Philip Kerr - Prague Fatale

‘Please, stop this,’ I pleaded.

Heydrich ignored me. He finished reading the transcript of the interrogation and handed the pages back to Bohme.

‘Is this really all that she knows, do you think?’ he asked.

Bohme shrugged. ‘That’s a little hard to say, sir. We’ve only had her for a few hours. At this stage there’s no telling how much she knows about anything.’

So it was true; her arrest had preceded Paul Thummel’s; in which case they couldn’t be connected.

‘Sergeant Soppa, isn’t it?’ Heydrich was looking at the very blond man whose foot was on the water board.

‘Sir.’

‘I believe you are something of an expert in matters like this. It was you who got Balaban to talk, wasn’t it?’

‘Finally. Yes sir.’

‘What is your opinion?’

Sergeant Soppa shifted his feet a little but still managed to keep Arianne’s head aloft. She looked like a human torpedo that, at any moment, he might launch into the water.

‘In my experience they always keep something back to the end, sir,’ he said ruefully. ‘There’s always one important thing that they’ll hold onto until the last. For their own self-respect, you might say. And they figure you’ll miss it because they’ve already told you absolutely everything else. It’s only when they’re begging to tell you something they think you don’t know — anything — that you can be sure you’ve got everything there is to be had out of them. Which means that it’s always best to keep the interrogation going for longer than seems decent.’

Heydrich nodded.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I see what you mean. So then, I think we shall have to know if she knows something that we don’t yet know.’

Heydrich nodded at Sergeant Soppa, who immediately took a step back so that the bascule carrying Arianne’s naked body tipped forward and hit the water with a splash, head first.

There was a horrible gurgling sound, like a drain trying to clear itself. Arianne was swallowing water. Her hands and feet flailed helplessly under their restraints like the fins of a landed fish. Then Soppa picked up a length of thick rubber cable that was lying on the wet floor and started to beat Arianne hard, the way no living creature, not even a stubborn mule, should ever be beaten. Each blow of the cable snapped loudly on her flesh and sounded like a dangerous electrical short-circuit.

I watched her beautiful body endure this for several seconds. I remembered the exquisite pleasure we had given each other just a few hours before in the hotel room back at the Imperial. That seemed a very long time ago now. More than that, it seemed like another life, in another place where cruelty and pain did not exist. Worse than this, the body I had known and kissed so tenderly already seemed like a different one from the one I was looking at now.

Why had I agreed to bring her to Prague? I could easily have refused her request to accompany me. Surely this was all my fault. I had perhaps foreseen something like this happening, only not quickly enough.

Her hair floated and twisted in the water like yellow seaweed. There was only so much of this kind of treatment she could take. That anyone could take. I told myself I had to do something and I hauled on the chain with all my strength but I was helpless to help her. At this realization, I felt an unpleasant sensation and taste arrive in my mouth from my gut and I spat it out onto the wet floor. If I’d thought, I might have spat it at Heydrich.

‘For Christ’s sake, you’re killing her,’ I yelled.

‘No,’ said Soppa’s smiling colleague. ‘Not at all.’ His tone was scoffing. ‘You might say that we’re the ones keeping her alive. Believe me, you have to know what you’re doing to take someone right to the edge like this. To almost kill them, and then not kill them. That’s the skill, sir. Besides, this little bitch is a lot tougher than she looks. She might panic a bit if ever she was to go swimming again. But, no, we won’t kill her.’ He glanced at Heydrich. ‘Not unless he tells us to do it.’

Arianne’s head stayed under the water but Sergeant Soppa stopped beating her for a moment, wiped his brow and nodded. ‘That’s right. We’ve been helping people to take the waters in Prague like this for a while now. Just like Marienbad, it is, this place. Or Bad Kissingen.’

He grinned at his own attempt at humour. Then he started beating her again.

After a few seconds I turned my face to the wall and closing my eyes against the edge of my vision, I pressed my forehead against the cold, hard tiles. These felt like Heydrich’s conscience. I might have closed my eyes but I could hardly close my ears, and the awful combination of sound that was Arianne drowning while she took a dreadful beating continued for another fifteen long seconds before I heard the ghastly dripping creak of the bascule being lifted out of the bath and the banshee rasp of her trying, painfully, to drag air into lungs that were already bloated with water.

By now I was absolutely certain that Colonel Bohme was right: there was not much that was worse than the water board. Just listening to it seemed bad enough. And when I looked again I saw Arianne was just a few centimetres above the surface of the water, dripping wet, trembling uncontrollably, her body galvanized with the spasms that were her agonized attempts to breathe and covered with fresh, livid welts. Sergeant Soppa had thrown aside his cable and had the heel of his hand on the edge of the water board, ready to do exactly the same thing again the very second that Heydrich or Bohme gave him the order.

Soppa’s colleague tossed away his cigarette and turned on a tap to pour some more water into the bath. Had she swallowed that much? Or had it just spilled onto the floor? It was hard to tell. Then he lifted Arianne’s head by the hair, shook it like a handbell, and spoke into her ear.

‘Is there anything you want to tell us, darling?’ he asked. ‘Something close to your heart. Next time we’ll fucking drown you, if we have to. Won’t we, Sarge?’

‘Sure,’ said Soppa. ‘And I’ll fuck her while she’s drowning.’ He stroked Arianne’s bare behind with lascivious intent and then patted it fondly.

‘Ask her — ask her if she knows where Vaclav Moravek is hiding,’ said Heydrich.

Soppa’s colleague repeated the question into Arianne’s ear.

She gulped loudly and whispered, ‘No. I’ve told you everything I know. I’ve never heard of Vaclav Moravek. Please. You have to believe me.’

She swallowed another painful breath, belched and tried to say something else, but her previous answer drew a sneer and then a nod from Heydrich which was the cue for another ducking. And this time her head banged against the side of the bath as she fell into the water. Her body struggled against the leather straps and the buckles which cut cruelly into her skin so that a thin trickle of blood ran down her shoulders and dripped into the turbulent bath water.

I held my own breath at the same time as she went under the water so that I could at least experience some small part of her ordeal. But this time they kept her under for much longer than a minute and when, with my lungs bursting, I realized I could hold my own breath for no longer I let it out with a yell, even as Arianne’s struggles appeared to have ended for good. Her hands and feet stopped moving. The water calmed. All was still. Including my heart.

‘Pull her up, you bastards.’

‘Is she dead?’ asked Heydrich.

‘No,’ said Soppa. ‘Not by a long chalk. Not to worry, sir. We’ve brought people round who were under the water for much longer than that.’

He and the other man lifted Arianne out of the bath and proceeded to use a combination of smelling salts, slaps, brandy and massage to try to put some life back into her.