Philip Kerr - The Lady from Zagreb

“That way,” said Oehl, pointing around the windscreen. “Drive past the fucking mosque and then down past Gestapo HQ.”

We quickly left the city behind. The sun was strong, the land seemed to cower underneath its fierce effect. With the hood of the car folded down behind us like the bellows of an accordion we drove southeast from Zagreb, into Slavonia. The land was very flat and very fertile as a result of the Pannonian Sea, which had existed here about half a million years ago. Apparently, the sea lasted for nine million years, which was probably going to put what happened over the course of the next couple of days into some sort of perspective; but I knew that the sooner I was away from this place and safely back in Berlin, the better. And all I could think about was sleeping with Dalia Dresner again. Especially now that I’d met my two traveling companions. Every time I looked at them I had a bad feeling about this particular road trip. Geiger’s sergeant kept the machine gun over the edge of the door like a rear gunner in a Dornier and looked like he was keen to use it. After half an hour, Geiger opened his eyes and lit one cigarette after another as though the clean country air was an affront to his lungs. The machine gun on his lap might have been a briefcase, he looked so relaxed with it. The smile on his face was not a happy smile. It was more like Bolle’s smile, just like in the Berlin song, because, for all the terrible things that he does and that happen to him, Bolle still has a bloody marvelous time.

Factories, garages, scrap-metal yards, and lumberyards gave way to houses that were half finished or half destroyed, it was hard to tell which. Villages, centuries old, that were all but deserted. The car jolted along the empty road. I did my best to steer around the potholes and sometimes what were obviously shell holes. After a while the road narrowed and deteriorated in quality so that we were soon making no more than thirty kilometers an hour. We drove on, past small holdings, goats tethered to fences, and men plowing fields or digging ditches. Here and there we saw road signs, all of them punctured with bullet holes, but mostly there was just the dusty road through this godforsaken country. The few people we saw paid us little or no attention. My mission was a universe away from the lives of those who eked out an existence here. Now and then a cart, impossibly laden with grass, or watermelons, or corn, provided a fleeting contact with reality. It was drawn by a knackered horse and steered by men who seemed only vaguely human, their faces covered with ant colonies of stubble and almost expressionless, as if they had been carved from the very oak trees that lined the road. These people wanted no justification for being there, no creed or warped ideology to excuse their unfenced existence in this place. This was their home; it had always been their home and it always would be. Men like me and Geiger and Oehl were just passing through on our way to a private hell that we had created for ourselves. I enjoyed seeing these lean, stoic men; they made me think I belonged in a world where something as straightforward and honest as growing tobacco and sugar beet, and animal husbandry, still existed; but this feeling never lasted long. From time to time Geiger would discharge his daddy at a cow in a field and frighten it off like a rabbit, and once a Focke-Wulf 190 flew low over our heads, ripping open the sky in a great salvo of oil and metal.

Nobody said much until we came across the carcass of a horse lying next to a burned-out Italian tankette. From the look and smell of the dead animal it was days old; but my two companions insisted on taking a closer look, with guns at the ready, of course. While Oehl walked off to scout the road up ahead, Geiger looked at the saddle on the horse and declared it had belonged to a Serb.

“How can you tell?”

“Only a Serb would be stupid enough to put a saddle on like that. Besides, there’s something written in Cyrillic on the leather.”

“I don’t understand why you seem to hate the Serbs so much. It can’t just be that they were part of the Ottoman Empire, otherwise why would the Ustaše have built that damn mosque in Zagreb? You even speak the same language.”

“Who told you that?”

“Lieutenant Waldheim.”

“What the fuck does he know about it?” said Geiger. “The languages are similar. I’ll grant you that. But with important differences. Serb is written in Cyrillic and Croatian in the Roman alphabet. And Serb just sounds more fucking stupid than Croat.”

“Yes, but why do you hate each other?”

“History. It’s the main reason anyone hates anyone, isn’t it? History and race. Serbs are stupid and lazy and deserve to be consigned to the racial rubbish heap.”

“That’s not exactly Hegel.”

“You want Hegel, then go back to Berlin. Here there’s just killing.”

“Believe me, I will, just as soon as I can.”

“All right, then, Serbs are backstabbers and assassins. How’s that for you? There’s Stjepan Radic, a Croat who was shot in the federal parliament by a Serb member — Puniša Racic — in 1928. And before that there was the Archduke Ferdinand, of course. But for the fucking Serbs, we might not have had a Great War. Think about that, Gunther. All of the good fellows you once knew back in Berlin who might still be alive today were it not for one dumb Serb called Gavrilo Princip and his Black Hand. That’s right. If you could ask your dead pals what they think about Serbs, I bet you’d get a dusty answer. You see, the Serbs have a habit of starting wars they don’t finish. They’re always on the wrong side. They were on the Russian side in the last lot and we Croats were on your side. Croats are more like you Germans and some of us are Germans, of course. Serbs are just peasants and communists. If you showed a Serb a lavatory he’d probably wash his hands in it. We hate them because they always stick together with the Slovenes regardless of where the interests of the country might lie. Brother Slovene, Brother Serb, that’s what we Croats say. You want more reasons why we hate them? Then there’s just this: they’re double-dealing bastards. You can’t trust Serbs any more than you can trust a fucking Jew. You can always rely on a Serb to let you down.”

“I’m glad I asked.”

He frowned. “What the fuck are you doing down here, anyway, Gunther? Captains in the SD don’t normally come out into the field like this. At least not without a special action murder squad at their back. Fritzes and Fridolins like you normally prefer to leave that kind of thing to volunteer SS like me and Sergeant Oehl.”

“Murder’s got nothing to do with why I’m here, Captain Geiger. I’m on a special mission for the Reich Minister of Truth and Propaganda. There’s a priest in Banja Luka I have to find so I can deliver a letter to him from Dr. Goebbels.”

“That gimpy little rat. What does he want with a fucking priest? He hates priests. Everyone knows that. It’s why the last Pope issued an encyclical against the Nazis.”

“He doesn’t tell me why he’s hungry, just to bring him breakfast.”

“And you aren’t just a little bit curious why he’s sent you to find a priest in Banja Luka?”

“When I was with the SD back in Smolensk I learned that it’s usually best not to question my orders.”

“True.”

I went back to the car and fetched some of the photographs of Father Ladislaus.

“But since you’re interested...”

“No,” said Geiger. “I don’t recognize him. All priests look alike to me. But I’ll tell you one thing. If he’s a priest in Banja Luka, he’s got his work cut out. Things were very bloody there a while back. And that’s saying something in this country, believe me.”