organization that is part of the Central Leadership of Home Resistance – UVOD. I am part Czech myself and I speak a little Czech and I was pleased when, having investigated my background, they accepted me into their organization. They said a native German could be very useful to their cause. Which is all that I wanted. After my husband died on a U-boat all I wanted was for the war to be over. For Germany to be defeated.

  Question: What did they ask you to do?

  Answer: They asked me to leave Dresden and to undertake a special mission on their behalf. In Berlin.

  Question: What was this mission?

  Prisoner refused to—.

  ‘Sorry, sir . . .’

  After a short pause, while she tracked down the transcript with a well-manicured fingernail, the stenographer started reading again.

  Answer: At the request of UVOD I joined the Berlin Transport Company in the autumn of 1940 and worked for the BVG director, Herr Julius Vahlen, as his personal secretary and sometime mistress. It was my job to monitor Wehrmacht troop movements through Berlin’s Anhalter Station and to report on these movements to my Czech contact in Berlin. This I did for several months.

  Question: Who was your contact?

  Answer: My contact was a former Czech German Army officer I knew only as Detmar. I didn’t know his surname. I would give him a list of the troop movements on a weekly basis. The troop movements were passed on to London, I think. Detmar would give me some more instructions and some money. I was always short of money. Living in Berlin is so much more expensive than Dresden.

  Question: What else did Detmar tell you to do?

  Answer: At first I had to do very little. Just give him the troop movement reports. But then in December 1940 Detmar asked me to help the Three Kings organization in Berlin to plant a bomb in the station. This was much more important work and much more dangerous, too. First of all I had to obtain a plan of the station building; and then, when the bomb was ready, I had to prime it and put it in a place where it had been decided it would cause the most damage.

  Question: Who taught you how to prime a bomb?

  Answer: I am a qualified chemist. I studied Chemistry at university. I know all about handling difficult materials. It’s not difficult to prime a bomb. I’m better at that than I was as a stenographer.

  Question: What was the purpose of that bomb?

  Answer: The purpose of the bomb at Anhalter Station was to cause panic, to demoralize the population of Berlin; and to disrupt troop movements in and out of the city.

  Question: Wasn’t the real reason for planting that bomb altogether different? Wasn’t the real reason that you had inside information about the train belonging to the Reichsführer-SS, Heinrich Himmler, that was due to be leaving the station? And that the bomb was meant to kill him?

  Answer: Yes. I admit that this bomb was really designed to assassinate the Reichsführer-SS, Heinrich Himmler. I planted the bomb in the left luggage office in February 1941. This is right by the platform where Himmler’s train was to leave from; and, even more importantly, the office is also beside the place on the platform where Himmler’s personal carriage was usually located. The assassination was unsuccessful because the bomb was not powerful enough. It was meant to bring down a joist on top of the train and it didn’t.

  Question: Then what happened? After the failed assassination?

  Answer: With the war in Europe more or less won, it was decided by my controller that troop movements in Germany were of less importance to UVOD; and a few months afterwards I left the BVG’s employment. I was not unhappy about this as my boss, Herr Vahlen, was besotted with me and something of a nuisance. Thereafter I worked in a series of nightclubs. Especially the Jockey Club, where I was supposed to befriend Germans from the Foreign Ministry in order to sleep with them and get information useful to the Czech cause. I did this. Again I was short
of money and sometimes I was obliged to sleep with some of these men in the Foreign Ministry for money so that I could keep myself. I also worked for UVOD as a courier. Then in the summer of 1941 my contact Detmar was replaced by another Czech called Victor Keil. I do not know what happened to Detmar and I don’t know Victor’s real name. But we were very uncomfortable comrades. Victor was a very demanding man to work for and I did not like him at all. He was not brave like Detmar. He was fearful and he did not inspire much confidence. He didn’t understand my situation at all, how difficult it was for me in Berlin. And we often quarrelled. Usually about money.