Philip Kerr - The Lady from Zagreb

“Yes, yes, of course. Well, please do that. And I’ll have someone make the arrangements for you to travel down to Zagreb on the next available plane.”

“It’s just that Brandenburg is sixty kilometers away and I’m going to need a car to get me there and back.”

“Of course. And yes, you may borrow the roadster until tomorrow. Just have it back here before ten. I’m planning a picnic at Schwanenwerder tomorrow.”

I got up to leave and began the long journey toward the door.

Halfway there, he said, “What you were saying just now about Fräulein Dresner. I liked it. I liked it very much. She is, as you say, beautiful in a fantastic, unearthly, in-your-dreams sort of way. But that’s all it can ever be for someone like you, Gunther. She can exist only in your dreams, Herr Gunther. And only ever in your dreams. Do we understand each other?”

“As always, Herr Doctor, you make your meaning very clear.”

It wasn’t unusual for Germans to have the words of Dr. Goebbels ringing in their ears as they went about their daily business. He was often on the radio, of course, making some important speech from the Sportpalast or the Radio House. Everyone still remembered with a shudder the speech he’d made in February when he called for “total war,” which somehow managed to seem even more frightening than the war with which we had already become wearily familiar. Mostly we’d learned not to pay much attention to what Joey said. But the speech he’d made as I left his city mansion was different; this particular speech was just for me. A speech that ought to have scared me as much as the one about total war.

After I’d been home and put on a clean shirt and my best lounge suit I jumped back in the car, shooed away some boys who were staring at it as if it had arrived from another planet, and started the engine. And now thinking it best that Goebbels didn’t know I wasn’t going to Brandenburg at all but to dinner with the woman he loved, I decided to take a few detours along the way, just in case I was being followed. But mostly I just put my foot on the gas when I had my ticket for the AVUS speedway because the 540K could outrun almost any other car on the road.

I got back to the house on Griebnitzsee just a little before eight and parked the car several streets away, just in case anyone noticed that there were two identical red roadsters on the driveway. I checked the street for cars but it was empty; if Goebbels was having her watched it could only have been from the window of one of those other enormous houses. Without those pips on the lapel of my uniform I figured I was harder to identify but I pulled the brim of my hat down over my eyes anyway, just in case. When you’re trying your best to steal the minister’s girl it’s as well to be a little careful. I’d bought some flowers from Harry Lehmann’s on Friedrichstrasse and, holding these like some lovesick young suitor, I cranked the doorbell again. This time the maid answered. She gave me a slow up-and-down like I was something the cat had brought to the door, and then pulled a face.

“So you’re it,” she said. “The reason my day off had to be cut short in order that her royal highness can play Arsène Avignon in the kitchen.”

“Who’s he?” I asked, advancing into the hall.

“You wouldn’t know him. He’s a French chef. Cooks at the Ritz. That’s an expensive hotel, in case you didn’t know that, either. What’s this you’re holding? Some kind of cheap umbrella?”

“Pour votre maîtresse,” I said.

“I thought all the cemeteries were closed at this time of night. Kind of small, aren’t they?”

Dalia appeared behind her maid’s shoulder. She was wearing an iridescent navy taffeta evening gown with a quilted collar and hem, cut very close to the line of her hips, which was where my eyes lingered for more than a moment or two.

“Are those for me?” she asked. “Oh, Harry Lehmann. How lovely. And how thoughtful.”

“I’d have brought a nice juicy bone if I’d known you had such a fierce dog looking out for you.”

Dalia took the flowers from me and handed them to her maid.

“Agnes, put these in some water, will you please?”

“I thought you said he was handsome,” Agnes said sourly. “And an officer, to boot. Did you check his teeth? This one looks kind of old for that beef you’ve cooked, princess.”

I took Dalia’s hand and kissed it.

“Take my advice with this one, princess,” said Agnes. “Look before you leap. For snakes among sweet flowers do creep.”

Agnes went one way along the corridor, Dalia and I went the other.

“Is she always this friendly?”

“As a matter of fact, she likes you.”

“How can you tell?”

“Telepathy. I warned you I was clever, didn’t I? You should hear her when Joey turns up at the door. You would think she was talking to the coal man.”

“I’d like a front seat for the next time that happens.”

“She told Veit Harlan that he should write a suicide scene with himself as the star.”

There were lots of suicides in Harlan’s movies; his wife, the Swedish actress Kristina Söderbaum, was always taking her life in his films, which must have made her wonder if he was trying to tell her something.

“I’m beginning to see why you keep her around. She doesn’t just growl. She bites, too.”

“Yes, she does. But not as much as I do.”

In the drawing room was a Swan Biedermeier living room set upholstered in white leather, several elegant tables, and a tall chest of drawers, only you didn’t notice the furniture much because of the paintings on the wall. Brightly colored, they were also recognizable, which is how I like my modern art. She told me they were by the German artist Emil Nolde and had been hanging on the walls of Joey’s city mansion until Hitler had seen them.

“He told Josef they were degenerate and to get rid of them, so now they’re here. I rather like them, don’t you?”

“I do now you’ve told me that story. In fact, Emil Nolde just became my favorite German artist.”

There was a black lyre-shaped clock on the mantelpiece and a mahogany grand piano, which couldn’t have been played much because there were as many photographs of Dalia on the lid as there were winged horses on the rug. In most of the photographs she was with someone famous like Emil Jannings, Werner Krauss, Viktoria von Ballasko, or Leni Riefenstahl. She pointed me toward an ice bucket and a bottle of Pol Roger and I managed to open it without scaring the pet white rabbit that was hopping around the floor.

“If that’s dinner, it’s looking a little undercooked for my taste.”

She pretended to scold me and then made me sit beside her on the sofa, which suited me nicely. It was quite a small sofa.

“So, what did you discover this afternoon?” she asked.

“About Yugoslavia? Only that a lot of people have advised me not to go there, Fräulein Dresner. And to be careful if I do. I thought Germany could teach the world something about hatred but it seems your countrymen know a thing or two about hate themselves. About all that I’ve learned to my advantage has been the name of the best hotel in Zagreb — the Esplanade. Which is where I’m staying, I think.”

“So you are going?”

“Yes, I’m going. Just as soon as Joey can get me on a plane.”

“Thank you,” she said quietly. “I’m so grateful to you, Herr Gunther. But please call me Dalia. And if I’m going to sit next to you on this sofa I can hardly call you Herr Gunther. I used to know a butcher in Zurich called Herr Gunther and if we’re not careful I shall ask you for some sausage. And that wouldn’t do at all.”

“Bernie,” I said. “It’s Bernie.”