Philip Kerr - Prague Fatale

‘Hardly,’ I said. ‘I’m not about to let you get away with murder, General.’

‘We’re getting away with it every minute,’ murmured Heydrich. ‘I thought you knew that.’

‘Kuttner had it coming for all I know, but even in the SS there are standards that have to be adhered to. Military discipline. Due process. Probably it will cost me my job. Even my life, but I can at least try to bring you down.’

‘You’re a fool if you think you can bring me down. But then I think you know that already, don’t you? It’s certainly true, you can cause a bit of trouble for me, Gunther. Himmler won’t thank me for exposing Paul Thummel; and naturally the investigation will have to be entirely above reproach. Very possibly that will involve you. In which case I can hardly have you shot or sent to a concentration camp. No, I can see I’m going to have to provide you with a better, more urgent reason than your loyalty to me, one that will make sure you keep your mouth shut about all of this.’

I shook my head. ‘I don’t think that’s going to happen, sir. Not this time.’

‘Do try to be sporting about this, Gunther. At least let me try.’

‘If you like.’

Heydrich threw away his cigarette and glanced at his wristwatch.

‘We’ll go straight to Gestapo headquarters. There, if you wish, you can make out your own report, in as much detail as you like. Pecek Palace is the proper place to bring charges against me. That is, if I can’t provide you with a better reason than simple self-preservation.’

‘I dare say you have people there who can persuade anyone to do anything.’

‘Oh, you misunderstand me, Gunther. You weren’t listening, perhaps. I said I was going to give you a much better reason to keep your mouth shut than self-preservation, and I meant it. You’re quite safe from that sort of thing, I can assure you. I’m going to give you something much more compelling than violence against your person, Gunther. Shall we?’

I nodded, but something told me that I had already lost. That this was one murderer who was almost certain to get away quite unscathed.

It was three-thirty in the afternoon when Heydrich and I got into the Mercedes with Klein and started out for the centre of Prague. No one said very much but it was obvious that Heydrich was in a good humour, humming a pleasant-sounding melody that was the very opposite to the threnody playing inside my own thick skull.

Nearing the railway line that led west to Masaryk Station, we overtook a horse-drawn hearse headed south, for the Olsany Cemetery. The mourners walking behind looked at Heydrich with baleful eyes as if somehow they held him responsible for the death of the person they were escorting to church. For all I knew that was true, and the sight of his distinctive SS car must have been like catching a glimpse of the grim reaper himself. You could feel the hate following us like X-rays and despite Heydrich’s overbearing confidence that he was invincible, it was clear to me that the hatred directed at him could just as easily have been a hail of machine-gun bullets. An ambush was the best way to kill Heydrich, and once you were in that car, anything might happen. If it had happened right then and there, I wouldn’t have minded that much.

By the time we reached the outskirts of the city what little confidence I had of making something stick to Heydrich had faded. Optimism has its limits. I was an idealist and ahead of me lay an unpleasant, possibly painful, even fatal demonstration of just where idealism could get you. A jail cell. A beating. A train ride to the concentration camp being built around the fortress of Terezin. A bullet in the back of the head. Heydrich might have assured me I was safe but I had little confidence in his assurances; and thoughts of my own peril overpowered any other ideas of just what the man sitting in front of the car — whose own mind seemed more preoccupied with Schubert and his trout — had in store to deflect me from any attempt to bring charges against him.

So we drove on to what promised to be some sort of final reckoning between us.

Pecek Palace, formerly a Czech bank, was part of a government area that was home to several tall and rusticated grey buildings any one of which could have been Gestapo headquarters. But the real HQ was easy to spot at the end of the street, surrounded as it was with checkpoints and bedecked with two long Nazi banners. It was a grim, granite edifice that was a near-copy of the Gestapo’s central HQ in Berlin’s Prinz Albrechtstrasse, with huge cast-iron lamps that belonged on an ogre’s castle, and a Doric-columned portico that might have seemed elegant but for several SS men who were grouped out front, easily recognizable with their leather coats, pork-knuckle faces and pugilist’s manners. None of them looked as though they would have turned a short hair to see a defenestrated Czech crash onto the black cobbles in front of their cold eyes. Five storeys above the street the balustrade featured stone vases that resembled giant funeral urns. Certainly it wouldn’t have surprised the Czechs to have been told that this was what these were used for. After three years of occupation the Gestapo at Pecek Palace had the most fearsome reputation in all of Europe.

Klein stopped the car at the entrance and the guards came to attention. I followed Heydrich through the wrought-iron doors and up a short, shiny limestone staircase that was lit by a large brass chandelier. At the top of the stairs were some glass double-doors lined with green curtains and in front of these were two SS guards, a pair of Nazi flags, and between them a portrait of the Leader — the one by Heinrich Knirr that made him look like a queer hairdresser. To the left was a reception area where I presented my identification and endured the awl-like scrutiny of the uniformed NCO on duty.

‘Tell Colonel Bohme to come and fetch us,’ Heydrich told the NCO. And then to me: ‘I’m lost in here.’

‘A common experience, I imagine.’

‘Bohme is the one who thought he could solve Kuttner’s murder,’ said Heydrich.

‘Are you going to tell him or shall I?’

‘Oh, I know you find it hard to credit, but I take a lot of vicarious pleasure in your solving Kuttner’s murder. I mean I can admire it as a piece of reasoning. And I’m very much looking forward to seeing the expression on his stupid Saxon face.’

‘I’d been kind of looking forward to that myself. Bohme was the other officer who straightened Kuttner’s tie after your speech the other night. When he rescued the maid, Rosa, from Henlein’s clumsy drunken pass. I shall miss the opportunity of making him feel like he had something to hide.’

‘You’re a natural contrarian, Gunther,’ observed Heydrich. ‘I think your problem is not with the Nazis, it’s with all authority. You just don’t like being told what to do.’

‘Maybe.’

I glanced around.

‘Major Thummel’s here?’ I said.

‘Yes.’

‘Is Bohme questioning him?’

‘Abendschoen is leading the interrogation. He’s much more agile than Bohme. If anyone can trip Thummel up without breaking skin, it’s Willy Abendschoen.’

A minute or two passed before we heard footsteps coming up the broad stairs.

Bohme arrived at the top of the stairs and marched smartly across the hall and into the reception area. He saluted in the usual Nazi way, and under the circumstances I didn’t bother returning the compliment; but Heydrich did.

‘Let’s go and see the prisoner, shall we?’ said Heydrich.

Bohme led the way back across the hall and downstairs. At the bottom of the stairs we walked on through a warren of unpleasant smelling and dimly lit corridors and cells.

‘I hear it’s down to you, Captain Gunther, that we found Thummel was the traitor,’ Bohme told me. ‘Congratulations.’