Prussian Blue

by Philip Kerr

  I had the room light low and was trying to make less noise than the wood in the stove, so my spirits fell a little when there was a knock at the door. It opened to reveal a tall woman in her thirties, elegant, but not pretty, not even good-looking, but somehow still attractive, in a horsey sort of way. She was dressed in a black suit and a black coat, with a matching black beret, and she was as slim as a used match.

  “I thought there was someone in here.”

  I stood up and pointed sheepishly at my boots.

  “I was trying to creep around but I’ve got these new boots, you see? I’m still getting used to how big they are. Look, I’m sorry if I disturbed you. Next time I’ll wear tennis shoes, hold my breath, and drape a towel across the bottom of the door.”

  “Oh, I didn’t say I heard anything. No, I caught the scent of your tobacco. You are aware of the fact that the Leader hates smoking, aren’t you?”

  “You know, it’s a funny thing, but I think I did hear something about that, yes. And for about two seconds I forgot where I was and lit one. I suppose I’m going to have to face a firing squad for that cigarette in the morning.”

  “Probably. I can fix it for you to be shot somewhere so that you can have a cigarette in your mouth when they do it, if you want.”

  “I’d like that. But no blindfold, okay? Especially if you can also fix it for me to be wearing a bulletproof vest when they do it.”

  “I’ll see what I can do. My name is Gerdy Troost, by the way. Who are you?”

  “Bernhard Gunther, a police commissar from Berlin Kripo.”

  “You’re the man who’s here to investigate the murder of Karl Flex, I suppose.”

  “Bad news travels fast, doesn’t it?”

  “That’s almost right. Look, I was going somewhere for a cigarette myself. Perhaps you’d care to join me.”

  “I guess it can’t be any colder out there than it is in here.”

  I stood up and followed her along the hush-carpeted corridor and down a staircase in the easternmost corner of the ogre’s castle. I almost felt like we were creeping out of there with a bag of stolen gold coins.

  “The panoramic window in the Great Hall is stuck,” she explained. “The motor has stopped working. There are a couple of starter handles that they use to operate it manually, but no one can find them. It’s the biggest piece of glass ever made. Eight and a half meters long by three and a half meters wide. Now, that really is bulletproof and it weighs a ton. I told him it was too much for one motor. Three windows would be better, I said. But sometimes he’s too ambitious and lets his heart rule his head. When it works, it’s something to see. But when it doesn’t, well, you can certainly feel the disappointment in the air tonight.”

  I shivered inside my coat collar and decided that perhaps this was a better reflection of the true essence of Nazism than a disapproval of smoking. At the foot of the back stairs we were in a hallway attached to the kitchens. Gerdy Troost led the way through the door and onto a narrow terrace behind the house and, sheltered from the wind by an almost vertical bank on top of which was a whole copse of trees, she opened the black leather purse she’d been carrying under her arm and produced a packet of Turkish 8. The terrace was already littered with cigarette ends.

  “I don’t much like these,” she said, lighting me and then herself with a thin gold Dunhill. “But I’ve learned to smoke them because they’re the only cigarettes you can buy up here, and when everyone smokes the same brand that makes things a little easier for addicts like me. I started smoking after I had a bad car crash in 1926. I’m not sure what’s been worse for my health. The accident or the smoking.”

  When we were both alight she moved us in front of a metal grille in the embankment through which a current of warm air was moving like a heavenly zephyr. And seeing my surprise, she smiled.

  “I guess I shouldn’t be telling you this but you’re a detective, and one is supposed to help the police, right? For everyone in the Berghof this is known as the smoking room. Because it’s always the warmest spot at the Berghof. That’s a local secret. But I figure you’ll need a few cigarettes to help solve this case.”

  “More than a few. It’s what we detectives like to call a twenty-packet problem.”

  “That many?”

  “At least. It’s not easy tiptoeing around the egos of so many important people.”

  “Not people, men,” she insisted. “Important men. Or at least men who think they’re important. To my mind there’s really only one man who’s important around here. With very few exceptions everyone else is out for themselves.”

  This seemed hardly worth disputing. “I’m not immune to a bit of that myself. Only I call it survival.”

  “A social Darwinist, eh?”

  “Only I’m not particularly social. By the way, where’s the warm air coming from? It’s certainly not the house.”

  “Underneath the Berghof is a whole network of tunnels and secret bunkers.”

  “Bunkers? You make it sound like someone’s expecting a war.”

  “There’s no harm in being prepared.”

  “None at all, provided the preparations don’t include the invasion of Poland.”

  “You’re a Prussian, aren’t you? Don’t you think we have a legitimate case?”

  “Don’t get me wrong, Frau Troost, the whole situation involving the Polish Corridor strikes me as nonsensical. There’s nothing I’d like to see more than Danzig properly part of Germany again. I just think there’s maybe a better time to do it. And a cheaper way of bringing it about than another European war.”

  “And if negotiations fail?”

  “Negotiations always fail. Then you negotiate some more. And if that fails you try again the next year. But people stay dead for even longer. This was my own experience during the last war. We should have talked a bit more at the beginning. And then the end might have been very different.”

  “Maybe they should let you handle the negotiations.”

  “Maybe.”

  “And this case. Think you can handle it?”

  “Someone thought so, otherwise they wouldn’t have given me my bus fare from Berlin.”

  “And who was that?”

  “My superiors.”

  “Himmler, I suppose.”

  “He’s one of them, last time I looked.”

  “You don’t have to play skat with me, Commissar. You want to find this killer, don’t you?”

  “Sure.”

  “So if you’re going to play Hans Castorp it might pay you to cultivate a few local allies up here on the magic mountain. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  I liked the fact that she thought I was bright enough to have heard of Hans Castorp.

  “We can help each other, perhaps,” she added.

  “All right. A cop can always use some new friends. Especially this cop. On the whole I rate pretty highly for a lack of people skills.”

  “So do I. Most of the men in the Leader’s intimate circle have learned to be very wary of me. I usually say exactly what I think.”

  “That’s not always healthy.”

  “I’m not out for myself.”

  “Makes you pretty unusual these days.”

  Gerdy Troost shrugged impatiently.

  “Anyway, please forgive me if I seemed a little guarded. Actually it was Generals Heydrich and Nebe who told me to come down here. You see, if I fail, it won’t reflect badly on them. I’m expendable.”

  “And how is that, do you think?”

  “Well, it’s like when you get invited to a wedding and the bride and groom really don’t give a damn if you turn up or not.”

  “I know what it means, Commissar Gunther. I was just wondering how anyone should think such an unkind thing about a man like you.”

  “What it means is that Karl Flex’s murder is Martin Bormann’s probl
em. If I can solve it, then he’ll be grateful to Heydrich and Nebe. And if I can’t, then it’s still Martin Bormann’s problem, not theirs.”

  “Yes, I do see your own problem. My late husband would have called that a fool’s dilemma.”

  “I’m not such a fool that I can say no to men like them. At least not so that they’d ever notice. It’s one of the things that makes me such a good detective. Generally speaking I point the fold in my hat where they tell me and hope for the best. And somehow, so far, I’ve managed to stay on this side of the barbed wire.”

  “There’s a bottle of good schnapps down there, behind that drainpipe,” said Frau Troost. “Some of the general staff keep it there so they can have a drink while they smoke.”

  “One’s often better with the other.”

  “Hitler doesn’t drink, either.”

  I bent down to take a look and smiled; she was right; there was even a stack of clean glasses. I helped myself but she didn’t want one herself. I toasted the general staff, silently. For once I had no complaints about their military preparations.

  “One thing I don’t mind being cold is schnapps,” I said. “Your husband was Paul Troost, wasn’t he? Hitler’s architect, until he died a few years ago.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And now his architect is Albert Speer.”

  “He thinks he is. That man is always trying to ingratiate himself with Hitler. But in truth, I’ve been carrying on Paul’s work since 1934. I may even be the only woman the Leader actually listens to. Except when it comes to windows. But I was right about that, too. Mostly I just offer my advice on building, art, and design. My studio is in Munich. And when I’m not there, I’m here. Lately I’ve been working on some new certificates and presentation boxes for military and civilian honors.”

  “No shortage of those in Nazi Germany.”

  “You sound like you disapprove.”

  “No. Not even a little. I always did like a ribbon on my cake.”

  “Maybe you’ll get an honor after you’ve solved this case.”

  “I certainly won’t be looking for one. From what I’ve been told this is a matter requiring absolute discretion.” I poured myself another. “You know when I said bad news travels fast, about Karl Flex being dead, you said I was almost right. Meaning you didn’t think it was such bad news, after all.”

  “Did I say that?”

  “Now who’s playing skat. I’ve been here for less than twenty-four hours but already it seems to me that quite a few people were happy to see Flex dead.”

  “We can talk about that,” she said. “But first I want a favor from you.”

  THIRTY-ONE

  April 1939

  “So ask it, Frau Troost. I have no idea why, but the schnapps has made me accommodating.”

  The terrace at the back of the Berghof was less lethal than the one at the front; the most dangerous thing that happened here was smoking too much. Gerdy Troost shrugged and threw away her cigarette. Under the black beret her light brown hair was bushy and gathered behind her head, which seemed to accentuate the woman’s ears; like her nose, these belonged properly to an elf. But she wasn’t a small elf. I guessed she was probably a head taller than Martin Bormann. It was a shrewd, clever head, too, that much was obvious. Cleverer than Bormann. The voice was educated and accustomed to being listened to, the eyes dark and inquisitive, the chin pugnacious and determined, the mouth just a little petulant; you might almost have assumed she was Jewish but for the violent anti-Semitism of her infamous patron. It seemed safer to assume that she was a bluestocking, only this had nothing to do with the color of her stockings, which were black.

  “Gerdy. Short for Gerhardine. My parents christened me Sophie but I never took to the name.”

  Looking at her, I figured there was quite a lot about being a girl she didn’t take to, not just an old-fashioned name. You get a feeling for that kind of thing.

  I toasted her with the glass in my hand. “Pleased to meet you, Gerdy.”

  “The fact is, I know who you are,” she said. “More importantly, I know what you are. No, I don’t mean that you’re a policeman. I’m talking about your character. I believe you’re a man of some courage and integrity.”

  “No one’s accused me of being that in a long time. Besides, if I really was what you say I am, then I’d be somewhere else.”

  “Don’t sell yourself short, Herr Gunther. One day soon this country is going to need a few good men.” She rubbed her chest and her face turned anxious as if she had a pain.

  “You all right?”

  “I get a little angina sometimes. When I’m under pressure. It’ll pass.”

  “Are you under pressure?”

  “Everyone here is under pressure of one kind or another. Even Hitler. Everyone except Martin Bormann.”

  “He’s a busy man, isn’t he?”

  Gerdy smiled. “Busy looking out for himself, almost certainly.”

  “There’s a lot of it about.”

  “For some. Now listen, do you remember a man called Hugo Brückmann?”

  I frowned as I recalled the name. Then I stared at the ground, noticing her largish feet and her black shoes, which had little straps across the ankles. “Brückmann,” I said evasively. “Let me see. No, I don’t think so.”

  “Then let me refresh your memory, Commissar. In 1932, Hugo Brückmann and his wife went to stay at Berlin’s Adlon Hotel. He is a German publisher and was a great friend of my late husband’s. Married to Princess Elsa Cantacuzene of Romania. Now do you remember?”

  I hadn’t forgotten either of them. Nor was I likely to. But like anyone else in Germany I was a little cautious about admitting to knowing someone who had deliberately thwarted the Nazis, especially to a member of Hitler’s intimate circle. While Hugo Brückmann was a Nazi, he was a decent Nazi and a friend of Bernhard Weiss, the former head of Kripo and a Jew whom I and Lorenz Adlon had helped to hide from the Nazis in the last days of the Weimar Republic. But it had been Hugo Brückmann and his wife, Elsa, who had paid for Weiss and his wife, Lotte, to escape to London, where the former detective was now running a printing and stationery business.

  “If they’re friends of yours, then yes, I remember them both.”

  “I want that man—the principled young detective from the Alex who helped Hugo Brückmann to help Bernhard Weiss escape from Germany—to help me find someone who’s gone missing, in Munich.”

  “I’m not saying I did help them. That wouldn’t be healthy. But lots of people go missing these days. It’s one of the challenges of life in modern Germany.”

  “This man’s a Jew, too.”

  “For them most of all. But yes, I’ll help. If I can. What’s his name?”

  “Wasserstein. Dr. Karl Wasserstein. He’s an ophthalmologist and a surgeon who treated my late husband. But he lost his position and his pension in 1935, and then his license to practice medicine in 1938. I spoke to the Leader about his case last year and Dr. Wasserstein’s license was restored, allowing him to continue in private practice. But when I went to see Wasserstein in Munich the other day, he had gone and no one seemed to know or even care where. He left no forwarding address and I was wondering if you might find him for me. I just want to know that he’s all right and that he’s not short of money. But I get the feeling I’ve already asked enough questions around here on his behalf. There’s a limit to what even I can achieve on anyone’s behalf. Especially when they’re Jewish.”

  “Maybe he’s left Germany for good.”

  “He just got his license back. Why would he leave Germany?”

  “The best people do. On the other hand, a lot of Jews have left Munich and Vienna to go and live in Berlin. They think that things are a bit easier for Jews there.”

  “And are they?”

  “A little, perhaps. Berliners have never made good Nazis. It’s
a metropolitan thing, I guess. People in big cities don’t care much about race and religion. Most of them don’t even believe in God. Not since that other German madman. They’re a little cynical to be wholly enthusiastic acolytes.”

  “I’m beginning to see why you’re expendable.”

  “But give me Wasserstein’s last address and I’ll see what I can find out.”

  “Thanks. Commissar Gunther, I want you to know that I’m loyal to the Leader.”

  “Isn’t everyone?”

  “You’re not.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Look, it isn’t him who’s at fault. It’s the people around him. People like Martin Bormann. He’s so corrupt. He runs this whole mountain like it’s his personal fiefdom. And Karl Flex was just one of his more loathsome creatures. Him and Zander, and that awful man Bruno Schenk. Those are the kind of people who give our movement a bad name. But if I’m going to help you I have to do it in my own way.”

  “Sure. Whatever you say. And that’s just the way I was going to handle it.”

  “I don’t want to hear any lectures about police procedure and withholding evidence.”

  “All that stuff means nothing now, anyway.”

  “So here’s what I’m offering. I’ve been coming here for almost a decade and I’m often in this house. Sometimes on my own. Sometimes not on my own. I see things. And I hear things. More than I should, perhaps. By the way, there are listening devices all over the Berghof so be very careful what you say and where you say it.”

  I nodded, hardly wanting to interrupt Gerdy Troost by telling her I already knew about the listening devices.

  “That’s another reason why this terrace—the smoking room—is so popular. It’s safe to talk here.”

  “So what have you got to tell me now?”

  “Nothing that might reflect badly on Hitler,” she said carefully. “He’s a man of great vision. But if you ask me a question, I’ll do what no one else on this mountain will do, Commissar Gunther, I’ll try to give you a straight answer. You tell me what you think you know and, if I’m able to, I’ll confirm it. Clear?”