Philip Kerr - Prague Fatale

That made me sit up a little: Heydrich had never struck me as mean with money; mean-spirited, yes, but not an embezzler. And to be so honest about it, too! Of course, I knew he’d never have told me if Himmler didn’t know about it and approve. Which meant that they were all in it. The whole rotten crew. Living high on the hog while the ordinary Fritz went without his beer and his sausage and his cigarettes.

‘Oh, I’m sure Kritzinger is a good German,’ continued Heydrich. ‘But it has to be faced, he was devoted to the Bloch-Bauers.’

‘Then why on earth do you keep him on?’

‘Because he’s an excellent butler, of course. Good butlers like him don’t grow on trees, you know. Especially now that we’re at war. I wouldn’t expect someone like you to understand what that means, but Kritzinger puts his professional duties as a butler ahead of his own personal opinions, always. He sincerely believes that it is his duty to provide good service and concentrate only on that which lies within his realm, as a butler. If you were to question him he would probably tell you that he wouldn’t care to say, or something else that was courteously evasive.’

‘And yet you said that he might hate you.’

‘Of course. I have to recognize that it’s a possibility. It would be stupid not to consider it. Doing what I do, Gunther, it’s wise not to trust anyone. All I ask of people is that they do their duty, and in that respect at least, Kritzinger is beyond reproach.’ He looked impatient for a moment. ‘That may be too subtle a distinction for a man like you, but there it is. Such are the dilemmas that afflict everyone who finds himself in a position of great authority.’

‘All right, General. Whatever you say.’

‘Yes. It had better be.’

When we were still several blocks east of the Imperial Hotel, Klein drew up outside an apartment building with massive, fierce-looking atlantes, Jugendstil windows, and a roof like a Bavarian castle. The portal was covered in mosaic and topped with a decorative filigree balcony. The building looked as if it had been designed by someone whose architectural influences were Homer and the Brothers Grimm. But the address was chiefly remarkable for the absence of any SS or even regular Army sentries, and it was immediately clear to me that this was not an official building.

‘What’s this place?’ I asked.

‘The Pension Matzky. A brothel run by the Gestapo for the entertainment of important Czech citizens. It’s staffed by twenty of the most beautiful amateur courtesans in all of Bohemia and Moravia. You need a password just to get through the door.’

‘I bet that keeps the tone up.’

‘Occasionally I visit the place myself. Or when I wish to reward the men who work for me with something special. And everything at the Pension Matzky is special.’

As we were sitting there a furtive-looking man went through the front door; but he was not so furtive that I didn’t recognize him. It was Professor Hamperl, the man who had carried out the autopsy on Captain Kuttner.

‘Who’s he?’ I asked. ‘One of these important citizens of Prague?’

‘I really have no idea,’ said Heydrich. ‘But I expect so. Incidentally, the password is Rothenburg. Now ask me why I told you that, Gunther.’

‘Why did you tell me that?’

‘So that you’ll be thinking about what you’re missing when you see that whore you brought from Berlin. I ask you, Klein, with the thousands of very willing girls there are in this town, can you imagine such a thing?’

Klein grinned. ‘No sir.’

Heydrich shook his head. ‘That’s like taking an owl to Athens.’

‘Maybe I just like German owls.’

Heydrich smiled his wolf’s smile, stepped out of the car and went inside the Pension without another word.

‘Oh, good. You’re back. Now we can go out somewhere.’

It was seven-forty-five, but a short while later when I looked at my watch it seemed like it was nine o’clock. With her head in shadow, Arianne was just a naked torso lying on the bed like a piece of marble sculpture. Dominated by light and form, she herself was almost secondary and not a person at all, so that I was reminded, a little, of what I’d seen during my time at the Bulovka Hospital.

I sat down on the edge of the bed and laid my hand on the curving white ski-slope that was the summit of her behind, descending the broad field of her thigh to her near-invisible knee.

‘It’s not that I don’t want you here.’

‘I know you want me, all right,’ said a disembodied voice. ‘You’ve made that perfectly clear. All you do is fuck me.’

‘It’s no longer safe for you here in Prague. I told you. There’s a special group of SD that’s been set up to look for Gustav. If they had any idea you’d actually met him, no matter how innocently — well, you can’t imagine what would happen. At least, I hope you can’t imagine what would happen. You’re in danger, Arianne. Real danger. That’s why you urgently have to go back to Berlin. First thing tomorrow. For your own protection.’

‘And you. What will you be doing?’

‘I’ll be going back to Heydrich’s house in Jungfern-Breschan.’

‘Is that his car? The Mercedes you went away in yesterday morning?’ She paused. ‘I followed you downstairs to say goodbye and changed my mind when I saw those other men in the car.’

‘Yes. That’s his car. One of them anyway.’

‘What are you doing there, anyway? At Heydrich’s house. You don’t tell me anything.’

‘There’s nothing to tell. Not yet. I had a couple of rather boring meetings with some very boring generals.’

‘Including him.’

‘Heydrich is a lot of things but he’s never boring. Most of the time I’m much too afraid of him to be bored.’

Arianne sat up and put her arms about my neck.

‘You? Scared? I don’t believe it, Parsifal. You’re brave. I think you’re very brave.’

‘To be brave you first have to be scared. Take my word for it. Anything else is just foolhardy. And it’s not bravery that keeps people alive, angel. It’s fear.’

She started to cover my head and neck with kisses. ‘Not you,’ she said. ‘I don’t believe it.’

‘I’m afraid of him, yes. I’m afraid of all of them. Afraid of what they might do to me. Afraid of what they might do to Germany. But right now I’m afraid of what they might do to you. That’s why I went to the Masaryk Station before I came here and bought you a ticket back to Berlin.’

Arianne sighed and wiped a tear from her eye.

‘Will I see you again?’

‘Of course.’

‘When?’

‘Soon, I hope. But right now everything is confused. You’ve no idea how confused.’

‘And sending me back to Berlin makes things simpler?’

‘Yes. But I told you, that’s not the reason you have to go back home. All the same I’ll sleep a lot sounder knowing you’re all right.’

She stroked my head for a moment and then said: ‘On one condition.’

‘No conditions.’

‘That you tell me you love me, Parsifal.’

‘Oh, I love you all right. As a matter of fact I love you very much, Arianne. That’s why I have to send you away. It was a mistake bringing you here, I can see that now. It was selfish of me. Very selfish. I did it for me and now I have to do this for you, see? I don’t in the least want you to go home. But because I love you I really do have to send you away.’

Maybe I did love her at that. Only it didn’t matter very much one way or another. Not now that she was leaving Prague. And somewhere inside me I knew that I couldn’t ever see her again. So long as she knew me she would be in danger because of who and what I was. After she had gone home she would be safe because I was the only person who could connect her with Gustav and Franz Koci. I knew I was going to feel bad about losing her, but this was nothing to how I knew I would feel if ever being with me put her into Heydrich’s cold white hands. He’d gut her for information the way Hamperl had gutted poor Albert Kuttner on the slab at Bulovka..