by Philip Kerr
“General, this will all end more quickly if we confine ourselves to me asking the questions and you giving the answers. And when you have done so to my complete satisfaction, you will walk out of here a free man. You have my word. Neither the Abwehr, nor your boss, Heinrich Himmler, will ever be the wiser. He’s the man who calls the shots in Department Six these days, isn’t he? I mean, since General Heydrich’s death. You’re Himmler’s special plenipotentiary, and answerable only to him.”
“Look, I’m not even a member of the Nazi Party. How can I persuade you that I’m not General Schellenberg?”
“All right. Let’s see if you can. You don’t deny you’re driving his car. All of the paperwork in the glove box confirms Walter Schellenberg as the car’s exporting owner. And the importing company as the Swiss Wood Syndicate. Then there’s the booking at your hotel. That was made by a company called Export Drives GMBH, a subsidiary of another company called Stiftung Nordhav, of which Walter Schellenberg is one of the directors and of which Reinhard Heydrich was formerly the chairman. The same company also paid the bill at the Baur au Lac for a Hans Eggen when, in February this year, he visited Zurich. He traveled to Switzerland at the same time as a Walter Schellenberg, who had also had a room at the Baur but didn’t actually stay there. The two men crossed the border by car at Fort Reuenthal.”
“If that’s so, then the Zurich cantonal police will easily be able to confirm that I’m not Schellenberg. You could ask Sergeant Bleiker, or Police Inspector Weisendanger. I believe I have the inspector’s business card in my wallet if you care to look for it.”
“As I’m sure you know, General, it’s only since your previous visit that Colonel Müller of the Swiss Security Service—your opposite number, so to speak—has insisted that you be kept under surveillance by the Zurich police whenever you are in Switzerland. He would like to find out what you’ve been up to almost as much as I do. Which is probably why you’re using an alias now. Beyond the fact that you and Eggen had meetings with Meyer and Roger Masson of Swiss Military Intelligence, very little is known of your activities in Switzerland. Perhaps you’d like to take this opportunity to enlighten me. What are you doing here now? And what were you doing then? After all, you were both here for almost two weeks. What did you discuss with Masson and Meyer?”
“Would it be easier to ask them?”
“I doubt that the Swiss would want to share any intel with me. They turn a blind eye to what we’re doing here in Switzerland just as they do their best to ignore what you Germans get up to. Let’s face it: their surveillance of you is hardly oppressive, is it? What can you tell me about the Swiss Wood Syndicate?”
“Nothing at all.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
I shrugged.
“Come now, General. There’s no need to be so coy about this. The SWS manufactures wooden barracks. Presumably the SS and the German Army have a use for wooden barracks.”
“If you say so.”
“Only, some of these barracks end up being used in concentration camps, don’t they?”
“I really wouldn’t know. Look, I just remembered something. Someone else who might confirm who I say I am. Heinrich Rothmund of the police section at the Swiss Department of Justice and Police. When I was a detective working for Kripo in Berlin I had several conversations with Rothmund. A missing persons case that was never resolved. I wouldn’t say we’re old friends but he’ll know exactly what we spoke about then.”
“But as you yourself have said, the Swiss police take a dim view of any interference with the diplomatic community in their country. I can hardly ask Herr Rothmund to come here and identify you without alerting him to the fact that you’re being held against your will. I’m afraid I’d soon find myself asked to leave Switzerland for good.”
“I’m sure you can think of a way of checking me out without raising his suspicions. After all, it’s the intelligence community you work in, not a local department store. Even your mind ought to be able to devise some means of establishing beyond all doubt that I am who I say I am.” I shrugged. “Look, Mr. Dulles, I’m just trying to save us both some valuable time here.”
“That reminds me, General, when is your next scheduled meeting with Police Inspector Weisendanger?”
“Tonight. At six.”
“We both know that this can’t be true. By the terms of your visa he’s only obliged to meet with you once a day. To make sure that you keep out of trouble. Since the two of you had breakfast this morning, I have to conclude that your next meeting must be tomorrow. But it would be useful to know at what time this will be. Are you to have breakfast again tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
“So, we have until then to get to know each other better.”
Allen Dulles—for so I believed him to be—checked his wristwatch and stood up.
“I will see you this afternoon, General,” he said. “I have a lunch appointment, here in Zurich. You will be well looked after in my absence. And you might take advantage of your time to reflect upon our conversation. In the absence of your cooperation I should hate to tell my associates here to treat you roughly, just as I should regret having to provide German intelligence with evidence of our conversations. You’re no good to me if I have to burn you, General. I should much prefer it if we can establish a proper working relationship for the future.”
“You mean you want me to spy for you.” I smiled. “Well, why didn’t you say so? I don’t have to be General Schellenberg to do that. Bernie Gunther could be just as useful a spy as him. I’m not nearly as expensive as a general. And after all, as you say, I do sometimes move in elevated circles. Since I’ve never been a Nazi, it’s my earnest wish that the war ends as soon as possible. Is that straight enough for you? As my country was hijacked by a bunch of gangsters, I have no reason not to betray it and, more particularly, them, to people like you. So, by all means let’s talk about my becoming an American spy. Where do I sign?”
Allen Dulles checked the bowl of his pipe, relit it carefully, and stared at me through eyes that slowly narrowed behind his glasses.
“We’ll talk again, this afternoon.”
He was about to leave the room when one of his OSS men handed him a photograph, which he looked at for several seconds through ruminative clouds of pipe smoke.
“Now, this is interesting,” he said. “While we’ve been talking, one of our more diligent desk analysts has come up with this photograph. Perhaps you’d care to comment on this.”
Dulles handed me the picture. There was a caption on a label affixed to the bottom of the print that I hardly needed to read as I recognized the picture immediately. It read: Picture taken at the Prague Circus Krone in October 1941 for local Czech newspaper. The two officers in foreground are Generals Heydrich and Frank. Also pictured are Heydrich’s wife, Lina, Frank’s wife, Karola, Heydrich’s three aides-de-camp, believed to be Ploetz, Pomme, and Kluckholn, and an unknown man, but also believed to be a senior officer in the SD.
“That’s you, isn’t it?” said Dulles. “That ‘unknown’ German officer with Generals Heydrich and Frank?”
“Yes, that’s me,” I admitted. “I see no point in denying it. But I don’t know that it tells you anything very much, Mr. Dulles. After all, none of us is wearing a uniform. It certainly doesn’t tell you that I’m an SS-Obersturmbannführer, which I think is the rank that Walter Schellenberg held around that time.”
“It tells me that you knew Heydrich pretty well if you went to the fucking circus with him and his wife.”
Thirty-one
They locked me in a bedroom. There were no bars on the window but this was in the tower room—the one that looked like a church steeple from the outside—and the drop straight to the sloping ground was at least fifteen meters. The Three Toledos wouldn’t have made a jump like that if the famous Erwingos had been there to catch them. I certainly wasn’t about to try
it.
There was a table with a drawer and a chair; I opened the drawer and found some sheets of Prantl, which would have been useful if I’d planned to escape from the window on a paper airplane. I lay down on a surprisingly clean bed, reached for my cigarettes, and then remembered they’d been confiscated along with everything else except my wristwatch. One o’clock became one-thirty, and then one forty-five, and I felt my spirits start to lower even further as I pictured Dalia arriving at the Baur au Lac and discovering to her surprise that I wasn’t there. How would she feel? How long would she wait before concluding that I wasn’t coming? Fifteen minutes? Half an hour? For a while I thought about being in bed with her and the pleasures I was surely missing, but that didn’t help. It just made me want to punch the door or smash the window.
At exactly two o’clock I went to the sash window and tried to open it, but the paint on the frame had left the window sealed. I thought about smashing the glass and shouting down to the street, but for as long as I stood there looking out, I saw no one in the street. Not even a dog or a cat. Zurich was quiet at the best of times. But this neighborhood was as quiet as a Swiss watch movement. I also imagined that the minute I started shouting out the window the American who was seated on the other side of the door—I could hear his feet on the floor and smell his cigarettes—would come in and belt me in the teeth. I’d been punched before and didn’t mind being punched again, but I figured I was going to need to keep all of my wits if I was ever going to persuade Dulles that I wasn’t General Schellenberg.
It seemed that I had until morning to do this. And if I didn’t persuade him, then what? Would they really let me go? If making a spy of the head of SD Foreign Intelligence was what this was all about, how did they intend to compromise him enough to make him turn against his Nazi masters? There was nothing that Allen Dulles had said that led me to think they had very much information about the real Schellenberg. Since they didn’t know what he really looked like, it all felt like a poorly conceived fishing expedition. At least it did until you considered another, more uncomfortable possibility, which was that they intended to question me for as long as they could before they killed me, or somehow got me out of the country and back to the USA for further interrogation. Getting me out of a landlocked country—Switzerland was, after all, surrounded by Germany, fascist Italy, Vichy France, and Nazi Austria—looked like a tall order, even for the Americans. Killing me looked like a better bet. If they did suppose I was a top Nazi general, then killing me would have made perfect sense, too. In spite of Dulles’s smooth assurances, a bullet in the back of my head appeared to be the real fate that lay in store for me. Assassinating the general in charge of SD Foreign Intelligence would have been no less useful to the Allied war effort than assassinating Heydrich, or Field Marshal Rommel, who had famously and narrowly escaped an attempt on his life by British commandos in November 1941.
At two-thirty I went to the door and listened carefully. The Ami on the other side seemed to be reading a newspaper. I thought I heard him fart, and a few seconds later I was sure of it.
“I wouldn’t mind a cigarette,” I said, retiring to a safe distance. “You’re never alone with a cigarette.”
“Sorry,” said the man, in German. “Boss’s orders. No cigarettes, in case you set the room on fire. And then where would we be? Explaining ourselves to the Zurich fire service.”
“How about a cup of coffee?” I said. “Have you any orders against giving the prisoner food and drink?”
“No. As a matter of fact, I was thinking I might bring you a coffee. But before I did that I was just trying to think of the German for ‘No tricks, you Nazi bastard, or I’ll shoot you in the fucking leg.’”
“I think you’ve made yourself perfectly understood.”
“How do you like your coffee?”
“Black. Plenty of sugar, if you have it. Or saccharine.”
“All right. Wait there.”
“You know, I think I will.”
I dropped onto the wooden floor and peered under the door just in time to see a pair of stout-looking brown, wingtip shoes walk loudly away and the butt of a cigarette he had discarded, which still had plenty of good tobacco left in it—in fact it was still burning. I went quickly back to the desk drawer, fetched a sheet of notepaper, and slid it underneath the door and then the cigarette butt. A minute later I was lying happily on the bed and puffing the Ami’s Viceroy back to life. No cigarette ever tasted better than that one. It felt like a small, exquisite victory—temporary but no less satisfying for all that, which is of course pleasure incarnate.
I’d hoped the Ami might come back with the coffee in time for him to see the cigarette in the corner of my mouth. But I smoked it right down to the butt, reminding myself of how much I preferred European cigarettes, and still he did not return. When I heard a muffled commotion I dropped back onto my belly and stared under the door again.
I could still see the wingtip shoes but now they were pointed at the ceiling, and while I was still trying to puzzle out why, I heard a gunshot. And then another. The Swiss police? I couldn’t imagine that anyone else was trying to rescue me; then again, it seemed unlikely that the Swiss would have fired shots at foreigners and risked their very neutrality. More shots were fired. And then I heard footsteps outside my door. Seconds later I heard the key in the lock and the door was flung open to reveal a man in a gray suit who was more obviously German than Swiss or American. His hair was as yellow as corn, there was a small dueling Schmiss on his cheek, and there was no mistaking his accent.
“Are you Hauptsturmführer Gunther?” he barked.
“Yes.”
“Come with us. Quickly.”
I didn’t need asking again. I walked out of the tower bedroom and followed the man to the door of the apartment, where I stopped and glanced around, looking at the room where I’d been interrogated earlier. The air of the apartment was thick with the smell of gunpowder. It hung visibly in the air like a poltergeist. Three of the Amis lay bleeding on the floor; one of them had been shot through the head and was almost certainly dead; the other had an expanding bubble of blood in one of his nostrils that seemed to indicate there was still breath in his body. Another German with a broom-handle Mauser was reloading it in case he needed to shoot someone else.
“My passport,” I said. “My car keys.”
“We have everything,” said my rescuer. “Come on. We have to get the hell out of here before the cops show up. Even the Swiss are not about to ignore gunfire.”
We ran downstairs and outside where a black Citroën was parked at the side of the road. The other man—the man I’d seen with the Mauser—was reversing my Mercedes out of the Ami safe house’s garage.
“Get in,” said Scarface, pointing at the Citroën. “He’ll follow us in your car.”
We drove west this time. I know that because we drove across the river before turning south again. A couple of times I looked around and saw the Mercedes following close behind us. There was no gun on me now.
“Here,” said Scarface, and he handed me a cigarette.
“Thanks,” I said. “And thanks for the rescue.”
I lit it; after the Viceroy it should have tasted bad but to me it was like smoking the best hashish. I shook my head and smiled. “Who are you?” I asked. “Abwehr?”
Scarface laughed. “The Abwehr. You might as well ask a dead cat to follow a dog. We’re Gestapo, of course.”
“I never thought I’d be glad to see the Gestapo. Is it just the two of you?”
He nodded. “It’s lucky for you that there’s been a twenty-four-hour tail on you since Genshagen. You’ve been our beer since you checked into the hotel here in Zurich. We saw the Amis pick you up in the hotel car park this morning. At first we thought they might be Tommies but when we saw Dulles and his driver coming out of the building, we knew they were Amis. Besides, the Tommies wouldn’t have the nerve to d
o what the Amis did to you. They’re even more respectful of Swiss neutrality than the Italians, and that’s saying something. We were going to wait for backup. Anyway, when Dulles and his driver came out, we still weren’t sure how many that left inside. The fellow in the car behind has spent the last hour listening at the door of every apartment in that building.”
“They thought I was General Schellenberg,” I said.
“Not unreasonably, I’d have thought. You were driving his car, after all. You’re a lucky fellow, Gunther. After interrogating you, they’d have killed you for sure. The Americans like to shoot people who they perceive to be a threat. But only after they’ve beaten the shit out of them first. They think Europe is like the Wild West, I expect. Last year they were behind the murder of some French Vichy admiral called Darlan.”
After a while we started up a winding road and soon I could see Lake Zurich below and behind us.
“Where are we going?”
“A safe house just a few kilometers outside Zurich, in Ringlikon, near the foot of the Uetliberg. You can go back to the Baur when we’re sure we’re all in the clear for this. The safe house is not much of a place but the fellow who owns it is a Swiss-German dairy farmer who’s owned it since before the last war.”
The house in Ringlikon was a three-story, half-timbered farmhouse-style building beside a field of brown Swiss cows. What else do you expect to find in a Swiss field? In a shed beside the house, a large bull was standing by himself. He looked cross. I expect he was keen to get among the cows. It was a feeling with which I was familiar. We parked the cars and went inside the house. There was a lot of wooden furniture and pictures that looked like they’d been there a hundred years. The Swiss flag over the back door was a nice touch. But almost immediately I spied a bottle of schnapps on the kitchen shelves.
“I could use a drink,” I said.
