The Lady from Zagreb

by Philip Kerr

  “That must have been horrible for you, Bernie. I’m sorry. But I’m grateful, too. Very grateful. It sounds like it was dangerous.”

  I shrugged. “A certain amount of danger is part of the job.”

  “Does Josef know? About my father.”

  “Of course. He sent me down here to tell you and bring you back to Berlin. Or at least to persuade you to turn up to work at the studio.”

  “Well, I had to try. Or rather, someone did. You do see that, don’t you?”

  “Of course I do. Believe me, nothing could be more understandable. With your mother dead, it makes perfect sense that you should have wanted to find your father again.”

  “After all, it was she who fell out with him, not me. A father is supposed to mean something. Even one you haven’t seen in an age.” She took another fierce drag at her cigarette. “I thought I’d be more upset. But I’m not. Does that strike you as a bit strange?”

  “No, not really. After all, you must have suspected he was dead, given that your previous letters were never answered.”

  “Yes, I suppose so.”

  “And it strikes me that you’re no worse off than you were before. At least you know now. For sure. You can put it all behind you and get on with the rest of your life.”

  “There is that to think about, yes.”

  “What will you do? About the movie, I mean.”

  “I don’t really know. If I come back to Berlin, then perhaps I can see you, of course. That’s on one side. To be quite frank with you, Bernie, you’re the only good reason I have for going back to Germany now. On the other side’s the fact that I don’t particularly want to work on this stupid movie with Veit Harlan. I can’t imagine it’s going to do my career any good in the long term to make a movie with a notorious anti-Semite like him. It’s bad enough that I was in The Saint That Never Was. I just know I’m already going to have a hard job living that one down. There’s that and the fact that Josef Goebbels wants to make me his mistress. Believe me, he’ll do his damnedest to find a way to make that happen. He’s devious and unscrupulous and you’ve no idea the trouble I’ve already had keeping that little Mephisto from conjuring me out of my underwear. It’s one of the reasons I came here. To escape from him.”

  “I’ve a pretty shrewd idea of what he’s capable of. I’ve been subject to quite a bit of pressure myself, angel.”

  “Yes, I suppose you have.”

  “In fact, you don’t know the half of it.”

  “Maybe not. But look, there’s something I have to tell you. I don’t know that it’s very important in the scheme of things. But I’ve fallen for you, and in a big way. While you were away in Croatia I thought about you day and night.”

  “Me too.”

  “And it’s no different now that you’re back. I’m having a hard job keeping a smile on my face.”

  “Stefan doesn’t know about us, does he?”

  “No. But suspicion of every man I know is his default state of mind. Even when there’s absolutely nothing in it.” She wound down the window and dropped her cigarette onto the gravel. “Yes, you heard what I said. Oh, don’t look so shocked, Bernie. You’re not exactly my first lover. Where does it say that women must behave one way and men the other? What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Besides, according to Josef’s telegram, you’re the one who just got married. When were you planning to tell me? In bed this afternoon? Or did it just slip your mind?” She laughed and took my hand. “I’m not in the least bit angry, darling. After all, I’m hardly in a position to lecture you on your morals. Although I am a bit jealous, perhaps. It’s true what I said about falling for you. Under the circumstances that sounds so much more of an insurable risk than saying ‘I love you.’ Although that would also be a tiny bit true.”

  “My marriage. It’s not what you think.” I was feeling slightly wrong-footed at the frankness of both of her admissions.

  “I think it probably is, you know. Most people usually get married for the same two reasons. Stefan married me for love. That’s one reason. But I married Stefan because he was rich and because it made me a baroness. That’s the other. He knows that. Before we got married I told him I would take the occasional lover and he seemed quite sanguine about that. In the beginning, anyway. With the exception of arranged marriages and dynastic alliances between two royal families, that probably exhausts the explanations for most modern marriages. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  “I doubt that even King Henry the Eighth has ever encountered the reason I got married,” I said, and told her about Kirsten, her problem with the SD, and how Goebbels had blackmailed me into marrying her.

  “That’s the most romantic thing I ever heard,” she said plaintively. “I take it all back. I thought men like you only existed in stories that involve round tables and shining armor. You really are a saint, do you know that?”

  “No, it’s just that sometimes I have to do saintly things to balance things up a bit.”

  She made a fist and shook her head. “Christ, what a shit that man is. You know, I really don’t think I will go back to Germany. Not for him and his stupid film. Someone else from UFA can do it. One of those bottle blondes in the chorus he’s always screwing.”

  “Don’t say that. The fact is I’ve fallen for you, too. And my chances of coming back to Switzerland before this war is over are about as slim as my chances of surviving it unscathed.”

  “Now it’s my turn to object to your choice of words.”

  “It’s going to get a lot worse before it gets any better. The Russians are going to make certain of that.” I shrugged. “But what about your career? You’re a movie star. You’d really give that up?”

  “I told you before. I’m really not that interested in acting. I’d rather study mathematics. I can still take up that place at Zurich Polytechnic. And what’s going to happen to anyone who’s involved with the German film industry when the Russians turn up?”

  “You have a point there.”

  “There’s this to consider, too. If I go back. Which I seriously doubt I will. Goebbels wouldn’t be nearly so understanding of my foibles as my husband. If I did get involved with Josef, or if he found out that you were an obstacle to his having a relationship with me, he could make your life very unpleasant, Bernie.”

  She seemed to have thought of everything.

  “It would be worth it,” I said.

  “No, my love,” she said. “You don’t know what you’re saying. But look, maybe love will find a way. And we still have Zurich and this afternoon. In your hotel room at the Baur au Lac. What could be more romantic? Now that you’re here, please, Bernie, please, I beg you, let’s make the most of it.”

  Thirty

  I drove slowly away from Küsnacht feeling both elated and depressed. Elated at the idea that Dalia loved me, and depressed at the realization that seeing her in Germany was going to be so problematic, if not impossible. She was right, of course. I could hardly blame her. What woman in her right mind would have voluntarily put herself in danger of becoming Mephisto’s mistress? But I certainly wondered what I was going to tell Goebbels when I was in his office once more. And it was clear to me that he was not going to be pleased when he learned that his favorite actress was refusing to return to Berlin. I could still hear his words, telling me to bring her back at all costs. Carl Jung would have had a difficult job persuading Dalia to change her mind.

  I drove into Zurich thinking I would probably have to send Goebbels a telegram advising him of the outcome of my meeting with Dalia. Maybe he could think of something that would bring her back to work. More money, perhaps. That was something all movie actresses seemed to understand very well. It was said that Marlene Dietrich had been paid $450,000 by Alexander Korda to star in his film Knight Without Armour. Surely Dalia could have commanded just as much as Dietrich. She was certainly more beautiful. And her films were more
popular, too. At least they were in Germany.

  I was still thinking about this when I drove into the Baur’s parking lot, immediately to the west of the hotel and on the other side of the canal. I stepped out of the car and was locking the door when a man got out of the car parked next to me and asked me for a light. Not suspecting anything, I reached for my lighter, which is when I found a big Colt automatic in my gut and another man frisking me for a gun. The next thing I knew I was being invited to get into the back of my own Mercedes and the man with the gun was sitting alongside me. The one who’d searched me had taken my passport and the car keys and was now in the driver’s seat. A moment or two later we were speeding out of the hotel car park with the other car close behind.

  I imagine they’d been following me all the way from Küsnacht. It wasn’t like me not to spot a tail, but with so much on my mind I simply hadn’t noticed it. There were four of them—two in my car and two in the car behind. I turned to take a longer look but the man seated beside me flicked the lobe of my ear meaningfully with the Colt and told me to keep my eyes to the front.

  “Who are you?” I asked. “You’re not Gestapo. Not with those suits and that cologne.”

  The man with the gun said nothing. By now all I knew was that we were driving north. That’s easy when the river is to the west and on your left. Five minutes later we turned into a dull, quiet neighborhood full of tall white houses with gable roofs and stopped in front of a corner house with several stories and a steeple. One of the men in the car behind opened a garage door and we drove inside. Then I was marched upstairs and through the door of a barely furnished corner apartment on the uppermost floor—a safe house, I imagined, with a nice view of nothing very much. A man smoking a pipe and wearing a three-piece suit was seated behind a refectory table. His hair was thin and white and he had a broad gray mustache. He wore a spotted bow tie and a pair of wire-framed glasses. He continued writing something on a sheet of paper with a fountain pen while I was escorted to a chair in the middle of the room. I sat down and waited to discover who these people were. So far, their accents had led me to believe they were neither Swiss nor German, and I quickly presumed they were English or American.

  Eventually the man behind the refectory table spoke in fluent German that was too good for an American.

  “How are you today, General?” he asked.

  “Thank you, I’m well, but I’m afraid you’ve obviously got the wrong man. I’m not a general. Last time I looked at my pay book it said captain.”

  The man with the pipe said nothing and continued writing.

  “If you bother to check my passport you’ll see I’m not the man you probably think I am. My name is Bernhard Gunther.”

  “In our profession none of us is ever really what he seems to be,” said the man with the pipe. He spoke calmly, like a professor or a diplomat, as if he had been explaining a philosophical point to a dull student.

  “In Nazi Germany not being who you are is a regular way of life, for everyone. Take my word for it.”

  The pipe smoke was sweet and actually smelled like real, unadulterated tobacco, which made me think he must be American. The English were just as badly off for tobacco as the Germans.

  “Oh, I think we know who you are, all right.”

  “And I’m telling you that you’ve made a mistake. I’m guessing you think that I’m General Walter Schellenberg. I am driving his car, after all. He asked me to bring it here, from the Mercedes car factory in Sindelfingen. And now I’ve met you I’m beginning to understand why. I’m guessing he was expecting something like this might happen. Getting snatched off the streets by American spies. That’s what you are, isn’t it? I mean, you’re not German. I know you’re not Swiss. And you can’t be English. Not with those suits.”

  The pipe smoker started writing again. I had nothing to lose by talking. So I talked. Maybe I could talk my way out of this.

  “Look here, I’ve an important appointment back at my hotel at two o’clock. With a lady. So I’ll tell you everything you want to know. Which isn’t much. Keep the car. It isn’t mine. But I’d rather not miss that appointment.”

  “This lady. What’s her name?”

  I said nothing.

  “If you tell us her name we shall leave word at your hotel that you have been unavoidably detained.”

  “So you can snatch her, too?”

  “Why would we do that when we have you, General?”

  “I’d rather not say what her name is. We’re lovers, all right? But the lady is married. I expect you could find out, but I’d rather not say what her name is.”

  “And how would your wife, Irene, feel about that?”

  “I think Irene would be all right with it since I’m not married to her.”

  “I’m afraid you’re going to be here awhile,” said the man. “So you might as well get used to the idea. You won’t be keeping your appointment with your lady friend. You’ll be helping us with the answers to some important questions we have, General Schellenberg. And it would be unfortunate for us both if your answers were not truthful.”

  “Look,” I said. “You know the name of General Schellenberg’s wife. Congratulations. But you obviously know very little else because if you did you’d know that he’s nothing like me. He’s short. I’m tall. He’s younger than me. Thirty-three, I think. Better-looking, too, although I agree that seems unlikely. He speaks fluent French. On account of the fact that he lived in Luxembourg. I hardly speak a word of it. And he’s a snake, which is how I’m here now instead of him. Look, there’s a man—a Swiss—who’ll vouch for what I say. He’s an intelligence officer, too—a captain by the name of Paul Meyer-Schwertenbach. He works for military intelligence. His boss is a man named Masson. Meyer knows who I am because he’s met the real General Schellenberg. And he’s met me, in Berlin. Last year he came to an international crime commission conference. I got to know him reasonably well. He lives in a château in Ermatingen, called Wolfsberg Castle. Why don’t you telephone him? He’ll tell you what Schellenberg looks like and what I look like and we can sort this whole thing out in a few minutes. I’ve got nothing to hide. I’m not a spy. I’m really not in a position to tell you anything very much. I was a criminal commissar with Kripo in Berlin, and until recently I was working for the War Crimes Bureau, at army headquarters. I’ve been sent here on a private mission by Dr. Goebbels in his capacity as head of the UFA film studios at Babelsberg. There’s an actress, living here in Zurich . . . he wants her to star in his next film. That’s it, gentlemen. I’m sorry to disappoint you, but this time you got the monkey, not the organ-grinder.”

  “This conference. Where was it held?”

  “The Villa Minoux, in Wannsee. That’s a sort of guesthouse owned by the SS.”

  “Who else was there?”

  I shrugged. “The usual suspects. Gestapo Müller, Kaltenbrunner, Himmler. General Nebe. And Schellenberg, of course. It was him who introduced me to Captain Meyer-Schwertenbach.”

  “You move in very elevated circles for a mere captain.”

  “I go where I’m told to go.”

  “Have you ever been in Switzerland before?”

  “No. Never.”

  The pipe smoker smiled in a faceless sort of way, without conveying anything of his emotions, so it was impossible for me to determine if he thought what I’d said was true, or false, funny, or beneath contempt. The three other men in the room were all thugs—Gestapo types with better haircuts and nicer breath.

  “Tell me, General, what plans does Germany have for the invasion of Switzerland?” he asked.

  “Me? I really have no idea. You might as well ask me when Hitler is going to throw in the towel and surrender. But from the little I’ve heard, our dear leader still believes the idea of invading Switzerland is a possibility. Only there’s no appetite for it among the German leadership. Goebbels told me that himself. The fact
is, everyone in the German Army lives in fear of invading this little country because the Swiss Army enjoys a reputation for marksmanship that’s second to none. That and the fact that the Alps mean that even the Luftwaffe wouldn’t be able to count for much in attempting to subdue the place. It’s just not worth it.”

  The man with the pipe spent several minutes writing this. I glanced at my watch and saw that it was already midday.

  “Could I have a cigarette?” I asked.

  “Give him a cigarette,” said the pipe smoker, and without hesitation one of his men sprang forward with an open cigarette case. I picked one, noted the name—Viceroy—on the paper, and put it in my mouth. He lit me and sat down again. From the speed with which the man had moved I formed the conclusion that the man with the pipe was no ordinary spy; perhaps this was the American spymaster himself. He certainly fit the description given by Schellenberg.

  “So you are American,” I said. “The OSS, I suppose.” I smiled at the pipe smoker. “And perhaps you’re even Mr. Allen Dulles himself, of the OSS in Bern.”

  The pipe smoker stayed smiling, inscrutably.

  “You know, Mr. Dulles, the Swiss will be very cross with you when they find out what you’ve done to me. They take their neutrality very seriously indeed. Your treatment of me—a German guest with a visa—might easily cause a diplomatic incident. After all, someone from the Swiss police or intelligence services must have told you I was in Zurich. That won’t go down well with the people in our embassy when they find out what’s happened. Which they will, of course, when I fail to report back to Berlin.”