The Eye of the Abyss - [Franz Schmidt 01]

by Marshall Browne

  Von Streck came out in his shirtsleeves, his astrakhan-collared overcoat slung over his shoulders against the cold in the corridor. His face showed alert good humour. Schmidt had worried about the condition the functionary would be in, but he was perfectly sober, standing there like a rock, suggestive of darkness and intrigue and ambivalence. He wondered at this man’s participation in these drunken revels.

  ‘I regret this intrusion, Herr Minister, but could I have a private word?’

  ‘Why not Herr Schmidt, why not?’The Nazi assessed the auditor’s face. ‘We’ll walk along the corridor.’

  They proceeded to do so. Schmidt’s heart was beating faster; three images were clear in his head: Wagner’s broken-mouthed face; the Zurich scheme, set up like a house of cards, awaiting an interrogatory puff of breath from any inquiry to come; his own jeopardy. Given the apparent case against Wagner, could the Nazi functionary work a miracle and remove him from the clutches of the Gestapo before they beat the truth about Zurich out of him, before they killed him?

  ‘My colleague at the bank, Herr Wagner. The Gestapo have arrested him, beaten him badly. He was on a mission to Zurich for the bank which has aroused their suspicions. The mission was routine, perfectly legitimate. However, it’s alleged he’s been involved in some political action.’

  As he uttered these half-truths Schmidt had fresh doubts about how far he could go with this man. Von Streck had been in that torture-chamber! He must concentrate. His mind seemed to have missed a notch. Concentrate! What if von Streck’s action in the Wertheim affair had simply been the aggressive reaction of a dedicated and ambitious functionary protecting the Party’s interests, his own? His connection with the Order, merely a coincidence and a little side-game. His sense of the ‘all clear’ — a mirage. He seemed to have missed another notch. Was his mind going to plunge into free-fall?

  Were all his assumptions about the Nazi functionary built on sand?

  Suddenly Schmidt felt empty.

  Von Streck stared straight ahead as they paced along the wide, timber-planked corridor, and seemed to weigh the auditor’s utterance.

  At last he said, ‘Dietrich and the gross Otto Wertheim are fine actors. Most convincing in their protestations that they know nothing of the missing ten million. One might think they’re truthful - if one didn’t know better.’ His throaty voice vibrated in the corridor. He smiled sardonically. ‘They make bitter accusations against you, Schmidt. However, they’ve been prevailed upon to sign authorities on the Swiss bank to repatriate the bonds.’

  Schmidt stared at him hard, pulling himself together, and said, ‘Herr Wagner?’

  ‘Cannot be released. This past half-hour he’s signed a statement admitting his complicity with Dietrich and Wertheim in embezzling the bonds, smuggling them out. Admitted other matters. Of course, in the Swiss affair he was duped by those criminals. That must be a shock to you.’

  He gave the auditor a dry look.

  Schmidt stared back. Von Streck had moved to bridge the gap. Though how that pair could dupe Wagner on a financial matter was a fragile proposition. Von Streck was ahead of him! He’d felt that events were running out of his control, and now the dimensions were taking shape. Involuntarily, he’d stopped walking. Alone the Nazi paced on.

  ‘I saved Wagner at the frontier on his way to Zurich,’ the Nazi said. ‘The Gestapo had his number.’

  Schmidt’s shoulders jerked with nerves. Von Streck had known of Wagner’s journey even as he was telling him of Diet-rich and Otto’s criminal actions ... He moved forward. ‘Why didn’t you save him tonight?’

  ‘The situation is complicated, Schmidt. ’The Nazi brooded on the dark at the end of the passage. ‘Also it has changed. At the frontier, I’d no precise knowledge of what you were up to. Except that something was in motion - and Wagner and you were as thick as thieves. I wished to observe the full scope of your machinations. A suitable description, I think. My congratulations and admiration. Since you came to my office with your revelation, since that stimulating interlude at the bank this morning, I’ve a very precise understanding of the affair — even as to your motives. Poor unfortunate Fräulein Dressler. Again — my admiration Schmidt.’ He was smiling at the auditor. ‘But don’t ask for too much.’

  Wagner was to be sacrificed. Schmidt stared to the dead-end of the corridor. With a sickening feeling, he knew that the foreign manager no longer had any part in whatever von Streck’s plans were. Yet, the special plenipotentiary was anti-Nazi. The confirmation was plain in his words.

  Von Streck had halted, and turned his bulky figure to look back at the auditor. His eyes glinted in the light. ‘I pointed out the deficiency in the case to you, Schmidt, and now it’s been rectified. Herr Wagner has quite admirably served the purpose. A few in the Gestapo have brains. Never forget it. How the bearer bonds got to Zurich would’ve been a burning question in their minds. That deficiency had to be rectified. It won’t go to court. The Party will have a hearing. Affidavits are being prepared for your signature. I have an excellent man who’s done wonders in the drafting. Dietrich and Wertheim will be tried, executed within the week. Good news, eh?’

  Schmidt remained speechless. Chilled. In a flash he’d an image of Dietrich and Otto, standing against a prison wall staring at the firing squad. And Wagner. They paced back. Schmidt’s mind was wrestling with monsters.

  ‘One feels sorry for Wagner, though he’s been imprudent in his other activities. But the greater need must have precedence.’ This time he shot the auditor a speculative look.

  Schmidt thought dully. That gap, that loose end, could have finished up anywhere. Would’ve sabotaged the plan. Wagner had to be Dietrich’s and Otto’s co-conspirator. If only he’d not tried to return — gone from Zurich direct to Paris.

  In signing the confession he had sacrificed himself. That struck Schmidt so hard that he staggered.

  The Nazi seized his arm. ‘Steady, Schmidt ... in the Third Reich, shocks await us every hour, around every corner. Much is in the air. Many levers are being pulled. For instance, that old fox Wertheim could hardly believe it when the Party’s business was landed in his lap. But who put it there?’ He laughed quietly. ‘Very little can be taken at face value.’

  Even in his daze, Schmidt knew he’d received an insight. Suddenly von Streck said, looking at him, ‘You’re a very brave and competent man, Herr Schmidt. An individual with rare talent and a hero’s precepts. Altogether, a man with extremely unusual and useful qualities, and I’ve great plans for you.’ He nodded to himself. ‘I must return to my colleagues. We’ll meet again soon.’

  Recovering, thinking hard, Schmidt said, ‘Wagner’s a good man. He should be saved. He could be very useful to you.’

  ‘I’m sorry Herr Schmidt, that is no longer possible. For your sake, and for mine.’

  In the frigid corridor, stock-still, Schmidt heard the shouts of reunion as the special plenipotentiary, apparently the star turn, rejoined his party.

  The man’s last phrase flashed in his brain. Dully, Schmidt felt the horror subsiding, and a sense of fatalism taking him over. Still he stood motionless. It came to him, that this Wertheim episode was just the beginning.

  He suddenly remembered he had a home to go to — if it could be described as such now.

  However, he didn’t go home. Wagner’s small gold key was in his pocket. He must take care of this last piece of business for his friend and colleague. Grimly, obdurately, he moved into the streets.

  Where Dr Bernstein had had his rooms was a ten-minute walk, and almost immediately he was in a depopulated, dingy district. The thin building looked abandoned. From the opposite corner, Schmidt scrutinised it. No lit windows, but some feeble illumination in the downstairs foyer. Narrow streets went away from him like spokes on a wheel. Street by street, shadowy doorway by doorway, he inspected them. No sign of humanity. The cold bored into his bones like steel screws were being turned into them.

  He crossed the street and entered the foyer. It was lit b
y a single bulb. Ignoring the door under the stairs he went up two flights to Dr Bernstein’s dark door. Stuck to the glass was a notice: Closed down. For dental attention contact Dr Muller, etc. He retraced his steps.

  In the foyer, he listened, sorting out sounds: a distant train; a shutter banging on a wall; the wind in some kind of wires. He opened the door under the stairs. Fourth board from the entrance. Enough light came in. The board looked a fixture; he bent down and tried it with his fingers. Then he took out his pen-knife and slid it into the crack. It came up easily. A tin deed-box. He laid it at his feet. He listened again: timber-creaks in the old building. He had the key out; it inserted, turned easily. He lifted the lid.

  The banded packages of mint banknotes filled it to the brim. French francs. The crisp smell of new money saturated the tiny space. It figured. Dietrich’s phrase. He closed it, picked it up, and edged out to the foyer. He shut the door and turned to leave.

  Two figures stood in the street door. Schmidt couldn’t move; stared at them like a hare caught in headlights.

  ‘Herr Schmidt! What a surprise! Though, is it really? Under the stairs, four boards in from the door ...?’ The second figure emitted three short barks, begun as a laugh, finishing as a cough. Wagner’s interrogators! ‘You bankers do work strange hours. And at suspicious locations. In your case, that is. Let me see that box, mein herr.’

  ‘This box?’

  The Gestapo man leapt forward, as did his colleague. But they were in flight, falling. Explosions. Two. Horrific. Bursting his eardrums, blowing his head off, blasting apart the rickety wooden balustrade of the stairs. All in a micro-second. He reeled back against the stairs, his ears ringing, a strange smell in the air. At his feet the two men had thudded down, converted to inanimate bundles.

  Von Streck’s blond colleague stepped in from the doorway, the large revolver hanging loosely from his hand, a wisp of smoke detaching from it. ‘Two less,’ he said calmly. He nodded to the door behind him. ‘Please leave, mein herr. Quickly! I will take care of the box.’

  Schmidt stepped over the corpses and went out to the street, where the breeze sang in telephone wires. No lights had come on in the windows; no curtain was lifted. This was Germany. He was two streets away, and calming down, when the thoughts began to roll in his brain: the blond man must have followed him; von Streck was as thorough at tidying up loose ends as he was ruthless. He stopped and stared at his blacked-out city. He, Franz Schmidt, was now irreversibly in orbit around the special plenipotentiary’s star. Wherever it was going.

  ~ * ~

  Epilogue

  S

  CHMIDT WAITED IN an anteroom. The atmosphere was reminiscent of being at his dentist, though Doctor Bernstein’s waiting room couldn’t be compared to this opulence. The French settees looked uncomfortable to his eye, but this wasn’t an occasion to sit down. So he paced up and down the honey-coloured parquet floor, spruce from his barbering that afternoon, handsome in his new, well-cut suit — in its lapel the Party badge exhibiting his empathy with the times.

  Von Streck had made him a special offer. He’d understood it was one he couldn’t refuse. But then, he hadn’t wanted to. Also, von Streck had returned to him his famous ancestor’s Salzburg cantatas. Poor Wagner couldn’t risk not bringing them back into Germany.

  So here he was. He considered recent events in the banking world. Herr Wertheim had been diagnosed with a brain tumour, and had retired from the bank and gone into seclusion at his country estate, taking Fräulein Blum with him as an assistant for the last months of his life. Wagner had been the first to detect the symptoms of the disease, though he’d never known their cause.

  While Schmidt was pacing the corridor with von Streck at 11.00 pm that terrible night, the deputy foreign manager had died of his injuries.

  Herr Schloss had been appointed general-director and had taken control to the relief of many; Schmidt had admired the rigorous efficiency with which he’d returned the Wertheim to port, and dry-dock — if not to safety. The Party had recovered the bonds from the Swiss bank and now the lawyers were arguing over the mysteriously missing amount of 500,000.

  His footsteps were setting up echoes in the salon. The NSDAP investment business had returned to the Berlin bank. In retrospect, he identified an inevitability about this, even as he recalled Herr Wertheim’s euphoria at the time of its acquisition. Certainly, the Berlin bankers had always thought so. They’d travelled to Wertheim & Co for the settlement, patronising triumph in their eyes.

  Von Streck. Schmidt stopped pacing and turned his eye to the gleaming floor. Clearly the Nazi ranks were rotten with power-plays, ambition and greed. The slippery politics of it were always in sinuous motion. In moving the Party’s investment funds to Wertheims the special plenipotentiary had been building his power-base. Subsequently surveying the Wertheim scene, he’d discovered Schmidt: a man who’d lost an eye to the SA in a quixotic act; a man with a deep family involvement with the Teutonic Knights; a man who’d attempted to save a Jewess in another hopeless, quixotic act. A man who could be a great asset to a cause. And, he supposed, it could be said: Ultimately, a man with a machiavellian mind. Schmidt couldn’t be positive about all of this, but, it must be close to the mark.

  He’d thought further about the incident in Dr Bernstein’s old building and decided that von Streck’s blond assassin had not been following him. He’d been on the tail of Wagner’s Gestapo interrogators to clean up that loose end. Von Streck couldn’t risk the Gestapo team, after interrogating Wagner, looking too closely into the antecedents of the Swiss affair. Despite the foreign manager’s confession ...

  He paused to better appreciate the gilded room. Had the Party paid for all of this? He’d been dwelling in a claustrophobic existence — it seemed that his horizons were about to widen to embrace this pomp and circumstance, a new life.

  As if this were a cue, double doors at the end of the room sprang open. Von Streck stood there, beaming, his hand grandly extended. Behind him hovered a restless galaxy of colourful uniforms and superior civilian suiting. It immediately struck Schmidt that the key motif to this striking scene — on the walls, on sleeves — was the swastika. As the guests circulated, the sinister emblem seemed to flutter and dance. ‘Without finesse,’ Wagner would’ve sneered. So here I am, he thought, entering ‘a corrupt and bogus world’. Who’d said that? Not Wagner.

  ‘Come in, my dear fellow, I want to introduce you around.’

  Schmidt marched down the anteroom to take von Streck’s hand. Surely, that was the knight’s trumpet in the far distance? Inside his head? Did von Streck hear it? Forty or so faces, pink and approving, reminding him of plump hams, had turned to regard him, the general conversation had died, as though someone had tapped a wine glass with a knife in the time-honoured way.

  Von Streck stood inside this inner sanctum, and raised his soft, strangler’s hands. Throttling the conversation, one might say. Schmidt asked himself if he could still risk this kind of thought any more.

  ‘Gentlemen, I wish to introduce to you Herr Franz Schmidt, banker and auditor, who’s rendered the Party a great service — uncovering a traitorous fraud against Party funds — and who I’m certain will render it many more. I present Herr Schmidt!’ Schmidt watched those hands drop to the functionary’s sides.

  Applause rippled throughout the room. Von Streck led him forward to introduce him to individuals. ‘Congratulations,’ they said one by one.

  A brown-uniformed official said, ‘We’ll expect great things from you now at the Ministry of Economics.’

  Schmidt bowed, and glanced at his mentor. Von Streck replied with weighty yet exuberant authority. ‘As the director of audit he’ll have great scope for engaging in the nation’s financial affairs. Great scope. He’ll bring his superior intelligence to the task, you’ll see!’

  Schmidt could tell von Streck was in the highest spirits. Recently, the functionary had remarked, ‘You and I, Schmidt, have a kind of telepathy going. There are things between us which
don’t need to be spoken of — bear that in mind.’

  Now, in a confidential aside he said, ‘One door closes, another opens. Exciting times my dear fellow — for those of us of the right calibre. Special opportunities, to make the difference! I could tell from the beginning you’d a rare talent. One might say that the Wertheim imbroglio was a trial run. Much more important game’s afoot. The fulcrum of the Reich is money and the economy. Together, we can be a lever! Ah! ... we must pay our respects to Admiral Canaris, and Colonel Oster. This is the circle you’ll be moving in, Schmidt. One of rare and splendid birds indeed. Come.’

  He followed the formidable passage of von Streck through the assembly. There appeared to be a sympathetic undercurrent between von Streck and Canaris. Yes, exciting, dangerous — but fertile — times to further investigate knightly precepts, though he’d never seen so many steely, calculating, and just plain wary eyes at one time. In quick succession he was passing from hand to hand — like being on the floor at an old-fashioned country dance. One man was introduced without show. ‘Von Hase, from Hamburg,’ von Streck said softly with an enigmatic smile, ‘he’s just taken up a key post in the chemical industry.’ He added, ‘The three of us share a particular interest.’