Philip Kerr - The Lady from Zagreb

“I thought you said there were no problems, Gunther,” said Schellenberg.

“With the car. The car’s just fine. It’s out front. With me, things were a little more difficult.”

Schellenberg looked relieved. “Such as?”

“Nothing I couldn’t handle.”

“That sounds a bit ominous.”

“It’s not at all ominous.” I lit a cigarette. “Not really. You see, it already happened. To me, at any rate. I’ll tell you about it sometime, General. When I’m in a more even frame of mind than I am at this moment. It will be better for you that way. Right now I just want to enjoy this very impressive view, this excellent glass of wine, and this cigarette. And to talk to Captain Meyer, of course. I haven’t seen you since last July, Captain. We’ve got a bit of catching up to do, you and I.” I smiled a sarcastic sort of smile. “With the accent on ‘catching,’ perhaps.”

“Whatever do you mean? And, please, call me Paul.”

“Thanks, but for now I’ll just stick to captain, if you don’t mind. And what do I mean? Well, at the risk of seeming rude, I have to ask you a formal question. A policeman’s question, I’m afraid.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” asked Schellenberg.

“The last time I saw you, Captain Meyer, at the German Opera in Berlin, there was a murder just around the corner. Fellow named Heckholz. Dr. Heckholz. Someone stove his head in with a bust of Hitler. There’s a joke in there somewhere but not for Dr. Heckholz. He died, you see. Not the first person killed by Hitler, and certainly not the last. There, I made it. The joke.”

“No one’s laughing, Gunther,” said Schellenberg.

“Let me finish. Heckholz was a lawyer for the Minoux family, who used to own the villa on Lake Wannsee. Where the IKPK conference took place. Heckholz was preparing to ask some awkward questions about the Nordhav Foundation and the purchase of the villa and who received all of the money from the sale. At first I thought the general here had ordered one of his men to shut Heckholz up. After all, he is the managing director of Nordhav and rather conveniently he does command an office full of murderers.”

“Really, Gunther, you’re the most extraordinarily impertinent fellow I think I’ve ever met,” said Schellenberg.

“But then — it was only yesterday, as a matter of fact — I realized who really killed him. It wasn’t the general or any of his men. And I don’t believe it was you, Captain Meyer. You don’t strike me as the type. But I think you know who it was. Which brings me to the formal question, sir. Was it your colleague, Lieutenant Leuthard, who killed Dr. Heckholz?”

“I must say,” said Schellenberg. “If that doesn’t beat all. You turn up at a man’s house, as a guest, and within ten minutes you virtually accuse the man to his face of cold-blooded murder. You astonish me.”

“Actually, General, I don’t think it was cold-blooded at all. I think the lieutenant hit him on the spur of the moment. With the first heavy object that came to hand. If he’d gone there to kill him, he certainly would have brought a more effective weapon than a bronze of Adolf Hitler. Which means I’m certain that the captain here didn’t order Heckholz to be killed, either. No, I’d say Leuthard acted way beyond his brief. After all, Captain, you yourself told me that Leuthard was a difficult character, at the best of times. A bit hotheaded, I think you said.”

Schellenberg stood up. “I think you should leave now, Gunther.”

“In the Mercedes?” I smiled. “The one I just arrived in? I don’t think so, General. You wouldn’t like that.”

“Sit down, Schelli,” said Meyer. “Sit down and be quiet for a moment. Captain Gunther is absolutely right. Lieutenant Leuthard did murder Dr. Heckholz. Just as he described.”

“That much is now certain, anyway,” I said.

“Leuthard was a lot more than a hothead,” said Meyer. “He was a thug. I had no idea what kind of man he was when he accompanied me to Berlin. The army insisted I take him with me, for security in the event that someone from the Gestapo decided to kidnap me from the conference. Out of fear that under torture I might reveal some state secrets.”

“Would you care to tell me exactly what happened, sir?”

“My God, Gunther,” complained Schellenberg, “you sound exactly like the village policeman.”

“I don’t think I’m going to tell you exactly what you sound like, General. It might tempt me to reach for that gun. This is a neutral country, after all.”

“No, no, Schelli, Gunther’s quite right. He was first on the scene of the crime, after all. Heckholz was threatening to expose a business deal between the Swiss Wood Syndicate and a subsidiary of Nordhav — Export Drives GMBH — in the Swiss newspapers.”

“You mean the deal to supply wooden barracks to the SS and the German Army?”

“How do you know about that?” asked Schellenberg.

“Precisely,” said Meyer. “Two thousand of them. The first five hundred were shipped last year. The whole deal is worth a lot of money to Switzerland’s rather beleaguered economy. About twelve million Swiss francs, to be honest. Not that it would be the first time our two countries have done business together. Back in 1939, Major Eggen’s department bought a large quantity of machine guns from us. Of course, not all Swiss are happy that their country is making business deals with yours. Especially when it’s military equipment. But those who are opposed to such deals don’t tell us how this country is supposed to survive economically while remaining a neutral country that’s surrounded by Germany and its allies. The fact is, we have to export to survive. We need German money, and to stay neutral, we need to do business with Germany. But this is a very sensitive subject and it would not have been helpful for someone to write about it in the Swiss newspapers. It’s that simple. Schelli here has been very helpful in making such deals happen. He believes very strongly in Swiss neutrality. In fact, that’s why he’s here, right now.”

“You’re telling him much more than he really needs to know,” said Schellenberg. “He’s really not that important.”

“Get to Leuthard’s role in all this,” I told Meyer.

“Soon after we checked into the Adlon I received a message from Heckholz asking for a meeting. So while you and I were chatting in the sunshine outside the hotel, I sent Leuthard round to Heckholz’s office to set something up. He wasn’t there. So he went back again during the opera, and this time he was. All that he was supposed to do was arrange a meeting. I certainly didn’t expect him to bash the man’s brains in. I was horrified when he told me what had happened. As soon as I got back to Switzerland, I arranged for Leuthard to be transferred from my section.”

“So you’re saying that Heckholz wasn’t killed to save Switzerland from any embarrassment about the end users of those wooden barracks,” I said.

Meyer looked puzzled. “Aside from the fact that a wooden barracks is going to be occupied by German soldiers,” he said, “I really don’t see that anyone can complain very much about a bloody hut. It’s not like we’re selling your country machine guns. That’s why we’re doing it. A hut is just a hut. Much less emotive than guns, I can assure you.”

“That’s fair,” I said. “All the same, I wonder what the Swiss people might say if they knew exactly what the SS is using some of those huts for.”

“I don’t understand.”

“They’re being sent to concentration camps. You’ve heard about those, I suppose.”

“You don’t know that for sure, Gunther,” said Schellenberg. “You’re just guessing.”

“Two thousand of them? I should think it’s a fair guess that quite a few of them have ended up in one KZ or another.”