Prussian Blue

by Philip Kerr

  “Me, sir? I don’t know what I can do.”

  “A bit of local knowledge might come in useful, eh, Commissar?”

  “I’m sure you’re right. But perhaps your adjutant prefers not to be under my orders.”

  “Nonsense. You’ll be glad to assist the commissar in any way you can, won’t you, Wilhelm?”

  “Of course, if you think it’s necessary, sir.”

  “I do. And while you’re there, make sure you ask the Gestapo if they’re doing everything they can to root out those other traitors.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Zander.

  “Maybe now’s the time to mention the innocent man who’s still in custody at the Türken Inn,” I said. “Johann Brandner. He should really be under medical supervision. Can I tell Major Högl to release him? And to have the man transferred back to the hospital in Nuremberg?”

  “I think not. Nothing has really changed. You may have a name but you don’t yet have your man. This fellow Brandner is our bird in the hand, so to speak. I might yet need a Fritz to blame for all this business, should you fail to make an arrest. If the Leader should happen to hear about the shooting on the Berghof terrace from someone jealous of my influence on him—and there are plenty of those, believe me—then I’m afraid I really can’t look him in the eye and tell him that nobody has been arrested. That would be unthinkable. You understand? Until you have Diesbach under lock and key, I am forced to keep Brandner in custody.”

  I nodded.

  “But rest assured nothing will happen to Brandner so long as Zander here tells me that the search for this Diesbach fellow is still proceeding apace.”

  “And the other two? The two Gestapo from Linz?”

  “Heydrich wants them dead.”

  “I’m the one asking.”

  “All right. Them, too. Because I’m feeling generous.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “All the same, given its extreme sensitivity, we’d better have a code word or phrase for a successful conclusion to this operation. A short message that will indicate that Johann Diesbach has been arrested and that will allow me to order the immediate release of Brandner from the Türken Inn’s cells. What do you say, Gunther?”

  “I agree, sir.”

  “So what would you suggest?”

  I searched the felt-lined hood for inspiration as I tried to think of something, and then, rather desperately, I said: “Well, now I come to think of it, there was another Johann Diesbach, Johann Jacob Diesbach, a Berlin paint maker who invented the color Prussian blue, back in 1706. The whole Prussian army wore coats of Prussian blue until the Great War, when it moved over to field gray. At one time every Berlin schoolboy used to know the name of Johann Jacob Diesbach. So how about that, sir? How about Prussian blue?”

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  April 1939

  The Police Praesidium in Saarbrücken was on St. Johannerstrasse, a stone’s throw north of the River Saar and conveniently close to the main railway station at which we had just arrived. Zander and I checked into the Rheinischer Hof on Adolf-Hitlerstrasse, consumed a very quick lunch at the Ratskeller, and then went straight to see Major Hans Geschke, the recently appointed Gestapo chief in the Saarland capital who was now coordinating the search for Johann Diesbach.

  Made of concrete the color of old dog shit, the Praesidium was a five-story building of recent construction, with regular square windows, a cumbersome door that was clearly meant to remind people of how small they were in comparison with the state, and nothing to commend it architecturally. I could almost hear Gerdy Troost dismissing it as a typical Speer design, with no redeeming features and zero character, and that was exactly how I would have described Geschke, a baby-faced doctor of law from Frankfurt and probably not much more than thirty years of age. He was one of those smooth, clever types of Nazi for whom a career in the police was only a means to an end, that being executive power and its twin shadows, money and prestige. Pale-skinned, smiling, keen, bright-eyed: he reminded me of a sinister Pierrot who’d abandoned unworldly naïveté and the pursuit of Columbine for a leading role in The Threepenny Opera. But while Geschke had been studying in Berlin, he’d read about one of my old cases, which he told me almost immediately I entered his office, and for several minutes I allowed myself to be flattered in the interests of congeniality and cooperation.* But I was glad it was him I was dealing with and not his predecessor, Anton Dunckern, now promoted to greater responsibility in Brunswick and known to many Berlin cops as a member of a notorious SS murder squad that had been very active in and around the city in the bloody summer of 1934. I had good reason to believe that Dunckern had murdered a good friend of mine, Erich Heinz, a prominent member of the SPD, whose body had been found near the town of Oranienburg, in July of that year. He’d been hacked to death with an ax.

  “The border police have been alerted,” Geschke told us. “And the transport police, of course. The local Gestapo are watching all of the local railway stations and I’ve been in touch with the French police, who, in spite of recent diplomatic tensions, are always extremely cooperative. If Germany ever rules France again you can be sure we’ll have no problem with their police. Commissaire Schuman, who you might say is my opposite number, in Metz, has a German father and speaks the language fluently. Frankly, I think he has more in common with us than he does with that fool Édouard Daladier. It was Schuman who boarded the Berlin train to Paris last October and arrested the Swiss assassin Maurice Bavaud. By the way, is there any news of when Bavaud is to be tried?”

  “I have no idea.” I thought it hardly worth mentioning that Bavaud hadn’t actually killed anyone, but we both knew that the verdict in the man’s trial was already a foregone conclusion.

  Geschke nodded. “Anyway,” he continued, “the Lorraine border is now as tight as the paint on a piece of Dresden china. But please, I’d welcome any suggestions as to what else we can do to assist the office of the deputy chief of staff, not to mention the Kripo detective who famously caught Gormann the strangler. We may be a small city by comparison with Berlin but we are keen to be useful. And we are very loyal. In the plebiscite of 1935, ninety percent of Saarlanders voted to become a part of Germany. I’m glad to say that most of the opponents of National Socialism who took refuge here after 1933 are in prison or have fled to France.”

  Wilhelm Zander, sitting in a chair by the windowsill, smiled thinly, as if he remembered what Bormann had said about the place. Roughly the same age, he and Geschke looked as if they’d come out of the same rat’s nest and the only noticeable difference between the two was that unlike a great many of the people who’d risen to positions of power under the Nazis, Zander wasn’t a lawyer, or, as far as I could see, a doctor of anything. Even after a longish train journey with Wilhelm Zander I knew very little about the man, but I had already come to the conclusion that I wasn’t remotely interested in finding out more. For his part, he seemed totally uninterested in the fate of my mission and had spent most of the train journey reading a book about Italy where, he told me, he still had a number of business interests. I could hardly blame him; for anyone who came from Saarbrücken, Italy must have looked like Shangri-la. A house built on the slopes of Vesuvius would have seemed more attractive than the finest dwelling in Saarbrücken.

  I didn’t mind his disinterest in my job; in fact I welcomed it. The last thing I wanted was Martin Bormann’s spy looking over my shoulder while I went through the motions of being a detective. And my only concern was that the Walther P38 he’d insisted on bringing from Obersalzberg would prove more lethal to him or me than to Johann Diesbach.

  “Do you know how to use that thing?” I’d asked when first I’d seen the pistol in his luggage, on the train.

  “I’m not an expert. But I know how to use a gun.”

  “I hope so.”

  “Look here, Commissar, I didn’t want this job. And surely you don’t expect me to help you
look for a wanted fugitive without a weapon. Frankly, I’d have thought you’d be glad to have some backup firepower, given that your police colleague elected to remain in Berchtesgaden.”

  “No, I told him to stay.”

  “May I ask why?”

  “Police business.”

  “Such as?”

  “I’m hoping he might obtain some more information out of Frau Diesbach. A last few crumbs, perhaps, concerning the exact whereabouts of her husband.”

  “And exactly how will he do that? Thumbscrews? A dog whip?”

  “Sure. And if all of that fails, then Korsch will light a fire under her feet. That always works. And one thing they’re not short of in Berchtesgaden is a supply of slow-burning wood.”

  I was joking about this but before I’d left I’d still felt obliged to tell Korsch very firmly that I didn’t want Eva Diesbach slapped around. It was enough, I thought, that he’d already hit her; the possibility that he might do so again—not to mention the charges that might yet be leveled against her son Benno—was probably enough, eventually, to persuade her to yield up more information.

  “We don’t use methods like that in Kripo,” I told Zander. “I leave that kind of thing to people like Major Högl.”

  “I had no idea you were so particular, Commissar.”

  “You start beating people up during an interrogation, it becomes a bad habit. In the long term the only person who comes out damaged is the cop who’s prone to using his fists. And I don’t mean the damage to the skin on his knuckles.”

  After meeting Hans Geschke, we went back to our hotel and then to dinner at the Saar Terrace by the Luisen Bridge. Like the food, the weather was foul: wet and cold, and after the blue sky and snow of Berchtesgaden, Saarbrücken felt very dismal. Geschke had told us that if he heard any news he would fetch us immediately, but when we got back to the Rheinischer Hof, I found a message from Friedrich Korsch asking me to telephone him urgently on a Berchtesgaden number, which turned out to be the Schorn Ziegler, the guest house in St. Leonhard where Captain Neumann had been staying.

  “I had to move out of the Villa Bechstein,” he explained. “To make way for some Party bigwigs and their entourages who’ve turned up for the Leader’s birthday. Apparently he’s expected any minute now. Anyway, Captain Neumann said I could use his room here, in St. Leonhard, because he’s not using it, on account of how he was going back to Berlin.”

  “Yes, he’s very thoughtful, is our Captain Neumann.”

  I hadn’t told Korsch about the murder of Aneta Husák; I wasn’t sure there was much point in telling anyone about her. Murder—real murder, when someone innocent is killed by someone else—was becoming almost unimportant in Hitler’s Germany. Unless it was designed to discredit someone in the eyes of the Leader.

  “The latest we’ve heard from the Orpo is that Diesbach’s Wanderer was found in front of the Frauentor, near the railway station in Nuremberg.”

  “Nuremberg? I wonder why he went there.”

  “Since 1935 Nuremberg’s had the best rail connections in Germany. Because of all the Nazi Party rallies, of course. A man in the ticket office remembers a man answering Diesbach’s description who bought three tickets: one to Berlin, one to Frankfurt, and one to Stuttgart. Trying to throw us off the scent, no doubt. Of course, Frankfurt and Stuttgart are a lot nearer French Lorraine. Assuming that’s where he’s gone.”

  “How are you getting on with the Amazon lady?”

  “I’m starting to quite like her, boss. She’s got some dinner on her, hasn’t she? Two lovely courses. I get hungry just looking at them.”

  “Just keep your mind on the job and your mittens off her exhibits. She’s a witness, always supposing that this Fritz ever goes to trial. More importantly, did you get anything else out of her?”

  “Nothing. But young Benno showed up eventually and I could see why his mama wanted him kept out of uniform. He’s much too warm for the army.”

  “He’s queer?”

  “Like a talking gardenia. Anyway, after I crushed his silk scarf a bit—just a bit, mind, nothing serious, he can still wear it—he told me something interesting. He used to have an aunt in the Saarland. Apparently Papa Johann has or had an older sister in Homburg. Name of Berge, Paula Berge. I looked the place up on the map. Turns out Homburg is a small town about twenty kilometers east of Saarbrücken and just the sort of place you might hole up for a while before deciding it’s safe to tiptoe across the French border. The Kaiser could be living there and no one would know. According to Benno, his dad and his aunt haven’t spoken in a long while but Benno Diesbach reckons Frau Berge used to work as a secretary for the managing director at the local Karlsberg Brewery. For all he knows she might still be there. In Homburg. In which case—”

  “Brother Johann and sister Paula might have patched things up.”

  “Precisely.”

  “What did Mama have to say to that?”

  “Not much. But she certainly looked like she wanted to give Benno a good slap.”

  “I can think of worse places to hide than a brewery, can’t you?”

  FIFTY-NINE

  April 1939

  Early the next morning Zander and I borrowed a car from the police and drove out of town along the Kaiserslautern road, toward the little town of Homburg. I was behind the wheel of a very battered 260 convertible but Zander sat in the rear seat, as if I were his chauffeur. Not that I cared very much. I laughed when I realized this was how he proposed to make the journey to the Karlsberg Brewery.

  “You really want to travel like this?”

  “I don’t drive. And I believe I might as well sit in the back as anywhere else.”

  “It’s not considered polite to treat a colleague like the hired help.”

  “Since when did being polite worry you?”

  “Now that you mention it, you’re right. Maybe we should take the top down and some local dimwit will mistake you for the Archduke Ferdinand and put a hole in your big head.”

  It was cold and we were both wearing overcoats but Zander was also dressed in his customary brown Party tunic, with the red leadership collar patches that signified something, I supposed, but I had little or no idea what this might be; all I knew was that the man from Saarbrücken looked as neat as a new pin and was just as prickly. Mostly he just smoked endless French cigarettes and stared sourly out the rear window as we left behind the gray streets and continued into the surrounding gray countryside. After a while, however, he spoke. I think it was me having to wait for a herd of red pied cattle to cross the road and the amount of dung they left behind that prompted him to open his slit of a mouth.

  “Christ, I hate this damn place. The only good thing about being back here is the French cigarettes.”

  “Anything in particular you hate?” I asked brightly. “Or is it mainly yourself?”

  In my rearview mirror I saw him bite his lip before answering; I imagine he’d have preferred it had been my jugular vein. Clearly I’d touched a raw nerve.

  “You wouldn’t understand. The whole world looks different when you come from somewhere like Berlin.”

  “I always thought so.”

  I might have mentioned in evidence for this assertion the fact that the Nazis had never been that popular in Berlin, where no more than thirty-one percent of people had ever voted for them in any election, but there seemed to be no point in antagonizing the little man, or in earning myself a trip to see the Gestapo. If Zander’s red collar patches meant anything, they meant that he hadn’t got where he was by ignoring even the smallest sign of disloyalty to the Party. He’d have denounced me as quickly as he could light another cigarette.

  “Coming from Berlin you’ve probably never felt the need to escape from the place you came from to go somewhere else. Have you?”

  “Not until very recently.”

  “You’re lucky,�
�� he said. “And you heard what Martin Bormann said about the Saarland, back in Obersalzberg. You’re automatically suspect if you come from somewhere like this. Why else does the Leader surround himself with Bavarians? For the simple reason they were always there for him. From the very beginning. When Hitler was marching through the streets of Munich with Ludendorff in 1923, I was growing up in a place that was ruled jointly by Britain and France under the Treaty of Versailles. I was a man without a country until 1935. What kind of a German does that make me in the Leader’s eyes?” He sneered out the window. “Of course I hate this place. Anyone would. Anyone who wants to get somewhere in the new Germany.”

  After that he didn’t say much about anything. But I now had a keener appreciation of why people became Nazis in the first place; perhaps it was like he said: that they wanted to get away from dead-end, no-account places like Saarbrücken, wanted to achieve some sort of status among their fellow men, wanted their shitty, insignificant lives to mean something, even if they could find that meaning only in being mean to others—Jews, mostly, but anyone who didn’t agree with them would do.

  We drove into Homburg and found it a place even less remarkable than Saarbrücken, which was saying something. The weather had closed in and rain lashed the windscreen so loudly it sounded as if someone was frying bacon. And Zander’s depression was becoming infectious, like a bad spell. I followed the signs for the brewery, which was the sensible thing for any German to do, and the route led us up a hill in the same direction as the ruins of Karlsberg Castle.

  “Is it an interesting castle?” I asked. “Only I remember some of the lecture you gave at the theater in Antenberg. You used to come here when you were a boy, didn’t you?”

  “There’s very little of the castle left nowadays. It was one of the largest châteaus in Europe and the residence of the Duke of Zweibrücken until an ill-disciplined rabble of a French revolutionary army turned up and set fire to it in 1793. Most of the ruins are gone. Only the foundations remain, I think. The one building that still stands belongs to the brewery. Anyway, that was the last time anything interesting happened in Homburg. History has been sidestepping this place ever since.”