by Philip Kerr
The IP was headquartered in an old palace within a cigarette-end’s flick of the State Opera. The truck drew up outside and we were marched through huge glass doors and into a baroque-style hall, where an assortment of atlantes and caryatids showed the omnipresent hand of the Viennese stonemason. We went up a staircase that was as wide as a railway track, past urns and busts of forgotten noblemen, through a pair of doors that were longer than the legs of a circus tall-man and into an arrangement of glass-fronted offices. The Russian kapral opened the door of one of them, ushered his two prisoners inside and told us to wait there.
‘What did he say?’ Fräulein Hartmann asked as he closed the door behind him.
‘He said to wait.’ I sat down, lit a cigarette and looked about the room. There was a desk, four chairs and on the wall a large wooden noticeboard of the kind you see outside churches, except that this one was in Cyrillic, with columns of chalked numbers and names, headed ‘Wanted Persons’, ‘Absentees’, ‘Stolen Vehicles’, ‘Express Messages’, ‘Part I Orders’ and ‘Part II Orders’. In the column headed ‘Wanted Persons’ appeared my own name and that of Lotte Hartmann. Belinsky’s pet Russian was making things look very convincing.
‘Have you any idea what this is all about?’ she asked tremulously.
‘No,’ I lied. ‘Have you?’
‘No, of course not. There must be some kind of mistake.’
‘Evidently.’
‘You don’t seem all that concerned. Or maybe you just don’t understand that it’s the Russians who ordered us to be brought here.’
‘Do you speak Russian?’
‘No, of course not,’ she said impatiently. ‘The American MP who arrested me said that this was a Russian call and nothing to do with him.’
‘Well, the Ivans are in the chair this month,’ I said reflectively. ‘What did the Frenchman say?’
‘Nothing. He just kept looking down the front of my dress.’
‘He would.’ I smiled at her. ‘It’s worth a look.’
She gave me a sarcastic sort of smile. ‘Yes, well, I don’t think they brought me here just to see the wood stacked in front of the cabin, do you?’ She spoke with crisp distaste, but accepted the cigarette I offered her all the same.
‘I can’t think of a better reason.’
She swore under her breath.
‘I’ve seen you, haven’t I?’ I said. ‘At the Oriental?’
‘What were you during the war — an air spotter?’
‘Be nice. Maybe I can help you.’
‘Better help yourself first.’
‘You can depend on that.’
When the office door finally opened it was a tall, burly-looking Red Army officer who came into the room. He introduced himself as Captain Rustaveli and took a seat behind the desk.
‘Look here,’ demanded Lotte Hartmann, ‘would you mind telling me why I’ve been brought here in the middle of the night? What the hell is going on?’
‘All in good time, Fräulein,’ he replied in flawless German. ‘Please sit down.’
She slumped on to a chair beside me and regarded him sullenly. The captain looked at me.
‘Herr Gunther?’
I nodded and told him in Russian that the girl spoke only German. ‘She’ll think I’m a more impressive son-of-a-bitch if you and I confine ourselves to a language she can’t understand.’
Captain Rustaveli stared coldly back at me and for a brief moment I wondered if something had gone wrong and Belinsky had not managed to make it clear to this Russian officer that our arrests were a put-up job.
‘Very well,’ he said after a long moment. ‘Nevertheless, we shall at least have to go through the motions of an interrogation. May I see your papers please, Herr Gunther?’ From his accent I took him for a Georgian. The same as Comrade Stalin.
I reached inside my jacket and handed over my identity card into which, at Belinsky’s suggestion, I had inserted two $100 bills while sitting in the truck. Rustaveli quickly slipped the money into his breeches pocket without blinking, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Lotte Hartmann’s jaw drop on to her lap.
‘Very generous,’ he murmured, turning over my identity card in his hairy fingers. Then he opened a file with my name on it. ‘Although quite unnecessary, I can assure you.’
‘There’s her feelings to think of, Captain. You wouldn’t want me to disappoint her prejudice, would you?’
‘No indeed. Good-looking, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Very.’
‘A whore, do you think?’
‘That, or something pretty close to it. I’m only guessing of course, but I’d say she was the type that likes to strip a man of a lot more than ten schillings and his underwear.’
‘Not the sort of girl to fall in love with, eh?’
‘It would be like putting your tail on an anvil.’
It was warm in Rustaveli’s office and Lotte started to fan herself with her jacket, allowing the Russian several glimpses of her ample cleavage.
‘It’s rare that an interrogation is quite so amusing,’ he said, and looking down at his papers added: ‘She has nice tits. That’s the kind of truth I can really respect.’
‘I guess it’s a lot easier for you Russians to look at.’
‘Well, whatever this little show has been laid on to achieve, I hope you get to have her. I can’t think of a better reason to go to all this trouble. Me, I’ve got a sexual disease: my tail swells up every time I see a woman.’
‘I guess that makes you a fairly typical Russian.’
Rustaveli smiled wryly. ‘Incidentally, you speak excellent Russian, Herr Gunther. For a German.’
‘So do you, Captain. For a Georgian. Where are you from?’
‘Tbilisi.’
‘Stalin’s birthplace?’
‘No, thank God. That’s Gori’s misfortune.’ Rustaveli closed my file. ‘That should be enough to impress her, don’t you think?’
‘Yes.’
‘What shall I tell her?’
‘You have information that she’s a whore,’ I explained, ‘so you’re reluctant to let her go. But you let me talk you into it.’
‘Well, that seems to be in order, Herr Gunther,’ Rustaveli said, reverting to German again. ‘My apologies for having detained you. Now you may leave.’
He handed back my identity card, and I stood up and made for the door.
‘But what about me?’ Lotte moaned.
Rustaveli shook his head. ‘I’m afraid you must stay, Fräulein. The vice squad doctor will be here shortly. He will question you regarding your work at the Oriental.’
‘But I’m a croupier,’ she wailed, ‘not a chocolady.’
‘That is not our information.’
‘What information?’
‘Your name has been mentioned by several other girls.’
‘What other girls?’
‘Prostitutes, Fräulein. Possibly you may have to submit yourself for a medical examination.’
‘A medical? What for?’
‘For venereal disease, of course.’
‘Venereal disease —?’
‘Captain Rustaveli,’ I said above Lotte’s rising cry of outrage, ‘I can vouch for this woman. I wouldn’t say I knew her very well, but I’ve known her long enough to be able to state, quite categorically, that she is not a prostitute.’
‘Well —’ he cavilled.
‘I ask you: does she look like a prostitute?’
‘Frankly, I’ve yet to meet an Austrian girl who isn’t selling it.’ He closed his eyes for a second, and then shook his head. ‘I can’t go against the protocol. These are serious charges. Many Russian soldiers have been infected.’
‘As I recall, the Oriental where Fräulein Hartmann was arrested is off limits to the Red Army. I was under the impression that your men tended to go to the Moulin Rouge in Walfischgasse.’
Rustaveli pursed his lips and shrugged. ‘That is true. But nevertheless —’
‘Perhaps if I were to
meet you again, Captain, we might discuss the possibility of me compensating the Red Army for any embarrassment regarding a breach of the protocol. In the meantime, would you be able to accept my personal surety for the Fräulein’s good character?’
Rustaveli scratched his stubble thoughtfully. ‘Very well,’ he said, ‘your personal surety. But remember, I have your addresses. You can always be re-arrested.’ He turned to Lotte Hartmann and told her that she was also free to leave.
‘Thank God,’ she breathed, and sprang to her feet.
Rustaveli nodded at the kapral standing guard on the other side of the grimy glass door, and then ordered him to escort us out of the building. Then the captain clicked his heels and apologised for ‘the mistake’, as much for the benefit of his kapral as for any effect it might have had on Lotte Hartmann.
She and I followed the kapral back down the big staircase, our steps echoing up to the ornate cornice-work on the high ceiling, and through the arched glass doors into the street where he leaned over the pavement and spat copiously into the gutter.
‘A mistake, eh?’ He uttered a bitter laugh. ‘Mark my words, I’ll be the one that gets the blame for it.’
‘I hope not,’ I said, but the man just shrugged, adjusted his lambskin hat and trudged wearily back into his headquarters.
‘I suppose I ought to thank you,’ Lotte said, tying up the collar of her jacket.
‘Forget it,’ I said, and started walking towards the Ring. She hesitated for a moment and then tripped after me.
‘Wait a minute,’ she said.
I stopped and faced her again. Frontally her face was even more attractive than its profile, as the length of her nose seemed less noticeable. And she was not cold at all. Belinsky had been wrong about that, mistaking cynicism for general indifference. Indeed, I thought she seemed more apt to entice men, although an evening of watching her in the Casino had established that she was probably one of those unsatisfactory women who dangle intimacy, only to withdraw it at a later stage.
‘Yes? What is it?’
‘Look, you’ve already been very kind,’ she said, ‘but would you mind walking me home? It is very late for a decent girl to be on the streets, and I doubt if I’ll be able to find a taxi at this time of night.’
I shrugged and looked at my watch. ‘Where do you live?’
‘It’s not very far. The 3rd Bezirk, in the British sector.’
‘All right.’ I sighed with a conspicuous lack of enthusiasm. ‘Lead the way.’
We walked eastwards, along streets that were as quiet as a house of Franciscan tertiaries.
‘You haven’t explained why you helped me,’ she said, breaking the silence after a while.
‘I wonder if that’s what Andromeda said when Perseus had saved her from the sea-monster.’
‘You seem a little less obviously heroic, Herr Gunther.’
‘Don’t be fooled by my manners,’ I told her. ‘I’ve got a whole chestful of medals down at my local pawnshop.’
‘So you’re not the sentimental type either.’
‘No, I like sentiment. It looks fine on needlework and Christmas cards. Only it doesn’t make much of an engraving on the Ivans. Or perhaps you weren’t looking.’
‘Oh, I was looking all right. It was very impressive the way you handled him. I never knew the Ivans could be greased like that.’
‘You just have to know the right spot on the axle. That kapral would probably have been too scared to take some drop, and a major too proud. Not to mention the fact that I’d met our Captain Rustaveli before, when he was plain Lieutenant Rustaveli and both he and his girlfriend had a dose of drip. I got them some good penicillin, for which he was very grateful.’
‘You don’t look like any swing Heini.’
‘I don’t look like a swing, I don’t look like a hero. What are you, the head of casting at Warner Brothers?’
‘I only wish I were,’ she murmured. And then: ‘Anyway, you started it. You said to that Ivan that I didn’t look like a chocolady. Coming from you I’d say it almost sounded like a compliment.’
‘Like I said, I’ve seen you at the Oriental, selling nothing worse than bad luck. Incidentally, I hope you’re a good card-player, because I’m supposed to go back and give him something for your liberty. Assuming you actually want to stay out of the cement.’
‘How much will that be?’
‘A couple of hundred dollars ought to do it.’
‘A couple of hundred?’ Her words echoed around Schwarz-enbergplatz as we came past a great fountain, and crossed onto Rennweg. ‘Where am I going to get that kind of mouse?’
‘Same place you got the suntan and nice jacket, I imagine. Failing that you could ask him to the club and deal him a few aces off the bottom of the deck.’
‘I could if I were that good. But I’m not.’
‘That’s too bad.’
She was quiet for a moment as she gave the matter some thought. ‘Maybe you could persuade him to take less. After all, you seem to speak pretty good Russkie.’
‘Maybe,’ I allowed.
‘I don’t suppose it would do much good to go to court and protect my innocence, would it?’
‘With the Ivans?’ I laughed harshly. ‘You might just as well appeal to the goddess Kali.’
‘No, I didn’t think so.’
We came up a side street or two and stopped outside an apartment building that was close by a small park.
‘Would you like to come in for a drink?’ She fumbled in her handbag for her key. ‘I know I could use one.’
‘I could suck one out of the rug,’ I said, and followed her through the door, upstairs and into a cosy, solidly furnished apartment.
There was no ignoring the fact that Lotte Hartmann was attractive. Some women, you look at them and calculate what modest length of time you would be willing to settle for. Generally, the better-looking the girl the less time with which you tell yourself you would be satisfied. After all, a really attractive woman might have to accommodate a lot of similar wishes. Lotte was the kind of girl with whom you could have been persuaded to settle for five steamy, unfettered minutes. Just five minutes for her to let you and your imagination do what you wanted. Not too much to ask, you would have thought. The way things happened, though, it looked like she might actually have granted me rather longer than that. Perhaps even the full hour. But I was dog-tired, and perhaps I drank a little too much of her excellent whisky to pay much attention to the way she bit her bottom-lip and stared at me through those black-widow eyelashes. I was probably supposed to lie quietly on her bed with my muzzle resting on her impressively convex lap and let her fold my big, floppy ears, only I ended up falling asleep on the sofa.
22
When I awoke later that same morning, I scribbled my address and telephone number on a piece of paper and, leaving Lotte asleep in bed, I caught a taxi back to my pension. There I washed, changed my clothes and ate a large breakfast, which did much to restore me. I was reading the morning’s Wiener Zeitung when the telephone rang.
A man’s voice, with only the smallest trace of a Viennese accent, asked me if it was speaking to Herr Bernhard Gunther. When I identified myself the voice said:
‘I’m a friend of Fräulein Hartmann. She tells me that you very kindly helped her out of an awkward spot last night.’
‘She’s not exactly out of it yet,’ I said.
‘Quite so. I was hoping that we could meet and discuss the matter. Fräulein Hartmann mentioned the sum of $200 for this Russian captain. Also that you had offered to act as her intermediary.’
‘Did I? I suppose I might have.’
‘I was hoping I might give you the money to give to this wretched fellow. And I should like to thank you, personally.’
I felt sure that this was König, but I stayed silent for a moment, not wishing to seem too eager to meet him.
‘Are you still there?’
‘Where do you suggest?’ I asked reluctantly.
‘Do
you know the Amalienbad, on Reumannplatz?’
‘I’ll find it.’
‘Shall we say in one hour? In the Turkish baths?’
‘All right. But how will I recognize you? You haven’t even told me your name yet.’
‘No I haven’t,’ he said mysteriously, ‘but I’ll be whistling this tune.’ And with that he proceeded to whistle it down the line.
‘Bella, bella, bella Marie,’ I said, recognizing a melody that had been irritatingly ubiquitous some months before.
‘Precisely that,’ said the man, and hung up.
It seemed a curiously conspiratorial mode of recognition, but I told myself that if it was König, he had good reason to be cautious.
The Amalienbad was in the 10th Bezirk, in the Russian sector, which meant catching a number 67 south down Favoritenstrasse. The district was a working-class quarter with lots of dirty old factories, but the municipal baths on Reumannplatz was a seven-storeyed building of comparatively recent construction which, without any apparent exaggeration, advertised itself as the largest and most modern baths in Europe.
I paid for a bath and a towel, and after I had changed I went to find the men’s steam-room. This was at the far end of a swimming pool that was as big as a football field, and possessed only a few Viennese who, wrapped in their bath-sheets, were trying to sweat off some of the weight that was rather easy to gain in the Austrian capital. Through the steam, at the far end of the luridly-tiled room, I heard someone whistling intermittently. I walked towards the source of the tune, and took it up as I approached.
I came upon the seated figure of a man with a uniformly white body and a uniformly brown face: it looked almost as if he had blacked-up, like Jolson, but of course this disparity in colour was a souvenir of his recent skiing holiday.
‘I hate that tune,’ he said, ‘but Fräulein Hartmann is always humming it and I couldn’t think of anything else. Herr Gunther?’
I nodded, circumspectly, as if I had come there only reluctantly.
‘Permit me to introduce myself. My name is König.’ We shook hands and I sat down beside him.
He was a well-built man, with thick dark eyebrows and a large, flourishing moustache: it looked like some rare species of marten that had escaped on to his lip from some colder, more northerly clime. Drooping over König’s mouth, this small sable completed a generally lugubrious expression which started with his melancholy brown eyes. He was much as Becker had described him but for the absence of the small dog.
