Michael Russell - The City of Shadows

‘The Langfuhr police have picked up the car and the dead driver. Not easy to miss really. The car was in the middle of the road. They also found the two men inside the house, Kriminaloberassistent Rothe and Herr Keller. But the investigation has been officially handed over to the Gestapo now. So there is a solid wall up around it, which tells its own story of course. I can’t get any more information.’

‘Are they looking for Herr Gillespie and Fraulein Rosen?’

‘I don’t know that either. But I’d say probably not. They don’t know who else was at Keller’s house. There may be some descriptions, but that’s going to take time. I think we can work on the assumption that it just looks like a Gestapo operation that went wrong. What is clear is that this man Keller was working for the Gestapo and the SS. That’s all I have. I think you know that already, Herr Gillespie?’ Stefan nodded. Lange continued. ‘That’s why they’ve shut it down as far as the Schutzpolizei are concerned. It’s political. But nothing seems to be happening, which is odd when there’s a dead Gestapo man. However, maybe not so odd if there’s something more important to cover up. I do take this threat against the bishop seriously.’

‘You do know something then?’ asked Lester.

‘Last night there were some SA men up in the forests above Oliva.’

Stefan and Lester exchanged glances. It wasn’t news to them.

‘Yes, I think you know something about that too, Sergeant. This is just rumour as far as I’m concerned. It’s the kind of information I’m not allowed to do anything with these days. It’s political,’ he smiled. ‘No crime has been reported and no bodies have been found, but I think two men were killed. What’s going around is that they were killed for a reason. I mean other than the usual reason, that the Nazis didn’t much like their opinions.’

‘And there’s a connection to Bishop O’Rourke?’ said Lester.

‘Scapegoats,’ replied the policeman. ‘It’s a well-established Nazi trick in Germany. You shoot someone you don’t like, say a businessman who doesn’t want to pay his dues to the Party, then you dump the body of someone else you don’t like at the scene of the crime, say a communist or a socialist, and announce he was the killer, shot while trying to escape. You’ve not only got your murderer, you can arrest all his friends as well. Anyway the rumour is that the two men who were shot in the forest are going to reappear and assassinate someone. The rumour doesn’t say who’s going to be killed but it seems to tie in with what Keller told you, Herr Gillespie. I don’t suppose it’s a coincidence that a priest who apparently committed suicide yesterday was one of Herr Keller’s informants. Is that correct?’

‘It’s not correct that he committed suicide,’ answered Stefan.

‘I use the term loosely. We get a lot of suicide in Danzig these days.’

Sean Lester was frowning. The gaps were filling in.

‘Why now? The elections are almost over. If Edward O’Rourke — ’

‘You’ve been here too long, High Commissioner. You’re starting to believe what the Nazis tell you. They’re not so sure they’re going to win this election. Oh, they’ll keep their majority and we’ll still have that arsehole Greiser as our president, but they may not get the numbers to change the constitution and kick the League of Nations out. And if that happens, whatever Greiser and Gauleiter Forster and the rest of them say, they’re going to lose a lot of face. They’ve promised Hitler a Danzig without you, without opposition parties, without elections, and with the Jews stripped of everything they own, including any rights they’ve got left under the constitution. If they can’t deliver all that, a dead bishop might solve the problem for them.’

‘The only people who could want Edward O’Rourke dead are the Nazis.’

‘I don’t know who exactly the scapegoats are,’ continued Lange, ‘socialists, communists, Zionists. It doesn’t much matter as long as they’re Jewish. Who cares if the last person in Danzig they’d want to see dead is Bishop O’Rourke? They’ll be guilty. And the Nazis will be right. They’ll have a Communist-Jewish conspiracy. So when they turn on the Jews, and whatever’s left of the opposition, they’ll be doing it to protect not just German Danzig but Catholic Danzig too. There’ll be blood on the streets and the police, God help us, will lead the charge. The only option left to you and the League would be to bring in Polish troops to restore order. But Hitler won’t accept that, so he’ll have to take over Danzig. The Poles will either put up with it or face a war with Germany in which they are the aggressors.’

Sean Lester said nothing. Now it all made sense. And the sense it made was far more frightening than the death of a man he regarded as a friend.

‘I’d say this is the SS. Not from the top, but it’s got SS all over it,’ said Lange.

‘Is it coming from Berlin?’ asked the High Commissioner.

‘Not necessarily. They need to force Hitler’s hand. I don’t know, but I wouldn’t think it’s what he wants right now. But if the Free City collapses into chaos, he’ll have to do it anyway. He’d look too weak if he didn’t.’

‘Will the police protect the bishop, Reinhold?’

‘They’ll do what they’re told. It all depends who’s giving the orders.’

The High Commissioner said nothing. He gazed across the Westerplatte towards the Baltic Sea. He turned back. His voice was lighter all of a sudden. He looked from Stefan Gillespie to Oberleutnant Lange, but his whimsical words didn’t disguise how seriously he took this, and how much it mattered.

‘My mother always used to say that the best way to deal with something unpleasant is to open all the windows and let God’s clean air in. She had a habit of doing it on the coldest days, and the threat of that had a powerful effect on family rows when I was young, at least in the winter.’

Neither Stefan nor Oberleutnant Lange understood.

Lester looked out to sea again. ‘There’s quite a breeze today.’

Behind the great oak desk of the Senatsprasident there was a small plaque that bore the arms of the Free City, the crown and the two white crosses. Above it a swastika flag stretched almost to the ceiling. Next to it was a framed photograph of Adolf Hitler, signed at the bottom. Arthur Greiser could have taken the plaque off the wall long ago, but its diminutive size made a point. Sitting opposite him were Sean Lester and Stefan Gillespie. The president had been surprised by Lester’s visit. He avoided the High Commissioner as far as possible, and their meetings usually took place when he had been summoned to Lester’s office to hear a catalogue of complaints that he had no intention of taking any notice of. He had assumed, for a moment at least, that this rare visit by Lester was some kind of recognition of the imminent and sweeping victory of the Nazi Party after the day’s elections. Even the irritating and pedantic Irishman had to recognise that the rules would change once the Party had a two-thirds majority in the senate. The constitution forced on Danzig by the League of Nations could be torn up for all practical purposes. If the High Commissioner adjusted to the new situation in the right way, they might wait a while before kicking him out, but if he wanted to be difficult his days in the Free City were numbered.

However it was quickly evident that Sean Lester had not come to kowtow. He demanded a private conversation, with no one else present, except for the man Greiser remembered meeting on the plane from Berlin. Greiser might have been pleased to see Stefan Gillespie again, especially when he was looking forward to the mother and father of all celebrations that night, in the bar under the town hall in the Lange Markt, the Ratskeller. Now, out of nowhere, Lester was in his office, spouting some incoherent nonsense about a plot to kill the Bishop of Danzig. It was a desperate attempt to rain on his parade, but it could hardly be taken seriously. He barely took in the details. He despised Lester. He didn’t know why the High Commissioner had brought this other Irishman with him, but it didn’t matter. He had better things to do. Lester was a stooge for the English; always polite, always smiling, always lying. But he would keep his temper. The League’s days were almost over anyway. He would enjoy kicking Sean Lester out of Danzig. He couldn’t help thinking that whatever anyone said to the contrary there was a bit too much of the English about the Irish.