by Philip Kerr
?” “If God is German, I for one won’t be at all surprised. Apparently he enjoys being worshipped, issuing people with ten commandments at a time, and has even written his own unreadable book. But the God that this man worshipped was the Hebrew God. Jews sometimes sew a piece of the word of God into their clothes, next to their heart. Yes, that’s right, Richard. He was a Jew.” “Shit. God damn it all.” “You really mean that, don’t you?” “I told you, Gunther. The chief is never going to authorize me to investigate the death of a Jew. Damn it all. I thought this might have been a chance to prove myself. To lead a proper murder investigation, you know?” I said nothing. It wasn’t that I was speechless, but I certainly didn’t feel like making a speech. What would be the point? “I don’t make police policy, Gunther,” said Bömer. “Even Liebermann von Sonnenberg doesn’t do that. If you really want to know, the policy comes down from the Ministry of the Interior. From Frick. And Frick gets it from Goering, who probably gets it from—” “The devil himself. I know.” Suddenly I badly wanted to be away from Richard Bömer and his vaulting forensic ambition. And it was now obvious in a way it hadn’t been obvious before that being a policeman had changed a lot more than I had supposed. I couldn’t ever go back to the Alex even if I had wanted to. “I expect there will be other murders, Richard. In fact, I’m sure of it. In that respect at least, you can rely on the Nazis.” “You don’t understand. I want to be a detective, like in the stories. It’s all I’ve ever wanted to be. A proper detective, like you were, Gunther. But police states are bad for crime and bad for criminals. Because everyone’s a policeman in Germany now. And if they’re not yet, they soon will be.” He kicked the laboratory workbench and swore again. “Richard. You almost make me feel sorry for you.” I picked up the dead man’s file and handed it back. “Well, I can’t say it’s not been fun. I’ve missed the job. I’ve even missed the customers. Can you believe that? But from now on I’m going to miss the job the way I miss the Lustgarten. Which is to say, not at all. Because it’s not the same. It’s not like it used to be. When someone gets murdered—it doesn’t matter who it is—you investigate. You investigate, because that’s what you do when you live in a decent society. And when you don’t, when you say that someone’s death isn’t worth the candle, then the job’s not worth having anyway. Not anymore.” I held the file out to him. But he stared at it as if it wasn’t there. “Go ahead,” I said. “Take this. It’s yours.” But we both knew it wasn’t. Ignoring the file, he turned and walked out of the laboratory, and although I wasn’t there to see it, the Pathological Institute, as well. A few months later Erich Liebermann von Sonnenberg told me that Richard Bömer had left KRIPO and joined the SS. At the time it looked like the better career move.
12 T
HE TWO OFFICERS FROM KRIPO were very polite,” Georg Behlert told me. “Frau Adlon couldn’t have been more grateful for the way you’ve handled this whole affair. Excellent. Well done.” We were seated in Behlert’s office overlooking the Goethe Garden. Through the open doors of the adjoining Palm Court, a piano trio was doing its best to ignore a statue of Hercules that seemed to demand something rather more muscular than a selection of Mozart and Schubert. I felt a little like Hercules myself, returning to Mycenae after carrying out some pointless labor. “Perhaps,” I said. “But I can’t think it was a good idea for me to get involved like this. I should just have let them get on with it. I might have known they would extract some sort of price.” Behlert looked puzzled. “What price? You don’t mean—?” “Not from the hotel,” I added. “A price from me.” And just to see the look of horror on his smooth, shiny face, I told Behlert about Liebermann von Sonnenberg and the dead man in the Charité. “Next time,” I said. “If there is a next time. I shan’t try to influence a police investigation. It was naive of me to think I could. And for what? Some fat guy in room 210 I never even met. Why should I worry about his wife? Maybe she hated him. If she didn’t, she ought to have. It would serve him damn well right if the cops put their feet right through her feelings when they gave her the bad news. He should have thought of her when he started monkeying around with a Berlin joy lady.” “But you were doing what you did for the sake of the good reputation of the Adlon Hotel,” said Behlert, as if that was all the justification required. “Yes, I suppose so.” He was on his feet now, removing a stopper from a decanter of the good stuff and pouring us each a thimble-sized glass. “Here. Drink this. It looks like you need it.” “Thanks, Georg.” “What’s going to happen to him?” “To Rubusch?” “No, I mean, to the poor fellow in the morgue?” “You really want to know?” He nodded. “With an unidentified body, what usually happens is, they take him around to the university anatomical institute and let the students loose on him.” “But suppose the investigation reveals his true identity.” “I didn’t make that clear, did I? There isn’t going to be an investigation. Not now that we—I mean, I—not now that I’ve established that he was a Jew. The Berlin police don’t want to know about dead Jews. It’s not considered a proper use of police time and resources. As far as the cops are concerned, his murderer—if indeed he was murdered, I’m not at all sure about that—that person is more likely to be congratulated than prosecuted.” Behlert drained his glass of the excellent schnapps and shook his head with disbelief. “I’m not making this up,” I said. “I know it seems incredible, but it’s all true. Hand on heart.” “I believe you, Bernie. I believe you.” He sighed. “One of the guests has just returned from Bavaria. He’s a British Jew. From Manchester. Apparently he saw a road sign that said something like DANGEROUS BEND, SPEED LIMIT 50. JEWS HURRY UP. What could I tell him? I said it was probably a sick joke. But I knew it wasn’t. In my own hometown of Jena, there is a similar sign outside the Zeiss Planetarium that suggests a new homeland for Jews on the planet Mars. And the terrible thing is, they mean it. Some of the guests are saying they’re never coming back to Germany. That we’re no longer the considerate people we were. Even in Berlin.” “These days a considerate German is someone who doesn’t knock at your door early in the morning in case you think it’s the Gestapo.” I handed him the letter containing Muller’s resignation as an Adlon Hotel detective. He read it and then laid it on his desk. “I can’t say I’m surprised or sorry. I’ve had my suspicions about that man for some time. Of course, for you it will mean there’s more to do. At least until we can find a replacement. Which is why I’m going to increase your salary. How does an extra ten marks a week sound?” “It’s not Handel, but I guess I like it.” “Good. Perhaps you can find a replacement. After all, you were very helpful with Fräulein Bauer. The stenographer? She’s been doing a lot of work for Herr Reles in 114. Apparently he’s very pleased with her.” “Good.” “You might know someone else. An ex-policeman. Someone like yourself. Someone reliable. Someone discreet. Someone smart.” I nodded slowly and poured the drink down my throat. Georg Behlert seemed to think he knew me, but I wasn’t sure I knew myself. Not anymore. Certainly not since my visit to see Otto Schuchardt on the Jewish Desk at Gestapo House. It was, perhaps, time I did something about that. I CAUGHT A NUMBER 10 TRAM WEST, across Invalidenstrasse and into Old Moabit, past the criminal courts and the prison. Next to Bolle’s Dairy—from which a strong smell of horse manure blew down the street toward the Lessing Bridge—was a dilapidated tenement. It was a crummy sort of area—even the trash in the street looked like something someone had thrown away. Emil Linthe was on the top floor, and through the open window on the landing in front of his door, one could hear noise from the machine-tool factory on Huttenstrasse. It had been silent for almost a year during the Great Depression, but since the Nazis had come into government, the place was constantly active. There were just three iron beats, over and over again, like a waltz conducted by Thor, the god of thunder. I knocked on the door, and eventually it opened, to reveal a tall, slim man in his thirties with a plentiful head of hair that was high at the front and almost nonexistent at the back. It was like finding a chaise longue on top of someone’s head. “D
o you ever get used to that noise?” I asked. “What noise?” “I guess you do. Emil Linthe?” “Gone away. On holiday. Rügen Island.” There was ink on his fingers. Enough to make me suspect I was talking to the right man after all. “My mistake,” I said. “Maybe you’re going by a different name these days. Otto Trettin said it might be Maier, or maybe Schmidt. Walter Schmidt.” Linthe’s persona deflated like a balloon. “A copper.” “Relax. I’m not here to squeeze your wrists. I’m here on business. Your kind of business.” “And why would I want to do business with the Berlin polenta?” “Because Otto still hasn’t found your file, Emil. And because you don’t want to give him any reason to start looking for it again. Or you might find yourself back in the Punch. His words, not mine. But I’m like a brother to that man.” “I always thought coppers killed their brothers when they were still in their cradles.” “Ask me in. There’s a good fellow. It’s a bit noisy out here, and you wouldn’t want me to raise my voice, now, would you?” Emil Linthe stepped aside. At the same time he drew up his suspenders and picked up a cigarette he’d left burning in an ashtray on a ledge inside the door. As I came inside, he closed the door and then quickly moved ahead of me along the corridor to close the sitting room door. But not soon enough to prevent me from seeing what looked like a printing press. We went into the kitchen. “I told you, Emil. I’m not here to squeeze your wrists.” “The leopard doesn’t change its spots.” “As a matter of fact, that’s exactly what I wanted to talk to you about. I hear you can do exactly that. For the right money. I want you to give me what Otto Trettin called an Aryan transfusion.” I told him the problem about my grandmother. He smiled and shook his head. “It makes me laugh,” he said. “All those people who got on the Nazi train, now running back down the aisle to look for the station they started from.” I might have told him I wasn’t one of those people. I might have admitted I wasn’t a cop, but I didn’t want to deliver myself into his potentially blackmailing hands. Linthe was a crook after all. I needed to hold on to the whip, or else I might lose control of a horse I planned to ride for as long as I needed it. “You Nazis are all the same.” He laughed again. “Hypocrites.” “I’m not a Nazi. I’m a German. And a German is different from a Nazi. A German is a man who manages to overcome his worst prejudices. A Nazi is a man who turns them into laws.” But he was too busy laughing to listen to what I was saying. “It wasn’t my intention to amuse you, Emil.” “Nevertheless, I am amused. It is rather amusing.” I grabbed him by the braces and drew them tight in opposite directions so that I was half strangling him, and then shoved him hard up against the kitchen wall. Through the window, just north of Moabit, I could make out the shape of Plötzensee Prison, where recently Otto had seen the falling ax in action. It reminded me to be gentle with Emil Linthe. But not too gentle. “Am I laughing?” I slapped him on one cheek and then the other. “Am I?” “No,” he yelled irritably. “Perhaps you think that file of yours really is lost, Emil. Perhaps I need to remind you what’s in it. You’re a known associate of the Hand in Hand, a very nasty little criminal ring. Also of Salomon Smolianoff, a Ukrainian counterfeiter who’s currently doing three years in the Dutch cement for forging British banknotes. You did three in the Punch for the same offense. Which is why you’ve developed a profitable little sideline forging documents. Of course, if they ever catch you forging currency again they’ll throw away the key. And they will, Emil. They will. I can guarantee it. Because if you don’t help me I’ll walk straight round to the Charlottenburg Police Praesidium and tell them about the printing press in your living room. What is it, a platen?” I let him go. “I mean, I’m a fair man. I would offer to pay you, but what would be the point? You could probably print more in ten minutes than I could earn in a year.” Emil Linthe grinned, sheepishly. “You know about printing presses?” “Not really. But I know what one looks like when I see it.” “Actually it’s a Kluge. Better than a platen. The Kluge is the best for running any type of job work, including die cutting, foil stamping, and embossing.” He lit a cigarette. “Look, I didn’t say I wouldn’t help you. Any friend of Otto’s, yes? I just said it was amusing, that’s all.” “Not to me, Emil. Not to me.” “Well, then you’re in luck. I happen to know what the hell I’m doing. Unlike most of the people Otto could have recommended. You say your maternal grandmother, surname—?” “Adler.” “Right. She was Jewish by birth? But was brought up as a Roman Catholic?” “Yes.” “In the parish of?” “Neukölln.” “I’ll have to fix it in the church registry and in the town hall. Neukölln’s good. A lot of officials there are old lefties and very easily corrupted. If it was more than two grandparents I probably couldn’t help you. But one is relatively straightforward, if you know what you’re doing. Which I do. But I’ll need birth certificates, death certificates, all you’ve got.” I handed him an envelope from my coat pocket. “It’s probably best I redo everything from scratch. All records fixed.” “How much will it cost me?” Linthe shook his head. “Like you said. In ten minutes I can print more than you can make in a year. So. We’ll call it a favor to you and Otto, all right?” He shook his head. “It’s no sweat. Adler easily becomes Kugler, or Ebner, or Fendler, or Kepler, or Muller, see?” “Not Muller,” I said. “It’s a good German name.” “I don’t like it.” “All right. And just to make things that little bit more plausible, we’ll turn your grandmother into your great-grandmother. Just put the Jew in you back a generation so that it becomes inconsequential. By the time I’ve finished, you’ll look more German than the Kaiser.” “He was half English, wasn’t he? His grandmother was Queen Victoria.” “True. But she was half German. And so was the Kaiser’s mother.” Linthe shook his head. “No one is ever one hundred percent anything. That’s what’s so stupid about this Aryan paragraph. We’re all of us a mixture. You, me, the Kaiser, Hitler. Hitler, most of all, I shouldn’t wonder. They say Hitler is one-quarter Jewish. What do you think of that?” “Maybe he and I have something in common after all.” For his sake I just hoped Hitler had a friend on the Jew Desk in the Gestapo, like I did.
13 H
EDDA ADLON HAD A FRIEND, TOO, but not the kind you find anywhere south of paradise. Her name was Mrs. Noreen Charalambides and, a couple of days before I was introduced to her, I had already committed her face and her backside and her calves and her bosom to a space in the flask of my Faustian memory previously reserved for Helen of Troy. It was my job to keep an eye on the guests, and whenever I saw Mrs. Charalambides in and around the hotel, I kept all eight of them on her, waiting for her to brush against the silken thread that marked the outer limits of my darker, spidery world. Not that I would ever have tried to “fraternize” with a guest, if that was what you called it. That was what Hedda Adlon and Georg Behlert called it, but something as brotherly as fraternity was a very long way from what I wanted to do with Noreen Charalambides. Whatever you called it, the hotel took a dim view of that kind of thing. It did happen, of course, and several chambermaids were not above selling it for the right price. When Erich von Stroheim or Emil Jannings were staying at the hotel, the chief reception clerk was always careful to have them attended by a rather elderly chambermaid named Bella. Then again, Stroheim wasn’t that particular. He liked them young. But he liked them old, too. It sounds ridiculous, and of course it is—love is ridiculous, that’s what makes it fun—but I suppose I was a little in love with Noreen Charalambides before I even met her. Like some schoolgirl with a Ross postcard of Max Hansen in her satchel. I looked at her the way I sometimes look at an SSK in the window of the Mercedes-Benz showroom on Potsdamer Platz: I don’t ever expect to drive that car, let alone own one, but a man can dream. While she was there, Mrs. Charalambides looked like the fastest and most beautiful car in the hotel. She was tall, an impression enhanced by her choice of hat. The weather had cooled of late. She wore a gray Astrakhan shako that she may have bought in Moscow, her previous port of call, although she was in fact an American who lived in New York. An American who was on her way back home from some kind of literary
or theatrical festival in Russia. Maybe she had bought the sable coat in Moscow, too. I’m sure the sable didn’t mind. Mrs. Charalambides looked better in it than any sable I’d ever seen. Her hair, which she wore in a bun, was also sable-colored and, I imagined, every bit as nice to stroke. Nicer, probably, as it wasn’t likely to bite. All the same, I wouldn’t have minded being bitten by Noreen Charalambides. Any proximity to her pouting, cherry-red Fokker Albatross of a mouth would have been worth losing a fingertip or a piece of my ear. Vincent van Gogh wasn’t the only fellow who could make that kind of heady, romantic sacrificial gesture. I took to hanging around in the entrance hall like a page boy in the hope of laying eyes on her. Even Hedda Adlon remarked on the similarity. “I’m thinking of asking you to read Lorenz Adlon’s rulebook for page boys,” she joked. “I read that. It’ll never sell. For one thing, there are too many rules. And for another, most of these page boys are too busy running errands to have the time to read anything longer than War and Peace
