Philip Kerr - The Lady from Zagreb

“Before the war I worked in a bank. But I think it’s best I just tell my superiors that you were smuggling gold out of Germany and leave it at that. Frankly, anything else is likely to get me into trouble just for mentioning it. What the generals do is for them to fight about, not the likes of me. Now I can make my report and wash my hands of the whole affair.”

“I know that feeling very well myself,” I said. “Crime doesn’t seem to matter so much when there’s so much of it around. When it’s completely out of control. After a while you just want to keep your head down and get by without comment. You have my sympathies.”

“I’m glad you see it that way.”

“Sure. I’d probably do the same myself. We’re cut from the same piece of wood, Nölle. We’re both of us ordinary cops just trying to get along. The way I see it, there’s plenty of gold for all three of us to live out the rest of our lives in considerable luxury.”

“You’d really do that? Steal the gold?”

“Why not? They stole it from someone. The Jews, probably. What’s to stop us stealing it back? Two million in gold split three ways? That’s seven hundred and fifty thousand for each of you and half a million for me. How about it?”

He looked at the other man, who shook his head slowly.

“Sorry,” said Nölle. “But we can’t do that. It’s not that we don’t want to. But we’re not like you, Gunther. It’s that we just don’t have the guts, I think. Besides, there’s Gottlob to consider. Our friend the farmer. He’s what you might call a die-hard Nazi. He’d never agree to what you’re proposing.”

“So you’re really going to shoot me.”

He nodded. “I’m afraid so. I could shoot you here but I wouldn’t like to risk the neighbors hearing the shots. Sound carries around here. Especially at night. Besides, I figure the Zurich cops have probably had enough shootings for one day. So we’ll go for a drive, I think. Edouard, bring the car around. And get the bottle. We’ll share a last drink before the end, Gunther. I’ve no wish to make this any more unpleasant than it needs to be.”

“Very thoughtful of you, I’m sure.”

“You’ve no idea. Gottlob would probably feed you to his pigs.”

After Nölle had forced me to put the gold back into the Mercedes we all climbed into the black Citroën and drove out of Ringlikon, up a winding mountain road, and across an open railway line, to the top of the Uetliberg, which, at almost nine hundred meters, is the highest spot in Zurich. It took about ten minutes to reach the top from the safe house. In any other circumstances I’d have been pleased to be there. There was a hotel — the Uto Kulm — and a thirty-meter-high viewing tower, as if the mountaintop itself and its many precipitous footpaths were not enough for the Swiss. It seemed almost blasphemous to try to improve on what nature had done, but that’s the Swiss for you, I suppose.

The darkness and a sudden heavy shower of rain had deterred the usual lovers and happy wanderers and it seemed we had the place to ourselves. We stepped out of the car and I looked around. For a moment my eyes caught some awful sculptures of deer that looked more like camels and I wondered how it was that the Swiss had permitted such an important beauty spot to have these ugly ornaments. Whatever Schellenberg said about the Swiss, they were still capable of the most appalling lapses of taste.

At gunpoint, the two Gestapo men forced me to climb up the tower. I didn’t think it was to appreciate the spectacular night views of the city or the red rooftops of the hotel itself. I’ve never much liked heights and this one was already beginning to bore me.

“This is nice,” I said. “I needed some air.”

“There’s plenty of that up here,” said Nölle. “All the air anyone could want.”

“I assume we’re not here to enjoy the view,” I said when we had reached the top of the tower.

“You’re right,” said Nölle, and he produced the flask of rakija he’d found in my car. “This is journey’s end for you, Gunther, so drink up, there’s a good fellow.”

Reluctantly I took a swig. With a gun shoved in my face I could hardly do otherwise. The rakija tasted like liquid lava and was probably every bit as inflammable.

“You’re not drinking?” I asked.

“Not this time. Which is good because there’ll be more for you. I want you to drink all of it. All of it, you understand?”

Reluctantly I took another swig. “I get it. I’m going to get drunk and have an accident. Is that it? The way some communists used to fall in the Landwehr Canal and drown. With a little help from the Gestapo.”

“Something like that,” said Nölle. “As a matter of fact, this is a popular place for suicides. The Swiss have one of the highest suicide rates in Europe. Did you know that? Of course, that might have something to do with the fact that assisted suicide has been legal in this country since 1941.”

“Fascinating.”

“So what we’re doing, you might almost say it’s legal,” he said. “Helping you to commit suicide. You see, the local police will like it a whole lot better if you jump instead of them finding you with a bullet in your head. That is, when they eventually find you. Drink up. That’s it. You can take my word for it, the trees are rather thick down there. We’ll write you a nice suicide note when we get back to the house and leave it in your hotel room tomorrow.”

“That’s a nice touch. The lonely German abroad. Away from home, he gets depressed and starts drinking heavily. Maybe he had something to do with the deaths of those Americans. That would tie a nice bow on everything.”

“To understand all is to forgive all,” said Nölle.

“Drink up,” said Edouard. “You’re not drinking. You know, you’ll feel a whole lot better about this with a few drinks inside of you. I know I will.”

He was holding the bottle to my lips and tipped some more in my mouth. I gulped at the fiery liquid and retched over the railing a little. But already I was starting to feel a little drunk. I sank onto my knees, cowering in the corner against the railing. The Mauser was pressed right under my ear. I knew if I finished the bottle I would die anyway, that they wouldn’t have to push me off the tower to kill me.

“Don’t throw up,” said Nölle. “That will spoil everything.”

A faint breath of wind stirred the hair on my head but that was nothing beside the effect that the height was having on the sinews of my heart. I glanced over the railings. Through the glass rooftop of the hotel’s brightly lit winter garden I could see people enjoying drinks and cigarettes and reading newspapers with not the least clue of what was about to befall me.

“Listen,” I spluttered, “if you’re going to kill me, for Christ’s sake give me a nail. At least let me have a last smoke with my drink. I never much liked one without the other.”

“Sure. We’ll all have a cigarette. And then you can finish your drink. Before you take wing, so to speak.”

I stood up, fumbled a cigarette into my mouth with trembling hands, lit it, handed them the pack, and then took as large a mouthful of that filthy rakija as I could manage, only this time I didn’t swallow it. Neither of the two Gestapo men was looking at me. I waited just long enough for them to get a cigarette in their mouths and then dip them to the lighter now springing into life in Nölle’s hands. And then I spat the whole mouthful of rakija at the steady flame between their two bowed heads.

Even I was surprised at what happened next. I’d heard horror stories of what happened when a Flammenwerfer went in to clear a trench on the Western Front — horror stories of human torches and burning Frenchmen — but I’m pleased to say I’d never seen it myself. It wasn’t a weapon that I could ever have used with a clear conscience. It’s one thing putting a rifle bullet in a man’s head, or even a bayonet through his gut, but it’s something else to set him on fire. As soon as the rakija — which Geiger had said was more than eighty-proof alcohol — hit the flame from Edouard’s lighter, it ignited the hands, shoulders, jackets, faces, heads, and hair of both men; in fact, it set fire to anything that the rakija from my drunken mouth had landed on, including the railing. A ruthless Flammenwerfer couldn’t have done a better job. A strong smell of singed human hair and burning flesh filled the bright and fiery air alongside their screams. Edouard plucked at his burning hair and a piece of it came away in his burning hand. Nölle twisted one way and then the other in hideous slow motion like a living Roman candle. The next second the alcohol had burned off and the flames were gone. For a moment they stopped screaming. At the very least, I’d blinded them.