by Philip Kerr
“Listen to the police commissar, Karl,” said Joe Krauss. “And we’re the ones who were sent to Dachau. Can you believe it?”
“He’s a real contradiction, and no mistake.”
“Have you got guns?” asked Joe.
“We’re coppers, not Boy Scouts.”
“Let’s see them.”
Korsch and I each pulled out a Walther PPK and tried to hold them in a way that wouldn’t intimidate the brothers.
“So if you hand over the magazines, then maybe we’ll feel a bit more comfortable,” said Joe. “For safekeeping, you might say. We’ll feel safer that way. My brother doesn’t like working when there are guns around. Especially when he doesn’t have one himself.”
“All right.” I turned the Walther upside down, thumbed the release catch, and then worked the slide to drop the last round from the barrel. I pressed the spare round into the mag and then handed it to Joe Krauss. Korsch did the same.
“That’s more haymish,” he said, and pocketed the magazines. “All right. We’ll do it. Not because we trust you, Commissar. But because you’re an honest fool and it’s lucky for you that you have an honest fool’s face. Isn’t that right, Karl?”
“You’re right, Joe. Honestly, only a fool would work for the Nazis and think there’s not a high price to be paid for mere survival. But I suspect you know this already.” He nodded firmly. “So let’s get on with it, shall we? All I need is a pencil and paper and that rubber mallet. But it’s not to hit the safe. It’s to hit my brother on the head and knock some sense into him when you betray us after all.”
Karl Krauss knelt down beside the York and took hold of the dial and pressed his face to the door. “So,” he whispered, “we start with the mark at the top of the dial in the twelve o’clock position. Now we keep turning to the right and going very slowly we feel for the drop. It doesn’t matter what order we get them in yet, all we’re doing now is just feeling for the drop, see? And there’s one right away on zero. There usually is. Most people like zeroes. It reflects their own life expectations. Of course, if we have got more than one zero, then this complicates matters.”
Joe wrote the number on Korsch’s notepad and waited as his brother explored the feeling in the dial for the next number. I smiled. He looked like any German listening, illegally, to the BBC on the radio.
While the brothers worked on the safe I took Friedrich Korsch outside and explained how the Linz Gestapo had tried to arrest me, and what I’d recently discovered at the house of Udo Ambros.
“Udo Ambros couldn’t be more dead if he was Hindenburg’s great-grandfather. Most of his head is sticking to the wall like the kitchen clock. Someone tried hard to make it look like suicide by shotgun. Left a nice confession for us on the mantelpiece, which was so neatly written it looked like a telegram. Hardly the work of someone who was getting ready to blow his own head off. I’ve seen enough real suicides to know a murder when I smell one. And this one is Limburger cheese.”
“Hey, talking of suicide, that yid eye specialist you were asking about, Dr. Karl Wasserstein? Threw himself into the Isar last Saturday morning wearing his Military Merit Cross and drowned. The Munich cops found a note on his surgery door, which they let me have. I think they had orders from on high not to tell your friend Frau Troost. But if you ask me, that’s another suspicious suicide. Who the fuck ends his life on a Saturday morning? Monday morning I could understand. But not a Saturday.”
Korsch laughed bitterly and handed the note to me, and I put it in my pocket to give to Gerdy later on; maybe. In Germany, disappointment was contagious and often came with consequences. I certainly wasn’t about to squander her willingness to help me in my inquiry with some premature candor regarding the fate of her friend.
“Anyway,” he continued, “it seems that he may have got his doctor’s license back, but only for general practice. Not for ophthalmology.”
“So maybe it was a suicide note after all.”
“Maybe. Anyway, the poor bastard said he thought his life had lost its meaning. Because he couldn’t look at people’s eyes.”
“Nobody looks anyone in the eye these days. Not if they can help it.”
“It would be like you prevented from being a cop anymore, I guess.”
“Try me, Friedrich. The day I can walk away from this bloody life, you won’t find me heading for the nearest river to drown my sorrows. I’ll be at the lakes with a bottle of spiritual ointment, drinking it up in a park in Pankow like a good Bolle boy.”
“Maybe I’ll join you, boss. I was born near that park. Schönholzer Heide. Tschaikowskistrasse, 60.”
“Then that makes us practically related. I know that building. Gray building near the bus stop? I had a cousin who lived there.”
“Every apartment building in Berlin is gray and near a bus stop.”
“Small world, isn’t it?”
“It is until you have to catch the bus.”
FORTY-ONE
April 1939
I almost couldn’t believe it when Karl Krauss turned the little handle and opened a heavy steel door that creaked like a lock-up in the basement of the Alex.
“Didn’t I tell you?” said Joe proudly. “My brother Karl is an artist. That man could top the bill at the German Opera. Just look at that door, Commissar, and then remember what it means to crack a nut like this. Drilled or puzzled, this is difficult. You appreciate that now, don’t you?”
Joe Krauss was right about the mechanism. The inside of the door looked like a complicated toy or maybe even the workings of my own coin-operated mind. Not that I was paying much attention to that or even to what he said. I was too busy looking at all the money stacked in the safe. Even the ledger I could see on the bottom shelf didn’t distract me as much as the cash. I selected a thick wad of twenties and held it up to my nose and riffled it like a pack of playing cards. I shook my head and said, “There must be a thousand reichsmarks in this little bundle alone.”
“You have a keen sense of smell,” said Karl Krauss.
His brother Joe was already counting up the other bundles.
“I make it twenty thousand marks,” he said. “A tidy little sum.”
“It’s not so little,” murmured his brother. “With money like this a man could buy himself a new life. Several new lives. One after the other. And all of them good.”
I tossed the wad of cash I’d been sniffing like a cocaine addict to Korsch, grabbed the ledger from the safe, and began to turn the marbled pages as if the money were of no account. There were names, alphabetically listed, and there were addresses, and there were records of what looked like payments made over several years. A few names I even recognized; they belonged to people I’d met, which augured well. I guessed that the contents were the long form of the notebook Hermann Kaspel had listed among Flex’s personal effects, and which had been stolen.
“And did you find what you were looking for, Commissar?” asked Joe Krauss.
“To be honest, I’m not sure yet.”
“Are you disappointed?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
It wasn’t the kind of evidence that provides a neat library finish to a good detective story. Even though I say so myself, it lacked drama—real evidence rarely looks at all significant—and it wasn’t the sort of thing to fill a man with much professional pride, but still, what was in the ledger had the look of something important. Although not as important as the money. That’s the thing about money, especially a large quantity of money: it commands not just respect but attention. The cash in the safe was on everyone’s mind now. The Krauss brothers were looking at me suspiciously, each asking himself if I was going to keep my end of the bargain. Friedrich Korsch was thinking exactly the same thing. He took me by the elbow and led me to the opposite end of the garage, where he spoke in the sort of hushed tones that would only have made the brothers even more ce
rtain that they were going to be double-crossed by the police. And they didn’t look as if they were going to take this quietly.
“When you told them they could keep any cash in the safe,” he said, “I thought it might be a few hundred reichsmarks. A thousand at the most.”
“So did I.”
“But twenty thousand reichsmarks, boss. That’s serious money.”
“I always thought so. It’s just as well it’s not mine to give away, otherwise I might be feeling seriously depressed now at the prospect.”
He lit us both a cigarette, handed me one, and smoked his own nervously.
“You’re not seriously considering actually handing it over? To them?”
“I am, Friedrich. Don’t you think they could use a fresh start? After Dachau? A good meal and new suits at the very least. Nice clothes cost money in Italy. To say nothing of new lives. I wouldn’t mind one of those myself. Maybe I can persuade them to take me with them. I could use a nice holiday in Italy.”
“Be serious, boss. Have you considered the possibility that some of this cash—I don’t know, maybe most of it—that it belongs to Martin Bormann? I mean, it stands to reason some of it might be Bormann’s, doesn’t it? If Karl Flex was his bagman? This might be the proceeds of some of his local rackets. In which case—”
“That’s very true,” I said.
“Bormann’s not going to be very pleased when he finds out that you gave this money to—to anyone, let alone a couple of heebs.”
“So we’d best not tell him. In my limited experience he’s not the kind of man who takes bad news at all well.”
“All right. Well, then, please consider this, boss. If that ledger contains evidence of any corrupt payments, and Bormann finds out you have it, then he’ll conclude that maybe you also have all the money. Money that’s maybe recorded in there. He’ll figure you kept it for yourself. That we kept it. You and me. We could get into a lot of trouble here. They send bent cops to Dachau these days. I’ve just been there and I’m not at all keen to go back.”
“Then we’d better make sure it stays a secret, hadn’t we? Look, Friedrich, a deal’s a deal in my book. Without these two heebs, we’d be picking our teeth. I don’t care about Bormann’s money. I almost hope he does ask me about it. I want to see his farmer’s fat face if he does. Maybe I’ll tough it out and tell him the safe was open when we got here. That someone else must have stolen it. That there was no money in here. And then what will he do? Torture me?”
“It’s not you I mind being tortured. It’s me.”
“Spoken like a true German. But with any luck this ledger will help us find the murderer and Martin Bormann will be so damned grateful he’ll forget all about this money. Keep in mind that it’s Hitler’s birthday soon. And by the way, remind me to buy him a nice gift.”
Korsch sighed with exasperation and looked away for a moment. It was my turn to grab him by the arm.
“Look, Friedrich, twenty thousand is nothing beside what they already spent on that goddamn tea house. From what I heard from Hermann Kaspel, it was hundreds of millions. The place looks like a pocket version of Neuschwanstein Castle and is almost as crazy. If Hitler gets spooked about coming back here because of what happened on the Berghof terrace, then all those millions they spent on the tea house and new roads and underground tunnels and compulsory purchases were wasted. And Bormann’s career as the Leader’s number one Obersalzberg sycophant is over. Honestly? Twenty thousand is the riches of Croesus to you and me but to Bormann, it’s yesterday’s sauerkraut. So yes, I’m going to keep my word. It’s about time someone did in Berchtesgaden.”
I went back to the Krauss brothers, who had collected the money into an old leather satchel and were anxiously awaiting the outcome of my discussion with Korsch. I expect they would have fought us to the death for all that cash; I know I would have done. That was another consideration I hadn’t mentioned to Korsch. They might have been in Dachau but each brother was still as strong as a bull. With big money like that to be had and a getaway vehicle parked just outside, I didn’t doubt that in a fight these two career criminals could easily beat two unarmed policemen. Maybe even kill us. With three other murders in Berchtesgaden and Obersalzberg, another two wouldn’t look out of place. In a way, that would end up suiting everyone; they’d be arrested eventually, and all five murders would be pinned on them. A couple of Jewish criminals? In Nazi Germany they were tailor-made to take the rap for something like that. I almost felt like suggesting it.
“So,” said Karl. “Do the Jews get screwed by the Nazis again? Or is the handl we made before still good?”
“The money’s yours,” I said. “And the beer truck.”
“We’ve talked it over,” said Joe, “and we’re going to leave behind two thousand reichsmarks. For the sake of appearances. We’ve decided we wouldn’t like you to get into trouble. Of course, what you do with that cash is your own affair.”
I smiled at the insolence of what was being suggested. “Just get the hell out of here before I change my mind. I hate to see so much cash walking out of here in such bad company.”
“We also want to give you this,” said Joe, and handed me a manila envelope. “It was hidden behind the money.”
“What is it?”
“Two passbooks for a Swiss bank,” said Joe. “We were going to keep them if you didn’t let us have the money. But since you did, they’re yours. I hope they help you find what you’re looking for.”
I glanced inside the envelope and nodded. “Thanks.”
“I won’t say you’re a good man, Commissar,” said Karl Krauss, “but you’re a man of your word. Who can say such a thing in Berchtesgaden these days? One word of advice. From one German to another. What you were saying earlier? About not believing in a moral order? Just remember this, Commissar Gunther. A righteous man falls down seven times, and gets up again. You persevere. That’s Torah.”
FORTY-TWO
April 1939
Friedrich Korsch and I watched the Krauss brothers drive slowly away from Berchtesgaden in the Paulaner beer truck. It looked as if they were driving south toward the Austrian border with twenty thousand reichsmarks in their pockets, but looks can be deceptive.
“It was a clever idea,” I said. “Bringing them down from Munich in that truck. With any luck, no one will ever know they were here.”
“That was Heydrich’s idea. His office telephoned the Paulaner Brewery in Munich and ordered them to let me have a beer truck. I’m not sure if they’re expecting to get it back or not. But when the SD tells you to hand over a beer truck, you do what you’re told, right? Even if that means supplying one that’s still full of beer.”
“It figures. Heydrich was Gestapo boss in Munich before he took charge of the SD. If he ever learned how to make friends, then maybe he still has some.”
“I’m not sure what I’m going to tell them now the truck has gone. And, more important, their beer.”
“Heydrich’s problem. Not yours. He’ll probably just tell them it was stolen. What can you expect of Jews? Something sensitive, like that.”
“You know, I almost envy those two kikes,” said Korsch. “Going to Italy with all that money. Think of those lovely Italian women with big tits and huge arses. I can’t think of a better way to spend twenty thousand marks.”
“Me neither. Of course, it’s just a guess, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they turn around and drive northwest. Back to Berlin. Maybe even dump the truck and make for the railway station here in Berchtesgaden. It’s what I’d do if it was me. After all, would you trust the police to keep their word if you were two kikes with twenty thousand in cash in your coat pockets?”
“Since you put it like that, no, I would not.”
“Do the opposite thing from what’s expected. That’s the key to survival when you’re on the run. Besides, they’d only stand out in Italy in a wa
y they don’t stand out in Germany. Even today. It’s the last place anyone would think to look for them. Especially now that they know we’re going to be telling everyone they went to Italy.”
“They’d stand out anywhere. Half the time I didn’t even know what they were saying. They’re the kind of Jews who make you glad you’re a German.”
“All that Eastern European Yiddish crap? They were laying it on with a baker’s chocolate knife. For their own amusement. No, really, they were twisting your cord, Friedrich. They’re not like that at all. That’s how they were successful burglars for so long. Because they can blend in when and where they want. Of course, in that respect they’re like any other Jews in Germany, very easy to spot. Most heebs look like you and me.”
“Maybe so, but I still think Germany’s finished for the Jews.”
“Let’s just hope it’s not finished for the Germans, too. But Berlin isn’t Germany. That’s why Hitler hates us so much. If you know the right people and have enough money, a man—even a Jew—can still disappear in Berlin. The Krauss brothers are smart. It’s where I would go if I thought the police were coming after me and I had all that coal in my pockets. I certainly wouldn’t go to Italy. Not anymore. Not since the Duce started blaming his troubles on the Jews, too.”
Korsch gave me a sideways look and I could tell what he was thinking. I pulled a face.
