Prussian Blue

by Philip Kerr

  “Captain Kaspel has been killed in an accident,” I said. “On the road to Buchenhohe. It would seem that he lost control of the car he was driving and went off the road.”

  “You’re not serious,” said Dietrich.

  “Well, actually, what I said, it’s not quite accurate. I’m more or less certain Kaspel was murdered. Someone cut the brake hoses on his car. I think they meant us both to be killed, but as you can see, I escaped.”

  “In Obersalzberg? Who would do such a thing?”

  “Yes, it’s hard to believe, isn’t it? That someone here, on Hitler’s mountain, could even think of committing murder. It’s incredible.”

  “Do you have an idea who this person is, Herr Commissar?”

  I shook my head. “Not yet. But I will find out. Look, you’ll have to notify the appropriate services to recover the body and the car. An ambulance, I suppose. And a fire truck. It’s a real mess, I’m afraid, and not for the squeamish. The car’s a complete wreck. Maybe a doctor, I don’t know. Not that he can help. And perhaps you’d better tell Major Högl. Although I’m not sure if he’s the kind of officer that you can wake up with important news or if it’s best to wait for the morning. Only you can say, sonny. But around here I get the feeling that bad news always waits until the morning.”

  I glanced out the window. There was a light on the ground floor in Bormann’s house and I wondered if he would want to know about Kaspel’s death and if I dared disturb the deputy chief of staff at this time of night. Leave it to Högl, I told myself; you’ve got enough to do, Gunther. You won’t be able to tell Bormann without also having to report on your progress, which has been disappointing, to say the least. The only good news you could tell a man like Martin Bormann was that you’d caught the murderer; everything else was an excuse for your own incompetence. Besides, there was always the danger I might talk out of turn. There’s nothing like seeing a man you like cut in half to make you a little too free with your opinions. Things like that happened a lot in the trenches. It’s how I lost my first set of sergeant’s stripes—telling some fool of a lieutenant that he’d got a couple of good men killed.

  “God in heaven, this is terrible news. Captain Kaspel was such a kind man. With such a nice wife.”

  “You can leave the widow to me,” I said, and yawned. The warmth of the Türken’s office was making me sleepy again. “Make sure Högl knows that. I’ll tell her first thing in the morning, just as soon as I’ve snatched a few hours’ sleep and had some breakfast.”

  I was on the point of leaving when I noticed the rifle rack: they were all the standard German army rifle—the Mauser Karabiner 98—but one with a scope caught my attention. This was a Mannlicher M95, the same kind of carbine that had been used to shoot Karl Flex. I lifted it out of the rack, worked the bolt, and inspected the magazine, which was full. The gun was well maintained, too, and in better condition than the carbine I’d found at the Villa Bechstein; for one, it wasn’t covered in soot. I turned the carbine and inspected the barrel; it was dirtier than it looked on first inspection but whether that meant it had been fired recently was not something I could determine.

  “What’s this doing here?” I said.

  “That’s Major Högl’s rifle, sir,” said Dietrich. “He uses it to go hunting sometimes.”

  “What does he shoot up here?”

  “Nothing inside the Leader’s Territory or the Landlerwald, you understand,” he insisted. “Nothing except a few local cats. Everything else is forbidden.” The lieutenant smiled uncomfortably, as if he didn’t approve. “The Leader doesn’t really like cats around the Berghof.”

  “So I hear.”

  “They kill the local birds.”

  I nodded. The fact was, I’d always liked cats and even admired their independence; being shot by the Nazis for doing what comes naturally was the kind of existential dilemma with which I could easily sympathize.

  “Is this the same rifle that Captain Kaspel gave to him? The one that belonged to a poacher?” But even as I asked I wondered how Kaspel could have failed to have noticed it there, on the Türken’s rifle rack. Surely he would have mentioned it following our trip to the apiary.

  “I don’t know, sir. Would you like me to ask him?”

  “No,” I said. “I’ll ask him myself.”

  I walked quickly back down to the Berghof and discovered my room was chillier than before on account of the fact that someone had been in there and left the door wide open. I wrote a message for Heydrich, collected my notebook and, thinking I needed to be somewhere warm, returned immediately to the Villa Bechstein, where I told the two RSD duty officers to send the telex, and to awaken me at eight. Then I went upstairs. Someone had thoughtfully left a bottle of schnapps on my dressing table, next to the Leica. I guess it did make a nice picture at that; it’s nice to have a few snaps of a favorite place you’ve been, even if that place is at the bottom of a glass.

  THIRTY-SIX

  April 1939

  I was surprised to be woken, rather roughly I thought, at seven, by two men with thick leather coats, igneous faces, and uncompromising cologne. They were from the Gestapo. Naturally I assumed they had come straight to Obersalzberg with some important news about the missing photographer, Johann Brandner, who was officially my number one suspect in the Flex shooting. But it was soon clear that this was not the case. One of them was already searching through my bag and my coat. He quickly found my gun, sniffed the barrel, and then dropped it into his pocket. The other had something under his arm and wore silver-wire glasses that resembled manacles, although that might just have been my imagination.

  “Brandner? Never heard of him,” said the one with the glasses.

  “Get dressed and come with us please,” said the other. “Quickly.”

  Now, under most normal circumstances, I’d have been very cooperative with government thugs like these, but working for Bormann and Heydrich I had the unreasonable idea that there were more important things for me to do than waste valuable time talking to the Gestapo, answering their stupid questions. Surely the RSD would come to my aid if I asked them.

  “Tell me you’re not dumb enough to try to arrest me here,” I said.

  “Just shut up and get dressed.”

  “Does Major Högl know about this? From the local RSD?”

  “This is a Gestapo matter.”

  “What about Captain Neumann?” I got out of bed because I could see that, like all Gestapo men, they were eager to hit someone and soon. I grabbed the Pervitin and popped one in my mouth. I was going to need all the help I could get.

  “Never heard of him either.”

  “Hans-Hendrik Neumann. He’s General Heydrich’s adjutant. And currently working from your own HQ, in Salzburg. I assume you’ve heard of General Heydrich. Head of the SD and the Gestapo? He’s on page two of the German Police and Gestapo Yearbook. Himmler is on page one. Smallish man with glasses who looks a bit like a village schoolmaster? Believe me, there will be hell to pay if they find out I’ve been arrested by a couple of comrade shoelaces like you. Neither of them much likes anyone interfering with the smooth running of the Nazi machine. Especially in Obersalzberg.”

  “We’re not from Salzburg. And we have our orders.”

  “Orders are orders.”

  “That’s true,” I said. “And the kind of logic that you boys can take comfort in. But with respect, that won’t work here. I’m not sure it works anywhere.”

  I started to get dressed. Already I could see their patience with me was wearing as thin as Himmler’s smile.

  “If you’re not from Salzburg, then where are you from?”

  “Linz.”

  “But that’s more than a hundred kilometers away.”

  “You must have read a book about geography. And we take our orders from the High SS and Police Leader for Donau.”

  “Donau?”

/>   I thought for a moment as I climbed into my trousers, and then I realized suddenly who it was that had sent them. Donau, near Vienna, was the primary division command of the General-SS in Austria. All this time I’d been trying not to come between those big beasts Heydrich and Bormann and unwittingly I had stepped into an internecine war between Heydrich and Kaltenbrunner. I was in a lot more danger than I’d ever imagined. With Heydrich wanting dirt on his Austrian SS rival, Martin Bormann, it had never occurred to me that Kaltenbrunner might try to put a spanner in Heydrich’s works. We’d underestimated him, enormously.

  “You’re Kaltenbrunner’s men, aren’t you?”

  “Now you’re getting it, piefke.”

  “Are we going to Linz now? Is that the plan? Because if it is you’re in big trouble, my friend. And your redundant propositional logic won’t help you when they’re tying you to a stake in front of an SS firing squad.”

  “You’ll find out where we’re going soon enough. And any more threats out of you and my fist will feel obliged to interfere with your smart mouth.”

  “Look, one more thing. We’re on the same side, after all. I’ve been sent to investigate a murder in the Leader’s Territory. As a professional courtesy you could at least tell me what this is about and why you think your mission is more important than mine.”

  “High treason. And that certainly trumps any case you’re investigating down here, Gunther.”

  “Treason?” I sat down on the bed. It was quicker than falling over. I started to pull on my boots before they lost patience with me. “You boys have made a serious mistake. Or someone’s misled your boss. There’s no treason here.”

  “That’s what they all say.”

  “Yes, but it’s not all of them who report directly to General Heydrich. I do, and he’s going to have your kidneys deviled and on toast.”

  And then I saw it. The man with the wire glasses was holding my own notebook as if it was something important, like exhibit number one in a criminal investigation. The same notebook I’d fetched from my office at the Berghof just hours before and which had been on my bedside table. And it now occurred to me that there was something in that notebook I didn’t know about. Something that had been written there by someone else, perhaps. Something incriminating that could put me under the falling ax. I guessed the one in Linz was probably just as sharp as the one in Berlin. And I’d seen enough men with their heads sniffing their own toes to know that I wouldn’t like it. Thanks to the Nazis, modern justice was quicker than a Reichspost telegram, with little or no time for defense arguments. Once I was in Linz they might execute me within hours of my arrival. I’d been measured out for this like Plato’s hypotenuse. The two sent to arrest me were beyond all reason; I doubted that Immanuel Kant would have made a dent in their capacity for pure ignorance and categorical disbelief. I could hardly blame them for this; Ernst Kaltenbrunner was probably just as frightening to them as Heydrich was to me. By all accounts he was certainly uglier.

  “Okay.” I stood up and put on my suit jacket. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  The one who’d taken my gun produced a set of manacles with which he proposed to handcuff me. Instead I reached for the Leica on the dressing table.

  “You boys don’t mind if I bring my camera, do you? Only, I’ve never been to Linz. Hitler’s hometown, isn’t it? I’ve heard it’s very pretty. After this misunderstanding has been cleared up perhaps we’ll look at the pictures I take and laugh about it.”

  “Put the fucking camera down and show me your hands in front of you or I’ll thump you very hard, Gunther.”

  “And you? Did anyone ever tell you that you’ve got the kind of face the camera just loves? No?”

  I laid the camera on the dressing table but I didn’t let it go. I was just trying to bring the irritated man with the glasses a step nearer so I could take his photograph. Not that I was much of a photographer. Somehow I never mastered the idea that you’re meant to put the subject’s face in the lens and not on it, violently and at speed. Made of die-cast steel, the Leica was a small camera that produces a small negative image except when it’s banged hard, twice, against a man’s nose, and then the negative it produces is much bigger and more colorful, although I think there was too much red with this picture. I felt his nose crush under the second blow as if it had been a hard-boiled egg. The Gestapo man howled with pain, cupped his bleeding nose, and sank down on the floor as if he’d been shot in the face. I had enough time to take half a step back, which was just as well, as the other man landed a blow on my chin that would have dropped me like an old chimney if it had connected properly. I grabbed his thick wrist and used the momentum of the man’s own weight to haul him into the dressing table, and then banged the cheval mirror hard on top of his skull, several times, smashing the mirror to pieces, which was unluckier for him than for me, as this left me an opportunity to grab a shard of glass and jam it into his neck with my left hand. I cut my hand but it didn’t seem to matter as much as winning the fight and as quickly as possible. In any fight, this is all that ever matters. I hadn’t killed him; I hadn’t even severed his jugular vein, but with a piece of jagged glass sticking out of his neck the man recognized he was beaten and sat trembling on the floor, holding his neck and the shard that was now at right angles to it like a wayward shirt collar. The other man was still wailing and clutching his nose and, for no good reason that I could think of except that I was scared by the idea of what they’d have done to me in some Austrian Gestapo cell, I gave him a fond pat on the head. I took a deep breath, fetched my gun from the pocket of the man I’d stabbed, and collected their weapons. I worked the slide on my own Walther and brushed the wailing man’s ear.

  “Any more trouble from you two and I’ll shoot you myself.”

  I grabbed a handkerchief, wound it around my hand, and then retrieved my notebook from the floor next to the man with the glass collar.

  I hadn’t made many notes since my arrival in Obersalzberg, so it was easy to find the cause for their concern: the caricature of Adolf Hitler was well rendered and commendably obscene. Hitler with an erect cock that would have made a herm statue proud. And if it had been anywhere except a notebook with my name on it—an old habit from my gymnasium—I might have thought it was funny. But rather less treasonable cartoons of the beloved Leader had sent better men than me to an early death. The Völkischer Beobachter frequently carried stories about Germans unwise enough to make jokes about Hitler. He might have looked like Charlie Chaplin but a transnational sense of humor was not included with the silly mustache, the comic manner, and the doleful eyes. I tore out the offending page, crushed it into a ball, and threw this on the embers of the fire. It seemed obvious that the person who had drawn the cartoon had probably also telephoned the Gestapo in Linz in the knowledge that Heydrich’s adjutant, Neumann, was currently stationed in nearby Salzburg and awaiting my call; quite possibly this was the same person who had cut the brakes on Kaspel’s car.

  “You can sit there and wait for the undertaker,” I said. “Or a doctor. It’s your choice, Fritz. But I want to know who called this in to Linz.”

  The man swallowed with difficulty and answered breathlessly. “Orders came direct from Donau,” he said. “From General Kaltenbrunner himself. Told us he’d had an informer report that you’d been seen making a libelous drawing of the Leader and that we were to arrest you for high treason.”

  “Did he name this informer?”

  “No. And no arguments were to be allowed. The Linz Gestapo had been chosen to carry out this assignment because you had too many friends in Salzburg and Munich who were likely to brush the affair under the carpet.”

  “And then what were you to do?”

  “We were to get rid of you on the way back to Linz. Shoot you in the head and leave you in a ditch somewhere. Please. I need a doctor.”

  “I think we both do, Fritz.”

  I went
to fetch the two RSD men who were at the Villa Bechstein to guard Rudolf Hess. They were playing chess in front of the fire in the drawing room and jumped up as soon as they saw the blood rolling down my hand.

  “Those two men who came in a few minutes ago,” I said. “I want them placed under arrest and locked up in the cells underneath the Türken. Right now they’re upstairs bleeding in my room. You’d better fetch a doctor, too. I’m going to want some stitches in this hand.”

  “What happened, sir?” asked one.

  “I told you to arrest them,” I said loudly. “Not ask me for a history lesson.” The magic potion had started to kick in again. It was odd how it made you feel impatient and intolerant and even a bit superhuman—like a Nazi, I suppose. “Let me spell it out for you. These two clowns have tried to interfere with a police investigation and the authority of Martin Bormann. That’s why I want them locked up.” I’d seen enough blood for one evening and it angered me that some of it was mine. “Look, you’d better fetch Major Högl. It’s time he did something around here other than comb his hair and polish his Party badge. And I’m going to need to send another telex to General Heydrich in Berlin.”