The Lady from Zagreb

by Philip Kerr

  “You want to know why they’re sad? Because they haven’t seen you in years.”

  She sat on my lap and kissed my eyelids.

  “Besides,” I added. “My eyes. They’re not so sad right now. As a matter of fact, I was just thinking how this is the first time in a very long time that I’ve felt as if life was actually worth the candle. That I can actually manage a smile that isn’t oiled with sarcasm.”

  “I’m glad about that,” she said.

  “I could get to like it here, with you.”

  “Good. I hope you’ll come again. By the way, I ran you a bath just in case you wanted one. Would you like me to wash you?”

  “Back in Berlin they have several words for girls like you.”

  She frowned. “Oh? Such as?”

  “Astonishing. Amazing. Astounding.”

  She smiled. “It was a simple question, Bernie Gunther. Would you like me to bathe you?”

  “Do you think I need bathing?”

  “Need has got absolutely nothing to do with it,” she purred. “Want is all that matters now. What you want me to do for you, what will bring you delight.”

  Dalia took my head in her perfumed hands and started to cover it with tiny kisses as small as her pink fingernails. Through the negligee I could see and feel every part of her delicious body. I ran my hand over her breast and onto her bottom; now that I actually had it in my hand it was even more perfect than I’d realized. She shifted and parted her thighs slightly so that my fingers could pleasure her a little.

  “That’s all that matters when you’re with me, Bernie Gunther.” Each word she spoke was punctuated with a kiss now. “All you’ve ever wanted from a woman is exactly what you’re going to get. So, please. Try to relax and get it through your beautiful big head that when you’re here, in this room, giving you pleasure is what I’m for. More pleasure than you’ve ever had from a woman before.”

  “You know something? I think that, all things considered, I’d really like to have a bath.”

  Eighteen

  The Fieseler Fi-156 Storch liaison aircraft dropped through the warm air toward Borongaj airfield, east of Zagreb. The three-seater Storch was well named; with its long legs and big wings the aircraft resembled a stork, only this one wasn’t delivering babies, just myself and a bad-tempered Austrian SS police general named August Meyszner. The general was arriving in Yugoslavia after a week’s leave in Berlin, to take command of an anti-partisan offensive in Bosnia, and regarded my mission—whatever it was—as of little or no consequence, and during the flight he made it quite clear that I should not speak to him unless addressed directly. This suited me very well since it inhibited me from mentioning that it was well known in Berlin police circles that Meyszner—a notorious anti-Semite—had a brother, Rudolf, who just happened to be married to the famously Jewish stepdaughter of the famous composer and conductor Johann Strauss II.

  From the air the countryside surrounding Zagreb was mostly woodland with large fields that were divided into long, narrow strips, as if the land were still farmed according to feudal principles of agriculture. This wasn’t so far from the truth. As the Storch neared the ground, General Meyszner forgot that he was trying to ignore me and explained that most Yugoslavians were “Swabian peasants” and had “no more idea of enclosures and crop rotation than they did of single variable calculus.” I said nothing. Inside the cabin I took hold of the seat in front of me and closed my eyes as a gust of wind caught the wings and the plane wobbled uncertainly, which did nothing for my nerves or my underwear. A few trips in a plane had given me a grudging respect for Heydrich, who, in the months leading up to his death, had seen some active service with the Luftwaffe, first as a rear gunner in a Dornier and then as a trainee fighter pilot, until a crash and then Himmler had obliged him to quit. I could no more have served in our air force than I could have gone over the Reichenbach Falls in a beer barrel.

  We landed and I let out a breath that steamed up the whole window next to me. After a minute or two I climbed unsteadily out of the plane just in time to see the general disappear in the only transport that seemed to have been provided—a Horch driven by the local field police, who were easily identifiable from the silver dog collar warrants that hung around their necks. I picked up my bag and walked toward the airport building where, after waiting almost half an hour, I was able to get a lift into town from the Storch’s suddenly garrulous German pilot, who proceeded to give me a tour guide’s explanation for how things were in modern Yugoslavia.

  The Hotel Esplanade on Mihanoviceva had been built during the previous century as a railway hotel for the Vienna-Zagreb stage of the Orient Express. It contained a quarryful of black-and-white marble, several art deco ceilings, a ballroom as big as a circus tent, and a formal courtesy that seemed better suited to Vienna and absurdly excessive for a city of just one hundred thousand people. It was like finding a tram driver wearing a white tuxedo. Come to think of it, these days that kind of old-world formality seems inappropriate for Vienna, too. But that Austro-Hungarian imperial past died hard in Zagreb; indeed it was perhaps what the Ustaše mistakenly imagined they were fighting for.

  And yet—according to my driver—the old enmity between Croat and Serb could not simply be dismissed as a conflict of two defunct empires. If Croats hated their Serbian near-neighbors it wasn’t entirely because of their Ottoman past. Croats might have been anti-Semites but they were tolerant of Islam. Why else would they have built a mosque in one of their main squares?

  Once I’d checked in, I went to find Schellenberg’s local SD officer, Sturmbannführer Emil Koob, but he was out so I left a message for him at the hotel’s reception. Then I looked for the local army liaison officer, who also had an office in the Esplanade. He was a lieutenant in the Wehrmacht and, like Meyszner, another Austrian. His name was Kurt Waldheim. Very lean and tall, with a nose like a billhook, I guessed he was probably in his mid-twenties, and he reminded me more than a little of Heydrich. I showed him my credentials—which were of course impeccable—and explained my mission.

  “I need to make contact with the local SD and then to travel to a place in Bosnia called Banja Luka,” I said. “I’m looking for this man.” I showed him a photograph of Father Ladislaus given to me by Dalia Dresner. “He was last heard of at the Petricevac Monastery of the Most Holy Trinity, which is run by the Franciscans. Dr. Goebbels wishes me to give an important message to him and, if he wishes it, to facilitate his coming to Berlin at some future stage. I’d appreciate any help or advice you can give me.”

  “I’m not wholly familiar with that part of the country, and as a matter of fact this is my last week as army group liaison with the Italian Ninth Army here in Yugoslavia. After a bit of leave I’m off to Greece to take up a position with Army Group South as the liaison officer with the Italian Eleventh Army. But what I can tell you is that the roads between here and Sarajevo aren’t too bad, especially now, with the temperatures in the high twenties and thirties. Bombed about a bit, of course. In winter it’s a very different story. It’s almost two hundred kilometers down to Banja Luka. I should think you could make it there in a day. Most of the partisans are operating to the southeast of there, in the Zelengora Mountains. But they’re pretty tenacious and move around the country with frightening speed so it’s best to be on your guard at all times. At least it is in Bosnia. You’ll find the SD at Gestapo headquarters on King Peter Kresmira Street. They’ll probably be able to arrange some transport down south for you. Some sort of a car or field wagon, I expect. I could drive you over there myself, if you like. It’s a little far to walk there in this heat.”

  “Thank you, Lieutenant, I’d appreciate that.”

  Waldheim wasn’t a bad sort of fellow. He’d been in Yugoslavia since the previous summer, after being wounded on the Eastern Front and discharged from combat service; since then he’d seen service only as a liaison officer with the Italians because he spoke the
language. But he held a dim view of the prospects for our main ally in the Axis.

  “Anyone can see that now the Allies have invaded Sicily, the writing is on the wall for Mussolini. I’d be very surprised if he manages to cling onto power until the end of the month. Not without German help, anyway.”

  “They’re sending you, aren’t they?” I said.

  Waldheim grinned uncertainly as we drove past the new city mosque. With three tall minarets still under construction, it seemed an improbable building to find in one of the most Catholic countries in Europe. Waldheim explained that the mosque was due to open the following summer, always assuming that Ante Pavelic—the leader of the fascist Ustaše—lasted as long as that, since the mosque had been his own initiative.

  “Tell me, Lieutenant Waldheim, is Italian the only language you speak or do you speak whatever it is they speak here? Croat, I suppose. Because when I get to Banja Luka I think I’m going to need a translator.”

  “I speak Czech and a bit of Croat. But like I said, I’m off on leave quite soon. And then bound for Greece, I’m afraid.”

  “And like you also said, it’s only a day’s drive down from Zagreb to Banja Luka. And a day’s drive back again. That’s plenty of time before you leave for Greece. Besides, unless I’m very much mistaken, the Italian Ninth Army no longer exists in this theater. On account of the fact that they’ve all gone back to defend their homeland against the Allies. Or more likely to surrender as quickly as possible. And who could blame them?”

  Waldheim frowned. “It’s very flattering of you to ask, but my commanding officer, General Löhr, couldn’t possibly spare me right now.”

  Waldheim pulled up in front of a huge modern building. The street, lined with maple trees that were shedding their bark, was closed to all traffic except those on Gestapo business. A rank of camouflaged German cars stood in front of the main entrance. Behind them was a quaint little park with a rose garden and the bronze statue of a naked dancing girl, which made a very pleasant change from the equestrian statues of forgotten Croat kings that seemed to be all over the city like so many giant dog turds.

  “Here we are, sir. Gestapo headquarters.”

  “I could ask him, if you like? General Löhr. I could ask him to let you come with me to Banja Luka. After all, this mission is a high priority for the Ministry of Truth and Propaganda. I’m sure your general would want to make sure that I have everything I need to make sure it’s a success. Dr. Goebbels is not a man who likes failure.”

  Waldheim was looking very awkward and probably wishing he’d never set eyes on me.

  “Look,” he said, “what if I was to find you someone else? Someone who speaks much better Croat than me?”

  “Is that possible?”

  “Oh yes. My Croat isn’t that good at all.” He saluted. “Leave it to me, sir. And I’ll see what I can do.”

  I watched Lieutenant Waldheim drive quickly away with a smile on my face; there aren’t many jobs that come close to being God’s representative on earth, but arriving in a place like Zagreb with Joey’s letter in the pocket of my tunic was one of them. It read:

  To Whom It May Concern: The bearer of this letter, Captain Bernhard Gunther, a Police commissar with the RSHA in Berlin, is to be extended every cooperation and courtesy. He is my personal envoy in Zagreb and should be always treated as if he were me and his mission is of the utmost importance to my ministry. Signed, Dr. Josef Goebbels, Reich Minister of Truth and Propaganda.

  With a letter like that I was going to have some fun in Yugoslavia. Or so I thought.

  Gestapo headquarters was mercifully cool after the searing heat of the street. The pictures of Hitler and Himmler and Ante Pavelic on the wall of the entrance hall were hardly a surprise, nor indeed was the giant map of Yugoslavia, but, in the circumstances, the portrait of Benito Mussolini—the one with him wearing a black helmet and looking more than a little like a circus daredevil about to be shot out of a cannon, which, perhaps, wasn’t so far away from the truth—already seemed out of place in that company.

  And yet it was a picture that gave me hope—hope that one day soon people like young Lieutenant Kurt Waldheim would be predicting the imminent demise of Adolf Hitler.

  Nineteen

  The next morning, after a disturbed night due to the many trams that passed in an almost steady stream of light blue beneath the open window of my stiflingly hot second-floor room, I was up early and waiting outside the hotel, ready to leave Zagreb in the open-top Mercedes 190 that SD Sturmbannführer Emil Koob had lent to me with some alacrity after I gave him the parcel of money from Schellenberg. Waldheim was also there, to introduce me to the two SS officers who were recently returned from Germany and heading for Sarajevo and then Savnik, to rejoin their division. Banja Luka is almost halfway from Zagreb to Sarajevo and the two officers had been assured that there would be transport waiting for them at this ancient Bosnian city’s Ustaše headquarters. I could have wished for more congenial companions than the SS but Waldheim assured me that both men were ethnic volunteers—Croatian Germans who knew the country as well as the language. Besides, he added, there were rumors that the partisans had broken out of southeastern Bosnia and were headed toward the Dalmatian coast across the very region to which we were traveling. All of which meant that three armed men in a car were certainly better than just one.

  Of the two officers, the sergeant was the first to arrive. He gave a casual sort of salute and said his name was Oehl. The left side of his face had been badly burned, which probably explained the Iron Cross 2nd Class he wore on his tunic and his taciturn manner; I’d have been a bit taciturn myself if half of my face looked like a plantation shutter. The hair on top of his head was short and gray and exactly matched the short gray hair on his enormous chin; his narrow blue eyes looked more like murder holes in the walls of an impregnable castle. Looking at him I felt as if I had just met a powerful gorilla while at the same time being in possession of the world’s last banana.

  “Where is Captain Geiger?” Waldheim looked at his watch.

  “We’re going to pick the boss up on the way out of town.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “All right.”

  I shook hands with Waldheim and wished him luck in Greece as the sergeant threw his kit into the back of the car and, nursing a daddy under his arm, climbed into the front seat and lit a cigarette.

  “You’d best drive, sir,” he told me. “If we run into any trouble I might need to sweep the road with this.”

  A daddy was a Russian-made Tokarev PPSh—the Papasha, which is Ivan for “daddy.” Oehl’s daddy had a drum magazine, the kind that holds seventy-one rounds as opposed to half as many in a box mag.

  I started the car and drove off with Oehl giving me directions.

  “Is that at all likely?” I asked.

  “I reckon we’ll be all right until we get over the Sava River. After that, anything’s fucking possible. The First Proletarian Brigade has broken out of the encirclement. And there are Chetniks in the same area. Proles are the communists. Tito’s men. Chetniks are royalists. Some of them are friendly. Some are not. Some Chetniks are really Proles pretending to be friendly Chetniks so they can kill you. The only way you can be sure which they are is if they start shooting at you.”

  His voice sounded vaguely irritable and tired. I recognized that sound; it’s what you sound like after people have been trying to kill you for a while.

  “Have you seen much fighting down here?”

  He let out a sigh that was almost as loud as the engine of the car I was driving and grinned patiently as if trying not to obey his first instinct which was to shove his daddy’s polished wooden butt in my face. The submachine gun was the only really clean thing about him.

  “There is no fighting down here,” he said. “They kill us when we’re not expecting it, and we kil
l them when they’re not expecting it. That’s how it works with partisans. It’s just killing. And more killing. Except there’s more of them than us. Twenty thousand in the partisans. Probably more. It certainly seems that way to those of us who have to do the killing.”

  At his request we stopped in front of a building near the new mosque on Franje Rackog Street; at the opposite end of the street could be seen the twin spires of Zagreb’s Catholic cathedral. The entrance of the building was busy with men wearing black uniforms and forage caps. Oehl said they were Ustaše and that our stuff would be safe enough in the car while we went to fetch Captain Geiger.

  “We?”

  “I might need your help getting him out.”

  “Are you sure about our stuff? The gun?”

  “No one would fucking dare to steal from a German car outside Ustaše headquarters,” he said. “That’s why we’re leaving it here. The banging hut’s only a minute away.”

  We walked around the corner to a cream-colored building with a mock Doric entrance and, above the door, a double-width buttressed balcony as big as an armored car where several semi-clad girls were already enjoying the hot Croatian sun. We went up to the second floor and entered a warren of rooms. A soldier wearing just his pants was sitting at a little harmonium and having a go at playing “Bolle Lied”—a traditional Berlin song about a fellow called Bolle from Pankow who goes to the fair, loses his child, gets drunk, kills five people with a knife, comes home with a broken nose, torn clothes, and a missing eye and, after his wife has polished his skull with a rolling pin, chokes to death on his own vomit. It’s a jolly little number that every Berliner knows and loves but which seemed oddly appropriate for Croatia.

  I followed Oehl through a warren of rooms that were busy with more half-naked girls and several soldiers until we finally found a tall, cadaverous man seated in an armchair smoking a cigarette. He was fully clad in an SS uniform but clearly drunk. By his leg was a bottle of cloudy spirit and all his kit, including another daddy. He looked at us through half-closed eyes and then nodded.