Prussian Blue

by Philip Kerr

  The man in shorts fired up his lighter and held it in front of the other man’s face like someone exploring a cave. “Nothing, Grandad,” he said. “I’m sorry, I mistook you for someone else. Relax. Here, have a cigarette.”

  The old man took one from the offered packet and placed it in his mouth. The lighter flared again. If the old man mentioned having seen me in the doorway farther down the street I was dead.

  “Who is it you’re looking for? Perhaps I can help you find him. I know everyone in Freyming-Merlebach. Even one or two Germans.”

  “Never mind,” said the Stasi man sharply. “Forget it. It’s not important.”

  “Are you sure? You and your friends seem to be all over this town tonight. Must be someone important.”

  “Look, just mind your own business, right? Now fuck off before I lose patience with you.”

  While this conversation was taking place I stepped quietly out of the doorway and started back down the street, intent on putting as much distance as possible between me and Mielke’s men. Hoping the Stasi man would assume I had just come out of the door and ignore me, I walked quickly but calmly, like someone who was actually headed somewhere in particular. I even stopped to glance in the window of a tabac before continuing and I had reached the premises of the local funeral home at the bottom of the street when a light came on at a window immediately above me. It might as well have been a searchlight designed to defeat enemy nighttime maneuvers and it marked me out like an actor on a stage. The next second there was a shout and then a pane of glass shattered near my head. I glanced around and saw the man in shorts leveling a pistol at me. I had been recognized. I didn’t hear the second shot, which made me think he was using a silencer, but I certainly felt the bullet zip past my ear and, taking to my heels, I turned sharply left and ran for about twenty meters before, next to a hairdresser’s shop, I spied a narrow patch of waste ground behind an overgrown metal fence. I climbed over it quickly, dropped into a tall bed of nettles, and ran as far as I could until I arrived at an old garage door. Fortunately it was not locked. I went inside, squeezed past a dusty motorcar, closed the main door carefully behind me, kicked open the back door, which had been locked, and found myself in the concrete yard of someone’s house. Some threadbare towels were drying on a washing line next to a small herb garden and these helped to screen my presence. A man was seated in a barely furnished parlor listening to a football match on the radio, which was loud enough to conceal the sound of me opening his own door and stepping quietly onto the brown linoleum floor of his malodorous kitchen; this was easily referable to a plate of half-eaten andouillettes that lay on the table. If ever a sausage-loving German needed a good excuse to dislike the French it was the pissy smell of an andouillette. It seemed to me there was only one thing worse than that smell and it was the stink of my own unwashed underwear. I paused for a moment and then advanced slowly through the half-lit house, unnoticed by the man still listening intently to the radio. I reached the front door, opened it, glanced outside, and saw a man running along the street. Guessing he must be Stasi, I shut the door and tiptoed up the house stairs in the hope I might find somewhere to hide. The main bedroom was easily identified and even more stinky than the kitchen, but the spare was clean and from the look of it, rarely ever used. A picture of Philippe Pétain hung on the wall; he was wearing a red kepi and a gray tunic and seemed every inch the proud warrior; his mustache looked like a prize chicken, which was also a very good description of the French army he and Weygand had commanded in June 1940. I went to the window and watched the street for ten or fifteen minutes as a car drove slowly up and down; the occupants were obviously looking for me. I could just make out Friedrich Korsch wearing his eye patch in the front seat.

  It was cold in the room, and I wrapped myself in a red blanket I found on top of the wardrobe. After a while I slid underneath the bed with only a chamber pot and a few toenails for company. I told myself I was probably better off where I was, at least for a couple of hours. Gradually my heart slowed and eventually I closed my eyes and even slept a little. Not surprisingly I dreamed I was being chased by a pack of slavering wolves who were almost as ravenously hungry as I was. For some reason I was dressed as Little Red Riding Hood. If only I’d listened to my Grandmother Mielke and stayed strictly on the path.

  When I awoke the radio was off and the whole house was in darkness. I slid out from under the bed, used the chamber pot, went to the window, and checked the street. There was no sign of my pursuers but that didn’t mean they weren’t around. I took the blanket and crept downstairs. A wall clock was ticking loudly in the tiny dining room. It sounded like someone chopping firewood. The smell persisted; the andouillettes were still on the kitchen table and overcoming my very real disgust I ate them, almost gagging as inevitably they reminded me of that chamber pot, and then helped myself to some bread to strangle the taste in my mouth. I drank a cup of cold instant coffee for the caffeine, which was almost as bad as the sausages, took a sharp knife from the drawer, slid it inside the leg of my sock, and then left the house.

  The town was still in darkness and as deserted as if a Gestapo curfew had been in force. I would have to move carefully, like one of those French resistance fighters who were now the stuff of popular fiction. And probably always had been. Anyone moving around at this time of night would raise suspicion. I knew the old border was at the top of the hill but not much more. Somehow I had to find it and then some rough country where, for a while, I might go to ground like a hunted fox. Moving from one little doorway to another as if I were delivering letters, I made my way stealthily up the streets of Freyming-Merlebach and through the town. Finally I saw a long line of conifer trees and knew instinctively that this was Holy Germany and sanctuary. I was just about to run across the road when I caught the strong smell of a French cigarette and paused long enough to see the man in the leather shorts seated in a bus shelter. I knew I would be fortunate to avoid being shot this time. Stasi men were always excellent marksmen, and with his silencer this one was probably an experienced assassin. Korsch would have taken a strip off him for missing me with any shots he fired. Maybe even put another scar on his face with that switchblade. I’d been lucky twice and I didn’t think I’d ever be that lucky again. Somehow I was going to have to get past this man, but I couldn’t see how.

  FORTY-FOUR

  April 1939

  Heydrich’s tall, smooth-faced adjutant, Hans-Hendrik Neumann, was waiting for us up at the Villa Bechstein. In his hand was a book about Karl Ferdinand Braun and the invention of the cathode-ray tube, which served to remind me that Heydrich had a habit of picking clever people from a variety of different backgrounds to work for him. Maybe this included me. Neumann had driven down from Salzburg with an order from Heydrich that had absolutely nothing to do with finding Karl Flex’s assassin and, in the wake of Kaltenbrunner’s clumsy attempt to have me arrested, everything to do with imposing his absolute authority on the Security Service.

  “These two comedians from Linz,” said Neumann. “Where are they now?”

  “In the jail cells beneath the Hotel Türken,” I said. “I stabbed one of them with a piece of glass.”

  “I’m afraid his situation is not about to improve very much. Heydrich has some important questions he wants put to them. Before we shoot them and send the bodies back to Linz.”

  I shouldn’t have been surprised at this news, but I was, and while I disliked the Gestapo intensely I didn’t appreciate being the reason why two men were going to be shot. “You’re going to shoot them?”

  “Not me. The local RSD can do it. That’s what they’re for.” Neumann looked at Friedrich Korsch. “You. Criminal Assistant Korsch, isn’t it? Go and find the duty officer from the RSD and tell him to organize a firing squad for tomorrow morning.”

  Korsch glanced back at me, and I nodded. Now wasn’t the right time to speak up for the two men from Linz. He got up and went off to find the RSD
duty officer.

  “The general wants these men to be made an example,” said Neumann. “Interfering with a police commissar from Kripo HQ carrying out Heydrich’s express orders—that’s you, in case you didn’t recognize yourself—is treasonable. And of course Kaltenbrunner will get the message this sends. But first, we have to interrogate them and make sure that they have told us absolutely everything.”

  “I don’t think you’ll get much more out of them than I did.”

  “Nevertheless those are the general’s orders. I’m to make them talk if I can. And then to shoot them both.”

  “Be my guest. But I think they already told me all there is to know. Kaltenbrunner sent them. Surely it’s all that’s important here.”

  From his trouser pocket Neumann took out an English punch and slipped it over his knuckles. Suddenly he looked like he meant business and I had a much clearer idea of why Heydrich kept him on as his adjutant. It wasn’t just his brain. Sometimes buttons needed to be pressed and faces rearranged. He grinned cruelly. “The general calls me his circuit breaker. On account of my background in electronics.”

  Maybe it was a better joke when Heydrich made it but I doubted it. On the whole I didn’t share the same sense of humor as Himmler’s number two. And while I knew there was a streak of cruelty in me somewhere—it was impossible to have survived the trenches and not have one—on the whole I considered it was nearly always and very properly suppressed. But the Nazis seemed to revel in their cruelty.

  “You’d probably call me all sorts of unpleasant names if I told you how very persuasive I can be,” said Neumann.

  “No, not even if I thought so. But you tell me what the general wants to know and I’ll tell you what I think.”

  He frowned. “These men would certainly have killed you, Gunther. I’d have thought you’d be quite glad to watch them receive a good beating.”

  “I’m not the squeamish type, Captain. I’ve no love for either man. It’s you I’m thinking of. Besides, when you’ve questioned as many suspects as I have you learn never to trust what a man spits out of his mouth when you’ve beaten it from him. Mostly it’s just teeth and very little truth. There’s all that and the fact that there’s so much more happening here than the general ever dreamed of. Take my word for it. This business with Kaltenbrunner is a sideshow. There’s enough going on in Obersalzberg to put Martin Bormann in Heydrich’s pocket for the next thousand years. I can promise you he won’t be disappointed.”

  Neumann shrugged and put away the brass knuckles. “All right. I’m listening. But I’m afraid there’s nothing you can say that’s going to save these men from a firing squad. By the way, I think you ought to be there when we shoot them. It won’t look right if you’re not present.”

  Rudolf Hess was down in Berchtesgaden having a meeting with Party officials at the local Reichs Chancellery, which meant we had the villa to ourselves. So we went and sat in front of the fire in the villa’s drawing room. Wearing his shiny black boots and immaculate SS uniform, Neumann resembled something that had already been consumed by the flames, something heretical, something cured and apostate, like some modern Templar knight. With the SS, you always had the feeling that there was no limit to their zeal—that there was nothing they wouldn’t do in the service of Adolf Hitler. With a war looking imminent, this was an alarming prospect. I threw a few logs onto the fire and drew my chair a bit closer to the pyre. It wasn’t that I was very cold, I just thought there was less chance of there being a listening device hidden in a blazing fireplace. Then, over coffee drawn from the urn on the refectory table underneath the window, I told Hans-Hendrik Neumann everything I had found out since coming to Berchtesgaden and Obersalzberg, and quite a bit more that I was still guessing at. He listened patiently, making notes in a little Siemens leather notebook. He stopped writing when I described the P-Barracks in Unterau.

  Neumann grinned. “You mean Martin Bormann is actually running a brothel down here?”

  “Effectively, yes. Bormann ordered it to be set up for the exclusive benefit of the local workers from P&Z. The weekly administration was being handled by Karl Flex, Schenk, and Brandt, like all the other moneymaking schemes he has running down here. But on a day-to-day basis I believe the place is now being run by a German-speaking Czech girl called Aneta.”

  “Now, that is interesting.” Neumann started writing again.

  “Is it?”

  “Aneta what?”

  “Her surname? I have no idea.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I should like to meet this whore. As soon as possible. Perhaps you could drive me down there now.”

  “I’m supposed to be running an investigation here, Captain. That’s why Heydrich sent me. To find the killer so that Hitler can come here and celebrate his birthday in total confidence that he’s safe. Remember?”

  “Oh, surely. But I don’t think this need take up too much of your valuable time, Gunther.” Neumann closed his notebook and stood up. “Shall we?”

  FORTY-FIVE

  April 1939

  At the P-Barracks, on Gartenauer Insel in Unterau, the business was brisk and Captain Neumann and I had to wait until Aneta had finished satisfying one of her rock-faced clients before she was able to meet with us in the car. She was wearing a strong perfume but you could still smell the sweat of the man who’d been with her, and probably much else from him besides that I didn’t care to think about. I had no idea what was on Neumann’s mind until he opened his tight mouth and started to speak. Aneta sat in the backseat of the Mercedes with her hands in her lap, clutching a small handkerchief as if she was about to start crying. She was a slight but pretty girl, probably in her mid-twenties, blond, and green eyed, with a cute dimple in her trembling chin; she was scared, of course. Terrified actually, but I couldn’t blame her for that. It’s not every day a black angel asks you to step into his car, and to his credit Neumann did his best to try to reassure her. He gave her a cigarette, ten marks, his limp hand—no wonder he needed the English punch—and his most winning smile. It was a charming side to the man I hadn’t seen before.

  “It’s all right, my dear,” he said, lighting her cigarette with a silver Dunhill. “You’re not in any trouble. But there’s something I’d like you to do for me. An important service.” He frowned, and then solicitously moved a strand of yellow hair from her recently—and perhaps, hurriedly—lipsticked mouth. “Don’t worry. I’m not interested in you in that way, Aneta, I can assure you. I’m a happily married man with three children. Isn’t that right, Commissar?”

  “If you say so.”

  “Well, I am. Now then, Aneta. I’m sorry—what’s your surname?”

  “Husák.”

  “Your German is very good. Where did you learn it?”

  “Mostly here, sir. In Berchtesgaden.”

  “Really? By the way—do you have your papers with you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Aneta opened her bag and handed over a gray German State Visitors Pass. Neumann inspected the pass and then handed it to me.

  “Keep that for now,” he said.

  I opened the pass and looked at it. Aneta Husák was twenty-three years old. She looked younger in her picture. I put the pass in my pocket. I still had no idea what Neumann was planning.

  “Have you ever done any photographic work? Any acting?”

  “Acting? Yes. I was in a film once. A couple of years ago.”

  “Excellent. What kind of film was it?”

  “A Minette movie. In Vienna.”

  A Minette movie was one featuring naked girls. I never minded looking at naked girls but the ones in Minette movies were always a little too uninhibited for my taste. A little inhibition is good for a man’s psychology; it makes him think the girl might not do what she’s doing with everyone.

  “Even better,” said Neumann. “Perhaps you can remember the film’s title.”

/>   “It was called Saucy Secretary. Please, sir, what’s all this about?”

  “Aneta, if you do this favor for me, you will be paid, handsomely, in cash, and you will get some nice new clothes. Whatever you want. A whole new wardrobe of beautiful clothes. All I require from you is that you come with me now and do exactly what I tell you. An acting job. I want you to pretend to be someone else. A lady. Can you do that?”

  “I think so.”

  “It shouldn’t take more than a day—perhaps a day and a half. But you must ask no questions. Just do what you’re told. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, sir. May I ask, how much will I be paid, sir?”

  “Good question. How does five hundred reichsmarks sound to you, Aneta?”

  “It sounds wonderful, sir.”

  “If you do this job well, there may be more. You could even be asked to Berlin, where you will get to stay in a nice expensive hotel and have whatever you want. Champagne. Delicious meals. You are Czech, aren’t you? From Carlsbad.”

  “Yes, sir. Do you know Carlsbad?”

  Neumann started the car’s engine.

  “As a matter of fact I do,” he said. “Only I think, now that Czechoslovakia is part of the Greater German Reich—since last year—we must learn to start calling that part of the world Bohemia, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I like Bohemia better, don’t you? It sounds so much more romantic than Czechoslovakia.”

  “Yes it does,” she agreed. “Like something from an old novel.”

  “So do you like being part of the new Germany?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. I went to the spa there once. And stayed at the Grandhotel Pupp. Marvelous place. Do you know it?”

  “Everyone in Carlsbad knows the Pupp, sir. My mother worked there as a waitress for many years.”