The Lady from Zagreb

by Philip Kerr

  I wouldn’t say I loved Zurich but it’s hard not to like a city that isn’t being bombed day and night and where no one is going to arrest you if you make a joke about your country’s leader. Not that there was anyone in Zurich who could have told you the name of the Swiss prime minister any more than there was someone who knew a joke. With government by direct democracy, the idea of having a leader simply was not important. You have to love a country like that, especially when you’re a German. There was also something very reassuring about a city with so many banks, where beer and sausage still tasted like beer and sausage, where the last person who made a speech was John Calvin, where even the best-looking women didn’t care enough about their appearances not to wear glasses. Another reason to feel reassured was that I had been booked into one of the best hotels in Europe. That’s something else the Swiss do very well: hotels.

  My room overlooked an attractive canal off the Limmat, the river that ran through Zurich and into the lake. The Baur au Lac was a little like the Adlon in Berlin in that everyone famous seemed to have stayed there, including Richard Wagner, the Kaiser, and more recently, Thomas Mann. According to Hans Eggen, the Baron von Mannerheim, Finland’s head of state, was now in residence and, having recently signed an armistice with the Soviet Union after several years of war, he was trying to negotiate his country’s independence of Germany, too, much to Hitler’s fury.

  In spite of the war, the atmosphere of the hotel remained elegant. Champagne was still in supply on the recently constructed rooftop terrace. Afternoon tea was served in the pavilion, and dinner dances took place regularly. But food was predictably scarce. The front lawn of the hotel, which had extended all the way down to the lakeside, was now a large potato field. These potatoes were protected with rolls of barbed wire that had once served to protect the hotel itself, although from whom was not obvious as it was impossible to imagine the luxury-loving German High Command treating Zurich’s finest hotel with anything but the utmost respect. There was also an air-raid shelter in case Switzerland’s neutrality was suddenly curtailed by the German Luftwaffe.

  Inspector Weisendanger joined me in the restaurant for breakfast. He presented me with a business card using two hands, as if he had been giving me the keys to the city, and refused, ridiculously, to let it go until he had seen that I had read what was printed on it.

  “My address and telephone number are here,” he said gravely. “And I am at your disposal for the duration of your stay in Zurich.”

  Like Bleiker, he spoke German very well—at least to me—but when he spoke to other Swiss he used a dialect of yodeling German called Alemannic that would have been difficult to comprehend at the best of times but, through a gray-black mustache that, joined to his sideburns, was as big as a tart’s feather boa, seemed quite inscrutable.

  “I get it. I’m to use this card if I get into trouble, right? I can get a taxi to this address. Or find a telephone and dial this number. This is going to be really useful.”

  “I’m not sure how things are with policemen in Berlin,” he said. “But it’s usually best to assume that any Swiss policeman you’ll meet does not have a sense of humor.”

  “Thanks for the tip, Inspector. I’ll try to remember that.”

  “Please do. My superiors require me to meet with you at this hotel once a day to make sure that you are in compliance with the terms of your visa. Should you fail to attend this meeting, you will be subject to immediate arrest and deportation back to Germany. Is this clear to you, Captain Gunther?”

  “Does that mean we’re having breakfast again tomorrow?”

  “I’m afraid so. Shall we say eight o’clock?”

  “I think nine would suit me better. I thought I might find a nice bar and have a late night.”

  “We might as well say eight. We’re not much given to late nights in Zurich. And in the police, we like to get an early start.”

  “I guess that means Germany should look to invade after lights-out.”

  Weisendanger sighed. “Please try to remember what I said about a sense of humor, Captain. It doesn’t translate from the German into Alemannic.”

  We finished a breakfast of boiled eggs, coffee, and toast, after which I gratefully bade him goodbye, collected my car from the hotel garage, and then drove along the north shore of Lake Zurich, toward the municipality of Küsnacht and Dalia Dresner’s Swiss home. I was very much looking forward to seeing Dalia again, especially as her husband, Dr. Obrenovic, was away in Geneva.

  Fifteen minutes later I’d twice missed the quiet entrance to the house on Seestrasse, the number on the stone gatepost was so well hidden. It was only when I steered the Mercedes along a gravel drive that ran through a valley of high box hedge and around to the front of the house, where a long neat lawn gave onto the sparkling blue sapphire that was Lake Zurich, that I properly understood how Küsnacht hid itself from view like a reclusive oyster. Showing a keen appreciation of human psychology, the psychiatrist Carl Jung lived and worked in Küsnacht. Doubtless he understood well that the municipality’s pampered inhabitants have the same neuroses and phobias as everyone else, with a lot more money to indulge them. But the only way to truly understand Küsnacht itself was to see it from the lakeside. This revealed it to be a little like Wannsee, only with much larger houses and bigger waterfronts. Even the boathouses looked like elegant mansions. Some of the boathouses had smaller houses attached where probably their boatmen lived. Most of the homes in Wannsee don’t hide their size. The houses on Seestrasse hid everything except the numbers on the gatepost and the newspaper in the letter box. The little town’s coat of arms was a gold cushion on a red velvet background, and after seeing the home of Dr. Obrenovic, it was hard to see how this could have been anything else save perhaps a fat bag of gold coins. Like most Germans, I’m fond of home, but Dalia’s husband’s idea of home and mine had no more in common than Lake Zurich and a bucket of water.

  I rang the doorbell and waited for someone to pay attention to it; as loud as a church bell, it was hard to imagine it being ignored by anyone. I was surprised to find it answered by Dr. Obrenovic, who introduced himself to me with the alacrity of an older man in possession of a much younger wife, as if meeting all of Dalia’s friends and acquaintances was necessary to his peace of mind; or not. Great wealth won’t shield a man from being the victim of jealousy, only from the pain of hearing his wife’s behavior discussed by a wide circle of friends. Men like Dr. Obrenovic don’t have a wide circle of friends, just an inner circle of trusted employees. Almost as soon as I felt him lay his keen blue eyes on me I knew that he knew—or at least suspected—that something had happened between Dalia and me, something outside the normal conventions of the professional, detective-client relationship. It was a curious sensation for me, like seeing my father again on the day I had almost failed my Abitur. But this certainly didn’t make me feel guilty, or even awkward, just unreasonably young—which is to say, more than a decade younger than a man who was probably in his mid-sixties—and perhaps curious as to the reason why a woman as beautiful as Dalia had married a creaking gate like him. It couldn’t have been money; as a young UFA starlet, Dalia was making a lot; then again, for some women, a lot is never quite enough. There’s a French novel about that, I think.

  I went inside and took off my hat and followed him through a hallway that was as wide as the Polish Corridor and lined with more old masters than Hermann Göring’s cellar.

  “My wife is just changing,” he said, leading me into the drawing room. “She’ll be down in a moment.”

  “I see.”

  “So you’re the detective who’s been looking for her father,” he said in a way that made me think he was almost amused by the very idea.

  “That’s right. I just got back from Croatia.”

  “How was it?”

  “I’m still having nightmares about the place. I keep dreaming I’m back there.”

 
“That bad, eh?”

  “Worse than bad. Awful. Like something from a horror film.”

  “Did she tell you that I’m a Serb? That I’m from Sarajevo?”

  “She might have mentioned it,” I said, uncertain if it had been Dalia or Goebbels who’d told me where Obrenovic came from. “I really don’t remember.”

  “Of course, I haven’t lived there in a long time. Not since the king was assassinated.”

  He didn’t mention which one, and I certainly didn’t ask. As far as I could see, Yugoslavian kings were a bit like taxis; it couldn’t be long before another one came to the head of the rank.

  “If there’s one thing European history proves it’s that there’s nothing more disposable than a king,” I said.

  “You think so?”

  “They don’t seem to be in short supply.”

  As tall as Leipzig’s Volki monument, Obrenovic had a full head of white hair, a pair of invisibly framed glasses, a bass tenor’s voice, and ears as large as bicycle wheels. He walked like an old man, as if his hips were stiff—the way I walked myself first thing in the morning, before the day had lent them some greater flexibility.

  “You obviously don’t know who I am.”

  “Your name is Obrenovic. Apart from the fact that you’re a doctor of something and married to Fräulein Dresner, I have no idea who you are.”

  “Is that so?”

  A little overawed by the size and luxury of the room, I nodded dumbly. It’s always a surprise when I encounter people like Obrenovic, who seem to own so much: good furniture, fine paintings, familiar bronzes, inlaid boxes, sparkling decanters, ornaments, chandeliers, rugs and carpets, a dog or two, and, outside the French windows, a Rolls-Royce. Not having anything very much myself is as near to feeling like a rich man as I’m ever likely to get, even if it is the kind of rich man in the gospels who actually took the advice of Jesus and sold all of his possessions to give the money to the poor. Perfection like mine never felt so shabby and, for a change, it made me more insolent. But this might just as easily have been caused by the disappointment of knowing I wasn’t about to make love to Dalia—at least not for the present.

  “So, Captain Gunther,” he said, pouring himself a cup of coffee from a silver pot on a little tray. “Did you find him? That’s what we’re dying to find out.”

  I waited for a moment, until I was quite sure that none of the coffee was coming my way, and said, “Did I find who?”

  He frowned and put the coffee cup to his lips. Even from where I was standing it smelled better than the coffee in the hotel. Just as important, it looked hot, which is the way I like it.

  “Dalia’s papa, of course. Father Ladislaus. Did you find him in Banja Luka?”

  “Not in Banja Luka, no.”

  “In Zagreb, perhaps?”

  “Not there, either.”

  “I see,” he said patiently. “In Belgrade, then.”

  “I didn’t get to Belgrade. Or Sarajevo. Or the Dalmatian Coast. Which is a pity, as I believe the beaches are very nice there at this time of year. I could probably use a holiday.”

  “You’re not telling me very much.”

  “I certainly didn’t intend to.”

  “My wife hadn’t told me your manners were so bad.”

  “You’d best take that up with her, not me.”

  “I don’t suppose I should be all that surprised. You Germans are not known for your courtesy.”

  “Being a member of the master race has some social disadvantages, it’s true. But you can take my word for it, Dr. Obrenovic, I’m just as rude in Germany as I am in Switzerland. I get plenty of complaints from my superiors. I could paper my walls with them. But if you’d just come all the way from Zurich to Berlin, I might at least offer you a cup of coffee.”

  “Help yourself,” he said, and stepped away from the tray.

  I didn’t move except to turn the hat in my hands.

  “You’re not going to tell me anything, are you?”

  “Now you’re getting it.”

  “Might I ask why?”

  “What I have to say is between me and your wife. I don’t know you from the Swiss prime minister.”

  He frowned. “I thought you wanted some coffee.”

  “No. That’s not what I said, Doctor. I had coffee at the hotel. It was the offer I was keener on.”

  “Well, I must say—I’m not accustomed to being spoken to in this way. Especially in my own house.”

  I shrugged. “I can wait in the car if you’d prefer.”

  “Yes, I think that might be best.”

  Twenty-nine

  I stalked back to the door and, followed by one of the dogs, went outside. I didn’t much care if it got out of the house. It wasn’t my dog. I lit a cigarette and sat on the shiny bonnet of the car, hardly caring if I marked the new paintwork. It wasn’t my car. The morning was already a warm one; I threw my jacket into the backseat of the Mercedes next to the flask of homemade rakija I’d brought as a present for Dalia from Bosnia, and tossed some stones into an ornamental pond that was full of koi carp. It wasn’t my pond. I waited awhile and when the big door opened again, I flicked the cigarette into the garden. It wasn’t my garden. Dalia walked toward me and stood silently in front of the front passenger door. She wasn’t my wife but I could certainly have wished she had been instead of the one I already had back in Berlin. Her golden hair was collected in a little bun at the back of her head and this added a regal touch to her Nefertiti neck, although that might as easily have been the sapphire-and-diamond necklace that was wrapped around it. She was wearing a navy blue dress; I might have said a plain navy blue dress except for the fact that nothing that was worn by the lady from Zagreb could ever have looked plain. She smiled a slight, rueful smile and then put her hand on the door handle of the car.

  “Are we going somewhere?” I asked.

  “No,” she said. “Now that you’ve been banished from the house, I thought we could just sit in the car and talk awhile.”

  I opened the door and she got in. I went around to the other side.

  “Well, this is cozy,” I said, closing the door behind me.

  “Shut up and give me a cigarette.”

  I lit her and she took a long hard drag on it.

  “Sorry about that,” she said. “I didn’t expect Stefan back home until tomorrow. He just turned up in the middle of the night.”

  “I guessed as much.”

  “What on earth did you say to him?”

  “Not much.”

  “He says you were rude.”

  “Only because he’d been rude to me.”

  “That doesn’t sound like Stefan. His manners are usually impeccable. I’ll say that for my husband.”

  “Are they? I watched him pour himself a coffee without offering me a cup.”

  “Ah, I see. So that’s it. You have to understand, Stefan is an aristocrat. He could no more serve you with his own hand than he could sweep the floor.”

  “He answered the door, didn’t he?”

  “I wondered who answered it. I thought it was Agnes, my maid. I gave Albert the day off. Because you were coming. I wanted us to be alone in the house. I’ve thought about nothing else since you called last night.”

  “Albert?”

  “The butler.”

  “Of course. I generally answer the door myself when my own butler’s busy polishing the pewter, or fixing the dripping tap in my drafty garret.”

  “You make it sound rather romantic.”

  “My life in Berlin—it’s La Bohème, right enough. Right down to the cough and the frozen hands in winter.”

  “All the same, I wish we were there right now, Bernie. Naked. In bed.”

  “My hotel room at the Baur au Lac’s not much to look at. But it’s still bigger than my apartment. The bathroom�
��s bigger than my apartment. We could go there now, if you like. The front desk will very likely report us to the Swiss police but I think I can survive the scandal. In fact, I think I might rather enjoy that, as well.”

  “I will come,” she said. “But it will have to be this afternoon. Around two o’clock?”

  “I certainly can’t think of anything else I’d rather do in Zurich.”

  “Only this time I’d like you to take more than twice as long doing what you did to me the last time we were in bed. Or, as an alternative, you could do something you’ve never done before. To any woman. You understand? You could do something you’ve only ever dreamed of, perhaps. In your wildest dreams. Just as long as you can make me feel like a woman is supposed to feel when a man makes love to her.”

  “I’d like that. And two o’clock sounds good. But there’s something I have to tell you first, Dalia. It’s about your father.”

  “Oh dear, I’d guessed it wasn’t going to be good news when Stefan told me you wouldn’t tell him about Papa.”

  “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but I’m more or less certain that your father is dead.”

  I would have felt a lot more guilty about this egregious lie if Dalia’s father hadn’t been such a monster. Nonetheless I did feel guilty.

  “Oh. I see. You went there? In person? To the monastery in Banja Luka?”

  “Mm-hmm. By car. All the way from Zagreb, which is a journey I wouldn’t recommend to anyone. I spent several hours in the monastery, having dinner with the monks. The Father Abbot told me that your father had left the monastery and joined the Ustaše. I’m afraid I got the impression that the Father Abbot strongly disapproved of your father, Dalia. Maybe because he left the Franciscan order, but more likely because of some of the things that the Ustaše has done. Like all civil wars, I think some cruel things have been done on both sides. After that, I went to the Ustaše headquarters in Banja Luka and it was there I learned that Father Ladislaus was now called Colonel Dragan and a bit of a local hero; and then, that he was dead. Killed by communist partisans in a skirmish in the Zelengora Mountains. This was later confirmed in Zagreb. Things are pretty rough right now in Croatia and Bosnia, what with the war and everything. I saw several people killed while I was there. The men I was traveling with—ethnic Germans in the SS—they were a bit trigger-happy. You know, the shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later type. It’s chaos, quite frankly, and getting accurate information is hazardous. But I’m as certain as I can be that he’s dead. And I’m sorry.”