by Philip Kerr
“Clear enough. You’re going to be my own oracle at Obersalzberg. And it will be up to me to make sense of what you tell me.”
She nodded. “If you like.”
“How much of what Flex was doing did Bormann know about?”
“Everything that happens on this mountain happens because Martin Bormann wants it that way. Flex was merely carrying out his master’s orders. Sure, he was an engineer with lots of letters after his name, but he was just a button that Bormann could press. Once for this and twice for that. Bormann’s difficulty is that he desperately needs this man caught or the Leader will never come back; but in order for that man to be caught he risks the exposure of all his local rackets. Which means you’re right about that police medal. You solve this case, you might not live to collect it.”
“I figured as much.” I lit another cigarette. “Dr. Brandt. Is he one of Bormann’s buttons, too?”
“Brandt’s in debt,” she said. “A massive amount of debt. Because of his lavish lifestyle. He used to rent part of the Villa Bechstein but now he has a house in Buchenhohe. Not to mention an expensive apartment in Berlin, on Altonaerstrasse. All on a doctor’s salary of three hundred and fifty reichsmarks a month. And because he’s in debt he has to make ends meet by being part of Bormann’s rackets. He might seem honorable. But he’s not. Don’t trust him.”
“Capable of covering up a murder, do you think?”
Gerdy nodded. “Not just of covering one up. Capable of committing one, too. Tell me. You’ve lifted a few rocks already. And seen what slithered out. Why do you think Flex was killed?”
“Because someone bore him a grudge, because of a compulsory purchase—perhaps.”
“Maybe. But that’s just fifty or sixty people. And quite a narrow sample of people on the Berg with a substantial grievance. You’re going to need to cast your net much wider than that to get a proper idea of what’s been going on here. You do that and you’ll have a much better idea of who killed Karl Flex.”
“The P-Barracks. The brothel? Does Bormann get a cut of that as well?”
“Bormann gets a cut of everything. But I’m disappointed. You’re still thinking like a policeman. The money generated by fifteen or twenty girls is tiny. No, there are much bigger rackets than that in Obersalzberg, and at Berchtesgaden. You need to expand your horizons, Commissar, to think on a more grandiose scale, to build your ideas of what one man can achieve if he has the resources of an entire country at his disposal.”
I thought for a moment. “Construction,” I said. “The Obersalzberg Administration. Polensky & Zöllner.”
“Now you’re getting warmer.”
“Is Bormann getting a kickback from OA?”
Gerdy Troost stood a little closer to me and lowered her voice.
“On every contract. Roads, tunnels, the tea house, the Platterhof Hotel, you name it, Martin Bormann is getting a cut. Think of it. All those jobs. All those workers. All that money. More money than you could imagine. There’s nothing that happens around here he doesn’t take his cut from.
“It’s going to take you a while to find out just what he’s been getting away with. You’re going to need to build a case, carefully. And when you do you’re going to need not just my help, but the help of someone close to the Leader who’s as honest as I am.”
“And who might that be?”
“Martin Bormann’s brother, Albert.”
“Where can I find him?”
“At the Reichs Chancellery building, in Berchtesgaden. Up here on the mountain might be Martin Bormann’s territory, but down there, in the town, that definitely belongs to Albert. In case you didn’t know, they hate each other.”
“Why?”
“You’ll have to ask Albert.”
“Maybe I should go and see him.”
“He won’t talk to you. Not yet. But he knows you’re here, of course. And he’ll see you when he’s ready. Or when you’ve got something concrete on his brother. But you haven’t got that yet. Have you?”
“No. Not yet. And I get the feeling I’m crazy even to try.”
“Perhaps.”
“You could speak to Albert Bormann. Tell him to see me now.”
“You’d be fishing. Wasting his time.”
“How will I know when I’m close to the truth? Will you tell me?”
“I probably won’t have to. The closer to the truth you get, the more your own life is going to be in danger.”
“That’s a comforting thought.”
“If you wanted comfort you’d have stayed at home.”
“You haven’t seen my home.” I sighed. “But from what you’ve told me, I’m going to be lucky if I ever see it again.”
THIRTY-TWO
October 1956
Home was beginning to seem tantalizingly close. Germany—what I called Germany, which is to say the Saarland—was less than eighty kilometers away. With any luck I thought I might get there before dark.
There was an almost invisible stream on the edge of the field of stubble where I washed my hands and face and tried to make myself look as respectable as you can be after you’ve spent the night in a haystack. A light drizzle was falling and the sky was gray with the threat of something worse. I ate the rest of my food, mounted the bicycle uncomfortably, and cycled northwest, away from Château-Salins. A few dogs barked as I cycled past farm gates and cottage gardens but I was long gone before any locals could look out of their net-curtained windows and see a suspicious character like me. The road was straight and relatively flat, as if some Roman engineers had not long finished their lapidary endeavors. I was now in Lorraine, which had been annexed by another great empire following the war of 1871 and made a part of the German territory of Alsace-Lorraine. After Versailles, Lorraine had been given back to France, only for it to be annexed by Germany again during the Second World War. But it looked solidly French to me now, with French flags displayed in nearly every wart of a town or village, and it was hard to understand why Germany had ever wanted this dull, featureless region of France. What use was it? What did it matter which country owned one stinking field or another misshapen wood? Was it for this that so many men had died in 1871 and in 1914?
A few kilometers farther up the road, in Baronville, I dismounted at an unremarkable café, ate some breakfast at the bar, bought some cigarettes, shaved quickly in the lavatory, searched for myself in the newspaper, and was relieved to see that there was nothing more than what had already been reported. But the polished wood radio in the café was switched on and in this way I gradually became aware that the French police believed they were now close to catching the Blue Train murderer; a man answering my description had been seen three times in Nancy before any police inquiries had begun, and all roads between there and the Saarland were now being watched. Perhaps I would have learned more but the patron started to retune the radio and, before I could check myself, I asked him—much too abruptly—to leave the radio station alone, which only served to draw attention to me. The patron did as he was asked but now regarded me with more interest than before so that I was obliged eventually to explain myself. He had a sharp nose and an even sharper eye, not to mention a boil on his scrawny bird’s neck that was equal in size to any of the onions on my handlebars.
“It’s just that I reckon I saw that German,” I said, improvising quickly. “The fugitive the police are looking for. The Blue Train murderer.”
“Really?” The man wiped the marble counter with a cloth that belonged in an Omo commercial and then emptied the Ricard ashtray that was in front of me. “Where was that, monsieur?”
“It was yesterday, in Nancy. But he wasn’t headed for Germany; what the radio announcer said was wrong. He was buying a ticket for a train to Metz.”
“Killed his wife, did he? It happens.”
“No, I don’t think so. Someone else. I’m not sure who. The guard
on a train, I think.”
“Then they’ll cut off his head,” said the patron. “Kill your wife, you might stand a chance. But not a man in a uniform.”
I nodded but I considered I had worse to fear than an appointment with the French guillotine; at least that would be quick. Thallium poisoning sounded like a fate worse than death. And for the first time I wondered if I should somehow make an effort to warn Anne French that the Stasi were planning to poison her.
“Nancy, eh? You’ve come a fair way, monsieur.”
“Not so far. Forty or fifty kilometers. On a good day I can do seventy-five or eighty.”
“We don’t see many onion sellers on these roads. Not since the war.”
“Usually I head for Luxembourg. Or Strasbourg. Plenty of money there. But that’s too far for me now. The legs are not what they were.”
“So where are you headed?”
“Pirmasens.”
“Pirmasens? Seems like a lot of effort to sell a few onions.”
“A man has to make a living any way he can these days.”
“True.”
“Besides, my family seems to own the only field in Nancy that’s no good for grapes. Usually I sell a lot in Pirmasens. The Germans like their onions and these days you’ve got to go where the market is.”
“Except that they’re French now, aren’t they? In the Saar.”
“That’s what we’re told. But it doesn’t feel very French when you speak to people. It’s German they speak. When they speak at all.”
“They spoke clearly enough in that referendum they had a while back.”
“That they did.”
“Well, good luck to them. And you.”
“Thanks. But if you would be kind enough to direct me, I reckon I’ll stop at the police station in Baronville before I carry on my way. And report what I saw. It’s what any good citizen would do, I think.”
The patron came outside and indicated the way, and I cycled off, wondering if he was in the least bit convinced by my improvised patter. In that part of the world I figured my French was probably accented just about right, but you never can tell with the Franzis. They’re a suspicious lot and it’s easy to see why the Nazis had such an easy job running the country; the French are just natural informers. Of course, I wasn’t planning to go anywhere near the police station but almost as soon as I pedaled off I wondered if the café patron might see the gendarme later on in the day and mention me; and if he discovered I hadn’t actually been there, then naturally his suspicions would be aroused. I wished I’d kept my mouth shut about behaving like a good citizen. Better still, I wished I hadn’t told him not to retune his damned radio. So I cycled to the police station after all, leaned my bicycle on the wall, and was just about to pluck up my courage and report seeing myself to the local gendarmes when I caught sight of some medals in an antique shop and, thinking that a First World War French Cross pinned on my lapel might help to deflect a bit of suspicion, I went into the shop and bought the decoration for only a few francs. Heroism is always cheaper to buy than it ought to be. Especially in la belle France.
Inside the police station the gendarme behind the desk regarded my medal and listened to my story with barely concealed indifference. He took my false name and address and made a few notes with a stub of a pencil on a yellow pad; meanwhile, I added a few things to the fugitive German’s description. He had a limp, I said, and a stick, as if he’d injured his left leg; and I explained I knew he was German because when I’d overheard him buying a ticket at the local railway station I was quite sure I’d heard him utter a curse in German when he saw that the platform for the train to Metz was being watched by police.
“Anything else?” The cop said it like he hoped there wasn’t. There was a strong smell of coffee in the station and I guessed he’d been about to drink some when I showed up.
“He had a small cardboard case with a Marseilles sticker on it. And there was something wrong with his left eye.”
“How do you know?”
“He had an eye patch.”
There were two roads from Baronville to the German border: the D910 was the shorter and more direct route; I took the D674 via Bérig-Vintrange to avoid any French roadblocks. Not that such a thing looked in the least bit likely, despite what the radio announcer had said. The road to the Saar couldn’t have been more quiet if the locals had heard the Wehrmacht was on the way again. All the same I was pedaling hard now, as if my life really did depend on it. By midmorning I was seated on a bench in front of the Church of Saint Hippolyte in Bérig-Vintrange, smoking a cigarette, regarding the church, and reflecting on my own situation. I couldn’t have felt more alone if I’d been cycling across Antarctica. The church looked like any other in that part of the world, which is to say quiet, even a little neglected with a small en suite cemetery, but it was not without a priest, who arrived on a bicycle not long after me, removed his bicycle clips, and offered me a good morning as he unlocked the front door.
“Have you come to see our ossuary?” he asked.
I said I hadn’t, and that I was merely resting my own dry bones after a long time in the saddle.
“Welcome anyway.”
We shook hands. He was a big man with shoulders as wide as the cross strut on a working crucifix and he wore the cassock like it was a boxer’s dressing gown.
“Would you like a glass of water, perhaps?”
“Thank you.”
He led the way into the vestry and presented me with some water.
“Is it famous then? Your ossuary?”
“Quite famous. Would you like to see it?”
Not wanting to appear rude I said I would and, still carrying his Bible, he led me down to a crypt, where he proudly showed off a neat heap of skulls and bones and, in an unguarded moment, I let out a profound sigh as I recalled my service with the SS and what I’d seen at places like Minsk and Katyn. A collection of dried death always awakens in me a perverse kind of homesickness. It’s as if these things follow you around like ghosts. I would call it a conscience except that part of me had always taken second place to simple prudence.
“They look how I feel,” I said. This wasn’t exactly Hamlet but then again I’d been riding hard for several hours.
“For you are dust and to dust you shall return,” said the priest.
“Amen.”
“Although it’s hardly the end. No, not at all. We have to believe in the life everlasting, don’t you think? That there is something after this.”
He didn’t sound convinced, but I wasn’t about to help him with any crisis of faith. I had my own crisis to manage.
“Not in here, you don’t,” I said. “This is about as final as it gets, I guess. And what’s more, I think God probably likes it that way, to remind us that this is our true glory in Christ. That everything wears away and falls to pieces until all we’re left with is this heap of bones, this accumulated testimony, this gray monument to where we’ve been and the futility of all our human endeavors. Here are the real facts of life, Father. We’re going to die. And there’s none of us that matters any more than those onions hanging on my handlebars.”
Momentarily the priest looked taken aback. “You don’t really believe that, do you?”
“No, I suppose not,” I lied. More than anyone, priests don’t want your honesty; it’s what makes them priests in the first place. You can’t be a priest if you are devoted to any empirical truth, which is the only kind you can rely upon. “But sometimes it’s hard to have faith in very much.”
“Faith isn’t supposed to make sense. If it was, then it couldn’t be tested.” The priest’s eyes narrowed. “Where are you from, friend?”
“Nowhere. That’s where we’re all from, isn’t it? It’s certainly where we’re all going. And that’s just the scripture you mentioned earlier. Ecclesiastes, wasn’t it?”
H
e nodded. “I’ll pray for you.”
“I wonder if that might work.”
“You know, anyone might think you’re a man who doesn’t believe in anything.”
“Whatever gives you that idea, Father? I believe the sun rises, and that it sets. I believe in kinetic energy and air resistance, and gravity and everything else that makes bicycling such fun. I believe in coffee and cigarettes and bread. I even believe in the Fourth Republic.” But of course, I didn’t. No one did—no more than they believed in the Third Republic.
The priest smiled a gap-toothed smile and put down his Bible, almost as if he was going to slug me. “Now I’m certain you’re a nihilist.”
“Well, why not be a nihilist? A man has to believe in something.”
“No, that’s what you are, all right.”
“If I knew what that was I might even agree with you. I used to believe in God and in trying to do the right thing. But now—now I don’t believe in anything at all.”
“You’re him, aren’t you? That man the police are after.”
“What man is that, Father?”
“The Blue Train murderer. I’ve been following your case on the radio and in the newspapers.”
“Me? No. I’m not much on trains these days. Too expensive. But what makes you say a thing like that?”
“Well, for one thing, I used to be a policeman. So I notice things. For example, those shoes you’re wearing. No one selling onions would wear shoes like those. They were bought in a nice shop somewhere down south, and not because they were practical but because they looked smart. The first heavy rain shower and those shoes will end up badly water-stained. Boots would have been better. Boots like mine. That wristwatch is a Longines. Not the most expensive. But then again, not cheap, either. Next there are your hands, which are clean and soft. Strong, but still soft. And well manicured. Living around here you shake hands with all kinds of men who make a living from the soil. Yours aren’t at all like theirs, which are like sandpaper. Another thing is that your teeth are good. Like you’ve seen a dentist in the last six months. Again, people who work the land don’t see dentists unless they need to have a rotten tooth pulled out. And only then because they can’t stand the pain anymore. The medal’s good. A nice touch. I like that. But not the glasses. There’s just glass in them, no actual lenses, like you’re wearing them for a reason other than to improve your sight.”
