Philip Kerr - The Lady from Zagreb

What the hell happened to your nose?”

“I blew it a little too loudly, I think. Either that or it’s a lot colder in Berlin than I thought.”

Goebbels smiled. “You really brought her back from Switzerland?”

“I left her drinking coffee at the house, in Griebnitzsee, an hour ago. She’s fine. Reading her script. Looking forward to starting work on Monday.”

“But, I don’t understand, why hasn’t she called me?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Perhaps I should go down to the house, with a bunch of flowers. With a piece of jewelry, perhaps. I wonder if Margraf on Kanonierstrasse might have something.”

“I think she said she was going to take a bath. It is a long drive from Munich, sir. And it is a hot day. Perhaps she intends to call you later. After she’s freshened up a bit.”

“Yes, I expect you’re right. Gunther, I’m amazed. What with the bombing and that unfortunate business with her papa, I thought she’d never come back to Berlin. The last time we spoke on the telephone she virtually told me to go to hell. I’d even started to look for another actress to replace her. In the picture, I mean.” He smiled. “She’s really there now? In Griebnitzsee?”

“As soon as I saw that she was safely through the front door, I came straight over here to tell you. I would have telephoned but I thought I should tell you in person.”

“I just knew it was going to be a great day,” said Goebbels. “Yesterday, on my way here from Tempelhof Airport, I was reflecting on the folly of human beings who wage war when nature is so very beautiful. It’s hard to imagine anything like that happening on a day as beautiful as this, isn’t it? And now this. Your fantastic news. Really, I couldn’t be more delighted.”

Goebbels grinned, flipped open the silver cigarette box, and bounced a little on the sofa cushion. “Help yourself to a cigarette, Captain. Fill your case.”

I smiled thinly, unbuttoned the breast pocket in my tunic, and took out my case. I was back in uniform now. My suit was still on the floor of Dalia’s bedroom at the house in Griebnitzsee, where she had hurriedly thrown it before we’d gone to bed. I’d forgotten to hang it up and now a small part of me was worried that the suit would still be there if on the spur of the moment the minister for Truth decided to dash round there to welcome his favorite actress back to Berlin. Good housekeeping wasn’t Dalia’s strongest suit and without Agnes there to remember these things, I’d not much confidence that the suit wouldn’t still be lying there when Goebbels walked in. And not just my suit, but also my dirty underwear and the shoulder holster with the P38 I’d borrowed from the farmer in Ringlikon. The gun I might have been able to explain, but not the underwear.

In his own white summer suit Goebbels looked exactly like a male nurse in an insane asylum, which was perhaps not so very far from the truth. Waging war — total war — was one of the Mahatma’s most famous mantras, and to hear him waxing lyrical about the follies of war took me by surprise. What could he possibly know about peace and nature?

I was also surprised he’d seen me without an appointment. The ministry was full of state secretaries and stenographers running around the palace like lunatics. Clearly something very serious was up but no one I asked felt at all inclined to say what this was. For a few glorious moments I thought that the whole government was fleeing Berlin, which had been the rumor on the streets ever since the RAF bombing had intensified. Hamburg had been hit again and was supposed to be in ruins. And there was no doubt that certain Berlin public offices had been evacuated. The minister of the interior, Wilhelm Frick, was reputed to have taken his entire department to the country. Every real Berliner I knew was anxious to see the back of them all. But Goebbels certainly didn’t look like a man who was about to run away from Hitler’s capital. In fact he looked so pleased with the news I’d given him and so relaxed that he crossed his legs, giving me a clean view of his deformed right foot dangled in front of my face, something I’d never known him to do; I’d become aware he usually crossed them left over right.

“However did you do it?” he asked. “You have to tell me everything because I certainly won’t get the truth from Dalia herself. She’ll give me some nonsense about how she didn’t want to let everyone down. Me, Veit Harlan. The rest of the cast. The woman is an expert liar. Take it from one who has a nose for the truth. What on earth did you tell her?”

I took a cigarette from my refilled case, rolled it under my nose to savor the sweet scent of good tobacco — which, unlike most German cigarettes, stayed tight in the paper and didn’t fall out in your pocket — and lit it with the table lighter. “The money, sir.” I aimed the smoke at the high ceiling and shrugged. “I told her about the money and the house you were offering to give her, for doing the picture. You mentioned it in your telegram.”

“She always knew that more money was in the cards,” he said, shaking his head. “That’s how these people work, you know. Actors. The women are especially ruthless. They wait until they have you between the jaws of their pliers before they start to squeeze you for the last penny. But money was never the issue with her. She has a rich husband. Houses and money are not that important to Dalia. No, there has to be something else, Gunther. Something you’re not telling me. She’s back in Berlin for something other than money. But what?”

I didn’t think he wanted to hear about the lady in the lake or that maybe her presence in Berlin had just a little to do with me, so I took a long haul on the cigarette, swallowed the smoke whole this time, and then said: “I told her she was going to be getting even more money for this movie than Zarah Leander got when she made The Big Love .”

“The Great Love.” Goebbels frowned. “The film was called The Great Love . But now I come to think of it, The Big Love sounds much more modern. More American. Anyway, the point is, there was nothing in my telegram about Zarah Leander. All I said was that I would double what Fräulein Dresner had been offered before. Which is already a hell of a lot, I don’t mind telling you, Gunther. You’ve no idea what these people call a day’s pay.”

“No, sir. That’s true. I’m afraid I took the liberty of adding that bit about Zarah Leander, just to help sweeten your offer. And, as it happened, Fräulein Dresner was pleased when I pointed out that she was going to be making more money than Leander. She seemed especially delighted when I suggested that she’ll be the highest paid actress in German cinema. Ever. I suppose you might even call that politics. As a result I think I might have given you a problem with Zarah Leander. You might have to arbitrate a power struggle between those two.”

“Brilliant,” said Goebbels, and he clapped his hands loudly. “Brilliant. Why the hell didn’t I think of that? Yes, of course. All of these actresses are pathologically jealous of each other. Dalia hates Zarah, who hates Marika Roekk. And everyone hates Marlene. How did you know that?”

“I didn’t. But when I did physics at school I learned about something called Coulomb’s law, which says that highly charged particles whose charges have the same sign repel one another. Sometimes violently. The same is often true with women. When there’s one woman who’s attracting all of the men in a room, then some of the other women might very well be repelled by that. At least that’s been my own experience. Sometimes I think that women pay more attention to each other than they do to men.”