Philip Kerr - The Lady from Zagreb

“Something that can get us justice,” she added.

I lit one of my own cigarettes and smiled sadly. I almost pitied them for thinking that they still lived in a world where ideas like justice were even possible. I thought there was probably less chance of him bringing prosecutions against the directors of the Nordhav Foundation than there was of him winning the Nobel Peace Prize and then donating all of the prize money to the World Jewish Congress.

“We should also very much welcome your assistance in handling Arthur Müller,” added Frau Minoux.

“Now that you’ve told me what you’ve got in mind I think it even less likely I could live to spend that bonus. These people you’re up against — they’re dangerous. Albert is currently the chief of police in Litzmannstadt, in Poland. There’s a ghetto in Litzmannstadt with more than a hundred thousand Jews in it. Have you any idea what happens in a place like that?”

When I saw them look at each other and look blank I wanted to bang their heads together.

“No, I thought not. Best and Schellenberg aren’t exactly shy flowers, either. Most of their friends are dangerous, too: Himmler, Gestapo Müller, Kaltenbrunner. Not to mention extremely powerful. Maybe the directors of this Nordhav Foundation do have some sort of racket going but then so does everyone else in the RSHA. Everyone except me, that is. My advice is that you should give this up. Forget this idea of taking on Nordhav. It’s much too dangerous. If you’re not careful you’ll end up in the cement alongside Herr Minoux. Or worse.”

Frau Minoux took out a tiny square of cotton that was laughingly called a handkerchief and dabbed either side of her perfect nose. “Please, Herr Gunther,” she said with a sniff. “You simply have to help us. I don’t know what else to do. Who else to turn to.”

Heckholz sat beside her for a moment and put his arm around her in an attempt to stop her from crying any more. It was a job I wouldn’t have minded having myself.

“At least say you’ll keep your ears and eyes open while you’re at the conference,” said Frau Minoux. “My hundred reichsmarks ought to buy me that much. And there’s another two hundred in it if you just come back here and tell Dr. Heckholz about anything you’ve learned about the sale of the villa. Anything at all. I won’t be here, myself. I’m going back to Austria this afternoon.”

It was the tears, I suppose. A woman cries and it cracks something open inside me, like Rapunzel’s tears, only they were supposed to restore her handsome prince’s sight, not blind him to the risks of snooping around a villa owned by the SS. I should have laughed and told them both to go to hell and walked straight out the door. Instead I thought about it for a moment, which was a mistake; you should always trust your first instincts in these matters. Anyway, I told myself there seemed little risk involved in just poking around a bit when I was at Wannsee and that was all I intended to do. Besides, Frau Minoux looked like she could afford to lose another hundred marks. So what did it matter? I’d make my speech, drink my coffee, steal a few cigarettes, and then leave and neither Frau Minoux nor Dr. Heckholz would be any the wiser.

“All right. I’ll do it.”

“Thank you,” she said.

I stood up and walked to the door.

“And Arthur Müller?” asked Heckholz. “The private detective? What about him?”

“You want him to lay off, right?”

They nodded.

“Just long enough for me to get my property out of the country,” she said. “Across the border into Switzerland.”

“Let me take care of it.” I shrugged. “But I get ten percent of whatever payoff I can negotiate.”

“That’s fair,” said Heckholz.

I couldn’t help but laugh.

“What’s so funny?” asked Heckholz.

“Because fair’s got nothing to do with it,” I said. “That’s a word for children. When are people going to wake up and realize what’s happening in Germany? People like you. Worse than that, what’s happening in the east. In the so-called swamps. In places like Litzmannstadt. Believe me, fair’s got absolutely nothing to do with anything. Not anymore.”

Early on the first morning of the conference I took the S-Bahn back to Wannsee and walked to the villa. It was another warm day and by the time I arrived there my white shirt was sticking to my back and I almost wished I had my own staff Mercedes. I was certainly the only officer arriving at the villa who seemed not to have one. Well-polished cars played tag in the driveway, delivering their self-important passengers while, at the back of the house, on a terrace that faced the lake, thirty or forty officers wearing lounge suits and a variety of foreign bandbox uniforms were smoking cigarettes, talking, and drinking cups of coffee. It was all very clubbable and you’d hardly have believed there was a war on.

In front of the Greek Revival entrance there were flower beds full of blue geraniums. In the conservatory the fountain had been turned back on but someone had thoughtfully removed all copies of Das Schwarze Korps from the library, as even a cursory glance through its morbid pages might have encouraged any reader to doubt that Germany was winning the war in the east, as Dr. Goebbels insisted it was.

On display underneath the curving staircase in the main hall was a bronze of Heydrich’s death mask, which made him seem oddly benign. With eyes closed, his head looked as if it had been on display at the old panopticum in Lindenpassage, or perhaps recovered from the basket under the guillotine at Brandenburg, for display in a glass case at the police museum. On an easel next to the death mask was a large facsimile of the sixty-pfennig stamp featuring a photograph of the death mask that the occupation government planned to use on letters in Bohemia and Moravia, which was a bit like hanging a portrait of Bluebeard in a girls’ school dormitory.

Staring critically at the mask and the giant stamp was a very tall man and next to him was a junior officer; from the monkey swing on his shoulder I took him to be the taller man’s aide-de-camp. I advanced a short way up the staircase until I was standing immediately above them and, in the vague hope of hearing something interesting about Stiftung Nordhav, I started to eavesdrop on their conversation. My conscience might be getting a bit dull these days, but there’s nothing wrong with my hearing. Their wisecracks were all taken from the SS joke book, which — take my word for it — only the SS think is funny.

“That’s one stamp I won’t be putting on my fucking Christmas cards,” said the senior officer. I guessed him to be almost two meters in height.

“Not if you want the card to get there in time for Christmas,” said the aide.

“Hardly matters, does it? We’ve made Christmas illegal in Bohemia.”

Both men laughed unpleasantly.

“They were going to put a picture of Lidice on the ten-pfennig stamp,” said the aide, “until someone told them that there was nothing actually left to photograph. Just a lost shoe and a lot of empty brass cartridges.”

“I just wish he was here to see it,” said the senior officer. “Just so I could see the look on his goat’s face. Strange-looking bugger, Heydrich. Didn’t you think so? He looks like a Paris perfumer, inhaling some rare scent.”

“Death, probably. The scent which fills that long nose. His death, thank God.”

The senior officer laughed. “Very good, Werner,” he said. “Very good.”

“Do you think he really was a Jew, sir? Like they say?”

“No, it was Himmler who put that rumor into circulation. To deflect attention from his own very questionable origins.”

“Really?”