Philip Kerr - The Lady from Zagreb

“Why didn’t you join the Ustaše?” I asked him.

“Me, sir? I’m not Croatian. I’m ethnic German, I am. And damned proud of it.”

In the light of what I’d already seen, I wasn’t feeling proud of being human let alone German so I let that one go.

We got back into the cars and drove through a thick, dark forest and onto a large marshy plain, where we caught our first sight of the camp, and soon after that we stopped at a checkpoint and were obliged to explain our business to the guards. In the distance, running parallel with the river, we could see a train heading for the camp. The guard picked up a telephone, spoke a few words, and then waved us on.

“You’re in luck,” said Geiger. “It seems that Colonel Dragan is here. He wasn’t yesterday.” He laughed. “Apparently he was in Zagreb.”

“That certainly sounds like my sort of luck,” I said. “I wouldn’t have missed this for the world.”

Finally we arrived at the main entrance to what described itself as Camp III. It was easy to see why this was a brickworks; the whole place was enclosed by an enormous brick wall about three meters high, perfectly built, and hundreds of meters in circumference. There was an entrance arch also made of bricks, with a big sign and, on top, an Ustaše shield featuring a U and a Croatian red-and-white flag. Inside the arch was a curiously ornate wrought-iron coaching lamp. Leaving Oehl and Schwörer and the two cars, Geiger and I walked up to the entrance. The Croatian guard escorted us through and it was only now that I perceived the true size of the camp, which was spread across a huge flat plain. The humid, swampy air was thick with the corrupt smell of death and the infernal whine of mosquitoes and I breathed it with more than a little distaste. When the very air contains human decay, it catches on the throat. Running parallel to the Sava River to the east was a single railway track where even now the black steam train we’d seen earlier was making its slow and laborious way to the end of the line.

In front of us to the northwest were the camp buildings dominated by a single-story barracks that was fifty or sixty meters long; behind these were several tall chimneys and some watchtowers. In the distance we could just about see a lake where even now hundreds of prisoners were at work retrieving clay to make bricks. Everything seemed preternaturally calm, but already my eyes had taken in the body hanging from a nail on a telegraph pole, and then a proper gallows on which were hanging two more bodies. But all that was nothing compared with the sight that awaited us in a little picket-fenced garden out front of the brick-built villa to which we were now escorted. Where someone in Germany might have chosen to display some plants in terra-cotta pots, a rockery, or even a series of ceramic garden gnomes, here there was a virtual palisade of severed human heads. As I mounted the steps to the front door I counted at least fifteen. The guard went to fetch the colonel while, waiting for him inside the villa, we discovered the true horror of exactly how the heads in the garden had been obtained. Surrounding the near mandatory portrait of Mussolini on the neatly papered wall were framed photographs of decapitations — men and women, presumably Serbs, having their heads cut off with knives, axes, and, in one particularly nauseating picture, a two-man crosscut saw. This was bad enough but it was the smiling faces on the large team of Ustaše men inflicting these cruelties that disturbed me most of all. These pictures made Goya’s disasters of war look like a set of illustrated place mats. I sat down on a poorly sprung sofa and stared unhappily at the toes of my boots.

“Try to remember what I told you,” said Geiger. “You need to keep your mouth shut if we’re going to get out of here alive. This is none of our fucking business. None of our fucking business. Just bear that in mind. Here. Have a drink.”

Geiger produced a silver flask. It was filled with rakija from the Hotel Sunja. Gratefully I took a bite of it and enjoyed letting the stuff burn the coating off my insides; it was the drink I deserved — a drink from the ninth circle of hell — and just to swallow it was enough to leave you silent for several minutes, as if some infernal imp had poured liquid fire down your throat.

We waited half an hour. I tried not to look at the photographs on the wall but my eyes kept on being dragged back there. What was it like to kneel in front of a man who was about to cut your head off with a knife? I could hardly imagine a worse fate than that.

“Where is this bastard anyway?” I asked.

“The guard said he was on the other side of the river. In Donja Gradina. A little island called the place of sighs.” He shrugged. “It sounds nice. Almost relaxing, really. But I have the awful feeling it’s nothing of the sort.”

Finally we heard voices and a tall, dark-haired man wearing a smart gray uniform, black boots, and a Sam Browne entered the room.

“I’m Colonel Dragan,” he said. “I understand that you wanted to see me.”

He spoke perfect German, with a near-Austrian accent, like most ethnic Germans. It was easy to see where Dalia had got her good looks. Colonel Dragan was unsmiling but film-star handsome. His tunic lapels and forage cap had a gold letter U on them but I could have wished that he’d had a letter U branded on his forehead. After the war, I hoped that someone else would think of this and take it upon themselves to mark him out for ostracism and then death.

Geiger and I stood and introduced ourselves; he was, after all, a colonel.

“Might I ask if you were previously known as Father Ladislaus, at the Petricevac Monastery in Banja Luka, and before that, as Antun Djurkovic?”

“It’s been a while since anyone called me that,” said the colonel. “But yes. I’m he.”

“Then,” I said, “I have a letter to you from your daughter,” and opening my briefcase, I gave him Dalia’s letter.

He glanced at the handwritten name and address on the back of the envelope with some incredulity, as if it had been posted on Venus. He even lifted it to his nose and sniffed it, suspiciously.

“My daughter? You say you know my daughter, Dragica?”

“I know her. I’m sure her letter will explain any questions you might have.”

“The last time I saw her she was but a child,” he said. “She must be a young woman now.”

“She is,” I said. “A very beautiful one.”

“But how is it in the middle of the war that Dragica has two errand boys from the SS? Is she so very important? Frau Hitler, perhaps? The last I heard she was living in Switzerland. In Zurich, I think. Or are the Swiss no longer neutral? Has the temptation to invade that ridiculous place become too much for your Hitler?”

“She’s a movie star in Germany,” I told him. “At UFA-Babelsberg in Berlin. As well as being the minister of Truth and Propaganda, Dr. Goebbels is head of the film studio. It’s on his direct authority that I’m here. I’m to wait until you’ve read that letter and see if there’s a reply.”

“I had no idea. She was always beautiful. Like her mother. But a movie star, you say?”

I nodded. I thought it best not to mention that his former wife was dead. That was best left to Dalia’s letter.

“I was a boy the last time I went to the cinema,” said the colonel. “Must have been. It was a silent film.” He frowned. “How did you find me?”

“Your old Father Abbot at Petricevac in Banja Luka. That was your last known address, apparently.”

“Father Marko? I can’t believe that someone hasn’t killed that man. He’s much too outspoken for his own good. Even for a Catholic priest. There are others who were less fortunate than him.”