The Eye of the Abyss - [Franz Schmidt 01]

by Marshall Browne

  He took a step forward, looked into those eyes, and lifted a porcelain wrist. ‘Shit!’ he swore under his breath, and let it drop. He turned, and went out to where Frau Bertha waited. He gestured impatiently to her to go to her mistress.

  Fräulein Dressler waited in the hall with the driver who, watching her but not seeing her, was munching a second roll. The stress, agitation, and fear of past weeks had come to a dead-stop. She was dazed. ‘Oh Papa, what can I do?’ she breathed desperately.

  The other man entered the hall. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘let’s move.’

  ‘What about ...?’ the driver said, wiping his fingers, nodding to the interior.

  ‘I’ll tell you later,’ his colleague growled. He took Fräulein Dressler by the arm, and they went out. She’d picked up her suitcase. The driver followed, closing the door precisely. The apartment was deeply silent; then the maid shrieked. He wondered what mistake his colleague had made.

  Schmidt and Senior Detective Dressler met at Number 178 at 7.10 am, and shook hands in the icy lobby. A minute later, they were confronted by Frau Bertha’s tear-stained face.

  ‘Too late,’ Dressler whispered, heart-sick in an instant.

  A moment later Schmidt stared at his mother. She appeared to be still in command of her salon, almost on the verge of speaking to him. He felt he’d gone out of the world himself — had ducked out a side door, and was looking down on the scene from a high vantage-point.

  Dressler, filling the salon doorway, his hat gripped in big fingers, took in the scene, jotting down facts in his mental notebook. It was a side-show to the shock, the deep foreboding for his daughter. His head was throbbing badly.

  Schmidt turned to him, more obviously shocked. The detective, intimate with sudden death, squinting his eyes against the pain, framed an interim conclusion: heart attack. The fear for his daughter was ringing in his own heart like an unanswered alarm. Somehow he switched it off. He regarded Schmidt with sympathy. This bank man must feel like he’d entered hell. Welcome.

  ‘Come,’ he said. They left the room and he questioned the distraught Frau Bertha, gently but persistently. He said to Schmidt, ‘Phone your mother’s doctor. He must examine her. He will tell you what to do. The maid — she should sit down, have some coffee.’

  ‘Your daughter?’ Schmidt turned slowly towards the detective. What’s happened?’

  ‘The Gestapo. The clock was running too fast ... we were too slow.’

  They walked out to the hall. The detective s voice had trailed away. He halted, frowning, trying to reorganise his thoughts. Droplets of moisture glistened on his brow. He stared grimly at the composer’s bust.

  ‘What can we do?’ Schmidt said.

  Dressler dragged his hand across his jaw. ‘I will go to the Gestapo office. Try to ... if you wish, I’ll contact you later. You ought to find a good lawyer. Familiar with matters like this.’

  Schmidt nodded vaguely. His thoughts had done a circuit, and settled on the main fact: Fräulein Dressler. Here last night ... gone now ... into the abyss. They’d failed. Failed ... His mind seemed to be slipping badly.

  ‘Herr Schmidt!’

  Sternly, the detective was staring at him. For a second it surprised Schmidt, then he found himself coming back. Shakily. Suddenly, he was turning over scenarios in the future involving his family, the bank. The detective was correct and helpful to point him towards the defensive. Hed regained stability, his mind was no longer a conveyor belt missing notches ... The policeman had established control over the father, as the situation demanded. A pillar of a man. Have you killed your mother with your good intentions? Or, had her time come by the unknowable clock running for each of us? With your imperfect plan, have you delivered Fräulein Dressler into their hands? He shook his head.

  The detective had watched the auditor reassemble himself. Quite a tough one. Pragmatic, at least. Without a handshake, silent on his thick rubber, Herr Dressler walked out of the flat.

  Schmidt went back in, told Frau Bertha to sit down, and phoned the doctor. Then, while coffee heated, he returned to the door of the salon. Was her spirit greeting her revered forebears? That would have been her expectation, and this morning no kind of strangeness or mystery seemed improbable. He blinked, and broke the spell. How had the Gestapo known to come here? It was one question he believed he knew the answer to.

  It was too early to ring the bank, but not Helga. He’d been due to call this morning anyway.

  ‘Franz?’ The familiar voice, up an octave. ‘The operation was successful. She’s recovering ... Is all well with you?’

  He drew in his breath. ‘Helga, I’m very sorry to tell you my mother died this morning.’ He listened to the echo of his voice down the trunk-line, her silence.

  ‘Good God! What happened?’

  ‘The doctor’s not here yet.’ He considered whether to prepare her for what he would need to tell her, what she would hear from Frau Bertha. In the worst case, from the Gestapo. No, not yet. ‘Probably a heart attack ...’

  A pause. ‘Franz, my dear, we’ll come home. Will you meet the six o’clock express?’ He hesitated. It would be better if she didn’t return. But immediately he knew there’d be no stopping her. They discussed a few details.

  He hung up. The apprehension which had arisen in her voice saddened him. What had she been thinking these days apart in Dresden? Doubtless, much. In consideration of the path he’d chosen, bills were going to come in from several quarters for payment.

  At this point, in his father’s study, his mother dead in her salon, there came into his consciousness — not in a flash of light, rather with a steadily increasing glow — the true nature of his purpose and his situation. He stared fixedly at the room, letting it pour into him.

  ~ * ~

  19

  A

  T 8.15 AM Herr Dressler, holder of the Iron Cross First Class, thrice-wounded, gassed in the Great War, strode into the Gestapo office and asked for an officer by name. The black-uniformed, suspicious SS Untersturmführer in a glassed cubicle at the door deliberated on his police identity card, examined a checklist, sized up the giant figure, then brusquely nodded him in. The municipal police fitted into the Reich bureaucracy, albeit at a subordinate level.

  He was told to wait. He sat down on a wooden bench and regarded Gestapo clerks working on files at desks behind a counter. They looked like tired shift-workers anywhere, not administrators of terror and deceit. Their replacements were arriving. The detective sat like a statue, his big fingers interlaced in his lap, regarding a huge poster of the Fuehrer flanked by red and black swastikas. Blood and darkness, he thought.

  Phones began ringing. He observed what was going on, keeping his feelings strictly under control, used to that. She wouldn’t have been brought in through this vestibule; prisoners and suspects for questioning came in at the back. His control slipped. Suddenly he felt sick in his stomach at the fear she must be experiencing. She was a strong, competent person but this would be far too much. Eventually, fear came to all. He gripped his hands together. Deliberately, he turned his head, taking in everything. A vast coir mat emblazoned with a large swastika was spread at the entrance, and the people coming in were conscientiously wiping their shoes on it. The irony of this wasn’t lost on him. In the army they would have judged it bad staff-work. The Gestapo was an immature organisation.

  ‘Heil Hitler!’

  Said quickly as a formality behind him. Dressler stood up. His army comrade’s son had entered through a side door.

  ‘Good morning, Herr Lueger.’ They shook hands.

  ‘Please call me Hans, as always. What can I do for you?’

  The sallow, intense youth he remembered stood there, still sallow, no longer youthful, analytically watchful now rather than intense. Nervy, too, the detective noted. The Gestapo might stand in the nation as an instrument of terror, but danger roamed its own hierarchal structure. Towering above the Gestapo man, quietly he told him what had befallen his daughter. Plainly, reasonably,
he said that he didn’t expect to change the course of what was in motion — a lie: one way or another that was his aim, but he asked could he see her, could he have an idea of what lay ahead, could Herr Lueger advise whether there was any process of intercession which might ameliorate their difficulty.

  The Nazi listened, eyes downcast. Dressler absorbed his reluctance to become involved, his resentment of the old family connection. Had his eyes glazed over at the recital of yet another awkward case? Watching the man’s reaction, at the end Dressler slightly increased the energy of his speech.

  ‘Wait here, please, while I make inquiries. It may take some time.’

  The giant detective didn’t immediately return to the bench. He stood, legs apart, easily balanced on his rubber soles as though on a stake-out. In the yellowish, unnatural light the black figures flitted by, perhaps on hellish errands, perhaps going to the lavatories. The smell of damp clothes moved through the vestibule. Guttural voices faded down corridors. He didn’t expect good news, but implacably willed that the son of the man whose life he’d saved might return with news not wholly disastrous.

  ‘What have you been up to, Franz?’ Helga said, half insistently, half reluctantly, when they were alone at last. Grimly, she wondered what answers she’d get.

  Schmidt thought: Yes, I should be asked that. Trust Helga. He’d met the train at 6.00 pm, and now it was 7.00. Throughout the day the city had been covered with fog. In his head, one of the Great Man’s requiems had been playing its monumental cadences.

  They’d given Trudi her supper. He’d made the funeral arrangements, and notified by phone or telegram the few relatives and friends of his mother’s generation who survived. The doctor, who’d been treating her for a heart condition unbeknown to Schmidt, had no problem with the death certificate. He’d received several callers. Wagner, sounding subdued, had phoned his condolences; otherwise it’d been resoundingly all quiet from Wertheim & Co, and grimly Schmidt pictured the confusion and concern in the bank, over the Fräulein Dressler/Herr Schmidt imbroglio.

  And, what had been in the mind of Dietrich this day?

  He’d not heard yet from Herr Dressler. And the Gestapo were ominously silent. Trouble must be waiting there. He’d obtained the name of a lawyer, but had decided not to speak to him at this stage.

  He opened wine and poured two glasses. He wished he’d some of Wagner’s schnapps. Schnapps and beer. ‘Stimulation, and satisfaction’ — Wagner’s phrase. Carrying the Dressler suitcases had done something to his back: high in his spinal column a single vertebrae felt like a hot coal.

  Obviously, Helga had been delaying this, agonising over the question just asked; but it could be postponed no longer. He’d exposed his family to danger. He’d told himself, he’d told her, that he would never do that. But events had swept him up. He wondered if his face looked as drawn as it felt. His heart seemed to be heavy with so much, and deeply worried at the situation he’d brought upon his loved ones. Deadly sad about Lilli Dressler ...

  ‘Fräulein Dressler,’ he began at last. Step by step, in his meticulous way, he told her of what had overtaken the general-director s secretary; of his own part. His ineffectual part. He’d the sensation of being a mourner driving in a funeral motorcade, headlights on. As tomorrow he would be. He did not tell her everything.

  His wife listened, tight as a violin string, but with a neutral expression. He kept looking into her eyes, trying to track any flickers of reaction. She was silent when he’d finished, her wine untouched. Her tension, her dead-white complexion, sickened him with regret: in Dresden the golden tan of summer had been lost.

  ‘Did you do it consciously, Franz? Put yourself, our little Trudi, me, into danger?’ But she answered herself. ‘No, I don’t think so. I’ve feared this. Oh don’t worry, I share your doubts about our new Germany, of those in power. But what of the family? Can there be anything more important? Your mother? God knows, where do you stand there? Do you take the responsibility for that, Franz? Where do you stand on any of it?’ she cried. He gazed at the pale wine as though its colour fascinated him. Yes. He took that responsibility. Would say so, when she’d finished. ‘I’ve never really spoken of that other world of yours. But I can guess the path your mind might be following. Am I right? Are you trying to mould that code to your life — our lives? In these times?’ He thought: Not as simple or as stark as that. Events are pulling on me like a tidal race. She’s slicing ideas out of the air. It’s wonderfully close. ‘You’ll never tell me! But if you are — of course you are! Oh, Franz, first your eye — now this unfortunate woman — and your mother! That time can’t ever translate to these modern times! What danger are you bringing down on us?’

  He regarded her intensely, affectionately.

  She burst out, ’All these years, I think you’ve been waiting for the Nazis! Your Fräulein Dressler!’ Her speech had become rapid, distracted, as she tried to enunciate her way through the nightmare, then concluded hopelessly. That final tiredness in her voice was another weight on his heart. There’d been no deliberating process in his involvement with Fräulein Dressler. His sense of justice, and ultimately his emotions, had been the conducting forces. The fantasy of his inner life had prepared the ground, begun the slow movement to where he now stood. And, the flowering of the long, latent attraction ...

  A rare flash of anger came. The real catalyst was this evil era. He rose, and went to the window. Behind him she waited. The trunks and branches of the trees were visible, shining dully in the streetlamps; the fog at last had lifted. He said, ‘I will tell you, Helga ... ‘

  As they lay in bed he went over what he’d told her. It was as though he’d revealed the intimate details of a love affair about which she’d only a sketchy idea. Still, even then he’d not gone down to the deepest roots of his motivations, of his obsession with the Order, of his feelings for the G-D’s secretary. Even to himself, he couldn’t fully articulate it.

  They made love with a passion which recalled their earliest married life. As though blotted out by some chemical release in his brain he did not, at that moment, recall the previous night. When he awoke in the darkness he was surprised to find her awake.

  ‘I’ll take Trudi back to Dresden,’ she said, ‘this afternoon, after the funeral. We may not return.’

  They lay awake together, holding hands as though sealing a bargain, watching for the dawn.

  In his overcoat and hat, his pistol still strapped to his shoulder, Dressler had sat all day in the vestibule of the Gestapo offices. Once he went out into the foggy streets to phone his station and buy coffee. He continued his relentless watch on the ebb and flow of grim and nervous citizens. He observed these visitors being given forms to fill out, apparently never the information they were seeking on loved ones. The smells of cabbage soup, and sausage, steamed up a stairway.

  At 10.30 pm his contact reappeared. He came to where Dressler sat. Watching him approach, rising to his feet, the detective’s nerves blazed to life in his stomach. Here, in the dregs of a dispiriting day for all in this city — a terrible one for him — he was to receive his news. Lueger, nearing the end of a 14-hour shift, appeared strained and irritable as he eyed the detective. Then Dressler was listening to the terse apology for the day-long delay, hearing the rest of it.

  He went out into the city, which was now clear, cold and livening up with the traffic going to and from dinner and entertainment. She was still there.

  Walking at a formidable speed he passed the two policemen stationed at the corner, omitting his customary companionable nod. His pace, and the night air, had set up his wheezing. At the close of his report, the Gestapo man had intimated something to him. It had sent him back to his starting point: back to Herr Rubinstein and his Nazi contacts who, for money, might provide a visa out of this hell. But could they do that now? Despairingly, he muttered, ‘She’s already in their clutches.’

  ~ * ~

  20

  T

  WO DAYS AFTER his mother’s death (murder,
Wagner categorised it later), Schmidt returned to the bank. He’d heard nothing from the Gestapo. Uneasily, he wondered if they were waiting on his return to the office. Perhaps Diet-rich had a hand in that — wanted to be in charge of events. Puffing hoarsely, Herr Berger crossed the ice-box of the foyer to gasp his condolences. Like a last breath, Schmidt thought. Will he survive the winter? Will I? He said, ’Thank you. Is your heater working, Herr Berger?’

  ‘Yes, Herr Schmidt. It’s my internal heater that’s packing up.’

  Schmidt saw that he was regarded with a new respect. It was a similar look to the one he’d received when he’d returned from hospital after the eye. In his room he sat down at his desk, and began to sort the morning’s post: away two days, it felt like a month. Had anything run out of control? He’d been on duty in another world. What had been happening here?

  He looked at the phone, apprehending its ring, Dietrich’s voice booming down the line. That deadly Nazi. He found he’d turned over a page on Dietrich — to a new one, deep-edged in black. He considered this. That page now allocated the Nazi a specific place in Schmidt’s universe. ‘Public enemy number one’ — the Nazi’s own phrase.