Wagner watched with undisguised contempt, Schmidt patiently. Was the embarrassment due to yesterday’s encounter in the corridor when he’d had Fräulein Dressler against the wall? What had that been about? Schmidt had sensed more in the air than Otto’s infamous lust. Then he recalled his own encounter.
Otto got his combination off, and stood back staring moodily while the deputy foreign manager twirled the dial with disparaging aplomb, and the chief auditor followed with his usual care and precision. The working stock of bearer bonds which the investment department used in their trading activities was due for Schmidt’s first audit. About once a week the trio attended in the vault with investment staff while bonds were lodged or withdrawn, but this was a different procedure. He took the opened packet to a table together with the register which recorded the ins and outs, the running balance. He proceeded to count and examine each certificate held in the working stock, comparing its number with that recorded.
Wagner lit one of his offensive cigarettes, and leant against a wall.
‘God save us!’ Otto complained. He moved away, paced up and down, weighty matters on his mind. Schmidt balanced the face value of the certificates against the running total.
The young director pulled up, swung around on them. ‘I trust you’re meeting all of Herr Dietrich’s requirements?’
Wagner shrugged carelessly. Schmidt intervened quickly, ‘Herr Dietrich’s watching everything with great care. He tells me he’s satisfied thus far.’
Otto grunted and resumed his moody patrol. Schmidt verified the seal and notation on a second large expandable envelope. He replaced the two in the safe, locked up, and they went their ways. Doubtless, Otto would retape the scrap of paper with its secret combination numbers to the side of his left-hand desk drawer, where Schmidt had once observed it. Strictly against the bank’s regulations, but the heir apparent had already begun to make his own. No political affiliations was the unwritten Wertheim dictum; predictable, that Otto now saw that as obsolescent.
‘Christ!’ Wagner said to Schmidt as they parted on the landing.
Herr Dietrich was waiting in Schmidt’s office, an air of impending action about him. Standing in the door, Schmidt felt a surge of adrenalin; this reaction was becoming chronic. At one point, as he’d checked the bonds, he’d had the uncongenial notion the Nazi was double-checking over his shoulder.
‘There you are, Schmidt.’ With an amused expression, the Nazi regarded the auditor. ‘Busy as a beaver, as the Americans say.’
Schmidt nodded.
Dietrich laughed. Clearly, he was in an ebullient mood. ‘I have visited the United States, you know. An interesting place. Never mind. I wished to tell you that I’ve settled the Dressler matter. Not quite settled yet, but it will run its course to a satisfactory conclusion. She’s Jewish. The birth certificate provides the clinching evidence. We lawyers are meticulous with the facts. I’ve spoken with Herr Wertheim, and I’ve no doubt he’ll take the correct action. So there we are!’ He paused and silently added: ‘And how do you like that, my little friend?’
Schmidt regained his chair, and held his composure together. As he’d listened to the Nazi his thoughts had run a kind of parallel race. Wertheim, the old silver fox, playing for time, might’ve deceived the Nazi about his intentions, might’ve fobbed him off while he sorted the matter out at a higher level. On the other hand, the banker might have capitulated, and sunk his good intentions. Unfailing urbanity was the G-D’s only predictable characteristic, especially these days.
Dietrich watched the auditor. ‘Another matter. Have you ever considered joining the Party? ... I invite you to do so. The Party needs competent people of sound stock. Naturally, membership brings arduous responsibilities. As the Americans say: There’re no free lunches ... what do you say?’
Schmidt gazed into the hard but avuncular blue eyes. This morning the Americans were really to the fore. He considered his desktop, the spot where the manila folder with Fräulein Dressler’s passport application had lain an hour ago. Sound stock? Could von Streck’s knowledge of his heritage extend to Dietrich? Another nerve-stirring idea. Nothing could be counted out.
‘A great honour, Herr Dietrich. Not to be taken lightly. Of course, the bank’s regulations —’
‘Would not stand in the way. Look at Herr Otto. You’re such a serious fellow, Schmidt. And you don’t have to tell me again it’s a professional characteristic. But think about it. Each of us must plan our future. I know about the unfortunate business with your eye. I trust no bitterness lingers there. We’ve eliminated undisciplined elements, people are now reliable.’ If it had happened to him he would’ve been bitter and revengeful. Why not this auditor? This correct little man had courage to do what he’d done. No doubt about that. He moved easily off the desk. ‘You’ve seen the streets this morning. The selected streets. This is a watershed, Schmidt. It’s time for us to become more rigorous about the question of the Jews. It’s all gathering momentum, all under control.’
He grinned, showing his regular, though nicotine-stained teeth. ‘They’re calling it Kristallnacht.’
He went off, to ring Berlin for the latest news.
The auditor remained immobile, heedless of his stacked in-tray. He wished he knew what was in Fräulein Dressler’s mind this morning. What of Prague now? He hoped she was staying calm. He hoped, also, that Herr Wertheim was still seeking a path through the thicket of complexities.
The teasing, probing character of the Nazi was a worry. He felt he was only half a move ahead of him, if he was ahead at all.
Herr Wertheim had been fifteen minutes on his call to Berlin. Fräulein Dressler felt a pain in her heart as she glanced at the light on his private line. God grant him aid! She was breathing lightly, quickly. He was talking to a man he knew well at the Party’s headquarters. Aid for her from that source seemed an unlikely proposition. However, in the past she’d seen him manufacture miracles out of thin air.
She couldn’t concentrate on her work. The minutes ticked by and her thoughts became more intense. More worried. She’d neither seen nor heard the overnight outrages, but the banner headlines, deadly smoke-trails and stench of burned material drifting over the city told the story; had begun the day-long constriction of nerves in her throat.
Herr Schmidt’s appearance in the anteroom at nine-thirty had been reassuring. He moved about the bank like a shadow. She’d concluded that he was honest and principled and compassionate. It would have surprised him to know the depth and longevity of her scrutiny
That spontaneous embrace! For him to step out of character like that — how remarkable! What a woman she must be! She smiled a tight, self-mocking smile.
Herr Dietrich had passed through the anteroom like the stale wind which blew in summer off the city’s industrial fringe. At 11.00 am, the insurance company directors had departed and she’d received instructions from Herr Wertheim to convey to the director of lending. She’d rearranged the papers; they’d felt sticky and repulsive. Then Herr Wertheim had placed the call to Berlin.
The light on the private line went out.
For nearly an hour, Herr Wertheim remained incommunicado. She resumed her duties, glancing frequently at a bulb which, when lit, would summon her to the inner sanctum. He often sat immobile for long periods these days gazing down his room at that painting. ‘Repositioning the furniture,’ she’d named these interludes. Today her situation was the furniture. And the delay wasn’t a good sign. She stopped her work, put her hands to her face.
The light on his private line winked on again. He was making another call. This lasted about ten minutes. Her heart was pounding. The bulb to summon her lit up, making her catch her breath.
‘My dear fraulein ... sit down, won’t you?’ Wertheim stared across his desk into the eyes which, despite his interpretative skills, had always baffled him, even during their intimate moments years ago. As though turning over the pages of a photo album, he remembered passionate afternoons at a little flat he kept. She�
�d been slimmer in those days ... For ten years, she’d efficiently administered the first floor, absorbed without trace the bank’s secrets, his own. Made her little jokes. What a pity, he thought. No! What a tragedy!
‘I’m afraid I don’t have good news. In recent weeks, there’s been a change. A high official who had discretionary power, no longer has it.’ In a tone, polite but deadly, it had been pointed out to him by the high-ranking Nazi that she was a lawbreaker, as were Wertheims; that this made the case extremely difficult, and with Herr Dietrich’s already-documented interest — the Nazi had wasted no time — it could hardly be glossed over. Further, that policy was less fluid by the day, instance the major overnight initiative, which, the high official ventured, was going to cost the nation a packet in repairs.
A hard case, his contact had sighed. However ...
Usually, Wertheim was absolutely straight with her, as though amid all the shifting sands of his affairs he needed one mind as bedrock. Today, he didn’t communicate what the Berlin functionary, finally, had suggested: that if an apartment building or a factory was available to transfer to the Party, a passport might still be feasible. Sitting there after the call, he’d thought of von Streck, with whom he’d negotiated the transfer of the Party’s business. Could that mysterious man do anything? He’d begun to reach for the phone, and then decided against it. Such an approach might be to the bank’s detriment.
He said gently, ‘Thus we can’t proceed with the Prague visit.’
On her face, in her eyes, not a hint of disappointment or emotion. It would be a relief to see something. He thought: She is enmeshed with my life. Yet, like all my old loves, a fading echo. He went on. ’Our lives are now overshadowed, in part, by ill-conceived forces. Nonetheless they’ve the authority of the law.’ He watched her keenly. ‘My dear fraulein, I had hoped to ride out this storm. Of course a woman of your intellect has read the signs. Having taken the steps we have, it will be dangerous for you to stay at Wertheims.’
‘Yes, dangerous,’ she murmured. Her face had frozen with shock.
He paused. ‘Unfortunately, Herr Dietrich is alert to your case.’ He observed she didn’t react to this. Obviously, she knew the Nazi’s intentions. How much else was going on around him which he was missing? ‘It must be faced — and we must be the ones to choose your moment of departure. Within a few days.’ He leaned forward, his hands spread on the desk before him.
He spoke for twenty minutes more, laying out the proposition he’d devised. When she came out to her desk she was moving in a daze, but she collected herself, and began to marshal the most urgent matters to be attended to. Prague was dead; now she was going to Saxony.
~ * ~
14
H
ERE WE GO again,’ Wagner said tensely. ‘This time they’ve a car.’ In his pitch-black parlour, he stood back from the window peering down at the street. Behind him, still in his overcoat, Schmidt waited uncomfortably. More Wagner eccentricity. They’d come in from the street and Wagner had steered him past furniture to what seemed like the centre of a black pit, then abandoned him.
‘They?’ Schmidt inquired. He felt he’d gone totally blind.
Wagner remained absorbed in his counter-surveillance. He said, ’I surmise it’s the SD or the Gestapo. Take your pick. Perhaps both.’ Abruptly, he stepped back, drew the curtains and switched on a side-light. He added tersely, ‘Fucking gangsters.’
Schmidt blinked at the room. He said, ‘Why?’
‘Come on!’ Wagner grinned, and removed his coat. ‘Work it out for yourself, my dear. Take off your coat, I must go out and speak to the maid about supper.’ He opened an interior door and went down a dark passage towards a light.
While the maid served the meal they talked intermittently about bank matters in the shorthand of insiders. They drank burgundy, a bottle Wagner said he’d brought back from his last visit to Paris. Schmidt had never set foot outside the borders of the Reich. When the maid had cleared the table and left them with coffee, Wagner went to a cabinet and produced a bottle of schnapps. Despite their close association, Schmidt had been here only once before, long ago, and remembered the apartment for the Biedermeier pieces which Wagner had inherited. The furniture of the past, and of the future, Wagner had said then. Happier days.
‘Two glasses only of that brilliant burgundy? Even an abstemious fellow like you, Franz, will try this.’ He poured small glasses full to the brim. His hand was shaking slightly. ‘Well, have you worked it out?’ He lit a cigarette, and gustily exhaled smoke.
The auditor shook his head. ‘If there’s something to tell, say it. Don’t waste time.’
‘Aha!’Wagner went to a record player, wound it up, and put a record on. In a moment a Mozart sonata began; a sound of heart-gripping pathos. The deputy foreign manager took up his glass, and tossed the schnapps down. ‘That makes a nice little fire inside. Listen my friend, it could be a number of things: my business missions to European capitals; my accurate, but possibly intemperate pronouncements on our so-called government; the dislike which I inspire in Herr Health and Sunshine.’ Schmidt winced. Wagner had taken to calling Dietrich this. With Schmidt, all nicknames grated. ‘But more probably, the fact that for five years until the damned thing sunk under me, I was active in the Social Democratic Party. The Nazis’ve got their dirty hands on the membership records.’
Wagner connected to the SPD! Schmidt was astonished. His mind grappled with it. Wagner had thrown out hints. More than my mouth, he’d said. Schmidt cleared his throat. ‘But that’s all in the past. Forgive me, that party’s finished, it’d be raking over dead coals.’
Wagner regarded him indulgently. ‘To the Nazis, once an opponent always an opponent. Is a defunct party absolutely defunct? Could there still be danger there? They think like that, the paranoid arseholes.’
Schmidt flinched at the obscenity. These days, a few drinks and his colleague was losing control.
Wagner grinned nervously, refilled his glass, tossed it down, still holding the bottle. He suppressed a cough. ‘Last night several hundred Jews were murdered or injured. Tens of millions of marks of damage done to their property, and to non-Jewish property. It’s a new phase. Everything’s speeding up. It’s been bad enough so far, but by God, if you’re Jewish, or out of step with the government, you’d better watch out from now on.’
Schmidt took a first sip of the suddenly-remembered schnapps. ‘I’ve been telling you this, Heinrich,’ he said quietly.
‘Yes, dear Franz, you have. But what should we do? Go on day to day simple-mindedly trying to fit the routines of our lives into what’s evil, immoral — nonsensical? Allow ourselves to be tickled on the stomach and stuffed like the miller’s daughter? Dance along in this crazy comic opera?’
Schmidt frowned. Was this what Helga was doing? No, she had its measure; there was nothing simple-minded about his wife; she was just standing cautiously aside.
Wagner laughed roughly. ‘I can see you think I trivialise it. Far from my intention. Does Greek tragedy fit better? Our Fräulein Dressler’s on stage for that, Franz.’
They were silent, and in his chair Wagner dropping his head on his chest, for a while seemed to drift away with the Mozart; then he looked up and chuckled. ‘Hear that fat bastard Otto come down on me for my smokes? That from the arch polluter of the corridors, the bank’s ace-farter! You can bet he doesn’t let it go in his own room. Is it his diet, his guts? The War Ministry should get a sample for analysis ... Ha! Already a Party member!’ His head dropped again.
Despite himself, Schmidt smiled. Then grimly his thoughts regrouped; the music after those opening moments was as inconsequential to him as it’d been at the concert. Dürer’s knight, he imagined, had lived in troubled and opaque times, had negotiated them warily, with what outcome? ‘Is that an example for me — for us?’ Schmidt silently asked his slumbering colleague. Abruptly, the Nazi von Streck loomed up in his mind.
At 4.00 pm this afternoon, Herr Wertheim had called Schmidt to
the first floor, and told him that the Prague mission was cancelled, no explanation — though he knew the reason. Fräulein Dressler hadn’t been at her desk. He’d returned to his room struggling with this. He’d not breathed a word to Wagner about the events unfolding around her, of his own part.
The record finished. Wagner woke up, put on a new one, his head dropped again. Unregarded, the music played on uninvolved in the changing, dangerous times, though obviously soothing to Wagner’s brain and spirit. Schmidt thought of Helga and Trudi in Dresden, probably already asleep. Was he in little Trudi’s dreams? His family life seemed a million miles away.
Wagner woke up again with a start and vigorously cranked the phonograph; he sat there, a new cigarette drooping from his lips, his face slack and meditative, his fear back in its cell in his brain. He looked slyly at his colleague: Still present. Schmidt wasn’t a social stayer; he was adept at making excuses and fading away, back to his arcane studies — Helga’d let something slip once. And what else are you up to these days, my clever, reticent friend? Has the delectable Fräulein Dressler found a champion? Franz had the guts for it; that eye business had been nothing but raw courage. He watched the auditor sip the last of his schnapps, and true to form, prepare to depart.
The Eye of the Abyss - [Franz Schmidt 01] Page 9
